Rockstar has staff "working 100-hour weeks" on Red Dead Redemption 2
94 replies, posted
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-10-15-rockstar-has-been-working-100-hour-weeks-on-red-dead-redemption-2
"We're saddened if any former members of any studio did not find their time here enjoyable or creatively fulfilling and wish them well with finding an environment more suitable to their temperaments and needs, but the vast majority of our company are focused solely on delivering cutting edge interactive entertainment," the studio said at the time.
Allow me to translate:
"we have a line of people that with less self worth that will do your job for even less so either fuck off or shut up"
-Anti-union sentiments in much of the industry
-A sense of "well you're working on GAMES, it must be FUN, if you're not having FUN why don't you just LEAVE"
-A lot of people who want to work on games, so there's no real threat of losing someone you can't replace
-Terrible managers/bosses who don't understand that humans aren't robots, and that you actually get less work done once you go past around 40 hours a week. (sure, crunch time works in the short term, but only for a few weeks at a time, and only with humane work hours)
Welp, missed it by that much.
Kotaku and Polygon got a response from Rockstar, with quotes attributed by Mr. Houser, for clarification:
There seems to be some confusion arising from my interview with Harold Goldberg. The point I was trying to make in the article was related to how the narrative and dialogue in the game was crafted, which was mostly what we talked about, not about the different processes of the wider team. After working on the game for seven years, the senior writing team, which consists of four people, Mike Unsworth, Rupert Humphries, Lazlow and myself, had, as we always do, three weeks of intense work when we wrapped everything up. Three weeks, not years. We have all worked together for at least 12 years now, and feel we need this to get everything finished. After so many years of getting things organized and ready on this project, we needed this to check and finalize everything.
More importantly, we obviously don’t expect anyone else to work this way. Across the whole company, we have some senior people who work very hard purely because they’re passionate about a project, or their particular work, and we believe that passion shows in the games we release. But that additional effort is a choice, and we don’t ask or expect anyone to work anything like this. Lots of other senior people work in an entirely different way and are just as productive – I’m just not one of them! No one, senior or junior, is ever forced to work hard. I believe we go to great lengths to run a business that cares about its people, and to make the company a great place for them to work.
IIRC this isn't even true which makes it even more absurd
wow, there's going to be billions of bugs in this game then
modern slavery
Not mandatory for anyone at Rockstar, also refer to Houser's elaboration.
They delayed it another year specifically for bug fixes, didn't want a repeat of RDR1 launch. Friend has been there for some time and whilst he can't comment on the whole product his studio has done a stupid amount of fixes in the last 3-4 months alone.
Form a goddamn good old American union.
fuck crunch culture
I'm going to quote this again because the following posters seem not to have read it.
There seems to be some confusion arising from my interview with Harold Goldberg. The point I was trying to make in the article was related to how the narrative and dialogue in the game was crafted, which was mostly what we talked about, not about the different processes of the wider team. After working on the game for seven years, the senior writing team, which consists of four people, Mike Unsworth, Rupert Humphries, Lazlow and myself, had, as we always do, three weeks of intense work when we wrapped everything up. Three weeks, not years. We have all worked together for at least 12 years now, and feel we need this to get everything finished. After so many years of getting things organized and ready on this project, we needed this to check and finalize everything.
More importantly, we obviously don’t expect anyone else to work this way. Across the whole company, we have some senior people who work very hard purely because they’re passionate about a project, or their particular work, and we believe that passion shows in the games we release. But that additional effort is a choice, and we don’t ask or expect anyone to work anything like this. Lots of other senior people work in an entirely different way and are just as productive – I’m just not one of them! No one, senior or junior, is ever forced to work hard. I believe we go to great lengths to run a business that cares about its people, and to make the company a great place for them to work.
This is taking the article out of context pretty heavily.
A few people, writers like Dan Houser, are the ones who worked 100 hour weeks.
Not the rank and file game devs.
people like being outraged
I'm sure that's true. And unioninzing it would be good.
But I worked in the Film Union, and regularly worked 18 hour days in my time as a grunt in the industry, and witnessed people regularly working 100 hour weeks.
They HAVE a union and those are the hours required to make film, television, and movies as well as plays, or theatre productions.
I don't know what the answer is, but just saying "Unionize" is pretty dumb IMO. It ignores the reality of a unionized job.
