In a new talk with IGN Unfiltered, Hakan Abrak, the CEO of Hitman developer IO Interactive, gave his thoughts on crunch culture in the games industry. With so much time in the industry, and titles like Hitman 3 under his belt, Hakan Abrak has some great insight to offer.
Crunch, or periods of time where developers and required to work extreme amounts of overtime – sometimes for extended periods of time – has been a prevalent issue in the games industry. In recent years, it has become a widely described topic, with releases of huge titles like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 being surrounded by discussions over the developers crunching leading up to release.
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In the interview, Abrak reveals that when he first took over as the executive producer on IO Interactive title Kane and Lynch, two years before it launched, he made his team crunch extremely hard. He goes into detail on how over those two years he only had two weekends where he took both days off of work, meaning that in finishing the game he nearly worked two years straight. Thankfully, he goes on to explain how he learned from that experience and explains how the culture in IO Interactive has moved away from mandatory crunch periods for games like the Hitman series.
Abrak does admit that the studio does still have periods of crunch, but says that "it's something that needs to be felt...like, a good clear purpose," and that it "needs to be on a shorter period than these long crunch periods." Another motivation for the change, according to Abrak, is the Hitman series' shift away from being standalone releases to being more of a continually updated service.
He says that due to the change developers can't simply crunch knowing that when the product releases everyone can relax for a while, and he likens IO Interactive's new development style to be more similar to running a marathon, where the studio is keeping employee's long-term health and sustainability at the forefront.
It is good to hear that IO Interactive is making effort to ensure that its developers are not overworking themselves, and for the workplace's culture to be as healthy as possible. It is also nice to see that discussions surrounding crunch in the industry are becoming more popular so that hopefully progress can be made towards irradiating it from the industry so game developers are treated properly, especially with how the industry is gravitating towards live service games like Fortnite that are constantly having new content developed and released.
Hitman 3 is available now on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Stadia, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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Source: IGN