Kotaku's Jason Schreier: Inside Rockstar Games' Culture Of Crunch

ElephantShell · Oct 23, 2018

JChung55 said:
So it seems like the crunch culture is different in different parts of the world which makes a lot of sense. However, I gotta ask, what industry and area are some of y'all in?

As an accountant in Canada, the hours listed in the article are pretty standard to a typical tax season. In fact, I would say 5 months out of the year I work 55-65 hours a week. With mandatory Saturdays and optional Sundays. Lawyers are also in the same camp, with some working even longer hours than me.

What's interesting (and shitty) is that there is a specific section in the labor code that prevents accountants, lawyers, engineers, etc from basic benefits like vacation pay, overtime pay, mandatory breaks etc. This is especially troublesome for law students as articling students are specifically mentioned in the aforementioned law, which leads to firms taking advantage of them.

I have never heard of anyone questioning this or raising concerns about the long hours and limited rights. It's very interesting and welcoming to hear so many people against these sort of practices, but I have to wonder if people know about the "crunch" other industries have.

Kinda off topic but I'm starting an 8 month co-op at an accounting firm in Canada in January and they told me to expect a total of 150 overtime hours during tax season, which is pretty much equal to 55-65 hour work weeks for 5 months, like you said. Luckily it's a smaller local firm so the employment contract is pretty good and my OT hours actually get banked and either paid out or used as paid time off. But I've heard that's not normal and it sucks for the students and juniors who are grinding hard and still getting paid shit.

JamboGT · Oct 23, 2018

Anecdotally I know a few Rockstar devs from Rockstar North and they love that place and they get fucking paid! But it seems like that place has the least issues.

Also generally QA have it tough wherever they are it seems, when I was doing QA I was lucky to be doing dev QA as a small team working with the programmers and designers and not in a traditional QA role.

I personally haven't had to deal with crunch for the last three years which has been great but the place I worked before I worked most of a year working 9-10 3 days a week then 9-5 the other two. Was hard but at the tme we were doing something cool, that was pretty unique in the industry and I loved getting it done each week?

It's weird, I know crunch is bad and thinking of doing it now sucks but at the time I was just focused on fucking nailing it.

Absolute · Oct 23, 2018

Damn that is WAY worse than I expected.

Sheepinator · Oct 23, 2018

"many said their average weekly hours came close to 55 or 60, which would make for six 10-hour days. Most current and former Rockstar employees said they had been asked or felt compelled to work nights and weekends. Some were on hourly contracts and got paid for overtime, but many were salaried and did not receive any compensation for their extra hours. Those who are still at the company hope that their 2018 bonuses—expected to be significant if Red Dead 2 does well—will help make up for that."

55-60 hours, during 1 year out of 8 years, hardly seems like a big deal. Plus they get overtime pay and royalties when it sells well. Take Two has paid out nearly $1.9BN in internal royalties in the last year and will surely pay out over $500M next year. Let's get some perspective. Teachers routinely work a lot harder than that, every single year, and they get paid less and don't get bonuses. I bet a lot of retail workers do those hours in the holiday season. Financial workers at the end of quarters and fiscal years too. Those hours, and the tracked hours Take Two provided for all staff, are so far off the "100 hours" headline that started this whole crunch narrative.

Everybody who goes into games knows it's going to be easier near the start and more demanding at the end. The industry has also made massive progress since the EA Spouse and other lawsuits. Now crunch is decreased, mass layoffs at the end of games completions are rarer, and overtime pay is more common.

senj · Oct 23, 2018

MillionIII said:
No, I'm just saying that it's not so easy to "manage the project better", shit happens, we hear stuff like that about almost all big games. You think CDPR are not crunching as we speak? Or naughty dog? Or kojima pro?

No, I completely believe that all of the usual "bad at project management" suspects are yet again, engaged in offloading the consequences of their fuckups at project management onto employees.

If the same suspects are, time after time, finding that the only way to hit their deadlines is to work everyone 80/week, I kind of think as someone who does this professionally, that the process by which they plan out their work and set their deadlines is incredibly suspect. And when it's the Exact Same People running these projects at these companies every time, It's pretty obvious to me where that blame lies.

