Following Rockstar Games’ comment on working “100-hour weeks” for Red Dead Redemption 2 yesterday, they’ve come back to clarify that statement (via Kotaku).
Just Misinterpreted
Here’s what Rockstar and Dan Houser had to say:
“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 where we wrapped everything up. Three weeks, not years. We have all worked together for 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.”
“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 and are just as productive – I’m just not one of them! No one, senior or junior, is ever forced to work that 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 and Crunch
Rockstar has offices in New York, California, Boston, and the UK among other places. Back when the original Red Dead Redemption came out in 2010, spouses of employees spoke out about their working conditions. The working conditions included 12-hour workdays, working Saturdays, and fewer benefits. It’ll be interesting to see if spouses speak out again in regards to Red Dead Redemption 2.
While crunch has been embraced by companies like Naughty Dog and CD Projekt Red, it’s something that can hurt developers. It can cause serious mental health problems and ruin relationships. The effects of crunch have even made some developers leave the games industry altogether.
Among the more recent developers that fell to crunch was Telltale Games, developers of The Walking Dead. Following their closure, reports came out of teams moving from project to project and massive crunch.
Red Dead Redemption 2 comes to PS4 and Xbox One on October 26th. What do you think of this statement? Do you believe what they’re saying? Let us know in the comments section below. For more news about Red Dead Redemption 2, keep it locked to VGR.