Naughty Dog admits the use of crunch, but promises to improve in the future

The documentary Grounded 2, which focuses on the creation of The Last of Us 2 and published these days on Youtube, also sheds light on a somewhat controversial aspect for Naughty Dogor the use of the crunch in a rather systematic manner, with the team however appearing committed to improvein this respect, for the future.

The issue was revealed at the time of the development of The Last of Us 2 by a report by Jason Schreier which caused a certain sensation, as it started a sort of examination of this practice which later proved to be quite widespread in the videogame industry.

In essence, it involves pushing developers to work overtime and work well beyond standard hours to try to compress processing times, with negative consequences on the psychological and physical health of employees.

As documented by various insights, many developers who go through long periods of crunch are subject to burnout and, in some cases, prefer it abandon entirely the field of video game development.

The problem is now recognized by team leaders

In the documentary Grounded 2 the topic, initially denied at the time of Schreier's report, is mentioned clearly, even if it could be filtered from a somewhat promotional vision, to show how much the team is perfectionist and wants to achieve great results, but at least it is clearly stated that the problem exists in Naughty Dog culture.

Although The Last of Us 2 was a project that, perhaps for the first time in the team, enjoyed long and detailed planning, this “it didn't solve the crunch problem,” co-director Anthony Newman says in the video, but it only allowed the project to increase in size.

“Now we have set ourselves the goal of eliminate crunch in Naughty Dog”, says Neil Druckmann in the video, starting from the fact of recognizing when this begins to be applied and trying to avoid it. The question is even more conceptual than systematic, but at least the fact that there is a “culture of crunch” at Naughty Dog has become a consolidated topic even among team managers.