I would definitely prefer that games took longer to make. Not only do I want to live in a world where people are treated well but the quality of the games will also increase, people who are stretched to the max are not nearly as keen to details as well rested people. Plus the cultural shift that would result in this change would necessarily move towards people caring about quality and longevity over release windows and timeliness, meaning that the motivation of the people creating the games will be more geared towards creating great games then making a quick buck. I am always more excited for games when I hear they've been delayed, it means they care and it'll be better.
@@da_jeezuss8922 I think I'd rather pay more money and ignore more microtransactions than have the people who make the things I love pay by being taken advantage of. Everything costs someone, and in my view, monetary costs are better than human costs.
There have been several studies on the efficacy of work depending on the length of the work week. Allowing people to have 3 day weekends and to not constantly crunch might not affect salary and release dates as much as people might expect. To answer the question, yes, I would pay $80 for games if they were responsibly developed. I really don't think it would be necessary in reality, though. Would I be okay with games being pushed back a year? No. I would be okay if they just waited another year to announce games, but to make all games be like 2012 Square-Enix where they announce games 5 years out to drum up hype way too early sucks. Just announce the game later if it will take longer. I don't mind waiting longer for games but Alanah has a good point in that Bethesda does it right by announcing games 4-6 months before release.
I was, for a time, an architectural designer. I drew floor plans, roofing plans, etc. but there would be days where I would work 12 hours without a break because I was trying to get a project done and I was passionate about doing it. Didn’t need to do that, I only had to perform 7 hours of work, but I chose to continue because I wanted to. I made a choice to continue working and I don’t regret it. I wouldn’t expect other people to do that, but when your passionate about something, you’ll work more than you should.
People take years to work on animated film. I expect even longer should be spent on games... I wouldn't mind not knowing about a project until it's absolutely ready
years in game change too much technologically. too much years you can get on a new console and new console is a new hardware, u have to start all over again.
Minimum wage in Tennessee is $7.25 most jobs high schoolers can get pay $8.00 max. I got into babysitting when I started college, way better pay and my boss is a toddler.
here in Brazil is $1.20 most of jobs but before taxes, since we pay like 70% of taxes its like $0.40 in the end and our cost of life is just less than 20% inferior than USA... damn, we really have no future here, no surprises that less than 1% of population can complete a college :/
Working constant overtime isn't going to increase productivity. It's just going to wear employees out and end up creating mistakes and errors that more people will have to fix later. I found it weird how the discussion assumed everything that the interview and the follow-up statement said was truth. Did they forget what just happened with Telltale? The horror stories of working years of crunch time and then being laid off? These things aren't just a "controversy of the week" that you forget about once the stories are old news. These are people's lives. For the people saying "Don't like it? Just get another job" I've seen allegations that Rockstar blacklists its employees and prevents then from getting other work. When they are contacted by other companies hiring their old workers they lie about how the person had poor work ethic and stole credit from other co-workers. And the people that it happens to can't speak up about it because of a lifetime non-disclosure agreement. I couldn't find a source on these claims but if they're true that is absolutely sickening.
Say what you will, but shit at least Rockstar pumps out masterpieces. And its not like they do this in 2 years, RDR2 is a sequel that took 8 years. Practically unheard of nowadays lol
I would absolutely wait. No question. Doesn't matter if I want my fucking toys. These people work hard to make something I love so much. I want them to be happy, and productive. Alana (Most of Funhaus seem to share this opinion) had easily the best solution. Companies need to stop announcing their games so early. Even a year is too much. I understand wanting to build hype, and the marketing garbage. But information doesn't travel the same way it did 20 years ago. The internet has seen to word of mouth being as good, if not, better than most advertising anyway. Not to mention the fact that they'd stop having to put out broken shit. It seems like such an obvious fix. But then again. The shareholders can't even get it up if they don't see any projections. Which means people get to suffer, and pre-order culture will continue to hold back progress..... hurraaaay.
15:30 Sorry ma dude, it's not free will. The new work culture is CEOs befriending their employees to the point they feel obliged by respect to overwork themselves, on the basis that they enjoy their job. Kids too enjoy eating ice cream but as a parent I'm not gonna let them eat 50 ice cones because they like them. It's the manager's/ CEO's/ boss' responsibility to force anyone working over the agreed time schedule to go home. My 2 cents (which I worked for 'em :p )
He clearly said he told him to go home. And got a response of, no I really wanna be here, I enjoy my job. You cant force someone to leave work, just as much as you cant force someone to stay and work. Unless it's a store or establishment that clearly shuts down in certain hours, then that'd be weird if they wanted to stay after closing time.
