Back in 2004, Erin Hoffman (aka EA Spouse) and her husband, Leander Hasty, took legal action against EA due to the latter being forced to work under intense circumstances in which developers apply every last bit of their being into finishing a title.
While the case resulted in their victory over EA (which cost the company $14.9 million), Hoffman revealed in a recent column she wrote for The Escapist, that there is an addictive quality to crunch time.
At one point in the article, Hoffman delves into what causes developers to push workers to their limits to finish a game and ensuring it plays as intended.
“…whenever you engage in something creative, there inevitably comes that moment, usually in the isolation of deep night, when things just start working,” Hoffman wrote. “Some piece of code you’ve been pounding on for weeks finally clicks into place, some level for the first time really starts to come alive, some infuriating piece of AI finally stops floating upside down and does what you told it to. It works.”
Despite the fact that Ms. Hoffman expressed her great disdain of EA’s unfavorable labor practices when she wrote a LiveJournal entry on the issue all those years ago, I suppose it’s safe to say that she’s deliberately gone out of her way to display that there is a very complicated love/hate relationship regarding the final period of game development.
[Via GameDaily]
