I'm on salary... so i don't get overtime paid up. But... bonuses at the end of the year count on hrs spent and dedication to your work and team. So you might get a bigger bonus on the amount of work and quality. Which is nice... at least we get recognized for that as well.
I'd like to know how many people here work 10/12 hours a day? In the five years I've been in the industry I always worked my 8 hour days, with the (very) rare 10 hour day now and then.
I generally work 9hour days and sometimes more generally just depending on how the day is going and if I am on a roll and don't want to stop. That is mainly because I super love what I do and revolve my life around my job and my friends on the weekends ha :P
For crunch, at least on Reach, when allowed I would work 60 to 75 hours a week. Only allowed to do this 3 weeks during the entire project and even then it was broken up with 1 week of crunch, 1 week of absolutely no crunch allowed even if you wanted too. Worked out nice. Was on hourly for pay so crunch was awesome for my wallet. Still only allowed to go up to 60hours of over time though.
Naughty Dog pretty much no longer has scheduled crunch time (or so they told me ha). You can do just 8hrs a day the entire project if you want and there cool with that. For people who do go the extra mile to make our projects shine they are rewared for it. But people do crunch during deadlines (and even on none deadlines, mainly because they want too) have no doubt about that. Its just not "mandatory" ha.
Oh, I guess that's something that varies. Here it's anything over 40-hours a week is considered overtime and needs to be approved. But it's never been a problem for me.
When i worked in movies i did have to have my overtime approved first. But that came paid.. since it was contract work. Time and a half of extra pay is not something they wanna be doing all the time.
@Autocon: reward makes a whole difference i think. Your time is well valued and that's the way it should be. I do love the work i do and the industry i am in. So it's all worth while.
at Mythic: hourly people got paid overtime, Salary didn't - on the other hand salary people got bonuses and hourly didn't. Unfortunately in 2008 EA froze all bonuses & raises and put strict limits on overtime so the salary people that crunched to ship Warhammer didn't get compensated for it. The Land of the Dead expansion was produced with alot of unpaid overtime across the board because we couldn't get enough approved overtime.
Could his blog be down because Rockstar are maybe taking legal action against him? In my last job there was a section in my contract about not making available to the public details on the inner workings of the company I was at. I wouldn't be surprised if Rockstar had something similar in his contract, and he's now possibly breaching it, slandering Rockstar, and they could maybe be threatening to sue him......Just sayin' it's possible.
more likely they posted it while pissed off. noticed it was being read and tried to salvage their rep.
In my own job I've been doing 6 day weeks / 12 hour days for the last month or so, not getting Overtime but being treated well. usually we are very flexible. if I start at 7 I go home at 3. crunch time just gets a bit nutty.. you take the good with the bad.
I was already for some good ol' fashioned R*ckstar bashing, but this guy came across as a bit of a tool and lost my sympathy well before I got to the end of that gargantuan wall of text. It seems likely that a lot of people have been poorly treated by Rockstar San Diego, but there must be more concise, less self-serving individuals out there who can blow the whistle.
more likely they posted it while pissed off. noticed it was being read and tried to salvage their rep.
I highly doubt it. This guy's been traveling around the country for months, and has spread his story through more than just his blog (I've seen him on a few forums posting about his travels and the like, I think.) Unless this is some other guy who used to work at rockstar doing the same thing.
Nick: Yeah he does muddy his message considerably even before he starts relating it heh
Any fool knows you don't point out that the Emperor has no clothes on within your first month at a new job too.
I have done the 12 hour shifts 5-7 days a week in the past. It's brutal. I was on contract so it was all compensated but the money is secondary when you lose track and feel like you spend all of your time in the office. I live a significant commute away from my job so my ratio of time spent at work/in transit was hugely disproportionate to the amount of time I spent at home(including sleep). Luckily, I was able to pick and choose which days I was willing to stay overtime and none of it was mandatory - however it's greatly looked down upon if you don't do it. Most weeks I would try to keep the overtime to only 2-3 days and come in an extra day on the weekend. Some weeks it was every day.
Since that month of crunch I haven't really had to work overtime. We're approaching the end of our project now and it doesn't look like we will have to either. We brought in extra staff to cut down overtime and improve productivity. I'm getting to take 10 days off over the holidays and everything.
Grace? Me ? lol Ask anyone I work with, I'm not known for my grace! I'm known more for being too abarasive and honest or overthinking things. I personally think most folk under think things and need to be honest and to the point more, but I don't get to set policy.
None of us like that stuff doesn't work as well as we think it would if it were done our way, blundering straight in with all the negative talk tends to just knock the legs out from any point you ever make later though and that needs to be accepted right off the bat when we start somewhere new.
None of us are seperated from our egos, when we place a negative on something someone has done they typically see that as a negative judgement about everything they do, thats just life I'm afraid.
Rugged good looks however, well naturally, you see that picture there? Well damn, when you look this good you don need ta know nuttin! hahaha
I feel very left out because when I clicked the link I found out that he took down the article:
Sorry to disappoint you.