@@colossalsqvid4587 You absolutely can force someone to leave work if you feel like it's having a negative effect on their life lmao. Just to put things on context, 100 hours a week leaves 68 hours of free time, if you sleep 8 hours a day that's 2 hours to do literally anything else (Eat, shower, socialize, pay taxes what ever), which clearly is impossible, so sleep will be cut shorter. 100 hours a week will by default have negative effects on a person.
@@colossalsqvid4587 You certain can, and many do, force employees to leave when they want to stay. Salary jobs are different cause there is not paid hourly work, but people can and have ruined themselves by doing that. As a member of a management team I have told my employees to head home even if they want to stay after their work hours.
@@Whinterfell Thats very true. I own a small tech business, and sense we are a small team i know them all very well. Many times i have had to tell them to go home. Its super important to send people home even when they want to work hard. I have been over worked myself many times to handle dead lines. And i know the effects they have on me and other people the day after. Its best to rest.
I started a 4 year bachelors for game design a few years ago, because I love video games and I thought it would be fun. I later dropped out after learning what the industry is like. I remember something my professor once said. “You don’t enter the game industry expecting normal hours. If you come in at nine and leave at five, you won’t last. You work and you keep working until it’s done. You’ll be the first to go when downsizing happens if you keep normal hours.” I remember he told a story about a game studio he worked for. I can’t remember which one, but I know it was based in Canada. He told us how the studio locked their front doors in the morning so none of the employees could leave, and unlocked the doors at around 11pm. If you wanted to leave before then, you had to leave through the side door. This became known as the “quitters door,” and everyone would see you if you used it. A walk of shame past everyone’s desk. Similar stories from people in the industry made me never want to work in an industry like that.
blackbeard premium: Or or Overworked and dead from dehydration or malnutrition!!! Welcome to the rest of the 🌎 yaaaayyyyyy we have it way better than everyone else!!!
I work at a place with a 9/80 schedule. We work 9 hour days, 80 hours a pay period and get every other Friday off. I don't know if I could go back to a regular 5 day week.
I want to meet people that send death threats for a game being delayed TWO DAYS just so I can see how they handle everyday life. I can't imagine how dysfunctional you have to be to think death threats are an acceptable response to a game delay.
I feel very uncomfortable with you guys saying that it's ok for people to overwork themselves if they want to when their motivation is to get noticed and move up. That puts anyone who doesn't want to work overtime (which they should never feel pressured to do if they don't want to) at a disadvantage and is exactly how these cultures and expectations get started. I think people should be very discouraged from doing overtime, I've never witnessed it result in anything but the deterioration of workplace culture.
Just want to say I’m stranded in pcb and get spotty reception and all I’ve really had are these podcasts. Thank you for keeping me entertained for the last week. Laurence specifically just kills it as a host week in and week out.
Film industry assistant director here: I typically clock 75-95 hours a week on set. It’s the same in the film industry. It’s the standard in many facets of entertainment.
Just throwing it out there, secret shoppers are definitely a thing. I've been one for restaurants, game stores, auto dealerships, gyms, etc. They have us buy specific things, try to get employees to break the rules (one required you to be under 21 and try to buy alcohol), listen for all the stupid little keywords that stores make you say nowadays, etc.
I work as a associate scientist at a big pharma company, and the hours we have to put at times is basically rockstar. A lot of the overtime could easily be fixed if it wasn't for horrible management and future proofing the process I work in. A friend/coworker of mine was in the hospital, lost blood due to something ovary related, boss still called her and asked her to complete the report. While I almost died due to salmonella I really sat there,since the heart attack wouldn't let me lie down, I realized I wasted a lot of my time working at this shit job, not using my degree to it's fullest. I decided I'm just going to quit and live on my savings and change job fields.
As a line cook, I understand the mentality behind working like that. You get into a sort of adrenaline high from the constant rush and pushing your body/mind to the max. Also, sawdust or kitty litter is the way you clean up vomit. You can sweep it up after that. I've seen some shit from your nightmares.
