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Well they did send Guardian some numbers
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2...g-conditions-red-dead-redemption-2-rob-nelson
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Rockstar grants permission to current devs to talk about company on social media
- Thread starter dex3108
- Start date
Well they did send Guardian some numbers
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2...g-conditions-red-dead-redemption-2-rob-nelson
Would be great, but in which industry would a company do this?
I think we didn't reach that tansparency anywhere, yet.
EDIT: Okay, well they actually did.
You don't - but let's be honest here - the accusations of disgruntled-employees happen every time a non-positive disclosure is made about a corporation. And ultimately odds are stacked overwhelmingly against anyone coming forward with negative information given that information control remains firmly on the corp. side, and if they make a popular product - so does the public opinion.
The other thing is that this industry is built on celebrating the very things that lead to problematic practices - so in terms of probabilities of which version is (more)true, odds are against the accuses.
Hey, thanks for that, well seems that this story is pretty much closed... he says across all studios, and he says the maximum was 67.1, unless he's lying.
One caveat is that it's "reported hours", which if you are permanent full-time, depending on the company, you don't fill in time-sheets. I worked at a company that, even if we worked more than 40 hours a week, we still just billed 8 hours a day... just because... I guess...
Yeah, thanks boss I'm gonna go right to Twitter and talk about how great you are lmao
I really don't see the need for the PR effort. There's not going to be any sort of noticable backlash as far as sales are concerned.
I really don't see the need for the PR effort. There's not going to be any sort of noticable backlash as far as sales are concerned.
Since a few weeks I've seen a lot of "the tribunal of public opinion doesn't have to wait for evidence" posts pop up unironically.
This is a really illuminating article; I'm glad Rockstar is at least aware of needing to improve in this aspect:
Yep, this. That was my first thought with the first tweet. Of course the tools team doesnt work much overtime.
Then again, if they actually sent that thing out company wide and it actually said they can talk about anything... maybe it is all hyperbole.
In an industry where 95% of employees surveyed by the IGDA reported crunch and "long hours or extended hours that they do not refer to as crunch", Rockstar is the only one to provide the transparency found in that article, and they've encouraged their staff to go public, and they don't have retention issues, and they've paid out $1.9BN in royalties in the last 5 years. Someone is going to have to explain where this whole, "They're so evil, fuck em!", mentality is coming from. They should be getting praise for this, not hate.
I didn't realize that lady was the ultimate arbiter of internet conversations about crunch.
The more you know.
I guess that one tweet invalidates every other experience from everyone else.
Innocent until proven guilty is a maxim of criminal law that, outside of a literal court room, is misused to downplay potential wrongdoing. It applies to court proceedings, and that's it.
Imagine "innocent until proven guilty" really was the generalised maxim you want it to be. How could police justify arrests, when we have to assume everyone is innocent?
Outside of a courtroom, no motherfucker on the planet has to be presumed innocent. Presuming innocence is in fact dangerously naive.
Oh stop it. "Giving the benefit of the doubt" is its equivalent, and doing so is a virtue if anything.
would you expect the studio head or the co-founder of R* to tell people about horror stories in their company? Praise? what.....
I'm torn between your astonishing ignorance of the history of art or the ego of comparing yourself to Beethoven and van Gogh.
Now, i don't believe everything is great at R*, and i don't just trust Houser to be the nice, honest guy. I just don't know.
But I do give him a little more credit than to come out and shoot himself on the foot like that by proudly announcing they straight up torture their employees at R*.
Which is why i believe his redacted statement really reflects what he meant. Again, not because i believe he's a honest dude.
Just because it would take a special kind of stupid to believe claiming their employees work under inhuman conditios would fly.
When you think we're only now discussing this because of a quote which was most likely misunderstood, it puts things in perspective.
But I do give him a little more credit than to come out and shoot himself on the foot like that by proudly announcing they straight up torture their employees at R*.
Which is why i believe his redacted statement really reflects what he meant. Again, not because i believe he's a honest dude.
Just because it would take a special kind of stupid to believe claiming their employees work under inhuman conditios would fly.
When you think we're only now discussing this because of a quote which was most likely misunderstood, it puts things in perspective.
Agreed; we should be talking about this situation way more than we currently do and for pretty much all releases, big or small. "Is a game worth it" should be a question we ask more, not less, IMO.
How do you actually think that?
These things aren't static products. Things change throughout the years it takes to make them. There are many moving parts. Some things break. Some things don't work as intended. Some things don't work as well as they sounded on paper. Things change but the deadline doesn't. Have you ever worked on any project in your life? Even little projects can get clustered up with the best of planning.
Can we stop pretending that things taking hundreds of employees and a decade to make can be perfectly planned out and will be issue free?
And your silly quote about sacrificing home life is nothing anyone has ever said ever so it's not even worth addressing. Does everyone here work sales jobs or what? How have people never encountered a real case of OT before or understand how it comes about.
Sure but using the biggest release of the year as a jumping off point to highlight the issue has proved to be quite successful this time, no matter who you believe. We have lots of people talking about it and its in the news. The publicity will probably help the game, it's not like Rockstar releases don't regularly see controversy and go on to sell millions. I don't see a loser in this discussion. Well I see a few twisting themselves into pretzels to defend their fav companies just like with Ubisoft but that's the norm on Era, sadly.
I think the amount of mentions of 100 hour work weeks is more noteable.
There will always be people pushing narratives one way of the other, even if I personally have an easier time sympathising with those pushing for working rights vs corporations.
It seems obvious to me there are some issues at Rockstar but how big and how common? Is it a culture problem or a few rotten bad eggs? That will take more time to tell.
I don't think anyone saying they don't think there's any issues at all though aren't being honest with themselves.
