How about real effort 8 hours a day 5 times a week instead of 12 hours per day and 7 days a week?

Companies should hire more people if they cant at least get close to that.

It doesn't work like that. Some job just can't be easily 'cloned' to another guy. For instance there is one creative director with his/her vision. If the game has to be released at a precise date, they just can't hire a second creative director.

And the crunch allows flexibility to the company so they don't have to fire the recently appointed second creative director when the game is done.

That is the problem right there. You cant put a date like that if your staff have to work for 70 hours a week. Simple as that. Staffs health will decline, I bet there is a reason as to why Chris Metzen is retiring as early as he is, he's mentaly done with working as much as he has with this despite his love for it.

Problem starts from the top. If staff has to work 70 hours a week.. yup there's the problem and there is no way around it. 

Some games have hard deadlines, and there's absolutely no way to change it. Think about games based on movies, or games based off of toy lines, or sports games. If those games don't come out by certain deadlines, there are enormous penalties from publishers, because the window to generate sales of those games is very limited.

Think about a game based on the FIFA World Cup. Imagine that game coming out two weeks before the work cup, vs. six months after the final has been played. Which release date would lead to higher sales?

Some games have hard deadlines, and there's absolutely no way to change it. Think about games based on movies, or games based off of toy lines, or sports games. If those games don't come out by certain deadlines, there are enormous penalties from publishers, because the window to generate sales of those games is very limited.

Think about a game based on the FIFA World Cup. Imagine that game coming out two weeks before the work cup, vs. six months after the final has been played. Which release date would lead to higher sales?

Program management is not so easy as some may think right? It isn't just a matter of tossing more money or people at a problem and it will sort out.

Video game companies pour millions of dollars into educated and experienced project managers and plan games years in advance and there are still hundreds of instances of video games having extended crunch period.

I mean sure, on paper all of these issues can be planned away, in the real world, life happens, and that can completely shred even the best laid plans in a matter of days.  People have been making video games for over 4 decades now, and software development for even longer. Yet crunch is something that happens industry wide on varying scales. If people actually think they have realistic and pracitcal solutions to eliminate crunch and still keep game development costs and deadlines the same, then by all means, become an industry legend and prove your worth. The industry is begging for it.

I've been on five different projects. Two problems always arise. They are feature creep, and art demands. The art team gets bogged down trying to make something that looks glorious, as opposed to making something that just looks good. The programmers always get stuck trying to implement one too many features into a game. Not every game has to have ridiculous 50k polygon models that are expertly textured, and animated. Not every game needs to be a massive open world with a crafting system, real world economy, stealth elements, etc. Another issue is that nobody does pen and paper playtesting anymore. Too often, we found out that a feature or element just wasn't fun, long after we had spent a lot of time getting it to work in the game. We could have just saved time by making a pen and paper prototype and trying our ideas before getting to work on them. 

AAA gaming is often just unsustainable. Everyone just needs to dail the scope of their games back a bit, but the customers won't allow it. They don't have a clue what it is like to make a game, and they demand cutting edge everything. Thirty FPS, 720p, and moderate polycounts are fine. 

Video game companies pour millions of dollars into educated and experienced project managers and plan games years in advance and there are still hundreds of instances of video games having extended crunch period.

I mean sure, on paper all of these issues can be planned away, in the real world, life happens, and that can completely shred even the best laid plans in a matter of days.  People have been making video games for over 4 decades now, and software development for even longer. Yet crunch is something that happens industry wide on varying scales. If people actually think they have realistic and pracitcal solutions to eliminate crunch and still keep game development costs and deadlines the same, then by all means, become an industry legend and prove your worth. The industry is begging for it.

I've been on five different projects. Two problems always arise. They are feature creep, and art demands. The art team gets bogged down trying to make something that looks glorious, as opposed to making something that just looks good. The programmers always get stuck trying to implement one too many features into a game. Not every game has to have ridiculous 50k polygon models that are expertly textured, and animated. Not every game needs to be a massive open world with a crafting system, real world economy, stealth elements, etc. Another issue is that nobody does pen and paper playtesting anymore. Too often, we found out that a feature or element just wasn't fun, long after we had spent a lot of time getting it to work in the game. We could have just saved time by making a pen and paper prototype and trying our ideas before getting to work on them. 

AAA gaming is often just unsustainable. Everyone just needs to dail the scope of their games back a bit, but the customers won't allow it. They don't have a clue what it is like to make a game, and they demand cutting edge everything. Thirty FPS, 720p, and moderate polycounts are fine.