That's many manual labor jobs or salary. Sometimes shit happens and for a very short time you have to do that. Now if you're doing hourly at a grocery store and doing 100 hours a week. Something isn't right there.
Didn't James and Bruce complain about working on Attack of the Show and how many unpaid hours they had to work, to the point where they couldn't even skip sick days?
So, as a PhD student and in a place in general where people go well you want that Dr. in front of your name, work harder I have to say if human treatment of someone would delay a game I don't care. I also am willing to pay more so these people can have real lives. Because I don't have a real life. At all. I'm not going to quit this but at the same time you begin to miss playing video games, talking to your girlfriend and actually being a part of the conversation, and seeing family. I mean, at my school the motto is it's not alcoholism until you graduate. It's called coping. Because this environment is so draining so many people have a problem with it. I prefer humane treatment and realistic deadlines to anything else.
Sometimes developers working on an AAA game have to push harder for the final release. It's honestly refreshing to see that they are pushing hard in order to not delay OR release a buggy mess like most games are nowadays. I'm sure they were paid extra for it aswell.
Hearing Bruce go through 5 years of that is sad because he such a sweet person and for him to be abuse and used like that sucks. But I’m still glad he remained kind and smiles everyday
51:02 I got slightly confused with Barbara's, I'm going to guess pun, because "namaste" can be said in Greek too and it kind of translated to "here we are" and combined with what Barbara said is: _Here we are_ right here with you. Which is a grammatically correct sentence.
Last job I worked at one of the admins quit, she was doing all sorts of odd jobs that all of sudden no one was doing. My bosses decided that I would take over a bunch of these tasks in addition to the full time job they hired me to do. I was getting some flak for falling behind in my work, and I got the impression that they felt I should be coming in early and staying until I finished everything. I was salaried there and no one had talked about bringing on someone to replace the person who had just left, so I wasn't being compensated for the increased workload and no relief was in sight. Really glad I found my current job and avoided getting sucked into 60 hour work weeks to cover for my bosses refusing to replace the person who quit.
This topic getting covered by everyone is so getting pretty tired, every industry has companies where team members (and owners) work their butts off and usually those companies are the best in their field. Rockstar is just one of them. The world is survival of the fittest, and there are no guard rails or XP caps on your daily/weekly workload. If you want to get noticed and promoted you work harder and alot of times that means putting in more hours. I work in the restaurant industry and the hours are very long, but that's a part of the job, i'm sure its similar long hard grind in development, probably even more.
here in Brazil is $1.20 most of jobs but before taxes, since we pay like 70% of taxes its like $0.40 in the end and our cost of life is just less than 20% inferior than USA... damn, we really have no future here, no surprises that less than 1% of population can complete a college :/
I'm glad I live in a country where companies are f***ing themselves over royally if they allow their employees to burn themselves out. Unless said company enjoys being forced to keep paying their sick employees for a year or longer even if they aren't able to work. I really hope that eventually US workers will get more safe and pleasant working spaces as well, even if they feel like they don't really need them. Overall a lovely podcast by the way! It's the first one I've seen in a long, long time and it has definitely convinced me to keep my eye on them from now on.
I recently discovered a Reddit thread about a video Alanah made about The Walking Dead Season 4. She suggested that TellTale shouldn't be finishing and selling the remaining episodes while not paying severance to all the employees they laid off. The comments from her direct audience on RU-vid weren't too bad but elsewhere (such as Reddit), they were colorful to say the least. This isn't exactly the same as delays to avoid excessive crunch. However, it is a real-world example of whether gamers care more about getting their games or the treatment of the people working on them. That particular situation is a little more complex than RDR2 because people had paid for the season pass already and that creates a parallel consumer rights issue. Nonetheless, the impressive assortment of names commenters were calling Alanah suggests to me that while many are happy to pay lip service to workers' rights, when it comes down to sacrificing something to ensure those developers aren't exploited, a large number of gamers aren't willing to do so.
