Former Team Bondi employees dish on LA Noire's troubled development

@Prboi

Much like diamond or tempered steel, great things come from harsh situations.

@Prboi Because when you're doing something ambitious it exponentially increases the difficulty and effort to execute it correctly. If you're creating a game that is not breaking a ton of new ground you might be able to get things done in a reasonable amount of time with an incompetent leader like McNamara. But as you make a bigger and more ambitious game, having a bad leader makes everything much, much worse.

For a counter example, look at Bungie. They have a stable workforce and strong leadership. They've shipped multiple AAA titles that have raised the bar in FPS games. But you don't hear disgruntled Bungie employees complaining about mistreatment.

@(Unverified)

Same thing w/ Naughty Dog - another great example of a studio others should model. I'd put Insomniac, Valve and BioWare on that list too.

@Prboi

The only studio immune to this seems to be Naughty Dog.

It could be they're just simply a better place to work that the employees actually want to give it their all.

@Breakdown Haha, that's the article writer trying to throw a game mechanic into his writing to sound like a smarty pants.

@Breakdown - I think it's a film noire-ism. (Also check the name. Definitely a female writer.)

@MatthewBlackwell

"(Also check the name. Definitely a female writer.)"

HOLY CRAP YOU'RE RIGHT. That... explains everything???

@Breakdown
Mobsters say things that don't make sense all time.

*20 Hours Later*

ShadowOp814 and his family are swimmin with da fishes like Roosevelt on payday. (see what I did there?)

@copa You're not sure if it explains everything?

@PlagueDoctor357

OMG THAT IS SO NOIR

@PlagueDoctor357 - No no no! I didn't mean it explained anything. Two unrelated comments: first, that the thing was a film noire-ism, AND a response to the person above me who said "his" writing. Sorry to anyone who thought I was some sort of sexist or something.

@ptcamn - I bet you hate unions, too.

@ptcamn

it's not that easy when you have to eat and put a roof over your head. You probably live in your mom's basement.

@ptcamn

You didn't bother to read the original article now, did you? Because directly right after that, it was said:

"According to this source, staff contracts were worded in a manner which ensured that the only way employees would be paid for their overtime would be to wait until three months after project completion. Those who left the company before this time were not entitled to overtime payments."

@ptcamn try reading the article. many people did leave. that's one of the reasons among many the game took forever to complete. also in the article you didn't read are numerous references to the fact the workers were not given what was contractually obligated to them. and it's not them suddenly coming out, it's them responding anonymously to a interview questions about what it was like to work for team bondi during those years. yeah, nothing lays the groundwork for a lawsuit like answering a few questions anonymously. get a clue, and leave your vapid "common sense" comments on the glenn beck board or something.

@ptcamn I don't know how it is in Australia, I'd guess it's mostly the same, but in America it has been and still is an incredibly stupid idea to just quit your job and hope you'll have a new one in a week. Terrible working conditions are terrible, and people shouldn't have to stand them, but they're still probably better than being unemployed.

@ptcamn said "To stick around for years and now come out and say they worked under "inhuman conditions) sounds like just prepping the groundwork for a lawsuit to get some easy money."

...you have a very strange definition of "easy money".

@MatthewBlackwell

Unions are a scam and their only interest is in collecting union dues.

While they once had their place and helped change working conditions, they're an outdated and unnecessary relic.

@MatthewBlackwell

Instead of "I bet you hate unions, too" I read "I bet you hate unicorns, too". And I was like, how can someone hate unicorns?!?

@SisypheanLife Shows how little you know. My union charges 2 hours of pay a month, very small price to pay for getting the kick ass benefits and retirement contracts that we would never have gotten with out it.

@mmmfishtacos

Anyone that's worth the kickass benefits could get them without a union's interference. Unions enable the lazy and incompetent to drag down the capable.

@MatthewBlackwell

??? And this is related to the article.... how exactly?

@themisanthrope

That's a cop out answer. So, under your logic you would stay in an abusive job that doesn't pay the extra hours and demands excessive hours that would prevent you from seeing your family much at all, instead of leaving for a job without extra hours paying you the same? A father does everything for his family, but if the company or the contract are not good you move on. Not to mention none of these people mentioned joining the team for that reason.

