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L.A. Noire Crunch Culture, Bondi issues, RockStar Boss chimes in #NoCakeDay
- Thread starter Deleted member 2791
- Start date
Gate Keeping opinions.
You guys are so progressive you celebrate people with differing opinions getting banned. Amazing.
Someone alerted me to this thread. I read it and thought, wow, people are upset about someone being asked to work while at work? You really think an employer should allow an employee to enact a break time for everyone to go mingle on a whim? You get breaks for a reason.
Now yes, you may not like the hours...and maybe they don't either, but they aren't forced to work there (spare me, unless they are enslaved, they can quit at any time).
People want to bring up diligence? You know who else needs to do their diligence? People applying for jobs. If you can't figure out that RS has been doing this for likely over 12 years, that's on you when you apply to them. You should always research a company you are going to apply to, just as the employer would when hiring you.
Right out of college I had to leave a job so I would have time to look for a new one. Sometimes you have to sacrifice in the short term in order to get what you want out of your future, be it a better work environment, pay, or whatever you feel you are missing. The point is, employment is an open market. If you don't like it, you certainty can quit and find work elsewhere. Pretending to not know what developers ask of their employees or any particular field of work is laughable. A lot of professions do similar things, anyone that has prepared for that field of work knows it what they are getting into.
If people didn't want to work for RockStar, they ultimately would not be there. When push comes to shove, people do what they have to do. If they weren't being well compensated, no one would work there.
Yes 30 minutes once a week when normal 15 minute breaks in the afternoon weren't allowed.. yeah sounds like laying on the beach being waited on hand and foot
Didn't they co ordinate the 30 mins as a group, it was implied from her posts that was the whole point of it?
And actually when working overtime over longer periods of time all the bull crap goes out the window, crunch time only carries so much weight if crunch time ends up being 90% of the work time over years.
People on top don't give a crap about health and well-being of their staff, not if it means they get bigger bonus cheques
people should be allowed simple group moral boosting breaks like this, anyone implying different sounds like the pr intern at rockstar...
Wtf is that shit?
Im a teamleader in a big company and I dont abuse my team. We have a really generous quota they have to fill set by the clients and if the quota is done, I dont care if they browse Era, watch YouTube videos, as long as the quota is filled and the quality is good.
Fuck, they can even eat cake.
100% unreflected bullshit
Trolling, arguing in bad faith, and talking about developers working inhumane hours like they're tools that need to suck it up are not opinions. They're bannable shit that's not welcome on this site.
But didn't you hear? We are just manufacturing ridiculous outrage because an employer had the audacity to tell their employees, "get back to work!"
I didn't bother reading the thread like I said I did, but I assure you my conclusion is sound.
they weren't "taking a break having cake", they were "providing calorie dense sustenance during an impromptu weekly scrum to convince the automatons that their life still has the potential for joy through the strategic injection of glucose"
you just gotta learn how to speak the language!
you just gotta learn how to speak the language!
This "fuck Rockstar I'm not buying RDR2" is ridiculous. People worked their asses off for years, almost 7 days a week and the best thing to do is not buying the product of their hard work?
You guys do know that usually there are bonuses for reaching certain sales milestones right? And that lots of people will keep working on the game after it releases - patches, DLCs, etc.
The situation is horrible but I believe the more sales the game achieves the more exposure this will eventually get and in turn, more pressure on Rockstar's management.
Not buying the game won't do a thing besides not appreciating their work.
You guys do know that usually there are bonuses for reaching certain sales milestones right? And that lots of people will keep working on the game after it releases - patches, DLCs, etc.
The situation is horrible but I believe the more sales the game achieves the more exposure this will eventually get and in turn, more pressure on Rockstar's management.
Not buying the game won't do a thing besides not appreciating their work.
Yeah not buying the game is a big fuck you to the people who work their asses off
EA has made a concerted effort for quite sometime to curb or otherwise completely eliminate crunch in all of its studios.
Is it a bigger 'fuck you' than the continued exploitation of their labor?
Who's to say!
Firstly, I don't identify as a progressive.