I am NOT an early adopter, so producers of ANYTHING aren't really too concerned with what I think, but since you asked: I'm not okay with paying more. I specifically buy most stuff when it's discounted (Steam summer/christmas sales in the case of video games), wait for movies to come to Netflix dvd (I haven't been to a theater in over a decade). I absolutely hate the idea of working for free in the anticipation it'll lead to something bigger in the future. Of the salary jobs I've had, the one that was 24/7 with defined shifts that fluctuated between 48 to 84 hours a week (military aviation) was absolutely the ideal way to play, imo. Figure out the shift, assign the shift, STICK to the shift. Being unable to manage the workload without having to get people to work beyond their anticipated weekly hours has always seemed like a garbage move by weak managers. But ya know, I'm absolutely never buying RRR2 at full price. So how I imagine game studios should behave won't really matter.
while working at a movie theater i learned that dumping Coffee Grounds on Vomit makes for an easy cleanup AND eliminates the smell fairly well....pro tip
Food for thought and to provide insight: a lot of jobs with the City/County of Los Angeles have 4 day work weeks at 10 hours per day with Fridays off (since nothing gets done on Friday anyway). And yes, of course! Delay the damn game and they shouldn't be $60 still anyways. Inflation has gone up like 25% since 2005, so they should be $75.
Take it from me and my experience. I worked my ass off at a few jobs, and all they would give me is more hours and more responsibility. The second I showed fatigue or told them I can't do something they completely turned on and I got fired. While my friend who started the same time as me who did the bare minimum was constantly congratulated when he did a little extra. You have to establish early on how much your willing to do for the amount your getting paid.
To answer Bruce and Lawrence’s question to the audience. I’m fine with waiting and paying more for a game so that the employees are treated better, we’ve got plenty of games to play during that time.
As a game programmer for a large development company I feel the largest contributing factors is the assumed. Programmers are competitive in nature and programming a game is difficult. It takes a lot of mental fortitude to sit at a desk 10 hours a day minimum and run equations and keep the mental model of the game in mind. Because you are in the games industry it is expected that you will be paid less and work more hours because you are doing something enjoyable at its core. You aren't working in finance or tax collecting you are doing something fun. I love my job more than anything however the culture comes with a price. Games programming is notoriously difficult so to be the best of the best requires absolute dedication, its perfecting the tools you use to increase the speed of your work flow. This speed means more prototypes to be tested ultimately creating a better experience for the player. Everyone that gets into game development because they love the problem solving of having an abstract end result and have to create structure to reach that point. I don't mind working the extra hours on my own volition or when it is required to reach a deadline however it is assumed you will do this at no extra compensation and dates are handed to you and not asked of you so you cut corners or overwork to reach the deadline. Your employment and promotions are based around slaving for a quantifiable result based on monetary outcome rather than viability of tested possibilities to create a more immersive experience. I think if you take the indie mentality of explore more with less, you will create better experiences as indies come from passion rather than purposely made to siphon money.
To Bruce's smoking analogy about that hunter: if you have a problem with cigarette smoke, especially around children, DO NOT WALK THROUGH A SMOKING AREA *ESPECIALLY NOT WITH A CHILD*. And for the ethical hunting, that guide is something created to help hunters cover their asses from backlash from people who seek out things to be upset with, not an actual rule book that they are supposed to abide by, like Alanah somewhat alluded to. I don't smoke or hunt, but I really hate when sensitive people try to sensor the rest of the world instead of avoiding the things that trigger them.
Everything about this podcast is great. In fact, watching this podcast has opened me up to watching as much funhaus content as possible. Great stuff. Also, thank your Barbra for fixing the candle.
Most creative industries have crunch. I myself am a Graphic Designer that works to deadlines so I regularly have to pull extra hours to meet client deadlines. The fact of the matter is after playing RDR2 and seeing the amount of detail in that open world. How much care was taken in crafting that game. It's a game that seriously has pushed the boundaries of story telling in video games again and is the first time this generation where I've thought "I can't believe this game exists". You just do not get games like this without putting in ridiculous amounts of time. 8 years of development (including a 1 year delay already) with over 1000 staff members and they still had to pull crunch periods and the quality shows in the final product. I feel like you can't have your cake and eat it too. People expect bigger worlds, better graphics, more polish, better writing, better acting, better stories from games and yet when a studio puts in the hours and effort to produce something so special, it's oh they shouldn't have worked that hard. Well, then this game probably wouldn't be as good as it is.
