The tweet you see above is from the social media account of the video game Ryse: Son of Rome. The game, an exclusive title for the soon-to-be-released Xbox One console, is currently in development for the November launch. I can understand the original intent of the tweet. The team is extremely hard at work to make the fast-approaching deadline to get the game done. The way the message was conveyed though, led to some extremely negative reactions from the Internet. It seems almost boastful and proud that Crytek, the company behind the game, is forcing its workers to stay late and eat dinner at work, so much so that over 11, 500 of such dinners will have been served before the game is done.
Perhaps ten years ago or more, such an admission would be acceptable or a badge of honour for team dedication. Today, such crunch is frowned upon. Many people view these long periods of crunch time as a failure of management to reign in the scope of the project. Crunch is no longer seen as something to proud of, rather as a sign of weakness. Everyone should expect to work a bit of OT on any video game but it’s in bad taste to boast about almost 12 thousand OT meals.
So, as with many things, people took to the Internet to voice their displeasure. If you search the hashtag #RyseFacts on Twitter, you’ll see a plethora of parody tweets and disdain for the original tweet. Like I wrote above, I understand why they wrote that tweet. I’d be naive to think crunch doesn’t happen on other teams. It was just a huge mistake to get their message across in the way they did. The game will now get massive amounts of attention but for all the wrong reasons.