My post was admittedly somewhat reactionary, and probably from just me reading too much into things.
I think what Patrick is expecting from an outlet like Vulture is looking for solidarity from a place that isn’t going to give it. Nothing Vulture’s ever done would indicate that they’d grill the Housers on this.
It’s not that I think waypoint should be doing more to bring about sudden change, it’s just that I thought this came across very “holier-than-thou.”
I mean, you’re right, it is holier-than-Vulture, and it is self-congratulatory. Both Patrick and Waypoint put their work into doing exactly the work this piece is demanding of their peers. I think that’s both justified and accurate.
I do not agree that Vulture “brought attention” to the work hours; the piece merely quotes an unsolicited off-handed comment that happens to mention a number. It isn’t framed as being something the Housers were pressed to divulge, nor is it framed as something that lead to a new line of inquiry about the intensity of those hours. It is just spoken aloud and then left wholly uninterrogated by the writer.
If your stance is “Vulture would never have done this anyway,” I think that might be missing the point. For one, the piece, while focusing on the Vulture article, is a rallying cry for all of the press to ask these questions. Secondly, acquiescing that Vulture sucks and should therefore be ignored is a bit weak. Is Vulture truly, totally lost? Is it Fox-News-status? I don’t know, I actually don’t follow them, but if there is even a smidgen of good intent over there, they should be called out when they perform their duties poorly, with the hope that they will heed that criticism and change their ways in the future. If not Vulture, then maybe, at least, the writer.
As discussed in the related podcast, this seems to come from a place of understanding that relationship between access and refusing to write the responses to any real questions R* may not want to answer. What Patrick may expect from Vulture (as he lays out on the podcast about competent editing) and what Vulture’s actual duty to their readers (and society as a whole, unless NYmag/Vulture is a lobby organisation creating propaganda rather than a publication) is maybe the gap worth thinking about.
Shivoa said it better than I can.
I’m not saying Vulture should be written off, it’s just that I read this as Patrick faulting it for failing to write about something that it, as far as I know, has never really done.
These are things that need to be written about, and I think the journalist side of the games industry is still trying to figure out how best to do that.
The thing is though, Vulture chose to include that quote. This wasn’t a live-streamed interview or something where they couldn’t pick and choose the exact tone of this piece. They went out of their way to include a boss non-chalantly mentioning a culture where 100 hour weeks are just a thing some people have to do. If you want to write your flowery making-of articles, fine. I don’t have a problem with that. But to throw that in the article and take no stance whatsoever is, to me, harmful and worthy of scorn. Given the positive tone permeating the rest of the piece, the inclusion of that comment with no subsequent grilling makes it seem like an acceptable, even noble thing.
Oh absolutely. I don’t mean for any of my posts to think I was ok with it,.
Also coming from a hospitality background, I find this totally off base. I’ve seen people crushed by the pressures of busy periods, uncaring managers and horrendous customers. Even when managers don’t want their staff to overwork themselves, they’re often powerless to intervene when they see it because of pressures from higher up (why have two people doing a job when it can be done by one?).
The key point is that Dan Houser isn’t overseeing each and every one of Rockstar’s 900+ employees, and because of the way these companies are structured, crunch is inevitable whether it’s mandated or not. The binary position you take is unrealistic - viewing Houser’s comments in a vacuum does a disservice to the people who suffer from poor labour practices.
And let me make this important point: none of this is taking into account the ego-driven nature of a lot of the top people in the industry. We’ve seen time and time again how willing they are to paint a totally opposite picture of reality when it comes to talking to the press and the public. Almost anything goes as long as their creative visions are met.
What it really comes down to is that Dan Houser is just mad about that movie where Daniel Radcliffe played his brother
While we might not want to over-read the situation, there surely is something to Rockstar corporate potentially feeling shaken by recent discussions. As a company who like to be quiet (and generally have employees not share workplace information as part of their message control and to prevent leaks) it would seem to be unlike them to tell their employees to feel free to post their own views on their workplace on social media (and yet that’s exactly what’s happened).