Secondly, I'm gonna say it one more time and then I'm going to leave it alone because this thread doesn't need to be derailed any more by this discussion line: I am not telling people to refrain from posting their opinions and I am not suggesting mods ban people for these opinions. Notice I didn't try to argue or talk down anyone whose actions I brought up. I simply suggested to other people to take the time to figure out who is worth responding to and act accordingly. In the long run it'd help you out as well because then people wouldn't be quoting you all the time and you could post your opinions without getting dogpiled. But also:
Thirdly, the "they either stick to certain threads and are out of their element in these kinds of topics (in which case they need to knee-jerk less and lurk moar)" part of my comment you quoted is in reference to you specifically, because you're bringing up points that have been discussed ad-nauseum in not only the recent R* threads, but basically every thread about shit employment conditions on this site. Your post history suggests you don't participate in these kinds of threads often, so you probably don't see the information or the anecdotes in those other discussions to understand why people take issue with your stance, or where you might have blind spots. I said that in an attempt to not paint you, you specifically, as a bad faith poster.
But I'm still gonna suggest you lurk moar
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More sales is rewarding management. As it is, there's plenty of exposure on their bullshit out there now, with more on the way I'm certain.
Buying RDR2 is going to have the opposite effect.
Two wishes:
One for people to be more empathetic to others. Having a working experience or not is not relevant to this.
And the other for an immediate way of making R* understand what kind of assholes they have been and try not to be as much in the future.
One for people to be more empathetic to others. Having a working experience or not is not relevant to this.
And the other for an immediate way of making R* understand what kind of assholes they have been and try not to be as much in the future.
I get what you're saying but put yourself in one of Rockstar's employees shoes. I'm not really sure if that's the best course of action at this point. The hard work is done, these people deserve their commitment being valued by the gaming community. It's a double edge sword, I suppose.
Somehow I feel like selling ten million copies and getting a 94 metacritic score won't force Rockstar to focus introspectively into their management process. That said, it's still totally going to sell like hotcakes. I just won't be adding to it.
Man, saying that developers are essentially to blame for not looking up the reputation of the studio is literally victim blaming. Specially saying that they could quit anytime, as if all these employees didn't have families, didn't have debts for their homes, their children hadn't already gotten used to city and their husbands/wives hadn't found their own job or are too stressed to move out once more and take a leap of faith into insecurity and not knowing completely if the next job is not going to be the same or is going belly up. Anyone remember, Lucasarts? I do. If your best answer to these problems is "shucks, they knew what they were going into" rather than investing more into better organizing and getting better management, I pray you never manage people, because you're going to be a terrible fucking boss. Also, you're also thinking that all devs are able bodied, and are not single moms, and are not somehow physically incapacitated. Different views that can improve the games you guys are playing.
Again, to any dev reading the thread, I suggest organizing: https://www.gameworkersunite.org/get-involved
Again, to any dev reading the thread, I suggest organizing: https://www.gameworkersunite.org/get-involved
How many customers actually know this workload is going on? This forum is quite literally part of the 1% of gamers who are aware of this, and some of us still don't seem to care.
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You know they already got paid? And that exploitation and coercion are not commitment?
I works in a software company (no videogame related) and I am lucky that the company is Swedish based so we have traditional "fika" time for 30 minutes once a month along with friday beer. It's suck for gaming developers that they dont even have time for small break.
Is this directed at people that generally think Rockstar's crunch is appalling or at people that are in defense of it?
I feel like it needs to be specified with how polarizing things have ultimately gotten in here. Is it better to figuratively die for the art of making games or does the art of making games require external self-care during the development process?
I'm in support of the latter, for the record, but I'm also not in a creative industry at all for my work. I do value my free time regardless of that, but I know it's not necessarily uncommon an attitude in creative ventures that some sacrifice needs to be made. Just asking for clarification given your verafied status, and it would be greatly appreciated! And to note, I don't intend to argue if you feel comfortable with specifying.
No. You are normalizing crunch and rewarding a practice that you don't agree with. There will also be less incentives to band together and unionized that way.
No problem. Sorry if it wasn't clear, but I mean in response to people defending the practices.
I am not willing to make a blanket statement that Rockstar is terrible in all regards, as a lot of this could be down to the specific managers at Bondi for example.
However, I do not really like their response to the controversy as the idea that the senior managers are doing it of their own free will and not forcing it on others
flies in the face of how internal politics actually play out at a company employing 1,000+ workers (no idea what the actual count is).
That sort of behavior absolutely sets an expectation for their employees, and will easily create a culture where that sort of behavior is rewarded or even expected.
The idea that any sort of extra 'time off' after normal working hours is being entitled or whatever is just ridiculous in a creative industry where basically all evidence points to stifling overbearing management being a detriment to the actual work being done.
And in most decent countries, I believe there are actually stipulations for giving extra break periods in relation to the overtime worked.
