Crunch culture is one of the most controversial and maligned aspects of video game development, right up there with generative AI and mass layoffs. Forcing employees to work well beyond their normal hours to ensure a game ships on time is generally viewed as not a good thing, but Wardogs studio Bulkhead very much embraces crunch as an inevitability and sees embrace of crunch as part of a strong work ethic.
“A lot of people who may have an issue with crunch—rightly so, I understand that issue, we always try and avoid it, but we don’t hide that this is going to happen at some point—they often don’t make it in the door,” Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer tells Game Developer. “We want to be known for that: this is a place you come to work hard. If you care about the work you’re making and the result of what you make here, you’ll feel really valued. If you don’t, you will feel slave-driven.”
Throughout his interview, Brammer strongly suggest there’s a major financial incentive tied to employees’ willingness to work extra hours, which is certainly better than unpaid crunch, but it’s still crunch. My critical view of crunch is probably already enough to get me disqualified from working at Wardogs, because Brammer even says the hiring team scans the social media profiles of applicants to make sure they aren’t posting negatively about crunch online.
“We check people’s socials, and if you’re constantly tweeting anti-crunch messaging: ‘This should never ever be a thing’, we know that and go, ‘Look, you’re not going to be happy here, so we’re not going to go with you,'” he says, adding that there’s a financial “upside” to working long hours at Bulkhead.
“If we’re going to be a company who says, ‘we do crunch,’ then we have to also say, ‘but you get something for it,'” Brammer says. “We want people to know that those people who do work hard get that return, and it is life-changing.”
While awareness around crunch at game studios has improved over the years thanks to whistle blowers and industry reporting, the practice is far from behind us. As recently as this past July, unionizing Rockstar employees alleged crunch is “built into” contracts as a way to get around labor regulations.