Artist Shares Experience at Rockstar San Diego
polycounter lvl 18
This guy who was a Senior Environment Artist at Rockstar San Diego on Red Dead Redemption shares his scary/funny/messed up experience while he worked there on his website :
http://blog.zerodean.com/2010/blog/my-life-at-rockstar-games/
It seems like this was this guys first job working in the industry. Working large amounts of overtime during crunch time seems like the norm in the industry, at least at the studio I worked at.
I have heard messed up stories about how screwed up the chain of command can be at many large companies...it's defiantly not something that is just wrong with Rockstar.
http://blog.zerodean.com/2010/blog/my-life-at-rockstar-games/
It seems like this was this guys first job working in the industry. Working large amounts of overtime during crunch time seems like the norm in the industry, at least at the studio I worked at.
I have heard messed up stories about how screwed up the chain of command can be at many large companies...it's defiantly not something that is just wrong with Rockstar.
Replies
Not loading. Wonder if he had to take it down?
Anyhow
Doesn't make it right.
heres the link to googles cache of it
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ItGMeRgoTp8J:blog.zerodean.com/2010/blog/my-life-at-rockstar-games/+http://blog.zerodean.com/2010/blog/my-life-at-rockstar-games/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a
But to give the writer shit. "The 48 Laws of Power" is not something I would have mentioned as making you understand the situation (at first). Instead you should have read and used "The Peter Principle".
and then twas awesome he linked his linkedin account.
looks like he quit his job and terminated his lease, sold everything and is roaming the country.
http://www.zerodean.com/x/about/why-i-quit-my-job-terminated-my-lease-sold-everything
hrmm now the sites down again... getting 403's.. Usually a 403 Forbidden error means that the page in question does exist but cannot be accessed by you.
It is unfortunately a games industry norm to work 10/12 hours a day. So you better love what you do before you sign in.
sounds a lot like my old studio, except no big name but also no crunch
Question is, does he even wants to go back to the games industry?
Judging from his linkedin, he created his own biz and he went to photography.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/zerodean
[ame]http://www.amazon.com/Things-Undone-Shane-White/dp/1561635634[/ame]
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2336353/search.htm
That's a giant wall of text even by my standards... Kudos to anyone who makes it all the way through it without their eyes bursting into fountains of gore.
Based on what I've skimmed, it seems like a typical situation in any big company probably with the normal tailor made trappings specific to this industry. Most of the abuse is probably either projected or suffered passive aggressively. Management is either oblivious to it or purposefully and carefully obtuse, making sure not to leave any tracks. In most big companies people think the later when the former is normally what happens... I'm not at rockstar SD so I have no clue how it runs but typically the fault doesn't always fall on one party.
I'm not sure I'll make it all the way through all of it. I think I've quickly hit the point of over saturation with these kind of "shocking tales of heart break and abuse". I can't say it will be a good move for his career but it sounds like he's not planning go back across that bridge so its probably good that things like this come to the surface.
If nothing more comes of this then a giant, titanic whine, then let it serve as a reminder:
To those looking for work:
Be careful not to fall deeply in love with an employer that only sort of like-likes you.
To those who found work and are happy:
Remember that you did homework and went into interviews with your eyes open, it was a two way interview and you asked just as many questions if not more than they did. Congrats you found quality employers and are happy working reasonable hours for reasonable people, hold on to what you got and don't let go.
His post, and the comment below about RS vancouver's fucked up state don't really make Rockstar look good from any angle
I can totally relate to a few things about the new employee experience even if they aren't to the same degree. Being left to your own devices doesn't make for the best first impression even though it was probably not intentional.
The rest of it does sound bad, but I think there's probably some of that everywhere. Office politics and miscommunication are all the more frustrating because we work in a creative field and invest so much of ourselves into our work. That isn't to say that folks in other industries don't care about their work, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't get so high strung about problems at work if I was working at a "regular" office job.
I do appreciate posts like this though, and hope game companies start to realize that cultivating talent should be an important part of making the bottom line.