Brass Body Dave · Oct 23, 2018

senj said:
If the same suspects are, time after time, finding that the only way to hit their deadlines is to work everyone 80/week, I kind of think as someone who does this professionally, that the process by which they plan out their work and set their deadlines is incredibly suspect. And when it's the Exact Same People running these projects at these companies every time, It's pretty obvious to me where that blame lies

Yes, any project manager worth a shit will plan for these things. I get it. "It's hard!" so it a lot of other work, and we've been conquering it.

SpotAnime · Oct 23, 2018

Holy shit that article. It really puts the recent statements by Kolbe - and even statements by her in the very same article - in question and makes them look like they really don't care about the issue as long as they can sell millions of AAAA titles.

I've worked in organizations like this - forced overtime for all even if you don't have anything to do, the perception of butts in seats equating to hard work, stakeholders who frequently change their minds at the expense of the development team and their sanity, management not trusting their employees to be productive at home. The thing that really kills me is that people still accept it because they are working at Rockstar and delivering some of the best games ever made. That just adds fuel to the belief from management that in order to deliver a AAAA, 90 MC game, there is no other way than this.

I feel for the hourly folks - I know it mentioned them having to work overtime just to make salaried level pay, but is it a given they can even bill for overtime? I've heard of stories (elsewhere) that contract workers would be required to work overtime but could not bill for it. That's just criminal if so.

The Housers really come off as greedy petty people here. I know they are running a business, and a pretty successful one at that, but some of these things their employees mentioned they were subjected to just have no purpose other than arrogance.

JChung55 · Oct 23, 2018

ElephantShell said:
Kinda off topic but I'm starting an 8 month co-op at an accounting firm in Canada in January and they told me to expect a total of 150 overtime hours during tax season, which is pretty much equal to 55-65 hour work weeks for 5 months, like you said. Luckily it's a smaller local firm so the employment contract is pretty good and my OT hours actually get banked and either paid out or used as paid time off. But I've heard that's not normal and it sucks for the students and juniors who are grinding hard and still getting paid shit.

Dude that's rad. I've been in the industry for 6 years and haven't heard of OT being paid in any capacity. If I only I got OT for the hours I've worked in the last 6 years... Anyway if you have questions about the field in Canada feel free to Pm me.

AlphaDump · Oct 23, 2018

Excellent work Jason. You are setting the bar for gaming journalism.

I want an article on their NDAs so bad. Preview and review events based on invite. I'll bet it is just as aggressive as the NDAs towards their employees. That would probably reveal why the previews are all so similar.

Nanashrew · Oct 23, 2018

Calisupra2nr said:
I'd argue you have never been a part of creating something legendary - and I don't mean that personally, as most of us have not. The comments I read about failure of project management and scope management and all the buzzwords fail to grasp that much of what makes something so good is on the fly iteration. A tireless push to improve and iterate, even the smallest pieces. The problem with video games is that they marry sterile concepts like IT project management with the creation of art which is a reactive, on-the-fly instinctual process of creation. If you read some of the all time greats, you see how things get made. You see that it is great because of the blood, sweat and tears. The passion. I don't think there is anything wrong in the world with having entities or people who want to endure hardships to turn out greatness. If Rockstar employees weren't fairly compensated, I would be up in arms. But the data proves otherwise. These are choices we make to do what we love. And how far down the spectrum of sacrifice we go to produce content hopefully is parallel with the quality of output.

The hallmarks of company exploitation and this mentality can fuck off. You don't have to kill yourself for your work.

Shadout · Oct 23, 2018

Sheepinator said:
55-60 hours, during 1 year out of 8 years, hardly seems like a big deal. Plus they get overtime pay and royalties when it sells well. Take Two has paid out nearly $1.9BN in internal royalties in the last year and will surely pay out over $500M next year. Let's get some perspective. Teachers routinely work a lot harder than that, every single year, and they get paid less and don't get bonuses. I bet a lot of retail workers do those hours in the holiday season. Those hours, and the tracked hours Take Two provided for all staff, are so far off the "100 hours" headline that started this whole crunch narrative.

Everybody who goes into games knows it's going to be easier near the start and more demanding at the end. The industry has also made massive progress since the EA Spouse and other lawsuits. Now crunch is decreased, mass layoffs at the end of games completions are rarer, and overtime pay is more common.

That doesn't make it better. Heck, it only makes it worse.
Everyone can point to some other jobs and say; They have it bad too. Hence why these issues need to be solved in all industries.

