And because of that enthusiasm there's always someone else in the funnel if anyone burns out or leaves.
Also, because games are art the most successful franchises can get away with completely broken processes as long as it doesn't go over some threshold (which appears to be very high judging by the success of even very broken releases).
Might be better in some places than others (e.g. europe vs the us). I've worked in the games industry for about 5 years now (another ~7 before that mostly as a web dev) for several companies and never had insane crunches like that.
And because of that enthusiasm there's always someone else in the funnel if anyone burns out or leaves.
Also, because games are art the most successful franchises can get away with completely broken processes as long as it doesn't go over some threshold (which appears to be very high judging by the success of even very broken releases).