Definitely a range of experiences being discussed (which I’m sure a Kotaku or similar will link to but I’m personally going to avoid direct linking as the people I’ve seen have no more of a social media presence than me so public comments but not already-around-5000-followers public) including some engineers who have worked there for at least a few years and not worked significant overtime (talking 40-50 hour working weeks with the upper end considered to be the exception not the norm) during that time.
Of course, this only reinforces that this is an industry-wide issue (especially those who aren’t at R* who have shared their horror stories) and that pressure like the recent discussion of this interview can push corporate offices to at least loosen their social media guidelines for workers just to try and break speculation. More open communication about working conditions can only help the situation.
It’s alarming how quickly and assuredly, people assume how much they know about working at Rockstar games. Especially since there hasn’t been any credible, concrete reporting on the subject. Anonymous quotes and letters? Industry hearsay? Interviews, taken out of context? Hardly reasons to gather the pitchforks. Let’s take a deep breath and try and be reasonable. “Crunch” is not a new concept in the development of video games. Making video games is difficult. It always has been and probably always will be. Being tied to technology, which moves at a break neck pace, makes things that much more difficult. And there are many intricacies within that. Type of game. Size of team. Business responsibilities. Budget. Management, etc etc. I think people fail to realize how young the industry is. People are still figuring out how to do things properly and efficiently. Furthermore people within the industry are well aware of the pitfalls of game development. With a number of panels every year, at various conferences, on the exact subject. Trying to tweak and change ways games are developed to ease the process. And some even admit, if you are making a certain type or size of game, there is going to be a period of crunch. Its not something that unionizing is going to help with. The film industry is unionized. It’s also a well-known fact, that people in certain positions absolutely crunch and work crazy hours. Regularly having 12-15 hour days. Point being, some people enjoy and even “thrive” on working long hard days. Especially if they find themselves doing something they’re passionate about. Passion can drive people to do lots of things. Many people who develop games, do it because they love it. They’ve played since they can remember, and never wanted to do anything else, other then make games. They live their passion. Many of us don’t know what that feels like. And never will. You shouldn’t presume, that because you like to work 6-8 hours a day, 5 days a week, that everyone enjoys or prefers that. I myself work 8 hours at my regular job, and spend another 5-6 hours working at my house. In my garden, tending to my animals, cooking dinner, working out etc. Who are you to say that I work too hard? That I don’t get enough sleep? That I don’t spend enough time socializing? That I’m not happy? We all don’t think and feel the same. How would you ever presume to know how 1 person is feeling, not to mention the many people who work at a large company? There is a big, big disconnect here. Your feelings, don’t reflect everyone else’s. It is ones right to work as hard as they want. It’s also one’s right to find new means of employment.
your generic avatar has quickly become synonymous with the rockstar logo
Kind of Mr Houser to join in on discussion here imo
(Ebenezer Scrooge Voice) It’s one’s right to starve in the streets! It’s one’s right to work themselves to death! It’s one’s right to be poor if they so choose!
But why oh why do so many choose poorly? 
There is a recorded history of questionable management at Rockstar. I can even point at 2K Games, a sister company, with hard evidence based on a personal account of Walt Williams on the development of Spec Ops: The Line in his own book (Significant Zero).
Crunch happens because of the failure of management to properly manage a project…and management are always the ones that decide if crunch gets used or not. Which is a pretty massive conflict of interest where the management that caused the problem never faces consequences for their poor management, while their team suffers.
Game development is a sort of process where there will always be problems and mistakes popping up as development goes on, and finding the problems takes a great amount of time. More mistakes get made under crunch because employees are working more, but much worse due to physical and mental strain. Not only is the process inhuman, it doesn’t help create good games - it makes them worse and possibly even creates unnecessary project delays just based on all the time it takes to fix these new mistakes.
