L.A. Noire lead programmer defends Team Bondi, admits development hardship

@eat it

I worked 72. I'd hate 12 hour shifts if it wasn't for all the delicious money!!

@eat it

That sucks.

@eat it

All of us do some times. Nobody cares.

The reason the Team Bondi story is interesting is because it goes to the heart of how you do sustainable game development.

Studios like Valve, Harmonix, and Naughty Dog are known for having very developer-friendly work environments. They keep very experienced staff over multiple titles. They have crunch periods, but not endless crunch periods. The staff remain because it is a good place to work, and you get consistent quality between titles because they aren't starting with a new development team each time.

These good studios don't go 7 years between game releases (although it may seem that way sometimes with Valve!), and they don't burn out or can most of their staff after the title is done. The top talent tends to remain in the game industry, even if they move on to other studios, because they had a good working experience.

And when you play a game like Portal 2 or Uncharted 2, you can just tell when everyone had a lot of fun making it.

RDR and LA Noire are essentially "one-and-done" titles. We may see sequels made, but they will be made essentially with brand new development teams, and it will be a very, very long time before we see them. And there are a lot of talented people who worked on those games who will be leaving the game industry forever, instead of creating another great title for us to enjoy.

@copa

"RDR and LA Noire are essentially "one-and-done" titles. We may see sequels made, but they will be made essentially with brand new development teams, and it will be a very, very long time before we see them. And there are a lot of talented people who worked on those games who will be leaving the game industry forever, instead of creating another great title for us to enjoy."

The long development time and hard work shows and that's what separates them from the rest of the industry. They are making games that are making people on the outside look in and say, "Hey that GAME actually looks pretty good."

Maybe from now on they should only hire people prepared to sacrifice a lot of their time. Hard work is part of being a pioneer.

@eat it But the point is they shouldn't have to sacrifice a lot of their time. In cases like this they aren't taking so long and sacrificing their time because their innovative pioneers blazing through new landscapes, it's because they suffer from extreme mismanagement and human resources bullcrap. Games like Half Life and Portal are considered masterpieces and groundbreaking, and you never hear stories about their employees working 70 hour weeks for years in a row.

@eat it
Yeah i feel no pity for these poor babies.

@Klearwater Killer The thing is, they had such massive turnover compared to companies in similar situations that clearly it IS abnormal. Generally speaking regardless of how 'innovative' or 'legendary' a game is, it's done with less people quitting games forever. A few whiners would be one thing, but this is massive.

@eat it
Did you get paid overtime? Because Team Bondi didn't.

@Labreya

You have to remember, some people are salary and don't get overtime.

@The Aquacharger

Of course I got paid overtime, because get this ... I WORKED IT OUT IN MY CONTRACT BEFORE I STARTED!

god only knows why these people signed a contract that said they wouldn't be paid for overtime until after the project was finished.

@eat it
Because in Aus if you want to be a game developer there's very few studios. These people wanted to make games, so they had very vew choices. Perhaps Team Bondi was one of the few studios to offer OVertime, or any sort of benefits. When you don't have much competition in your area you can do as you please.

@eat it
Besides many game studios, even in America, don't offer overtime. That's why most of them gripe about crunch. There's minimal plus about it. The Studio where my friend works they don't allow over time, but during crunch period ifhow many full days worth of extra hours you make is free days off (paid).

@SirUrza

I'm on contract so I never even have the opportunity of overtime.

I'm also not guaranteed my breaks. I often work 14 hours straight. Thats just how it goes.

I get where Bondi staff are coming from, but to me it reeks of "Job was crappy, but we didn't read our contracts when we signed them and got screwed.".

@Yuglyoshi
There are 168 hours in 7 weeks.
To have 100 hours (and keep a consistent work day), you would have to work for about 14.3 hours a day.
That or you could cram it all in the first 5 days without any sleep and rest the other 2 days.

@Yuglyoshi
7x24=168 so uhm yeah

@Protege420
note: pro tip refresh page for most recent replies

@Tyran You beat me to it. I believe his name is Greg Grundberg.

@Tyran

Its "Matt Parkman" alright, reading your mind. Fyi, i watched every episode of Heroes on Netflix and demand a reward for keeping my sanity.

@Tyran
That's because the character model was from Grunberg.

@Andrew12h
Oh, and scroll down to the cast part-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.A._Noire
There he is.

@Andrew12h

YOu mean you lot never knew who is in this game? :lol:

Did you all know that John Noble is in it too? 'Walter' from Fringe?
Amongst others that is.

Tonnes of stars in this!

@copa

If there was any doubt that working for a game company is a bad career idea, this account has all but erased it.

@kentuckyfried

More accurately, I'd say working for a bad game company is a bad career idea.

@yellowtrash nvm

@yellowtrash

Yes. There's quite a few recognisable faces in the game. It's like a neat little metagame to try and guess where you saw them before. Then look it up on IMDB.

@ORTHROK

I missed the part where working at Team Bondi was an amazingly good job, or that they were paid a lot of money.

Working 100 hours a week on a salary is not amazing pay, they were probably making $10/h at most, many were probably making less than $5/h. And werent you supposed to be banned?

@snapekillsdumbledore

When you work for salary you don't get paid by the hour.

@The Aquacharger

Yes but taking an average rate from the number of hours worked in a month/monthly salary shows how much your effort was valued. In this case not much.

@captplut9465

It will be. The next generation of anonymous who believe that they are the rightful heirs to the internets and feel that no-one should be able to hinder their meme generatating, flame bait posting destiny.

@(Unverified) The problem is they that they aren't just working like this near a deadline, they're doing it 100% of the time. Also, it's pretty clear that you have no kind of experience with computer programming. Just because you don't pull any muscles or get back injuries doesn't mean it's not strenous, mental exhaustion is a thing too.

@(Unverified) I'm assuming you like where you work? They hated it. Besides that, I think it's poor management if you have to do anything constantly for 100 hours per week. I make great money and don't have to work anything near that. I don't think other people should either. In my experience, 99% of the time that something is that ridiculous, it's poor management.

@TheDarkWayne and @MontEdZuma you guys are right, it definitely does suck, and it is mentally and physically exhausting, but it's part of the job. and there is no way they were pulling 100 hours a week the entire time of development. If they were actually, I take that back, that is insane. but if they did that for a week or two, thats just part of the game.

@(Unverified)

They were doing crunch time for the last 2+ years of development on the game.

@(Unverified) I'm sure it wasn't literally for years on end, but I feel pretty secure in saying, based on other instances like this, it probably lasted for a few months at least. The example I always think of in this sort of thing is the crunch time Bungie went through for Halo 2. On the collector's edition making of DVD, they talked about how for pretty much the entire last half of 2004 they were crunching hardcore, but it was because they'd made their own mistakes and made a promise on the release date. That sort of thing is part of the job, certainly. But if it's like that on and off for 7 years, that's a real problem.

@MontEdZuma

Just going to point out that yes, some of us do have to work huge hours for weeks, because thats our jobs.

I'm not trying to be a dick, or pull the usual "You don't get it" crap. It's good you make a comfortable amount of money without having mental work hours. Some of us are just in vocations where constant, long hours are the norm, and we're ok with that.