Deleted member 11413 · Oct 23, 2018

SpotAnime said:
Holy shit that article. It really puts the recent statements by Kolbe - and even statements by her in the very same article - in question and makes them look like they really don't care about the issue as long as they can sell millions of AAAA titles.

I've worked in organizations like this - forced overtime for all even if you don't have anything to do, the perception of butts in seats equating to hard work, stakeholders who frequently change their minds at the expense of the development team and their sanity, management not trusting their employees to be productive at home. The thing that really kills me is that people still accept it because they are working at Rockstar and delivering some of the best games ever made. That just adds fuel to the belief from management that in order to deliver a AAAA, 90 MC game, there is no other way than this.

I feel for the hourly folks - I know it mentioned them having to work overtime just to make salaried level pay, but is it a given they can even bill for overtime? I've heard of stories (elsewhere) that contract workers would be required to work overtime but could not bill for it. That's just criminal if so.

The Housers really come off as greedy petty people here. I know they are running a business, and a pretty successful one at that, but some of these things their employees mentioned they were subjected to just have no purpose other than arrogance.

I think the issue is more than Kolbe, the Housers, and other high level executives are all workaholics, their entire life is their work. So they expect the same of their employees, without considering that unlike them, the average employee will never see the benefits of this all-consuming obsession with their work and burn out. The workplace culture is the issue, and that comes from the top.

Kthulhu · Oct 23, 2018

UF_C said:
You may be right but if I spent years of my life crunching, the only payoff is that bonus. I'd want that damn bonus. I don't blame you for not buying honestly. Hopefully we can all remain loud and vigilant regardless of the decision we make.

Don't get me wrong, I get why people still want to buy the game, and I don't think buying the game and enjoying it makes anyone complicit.

I do think shame can help though. I hope I'm wrong and the higher ups at Rockstar will learn from the pushback and will try to avoid and minimize crunch in the future.

shimon · Oct 23, 2018

Creamium · Oct 23, 2018

This was a pretty huge article but it didn't feel that way. It was captivating and I read it from the first word to the last, incredible work Jason.

Hailinel · Oct 23, 2018

Romanticism: "Video games are an art form and I'm dedicating my life to that pursuit."

Reality: "I murdered my health, my marriage, and my friendships by working 80+ hours a week to animate realistic horse balls."

Shadout · Oct 23, 2018

JChung55 said:
Dude that's rad. I've been in the industry for 6 years and haven't heard of OT being paid in any capacity. If I only I got OT for the hours I've worked in the last 6 years... Anyway if you have questions about the field in Canada feel free to Pm me.

Yeah, that sounds like a reasonable way to handle it.
Some jobs will have seasonal workloads. Which is not a problem on its own, if the company tries to make it as as livable as possible.
But at least make sure that people are compensated not only in pay (if they get so lucky), but also in the ability to use their overtime as paid time off during periods that are less stressful if they wish so.
Personally I have no issue working more in some periods, if it allows me to take days off in other periods. Contrary, I love that kind of freedom. But typically that is not the deal people get from unpaid overtime.

Alucrid · Oct 23, 2018

Sheepinator said:
"many said their average weekly hours came close to 55 or 60, which would make for six 10-hour days. Most current and former Rockstar employees said they had been asked or felt compelled to work nights and weekends. Some were on hourly contracts and got paid for overtime, but many were salaried and did not receive any compensation for their extra hours. Those who are still at the company hope that their 2018 bonuses—expected to be significant if Red Dead 2 does well—will help make up for that."

55-60 hours, during 1 year out of 8 years, hardly seems like a big deal. Plus they get overtime pay and royalties when it sells well. Take Two has paid out nearly $1.9BN in internal royalties in the last year and will surely pay out over $500M next year. Let's get some perspective. Teachers routinely work a lot harder than that, every single year, and they get paid less and don't get bonuses. I bet a lot of retail workers do those hours in the holiday season. Financial workers at the end of quarters and fiscal years too. Those hours, and the tracked hours Take Two provided for all staff, are so far off the "100 hours" headline that started this whole crunch narrative.

Everybody who goes into games knows it's going to be easier near the start and more demanding at the end. The industry has also made massive progress since the EA Spouse and other lawsuits. Now crunch is decreased, mass layoffs at the end of games completions are rarer, and overtime pay is more common.

and teachers are one of the key highlights of a position that's underpaid and overworked. also what about these quotes from rockstar employees?

