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Devolver Releasing SNES Game About Game Development Crunch For Charity
Devolver Digital and developer Mega Cat Studio are releasing a brand new SNES game, cart and all, that illustrates the frustrations and dangers of game development crunch with profits going to mental health charity Take This.
Fork Parker's Crunch Out is a management sim where the player takes the role of a Devolver Digital executive who needs to get a game shipped on time. He does this by giving his employees coffee, disciplining them for for not working efficiently, or breaking out a gentle electric shock to keep them focused and motivated.
When a game ships and its profits rake in, you make it up to your employees by reinvesting some of that money into espresso machines and parties to express how truly sorry you are about them not seeing their families and other loved ones before getting right back into more crunch time.
Devolver is actually producing SNES carts for the game for $50, with there only being 1000 copies for sale, but it should function fully on a normal SNES system. There's also a fancy $150 special edition that has a screen on the cartridge that displays the game's title logo when the system is powered on. Devolver is donating its entire cut to Take This, a non-profit charity for mental illness prevention and mental health issue awareness in gaming.
To read more about crunch in the gaming industry, read David Milner's award-winning piece on the subject.
Our Take
It sounds like a pretty good illustration of gaming crunch and how executive teams try to paper over the labor abuses with pizza parties and platitudes rather than actual change. Playing as the CFO is an interesting idea since it puts you at war between the ethics of the decision and the goal-driven gameplay. I'll be interested to see it when it comes out.
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