Apparently people were taking my story about my alleged experiences regarding a fictional company a bit too seriously when I very clearly said that it was most likely a complete fabrication and that most of what you are about to read is probably lies. I also said that any reference to anything resembling actual people, places, or events was purely coincidence. People didnt listen.
So I had to remove it.
Could someone who read it summarize it, I really want to know what he said, it's hard to understand what he really meant after reading everything posted in this thread.
As far as rant posts about the game industry go, I thought this guy was pretty well composed. Then again, these things always interest me.
I don't know how fair it is to say that if the roles were reversed that things would be just as bad. It sounded like he made some headway on some initiatives while he was there, but then went up against the wrong people. Sometimes you don't succeed, not because you weren't capable, but because others don't welcome it. Although I suppose that's one and the same in the end for some.
I feel very left out because when I clicked the link I found out that he took down the article:
Sorry to disappoint you.
Apparently people were taking my story about my alleged experiences regarding a fictional company a bit too seriously when I very clearly said that it was most likely a complete fabrication and that most of what you are about to read is probably lies. I also said that any reference to anything resembling actual people, places, or events was purely coincidence. People didnt listen.
So I had to remove it.
Could someone who read it summarize it, I really want to know what he said, it's hard to understand what he really meant after reading everything posted in this thread.
I remember at my first job during Alpha we worked 12+ hour days for 19 days straight. Not 19 work days straight, 19 literal days straight (Monday to Sunday). Some people worked 16+ for those 19 days straight.
It seems usually when crunch hours like that are put on people it's because of bad scheduling which is funny because it's someone's job to make proper schedules and deadlines so this doesn't happen. It's not like overtime crunch is a "alright guys we were being lazy earlier in the development of this game and now we need to stop messing around and work more hours". I love my job, but the problem with long crunch is burnout and that 12+ hours you worked ends up being like 4 hours of quality work.
Also from reading his novel, the overtime parts weren't really the issue more of the really big disconnect in the entire company but at the same time if that company was as disconnected as he claims how the hell did they make RDR that good? I also find it messed up that someone took credit for his work. That happened to me but it wasn't brought to my attention until after I had left the company. If I had knew when I was there I probably would have flipped out.
I keep trying to work 6 days a week, 12 hours a day, but my damn boss won't let me!
I even offer to do it without overtime pay (for now). What a jerkoid! And now I hear he calls interviewees "gay"? Man.... Somebody call HR on that guy. :poly142:
The bit about the higher ups reading all the private emails...man.. Thats lame
I can just imagine how it went too.
"Oh, he wrote a e-mail to his guys. hmmm, lets see what he wrote to them.... hold up, the fuck... Did he just...? SOMEBODY GET THIS MONKEY MOTHERFUCKER IN MY OFFICE RIGHT NOW! Shit is about to go down!"
I keep trying to work 6 days a week, 12 hours a day, but my damn boss won't let me!
I even offer to do it without overtime pay (for now). What a jerkoid! And now I hear he calls interviewees "gay"? Man.... Somebody call HR on that guy. :poly142:
Ive only had one job in this industry, well 2, but if you have to crunch more than a month in total on a project, then thats a broken ass company and its not going to get any better. move somewhere else.
I'd like to know how many people here work 10/12 hours a day? In the five years I've been in the industry I always worked my 8 hour days, with the (very) rare 10 hour day now and then.
Thats typical for me too, I normally work 8hr days 5 days a week with a little OT here and there. Going on 5 years of that and I love it. I'm home by 3:30-4pm which gives me 4-6 hours of family time before my daughter heads off to bed. I love the flexible hours and being able to work from home sporadically, is a great way to put in some OT.
I'll see his wall of text and raise him one of my own. I'm not sure if he expected them to send him to some kind of summer camp and assign him a camp counselor for the first week? There clearly was a breakdown in communication concerning who would shoulder the burden of the transition from Max to Maya.
It seems like he did the typical fall in love with a place and fail to ask questions until it was too late. Then he had another typical experience of being air dropped into the wilderness and having to establish a new comfort zone. Also not having been in a lead or AD role he was clearly overstepping his boundaries and spending more time running around trying to fix and change things than just getting stuff done.
If they're fine with it, let it go.
"I was on my own from day one".
That's pretty typical in any job, school, or social setting. It's best to walk in thinking that and any help you get is going to be gravy.
As with most things a new job is like water skiing, you are going to face plant your first attempt. After face planting how fast you let go of the rope determines how fast you get another try. The boat can't swing back around and pick you up if you're being dragged from it. The only way to stop face planting is to try more time and face plant less and less until the time that you stay up is greater than the time you spend getting dragged around the lake.
It seems like you thought you could hold onto the rope... even when the people driving the boat told you to, let go.
"Like I said my primary job for a year was to fix stuff that hed created in the time leading up to before I was hired. When I delicately mentioned this to the powers-that-be, I was told well hes very fast, thats just how he works. When I pointed out that he wasnt producing work using the same standards as everyone else, I was told yes, but hes fast"
That's where you stop fixing it unless you're told to. It just makes you look like you don't do anything new. If they're happy with a little slop and you're not, feel free to spend more time on your stuff however knowing they prize speed over technical perfection you'll just look slow, something the other guy "the slacker" the trench mate you stuck a shiv between his shoulder blades, probably already knew. If you had talked to him instead of trying to throw him under a bus he might of told you that. But I guess thats what he gets for not being your tour guide and giving you a BJ on the first day.
