Overcoming Burnout Culture in the Game Development: Role of Global Crowdsourcing

The game development industry has witnessed rapid expansion and innovation, alongside the emergence of a widespread issue known as "crunch culture," where developers face long working hours leading to burnout. This thesis explores the potential of global crowdsourcing to ease the burden of crunch culture and promote better working conditions. The study seeks to enhance the industry's working environment by examining employees' receptiveness to outsourcing tasks and pinpointing effective implementation strategies, utilizing the Job Demand-Resources (JD-R) model as a theoretical framework, and collecting insights from industry professionals across various roles through in-depth interviews and a supplementary questionnaire. The results include identifying the types of tasks most amenable to outsourcing and the factors influencing developers' willingness to embrace crowdsourcing practices. Additionally, insights into effective crowdsourcing implementation strategies, such as task allocation and quality control mechanisms, are expected to emerge. By combining qualitative and quantitative findings, this research aims to deepen understanding of crowdsourcing as a strategy for decreasing burnout in the game development industry. Keywords. Game development, overworking, crowdsourcing.