I could get fired for touching the wrong equipment(Not moving, Touching) due to union rules.
I've always found management to work stupid hours in general, still 100 hr work weeks are insane
They do too, a lot of former employees have talked about how the company is run by complete psychopaths. They abuse the workers, force them in to constant crunch times, are completely paranoid about people in different departments talking at all. Like inside reports paint it in a terrifyingly incompetent light.
No one likes to read on here I guess
Quoting a current employee and close friend who has spoken to other employees who have been there far longer than him, that shit ended years and years ago. The reports on working conditions are literally years old and it's getting pathetic to see people quoting that as if it's still relevant.
They made drastic changes and completely dropped any requirement for overtime nor do they even attempt to encourage crunch. It's been like that for some time.
the problem I have with the whole "incompetent management setting unreasonable demands" thing is that what constitutes "unreasonable demands" is purely subjective
most people would say thousands of takes of the same tiny, insignificant scene is "unreasonable", but fuckin stanley kubrick was one of the greatest directors of all time so idk
I mean he was also insane and known to drive his crews in to insanity himself and cause all kinds of mental problems for them, and a creepy fuck. Like yeah he produced a lot of prominent works but he also was an active danger to people working for him.
Rockstar is still pretty exploitative.
as an epic gamer i would be happy with waiting longer for games to release if it meant crunch time would be abolished
as someone who has been subject to working under crunch, it is hardly faster, the work produced is not as good, and the only real reward is that the company meets a sacred deadline that they spent millions printing on billboards and buses
really i think the main problem is announcing games too early. i doubt your average schmoe would even notice if you just waited another year to announce a game, if anything they'd get more hype seeing release was closer than "however many years from now until it's done"
But that's the trade-off.
Some of the most remarkable pieces of work were at the cost of multiple different peoples time and energy.
I don't know how you do creative jobs and not have that happen.
In the film industry, a union protected job none of you really complain about being "abusive", a work day for myself was usually 14-18 hours. I left that job, and industry because the time crunch was too much for me, but I ultimately don't know what we're supposed to do to make those projects work.
I made passion projects with friends, and those consumed as much time as any job in the industry ever did. It turns out to make things your passionate about, you're probably investing a lot of time. I don't know how else the sausage gets made.
oh yeah, absolutely, tons of great directors, including him, were total cunts
it's just that they were cunts who knew what they were doing and produced some amazing shit
my point isn't that workers shouldn't be protected, just that I can't agree with the flippant dismissal of people who've regularly produced amazing things as "incompetent" just because they have high standards. You can recognize that someone knows what they're doing creatively while also recognizing that they shouldn't be given absolute power to terrorize their workers.
It's been worked on for 7, almost 8 years. I really have to ask, when is the time frame too long to no longer be viable?
These aren't just products, they're peoples works as much as they are products.
They are promoting it as a good thing too.
I’m gonna repeat myself here
they we’re referring to the writers, Houser, and a select few others who volunteer for that for a few weeks.
Again.
Read the actual fucking articles people this is how fake media spreads
"volunteer"
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/224422/eff1900d-58c7-442a-9c12-4378b7606f2a/quotes.gif
I'm sure if I was working on my dream project and my boss asked me if I wanted to "volunteer" to stay a work longer because "it would be really helpful to my career" I'd be hard pressed to decline.
I guess the problem I have with a lot of the rhetoric surrounding discussion of work culture in media is the lack of positive example based arguments
I'd like less "these people are dumb, this structure is bad, it should change" and more "this company is better, this structure is better, more companies should adopt this structure".
like, for anime, an industry that deals with a lot of the same issues, I'd point to kyoani as a better kind of structure for companies to move towards. If you can't demonstrate that there's a better way for things to be done, it's hard for me to believe a better way exists.
"It can't be helped in nobody tried it yet" sounds like some high-level toxic BS tbh.
it would be if I was saying "you need to show me rockstar but better to prove that rockstar can be better", but that isn't what I'm saying
I'm saying I just need any example. If no company anywhere, regardless of scale, has come up with a better way of making games, then it's really hard for me to get behind the sentiment "rockstar is run by idiots who just don't know how to make games right".
You can be a fan of something without the need of excusing this kind of things you know?
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