A group of students from the Columbus College of Art and Design (CCAD) have created a board game called '100 Hours Till Launch' in an attempt to raise awareness about the unhealthy 'Crunch Culture'
'Crunch Culture' is the industry-wide practice of crunching out hours to meet deadlines. It often results in overwork going beyond the traditional 40-hour work week. Some have reported to even work more than 70 hours a week, with Rockstar having reports of 100-hour weeks. This results in stress, work life imbalance, and poor cognitive performance which is counter-intuitive to what crunch aims to do. When workers suffer the negative effects of crunch, products tend to be lackluster in quality, and at the compromise of the workers' health. This could have gotten worse given that COVID-19 has resulted in more people playing games than ever.
The CCAD's Game Arts Project class, partnered with tabletop RPG game developer ODAM Publishing, designed a board game to raise awareness on the negative effects of crunch. The project was inspired by the campus-wide campaign of health and wellness making better artists. Much like how Monopoly promotes an entrepreneurial and investing mindset, the board game '100 Hours Till Launch' allows players to explore the different positive values that promote a healthy working culture in the workplace.
The project was led by Liz Keegan, CCAD Assistant Professor of Animation and Game Art & Design. She says that after looking at several options to address Crunch Culture, it became clear that the best way to engage dialogue and problem solving would be through gameplay. The team also got to work closely with ODAM Publishing's founder Matthew Tarulli. The founder says that he was grateful to work with the students at CCAD for a reasonable cause.
100 Hours Till Launch will be free while supplies at select events in Columbus including the GDEX Gaming Expo on Sept. 18–20, and the Origins Game Fair 2020 on Oct. 7–11. The game will also be available online at this site as a downloadable print-and-play.
Sometimes, problems and issues' awareness to the public could be hard to get across. In the gaming industry where people are more concerned towards new changes and bug fixes, 100 Hours Till Launch has nailed the perfect medium in reaching out these concerns -- through gameplay.
Once crunch culture has been addressed, and changes to mitigate unhealthy work hours have been implemented, we could see a decrease in the horrid practices that plague this industry. This creates not only a healthy ecosystem in the workplace, but a better relationship between gamers and game developers too.