Vi hører ofte om hvordan de største studier i branchen benytter sig af såkaldt "crunch", altså en overarbejdskultur der presser medarbejderne til at lægge masser af interessetimer i deres arbejde, oftest uden tilsvarende kompensation. Dette har, igennem tiden, resulteret i at medarbejdere oftest går ned med stress, eller har en tendens til at skifte job hurtigt.
Så hvordan foregår det hos danske IO Interactive? Det snakkede CEO Hakan Abrak om i et interview med IGN Unfiltered for nylig, og her slår han fast, at de ikke gør brug af den slags taktikker hos IO, og grunden er simpel - det er slet ikke nogen effektiv måde at udvikle spil på. Dog indrømmer han også at overarbejde forekommer.
"I took over as executive producer on [Kayne and Lynch] just two years before it was launched, and at that point the technology was just barely done. It was nowhere. Although it had been on the way for five years, it didn't really have any core features in place yet. That production was absolutely... it was crazy. For me, personally, I ran people really hard. I was really hard, we crunched a lot. I remember, personally... myself... in two years, I had two weekends where I was off both days, or else I would have worked every day, two years straight, no vacation.
"I learned a ton from that. After that, I went on to do R&D [research and development] and I went on to be studio production director. When I turned to be the studio production director, I could actually affect things on how my production's run... So, I did learn a lot from that. I did learn it's not only destroying souls, but it's also not an effective way of developing games. Today, I'm not saying we're not doing 'overwork.' We do, at times. But it's something that needs to be felt... like, a good clear purpose... from within the team, and it needs to be on a shorter period than these long crunch periods."
IO Interactive arbejder lige nu på mere indhold til Hitman 3 og Project 007.