The Dark Side of Making L.A. Noire 242
JameskPratt writes "Long-time readers have no illusions of how awful the video game industry can treat its workers. Eleven ex-employee of Team Bondi, who made LA Noire, have now cited 60- to 110-hour work weeks, unusual compensation rules, and the 7-year development cycle as reasons for frustration and discontent. They claim their boss, Brendan McNamara, crushed office morale with verbal abuse and unreasonable goals. As the saying goes, the two things you don't want to see being made are law and video games."
The International Game Developers Association will be investigating the matter.
Re:No way... (Score:5, Informative)
You're doing it wrong.
I've had a pretty reasonable software career so far. 10 years, decent money (nothing spectracular, but decent) and outside of about two months of actual, genuine, crunchtime in there I've never worked more than 38-40 hours a week. Often less!
There are some parts of the industry that are not managed by psychopaths, or permanently in OMG PANIC mode.
Re:No way... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, I'd say really that situations like this are even the exception in the industry rather than the norm now too.
From what I understand, much of Rockstar has historically always been like this, I have a close friend who worked in Rockstar Vienna before it collapsed, he got out about a month beforehand and was telling me long before it collapsed how messed up it was with very similar issues as those mentioned here.
The game industry has had to improve somewhat because developers have begun to realise that there's far more money in business software, and far less stress, because employers are more frequently treated like humans.
I've also never had a problem doing software development, my hours are 8:30 - 4:30pm Mon - Thurs, and 8:30 - 4pm Friday and I've never had to work a minute of overtime. My last job was only slightly worse in that I finished at 5pm each day, and the pay wasn't as good, but that's really just because of career progression.