The Rumble at Rockstar

By: Grahame | January 21st, 2010

We’ve all done it, sat there playing our most loved game and said to ourselves: “I wish I could make games like this”. In our naive eyes it seems to be all a bed of roses, but recent rumblings have pulled back the curtain on what it means to be a games developer in this generation of consoles.

A recent open letter to Rockstar Games’ San Diego development studio on Gamasutra.com, from a group calling themselves  “Determined Devoted Wives of Rockstar San Diego employees,” has shed light on allegedly poor working conditions and benefits.

The posting, made on January 7, states “the extent of degradation employees have suffered extends to their quality of life and their family members” and that “there have been physical manifestations caused by stress making health a concern.”

Rockstar San Diego is currently working on the promising Red Dead Redemption

Rock star have yet to make any comment, but it does beg the question: “Just what is going on at big developers to push these games out before deadline?”

The pressures placed on development teams now is greater than ever before. The visual fidelity of this current generation has driven up development time, and thus costs have also increased. Publishers are now ruthless with their money, closing studios, like Pandemic or Grin, if their projects (which are often still in an alpha phase) don’t meet expectation.

Due to these uncertain financial times, development teams face huge pressure to get their product out, on time and to a high enough standard that it will make a profit. Even that’s not always a guarantee, a look at the sales for much praised Rockstar published GTA: Chinatown Wars shows that the games buying public can be unpredictable.

Nintendo USA's VP Cammie Dunaway called Chinatown War's sales "frustrating"

I have many friends in the games industry who are working at some big developers, they have given me some insight into what it can be like being a programmer on a big titles. As the Rockstar spouses said in their letter, 11 or 12 hour days are basically expected of the team when it comes to the big push for deadline; one friend even slept in the studio instead of going home on a few occasions.

Brian Green was a developer on RPG game Meridian 59, as well as many others. In a recent blog posting, he talked about the life of a developer: “For every burnout case in the industry, there are a number of fresh-faced kids wanting to get their chance at what they think is their dream job. This is why you have crunch time in the industry; if you don’t be a “team player” and put in the long hours, there’s an endless supply of 20-something year olds willing to do so.”

Brian’s comments show that there are companies out there who will put pressure on employees to self-sacrifice. “Crunch time” it seems is only intensifying for development teams.  What cost is this taking on the personal lives of those working the hardest? And who is going to buck the apparent trend?

Perhaps we gamers have to take some of the blame. We demand sequels to our favourite series’ and then many will go on the forums of these games to complain if a delay is announced, putting further pressure on the team behind it. Perhaps everyone, from publishers to gamers to the developers themselves, need to take a step back and realise that for the sake of the people who make the games, we should lower our expectations on what we demand from our top teams.

The last thing our much criticised industry needs is its version of the Orange France tragedy.