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Jason Schreier: As Naughty Dog Crunches On The Last Of Us II, Developers Wonder How Much Longer This Approach Can Last
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I originally wanted to become a game developer, but these are the stories that made me say "no"
that's not it, chief
rainbow six siege is one of the most succesful competitive FPS's of all times, so, uh............
This is horrible, perhaps the most extreme story i've heard. WTF Naughty Dog?
Sad, and it won't stop until they ship.
I've been in a very, very similar situation for a span of 6 months. Made me resent the place I worked at, especially HR that protected the company at all costs and ignored employee complaints.
After everything is said and done, you are proud of the end result, but you also know that you've been exploited.
Sucks that Naughty Dog is exploiting people.
I've been in a very, very similar situation for a span of 6 months. Made me resent the place I worked at, especially HR that protected the company at all costs and ignored employee complaints.
After everything is said and done, you are proud of the end result, but you also know that you've been exploited.
Sucks that Naughty Dog is exploiting people.
It's utterly disgusting that Sony with their money are doing this. Not surprising though in the slightest.
We don't deserve Jason Schreier
And holy shit does Sony and ND deserve to catch hell for this. It's a fucking video game. You're not curing cancer. This shit is not worth the health of your employees.
And holy shit does Sony and ND deserve to catch hell for this. It's a fucking video game. You're not curing cancer. This shit is not worth the health of your employees.
That's good to hear, because when I worked at Activision, it was atrocious. To the point where I vowed to never work at that company again, and I can't bring myself to buy their games because of how they treated the employees at the lower end of the work food chain. To be fair, it's been quite a while since I worked there, but I still have a lot of work related PTSD from my time there that crops up from time to time.
It shouldn't, for every horror story like the one unfolding in this thread there are plenty of ones where the Dev studios understand what is needed to get the best out of their staff with out wearing them out in the process.
"You don't HAVE to work overtime! That's silly. But I mean if you don't, that would be a shame. I saw you were looking to move up in the company, or maybe get a higher-up job elsewhere. Didn't you ask for a letter of recommendation? I'll have to look into that. But yeah totally, you can head home! No one is forcing you to stay. ;)"
That's so frighteningly close to what our team was told at one of the companies I was QA for many years ago. "No guarantee you'll be put on another project if you don't put in the hours, but hey, this isn't mandatory, of course, so we're not forcing you..." The implied threat kept a lot of us terrified enough to work whatever they wanted us to work. Especially those of us that were married or had kids to take care of.
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Yea this sounds terrible and manipulative.
The obvious solution is to unionize and fight for better labor conditions. Lord knows Sony isn't going to give it to them out of the kindness of their hearts.
Honestly this kind of development is not sustainable in the least. Coming into this generation developers were worried about the ballooning development costs and player expectations, and this reality is why they were concerned. AAA games are no longer just the least interesting and most corporate segment of gaming, they also foster abusive work practices. Burn it all down.
lol yeah. I'm not in the games industry, but I just finished medical residency. We have pretty strict work hour limitations but we got that same stuff. "Well, you don't have to take that extra shift tonight but I'll have to see about that letter you need for fellowship/your job interview..." Scummy stuff.
People feel pressured to work extra hours when others around them are working extra. There are likely many employees who are not happy sacrificing their personal lives. A union could make a huge difference in establishing vastly improved working conditions.
How so? I see more defending of Rockstars practices in the first few pages of said thread than in here.
Kotaku's Jason Schreier: Inside Rockstar Games' Culture Of Crunch
https://kotaku.com/inside-rockstar-games-culture-of-crunch-1829936466 Here's the story Jason has been working on the last weeks. Here's a sample: Adding more links to new articles, thanks hydrophilic attack Eurogamer...
www.resetera.com
I've said this a decade ago of one of my former companies and they only got bigger and more successful using the same method since.
Mostly praised for it too, much like some the other infamous companies in this thread.
It's really gross and manipulative. Another old chestnut from my time at various companies was "there are plenty of people that would kill to work in the gaming industry, so if you don't like it, there's the door" (paraphrasing, but that was the gist).
