Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, Chapter 2: Naughty Dog

The second chapter of Blood, Sweat, and Pixels follows a tale as old as video games: the crunch. The victims this time were the employees of Naughty Dog, who at the time were well into the development cycle of Uncharted 4. This crunch came with an interesting caveat, however; much of its problems stemmed from the employees’ borderline excessive desire to go above and beyond for their craft. From stitches on buttons, to minor animation details, the artists at Naughty Dog have a reputation of quality for a reason. Unfortunately, that quality comes at a hefty cost in work hours, and in the game industry, deadlines are always far too tight.

The perfectionism within the ranks of the team caused things to be pushed out at a snail’s pace. Put simply, they took far too much time to perfect every minute detail of their current tasks before moving on to the next, despite their current work already being more than acceptable. The approaching deadlines didn’t help much, either; the pressure of ever-encroaching dates can and will affect the team’s mental state, and thus, their efficiency.

Of course, the simple solution to meeting deadlines is to just push “good” work instead of delaying to create “perfect” work. In practice, however, the situation becomes much more complex. It is a matter of convincing both oneself (and one’s team members, in the case of leadership) that something is good to push. It takes a good eye and a great awareness of the time one has to work, and how that work should be spread out to complete everything on time. Spending too much time on a small group of items comes at the expense of everything else’s quality, so time management is the key to success in regards to ensuring quality across the board.

Not that I’m much better. I’ve not experienced crunch in its full force, but I imagine it would be a huge mental struggle to handle. Certainly possible, but that sort of pressure is best avoided completely. In the case of Naughty Dog, though, they couldn’t dodge that bullet, and the crunch proved a bit too much. The game released with major flaws, and Naughty Dog needed to add patches as soon as possible to address them.

Now, patches are important. If anything, they demonstrate at least a base commitment to ensuring a game is as playable and enjoyable as possible, even after it’s been put out. This is especially true of multiplayer-focused games, where game balance may be a massive undertaking. However, they are not the go-to solution; that would be to fix the problems before release. To accomplish that, as stated above, Naughty Dog would need to spread their tasks out more evenly across the development timeline, pushing out assets when they’re good, instead of going overtime on every aspect to make them as perfect as they can be and running out of time to finish everything else.

In general, the Uncharted 4 situation is a lesson in knowing when to stop. Of course, the goal is to make everything as good as possible for the sake of the game, but chasing unrealistic goals is a recipe for disaster, especially when on a tight time constraint. It’s important to know when to step back and focus on getting the game done instead of just one piece of it.