"Others said they still had it rough, however. Three people who worked at Rockstar San Diego between 2011 and 2016 recall a period where they were told that overtime wasn't optional. "It was mandatory 80 hours for basically the whole studio," said one person who was there. "If you don't have any work to do on Red Dead 2, just test GTA V for another eight hours." Said a second: "Maybe they didn't tell anyone 100 hours, but they definitely told us 80. Concept artists were sitting there being glorified QA.""

"A second Rockstar NYC developer also said they reached out because of Houser's comments. "While nobody I know worked 100 hour weeks, many of us worked 60-80 hour weeks for the past one or two years," they said. "To hear one of the heads of the company effectively go on record as saying none of that ever happened has been a huge blow to morale at a time when we should be celebrating.""

Jessie · Oct 23, 2018

10am to 9pm, seven days a week.

Jesus Christ. Game devs need to unionize.

shem · Oct 23, 2018

I haven't read the whole thread but arguments akin to "Other industries do it too" are not arguments. Unless you're asserting those and this case as also good which I haven't seen. You're just trying to smuggle in "Well I/they worked this much, why do they get to complain" when in reality the market on human suffering in the workplace isn't zero sum and can and should be reduced to zero.

Unions are the obvious answer to prevent abuse.

SpotAnime · Oct 23, 2018

Sheepinator said:
55-60 hours, during 1 year out of 8 years, hardly seems like a big deal. Plus they get overtime pay and royalties when it sells well. Take Two has paid out nearly $1.9BN in internal royalties in the last year and will surely pay out over $500M next year. Let's get some perspective. Teachers routinely work a lot harder than that, every single year, and they get paid less and don't get bonuses. I bet a lot of retail workers do those hours in the holiday season. Financial workers at the end of quarters and fiscal years too. Those hours, and the tracked hours Take Two provided for all staff, are so far off the "100 hours" headline that started this whole crunch narrative.

Everybody who goes into games knows it's going to be easier near the start and more demanding at the end. The industry has also made massive progress since the EA Spouse and other lawsuits. Now crunch is decreased, mass layoffs at the end of games completions are rarer, and overtime pay is more common.

Not to attack you, but try working 60 hours a week for a month straight. On top of two hours of commuting a day. That's basically five fourteen-hour days. If you have a family, you just can't. Unless you are paid enough to support said family on one salary and let your partner handle the family matters. That also assumes they are giving you your weekend back, and generally if you are working that much you are taking work into the weekend regardless (emails, logging in from home, not disconnected). So generally 60+. That also means, not helping kids out with homework, missing baseball games, missing school plays. Being "that" parent. And missing dinner with significant others, other relationship stuff. Oh, doctors appointments? Home care? Auto repairs? Forget it. And that's just a 60 hour week. A month doing that is hard enough. But for a year? Life is too short. And if they are really talking about bonuses in the $30-60k range, that's just paying for overtime, nothing more.

Nanashrew · Oct 23, 2018

This is incredibly sad.

"I have never suffered from depression before working at Rockstar," said a former Lincoln tester. "Now some time after leaving it's a recurring issue for me… One tester who worked below me told me he had gone to the doctor for help dealing with depression, was asked where he worked and when he replied Rockstar, the doctor said. 'For god's sake, another one.'"

In conversations, some testers said they'd missed out on important events and time with their families due to this crunch. Others said their hours were monitored down to the minute, with managers reacting harshly to any missed time. One former Lincoln tester said they'd arrived late at work one day due to a heavy snowstorm that had led other businesses in the area to shut down. "There was no, 'Thanks for making it in,'" the tester said. "It was, 'Can you work back that?'"

"I feel like I'm going to need to get to know my partner again," said a current tester.

sabrina · Oct 23, 2018

Hailinel said:
Romanticism: "Video games are an art form and I'm dedicating my life to that pursuit."

Reality: "I murdered my health, my marriage, and my friendships by working 80+ hours a week to animate realistic horse balls."

tfw this wasn't parody

Delriach · Oct 23, 2018

Finally had a chance to finish reading the article. This was really good reporting and I'm glad this stuff has come to light.

What a lot of people don't realize is that this stuff being brought to light is already enough for change to happen. The next game that Rockstar works on will likely have even less crunch as a result. Most people here have done all they can do at this point and that is totally ok. It's ok if you buy the game. It's ok if you don't buy the game.

