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Kotaku's Jason Schreier: Inside Rockstar Games' Culture Of Crunch
- Thread starter Deleted member 10629
- Start date
It says in the article that this average included days off, which is insane.
Also, you can grantee that their measurement of work periods in inaccurate. According to the article, it is tied to logging into the debugging software. I assume a lot of employees have no reason to do that and would forget.
Also it includes all employees. So your reception person is going to drag that average down a bit. Not everyone is crunching at the same time.
Kolbe has an interest in painting a rosy picture and downplaying the negatives.
So finally got to sit down and read this during breakfast. That's a lot to take in, if I didn't already have this game pre-installed on my system I would certainly be buying it to say thank you for all the hard work. Can you imagine giving a fraction of your life to development of a game and then people boycotted it. All those nights where you just wanted to leave and walk away would be for nothing.
Thank you to the employees of Rockstsr for putting up with horrible work conditions. I won't read spoilers and will take my time playing a game you put your physical all into.
Thank you to the employees of Rockstsr for putting up with horrible work conditions. I won't read spoilers and will take my time playing a game you put your physical all into.
i think it is highly questionable to shout "boycott!" while many of the people writing this are writing it on a Apple or Samsung smartphone and playing their PS4´s and Switches in general.
these guys should maybe inform themselves about the working conditions at companies like Foxconn where people literally jumped into their deaths and being forced to work there. double standards at its best but to each their own
these guys should maybe inform themselves about the working conditions at companies like Foxconn where people literally jumped into their deaths and being forced to work there. double standards at its best but to each their own
Life is full of hypocrisy, like you supposedly caring about the working conditions of people at Foxconn but not the people at Rockstar.
Or maybe you actually do really care about the people at Rockstar and have in fact figured out a way to help them other than boycotting, care to share that suggestion?
Well, i think that employees at rockstar who prefer bonuses over the paid overtime made the wrong choice.
Boycott this game so all overtime be paid.
Is it so dofficult to imagine a rockstar who paid overtime bu still give bonuses, like all normal companies?
People are more inclined to care and emphasize more with someone who could be their neighbors, family, or even themselves, than situations in other countries. Not to mention that this discussion we have more power and sway in not buying this game than not buying a phone.
This type of rhetoric is really stupid to be honest. It's like saying "why care about your government when others are so much worse, double standard much???" It completely misses the point.
They should definitely be paid for overtime too.
But boycotting the game to make it so they don't even get their bonuses strikes me as counterproductive. There isn't a need for it.
If you want the game, buy it, and continue pushing for change in the industry.
I don't think their bonuses would be effected much.
I don't like this thinking since in the end, R* is the one that wins, not the employees. Buying the game doesn't support change, just their wallets.
Correct, and we want to see changes. Not some employees to make 10k more as bonus or not.
Developers, all employees of large game companies need negotiable power to achieve better working conditions.
So glad I rejected their job offer and decided to go to art college instead. I have had friends who have worked for their QA office in Lincoln and this article has been a long time coming.
It's not as if the people managing there are awful people, it's just the culture within the industry of being so easily replaced, that you kinda have to work longer than you want to. This includes the studio management. Let's not forget QA is an entry point in the games industry and there are mountains of people desperate to work in it, to add something impressive to their CV's.
On the flip side, every one who works on their games are proud of the effort they put into it. Theres an element of, 'I hate working all these long hours for shitty pay, but I want to do the best job possible and I don't want to let my colleagues down.'
It's not as if the people managing there are awful people, it's just the culture within the industry of being so easily replaced, that you kinda have to work longer than you want to. This includes the studio management. Let's not forget QA is an entry point in the games industry and there are mountains of people desperate to work in it, to add something impressive to their CV's.
On the flip side, every one who works on their games are proud of the effort they put into it. Theres an element of, 'I hate working all these long hours for shitty pay, but I want to do the best job possible and I don't want to let my colleagues down.'
Rockstar Lincoln? Yeah, they're fucked.
You need to be given notice of overtime, and it can't be forced upon you.
That's always good. I just wish it wasn't exploited by any company where people want to come together to build something great while killing themselves doing it
Yeah and he contacted Jason so hopefully we should see a article in a couple of days
I'm not arguing that buying the same supports change. I'm arguing that not buying it does effect their bonuses, as they themselves said.
Considering how long it's been in the pipeline, boycotting it to make sure they're not even sort of compensated for the extra work they put in on it is a net negative to me. And they agree.
As a counterpiece to this, and an encouraging sign that things don't have to be this way, this article about the working conditions at UK Criterion needs to be read:
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...e-features-how-not-to-overwork-your-employees
Too many good statements to quote here, read and post your favorites...
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...e-features-how-not-to-overwork-your-employees
Too many good statements to quote here, read and post your favorites...