Notice the motto you quoted was:
"Do it NICE or two it Twice" Not "Do it to technical perfection, taking 3x as long using unnecessarily high standards or the new guy will take it upon himself to trash talk your work and redo it all".
Yes they where unnecessary you where told that in pretty clear terms. "yes but he's fast" in other words, its fine if it causes an issue we'll flag it and fix it but we're fine with it. FNG
F*uckin New Guy. Be the NG not the FNG. NG stink is easier to wash off than FNG stink. A lot of people don't like people who come in on their first week and start suggesting changes and reinventing the wheel without really fully understanding the pipeline. I'm all for thoughtful suggestions sometimes fresh eyes on things are great! But lets make sure you understand the process and why things are like they are, it might be chaos to you but that's because you don't have all the pieces yet.
Fight the urge to turn your nit picks into a battle ground. 3-4mo down the road you might be making thoughtful suggestions but early on its probably going to be met with "FNG". Show respect and earn it before you go nit picking.
The irony is, when all my responsibilities were taken away from me, I just got to focus on production and work and my punishment was actually a reward it took me away from a lot of the craziness going on. So I came in to work, I created cool stuff for 12 hours was mostly ignored. I didnt even get invited to Senior Artist meetings about things that I had the most experience with or things that Id actually been responsible for and I went home.
Yea most of that headache was what you created by being picky and trying to establish yourself as an authority. In your effort to establish a comfort zone you used napalm and set up camp leatherneck and waged a one man war on stuff no one seemed to cared about. The responsibility that you created for yourself was a boat anchor you hung around your own neck. They wanted someone who would come in do his job and get stuff done. Not someone who would run the company from the ground up. Something tells me that the loose system you railed against in the beginning, was the loose system you fell into after they "stripped you". Sooo... the system you hated and redesigned is the system others liked and you yourself came to like... interesting. Sounds like a personality clash and culture shock.
About Posting Publicly
Personally I think its bad form to burn bridges like this publicly, but its his call to make. For me these are things that you share with friends over a beer long after you've left. You just never know what all something like this will effect. It could follow you to other jobs in other industries since most of this is "why the company didn't like the way I ran it from the ground up" it applies to just about everywhere else.
I dunno maybe its good this gets out there and people come to understand how most jobs go and that the industry isn't made of marshmallows and candy canes. Maybe it will head off blogs like this in the future...
Honestly, best of luck to him as he goes forward. I hope he finds a good place to work. It sounds like now that he's gotten his first horror story out of the way and started to get a feel for what he would like to see in an employer. It sounds like he look for a smaller studio that is a better fit, one that works more like what he envisioned. That probably means not working on titanic triple A titles... which is hard for someone to come to grips with. "But I was going to rule the world and be a millionaire by the time I was 28" (go watch fight club).
Long post short Sounds pretty typical of any job. He'll probably make a good lead that's super friendly to the new guys because he's been through the comfort zone meat grinder and knows how it feels. OR he'll be a picky asshole who wants everything his way and doesn't want to hear anything else because its technically correct!
He'll probably find a better fit at a smaller company that runs a bit more organically and democratically.
from the story i read from him
it seems smaller studio better for him indeed,
anything that involve him in better role no matter what kind of position he has.
i can understand he said but I've know much worse story from my friend.
I always enjoy reading theses kinda hate thing because I dont think theses guys know what long hours really are. Or know what it is to really deal with problematic/shitty Lead/artist/producer..
I do agree with Gav and Hot Kevin. Al thought we all know that im the one with the goodlook here Duh!(Except i cant type as well.)
It's funny how he told his superiors about the guy who always screwed up buildings but was fast, but never told his superiors how his work had to be re-done to be even remotely game-ready.
I feel for the guy, and it's nice to learn from his mistakes, but come on.... some of the things he did just did not add up in the grand scheme of things.
If things were really so screwed up, he should've written up a pipeline document, showing how it would boost efficiency, how much electrical costs could be cut when employees worked 8 hours a day, things like that.
Yeah, I agree. He was a new guy and overstepped his position which made him an enemy with the higher ups. Hell I've never worked before but even I know that you have to know your place.
In fact his description of the workings of the company reminded me exactly of my final year at university. We had to build a game in one big team and we spent the first half of term planning it. It took longer than expected because we were all equal in power and could argue over each others ideas.
Anyway in the second half we started making the game but it was obvious that only a handful of us had some skill while the others were more writers than designers or artists. I noticed how progress was slow because we weren't fully communicating with each other so I took it upon myself to guide people and get the game rolling.
Really though, this lack of communication and higher ups with less skill than juniors just reminds me of uni days. I'd have thought a professional company would have a better structure for developing games.
I hope my first day in a games company is more smooth than this mans story.
I hope my first day in a games company is more smooth than this mans story.
I'm sure you'll do alright with your good attitude. People that work hard and are team player oriented can do successful work that has quality. But yea... i guess the point here to take is, think before you talk to someone that might have an impact on your rep, and do your work.
