Michael Pachter Apologizes for Team Bondi Comments

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In the video game industry however, you can very much forecast what your workload will be, there is really no excuse for it. There's no such thing as an emergency.

First off - nobody misread the beginning of this long post and think for one second that I'm defending what went on at Team Bondi. Oh, and just for the record a second time... Pachter is a tool.

However, I have to disagree with you on this one. I can tell that you don't work in the industry, because if you did, you'd know that it's actually quite difficult to predict with accuracy how long certain tasks are going to take, especially for engineers. Art and design are somewhat easier because future predictions can be based on previous work - if car model 'x' took 'y' man hours, then car model 'z' can realistically be expected to be similar.

Sorry, I should clarify, by emergencies I meant something dire that can't be ignored (literally), like a fatally ill person in front of you or an immediate deadline (like 24 hour requirements for legal reasons or whatnot).

The "emergencies" you're describing really happens in every industry and I wasn't trying to imply that it isn't there for the video game industry, as you indicated, they're clearly there.

For example, take a construction company;
Is it a big project? Yes
Are millions of $ at stake? Yes
Is there critical talent required? Yes
Is there deadlines to meet? Yes
Does the project span years? Yes
etc. etc. etc.

Any hiccup in the timeline and your whole project can be severely compromised. Really and truly, the crux of the whole matter is project work. If you've ever been involved in project work, you will have an appreciation for how many unknowns there are and how many things can go wrong. But one of the basics is the planning and coordination. This is something that they (the VG industry) has been nailed for before and is clearly showing most notably now that it doesn't do well (nor does it look like it plans to change anytime soon, regrettably).

Now I could sit here and talk about potential solutions and all that but I think we all know its not a simple thing to fix. One thing that is for darn certain though, is you don't (shouldn't) demand unpaid overtime from your staff because you chose to skimp out on the bill. You don't see construction companies asking their workers to work (excessive) unpaid overtime and only paying them once they sell the real estate and there's a reason for that, and it doesn't have to do with wages. It goes for everything, if you only have to pay people after you've achieved success, then you never really took a risk in the first place. Its like going to a casino, saying that you're betting $1,000 but only fronting $250, if you win, you'll make up for that $750 you were short, if you don't though, you're only out $250 instead of $1,000.