@itsANDREW

I did, hence what I wrote. Are you gonna tell me you don't read the contracts you sign BEFORE signing them? Then you are a fool.

I would like the specifics of who these people are. While the article claims they have several years of experience combined, it seems that they committed basic mistakes if they didn't read that clause in the contract until after the fact.

@SpookyApparition
I'm not even going to entertain your comment.

@TheDarkWayne
You are right. Specially in Australia several studios have closed in the last couple of years. We could argue, though, that while the issues with Team Bondi happened until the release of the project, a lot of the people that left or that are commenting in the article were around before the economy tanked (7 year development after all), and even over a period when many studios popped up.

With that said, it is unquestionable that Team Bondi was a mess and that the working conditions were less than stellar. I've had my share of experiences with studios I don't want to work with again

@onan
It's sad but true. I am not sure about Australia, but in the US people are a little trigger happy when it comes to starting lawsuits for about everything. I wouldn't be surprised to see one against this company coming up at some point, deserved certainly if it failed to pay contractual salaries..

@SisypheanLife Let me guess: you're one of those, "Everything I know about economics, I learned from Atlas Shrugs," kinda guys, right? Might want to keep your uninformed opinions to yourself until you've read a textbook and a newspaper. Fairy tales don't help much.

@ptcamn

You're missing the point that the people who did stay the length of time stipulated by the contract were not paid the overtime they were due

@SisypheanLife You really are naive my friend.

@ptcamn

I hate it when people say garbage like that.

Maybe your one of those people with a magical pedigree that lets you waltz from job to job, but for most people, finding a new job is a royal pain in the ass. Especially if it's in the U.S. right now.

@mmmfishtacos

No, I have the misfortune of being in a union.

@SisypheanLife Well then opt out and be done.

@ptcamn did you even read the article ? all of the ex employees resigned at one point or another. A few with no other job to go to.

@ptcamn I think you've now, officially, lost any shred of respect within this community.

@ptcamn Maybe because the video game industry isn't what you call stable some people have to make money to live i know you and to your pet rock* are jobless living in your mums basement.Well your pet rocks striper job could have gone better.


*PET ROCKS ARE AWESOME!

@SisypheanLife So THAT'S why you're down there, as capable as you are. You were DRAGGED. By UNIONS. lol ayn rand.

@copa

Spoiler Alert: They haven't.

I find it repugnant that games that make so much earn so little for the average staff. It seems all things Rock Star have had a great deal of controversy in recent years. (Red Dead, Max Payne 3, and now this game) Is this exclusive to Rock Star or does it trickle down from Take Two?

@The Wicker Man Eh, if you really think about it from a business perspective it makes sense. The publishers (in this case R*) are the ones laying out the huge budgets of these games. Worst case scenario for the people working on the game is that the game will come out and not sell at all, and they would be out nothing since they received all their pay for working on the games but the publisher would be out sometimes in the neighborhood of $100 million.

It wouldn't be logical to say that if the game underperforms that the average employees should help cushion the loss and not be paid their full salaries to help offset the losses. That's how a lot of publishers justify not rewarding their employees. That is why they see more of the return because they accept infinitely more risk.

Some studios do it right, they give their main staff bonuses if the game explodes and surpasses expectations, but others go into it with the mindset of "I'm risking my money I'm taking the reward".

@The Wicker Man

I don't know if this is "Trickle-down from Take Two", but I don't think that Rockstar and the independent developers it works with (like Team Bondi) are the only game companies treating their workers this way.

@Kiichi It was a Spongebob quote...

@darkhellmutt

yeah... I know how they feel. I am getting ready to leave my job, too. Shame it is so hard to find another one.

@darkhellmutt - My situation wasn't near as bad as the one described in the article but I also just left a company that had a similar attitude.

Morale was shit amongst my team during my last few weeks. It's just not how you run a successful business.

@darkhellmutt

That's the thing. Rockstar and their affiliates CAN run a company just like this and make obscene profits doing so.

And why would upper management care if the company tanks in 2 years because of talent leaving, if they're making millions this year? Everyone's out of a job, but they're out of a job with gobs of money, so who cares?

Unions aren't magical unicorns or anything, but these sorts of abuses are exactly what they're designed to combat.

@An Unnamed Mob
Problem is the game industry has no unions and can't seem to get one.