IGDA Investigating L.A. Noire Dev

[tkioz]

Ok as a small business employer I have some insight into this hostile work environment, no my experience is with all hourly non salary employees who get OT if they break 40 but I myself have been a salary employee who had the eye opening revelation...if they arent paying you hourly then you have to fucking stay till the job is done...period.

Now I can understand why these employees are complaining, many I assume, did not realize what level of work beyond the 40 hour work week they would have to put in, but even I know that game developing is LOTS of long days and im not in the business (tho i visit gaming websites like this one often). You all have to realize if these people were not hourly (im assuming they were not because otherwise its a MASSIVE federal and state violation to not pay OT) and as such they signed a contract that is similar to every salary job ive ever had.

What im getting at is all these complainers must have known what they were getting in to before day 1. Granted some of the extremes in complaints that I saw are kind of crazy but thats just bad management and most of all, if these people were tolerating this kind of behavior they were either A. Unable to find a different job or B. Complacent in informing their bosses superiors of his behavior (yes that could have meant letting the publishing company know of all of the unstable management actions if need be).

Also I call BS on the programmer working 15 hour days for 3 weeks in a row, I know computer programmers and every one of them, even the good ones, do the half on half off work day where they take "coding breaks", oh to see that "hard working" employees browser history.

And this is one of the major problems with "employers" in Australia boys and girls. They fail to grasp treating your employees like crap, and expecting them to "live to work" rather then "work to live" they are going to a) quit or b) burn out, in which case you've just lost whatever investment you put into them, be it training, or simply being up to speed on the project.

I've had salary jobs, commission jobs, contracted jobs, and by the hour jobs. A salary job doesn't mean "you stay until the work is done", it means in agreement for X amount of work I'll pay you Y amount of money every Z. If the employee has put in 40 hours of work, you've got no damn reason to ask him to do more just because you as the manager cocked up the time table.

Anyone who is saying "oh but they didn't MAKE them do the extra work"... yes employers rarely come out and say "you're staying tonight, and you wont be getting paid for it", they say "it would be helpful if you could stay after work and finish X"... means the same thing, and if you say "no", you know your name is getting put somewhere in the managers mind under "first to be sacked" for "lack of commitment". Never mind in a properly run company there should never be a reason overtime apart from true emergencies (trucks crashing needing you to sort out a new shipment, had it happen)

And let me tell you I'd walk out of any place that treated me like that, the dole is better then that crap. The only time I ever did a "crunch time" job was when was when a QAS was dumped on me a week before it was due, thing was a total mess, I did two months work in 6 days, alone because I was all that could be spared, because it was a "finish it or the lights go out" thing for the company I was working at. Day after I handed it in I told my boss I was taking a week off, paid, that wasn't coming out of my holiday pay or sick days, and if he didn't like it he could sack me, because I needed to rest or I was going to collapse. I spent the better part of that week in bed recovering I was that mentally exhausted. And that's one week of "crunch time". I shudder to think what months of it would be like.

Oh and "coding breaks", you have any idea the massive amount of mental energy programming takes up? You need to stop and take a break or you start making mistakes.

 

[tkioz]

Crunch time is an accepted part of the life for alot of these developers, the issue here is when extreme crunchtime is taken that much further, to the point it physically harms the health of the employee.

If 110 hr weeks is accurate thats more then 12 hours a day 7 days a week. Infact it's nearly 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, or an utterly impossible 22 hr days 5 days a week.

16 hour days means you work, go home, sleep for 5-6ish hours,wake up, go back to work, with no time for interaction with your family or eating in the middle.

Sounds kind of like what my dad did when he opened his first restaurant. He was out of the house by 7, came home 11 earliest, midnight usually, sometimes 1, then grab 5-6 hours of sleep if he was lucky. He did that for 2 years.

There is a difference here, you're dad was starting his own business, he was emotionally and financially invested in it to a degree that you want find in employees. It use to be employees would become invested in their companies, not any more, why should the employee show loyalty to a company that will throw him a under a bus the second it becomes convenient? To an employee it's about the pay packet, and expecting anything more is insane, because the employers rarely offer anything a reward for going the extra mile.

My grandfather started on a factory floor and ended up district manager of the company before he retired, and that wasn't uncommon, doesn't happen anymore, employers don't do anything to engender that kind of loyalty because they don't reward it. Rather then promote from the ranks, they bring in some asshat fresh out of uni that happens to be related to the GM to yell at people with 10 times the amount of experience he has.

 

[Jumplion]

I do think there are conditions that are BAD, but if you warrant being shouted at because you're cocking around or not doing work, then the manager is there TO shout at you! He or she needs to ensure they get the best out of you so that all the OTHER employees still have a job. Each manager is in charge of their own section and if theirs fail, he or she may get fired and the people that work for him or her will also be at risk. It's not ALWAYS that they are heartless. Our manager shouts at us across the office but we take it on the chin because we mostly deserve it at the time. It's not like she shouts at random with no reason--- I don't think ANYONE shouts who doesnt have to!

That's assuming that the team deserved most of those verbal delights. If 34 people who left on their own terms decided unemployment was better than working with McNamara, something has gone terribly wrong. If constant yelling is required to keep the project moving, something has gone wrong with your management. This is the full article [http://m.ign.com/articles/1178844] on the whole thing, and it points out the many flaws in the development of Noire.

 

[Eveonline100]

And yet without those brutal 110 hour work weeks, we'd have been screaming for their heads on platters for not delivering the game on time. Ahhhh, injustice, what would we do without it?