I still see posts saying that "it isn't that bad" or "see, it's not everyone". It actually is bad. And no, it was never going to be everyone. But that doesn't de-legitimatize any of the claims.

Zedelima · Oct 23, 2018

In the end he made a valid point.

Is possible to make a work of art like red dead, zelda or the witcher without things like that and in a resonable time?
Lets remember that aonuma made the entire team play zelda at least 3 times.
And i dont think that simple saying "good management" solves it all.

Philippo · Oct 23, 2018

Read the whole article.

We might not agree on all stuff, but damn Jason if you are not the one journalist in this biz close to the authentic definition of journalism, thank you.

Reinhard · Oct 23, 2018

Reading about the crunch is so aggravating because it resonates allot with previous bosses I've had. It doesn't matter how efficient you are at getting your job done and if you have anything to do relevant to your actual position, the boss just wanted to see people there on the weekends to be considered a good worker. I'd get all my work done working ~48-50 hours over 5 days, but I wasn't seen as good as fellow labmates who wasted a TON of time every day but came in consistently on weekends because they constantly slacked off during the week.

Deleted member 8561 · Oct 23, 2018

Reading it now, but looks like a good helping for crow is to be ordered.

Tennis · Oct 23, 2018

Incredible article by Jason, balanced and well-written. Although it might be the longest online article I've ever read, I fully recommend reading it. Rockstar is in the business of building monuments, but I do feel sempathy for the poor people working on these gigantic productions. Having worked in a creative industry myself, I can relate to some of these stories (the culture of fear etc.) BUT at the same time I can't wait to finally experience the game first hand.

Tzarscream · Oct 23, 2018

Rouk' said:
Yes, this is how those games are made. But, is it worth it ?

Is enjoying slightly more a game during ~65 hours, because of this attention to detail, worth taking away years of the lives of hundreds/thousands of people ? Is my small pleasure more important than the basic human right that is having a bit of free time on top of a salary ?

I mean the actual answer to this unequivocally, no.

Yet here we are talking about it with other people saying otherwise.

Deleted member 42641 · Oct 23, 2018

sabrina said:
tfw this wasn't parody

Wait nevermind understand what youre saying now

Zeouter · Oct 23, 2018

Incredible article, depressing and being honest, not surprising.
We enable this, probably in fact implicitly demand it :-/
We "reward" it too.

Dinobot · Oct 23, 2018

Kolbe sounds like the Official Speaker of a Cult.

Nocturno · Oct 23, 2018

R* becoming the parody of their game's villains.

Mivey · Oct 23, 2018

Hailinel said:
Romanticism: "Video games are an art form and I'm dedicating my life to that pursuit."

Reality: "I murdered my health, my marriage, and my friendships by working 80+ hours a week to animate realistic horse balls."

As long as it gets us a game with tons of content (otherwise review bomb incoming) for 60$, and the shareholders at Rockstar their ROI, I feel we can say this corporate human sacrifice is something we can all feel bad about for five minutes, and then ignore and continue with business as usual.

BossAttack · Oct 23, 2018

DJtal said:
What is this nonsense ? I promote people based on a simple ratio efficiency. If you put up more work hours than me and come up late on a project, good for you but we will be done soon.
I let go employees when they are done on theirs projects. Don't sit here, go rest, relax. See you tomorrow, a Boss Man have different prerogatives (I have confcall sometimes at 8pm, have to review stuff, don't want you here, go)...

I guess the work culture differ from a country to another.

Well, I'm assuming your career field is different than video game development. Video games can't have a "simple ratio efficiency" because they are crafting a piece of art just as much as a consumer project. And, there is no simple time frame for when a piece of a project will be completed. When will the AI in God of War stop being weird and work? When will the axe throw finally be playable? When will the glean off the water look just right? When is the writing for the story actually great? There are unknown factors that can't be calculated to a simple efficiency ratio and why it can be hard to judge performance in the field.

ZiggyPalffyLA · Oct 23, 2018

"Even something as simple as changing the name of a city could lead to tons of extra work. At one point, Red Dead Redemption 2's biggest city was called New Bordeaux, two sources confirmed, but when Rockstar found out that the open-world game Mafia III (developed by 2K, which is also owned by Rockstar parent company Take-Two Interactive) had used that name, they changed it to Saint Denis. That meant taking voice actors into the dialogue booth for a whole lot of re-recording, which meant a whole lot of extra work for anyone involved with cinematics—not to mention all the artwork and interface changes."