I'm personally glad that he wrote this letter. When a company treats it's employees like robots instead of human beings, it deserves to be reprimanded for that. Whether it comes in the form of a lawsuit like EA or public shaming like this instance doesn't really matter to me, just as long as it happens.
The only way standards change is if the employees band together and put an end to it. If you just sit around and let it happen, then you are helping the problem, not creating a solution. Rockstar games has been notorious for making their employees work completely unreasonable hours. Here at DE we have about 3-4 people who came from Rockstar, and the horror stories i've heard seriously make me sick.
There was one instance where someone tried to leave at 1 AM and got chased down by a producer as he was walking to his car.... are you fucking serious?! This shit is absolute nonsense, and for all of you young guys out there who think that this is how the rest of the industry is, and that you should just deal with it, i say this to you: The longer you sit around and don't act, the worse it's going to get. If a team of 20 artist being treated like shit were to refuse to work, the company would lose thousands of dollars and hundreds of valueable man hours every day you don't work.
You may lose your job, but trust me, there are other companies out there who would love to have your talent.
And for any of you out there who think that people need to suck it up and work the 10-12 hours a day because "It's the price of being in the industry" then you are seriously delusional. There is absolutely no excuse for overworking someone like that, especially without compensation. I can understand a week of crunch time, but other than that... it's just plain abuse.
I've had an employer treat me like shit in the past, in a different industry. They called me the day after my Grandfather's funeral to chastise me for taking too much bereavement time off. I called them up the next day and quit - no two week notice.
I've crunched in the past but there was a sense of a common goal, everyone was working to make the game awesome. If management came and said "listen you assholes, you better crunch or the game won't ship and we'll all be out of the job" I would of showed him the bird finger and quit right there.
I've had an employer treat me like shit in the past, in a different industry. They called me the day after my Grandfather's funeral to chastise me for taking too much bereavement time off. I called them up the next day and quit - no two week notice.
I've crunched in the past but there was a sense of a common goal, everyone was working to make the game awesome. If management came and said "listen you assholes, you better crunch or the game won't ship and we'll all be out of the job" I would of showed him the bird finger and quit right there.
And this is how kids like me learn about life and how to handle it. Reading stuff right here at polycount.
One day I'll figure out if that's a good or bad thing, ha!
One of the weirdest parts of the article is when he talks about how his team didn't have an organized feedback system. Is this common? As an animator, I can't imagine not having animation dailies... it's so important to get critiques from your peers and lead.
Havent read everyones responses, but I would eat my own art hand, if all the guys on this forum that have been involved with a top, widely regarded AAA 90% metacritic or higher franchise, have not gone through various aspects of his rant to some degree or another.
Didn't those guys get let go after RDR was released? I mean I could almost care less if I worked on a AAA title only to get kicked out onto the curb with bills and other shit to pay along with a feeling like a wreck because that sort of stuff really sucks.
I mean yeah he's whining and ranting, but at the same time he was expecting a little more professionalism, communication and integrity and that was obviously not happening to his and a lot of other people's dismay in a company that somehow puts out great titles fairly consistently. I also really don't know what it is with some people talking about "Stop yer bitching and deal with it" or "this is how shit works" or "hey guy at least u got to make a great aaa game" because you can obviously look at some larger and more reputable studios with their own AAA game track records vs dev turnarounds/layoffs. There are places that just 'get by' with success and there are places that can grow and perpetuate it without alienating anyone in the process.
OK, so R* did release a great game mind you, but did we all really forget that this game took 4 years to complete AND people were let go after production completed? Now for those of you guys who don't have ADHD or failed to locate the TLDR acronym in that guy's post, think about what this Dean guy said about him wanting and trying to actually improve productivity in the work environment...then see how failing to do this correlates to a loooooooong and bloated production cycle and how, by doing things more efficiently could actually have produced the same game or an even better game in less time? OK, let that sink in for a bit. Do you guys kinda see how that sorta makes sense there with him wanting to improve things just a tad, rather than kicking people's asses out the door when the game is finished? What I am saying about making the game faster/better is unsubstantiated, but you can definitely see how that production cycle could have been faster and produced results quicker.
But whatever, right? I mean, I guess it's ok that the whole lot of us just want nothing more in life than to get paid to make pretty shit all day long and not have to deal with other people and team/department/company-wide issues, but surprise kids, that sort of stuff is actually important when your life gets more complicated in the future. You like, kinda sorta wanna make sure that everyone else on board with the project is doing a good job because you are doing a good job and it would suck if they weren't doing their job but you gotta trust that things are happening in the best interests of the people involved in the project/studio/company. Otherwise things begin to slip and sink and crash and burn and then BOOM the shit hits the fan and it's time for job hunting again, which is fine and dandy in your 20's but that shit gets old real quick, especially when you actually want to plant some roots and you get tired of moving around the country.
Really though, I do applaud the guy for rocking the boat and wanting to try to improve a broken system. It's hard to ignore the issues and refrain from wanting to do something about it due to fear and job instability, but at the same time; almost NO ONE ever really considers the long term. I can look at the development of RDR and think "Boy howdy! This game was dragged out for a guaranteed 4 years of pay! But now I got no job in a shitty 'conomy..." or you can see it as, "You know if everyone wasn't a self serving little shit 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, then maybe we could have planned and anticipated this game to do well and start pre production on a sequel upon release of the game in an even faster dev cycle..."
