LogInFallout: New Vegas' Director Josh Sawyer says that burnout has replaced the crunch culture.
Image credit: Obsidian Entertainment, Fallout: New Vegas
As many of us know, the game industry has long grappled with the issue of crunch culture. For those unfamiliar with the term, crunch is when developers put in extra hours and workloads to meet deadlines, usually, that happens before a game's release or important project milestone.
However, according to seasoned veteran Josh Sawyer, who you may know as Studio Design Director at Obsidian (contributed to Fallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity, etc.), burnout has now taken its place as "the primary hazard of the game industry" for gamedev professionals.
Burnout, a state of mental and physical exhaustion caused by prolonged stress, is the scourge of our time, and nobody is safe when we talk about it.
Having experienced burnout himself, Sawyer believes that more action is needed to combat this problem and improve working conditions in the industry.
"I believe burnout has already replaced crunch as the primary hazard of the game industry," he says on Twitter. "Managers are setting teams up to fail and devs are getting ground up as collateral damage. I have suffered from burnout myself. It's no joke," Sawyer wrote on Twitter.
As with crunch, it's likely that managers may acknowledge creating the circumstances leading to burnout but will not take the necessary steps to change them. It's important that devs continue to talk to and support each other and to apply pressure until change is effected."
Aside from crunch and burnout, the other problems that developers have been facing these days are layoffs. The last studio affected by job cuts is Ascendant Studios, the creator of Immortals of Aveum, which recently reportedly placed around 30 of its staff on extended unpaid leave.
Read the original article on GamesRadar and the source on PC Gamer. Don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.
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