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Inside Rockst*r Games

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Re: Inside Rockst*r Games

#11

Post by ovi256 »

"And this was the sort of place where that sort of thing was the norm — the building process and the pipeline was inefficient to the extreme, yet no one who directly managed such things seemed to care — or was competent enough to recognize it."

Well, I think the last part is universal - nobody could easily diagnose or evaluate that situation. It took W. Edwards Deming years to create a method to first convince himself that it could be done, and then more years to convince others. This is made worse by intellectual work, where standards of quality are less obvious than "length at 100mm +/- 0.01mm". I'm not saying that standards do not exist, that is a trope that must disappear, they're just less obvious.

Re: Inside Rockst*r Games

#12

Post by stonemetal »

stuhacking wrote: post #5
stonemetal wrote: post #4

It felt like a very unreal situation — working for a supposed “top-notch” company only to discover that some of my coworkers (including senior artists and management) wouldn’t even have been hired as interns at other companies I’d worked at. I’m not exaggerating. Is Rockst*r considered a top-notch company? I know their output is quite respected but like Mel Gibson there is a difference between looking good on TV and…

I guess the articles impact is that it's surprising that a company with a track record of producing high quality games would have so many alleged issues on the inside. Of course, whether or not you find it surprising is down to experience.

That is the thing though, the rockstar that is famous for pretty much everything rockstar is famous for is in Europe ( Edinburgh, Scotland to be precise.) So it is a little disingenuous to say he is working for a company with a history of quality. He works for a company that was bought by a company with a history of releasing quality products not quite the same thing.

Re: Inside Rockst*r Games

#13

Post by bmj »

stuhacking wrote: post #5
stonemetal wrote: post #4

It felt like a very unreal situation — working for a supposed “top-notch” company only to discover that some of my coworkers (including senior artists and management) wouldn’t even have been hired as interns at other companies I’d worked at. I’m not exaggerating. Is Rockst*r considered a top-notch company? I know their output is quite respected but like Mel Gibson there is a difference between looking good on TV and…

I guess the articles impact is that it's surprising that a company with a track record of producing high quality games would have so many alleged issues on the inside. Of course, whether or not you find it surprising is down to experience.

I've not worked at a game studio, but I have worked at an interactive design studio, and the basic story is the same. The artists, Flash devs, and creative directors put up with a mind-boggling amount of mistreatment[1] from management in order to build up a professional portfolio. There was a high level of turnover in the creative department, however, because once a portfolio was built, the designer would attempt to find greener grasses.

[1] 12 hour days were pretty normal for a lot of folks, and our poor Flash dev, who was pretty darn good, often worked for days straight.

Re: Inside Rockst*r Games

#15

Post by mrcharles »

Rockstar is well known within the industry as the worst place you could possibly work. People who've worked with ex-Rockstar employees have always known. When the EA Spouse thing came out, a lot of us wondered when something would finally break about Rockstar.

But Rockstar has a secret -- that secret is that they are sued regularly over working conditions and abuse, and they always settle. The settlement comes with a gag order, however.

Genius, I guess, in the evil way.

I've been lucky enough to work for a fantastic company for the past six years, and any overwork has been entirely my own decision, and mismanagement has been minimal and more conceptual than actual. Someone high up will make a silly decision about something, and then teams will transparently handle and incorporate it while minimizing impact on people's work environment.

Re: Inside Rockst*r Games

#16

Post by mrcharles »

stonemetal wrote: post #4

It felt like a very unreal situation — working for a supposed “top-notch” company only to discover that some of my coworkers (including senior artists and management) wouldn’t even have been hired as interns at other companies I’d worked at. I’m not exaggerating. Is Rockst*r considered a top-notch company? I know their output is quite respected but like Mel Gibson there is a difference between looking good on TV and…

Rockstar is not. Their output is quality because they are willing to spend five years on a single game, because they have the money to, and they are perfectly willing to make people redo their work a hundred times until it is acceptable.