This post is already in TLDR territory so I'll just leave with this; there are 2 ways to see this guy's post and what I typed up; you either become really good at what you do and become a rock star [lol, pun] yourself, where your actions and skill guarantee your own personal success so you make the choices and decide who you want to work for [like a reputable big name place that is stable and has foresight and a clue with projects and development], or you roll with the punches and eat shit and be grateful you have a job for the unforeseen future with your current gig and hopefully you don't get a pink slip for your services.
... think about what this Dean guy said about him wanting and trying to actually improve productivity in the work environment...then see how failing to do this correlates to a loooooooong and bloated production cycle and how, by doing things more efficiently could actually have produced the same game or an even better game in less time?
I'm not exactly convinced all of the changes this guy purposed or the workflow he was doing, was an improvement. Some of them seemed good but others where counterproductive to the goals of the company but he kept pushing which would slow things down.
Just because your boss doesn't agree and implement 100% of your suggestions it doesn't mean he/she is a bad boss. They have their reasons and ultimately they aren't beholden you. A good boss will let you know what those reasons are and they'll make sense but even if they can't help you rationalize the reason it's their call to make. If they don't take your suggestion, CYA and move on.
When you're boss says: "its fine, I wish you where more like him, if its a problem we'll fix it later", then you need to put your ego aside and do what he asks. He prizes one style of work while the company wanted another and he stubbornly held to his style and kept trying to force it. When a company says this is the level we want and this is how fast we want it, do this. Then you can make suggestions that fall in line with those goals. But suggesting new goals or reinventing things is going to be met with resistance, especially after you've been told no.
No company should be forced to be lead around by the employees it hires anyone of them could come up with some really stupid ideas that sound good on paper but sink the ship. If you had to try them all out and watch them fail before being able to return to something that you know works, then its just a waste of time and resources.
If you're boss truly is full of shit then you make your views known, cover your ass so you're protected and get back to work. After things fall apart and people ask "why didn't anyone flag this" then you're clear and in a better position to be listened too later. You want to express your opinions and purpose suggestions but not be so stubborn and arrogant as to demand they are the only way to work and then try and fight to implement them tooth and nail. You throw it out there, make a logical case if it gets batted down then you get back to work. If it really turns out that they are making some poor choices and your boss is a tool look for a place that is a better fit.
Now imagine having 5 or 6 of these guys that constantly prefect the same water tower over and over and nothing new gets done because they're worried that when the player extracts the models from their game they'll see that their textel ratio was slightly off or they tiled when they should of gone unique.
It seemed that his first order of business was to tell everyone how wrong they are doing things. Ouch... this is a quick road to FNG land and the fast track to having your suggestions ignored. It might be the most direct route but you don't knife people and expect them to agree with you and to be your buddy.
Maybe I'm wrong, but most of this reads as:
"Fine you don't want to carry me around on your shoulders and throw a parade on the biggest day of my life! FINE! You don't want me to pretend I'm a lead designer FINE! I'm going to fuck every last one of you over! Ya bunch of noobs. PFFT sloppy work... this is off and this is wrong /deskflip"
Replies
weither I work 8-10 hours, my pay is the same. Your paid for the day if you meet the min 8 hours. You don't get more if you work 10.
I generally work 9hour days and sometimes more generally just depending on how the day is going and if I am on a roll and don't want to stop. That is mainly because I super love what I do and revolve my life around my job and my friends on the weekends ha :P
For crunch, at least on Reach, when allowed I would work 60 to 75 hours a week. Only allowed to do this 3 weeks during the entire project and even then it was broken up with 1 week of crunch, 1 week of absolutely no crunch allowed even if you wanted too. Worked out nice. Was on hourly for pay so crunch was awesome for my wallet. Still only allowed to go up to 60hours of over time though.
Naughty Dog pretty much no longer has scheduled crunch time (or so they told me
@Autocon: reward makes a whole difference i think. Your time is well valued and that's the way it should be.
at Mythic: hourly people got paid overtime, Salary didn't - on the other hand salary people got bonuses and hourly didn't. Unfortunately in 2008 EA froze all bonuses & raises and put strict limits on overtime so the salary people that crunched to ship Warhammer didn't get compensated for it. The Land of the Dead expansion was produced with alot of unpaid overtime across the board because we couldn't get enough approved overtime.
In my own job I've been doing 6 day weeks / 12 hour days for the last month or so, not getting Overtime but being treated well. usually we are very flexible. if I start at 7 I go home at 3. crunch time just gets a bit nutty.. you take the good with the bad.
I highly doubt it. This guy's been traveling around the country for months, and has spread his story through more than just his blog (I've seen him on a few forums posting about his travels and the like, I think.) Unless this is some other guy who used to work at rockstar doing the same thing.
Blog seems to be back up now, as well.
Any fool knows you don't point out that the Emperor has no clothes on within your first month at a new job too.
