As we seemingly hear all too often around the industry, crunch is real and present for the teams that develop nearly every major game.
Jonathan Cooper is a former Senior Animator at Naughty Dog who took to Twitter to share some of the working conditions he faced prior to leaving in late 2019.
First, he details how the crunch was so bad to develop the gameplay demo last year for The Last of Us 2 that one friend of his in the studio had to be hospitalized.
For the demo shown last September, the gameplay animators crunched more than I've ever seen and required weeks of recovery afterwards. One good friend of mine was hospitalised at that time due to overwork. He still had over half a year to go. There have been others since.
— Jonathan Cooper (@GameAnim) March 12, 2020
Next he says that this is very common in Los Angeles but that Naughty Dog’s reputation for crunch is so bad, that it is now near impossible for them to hire senior developers.
While super-talented, they lacked the technical/design knowhow to assemble scenes. Similarly, the design team ballooned with juniors to make up for the attrition of key roles. Every aspect of finishing this game took much longer due to the lack of game experience on the team.
— Jonathan Cooper (@GameAnim) March 12, 2020
According to Cooper, he is only telling the story from the animators viewpoint, but that there are other “worse” situations within the studio.
There are ND stories worse than this but like everything on my twitter I'm focusing on animation. For TLOU2 fans, the game should turn out great with industry-leading animation. I would just not recommend anyone work at Naughty Dog until they prioritise talent-retention.
— Jonathan Cooper (@GameAnim) March 12, 2020
And lastly as we’ve seen all too often, the company doesn’t want these stories being shared.
When I left Naughty Dog late last year they threatened to withhold my final paycheck until I signed additional paperwork stating I wouldn't share their production practices. They finally relented when I assured them that was most likely illegal…
— Jonathan Cooper (@GameAnim) March 12, 2020
Our Take
Sadly, this isn’t much of a surprise. With capitalism and the need to produce the best in the most cost efficient manner, many shortcuts are taken and it goes well beyond the video game industry. We hope that more developers within the industry share their stories so that one day it can change for the better. While we all adore the AAA experiences, at the end of the day they are games and people shouldn’t have to pay with their health to produce them.
