How hobbyist game developers can crush crunch

There’s a lot of discussion about the immense pressure game developers face to create content on time and under budget. While there are many horror stories about crunch leading to mental and physical strife, there’s another side of game development we don’t often hear about: hobbyist developers.

Hobbyist devs have a unique perspective on game development with pressures and freedoms that are different to professionals. They publish many games, but do they have it better or worse? Hobbyist developers are a core part of the GameMaker Studio 2 community I serve, so to learn more about this, I decided to ask a handful of them about their views to learn what their work/life balance is like, and what advice they have for others with a side-line in game making