How the fuck did nobody catch this? All that extra work because someone was too lazy to check if another game (let alone a game with the same publisher) had already used it?

EkStatiC · Oct 23, 2018

First of all, thank you Jason from someone who has worked some brutal unpaid overtime but in another field.

AlphaDump said:
Excellent work Jason. You are setting the bar for gaming journalism.

I want an article on their NDAs so bad. Preview and review events based on invite. I'll bet it is just as aggressive as the NDAs towards their employees. That would probably reveal why the previews are all so similar.

Bingo!!!!

I want to know like crazy the relations between big publishers and big outlets, preview events and NDAs, the last 5 year for some reason almost every major release has pretty similar reaction from the press and i suspect the restrictions from NDAs play a role.
It is a difficult job for any journalist, to investigate his own kind but do it.

Tzarscream · Oct 23, 2018

ZiggyPalffyLA said:
"Even something as simple as changing the name of a city could lead to tons of extra work. At one point, Red Dead Redemption 2's biggest city was called New Bordeaux, two sources confirmed, but when Rockstar found out that the open-world game Mafia III (developed by 2K, which is also owned by Rockstar parent company Take-Two Interactive) had used that name, they changed it to Saint Denis. That meant taking voice actors into the dialogue booth for a whole lot of re-recording, which meant a whole lot of extra work for anyone involved with cinematics—not to mention all the artwork and interface changes."

How the fuck did nobody catch this? All that extra work because someone was too lazy to check if another game (let alone a game with the same publisher) had already used it?

Let me go one level deeper, does it really matter if the name is the same?

Sheepinator · Oct 23, 2018

SpotAnime said:
Not to attack you, but try working 60 hours a week for a month straight. On top of two hours of commuting a day. That's basically five fourteen-hour days. If you have a family, you just can't. Unless you are paid enough to support said family on one salary and let your partner handle the family matters. That also assumes they are giving you your weekend back, and generally if you are working that much you are taking work into the weekend regardless (emails, logging in from home, not disconnected). So generally 60+. That also means, not helping kids out with homework, missing baseball games, missing school plays. Being "that" parent. And missing dinner with significant others, other relationship stuff. Oh, doctors appointments? Home care? Auto repairs? Forget it. And that's just a 60 hour week. A month doing that is hard enough. But for a year? Life is too short. And if they are really talking about bonuses in the $30-60k range, that's just paying for overtime, nothing more.

I've worked a lot more than that, for a lot longer. I do get your points. However, when the number of successful games made without crunch is apparently near zero, the solutions aren't trivial, and will likely also cost more. As I said, the industry has made significant progress since EA Spouse and similar lawsuits. Let's say it goes further, unions or whatever. 40 hour weeks mandated for all. Never mind that some people making overtime pay might actually want that pay for a house, wedding, whatever. If a studio needs say 10% more staff and/or 10% more time, that has real cost. That's potentially millions more on the budget. Are gamers willing to pay for that? I doubt it. It's like that discussion about Walmart minimum wage, where they ask shoppers if Walmart should pay more and they all agree yes, but when asked if they accept prices going up to pay for it, suddenly they aren't so supportive.

Do you think great games get made with, "Let's iterate on that again for more polish", or, "Would love to make that better, but it's 6pm, time to punch the clock."? In the latest IGDA satisfaction survey, 95% of devs reported doing crunch in the last year or extended hours they wouldn't classify as crunch. How do you get from 95% to 0% while still delivering great 90%+ rated games and without adding millions to the budget?

Benita · Oct 23, 2018

steviejd1 said:
That's made me settle on getting RDR2 used at most. Enjoyment of gaming shouldn't just be about those playing the game but also those making it too.

So you're going to enjoy the fruits of their unreasonable labour, but do so in a way that denies them sales numbers, a sense of accomplishment, and potentially bonuses?

ZiggyPalffyLA · Oct 23, 2018

Tzarscream said:
Let me go one level deeper, does it really matter if the name is the same?

This too. The amount of perfectionism that went into this game caused stress that far outweighs the benefits of implementing it.

