The experience of crunch in the video games industry amongst current and aspiring developers

The video games industry relies on crunch - overworking the developers, usually towards the end of the project in order to meet a required deadline. In this paper, I analyze the different relationships that aspiring and current game developers have with the games industry and how they position themselves when it comes to crunch. Passion is a major component of people's desire to join the games' industry, later being used to justify one's need of staying overtime: "Since I am passionate about video games, it did not feel like work at all." Other aspiring or current developers are more skeptical when it comes to crunch and are developing secondary plans, either to quit the industry, join labor unions or push for better working conditions.