Chair Entertainment co-founder Donald Mustard has said the crunch time the studio underwent to finish Infinity Blade II in six months was "not worth the cost" to the team.
"We only did it because we definitely, passionately wanted to get the game done, and we wanted a little more in there.
"I think in retrospect, having done it twice, that our development cycles are a little too short. Not that the games are less polished because of it, but we're way more burnt out because, in order to make [Infinity Blade] II feel the experience it needed to be, required way more crunching than is effective.
"It required for us, for the last two or three month, to just death march kill ourselves. I mean, guys are just working so many hours, doing so much, and that's not really good, I think, for the longevity of our studio."
Some argue that crunch time is actually detrimental to the development of a game, and work produced during crunch is actually at a lower quality than work produced during normal working hours.
"We definitely won't do that again," Mustard continued.
"It's not worth the cost. I would rather take an extra two or three months than burn the guys out, or burn even me out. It doesn't allow enough time to sit there and let the game breathe."
Infinity Blade II is available today on the iOS app store for £4.99.
Comments
5 comments so far...
metallicorphan on 1 Dec '11 said:
Shadow Complex 2 please
10699 on 1 Dec '11 said:
I don't think its argued. I think its pretty obvious that 15 hour days 7 days a week for 6+months means that you won't be producing your best work, if anything due to fatigue, depression and lack of excercise/sunlight, its highly likely you will be working slower then you would be had you been fresh and working normal hours; meaning that you will need to crunch harder just to keep up with the fact you are working slower/making more mistakes.
Statements like this make me think that people don't seem to realise how hard people in the games industry work to make these experiences.
BLARRG on 1 Dec '11 said:
this or nintendo get them to do a 2d metroid game for the 3ds
mogel94 on 1 Dec '11 said:
this.
martinawatson on 1 Dec '11 said:
5 months to develop a platform defining game, that's really something to be proud of. Don't worry mate , you've got a whole ten months before the ipad3 and iphone 5 launch requires your next infinity blade title,so get the red bulls in, cheers