Why am I not surprised. Overtime is always ordered by the folks who clock out at 3.
Sony's Naughty Dog Studio Orders Employee Overtime on ‘Intergalactic’
Submitted 3 weeks ago by lazycouchpotato@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
Comments
HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth 3 weeks ago
dukemirage@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Often it is ordered by folks who are pathological workaholics who don’t understand that healthy people usually burn out when crunching away 12h a day.
PP_BOY_@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Fuck Neil Druckman, Naughty Dog, and Sony, in that order. Amy Hennig carried the whole PlayStation brand identity and got couped over some good ol industry sexism
jaaake@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Any Hennig is great, but what? Are you saying Uncharted 1-3 is the whole PlayStation brand identity?
gustofwind@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Do they hand out adderall or something? How do you even produce quality work like that…
TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
You don’t. Mandatory crunch produces a mediocre result and drives away your hired talent.
vega208@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Was the Last of Us mediocre?
It had mandatory crunch.
dukemirage@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Phew, good thing Druckman supressed that union! Imagine a pesky strike interfering with the mandated crunch.
RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
What’s the matter? I thought they were super confident this was going to do really well. Are they getting cold feet and deciding to make changes for fear of bad reception when they don’t quite have enough time, leading to forced overtime?
MurrayL@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Demo in this context isn’t a consumer-playable ‘demo’ in the sense that most people understand; it means a playable internal build with specific targets for what must be included. Internal demo milestones are often linked to project funding and approval to move forwards, so there is a tangible risk if they fail to deliver.
Presumably the current state of the game is behind where it needed to be to deliver that demo, so they’re now crunching to finish it on time.
RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
IMO, any time a game repeatedly fails to meet deadlines, especially so early on in its development, that usually indicates the game isn’t likely to launch in a healthy state. Either the scope is way too big, or the narrative is receiving major changes and reworks, or the people working on the game just wish they weren’t working on that project and taking longer as a result. This kind of situation is rarely good, and even more rarely ends up with a good launched product.
Cyberpunk 2077, Anthem, Mass Effect Andromeda, Halo Infinite, Duke Nukem Forever, John Romero’s Daikatana (although I personally am a bit charmed by this one despite it being undoubtedly bad), and other games are examples of this. Repeated failure to meet production deadlines, lots of crunch forced on the developers, and all for what? The launch product for all of these games was horrendously bad. Some for technical reasons, some for narrative reasons, and some for both.
When I first saw the trailer for Intergalactic, I had mixed feelings. I liked the intended graphics/art style and retro styled tech, the Porsche was a little weird product placement but fine I guess, but the characters and dialogue I personally found both unappealing. The obvious Snake Plissken rip-off woman the main character talked to (blonde with an eyepatch, I can only assume she is some sort of merc job handler) seemed maybe interesting but then she spoke and the writing lost my interest. Upon learning the game is likely to follow some sort of religious theming, I lost all interest in the game. Its not what I want from a video game. So this was pretty disappointing to learn. But now seeing the game is in such a state doesn’t give me great confidence that the final product will be even decent when it launches.
Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I’ve loved Uncharted and the Last of Us, but this one isn’t attracting me for now…
vega208@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Ew, couldn’t imagine slaving away on a game like this.
Gonna be real funny when it flops.
Pika@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I wonder why companies do this? does it actually make it get done faster? Last I knew most workers were only efficient at their job for like the first 5 or 6 hours if that, spending an extra 8 ontop of it sounds like a waste of salary.
saphiron@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Ex Activision QA employee here - It does not get anything done faster, and it burns out the devs and QA alike so more mistakes are made. It’s always about hitting dates on time for shareholder profits, the C-suite people in charge do not give a shit about releasing a quality game.
echodot@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
Why even have a QA department if they just release the game anyway?
Shirasho@lemmings.world 3 weeks ago
Because most CEOs are wholely incompetent and don’t know how to run a successful business.
vega208@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Yes, it does.
Naughty Dog made its name by working ludicrous hours. One of the founders worked 16 hour days for a year, only taking off for Christmas, in order to make Crash Bandicoot.
essteeyou@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Which is great if you get to reap the rewards, but not when you’re a salaried employee who will be laid off when the project’s over.
Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
For short periods, like a few days, you can get a small boost in productivity. But if it goes on too long, you actually see a decrease in productivity overall.
And most companies aren’t paying for this, as lobbyists managed to get “computer workers” onto the list of allowed overtime exempt employees.
Pika@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
ah shoot yea thats true, I forgot about the BS that is “salary exempt”
a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Nope. You have your programmers work more hours and their productivity is just going to tank.
There are much smarter ways to do this, but the jobs are so in-demand that they can treat employees like slaves.
rafoix@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Efficiency is not always the most important thing. Sometimes you just want more progress to finish.