Crunch Explains Bad Games

 I figured it out. Programmers can't make any decent games because crunch destroys their sleep and thus their ability to reason. 

 Exception proving the rule: Pixel made Cave Story over such a long period that he clearly got enough sleep. Thus, despite having to do everything himself, getting no economies of scale or division of labour, it's still one of the best games ever made. Turns out deadlines exist to kill you. 

 

 There's this series of quests in vanilla World of Warcraft at level 40, which were put in to encourage players to use their shiny new mount. On one hand, encouraging players to use new stuff is often necessary.

 For WoW mounts, it's completely batshit nutjob jibbering jabbering fruitcake loco crazy. The game is already absurdly slow - on purpose, to try to milk subscriptions - the mount is only +60% movement speed, and the regular walking speed is not exactly a blistering pace. The mount doesn't make crossing continents easier either, and naturally they made all these quests require multiple continent crossings. 

 Everyone is so desperate to get their mount they immediately grind gold if they get to 40 and don't have enough. Nobody would whoopsie forget they have the mount. You don't need to train them - walking for 40 levels trained them plenty, thanks. The fact you can't fight on your mount and keep the +60% movement speed is a major pain point. P.S. The correct speed for a travel form is "too fast to control," and that's more like 300% movement speed in WoW. Maybe a little faster than flight paths. BTW super fun "wait five minutes" gameplay there Blizzard, how did you ever think of it.

 Result: these level 40 quests are all seriously obscure. You have to read occult interviews and niche 10,000 copy books to know about them. "They made the rewards really good though, right? Because they take so long?" Ha! Haha! You're funny.

 Who with a remotely working brain would think WoW post-mount quests are a good idea? Answer: actually no one. Only folk with completely busted brains can possibly think that. WoW's budget was less than half of what they ultimately spent, meaning basically the whole dev process was crunch. Result: very, very stupid. 

 For my sins, I know when Blizzard turned a spell called Death and Decay into something that causes Disrespect and Delay. Disappointment and Affray. Maybe if you really pump it up you can Disturb and Dismay. Why would they do that? Crunch => stupid.

 Conclusion: we can safely assume all Official game developers have busted brains. No wonder the games suck so bad. 

 Perhaps that's the main driver behind EA studio destruction. They don't 'meddle' because the execs aren't under crunch - they know not to strangle the golden goose by trying to replace their stylistic vision with its own. However, they don't know anything about long term vs. short term. They make them work harder. Sleep when you're dead, right? Do you know how much we're paying these people? Haha! Whoops! Turns out crime doesn't pay!

 The larger the studio, the more crunch pressure they can apply, thus the worse the games they produce.