How Will Rockstars' Boast of 100 Hour Work Weeks Affect Your Play Through? - Updated

I have a hard time believing anyone worked a 100 hour week. It seemed like the original guy that started this was trying to brag about how hard everyone was working on the game and it blew up on him. But if it is true then I propose, do you not pee in the building toilet because some poor sap has to clean it? Life ain't exactly fair. And have some balls to stand up to your boss. I never took shit. "You think I should stay here and keep working? I am going home I am tired." It is not difficult. They need you too. Can they just replace you so easily?

@memu: how bad are you at taking a piss?

They are? It seems to me that crunch as a policy should be compared not to risk of injury, but to injury itself, seeing as crunch itself is harmful (i.e. like an injury itself). So an appropriate comparison would not be company with a risk of harm, or accidents, but rather a company that determines--as policy for increasing productivity--that they will inflict injury upon employees at certain junctures. But that sounds absurd!

@theht: We've already gone over this. A company, like say construction, that does work involving accidents already make the same kind of policy. They are aware of the fact that people will be injured, they decide how many and how badly. Risk assessments in these situations aren't about maybe or maybe not, they are about how much harm are we willing to do. If you run a carpentry business the question on your mind isn't "what if one of my employees get hurt", it's "how long until the next time one of my employees get hurt".

@memu: this is the video-game industry, a field where far more people want to work than there are well-paid jobs available. And the biggest video-game production company in the world with extreme prestige and stufpid money to throw at every project.

So yes. Yes they can replace employee’s very easily.

@memu: very few people are indispensable. The best example here is Jeff - he was basically the face of GameSpot and they still fired him because some people thought that was the best business choice for the company and no one took under account all he had done for that website. Despite the outrage, GameSpot and life moved on, someone took his post and that was that. And this is Jeff we’re talking about here, not some kid four rings down the food chain reviewing kids games.

Life really isn’t fair and if you’re not in a position of power or influence then sadly no matter how hard you work, or how good you are, your position is never guaranteed.

I still get it as long as they’re making the proper overtime pay.

Whether it's bloated with microtransactions or not will be a bigger deal for me. After the whole L.A. Noire debacle I've always had the impression Rockstar is a very shitty company to work for, not too hard to imagine the cynical attitude permeating all Rockstar games reflects the feelings of studio heads.

@humanity: You don't have to be "indispensable" to give a little push back if you feel you are not being treated fairly. Your boss is a human too. Even if there are other people that want and can do your job it takes effort to find and hire them. I just cannot believe that jobs in game development are so fragile. Maybe they are.

you might be interested in this idea called "unionization"

@ares42: Not quite. There's a meaningful difference between having an acceptable level of risk of harm and actually consciously inflicting harm. Risk assessment isn't about what harm a company is willing to do, it's about what amount of chance of harm do they think is reasonable to accept.

In the carpentry example, there's an obvious difference between the mentality of "how long until one of my employees gets hurt," and "now it's time to go outside and hurt one of my employees." That's why the distinction matters, especially when we're talking about crunch. Unless we're to say that crunch itself is not harmful.

It doesn't affect my purchase at all, the news about that and the back peddling of what he really meant doesn't change my opinion to play or not play a game. I enjoyed the first one and this straight up looks fantastic so I'm gonna support them and pick it up day one like I do most games. Working conditions should be improved however, and with what little info I know from the outside, that's what I think about it. If people don't support it, things like this may or may not change. Odds are the only way overworking employees will get solved is if it becomes more well known, not from not paying for the game new.

It reminds me of the movie Jeepers Creepers 3 when people boycotted the movie because of what happened with the director. It doesn't affect my view on the movie, and people worked hard on making it.

As long as people are getting paid. Then it's on them if they want to stay at company that "forces" OT. But if it was me I wouldn't mind getting OT or Double Pay. Nice fat check at the end of the week. BTW I ordered the ultimate package. Love RD and will love RD2.

@theht: Are you trying to make the argument that a company is less responsible for the harm they cause their employees if it's not deliberate ? You're saying it's worse for a company to deliberately hurt their employees than it is to put them in situations where someone eventually will get hurt ?

Sounds like the devs put a ton of work into the game. I will play it because if I worked super hard on something and nobody played it I would be pretty bummed. Plus saying you worked on RDR 2 would make a resume look amazing. I hope they didn't stress out too much but I am not skipping it because of this. I wouldn't really own many electronics or clothing if I was this serious about how workers are treated.