I've no idea if this is still common policy for the company I worked for (It was several years ago), but I had worked on projects where we were asked to scrub people from the credits when they left. I'm pleased to say that we - as a team - pushed back against it!
So yeah, that's certainly not just a Rockstar thing.
Wonder how badly affected it is in their Indian office at Bangalore. When it was under Technicolor (before it became as Rockstar Bangalore) who used to provide art outsourcing work for R*. A buddy of mine who knew a buddy working at Technicolor used to mention about crazy crunch hours when working on films.
Oh absolutely, especially in this day and age. A lot of companies seem to see their employees as statistics instead of people, they try to squeeze every last drop out of these numbers and that is clearly not an ethical and healthy way of doing things.
This is unbelievable. If your work is in the final game your name needs to be in the credits. Full stop.
The damn thing took 7 years to make, you can't expect everyone to still be there by the end of it.
So if someone joined during the last year they will be in the credits but someone who was there during the first 6 years and then left for whatever reason wont? Is this a fucking joke?
This. Fuck ups at the top, like taking two years to realise that letterbox looks cinematic, after shipping god knows how many iterations of their game now, impacts everyone down the pipe, and without shifting the end dates, causes crunch.
Nah, I didn't miss that part. I get that employees are being held hostage by sales expectations.
This is the problem with having your CEO's also directly involved in designing the game, who's there to say no?
If you're on a project and you wanted to make a small change like, changing the name of a town, or adding black bars to cutscenes (nice to haves) and you do the analysis and come back saying "It'll cost a massive amount of money and will delay the project unless we crunch everybody hard for 4 months" - Any project manager with sense would go "No, it's not worth it."
There's nobody there saying that and therefore they're just going mad with small changes with huge costs.
Sometimes it is worth it, a name change and black bars isn't in my opinion.
create a new thread about it
they can't force something if you have not signed any contracts.
I saw something similar to the post you were responding to in a different thread and I was searching for that image. I really need to save that.
I see people in this thread defending labor abuse as 'the norm', including stuff like 12-hour days.
The 40-hour week isn't a number someone pulled out of their ass. It's based on large amounts of evidence showing that regularly working more than that leads to a plethora of physical and mental health problems.
I honestly don't know whether to feel mad at them, or just pity, as they're so obviously trying to defend their own predicament so as to not face the harsh truth of what they're being subjected to.
The 40-hour week isn't a number someone pulled out of their ass. It's based on large amounts of evidence showing that regularly working more than that leads to a plethora of physical and mental health problems.
I honestly don't know whether to feel mad at them, or just pity, as they're so obviously trying to defend their own predicament so as to not face the harsh truth of what they're being subjected to.
Excellent article Jason, appreciate your work on this. It seems so much of this stems from the studios culture, some self-imposed and some from genuine fear of reprisal by management. I think we as the audience so rarely have a solid understanding of how complicated, nuanced and difficult making games (especially of this calibre), truly is. It sounds like R* management is slowing making steps in the right direction but also that they themselves don't truly see how bad things can get down in the trenches.
Yeah, that would make a world of difference. I've worked at places with it and places without it and I'm not going back to the latter unless I absolutely have to.
Brilliant article Jason. I had a feeling Lincoln would be hard hit by crunch. The sentiment about boycott I also support - boycotting this game would only harm the employees who have worked so much on it. I think it's important not to let this open discussion of crunch fizzle out. More importantly the industry needs complete unionisation.
Someone is literally making up claims about being visited by rockstar without any corroboration or reaching out to the press so yeah forgive me being skeptical. Also the real focus here should be on rockstar condition, not this attention seeker
The article really does frame it as bad, terrible, dumb, management. The boss's at Rockstar are just using the staff as to make up for the terrible management, which means they are consequence free to make these dumb terrible decisions, which means it will never likely get better.
Requiring the company to pay overtime rates is how you solve the problem of crunch if you're not going to unionize.
It means that the company has to pay increased pay for less productive time, which is bad business sense and constrains the use of crunch. And it also means that when the Housers realize way too late that they want a different aspect ratio on all the cutscenes, the project manager can push back saying "This will require that we either make cuts in other areas or increase the budget by <however much it costs to pay people for overtime>."
It forces companies to actually manage overtime as an expense instead of it just being a thing they can get for free.
Most game companies I've worked at have involved the CEO being a designer, or programmer. It can work, but it need to be a culture where fear doesn't govern. Sounds like Rockstar is a culture of fear, which is exactly what you describe and that's definitely bad.
Yep. Currently they make themselves feel good by offering "laundry service" and "dinner" which are things that basically cost the company nothing.
Houser can go to the guillotine.
The sooner the better, I'm hungry for some info on this.