Having a passion for games, and having a passion for making games, can be exploited very easily by corporations that bank on your passion for the industry to exploit your skills/talents as much as legally able, and even "legally" can be bended and exploited. One tactic that I experienced frequently was keeping you as a contract worker for as long as possible by getting you stuck in a "lay off" cycle, so that your time at the company was too short to meet the requirements for becoming permanent (and thus qualifying for benefits like insurance). I can't tell you how many times I was contracted for a few months, laid off for a few months, contracted again for a few months, laid off for a few months, etc, etc.
When I finally landed at a company that wasn't about that, I was already so traumatized by that cycle, that I was always stressed coming in to work not knowing if it would be my last day. I ended up at that company for almost 6 years, still the longest tenure I've ever had at a gaming company. I was contract for about 3.5 years before they hired me on permanent (and I finally got medical, dental, and vision insurance as a result), and got to enjoy the benefits of being a full time employee before we unfortunately had to close our doors and we were all let go. I actually loved working there, and our CEO was incredibly kind and supportive of everyone that worked there, contractor or full time. We never had crunch time either. Just occasional period where we'd be asked to work an additional hour or two max from our regular 8 hour shift to try and get updates out the door or some such. Up until my current employer, it was the best experience I had in the industry as far as work/life balance.
I had to take a year off one year after my time at Activision because I was so burned out and exhausted. I worked in other industries, but my love of games always brought me back to gaming. More nefarious motivated companies prey on that. The way games are made needs a top to bottom reworking, and it's really only going to be reworked from top to bottom, because often, there is only so much the "lower tier" employees can do when their livelihood is constantly in question should they dare to speak up. As the sold breadwinner in my household, I couldn't afford (literally and figuratively), to rock the boat and fight for change, and the few times I did? Guess where I ended up? The unemployment line, you say? You get a prize. XD XD
I can't reiterate enough how lucky I am to have landed where I'm at, with a president that worked from the bottom of the industry, to the position they're in now, and understand what it's like to be at that bottom level of the totem pole, and formed a company where work/life balance is a key pillar of our company's ethos. My hope is that more companies can reach that point, but often, the powers that run them have a "profit > product > people" mentality, and even then, the "people" portion is more like "profit > product >>>>>>>>>> people, i guess."
Same old story unfortunately. Poor management and breeding of a toxic "all the cool guys are doing it/you need to do this to keep this job" culture. Really makes me worried for any one in the industry. Are we going to see any young people survive and thrive in the industry as the way it is now? Or will people just move away from it and go into alternatives?
Just doesn't seem like we can continue to burn the people who enter the industry out of passion and end up broken people.
Just doesn't seem like we can continue to burn the people who enter the industry out of passion and end up broken people.
Some of the replies in that thread holy shit. So in addition to being Sony hive mind, Era is also Rockstar hive mind.How so? I see more defending of Rockstars practices in the first few pages of said thread than in here.
Kotaku's Jason Schreier: Inside Rockstar Games' Culture Of Crunch
https://kotaku.com/inside-rockstar-games-culture-of-crunch-1829936466 Here's the story Jason has been working on the last weeks. Here's a sample: Adding more links to new articles, thanks hydrophilic attack Eurogamer...
A bummer to read this. It's not unexpected though. RDR2 had all those headlines as well. But one year and a couple months after launch, all we talk about is the game. This will be so until their next game ships when the topic will resurface. And then the cycle starts anew :/
Some studios get it right and we should probably support them way more than we do!
Some studios get it right and we should probably support them way more than we do!
Because they only care about profit and acclaim and not the human cost associated with it.
The solution is to make overtime pay mandatory for salarymen. If I'm getting paid 2x the money for overtime, you can bet your crazy buttocks that I will crunch with gusto, as one era member described on the first page.
You can also bet that the company will never ever make me crunch for something they could've hired someone for and paid them half.
And thus, capitalism would work as intended to incentivize my employer to do the right thing.
The word "incentivize" is the key. People can be shamed or guilted, but businesses can only be incentivized with the promise of more money, or the threat of less money.
A union can help accomplish such things. A law would be even better, but that's really hard. Some people are ok with workaholism. Some just have that much passion and love for what they do; others are misguided souls who will regret their blindness later.
You can also bet that the company will never ever make me crunch for something they could've hired someone for and paid them half.