This is kind of a different situation. Turning out a bad game is actually a preferable alternative really.
Besides, plenty of studios turn out brilliant games without having to force such brutal working conditions.

like valve or bioware i guess

 

[EvilPicnic]

110 hour weeks are 'apparently common'?? Really? That's like 16-hour days with 7-day working, or 22 hour days of 5 day working. That's just insane (if true).

That's worse than sweatshop labour hours.

 

[Zing]

Working crazy hours is one thing, but not being paid overtime is against the law in Australia. Don't these people have unions?

 

[rapidoud]

Old news. IGN had an article (because they're Australian so...) about this weeks ago.

 

[SouthpawFencer]

As somebody whose only interaction with the gaming industry is playing the games and some very low-level programming from college, I don't know how the programmers are managed in these companies. Does anybody know the following:

How well do managers keep their programmers focused and working, even during the early stages? Do they utilize remote desktop software to periodically check screens to ensure that the programmers are programming rather than web-surfing (well, except at noon EST, when new content is posted to the Escapist website... let's be reasonable here...)? Do the managers have enough experience as programmers to know whether the delays are caused by incompetence, laziness, or due to completely unreasonable expectations set by somebody who can't even get his home entertainment center to stop flashing "12:00"?

Does crunchtime occur because work has been slow up until the stage of "Oh my God, we're never going to make the release date unless we double our output!", or does it occur because all the various, separate elements of the game are all completed by their respective deadlines, but, once they get brought together, a trillion bugs bugs are found that could not be detected until the various products of the dev teams were combined - sort of like a Voltron of run-time errors?

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

Salaried employment is the biggest scam going in corporate America. You say that magic word ("salary...", with a soft whisper for effect) and people forget everything they learned in 1st grade math.

Take your starting salary at most corporate entities (let's say $40,000/year) and divide it by the 60 hours/week you'll actually be working. Hey, guess who's making less than $14/hour before taxes? High-pressure field with deadlines? Creative field with high satisfaction quotient? You might be looking at 80-100 hour weeks, which is not only completely unsustainable/unhealthy but also sends your hourly take spiraling down to near minimum wage levels.

When you're taking that much money out of your people, and generating enormous profits from their labors, that excess production doesn't just vanish. It ends up somewhere. You really only need to look at CEO salaries/benefits to find out what happened to all the money.

Regarding this thread: I was curious about L.A. Noire. I thought I might give it a shot at some point. Now I am specifically not purchasing the game. If you treat your employees like shit and I find out about it, I'm taking my business elsewhere. Being a gargantuan greedy asshole should have consequences, and I try to do my part to enforce them.

 

[hotsauceman]

Hmm now i'm wondering whether or not to get the game. I cant buy this game knowing this could have happened. Maybe not. I can live not playing this game.
But if i do its used so they wont see a dime of my money.

 

[teebeeohh]

well i finally have i reason why i didn't pick up LA noire yet.
No, i was not just waiting for the pc version.

 

[neonsword13-ops]

You can't prove that! You don't have the guts, buster!

 

[Ghengis John]

To all the people saying "that's just the games industry."

When a representative from a team-building company decides you absolutely, positively are not team material I think you might have a legitimate problem.

 

[chiefohara]

Pathetic.

I can empathise with these people having worked in hostile, crap, rubbish work enviroments myself, but of all the different jobs i've done nothing makes it worse than incompentent and vindictive management. A hard job is a hard job and you sign up for that, but a bully that makes shit of the work atmosphere making everyone work under conditions of fear just makes it unbearable. You kill creativity, you ruin people's appetite for the work, and make life a living misery for people who should be just as vested in the project as you are. Its counter productive and retarded.

Kudos to the people who walked, and like others on this thread i wont be pruchasing this game or anything by team bondi again.

 

[chinangel]

maybe it's just me, but there seems to be a growing number of these in the news as of late.

 

[LostintheWick]

Salaried employment is the biggest scam going in corporate America. You say that magic word ("salary...", with a soft whisper for effect) and people forget everything they learned in 1st grade math.

Take your starting salary at most corporate entities (let's say $40,000/year) and divide it by the 60 hours/week you'll actually be working. Hey, guess who's making less than $14/hour before taxes? High-pressure field with deadlines? Creative field with high satisfaction quotient? You might be looking at 80-100 hour weeks, which is not only completely unsustainable/unhealthy but also sends your hourly take spiraling down to near minimum wage levels.

When you're taking that much money out of your people, and generating enormous profits from their labors, that excess production doesn't just vanish. It ends up somewhere. You really only need to look at CEO salaries/benefits to find out what happened to all the money.

This seems so obvious and common sense, that it is enraging to see this can still go on and people don't notice! I think it would make sense for profits to be divided proportionately according to contribution and effort. But what am I saying?! I have a hard time seeing the honcho's giving up their EXTRA spending cash. Would anybody else? (a small few I sure)

 

[TokenRupee]

This is out of the Metroid Prime wiki:

"During the last nine months of development Retro's staff worked 80 to 100-hour weeks to reach the deadline imposed by Nintendo."

By all means this is kind of normal stuff for the games industry.

Where I currently work we're trying to get a big patch out and we've been working 16-20 hour days since last Thursday. We're all paid salary so we just get compensation time that's put on the side.

Unless the place was an absolute shit hole the only problem seems to be the manager. Which by all means, they've been working on the game for 7 YEARS. I'm pretty sure none of us could imagine how that guy was feeling and what he was going through. He was just cracking at the seams.

But I'll bet Retro's staff got paid for overtime where as Team Bondi's didn't/