Since that month of crunch I haven't really had to work overtime. We're approaching the end of our project now and it doesn't look like we will have to either. We brought in extra staff to cut down overtime and improve productivity. I'm getting to take 10 days off over the holidays and everything.
None of us like that stuff doesn't work as well as we think it would if it were done our way, blundering straight in with all the negative talk tends to just knock the legs out from any point you ever make later though and that needs to be accepted right off the bat when we start somewhere new.
None of us are seperated from our egos, when we place a negative on something someone has done they typically see that as a negative judgement about everything they do, thats just life I'm afraid.
Rugged good looks however, well naturally, you see that picture there? Well damn, when you look this good you don need ta know nuttin! hahaha
Apparently people were taking my story about my alleged experiences regarding a fictional company a bit too seriously when I very clearly said that it was most likely a complete fabrication and that most of what you are about to read is probably lies. I also said that any reference to anything resembling actual people, places, or events was purely coincidence. People didnt listen.
So I had to remove it.
Could someone who read it summarize it, I really want to know what he said, it's hard to understand what he really meant after reading everything posted in this thread.
I don't know how fair it is to say that if the roles were reversed that things would be just as bad. It sounded like he made some headway on some initiatives while he was there, but then went up against the wrong people. Sometimes you don't succeed, not because you weren't capable, but because others don't welcome it. Although I suppose that's one and the same in the end for some.
- BoBo
sorry
ahahahahah
!WIN
It didn't say any of that yesterday haha
It seems usually when crunch hours like that are put on people it's because of bad scheduling which is funny because it's someone's job to make proper schedules and deadlines so this doesn't happen. It's not like overtime crunch is a "alright guys we were being lazy earlier in the development of this game and now we need to stop messing around and work more hours". I love my job, but the problem with long crunch is burnout and that 12+ hours you worked ends up being like 4 hours of quality work.
Also from reading his novel, the overtime parts weren't really the issue more of the really big disconnect in the entire company but at the same time if that company was as disconnected as he claims how the hell did they make RDR that good? I also find it messed up that someone took credit for his work. That happened to me but it wasn't brought to my attention until after I had left the company. If I had knew when I was there I probably would have flipped out.
I even offer to do it without overtime pay (for now). What a jerkoid! And now I hear he calls interviewees "gay"? Man.... Somebody call HR on that guy. :poly142:
"Oh, he wrote a e-mail to his guys. hmmm, lets see what he wrote to them.... hold up, the fuck... Did he just...? SOMEBODY GET THIS MONKEY MOTHERFUCKER IN MY OFFICE RIGHT NOW! Shit is about to go down!"
Fuck that shit! sit down and do your work peon! this game isn't gonna make itself.
ah man, is his name really zero? :poly121:
I'll see his wall of text and raise him one of my own.
I'm not sure if he expected them to send him to some kind of summer camp and assign him a camp counselor for the first week? There clearly was a breakdown in communication concerning who would shoulder the burden of the transition from Max to Maya.
It seems like he did the typical fall in love with a place and fail to ask questions until it was too late. Then he had another typical experience of being air dropped into the wilderness and having to establish a new comfort zone. Also not having been in a lead or AD role he was clearly overstepping his boundaries and spending more time running around trying to fix and change things than just getting stuff done.
If they're fine with it, let it go.
"I was on my own from day one".
That's pretty typical in any job, school, or social setting. It's best to walk in thinking that and any help you get is going to be gravy.
As with most things a new job is like water skiing, you are going to face plant your first attempt. After face planting how fast you let go of the rope determines how fast you get another try. The boat can't swing back around and pick you up if you're being dragged from it. The only way to stop face planting is to try more time and face plant less and less until the time that you stay up is greater than the time you spend getting dragged around the lake.
It seems like you thought you could hold onto the rope... even when the people driving the boat told you to, let go. That's where you stop fixing it unless you're told to. It just makes you look like you don't do anything new. If they're happy with a little slop and you're not, feel free to spend more time on your stuff however knowing they prize speed over technical perfection you'll just look slow, something the other guy "the slacker" the trench mate you stuck a shiv between his shoulder blades, probably already knew. If you had talked to him instead of trying to throw him under a bus he might of told you that. But I guess thats what he gets for not being your tour guide and giving you a BJ on the first day.
Notice the motto you quoted was:
"Do it NICE or two it Twice" Not "Do it to technical perfection, taking 3x as long using unnecessarily high standards or the new guy will take it upon himself to trash talk your work and redo it all".
Yes they where unnecessary you where told that in pretty clear terms. "yes but he's fast" in other words, its fine if it causes an issue we'll flag it and fix it but we're fine with it.
FNG
F*uckin New Guy. Be the NG not the FNG. NG stink is easier to wash off than FNG stink. A lot of people don't like people who come in on their first week and start suggesting changes and reinventing the wheel without really fully understanding the pipeline. I'm all for thoughtful suggestions sometimes fresh eyes on things are great! But lets make sure you understand the process and why things are like they are, it might be chaos to you but that's because you don't have all the pieces yet.
Fight the urge to turn your nit picks into a battle ground. 3-4mo down the road you might be making thoughtful suggestions but early on its probably going to be met with "FNG". Show respect and earn it before you go nit picking.
