In a recent interview with The Game Business, Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer openly discussed how crunch was inevitable when developing Wardogs, noting, “We check people’s socials, and if you’re constantly tweeting anti-crunch messaging, you’re not going to be happy here, so we’re not going to go with you.”
Some outlets, including PC Gamer, took this to mean that crunch is mandatory at Bulkhead, but Brammer refuted this assertion in a new X post.
“I’m not going to get into a public debate about this, or any other of these out of context articles. But here are the facts,” he said. “No information says mandatory, they made this up. 80% of the shares in Bulkhead are owned by 50% of the staff. For 50% of the development we ran a 4 DAY WORK WEEK… We gave everyone the entire month of December off. We made a game you like and our staff will be rewarded for it accordingly. We made that choice, don’t take it out of context, watch the whole interview here to make up your own mind. This is the other side of the honesty and transparency we have been commended for.”
In the initial interview with The Game Business (via Game Developer), Brammer had this to say about the studio’s relationship with crunch: “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. 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.”
Crunch is an unfortunately common practice in game development, and while Brammer says he wants Bulkhead to be a transparent studio where “you get something for it,” that doesn't erase the exhaustion, disrupted work-life balance, and stress that can come with working long hours. Brammer may assert that it’s not “mandatory,” but scanning applicants’ social media posts and rejecting those with anti-crunch messaging because it is “going to happen at some point," and insisting that you must be okay with it because you care about the work you do, suggests that crunch is at least an expected part of working at Bulkhead.
Four-day work weeks are commendable, and it's amazing to see developers rewarded for a game's success, rather than shareholders, but crunch still runs the risk of burnout, fatigue, lower productivity, and, crucially, peer pressure. If everyone around you is working overtime because they are truly passionate about the work they’re doing, it can create pressure to join them, regardless of whether you’re comfortable working longer hours. We don’t know what every individual at Bulkhead was thinking during these periods of crunch, and can't speak on their behalf, so this may not have been the case during Wardogs’ development, but it’s nonetheless a culture that risks turning passion into an unhealthy expectation, regardless of whether it’s mandatory.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.thegamer.com/wardogs-ceo-responds-mandatory-crunch/