And thus, capitalism would work as intended to incentivize my employer to do the right thing.
The word "incentivize" is the key. People can be shamed or guilted, but businesses can only be incentivized with the promise of more money, or the threat of less money.
A union can help accomplish such things. A law would be even better, but that's really hard. Some people are ok with workaholism. Some just have that much passion and love for what they do; others are misguided souls who will regret their blindness later.
Same here.
I literally watched my friends slowly get worse and worse when I saw them. One of them had a mental breakdown called me asked to come pick them up. I took them for some needed medicine which was a beer at the warf, then took them home. They now work for Sony animation studios luckily and are much happier.
What lifestyle? You have no life with such a schedule. This isn't just some lifestyle choice unless your whole identity in life is being a workaholic/slave.
Interesting how while a company like Insomniac has a healthy working environment, they also produce quality and they actually release a lot of games in a short period of time. And they aren't a huge team.
I mean they were still releasing PS3 games while working on a new IP for Xbox One (Sunset Overdrive), they released some mobile games a year later (4 games in fact!), then a year later they were back with another Ratchet, Song of the Deep and again, a couple mobile games, then Spider-man only 2 years later, now also working on its sequel and another Ratchet.
Sony should look at this company and actually step in at Naughty Dog and do something similar. Clearly they are doing something right. Insomniac is releasing an AAA title every 2 years and some of them are new IPs. That's crazy nowadays!
Sony Santa Monica is also another example on how to turn a company around successfully. I'm sure they had a lot to sacrifice doing God of War and the crunching period must've been insane...but they were also on the verge of closing at one point and were still recovering, i'm sure things are getting much better now.
This is disgusting, and worse part is, it doesn't make the game better. Might make it review better, but ultimately as a piece of entertainment/art the crazy crunch these style of games require are not worth the human cost to make them.
Industry gotta make some big changes. Is it gonna take a death or some other tragedy to get people to notice?
Industry gotta make some big changes. Is it gonna take a death or some other tragedy to get people to notice?
same here, i was learning 3d modelling and animation just to try to get on ND, Santa Monica or any other triple A.
fucking never will.
From my understanding, this is a broader issue than the culture of gaming. Nothing mentioned here would look out of place in say the medical or academic spheres. With the later, however, the amount of unpaid activity you have to do is insane. Same within the field of conservation / ecology. It always blows my mind how in academia people who are paid to think, have negotiated such poor working conditions. But then, I realise if you overwork and stress people, who also are looking for morgages and to statr a family, they have little energy outside that to challenge their system of oppression.
Many of us have wondered how much longer this approach will last where you have these huge games with so much pressure to deliver. 4 years, 5 years into the making and yet we still see so much crunch? We continue to see top talent step down over and over yet nothing seems to be done about correcting the situation because we all enjoy those blockbusters.
Workholism is an addiction, so it's not so much a choice as it is something that can be incredibly hard to change.
But culture of overtime is problematic in other ways as it actively propagates building bad habits of this type, and does so passively a lot of the time, it's actually fairly rare for people to be 'forced' into it.
The industry is self-indulgent as a whole with this - but yes, the high-profile products are built and sold on perception of being better than everyone else.
I agree with this but my understanding is that people are working 6 12's and then Sundays for months. That's unacceptable. I've done 6 12's (not in this industry) and as soon as I was in a position to stop it I did, people are just going through the motions at that point.
To the people in here blaming Sony for this, while they're definitely not free of any blame, the issue here is ND's leadership. I only say this because anger should be directed in the right places. In a lot of cases, first party studios are their own companies with their own identities and individual cultures who happen to be owned and funded by a larger parent company.
While this has likely come about due to Sony's own expectations on the studio, the job of the studios leadership is to plan inline with the parent company's expectations, deadlines and commitments in order to mitigate problems like crunch and overworking. If that isn't happening, their studio management has fucked up in a big, big way.
While this has likely come about due to Sony's own expectations on the studio, the job of the studios leadership is to plan inline with the parent company's expectations, deadlines and commitments in order to mitigate problems like crunch and overworking. If that isn't happening, their studio management has fucked up in a big, big way.
Edit: disregard. I misread the quoted post.
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