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Ex-Naughty Dog animator: "ND's games success is due in large part to Sony's deep pocket funding delays rather than skill alone"

PeskyToaster

PeskyToaster

Member
Oct 27, 2017
15,316
Snakeeee said:
Yah Ubisoft releases this big AAA titles(like 3 or 4) a year, i dont know how they do that.
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Time, scope, resources. When one changes, the others have to compensate. Ubisoft just throws more resources at it to counteract scope and keep to the schedule.

Crunch is taking the easy way out instead of improving your process and getting your developers more experienced and more skilled. Crunch also has a negative impact on that because it burns out your most skilled and best employees which compounds the issue.

If they got rid of crunch their developers would get better and better without burning out and thus projects would become smoother over time with your more experienced workforce. They are basically burning through bodies to avoid actually improving which means they have to crunch more and burn through more bodies until they run out of people who want to work there.

EssCee said:
Your commute has absolutely zero factor on the number of hours you're working.
Unless you're in some sort of consulting position in which you're having to go outside of your normal business commute, those are not "working hours".

Not sure what country you live in our cushion job you have but the majority of corporate America works 40-45 hours a week. Those are not unreasonable hours
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I think you're right, people should get paid for their commute.

Also it's only reasonable because that's all you've known. It's only been the norm in recent history and is definitely not the optimum for productivity or work-life balance. The "hustle" is a scam. You're being tricked so someone can suck your life for money.
 
cowbanana

cowbanana

Member
Feb 2, 2018
13,892
a Socialist Utopia
EssCee said:
Your commute has absolutely zero factor on the number of hours you're working.
Unless you're in some sort of consulting position in which you're having to go outside of your normal business commute, those are not "working hours".

Not sure what country you live in our cushion job you have but the majority of corporate America works 40-45 hours a week. Those are not unreasonable hours
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Corporate America... lol, there's your dystopia.

I work in a civilized western country where my parents and grand parents unionized and made it possible for me and others to have a healthy work/life balance. We have laws that try as best as possible to stamp out abusive practices. We have a vastly better society than the US for a multitude of reasons, don't get me started on the rest of them...
 
StrayDog

StrayDog

Avenger
Jul 14, 2018
2,633
Such jackass, throw your ex-coworks under the bus.... "you guys weren't talent enought... if it was me"
 
BlackJace

BlackJace

The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
5,477
cowbanana said:
Corporate America... lol, there's your dystopia.

I work in a civilized western country where my parents and grand parents unionized and made it possible for me and others to have a healthy work/life balance. We have laws that try as best as possible to stamp out abusive practices. We have a vastly better society than the US for a multitude of reasons, don't get me started on the rest of them...
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While I disagree with the poster you quoted myself, we don't need to resort to underhandedly calling other countries uncivilized and touting superiority. It's pretty lame.
 

Deleted member 3208

Oct 25, 2017
11,934
I will never understand why people put companies on a pedestal. Defending them and ignoring the facts about the terrible work culture they have.
 
TaterTots

TaterTots

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,987
I understand being against crunch culture, but talking about games being delayed and focus testing like its a bad thing is odd. Focus testing is all over place.
 
Handsome James

Handsome James

Member
Aug 23, 2018
2,384
The defense force really is gross and pathetic. This shit getting hand waved away because "well who DOESN'T have crunch, amirite, guys?! Hey look! Silent hill!"

Super disappointed to hear about this as ND is one of my fave devs. Not just the crunch culture and the impact it's had on bleeding senior talent and creating a pretty shit reputation in the LA developer scene. It suddenly makes a lot more sense why MP was just completely dropped, and that this development cycle seems like it's taken far longer than any other projects.

They need a Rod Ferguson-type that can efficiently manage projects and retain a healthy work/life balance
 
Mr_Zombie

Mr_Zombie

Member
Oct 27, 2017
974
Poland
StrayDog said:
Such jackass, throw your ex-coworks under the bus.... "you guys weren't talent enought... if it was me"
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Yeah, no. From the thread (https://twitter.com/GameAnim/status/1238199242256052224):

"As such we loaded up on film animators. While super-talented, they lacked the technical/design knowhow to assemble scenes."