I'm neither pro-OP or anti-Rockst*r, but after reading this I can't help but realize the importance of asking questions at an interview. And I'm not talking about dime-a-dozen questions like, "what is the typical career path for this position?"
Admittedly, at times I havent been as diligent as I should have been in this respect and it always serves as a disservice.
S6
to put things in perspective, some people work longer hours at more dangerous jobs then we do
I mean... in the game industry we will always have some late nights, but having to work 70 to 80 hrs a week (which i had to do) just sucks the soul out of people. Work starts to get sloppy, people get edgy. Specially when you are working late and your boss says the classic "Hey guys, work hard to get this done! i'll go home now but i can be reached through email".
Anyways, when i first interviewed for this company i did my research. They were coming out of development of 2 titles, starting some bigger ones. I checked their income, they development cycles, i asked questions, people seemed nice... But you sometimes can't count on peoples stubbornness. Really, we developed a prototype for a game that cost us the entire company's fund!~ we worked on things that we were not getting paid by any publisher... while we commented to them, we should be doing some games that are actually creating revenue... at the end, we ended up with no money in the company. The prototype worked awesome, but it took over a year and a half to get almost funded. Only to be turned down at the end of the day by a company that said that it can't guarantee the game selling as many units as its supposed to to make profit. With this said, this was a smaller company, so we were more on the loop of what was going on. I can't start to imagine the politics at RSD.
So... for a while this went on. I had a mindset of... well... it's better than being unemployed at the time. I started applying at some places. But the news only mentioned about studios closing, and all the competition that is out there still. We finally reached a point where layoffs happened... long story short... they company ended from 40 employees to now 6! The amount of work we put there, the security of our jobs and projects are jeopardized by people that really don't have a clue on how to schedule and manage a studio.
As an artist we made what we could, we set out our own pipeline, critique work, i think the good side is that i got to work with people that had 20 years of exp, and i really learned from them. By the end i was producing a whole level from scratch in game with everything in 2 weeks! Crazy stuff...
Layoffs... and i was out of a job. It took a little over 6 months to actually look at some prospects that were serious. I finally land a job where its really amazing. Things work in the way we think. We get a good pipeline. We are realistic about deadlines and its just fun to work at. But its a company that has been developing over 30 titles in 5 years when the other company produced 6 in 5 years. So here they have the money to back them up and they create pretty succesful games.
Now... that was a long rant. But i think it's important that people share their experiences. That we don't settle for the "Hey guys.. .it's ok... it's expected from us to work unpaid overtime". We need to set standards as well and like Vig said, really do our homework and be sure that is where we want to be at.
i'm with Justin ... not that this really comes close to comparison to the image included....
but where I work now, the vast majority of the guys work on the road... this entails on average 60-80 days (3 times a year) split up between 3 - 5 different cities, doing manual labor rain or shine, 7 days a week at 10 - 12 hours a day. no days off. you are always away from your family, friends, and home in general... you are always in a different city that you never get to see because you are always working. even if you wanted to go out, you are usually too tired to give a shit... and you dream of the day that you get to come home and sleep in your own bed. one of the guys i work with has 4 kids... his youngest didn't even recognize him when he came home from his last stint and actually cried when he tried to say "hello" because she was scared of him... thought he was a complete stranger. you want fucked up? that's fucked up. but at the same token, that's the job. not a justification, but it is, unfortunately, the way it is.
*continues working at his job where he never works overtime
It is exploiting the workers , and just because workers have "learned" to live with beeing exploited doesnt make it right , infact it makes it worse since it starts to be the standard of the industry because everyone is afraid to stand up.
Boo fucking hoo.
If you take it at face value, it looks like he tried several times to get more out of his career and fix the problems he saw.
He wrote it on his fucking blog. Blogs exist so people have a place to bitch and moan about their life.
Is it really that hard to have some empathy for someone unhappy?
and i agree... I understand and know that people have it tougher in other places. But we are really only talking about standards in the game industry.
I do sympathize and agree that some people have worse jobs that are tougher and more demanding. Thats why i got a degree and have been working towards something that doesn't break me and take my life apart, and makes me feel accomplished and give something back to my community.