Normally I would agree with you, but such a blatant troll comment coupled with that avatar? Gimme a break.
Eh, it sorta does depending on what side of the "we think workers should have more rights" wagon you're on:
By "more notable", do you mean "still not at all?" Because the hundred hour thing has literally been the main point of the narrative over the past couple days.
What better platform is there other than the biggest release of the year, really?
It was what got the conversation going but no sane human being thought that 100 hour weeks was a near common occurance. Tweets basically just saying "I've not done any 100 hour weeks" are quite a few and to me they are noteable.
Unfortunately the same can be said about almost anything. It's all mob rule now. Logic and critical thinking is thrown out the window and people act on emotion alone.
Successful in what? Making Rockstar out to be a bad guy when they didn't do anything? Crucifying a company for past mistakes? Ya, we really showed them that, hey, you can try and change and be better, but we will still write an article with a horribly misleading title and make the masses hate you again for no reason!
This conversation isn't geared towards the rest of the industry, and just like everything else in this social media fueled world, it will be forgotten the second the game is released and all companies currently doing this will not give two shits about the storm cast down on one developer.
I think the point a lot of people are missing here is that crunch exists. It sucks. Not everyone experiences it. But it happens and it does happen a lot. And even if you're not literally forced by gun point, there are a lot of other pressures that force you into doing super long hours.
Personally, not sure what agendas people are trying to push here. But the fact that there is pressure to not normalize crunch is a good thing. Again, this is coming from someone who crunched 90 hour weeks for months for a AAA title. Let's not try to belittle those very valid experiences.
Social pressure to make companies improve the life of their employees is a good thing. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to boycott something or do anything significantly different. But just speaking up and saying "hey, that's wrong" is actually quite good.
Personally, not sure what agendas people are trying to push here. But the fact that there is pressure to not normalize crunch is a good thing. Again, this is coming from someone who crunched 90 hour weeks for months for a AAA title. Let's not try to belittle those very valid experiences.
Social pressure to make companies improve the life of their employees is a good thing. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to boycott something or do anything significantly different. But just speaking up and saying "hey, that's wrong" is actually quite good.
Well, if these numbers hold up (I'm unsure if they do), then this fits nicely into my "Dan Houser is a bullshit artist and was bragging about working hard to try to make his game sound better," theory.
65 hour weeks are still bad, but if your boss is also bragging about people working 100 hour weeks, even if the reality is they're working 50 and 60 hour weeks, that's still a bad thing to do because when the boss brags about doing something, then the culture changes in the organization and you start to think that your 60 hour weeks aren't adequate anymore... Which makes it worse.
Houser is a gas bag who is so in love with the smell of his own gas. I'm glad this reverberated back at him.
Where have you been? There were absolutely people, and plenty of them, who thought that. They're also meant to corroborate Dan Houser's clarification, in that only a few key senior staff were pulling those hours specifically. it's really not notable at all.
So, like, are you arguing against any use of crunch whatsoever? Because that's an entirely unrealistic ideal.
van gogh is remembered for his amazing skill at rigging horse balls
I did say sane people who thought that. I'm sure some thought that.
Nah. Tons of companies reached out to talk about this, and its naive to think that the HR departments of every major developer aren't paying close attention.
When No Mans Sky didn't match the trailer, people were shook. Preview cycles shortened.
When Battlefront 2 got torched over loot boxes, companies got scared, governments got involved.
This has sparked a conversation. If at least one manager realizes that maybe they should be wary of crunch, it's worth it.
So, with this data in, was Dan Houser just ... lying to a reporter about his (and his peers) work ethic?
To be fair, we got the article, the transparency, and the staff "confessions" because of the backlash--unless you're saying this was all out there prior to the Houser interview?
You are probaby right this specific case will be forgotten soon.
But nothing so far indicates that Rockstar has not been using unreasonable crunch in their game development. They gladly admit it in the Guardian article. The focus on this issue has been good, and should happen a lot more often - especially considering everyones short memory. Only way things might change for the better.
Dan Houser was talking about himself and his small team of writers working 100 hours. He also works at the NYC office.
Folks' identities become so inseparable from their chosen favorite games, systems, companies, etc., that very rarely are they able to see the forest for the trees. I hope we continue scrutinizing all companies until everyone can be comfortable in working and creating in this media space.
Self reporting hours is a bullshit metric. I've worked plenty of places where you put your 40 hours on your time sheet and you actually work 60 because if you put more than 40 they either have to pay you if you are hourly or if you are salaried your higher reported hours drive the cost to customer up. I've seen too many companies where the culture is to just put down 40 a week.
#1 rule at my company right now with time recording now is true time recording, you put down what you work. It's important for future cost estimating but it is also important so you know when people are being worked too hard. They beat it over our heads, record what you work, and I'm a time sheet approver for several employees so I try and sniff out if they are under reporting.
Not claiming this instance is BS, but take those metrics with a grain of salt.
Well because fake news and damage control.
But seriously, I repeat what I said before. Crunch is an important topic and I am thankful it was brought up. But Rockstar just isn't the corporate devil some people want them to be.
I worked at different companies and big corporations. All of them had employees that have rated the company "1/10, worst place to work." But one thing I learned is not only to judge my workplace by that, but to see what the company is doing to make it better and how I and my co workers felt about it. And I see game companies doing the same thing. Recognize what's bad and work on improving it. It takes time, but we will get there.
A lot of opinions here just reminded me of witch hunting back in the days. Misquotation, stupid brag from crazy Dan and few tweets from ex employees is enough for some people to scream *BOYCOTT* and *BURN ROCKSTAR*
:/
He means that crunch should be the exception, not the norm.
This dude -so- badly wants to buy Red Dead Redemption 2 with 0% of the moral guilt of supporting a company that crunches. These are some mental gymnastics.