"Similarly, the design team ballooned with juniors to make up for the attrition of key roles. Every aspect of finishing this game took much longer due to the lack of game experience on the team. Don't get me wrong, these kids are mostly awesome and the best were great. It's just when the junior/senior ratio is out of balance things can really grind and more time is spent training than actually working."

He doesn't complain about the team's lack of talent, he complains that due to the working conditions there were too few experienced animators (because they simply didn't want to work there) and too many inexperienced animators.
 
Spinluck

Spinluck

▲ Legend ▲
Avenger
Oct 26, 2017
28,558
Chicago
Matic said:
And that is something the employees have to change themselves, form a union, quitting, etc. They can quit to send a message, I can't even go to my commander when deployed and say "my grandma died I would like to attend funeral." Nope because she isn't my immediate family as in mom dad siblings.

Point is people out there have it a lot worse so definitely not as bad as that guy makes it seems. And me boycotting the game isn't going to make the change, change is going to happen from the employees.
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The military and the video game business operate quite differently, and are both quite different.

You can't just say "they can quit to send a message," finding a job in game development isn't all that easy.

And yeah you can't do those things but you know what you signed up for by joining the military. This is a civilian job and it's to make a game. ND can do better, they are at fault here as well.
 
RPG_Fanatic

RPG_Fanatic

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,670
Oh boy is this a thread. The work practices that Cooper is describing sound terrible. I have to respect that he just came out and said all this and didn't back down when Naughty Dog wanted to silence him on his way out.
 
Witness

Witness

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
9,854
New York
This all sounds so fucking awful, I cant imagine working for a company that treat people this way. I'm absolutely not buying this game now, I can't in good conscience.
 
Watchtower

Watchtower

Member
Oct 27, 2017
11,708
There is absolutely nothing wrong with calling junior developers junior and inexperienced. Any developer worth their salt should be able to recognize and accept how skilled they are among their peers in a team. You're not going to climb up any fasted getting all defensive and haughty about that.

It'd be a different thing if the comment was unfair, but I absolutely think it's fair to call out that film animators grabbed en masse to be bodies are going to be more junior and inexperienced. I can't imagine they're all that happy about it themselves! That's not their fault, that's the fault of management putting them in that situation in the first place.
 
Majora's Mask

Majora's Mask

Member
Oct 26, 2017
1,568
I love the fact that this thread should be about ND awful working environment and almost illegal practices but instead some people are getting hung up about the former ND developer "throwing his ex co-workers under the bus". Lol. Just say that you don't like your favorite developer being critized, you'll look a little less like a moron.
 
King Kingo

King Kingo

Banned
Dec 3, 2019
7,656
Naughty Dog's been a Naughty Dog, but this company isn't getting the flack they deserve because it's Naughty Dog.
 
SuperYlvis

SuperYlvis

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,661
This thread should be a graveyard of people trying to defend this. Embarrassing. Mods should have the balls to ban this shit.
 
Arthands

Arthands

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
8,039
Majora's Mask said:
I love the fact that this thread should be about ND awful working environment and almost illegal practices but instead some people are getting hung up about the former ND developer "throwing his ex co-workers under the bus". Lol. Just say that you don't like your favorite developer being critized, you'll look a little less like a moron.
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Those guys attacking him, is trying to deflect the criticism at a Sony studio making their favorite games.
 
LuigiMario

LuigiMario

Member
Oct 28, 2017
3,940
raitosaito said:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Even after years of working on it, I'm still blown away by the animation in Part II. We have one of — if not the — best animation team in the industry — both in raw animation skill and technical knowledge. Can't wait for you to experience their incredible work.</p>&mdash; Neil Druckmann (@Neil_Druckmann) <a href="https://twitter.com/Neil_Druckmann/status/1238496735078625281?ref_src=twsrc^tfw">March 13, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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LMAO this is the most tone deaf thing I have seen in a while.
 
catswaller

catswaller

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,797
cannot believe how many people are out here trying to nitpick this dude's argument or defend ND. This is a person with 20 years working in a highly technical and skill based field, with numerous management credits.

Aside from the fact that the case he is making is obvious and intuitive, he knows what he's talking about!

And while numerous large studios have very similar crunch problems, not every big studio churns talent as hard as ND, or structures their company this way. It's not Ok when other studios do it either, ND is just the one this guy worked at, which he's talking about.
 
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