@ares42: I think the argument is more than some of the responsibility in instances where things are an inevitably is on employee as well. I used to work warehouse work for example. Injury, strains, tears, that type of stuff is common in those environments due to constantly lifting heavy things and working your body for an extended period of time longer than it, should be, in some instances. The company shares in some of that risk, they provide the accurate safety equipment, PPE, training, and appropriate lifting techniques to make sure I keep the wear on my body to a minimum. But it's still on me to use the safe practices. To make sure I'm lifting the way I'm supposed too, etc. You often get left alone enough that I don't see how the company can be at fault for properly telling you what you should be doing, safely, and then you decide due to wear and tear or grind to not do something correctly. The frustration you feel in fields like that is the realization that humans just weren't designed to do this for as long as we make them.

What makes coding, not just game development, but coding, so unique is how hyper individualized it can be. Even when you are working in a team. Tons of the R* employee's and other game devs have shared stories of bosses telling them to go home, leaving, and then they choose to stay to finish something. Yes external pressures of deadlines, what needs to get done in a week etc can have a factor on all of that. But even if a company goes full board and issues emails and has awareness seminars regarding crunch and overtime, the reality is these people aren't watched like hawks. They are given freedoms, even more freedoms than what you would enjoy in my other work environment example. Freedoms to work through mistakes etc. Even if you aren't doing aggressive self management, often coding gets split up into teams. Which has another tier or hierarchy of management.

I'm not saying the company or R* in this instance takes no share of the blame. Of course they do. But they can do everything right and an employee can still choose to crunch. The problem I think has less to do with individuals or companies that we should be hunting and more to do with the realities that people are structuring and micro managing game development in a way that doesn't entirely make sense for the medium. But it's also another aspect where, human thinking and problem solving often goes against a lot of coding and development practices. You almost have to train yourself to think differently in some cases. It's another case where humans just weren't designed to do that job repeatedly on hours without break etc.

I think it's just going to take time for people in higher up positions to rethink and restrategize their approach honestly. Yes sure there are the actual black marks out there who are trying to manipulate labour for the bottom line. But I'd argue deep down those are really few and far between. The guys working with the development team and creative heads and managers on the ground floor are generally just as engaged in making a quality game as anyone else on the dev team. And structuring the work so that they get more out of their employee's is generally not something they would dislike. It's just the ways of how you do things get set in stone for so long that nobody examines them. To make sure they fit. Like you look at something like the film industry and games studios have historically run things pseudo similarly. Especially bigger ones. It's very project focused, with a project taking a crews entire priority. The difference though with film is that upon completing a 6 month shoot most of the crew gets well compensated, and are all freelancers in most cases. So not only do they then control if they want to work again, the work flow becomes a project whenever you can take one on. In a dev studio your hired to come in everyday in most cases. So you'll see projects ramping up before ones are even done, so it ends up being a situation where crunching to release a project doesn't actually lead to the light at the end of the tunnel you'd see in something like film. Because your then responsible to come back in the next day, and begin the grind and crunch planning for the next big project.

It gets kinda tricky with developers from other countries right? Different labor laws, different overtime hours, and different work culture. It's kinda difficult to get a grasp on game development as a whole.

I am still incredibly exited about the game, will totally play the crap out of it. I'm supporting those hard workers with my money.

(I'm assuming it's supposed to be "that") It's not. If you get harmed doing your job your employer is 100% responsible. Yes, negligence is a thing, but if you get harmed due to negligence how is that morally wrong by the employer ? People making bad choices and then suffering the consequences can't be blamed on the company. Unless it can, in which case it's no longer negligence.

Worse? Mhmm, yes. For instance, if a company had a risk of employees getting their hands cut off, it would be worse if the company literally started cutting employees hands off. That would seem to me to move things outside of the realm of risk, unless there's some trick to that not being the case?

If not, then should we tolerate it, even if it's the norm and consented to, and if the company could avoid it at the cost of money and time?

@theht: Ok, you just tore apart one of the most essential labor laws, but if that's your stance I'm not gonna argue.

It wont at all

if you do not buy red dead 2 are you screwing the people who did 100 hours of work out of royalty checks?

It's a shame the games industry isn't.