Maybe I am wrong and it's not a legal stipulation, but I know that it is generally accepted that extra work means extra breaks as well.
Rest periods are important and anyone who has the gall to say otherwise should absolutely never be in charge of other human beings and I hope they never become managers for any industry!
Surprised to see OP say this was unknown. I thought it was well known that the crunch and working conditions on LA Noir were terrible and a big factor in leading to the closing of the studio. Inexcusable, obviously.
Yeah, it's probably not good.
Your comment is dumb, it shows you fail to understand the underlying meaning of all this.
I'm not clear on the timing, was it always after work? If so it's a nice gesture and something to look forward to but I disagree if she was doing this during work hours. I used to work in IT and I can't imagine my company paying me to stop the whole department for 30 minutes to eat cake and have chit chat. Currently I am doing the whole English teaching thing and I can't imagine stopping classes just to have cake and chat to people either.
Yeah, do it in the lunch break or after work, like going for a drink with your coworkers, you don't do that during your working hours.
Yeah, do it in the lunch break or after work, like going for a drink with your coworkers, you don't do that during your working hours.
I mean, massachusetts is voting to stop this because the care nurses give working these extended shifts has found to be lacking. We need more nurses working sane hours instread of less nurses working longer hours.
Vote yes on question 1.
I agree, no doubt that in Rockstar there are a lot of problems regard the working hours but I can't see any company in the world allowing something like that without doing nothing. A coffee is allowed everywhere, launch time, a couple of break during the day and so on...but it's obvious that you can't do whatever you want when you are working. I don't think that this is indicative of anything, the real problem are the 80-100 hours of works per week, not denying a 30 minute break for a cake.
It's pretty obvious that it's happening after normal work hours.
The first tweet says they did it late at night, and the next tweet says that became a regular thing.
The third tweet even reiterates that it is in response to working late and on weekends.
You have to make a bunch of assumptions that directly go against everything she wrote to assume she is doing it during normal work hours.
While true there are still plenty of examples from other industries where nationwide or global corporations got caught doing things ranging from grossly immoral to demonstrably lethal to outright illegal and consumers still shrugged and said "gimme more"
So even in the case where abusive conditions in the video game industry became a global scandal it strikes me as unrealistic that it alone can alter consumer habits. It takes external forces like labor laws and unionization as others have mentioned. I don't put any stock in awareness being the thing that forces the general population to care. We probably agree 100% on that.
I'm wrong maybe, but she says that in the night she cooked the cake, not that they eated it. Even the fact that his boss suggested her to do that thing during lunch hours (So he/she wasn't denying her to do a cake if she wanted to) imply that they were doing this thing as an extra break time during the day
I mean, they can do whatever they want of their life. If it was like you are saying it would be something even more dangerous than crunch and such
What if you were doing crunch hours for weeks at a time? https://www.mcvuk.com/development/industry-outrage-at-brutal-team-bondi-crunch
Doesnt seem remotely fair to me, and any basic idiot can see that such a thing would do miles for morale under such conditions. its bad management
Ya ,I agree.
Really sad that all this is happening. Something needs to be done.
Wish I could boycott RDR2 but I can't :(. So Dayone for me :/
My software development firm doesn't even do any crunch or mandatory overtime and we still have unscheduled cake breaks on birthdays, or when people are late to a meeting (they're required to buy a snack for the team). And guess what? on the last half hour of friday we usually get out the beers and just fuck around for a bit.
A workplace should be pleasant to work at. that's how you get happy workers, better communication, better teambuilding.
Honestly, rockstar (and probably most big game companies) seem badly mismanaged.
Employee happiness means absolutely nothing to them.
They shead good employees because of constant burnout, then have to build up talent from scratch again, messing up deadlines and estimates because theres no stability, and thus, have to go into crunch. The loop starts all over again.
I mean, it's possible I guess. But the way it is written sounds like she cooked the cake and immediately sent out an email to get everyone to take a break.
The entire point is that she did it because everyone needed a break from crunch. Baking a cake at 9PM, but only sitting down to eat it the next day at 2PM doesn't really make much sense in context, especially when she again reiterates that it was in response to late hours and weekend work.
Even if it was actually during 'actual work hours' that line is obviously VERY blurred if they are working 12 hour days anyway.
Practically every single study says there comes a time when working more hours produces zero productivity gain, and then it tips over to actively harming whatever it is your doing because you make mistakes that you then have to go back and fix. I don't understand how these companies don't understand this.