Rockstar's future looking grim?


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Not sure if people caught this but it started off with an open letter called Rockstar Wives on the 7th.

Here's an extract from the open letter to Rockstar:

Furthermore, the extent of degradation employees have suffered extends to their quality of life and their family members. Though it is presumed, this unfortunate circumstance is due largely to ignorance and unawareness of most, with enlightened knowledge, action must be taken to protect the rights of employees and those who depend on them.

There were complains of forced 6-7 days weeks with 15 hour plus days to finish Red Dead Redemption. The toll slowly taking it's course on the staff there. Shortly after that letter came out more sources emerged that Rockstar San Diego aren't working on any more Midnight Club games, with future games in jeopardy (11th). Then the day after another story put even, the nearly finished, Red Dead in trouble.

Not content with one studio going down the pan. Apprently Vancouver is having exactly the same issues with bad management putting Max Payne 3 at risk.

"The game's story just went through another total re-write earlier this month (the third that I am aware of in the past two years) and that [means] the team would have to have all of the content done by April or May to make that August release date."

As the chuckle brothers would say:

Oh dear, oh dear.

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umm....it's very, very common in the gaming undustry to put in 16 hour days 6-7 days a week for the last ~3 months before the release of the game you're working on. This isn't news.

The rewrite sucks though

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Well, that's unfortunate. I wonder if they'll delay the release of the aforementioned games because of this so called "bad management".

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umm....it's very, very common in the gaming industry to put in 16 hour days 6-7 days a week for the last ~3 months before the release of the game you're working on. This isn't news.

Not just the gaming industry. That's true for almost all software development.

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umm....it's very, very common in the gaming undustry to put in 16 hour days 6-7 days a week for the last ~3 months before the release of the game you're working on. This isn't news.

The rewrite sucks though

This is so very true. Anyone not aware of this getting into the industry... where have you been hiding?

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umm....it's very, very common in the gaming undustry to put in 16 hour days 6-7 days a week for the last ~3 months before the release of the game you're working on. This isn't news.

Read the rest of the article. tl;dr version: Overworked staff + bad managers = botched game + studio closure?

Well, that's unfortunate. I wonder if they'll delay the release of the aforementioned games because of this so called "bad management".

Both have been in development for way too long. If anything we might see them rushed to fire them (hrhr) out in time for the Aug-Nov period of this year.

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umm....it's very, very common in the gaming undustry to put in 16 hour days 6-7 days a week for the last ~3 months before the release of the game you're working on. This isn't news.

The rewrite sucks though

They should be happy that they are not flight test engineers or anything. My father virtually lived at the facility for weeks at a time (my mother had to take him clean clothing and what not) for a few months following the sale of some of their new aircrafts.

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Read the rest of the article. tl;dr version: Overworked staff + bad managers = botched game + studio closure?

Both have been in development for way too long. If anything we might see them rushed to fire them (hrhr) out in time for the Aug-Nov period of this year.

I'm not seeing anything about how this management is actually bad aside from doing rewrites of the story

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I'm not seeing anything about how this management is actually bad aside from doing rewrites of the story

*cough*

I heard a lot more about this a few weeks ago.

Basically, MCLA was done nearly a year before release, but had to be pushed back due to GTA4 being pushed back. Once GTA4 got released, R* NY turned their attention to MCLA (which is where the eye of Sauron refernce came from). NY took the basically finished game, had devs outside of SD add in a bunch of effects to make it look more like GTA4, then sent it back nearly unplayable (blur doesn't work as well @ 200 mph). SD had to move their asses to get it fixed which is why it was pushed back a few more weeks.

A new engine was built from the ground up for MCLA, one that the team would be able to use on future games and DLC to make things quite seemless with future releases. NY said they had to move over to RAGE and make everything more like GTA. Much of the team resisted, and many were fired or moved over to Red Dead Redemption.

My buddy, the one I refer to in the post linked above, posted this on gamefaqs

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage....;topic=52996268

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