Åbenbart blev holdet bag Fable-serien udsat for ekstrem "crunch"

Selvom der er kommet mere fokus på emnet i løbet af de sidste par år, så er spilbranchen fortsat et sted hvor overarbejdestimerne er ekstreme, kompensationen for disse er lav, og de generelle forhold efterlader mange kritiske spørgsmål.

Nu er det eksempelvis kommet frem, via et interview med Elite Game Developers, at også Lionhead Studios oplevede ekstrem "crunch"-kultur under udviklingen af Fable, Fable 2 og Fable 3. Det er tidligere Assistant Producer hos Lionhead, Shaun Rutland, der snakker lidt om sin oplevelse, og han er fortsat ret skuffet over behandlingen af medarbejderne i de år.

"I got into Lionhead Studios as an assistant producer. And that was like my dream job working to Peter Molyneux working on Fable so it was like, 'Wow, this is very exciting. There I was quite blown away by the sheer size of the productions. I think it was, like 110 people, something crazy. Well, and how hard that was. I joined when they had a really bad period of crunch. And I'd already had a bad few years of crunch. So I experienced that kind of firsthand. And I was quite disappointed by it and a lot of challenges with people's health around working such long hours, and then realising people weren't actually that productive when they work 14 hour days."

Molyneux selv har tidligere beskrevet situationen lidt anderledes, og fået det til at lyde som om at hele holdet har været med på ideen om crunch.

"I know a lot of people would say, this is crunch. But this was a real work of passion. It wasn't a work where you told people to come in. We really felt we were making something that never existed before. Everybody was totally up for it. I don't think many of the team who were there would look back and regret the amount of hours they spent on it. It just felt like we were making something that never existed before, and that was a fantastic thing," fortalte han i et interview fra 2016 via Videogamer.