CopperPuppy · Oct 23, 2018

ZiggyPalffyLA said:
"Even something as simple as changing the name of a city could lead to tons of extra work. At one point, Red Dead Redemption 2's biggest city was called New Bordeaux, two sources confirmed, but when Rockstar found out that the open-world game Mafia III (developed by 2K, which is also owned by Rockstar parent company Take-Two Interactive) had used that name, they changed it to Saint Denis. That meant taking voice actors into the dialogue booth for a whole lot of re-recording, which meant a whole lot of extra work for anyone involved with cinematics—not to mention all the artwork and interface changes."

How the fuck did nobody catch this? All that extra work because someone was too lazy to check if another game (let alone a game with the same publisher) had already used it?

I'm not saying anything about laziness, but it is baffling that this got as far as it did when all you have to do is type "New Bordeaux" into Google and the first result is a Mafia III link.

EDIT: Actually, the entire first page of results is for Mafia III.

Green Yoshi · Oct 23, 2018

"The overall tone at Rockstar is that what the company values most is not the bugs you fix but the hours you put in," said one current employee, echoing a view shared by most of the people interviewed for this article.

"You'd feel the stare down, and sometimes you'd see it as you were leaving. There was this culture of, if you don't put in the hours, you're not worth working here."

"The temperament from these guys has always been: It should be a privilege to serve in this organization," said a person who was there. "And if you don't agree with that, there's a long line of people waiting to take your place."

"Now, I have heard from some friends that are still working there that some improvements have been made, but Dan's statement about crunch being optional is ridiculous. It is optional if you want to lose your job or never move forward in your career."

Wow, it's actually as bad as I feared. To ruin your physical and mental health in order to "live your dream" is a very, very bad idea. Unfortunately, this happens quite often with self-employed people, but as an employee? Nobody thanks you for that!

Deleted member 1062 · Oct 23, 2018

one of the most bizarre things when talking about this issue is other people that happen to work crazy long hours chime in with the sentiment of like "I work a ton of hours, its not that bad etc.)

like yes okay that sucks I wish you didn't have to do that either

ZiggyPalffyLA · Oct 23, 2018

Also, I'm sure this has already been said, but anyone boycotting this game is directly hurting the people who slaved away to make it, since its success is tied directly to their annual bonus.

Mifec · Oct 23, 2018

Zedelima said:
In the end he made a valid point.

Is possible to make a work of art like red dead, zelda or the witcher without things like that and in a resonable time?
Lets remember that aonuma made the entire team play zelda at least 3 times.
And i dont think that simple saying "good management" solves it all.

I've always been annoyed by this even being a question because it transposes the partially mythic idea of the tortured starving artist producing his best work when under the worst stress onto a collective.

The answer for Jason is btw yes, there I answered it definitively for him.

Sheepinator · Oct 23, 2018

ZiggyPalffyLA said:
"Even something as simple as changing the name of a city could lead to tons of extra work. At one point, Red Dead Redemption 2's biggest city was called New Bordeaux, two sources confirmed, but when Rockstar found out that the open-world game Mafia III (developed by 2K, which is also owned by Rockstar parent company Take-Two Interactive) had used that name, they changed it to Saint Denis. That meant taking voice actors into the dialogue booth for a whole lot of re-recording, which meant a whole lot of extra work for anyone involved with cinematics—not to mention all the artwork and interface changes."

How the fuck did nobody catch this? All that extra work because someone was too lazy to check if another game (let alone a game with the same publisher) had already used it?

That one doesn't surprise me. I think Rockstar and 2K are almost like two separate companies. Rockstar is their own publisher, and the Housers begrudgingly report to Take Two's CEO, Zelnick. He wouldn't know the names of cities in either game, and I doubt the devs on Red Dead would have access to in-progress games at 2K.

Deleted member 31817 · Oct 23, 2018

Benita said:
So you're going to enjoy the fruits of their unreasonable labour, but do so in a way that denies them sales numbers, a sense of accomplishment, and potentially bonuses?

I would rather not contribute to a game that's gonna sell millions anyway since its success just means this is gonna happen again with GTAVI to a whole new crop of workers.

Sheepinator · Oct 23, 2018

CopperPuppy said:
I'm not saying anything about laziness, but it is baffling that this got as far as it did when all you have to do is type "New Bordeaux" into Google and the first result is a Mafia III link.

EDIT: Actually, the entire first page of results is for Mafia III.

You are assuming that situation happened after Mafia III came out in October 2016.

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