From everything I've heard from somewhere in the range of 5 friends who are ex-rockstar, from almost all their studios (I've known people from North, Vancouver, San Diego, and Toronto), most of their games could have been done in half the time given some proper management and organization.

Really, it's a company where if you want to go home on a weekend the top guy will literally scream at you about being a pussy.

My favorite story was from Rockstar Vancouver, where one of the suits from the main office flew out to oversee their work. He came in on July 1st. On arrival to the studio, he called a meeting with all the leads who were there, and proceeded to yell at them about how few people were at the office, which culminated in "What do you think this is? A fucking holiday?"

Well, July 1st is Canada Day (basically the same as the US's July 4th in terms of import). Guy was lucky anyone was in the office at all.

But just one of many stories that highlight the sheer incompetence and malice with which Rockstar runs their companies.

Re: Inside Rockst*r Games

#17

Post by [deleted] »

mrcharles wrote: post #15

Rockstar is well known within the industry as the worst place you could possibly work. People who've worked with ex-Rockstar employees have always known. When the EA Spouse thing came out, a lot of us wondered when something would finally break about Rockstar. But Rockstar has a secret -- that secret is that they are sued regularly over working conditions and abuse, and they always settle. The settlement comes with a…

[deleted]

Re: Inside Rockst*r Games

#18

Post by kenjackson »

stonemetal wrote: post #12
stuhacking wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the articles impact is that it's surprising that a company with a track record of producing high quality games would have so many alleged issues on the inside. Of course, whether or not you find it surprising is down to experience.

That is the thing though, the rockstar that is famous for pretty much everything rockstar is famous for is in Europe ( Edinburgh, Scotland to be precise.) So it is a little disingenuous to say he is working for a company with a history of quality. He works for a company that was bought by a company with a history of releasing quality products not quite the same thing.

Except Rockstar San Diego has delivered some great content including the game this article seems to be about. RDR has won multiple 2010 "Game of the Year" awards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dead_Redemption#Awards), had great reviews, and incredible sales.

It's also the same studio that produced the Midnight Club series, one of the best racing series and the one that really brought the open terrain racer to market.

It seems like a relatively small studio, but one that has a very solid track record -- at least if you just look at the games it produces.

Re: Inside Rockst*r Games

#19

Post by trafficlight »

mrcharles wrote: post #15

Rockstar is well known within the industry as the worst place you could possibly work. People who've worked with ex-Rockstar employees have always known. When the EA Spouse thing came out, a lot of us wondered when something would finally break about Rockstar. But Rockstar has a secret -- that secret is that they are sued regularly over working conditions and abuse, and they always settle. The settlement comes with a…

I had no idea about Rockstar. I've heard for years about EA's shenanigans and thought they were the worst.

Why do people allow themselves to be treated that way?

Re: Inside Rockst*r Games

#20

Post by binaryfinery »

Since the site has hit its quota, I'll post my reply here:

I had the same experience, just ten years earlier. I was the lead programmer of resident evil 2 for the N64. Project was on time, under budget. Client was so happy it got Angel a little title called "Red Dead Revolver", which R* took over from Capcom when they bought Angel.

You want to know how we got the RE2 deal? I'll tell you: Chris Fodor and I noticed that you could spend 5 days a week totally fucking everything up and not get fired. You could lose Nintendo as a client by utterly failing to hit any deadline - and not get fired. You could be lead of a project that didnt ship, and then be lead of another project that didnt ship, rinse, repeat.

So we decided to spend monday working on our job, and the rest of the time working on a tech demo. We then presented our ideas to the programmers at the company. Of course, only a few senior programmers voiced their opinion, and their opinion was "that wont work". So then we ran the demo of it working.

Diego showed up a week later with a choice of two titles, one of which was porting RE2 to the N64.

I was fired a few weeks after we shipped.

I used to believe that the role of an employee was to maximize the value for shareholders. I still choose to believe this role, which is basically why I am only employable at start-ups, where it is still true. At any other company, the role of the employee is to maximize the value for the employee and the other employees that think likewise.

So welcome to the world of start-ups. You're now unemployable by most everyone else.

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