In some cases, crunch culture is so ingrained in a company that leadership willingly exposes their teams’ 100 hour work weeks as a sign of hard work and proof that companies are doing their best to release a game on time.

Most of the problems with crunch are a result of the crunch culture that runs rampant and is widely accepted throughout the industry. It stems from an emphasis that getting work done well and done quickly is more important than work-life balance or personal well being. īecause crunch time tends to come from a combination of corporate practices as well as peer influence, the term 'crunch culture' is often used to discuss video game development settings where crunch time may be seen as the norm rather than the exception. In some cases, the drive for crunch may come from the developers themselves as individual developers may want to work extra hours without a mandate to assure their product meets delivery milestones and is of high quality, which can influence other developers to also commit to extra hours or avoid taking time off as to appear slacking. The use of crunch time is also seen to be exploitative of the younger male-dominated workforce in video games, who have not had the time to establish a family and who were eager to advance within the industry by working long hours. The complexity of work flow, reliance on third-party deliverables, and the intangibles of artistic and aesthetic demands in video-game creation create difficulty in predicting milestones. 'Crunch time' is the point at which the team is thought to be failing to achieve milestones needed to launch a game on schedule.

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