The moral of the story is if you're a production artist you aren't going to change much in a big studio - just move on. You'll have to live a little more responsibly, don't do the average American style of living paycheck to paycheck with massive credit card debt and a house you'll never pay off.
Sending off documents in emails and communicating with your co-workers isn't being a rebel and isn't trying to turn anything on it's head. It sounds to me like another person who expected too much out of a job because the company had such a huge name. He said it himself "He should've known better." I've been in a situation like this and it all sounds familiar...but man, every time something like this creeps up, everyone turns into a humanitarian. No, I guess it isn't "fair" to compare it to another job as it's like comparing apples to the AIDS virus - but still - "that's the way it is" and I would bet that if this guy actually had the chance to run things his way, it'd turn out the same way.
Wow, what? The guy went on a fucking journey across the country to try and regain his sanity a bit, since the whole thing made him feel disillusioned.
I guess I'll just blame it on the fact that his site is offline and you can't read the rest of his story, but I really didn't expect to see this kind of remarks on a fellow man of ours on Polycount.
edit: Gav, the whole statement at the top is a joke, OK, he sort of uses it to cover his ass.
Mark, no offence but that seems a bit strange coming from you. I read all of it yes, and I found all of it interesting, just wish he'd have given some more outrageous examples of the mismanagement, he seemed a bit conservative with actually handing those out. I've been told by ex R* employees about things like a manager that left and upon checking his files/pc, it turned out all his spreadsheets were empty and the guy had just been pretending to work for months. Shit like that really illustrates the madness of it all.
He took the job, saw that noone talked to each other, tried suggesting they'd do it. They got tired of the emails, so he shut up and took initiative, which worked alright.
He then ended up as Snr. Env. artist, tried to make ends meet. Sent a private email to three people saying: "Please close youtube, lets haul ass even though the deadlines are unrealistic."
Mail had been monitored, he got reprimanded and demoted to Jr. keeping the title as Sr. Kept working 12hr shifts though.
Then later his boss took credit for his work, he got pissed off and quit.
I guess some people are just trying to find any excuse to prove they are the boss...
or maybe there was an attachment in the email that planned a civil outbreak in the office.
for the youtube case in general - man, I couldn't agree more with him on wanting to stop "that" - but there's a pecking order you need to respect and, yes, if it isn't his place to call people out like that, he should have gone to his boss and have it filter down. That sounds pretty corporate and lame - but that's pretty common, isn't it? I mean, would you appreciate an email from some guy that says something like "hey guys, we all need to buckle down - so, stop watching videos and get to work."
At the end of the day though - his sticking around and putting up with the bullshit he claims happened earned him a game of the year title, so, he should be able to take one of the job offers that - no doubt - would be coming into his inbox...unless, you know...he does something really stupid like openly bitch about his employers.
It was because he wrote that the deadlines were unrealistic..
^ - This. His boss got pissed because he was pretty much saying straight up "Yes, those above us are dumbfucks and these deadlines are impossible bullshit..." In a manner of speaking. Granted, he was also saying "...but in spite of that, we should be working best we can and not goofing off." That part I can only assume was ignored. Bosses like to think they've got their employees fooled, they like to think that their employees believe they have to meet those "possible" deadlines. Well...bad bosses like to think that way.
I remember this guy, I think he posted a thread on CA.org after he quit, talking about his country-wide journey and that sort of thing.
I feel for the guy, it seems like he really gave it a good shot and tried to make things better. Which is admirable.
Unfortunately there are times when you can't waste your efforts trying to make an impossibly stupid situation better. You get out or you get screwed. If the guy had another job opportunity - should've gone for it. Though, it does sound like he's learned from the experience which is always nice.
I don't mind him writing it up, doesn't bother me. It wasn't that long a read. Besides I get to learn from his mistakes. That's always nice.
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.
Work 10 hr days so far, and is because i like being ahead with my work and do some extra research and stuff. I could be working 8 hr days. Some build days we do end up staying a little over time... but usually i get out of here at 6.30.
before i we had a stretch of work of like 12 hr days avg, for like 6 months haha.
Just echoing this cause that's exactly how it is for me.
What do you mean?