Homefront - Catch all

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...

Article wrote:

One source tells us the minimal expectations for all members of the studio were six months of 12-hour shifts, six to seven days per week. But actually, according to the ex-staffer, most of the studio was clocking 14 to 16 hour days, seven days a week, during that six-month window. Some worked that schedule for 14 months, and jobs were at risk if the time quota wasn't met.

The staffer describes "inhuman, combative" leadership and labor under a system of fear. Many employees say their health and family relationships suffered -- and hearing THQ execs tell the media that crunch was reasonable and expected felt like a slap in the face, as the crunch came from poor management and an unhealthy environment, not because the work ethic dictated it.

And Kaos' own studio was rife with facility problems. Employees describe an "absolute dump" where, by the end, some staffers had desks beneath stairs. One men's room urinal sprung a leak, and someone's idea of repair was to stick a trashcan underneath it with a warning sign. One ex-employee estimates the urinal went un-repaired for some seven months, and that the "Urinal Bucket" became something of a symbol for the hopelessness and irrelevance the team felt when compared to THQ's shiny new Canada studio -- the one THQ would soon announce was taking over Kaos' franchise.

Man, what the hell. Tkyl, I don't expect you to comment, but if any of that stuff is true that is seriously f'd up.

Stories like these are getting far too common.

Speedhuntr wrote:

Stories like these are getting far too common.

Yep, this seems to be the exception rather than the rule when working for most large publishers. And they wonder why people are leaving AAA development in droves to go do indie games. There's going to be a serious brain drain in this segment of the industry soon if these companies don't smarten up.

Gumbie wrote:

Man, what the hell. Tkyl, I don't expect you to comment, but if any of that stuff is true that is seriously f'd up.

Unfortunately it's pretty much all true. The people there were great, but there were some serious management issues.

The thing that gets me is that companies keep sailing their AAA ships into the rocks in avoidable ways, blowing tens of millions at a time. I guess there's a certain instinct to hope for or assume the best, although that was also around the time THQ had their Udraw problem.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:
Speedhuntr wrote:

Stories like these are getting far too common.

Yep, this seems to be the exception rather than the rule when working for most large publishers. And they wonder why people are leaving AAA development in droves to go do indie games. There's going to be a serious brain drain in this segment of the industry soon if these companies don't smarten up.

Yep. It's not all roses there, though. Watching "Indie Game: The Movie" was heartbreaking. Even on "small" projects your personal life can suffer. Software development isn't easy. And software development on any kind of schedule is even harder. I've had to do do "crunching" every year for most of my career including 12 hour days, meals brought in so we don't leave for lunch, etc. It's never as bad as the stories you read about game development, but it's still there. No one truly seems to adequately plan, staff up or train for having a team that can take on a big project. There's almost always a crunch. It's just a question of how bad. That KAOS started in this mode is terrible.

But yeah, Indie games seem to go better. It's one reason (aside from my bias for 2D) why I'd like to see even more movement towards 2D.

And it's stories like this that make me think the next round of consoles aren't going to be that much more powerful than current systems. You think the current trend is bad (ie, Rockstar, Team Bondi, Day 1, Kaos, etc), wait until these same poorly-managed devs are forced to make games on par with Epic's Samaritan demo, in the same amount of time as current AAA development cycles.

So I see the future as either the above (worst case scenario for developers), or the majority of developers are simply not going to support such massive hardware expectations, leaving a void in the AAA and possibly AA spaces, thus more or less damning the next console generation (at least, as the generation has been speculated/forecast so far). It's a scary/interesting time for the games industry.

WipEout wrote:

stuff

I guess this ties into the nextbox discussion.

I'll be happy to be proven wrong, but I don't think they need to be much more for the reasons you stated. Consoles don't need to be bleeding edge, so much as they need to leverage their other benefits like being a set target to develop for and 'plug and play' (although even that is eroding). I'm sure developers would welcome more modern hardware and more memory to stretch their legs, but lots of developers are saying that the biggest factor in a successful game is efficiency of production. Tales like Kaos tell us that companies still haven't mastered the process of making games yet.

A part of me would be happy to see a modest increase in horsepower for next generation, if the flip side was better games and better companies behind those games. You know, the things you actually play on that hardware. It would be very interesting to see how the hardware market would go, and where technology focussed companies would go. A generation of refinement rather than pushing boundaries (but the games are held together with string and sticky-tape).

I'd like to see that, but I doubt it'll happen. Of course, the elephant in the room is that it's not a hardware problem, but a software development/management problem. I guess there's something to be said for not giving companies the rope to hang themselves with.

Damn Tkyl, I didn't sense it was that bad when you showed me around, but then again it was only for 15 minutes after the play test. I'm sure you are a much happier man at Firaxis and glad you got back on your feet.

Also, I am very sad that Homefronts multi didn't catch on as much. It was amazing.

I'm surprised Rob Zacny's article hasn't been linked here yet: http://www.polygon.com/2012/11/1/356...

Fantastic read.

That is a great article. Nice work Rob, and thanks for the links, Dyni. I am actually far more interested in playing the game now, in a weird way I'm not even going to start trying to define.

That was a fantastic article, Rob. Spot on, the whole thing.

My eyes literally hurt now, I think I was focusing too hard in order to read the text against that background image.

Sorry, it isn't much of a comment, but it is really overwhelming any thoughts I may have on the article.

Tkyl wrote:

That was a fantastic article, Rob. Spot on, the whole thing.

I was wondering how you'd feel.

I thought it was exactly the type of articles I'd like to see more of from games writing persons. Excellent.

[quote=ccesarano]

garion333I thought it was exactly the type of articles I'd like to see more of from games writing persons. Excellent. [/quote wrote:

I said so elsewhere, but it's exactly why I wish more development studios had small film crews around. This story, and many others, just feel like they'd make for fantastic documentaries like Alien 3's "Wreckage and Rage".

Quoting this for posterity.

Tannhauser wrote:

My eyes literally hurt now, I think I was focusing too hard in order to read the text against that background image.

Sorry, it isn't much of a comment, but it is really overwhelming any thoughts I may have on the article.

Yeah, that's an odd design choice.

garion333 wrote:

I thought it was exactly the type of articles I'd like to see more of from games writing persons. Excellent.

I said so elsewhere, but it's exactly why I wish more development studios had small film crews around. This story, and many others, just feel like they'd make for fantastic documentaries like Alien 3's "Wreckage and Rage".