Yea most of that headache was what you created by being picky and trying to establish yourself as an authority. In your effort to establish a comfort zone you used napalm and set up camp leatherneck and waged a one man war on stuff no one seemed to cared about. The responsibility that you created for yourself was a boat anchor you hung around your own neck. They wanted someone who would come in do his job and get stuff done. Not someone who would run the company from the ground up. Something tells me that the loose system you railed against in the beginning, was the loose system you fell into after they "stripped you". Sooo... the system you hated and redesigned is the system others liked and you yourself came to like... interesting. Sounds like a personality clash and culture shock.
About Posting Publicly
Personally I think its bad form to burn bridges like this publicly, but its his call to make. For me these are things that you share with friends over a beer long after you've left. You just never know what all something like this will effect. It could follow you to other jobs in other industries since most of this is "why the company didn't like the way I ran it from the ground up" it applies to just about everywhere else.
I dunno maybe its good this gets out there and people come to understand how most jobs go and that the industry isn't made of marshmallows and candy canes. Maybe it will head off blogs like this in the future...
Honestly, best of luck to him as he goes forward. I hope he finds a good place to work. It sounds like now that he's gotten his first horror story out of the way and started to get a feel for what he would like to see in an employer. It sounds like he look for a smaller studio that is a better fit, one that works more like what he envisioned. That probably means not working on titanic triple A titles... which is hard for someone to come to grips with. "But I was going to rule the world and be a millionaire by the time I was 28" (go watch fight club).
Long post short
Sounds pretty typical of any job. He'll probably make a good lead that's super friendly to the new guys because he's been through the comfort zone meat grinder and knows how it feels. OR he'll be a picky asshole who wants everything his way and doesn't want to hear anything else because its technically correct!
He'll probably find a better fit at a smaller company that runs a bit more organically and democratically.
it seems smaller studio better for him indeed,
anything that involve him in better role no matter what kind of position he has.
i can understand he said but I've know much worse story from my friend.
I do agree with Gav and Hot Kevin. Al thought we all know that im the one with the goodlook here Duh!(Except i cant type as well.)
I feel for the guy, and it's nice to learn from his mistakes, but come on.... some of the things he did just did not add up in the grand scheme of things.
If things were really so screwed up, he should've written up a pipeline document, showing how it would boost efficiency, how much electrical costs could be cut when employees worked 8 hours a day, things like that.
He definitely didn't think things through.....
In fact his description of the workings of the company reminded me exactly of my final year at university. We had to build a game in one big team and we spent the first half of term planning it. It took longer than expected because we were all equal in power and could argue over each others ideas.
Anyway in the second half we started making the game but it was obvious that only a handful of us had some skill while the others were more writers than designers or artists. I noticed how progress was slow because we weren't fully communicating with each other so I took it upon myself to guide people and get the game rolling.
Really though, this lack of communication and higher ups with less skill than juniors just reminds me of uni days. I'd have thought a professional company would have a better structure for developing games.
I hope my first day in a games company is more smooth than this mans story.
I'm sure you'll do alright with your good attitude. People that work hard and are team player oriented can do successful work that has quality. But yea... i guess the point here to take is, think before you talk to someone that might have an impact on your rep, and do your work.
The only way standards change is if the employees band together and put an end to it. If you just sit around and let it happen, then you are helping the problem, not creating a solution. Rockstar games has been notorious for making their employees work completely unreasonable hours. Here at DE we have about 3-4 people who came from Rockstar, and the horror stories i've heard seriously make me sick.
There was one instance where someone tried to leave at 1 AM and got chased down by a producer as he was walking to his car.... are you fucking serious?! This shit is absolute nonsense, and for all of you young guys out there who think that this is how the rest of the industry is, and that you should just deal with it, i say this to you: The longer you sit around and don't act, the worse it's going to get. If a team of 20 artist being treated like shit were to refuse to work, the company would lose thousands of dollars and hundreds of valueable man hours every day you don't work.
You may lose your job, but trust me, there are other companies out there who would love to have your talent.
And for any of you out there who think that people need to suck it up and work the 10-12 hours a day because "It's the price of being in the industry" then you are seriously delusional. There is absolutely no excuse for overworking someone like that, especially without compensation. I can understand a week of crunch time, but other than that... it's just plain abuse.
I've crunched in the past but there was a sense of a common goal, everyone was working to make the game awesome. If management came and said "listen you assholes, you better crunch or the game won't ship and we'll all be out of the job" I would of showed him the bird finger and quit right there.
And this is how kids like me learn about life and how to handle it. Reading stuff right here at polycount.
One day I'll figure out if that's a good or bad thing, ha!
Even though it's always hard with these "open letters" to tell how much is objective or at least true.
ae. : not sure how serious your last post was but I'm absolutely not your opinion
I was trollin hardcore!
but in all seriousness, I think what happens at these studios sucks huge ass monkey balls!