I'm still going to buy it because I want to support the developers who busted their butts to make it. It seems like there's a mixed bag of people who support/refute the claims of crunch, and if anyone was ever forced to do that, it absolutely sucks. At the same time, I have been looking forward to this game for months and can't justify not buying it based off of a guy's poorly worded answer in an interview.

Not at all.

@ares42: You're not honestly telling me that you think it's better (or the same) to literally go and cut off an employees hands, rather than it occur in an accident that you did not intend. Responsibility is one thing, but which one is worse to do?

@theht: Neither is worse. Yes, chopping off an employees hands would be really really bad. But that doesn't mean sending someone to do a job where within 10 years by all means their hands are gonna get chopped off at some point is any less bad. You're not understanding risk. If someone has a 10% annual risk of getting hurt that doesn't mean it might happen, it means if they haven't gotten hurt in 30 years of work they've been insanely lucky. High risk jobs can have well over 15%. Even though you're not sure how when and where it's gonna happen you've still pretty much already decided it will happen.

I dunno if you're into sports, but have you ever heard of a sports star that went through their entire career without being injured ?

convicted pedophile victor salva, who filmed himself raping a child actor from his own movie, has made a career out of repeatedly iterating on an essentially autobiographical horror franchise he both writes and directs, about an unstoppable monster who preys on children. it seems pretty clear that you are basically wholly uninterested in any external context that might challenge your ability to enjoy something.

I mean that's really what this boils down to: are you willing to accept the circumstances around the creation of something you like? any rationalization thereof ("other people besides the baddies worked real hard") is an attempt to soothe one's own conscience.

@kcin: My point is with the Jeepers Creepers statement is the actors and other people involved with making that movie don't reflect what the director did, and therefore loose money and credibility because of someone else's actions. Thinking its OK not to buy Red Dead Redemption 2 because a handful, or all of the employees (i'm still unsure of all the details at this time) had to work an absurd amount of hours, is ridiculous. You decide to purchase a game because of the quality of the game, and you support the studio for their work and effort put into it.

At the end of the day, consumers don't care. I was curious about another Jeepers Creepers since it was rumored years and years ago, so I watched it. I enjoy every Rockstar game, so I pre-orderd this.

@kaos_cracker: that's not a great argument imo. I've never seen any of those movies and I never will. Just because you're ok with it doesn't mean everybody else has to be...

that may be what you do, but that is ethically bankrupt, selfish, and, in the case of Jeepers Creepers, actually fucking gross and isn't what I do. At the end of the day, YOU don't care.

Whoever said life would be fair?

No, I haven't seen a sports star go through their career without injury, but I wouldn't be the one to ask about that (I'm not into sports at all like that lol). In any case I still cannot wrap my head around a risk of injury (certain only to a degree, and still not intended) not being better than directly causing that injury. It's like if there's a lever for your work that has a 5% chance of also killing someone when you pull it, doing so seems to me to be less bad than pulling a lever with a 100% chance (i.e. that certainly will kill someone).

But if neither is worse, and its okay that we tolerate either when its the norm and consented to (even when it could be avoided), then I suppose there's nothing really bad about crunch at all. I suppose that's a way to justify it, but I'm hesitant to accept that that's the case, because of this matter of risk versus intentionally inflicting harm towards some end (like finishing a game or whatever).

@theht: Think of it this way, the 5% lever is set up to be pulled several times per day automatically. The 100% chance lever gets pulled when your manager decides to. Which one is worse ? The person that set up the 5% has by all means set up a trigger that guarantees it will kill you some day right ? Allowing them the excuse "well, it's not like I did it deliberately" doesn't sound fair, does it ?

@ares42: Aww, but that changes the scenario too much if it's automatic several times a day versus whenever a manager decides to! If we say it's two workers pulling each lever separately, several times a day, then the only differing variable between the levers is the probability of killing someone. Let's say they're both pulling the lever towards some end (each pull cranks out a AAA game) so that they can both at least say they didn't intend to kill anyone, but they know the chance of their respective lever. So everything's equal except the percent chance.

