After this you get to the commercial market for creative works. In a market that with a lot of options for consumers that are equally accessible, similarly priced, and infinitely replicable, power-law-curve nonlinear returns on quality is the norm.
So, there is huge motivation to put in “just a bit more effort”.
If you dislike crunch time, you should be thankful we live in the superlinear world, and not the sublinear world. Imagine how bad the winner take all dynamics would be if 5% extra effort from you resulted in a game that is not 2% but 2 times as good as it would be otherwise.
So, there is huge motivation to put in “just a bit more effort”.
And, thus you get Crunch Time in gamedev!