So far our Metacritic score is 78%, which is good but a little disappointing. I’m very happy with ATV Pro and feel it deserves more. I think we’ve delivered a title that really pushes the PSP and is fun for portable play.

Two of our biggest goals were to have a 60fps framerate and keep most loading times under 20 seconds, both of which we achieved. Very few titles on the PSP have either of these, and for a good reason – they’re hard to do! We also wanted to do something else that few other games do; PS2<=>PSP connectivity. For example; When unlocked, certain mini-games and vehicles can be transferred from the PSP to PS2 (and vice-versa) and played on that platform. It’s a great feature for people who own both versions, or have friends that do.

While I’m happy that ATV Pro has shipped, I’m also a little sad. 

For close to six years now I’ve worked for Climax Racing, first in Brighton and for the last two years from our LA studio. When Climax Racing was sold to Buena Vista my choices were either return to the UK, or remain in LA working for Climax. I chose the latter. I’m sad to leave Racing, but I’m also excited to see what the future holds.

Last week I moved on to a new game team. I can’t say what I’m working on just yet, but it’s for the PC and scheduled to ship for Thanksgiving 2007. This’ll be the first time in five years that I’m not working on a PlayStation title. It’s going to be a little strange, but I’m looking forward to it!

For the majority of video game developers, end of project overtime (a.k.a crunch-time) is the near-inevitable tradeoff we accept for an interesting and generally fun job. And like the Curb Your Enthusiasm sketch about Hodgkin’s disease, there are both ’good’ and ‘bad’ varieties of crunch-time. 

Good crunch comes close to the end of the project. There are X number of bugs preventing you shipping and the end is in sight. Another form of good crunch would be working overtime to make that last-minute-yet-terrific tweak, or polishing up the latest E3/Press/Cover-Disc demo that will be seen by thousands.

Bad crunch is very different. 

Bad crunch can be summed up as the “oh fuck” phase of a project or milestone, the time where it’s discovered the amount of outstanding work exceeds the time remaining. In addition, while working on features that have not yet been completed (or started!), special care must be taken as the amount of QA time they will receive before release can vary from weeks to hours. 

The causes of bad crunch and how they can be avoided deserve an entire post to themselves. However, since I’ve only recently finished my latest bout of crunch I’ll save that post till I’m feeling a little more objective  Instead, here are 10 of the things I most dislike about crunch-time in the games industry..

1. The final deadline is never really the final deadline, at least not at first. Attempting to guess the real deadline becomes a game of cat and mouse between the developer and the publisher.
2. Your daily diet consists of cheap takeaway food, constrained to a few repeating varieties. To this day, certain Indian dishes bring back haunting memories of summer 2004.
3. Life begins to resemble Groundhog Day, sans humour and Andi McDowell. While Bill Murray learnt to play the piano, your only gain will be carpal tunnel syndrome.
4. Because the majority of games target the holiday season crunch-time, annoyingly, coincides with the last few months of summer. (We work on video games people, we don’t get enough sun as it is!)
5. You wake up one morning and realize you’re out of fresh laundry
6. You wake up the next morning and realize you’re still out of fresh laundry.
7. Consumption of Coffee/Coke/Red-Bull increase to dangerous levels. Unofficial competitions begin to see who can brew the strongest, yet still drinkable, coffee. 
8. Some team members begin to develop an irrational dislike for the publisher in general, and the publishers QA team in particular.
9. During the final month (or months), various team members will be sporadically struck by day-long bouts of unfounded optimism and utter phrases such as “we’re nearly there”, or “one last push!”. The rest of the team will take time out of bug-fixing to plot their painful deaths.
10. After crunch is over, you still have submission to contend with.