Probably a bad idea to jump in now... (Gaming)

by cheapLEY , Tuesday, May 26, 2020, 11:01 (1645 days ago) @ Claude Errera

I think you’re exactly correct. “Crunch” to me is something forced upon you from above.

Working long, hard hours isn’t necessarily crunch. It’s just working hard on something you’re passionate about. It’sa right situation, because I don’t think we need to prevent people from being able to work 60 or 70 hour weeks if they want to (and I know that real crunch is far worse than 70 hour weeks). Some people are just driven like that. We must however, fight against forcing folks to crunch. That might require also forcing folks who genuinely don’t mind to also go home, at least until we can figure out how to let people work when they’re most productive. The risk of exploitation is far too high to accept “well some people thrive on long hours” and “art requires sacrifice” as an excuse.

As a consumer, it’s difficult to make purchasing decisions based on crunch. If you’re not going to play things that were made under bad conditions, you might as well sell all of your gaming hardware. Until developers stand up for themselves and demand protections, I’m pretty hard pressed to factor it into my purchasing decisions. That’s very selfish of me, I know, in that just allows me to sidestep the issue. But, as always, there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism, so unless I’m going to go entirely off-grid and grow my own food and make my own clothes, that’s the reality of everything money is spent on.