Crunch time (expression)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Crunch time is the period of time immediately before a project (or other timetabled item) is due. It is typical for crunch time to occur between the next-to-last scheduled milestone and the final due date.

"Crunch time" has become such a problem the Video Game Industry that major production companies have and are still being sued to date by not just overworked, sleep deprived employees, but their spouses and families for taking so much time out their own personal lives. It is fairly commonplace for developers to put in a 12+ hour day, 6-7 days a week when these crunch times occur, sometimes going weeks before having a day off. Crunch time also happens a few times throughout a game's development stages, not just the last 3-5 months towards the end of the project. There's also crunch time during the weeks that a greenlight, milestone, Alpha and Beta builds are to be made. At these times a clean and bug free version of the game are expected to be delivered to the production company for further scrutinizing and analysis. This of course can lead to much stress and anxiety as work is often cut or changed to make the deliverable by its deadline.

In game design it is sometimes taken so seriously that the team developing the game may have to work overnight during the crunch time. In some cases developers have been taken ill during this.

In basketball, the term crunch time is applied to the last few minutes of play in the fourth quarter. Here, both teams gear up to secure the game with fierce play, effectively ending the endurance match of the first, second and third quarters. The term was invented in New Zealand in 1984 as a combination of the two phrases show-time and when it comes to the crunch.