Several days ago in an interview, a Rockstar Dev said they were often working 100 hour weeks.
'We Were Working 100-Hour Weeks,' Red Dead Redemption 2 Head Writer Says, Then Clarifies
Rockstar grants permission to current devs to talk about company on social media | ResetEra
'We Were Working 100-Hour Weeks,' Red Dead Redemption 2 Head Writer Says, Then Clarifies
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The polishing, rewrites, and reedits Rockstar does are immense. "We were working 100-hour weeks" several times in 2018, Dan says. The finished game includes 300,000 animations, 500,000 lines of dialogue, and many more lines of code. Even for each RDR2 trailer and TV commercial, "we probably made 70 versions, but the editors may make several hundred. Sam and I will both make both make lots of suggestions, as will other members of the team."When asked for clarification:
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There seems to be some confusion arising from my interview with Harold Goldberg. The point I was trying to make in the article was related to how the narrative and dialogue in the game was crafted, which was mostly what we talked about, not about the different processes of the wider team. After working on the game for seven years, the senior writing team, which consists of four people, Mike Unsworth, Rupert Humphries, Lazlow and myself, had, as we always do, three weeks of intense work when we wrapped everything up. Three weeks, not years. We have all worked together for at least 12 years now, and feel we need this to get everything finished. After so many years of getting things organized and ready on this project, we needed this to check and finalize everything.Due to the backlash, Rockstar allowed employees to talk about their working conditions.
More importantly, we obviously don't expect anyone else to work this way. Across the whole company, we have some senior people who work very hard purely because they're passionate about a project, or their particular work, and we believe that passion shows in the games we release. But that additional effort is a choice, and we don't ask or expect anyone to work anything like this. Lots of other senior people work in an entirely different way and are just as productive - I'm just not one of them! No one, senior or junior, is ever forced to work hard. I believe we go to great lengths to run a business that cares about its people, and to make the company a great place for them to work.
Rockstar grants permission to current devs to talk about company on social media | ResetEra
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https://www.vg247.com/2018/10/18/rockstar-working-conditions/Kotaku R* QA Studio With Hardest Crunch Told Today That Supposed Mandatory Overtime Is Optional | ResetEra
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...ees-to-speak-out-on-100-hour-week-controversyI'm "non exempt" so my overtime pay starts at 1.5x salary and scales to 2x after 8 hours of OT in a week or 12 hours in a single day, in accordance with California law. Also, I have only been asked to work on weekends once or twice in my entire time at R* on the Tools team.
— Vivianne Langdon ?????????? (@viiviicat) October 18, 2018It's been surreal to see people share their crunch stories with the conclusion being, 'Rockstar needs to change'. When I've just been reading them thinking, 'I'm so glad I work at Rockstar and haven't done anything they have'.
— Wesley Mackinder (@WesleyMackinder) October 18, 2018
Wesley said: ↑QuoteThe email saying we were allowed to discuss this was sent to the entire development staff; all studios, all roles, all levels of seniority. We were told there were no limits on what we could discuss with regards to conditions/hours. I really don't have anything to add to the Tweets in the original posts, other than to say that it's just been frustrating knowing that industry friends/students might be put off working for R* because of all this guff.Click to expand...
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https://kotaku.com/rockstar-qa-stud...that-1829876472/amp?__twitter_impression=trueStill there's been a lot of backlash.
QuoteRockstar Lincoln, a UK-based studio that has been handling a lot of the quality assurance testing for Red Dead Redemption 2, is swearing off an approach that many employees say they had interpreted as mandatory overtime.Way more at the link.
That change comes a result of a studio meeting at the end of a week full of unusually public discussion about the work hours put into the creation of what is likely to be the hottest big-budget video game of the last several years.Click to expand...