Three to six months is an acceptable period of 'crunch time'? That's just shitty planning.
The games industry has conditioned itself to believe it is unique in software development, and that as a special snowflake, it is able to define whatever is reasonable for itself. Whatever is reasonable is what's come before, and what's come before has been a terrible mess. Google can launch products with a much better work/life balance than most games studios, and their engineers make a lot more money for it too.
The only people that stay are the people who can survive it. Those that survive are those that don't know any better (fresh-faced grads), grizzled and bitter vets that perpetuate the cycle of violence, or those people who really can't imagine anything more awesome than making games, personal life be damned.
Pachter is being blunt here, but he's right. The industry won't change, and in my interactions with it, it doesn't seem to want to.
I don't quite understand the glamour of the business. When I hear stories from my friends it just makes me angry that million dollar salaries are subsidized by such shitty working conditions.
I wonder: if Google decided to get into the video game business, would it fall into the game studio trap?
I'm not really sure what the answer is myself. For what it's worth, when I was at Microsoft, I heard no horror stories about overwork at MGS. However, any such stories would be second-hand at best because I never interacted with any MGS people.
But I wasn't referring to that situation. For a given project, there's an optimal team size. Adding people to that team can often reduce the productivity of the team as a whole. There's a limit at which you just can't get the project done any sooner. In that case you need to set a realistic schedule given these limitations.