[ungzd]

I'm not sure that level of crunch is generally lower in indie companies. In theory, they might be struggling more, they are in disadvantageous position against big companies, they have to do more experiments and take more risks than AAA, which make the same "press X to hollywood" or network shooters for the last 20 years.

(I don't play big companies' (modern) games, because almost always I'm not in target audience and find such games completely unplayable)

[WorldMaker]

Yeah, if crunch is the moral issue, then indie companies are more prone to work/life balance issues than even the AAA developers. Indie companies have the usual startup issues of either the developers are moonlighting after their day jobs (working two jobs, a personal crunch) or pushed hard for "passion" to work hard (crunch) to pay the bills when it's still life or death to the company.

A lot of indies directly come from "game jam culture" which celebrates over-taxing developers with crunch "for fun".

Sustainable business practices in the games industry are unlikely to be possible until the industry is much more strongly unionized. At which point it would be more likely for the AAA games to be union shops and/or able to afford unionized workers to work on games.

[kkarakk]

Indie workers get rewarded proportionally for their crunch though. AAA workers seem to have to crunch for their base salary and good luck ever seeing an extra penny if the game becomes a phenomenon like fortnite did. meanwhile notch is a billionaire now and his employees are all comfortable millionaires

[WorldMaker]

Indie workers may get rewarded for their crunch efforts. Usual startup worker caveats apply that far more indie development companies bankrupt than succeed, and even in a small, early startup not all stock is equivalent (depending on funding sources and corporate politics).

[mynegation]

Most of the time I cannot drop by their office or home office and watch over their shoulder, but I try to do my due diligence as much as possible. Last game I played for example, was from this team [1], started playing it when it was an actual indie company (Alex as a single developer and Lacey as ops)

[1] http://edgeworksentertainment.com/about

[Mikeb85]

At least with indies the staff are more likely to share the windfall. While they crunch, it's their own choice and they profit directly.