DISCLAIMER: I am obviously biased here, on several different levels.
When Mike mentions "the platform" he's using a very standard industry phrase to describe the hardware the game is offered on. Implying anything otherwise is really just silly. It's not like he over-emphasized ("THE platform" - as in "t3h be-all-end-all of g4m1ng pl4tf0rm5!!!") or implied some uber status to Xbox ("The Platform" (capital T, capital P) and a chorus of angels sang in the background). Replace the word "platform" with "Xbox 360" if it makes you happy. It's no different than saying you're going to the store or out to the movies.
As for work here in the offices: yes we look for passionate people, and there ARE plenty of folks who work an 8 hour day, do phenomenal work, and are considered valuable employees who make important contributions. Performance is not measured by amount of time spent in the office. Passion for what you do is something completely different.
Obviously, passionate people tend to be more invested and self-motivated. If you read the interview (and not just hand pick inflammatory quotes) you'll see that WE (the staff) are the ones who push Mike to call crunch time, not the other way around. Mike pushes back constantly, because he knows from experience how it can burn people out and what that means to the team, as well as the final product. [Note: I most certainly would call Epic "The Team" (chorus of angels included) but wouldn't be so pretentious as to say "_THE_ Final Product". Don't go there.]
Epic takes better care of its employees than virtually any company I've ever heard of. Tim (or as we affectionately call him, Uncle Tim) is one of the most generous people I've ever met, and Mike cares more about the people here than any boss I've ever known. If anything, they both go too far on a regular basis and we end up as spoiled primadonnas - I'm not yet convinced they'd have it any other way. Turnover here is exceedingly low (voluntary and involuntary both around 1%/year), because we work with people to hold on to them. Staff is the most valuable asset a company has.
Many people consider crunch to be a fact of life in making games. I wholeheartedly disagree, and with every game we ship, we (very consciously) take one step closer to eliminating it. We're not always effective, but we are making the effort. I'm not naive enough to say it will one day be gone, but it can be minimized and efforts properly rewarded. Hell, the average person here works crunch hours on a normal basis anyway, so calling an official crunch really just formalizes the process and serves mainly to focus the efforts of the team. Personally, I'd rather work for a small company where everyone cared than for a large company where I was a number on a spreadsheet. If that means crunching once in a while, sign me up.