I now am currently working 160 plus a week two separate jobs, I am in my early twenties. (So for now it is doable) Its not as tho I look down on others who I see on a day to day slacking off. I just lose my spark for others, most especially when they treat me differently. Not knowing the battles I have to fight not only in my heart on a day to day. Fituge,stress,loss of family and friend time ect. I am doing this for money for my family. That is what makes the world go around. Now as I say all of this I do not reccomend this. I'm doing this for my dreams and plans for my family's sake. I just want my family and my self to be treated as equals, yet I feel that the time and effort that I am putting in now will pay off later. Not trying to be a one percenter, neither am I trying to be a blue collar working for someone else. While others continue to look down on me. Hard work pays off right!?
Would I pay more? Probably not, but I'd definitely be willing to wait a little longer for a game to come out if it meant I get a more quality product and people can get that product out without killing themselves.
My only problem is unpaid overtime. If there's an expected crunch period where employees are expected to put 100 hours in, the company better be ready to pay 60 hours of overtime even for salaried employees. With the decline of unions over the past 4 decades it's harder for workers to fight for their rights. But the 40 hour work week is something that people died for. So if you're in a field where a lot of people want your job, that doesn't mean you don't have rights. Companies should not leverage that against their employees to get them to work more for no pay.
Bruce was sort of on to something there with, "Well, how did you get here?" But Alahna's right to say that quality of work is much more important than hours put in. She also mentioned that senior developers are often made managers because of the years they've put in, which isn't necessarily good, as management skills and game development skills are two totally different things. Managers should be promoted to their position because they have good management skills, and no other reason. But, and Jim Sterling said this about Witcher 3, if a game is made under terrible work conditions, even if it's a badass game like Red Dead and Witcher 3, it's not worth it. It's much better to wait another year or so for a good game to be made if it means no crunch period or rights violations. In RDR2's case, I was really worried when I first heard the news because I wanted the game, but wasn't willing to buy it if it was made under terrible conditions. However, assuming what they said about only several senior developers volunteering to work triple overtime is true, I do agree that's something those individuals should be proud of. I think it's admirable for anyone to pour their heart into a project just because they're passionate about it, as long as they are working comfortably within their rights. With that said, I actually think an increased price point would hurt profits more than compensate for the extra development time. Rockstar, of all companies, does not need to raise the price point of above the industry standard to make a massive profit. They made, I think, $500 Million in just GTA Online microtransactions (so far), and surely that's more than enough to make RDR2. And, say, a smaller company tried something similar; the industry standard is where it is for a reason, and it's already higher than it probably needs to be. If a game demands bad work conditions to incorporate certain features and still get the game out on time, than the game doesn't need those features, or just shouldn't be made at all. Raising the price above the standard because it took a long time to make would be manipulative, and underhanded, and, honestly, less consumers would purchase the title. It's difficult to reason a $60 game into your budget already.
It is the responsibility of the manager to force an employee to leave work if they seem to be overworking themselves, not just because of the employee health which as a good manager you should watch for but the fact that most times it creates a toxic environment where other employees think they also need to work extra hours just because of that dude that was allowed to overwork and probably got the attention of management of a "passionate" employee. Better to have every employee work the same hours and reward the quality of their work during those hours.
Baboons are probably considered a nuisance and are overpopulated. In my state, you can legally take coyotes and a half dozen different birds all year round on your own property without a permit.
If people want to normalise 100hr work weeks and try to justify it, don’t come crying when it becomes the norm. You think they won’t? They fucking will mate. Just like games are balanced to “incentivise” extra player spending, employment will be balanced so promotion “incentivises” suffering ridiculous working conditions.
I love how you literally print out a reddit comment for Bruce to read but you won't add closed captions to your videos!!!! God damn it guys come on! You want to raise your viewer rating? Just give it a google man it's proven! Add captions!!
Pray to God that our local GameStop, BestBuy, Walmart and Target have enough copies of Red Dead Redemption 2 because we all gonna want to play this game.
Work construction. If I don’t work the voluntary overtime I’m considered uncommitted not one of the guys. Worked 12 hr days, 6 days a week for 5 months got laid off for 11 months. Came back worked 16 hr days, 5 days a week for 9 months got passed over for promotion for missing time when mother and father got hospitalized during the same month. Management preach team and family but don’t treat subordinates with same respect even though we do all the physical work for longer hours
