The Dark Side of Making L.A. Noire

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...

[j-stroy]

Percentage of overall software sales should be mandated by law for employees and contractors. The boundary for this should include coders, artists & platform port teams, but stop somewhere before functionaries such as translation and printing ad copy. It avoids but does not preclude the "union" issue. The residual would accumulate after the percentage accumulation passes the salary earned on the project. It would protect against the disenfranchisement and emotional/fiscal abuse that occurs, yet still allow producers to have a reasonable break even point.

This whole "brand" licensing thing has funneled the money away from those who actually do the work, and the trend towards short term contractors leads to the littlest guy taking the hit on fair wages, job security and benefits to protect the bottom line of the gorillas in the room and the monkeys that fight each other all the way to the bottom to kiss gorilla butt..

speaking from experience of being a crucial (yet by monkey madness necessity cheap) monkey employed sub-whore for several triple A titles, I have seen lots of monkey companies go down, with the same individuals being re-hired by different outfits for the same project. Just sayin.

Constructive dismissal

[Psychotria]

Based on just the stuff in the linked articles I do have to wonder why the employees didn't seek legal advice and pursue constructive dismissal [wikipedia.org] action. I fucking would have.

Re:Don't like the conditions ? Vote your your feet

[Anonymous Coward]

What if you actually want to have that game on your resume, because it might help your career in the long term? How much would an employee tolerate for that?

Re:No way...

[hey!]

The secret is to work in a field that is useful, but unglamorous. Best treatment I ever had was in my first job, working on inventory software.