In a recent interview with GameSpot, Halo co-creator Marcus Lehto revealed that one of the reason he left Bungie was due to the crunch of developing a game with a very specific deadline. Stating:
“One of the reasons I left Bungie–and I know one of the reasons people from the industry have joined us here at V1–is that many of us have seen the bad side of extended crunch periods that would go on for months and months … and what kind of human toll that took. We don’t want to experience that, we don’t want to replicate that at all again [at V1]. So at V1, one of our primary goals with the studio is making sure that we create an atmosphere where everybody is intimately involved with what we’re working on, so there is a lot of responsibility on everybody’s shoulders. And everybody wears several hats.”
This has led his new studio V1 Interactive and do more for the well-being of their employees. Saying:
“We also value, incredibly, the health of everybody here–both physically and mentally. Making sure they have that time outside the office to be with their family, and we support them to be home when they need to be home, to go to their kids’ school concerts and to have the weekends to themselves. That is a very important part to me, and it’s one thing we’ve extended to everyone here at the studio.”