I mean yeah he's whining and ranting, but at the same time he was expecting a little more professionalism, communication and integrity and that was obviously not happening to his and a lot of other people's dismay in a company that somehow puts out great titles fairly consistently. I also really don't know what it is with some people talking about "Stop yer bitching and deal with it" or "this is how shit works" or "hey guy at least u got to make a great aaa game" because you can obviously look at some larger and more reputable studios with their own AAA game track records vs dev turnarounds/layoffs. There are places that just 'get by' with success and there are places that can grow and perpetuate it without alienating anyone in the process.
OK, so R* did release a great game mind you, but did we all really forget that this game took 4 years to complete AND people were let go after production completed? Now for those of you guys who don't have ADHD or failed to locate the TLDR acronym in that guy's post, think about what this Dean guy said about him wanting and trying to actually improve productivity in the work environment...then see how failing to do this correlates to a loooooooong and bloated production cycle and how, by doing things more efficiently could actually have produced the same game or an even better game in less time? OK, let that sink in for a bit. Do you guys kinda see how that sorta makes sense there with him wanting to improve things just a tad, rather than kicking people's asses out the door when the game is finished? What I am saying about making the game faster/better is unsubstantiated, but you can definitely see how that production cycle could have been faster and produced results quicker.
But whatever, right? I mean, I guess it's ok that the whole lot of us just want nothing more in life than to get paid to make pretty shit all day long and not have to deal with other people and team/department/company-wide issues, but surprise kids, that sort of stuff is actually important when your life gets more complicated in the future. You like, kinda sorta wanna make sure that everyone else on board with the project is doing a good job because you are doing a good job and it would suck if they weren't doing their job but you gotta trust that things are happening in the best interests of the people involved in the project/studio/company. Otherwise things begin to slip and sink and crash and burn and then BOOM the shit hits the fan and it's time for job hunting again, which is fine and dandy in your 20's but that shit gets old real quick, especially when you actually want to plant some roots and you get tired of moving around the country.
Really though, I do applaud the guy for rocking the boat and wanting to try to improve a broken system. It's hard to ignore the issues and refrain from wanting to do something about it due to fear and job instability, but at the same time; almost NO ONE ever really considers the long term. I can look at the development of RDR and think "Boy howdy! This game was dragged out for a guaranteed 4 years of pay! But now I got no job in a shitty 'conomy..." or you can see it as, "You know if everyone wasn't a self serving little shit 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, then maybe we could have planned and anticipated this game to do well and start pre production on a sequel upon release of the game in an even faster dev cycle..."
This post is already in TLDR territory so I'll just leave with this; there are 2 ways to see this guy's post and what I typed up; you either become really good at what you do and become a rock star [lol, pun] yourself, where your actions and skill guarantee your own personal success so you make the choices and decide who you want to work for [like a reputable big name place that is stable and has foresight and a clue with projects and development], or you roll with the punches and eat shit and be grateful you have a job for the unforeseen future with your current gig and hopefully you don't get a pink slip for your services.
Just because your boss doesn't agree and implement 100% of your suggestions it doesn't mean he/she is a bad boss. They have their reasons and ultimately they aren't beholden you. A good boss will let you know what those reasons are and they'll make sense but even if they can't help you rationalize the reason it's their call to make. If they don't take your suggestion, CYA and move on.
When you're boss says: "its fine, I wish you where more like him, if its a problem we'll fix it later", then you need to put your ego aside and do what he asks. He prizes one style of work while the company wanted another and he stubbornly held to his style and kept trying to force it. When a company says this is the level we want and this is how fast we want it, do this. Then you can make suggestions that fall in line with those goals. But suggesting new goals or reinventing things is going to be met with resistance, especially after you've been told no.
No company should be forced to be lead around by the employees it hires anyone of them could come up with some really stupid ideas that sound good on paper but sink the ship. If you had to try them all out and watch them fail before being able to return to something that you know works, then its just a waste of time and resources.
If you're boss truly is full of shit then you make your views known, cover your ass so you're protected and get back to work. After things fall apart and people ask "why didn't anyone flag this" then you're clear and in a better position to be listened too later. You want to express your opinions and purpose suggestions but not be so stubborn and arrogant as to demand they are the only way to work and then try and fight to implement them tooth and nail. You throw it out there, make a logical case if it gets batted down then you get back to work. If it really turns out that they are making some poor choices and your boss is a tool look for a place that is a better fit.
Now imagine having 5 or 6 of these guys that constantly prefect the same water tower over and over and nothing new gets done because they're worried that when the player extracts the models from their game they'll see that their textel ratio was slightly off or they tiled when they should of gone unique.
It seemed that his first order of business was to tell everyone how wrong they are doing things. Ouch... this is a quick road to FNG land and the fast track to having your suggestions ignored. It might be the most direct route but you don't knife people and expect them to agree with you and to be your buddy.
Maybe I'm wrong, but most of this reads as:
"Fine you don't want to carry me around on your shoulders and throw a parade on the biggest day of my life! FINE! You don't want me to pretend I'm a lead designer FINE! I'm going to fuck every last one of you over! Ya bunch of noobs. PFFT sloppy work... this is off and this is wrong /deskflip"
"If you're boss truly is full of shit then you make your views known, cover your ass so you're protected and get back to work."
alot of times your ass is uncovered when you do this.