If how it has always been matter and was considered the right thing, we wouldn’t have weekends and children would still be working in factories.
Unionizing is not being considered to make better games. It’s being considered so employees don’t destroy themselves because their management is unable to properly do their jobs. It’s being considered so you don’t get a Telltale situation where an entire studio of over 200 people is stuck in crunch for multiple years before just being let go without their law mandated severance pay. Unionization is to protect employees from either incompetent or outright hostile management.
You seem to think everybody who works in games wants crunch because they’re passionate. No. There’s a small handful of people who do that to themselves because of their passion (and many regret the strain it puts on them, with Walt Williams even describing himself as an addict when he describes his years of work on The Line), but the vast majority of employees are doing a job. They have families they’re trying to support, bills to be paid. Most people don’t want to bring themselves near death so a people they’ve never seen can play the 27th Assassins’ Creed.
Did you know you can be blacklisted out of an entire industry? Did you know incompetent management is also usually the sort of management who would do this at the slightest hint of dissent over how they manage a project?
You do a lot of work. Cool, that works for you. But as you pointed out, that doesn’t work for the vast majority of people. You can’t toss away the complaints of people scared for the lives of actual people because they have a different focus in life compared to you.
Crunch also basically keeps a ton of talented people with disabilities out of the industry because they literally can’t handle such a ridiculous strain on their health.
I think the idea that this sort of problem will be ‘solved’ by unionisation is a bit of wishful thinking. AFAIK, unionized professionals in similar high-status industries, like, say, film editing, still crunch to meet release dates. It’s tough, because many of the costs of crunch, beyond health, are externalized, borne by family and spouses, and there’s still a lot of cultural forces that make that externalization possible.
Your union can negotiate to make sure you are well-compensated for crunch, but in jobs where the risk of low quality work is abstracted from the more concrete consequence of death or dismemberment, there’s not as many cultural mores to push back against the ‘benefits’ of paying overtime.
Echoing my orginal post…maybe we should be reasonable and realize that there are many different facets and intricacies involved, before calling for the heads of people in the industry. I appreciate your numbered list of talking points, but I never made definitive stament either way. I don’t agree with forced overtime or bad labor practices. I don’t agree with being harraassed in the work place. I don’t agree with people being bullied into keeping their mouths shut. I am well aware of blacklisting people (Mr klepek) from certain industries. I don’t think that people in the industry want to crunch and be worked to death. I never claimed the industry to be pure and clean of labor issues. I was simply trying to be unbiased and reasonable. Sure, Walt Williams wrote that book. And you can find many like it. You can also find accounts of people loving and enjoying their times at various companies. What’s the point? There will always be a disgruntled employee. A bitter loved one. I wasn’t trying to offend. I was just giving an opinion on an open forum. I was hoping to receive something more than ridicule, for what I thought was, if not well expressed, was a pretty unoffensive post. For a site claiming to be so “accepting” of peoples opinions, it sure is the opposite.
At least it’s a step in the direction of the game industry actually having to follow the basic rules the vast majority of other industries have to follow. It’s not the absolute solution but it’s an important first step before any real change can actually happen.
On the other hand, maybe an industry that requires employees to work 100+ hours weekly (and sometimes for years) to exist doesn’t deserve to exist. There’s still plenty of other studios making games that don’t have a business model built on harming their own employees, so it wouldn’t be that big a loss. And honestly, with the near 1000 people teams these blockbusters get, a lot of these people (many of whom aren;t even developers) might get better results in other industries.
At some point there has to be some basic ethical standards or we’re just propping up and defending evil practices born from apathy or poor judgment and ego.
“I haven’t worked a 100-hour week in my life,” Zoe Sams, a tools programmer with Rockstar North, said on Twitter. “I’m thanked for any overtime I am asked to do, and it feels like in those circumstances it truly was an unfortunate situation.”
New context! Turns out this really is an empty PR move that’s only using half truths!