So two things I would take away from this:

1. The 100% lever is always going to kill someone, whereas the other has only a 5% chance with each pull; if we compare a single pull, surely the 100% lever is the worse option! If we imagine instead that the person who would be killed is the puller of either lever, which one would we advise a single worker to pull (and they have to pull one lol no cheating)

2. The 100% lever puller cannot reasonably say that they don't intend to kill someone whenever they crank out a AAA game, because they know two things are absolutely certain to happen when the lever is pulled: a game is made, and somebody dies (this is starting to sound like a B-movie horror plot)

The 5% puller can pull their lever without simultaneously choosing to kill someone. If they eventually happen to kill someone and then say they didn't mean to, we can still say in response that they knew there was a risk, but the 100% puller is guilty as fuck! I guess it's kinda like involuntary manslaughter vs. first degree murder. The 5% puller isn't off the hook, but they're not as bad as the one who's pulling 100% ("pulling 100%," put that on a t-shirt).

@theht: What scenario ? It's an analogy. If I work as a roofer and every time I climb a ladder there's a 5% chance I fall and hurt myself that means at least four times per day every day I pull the "lever". That's the automatic part. Just by doing my job every day I'm exposing myself to X amount of automatic "lever pulls".

We're comparing a job where the employee decides to implement a new policy they know will cause harm (100% when the manager decides to pull the lever) to a job where the employee decides you have to do things where there's a risk of harm (5% every time you have to that thing).

@xanadu: It won't affect my playing at all. These folks do not HAVE to work at Rockstar. They can work somewhere else anytime they wish. If they don't like the conditions, get a job elsewhere. They are not prisoners. If they work there it is because they choose to.

All the people saying "life ain't fair" in this thread forfeit any right to complain about their work or their boss.

Responding to exploitation with "life's not fair, you asked for this, suck it up and deal" is some pathetic teenage nihilist shit. You and everyone who has ever screwed you over in your career has had that response. Do you really want to parrot the talking points that those people would throw in your face if you ever talked back or stood up for yourself if you were in the same situation as these workers? Grow up.

Way to pick the team that is in absolutely no way on your side, not ever, not even once.

I will be playing it even harder.

I just added my final update to the original post. Jason Schreier posted a long article on kotaku.com that hes been working on before this shit ever blew up. Pretty interesting stuff in there.

@kcin: What part of that is selfish?

@xanadu: Good lord the QA section is horrific and exactly what I thought was happening.

Apparently I'll be playing it just as much as Schreier. If the writer of the articles intends to vote yes with their wallet then you shouldn't feel too bad either. As long you you mention that crunch exists once in a while you're gold.

@merxworx01: yeah especially hearing that a lot didn't get paid overtime and like Jeff was saying on the podcast, they might have a bonus system based off sales.

Mainly I just hope major developers take all of this into account for future endeavors.

If I spent 100 hours a week on something, I'd want people to admire it. That being said, definitely give Rockstar shit for their business practices and speak up for employee rights.

@ares42: No, no, we're trying to see whether 100% chance of harm or 5% chance of harm is worse, so it's meet that those be the only differences in whatever analogy/scenario/thought experiment we're working with. In your scenario there's varying rates of "lever pulls," with one wholly at the discretion of a manager. That's not gonna tell us whether a 100% chance of harm is the same as a 5% chance of harm; the manager may never decide to pull the lever! Or, he may pull the lever 1000 times a day! Which is worse then? And wouldn't answering that just tell us about quality of the manager, not the quality of each lever? We don't care about the manager, we wanna know which lever is the worse one to have pulled.

@xanadu: They'll take it in account, see that their budgeted costs rise & time schedule extends by 30% if they'll treat everyone as a happy human being and feel like they are leaving money on the table. And are not able to ship as many games in a similar timeframe as they used to. Perhaps even missing crucial deadlines before the end of the fiscal year or holiday sales.

Even if they do a smaller-scope game to experiment with a less crunch heavy project and the results are positive, there will always be the question whether the sales numbers would be significantly lower if they didn't extend the development time to eliminate the negatives of crunch. Sure, the 'happiness & efficiency' bars of employees might be filled better in this new scenario, but you don't get to see those in real life as you get to see them in the Sims. The effects of crunch are not easily captured in a way that you can convince managers that not overworking them to 100% might eventually be more beneficial than getting the most out of their time during the development. Absenteeism numbers help a bit, but when you're in a place where not showing up to work is heavily frowned upon by everyone & you simply need the money & you fear for being replaced, people are compelled to show up to work anyways. And yes, that means that you will spread your sicknesses to collegues and make it worse. All because of that peer-pressure.

Nope, that's a fictitious completely irrelevant scenario. You said it was worse for a company to deliberately harm their employees than it is to send them off to do a job where they will eventually get harmed.