you?

Archangel3371 said:

I doubt I'll ever try Goldeneye. I've seen videos and video reviews and to be honest it just doesn't interest me enough. I'm much more interested in MW3, Battlefield 3, and Halo CE remake. Then there's all the other games like Gears of War 3, Uncharted 3, Skyrim, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Arkham City, Skyward Sword, Dark Souls, etc.

Then you will miss out on one of the great FPS campaigns of our time! Not much more I can do to save you now.

Archangel3371 said:

You say great, I say "Meh".

The difference is he's played it, he doesn't feel things from the beyond.

Archangel3371 said:

Meh. I still think the campaigns are excellent. I find them intense with no filler. The AI may not be the smartest from the bunch but they're certainly not dumb as bricks.

No Edge I don't play everything, not even close. There's plenty of games that I haven't played way too many to even begin to name.

Like the good ones.

aspro said:

Agnates said:

.... Unemployment rates aren't getting much better and not every unemployed person is a lazy bum. Many companies, smaller or bigger, prey on simple facts like that, obviously.

...

As I said earlier Australia is at effective full employment.  Software developers are much needed in this country.  (Team Bondi is in Sydney).  The employment market for software developers is INSANE in my state capital.

Software developers are highly sought out pretty much everywhere. Which is as mentioned before is the reason why how Rockstar and Team Bondi and others are on a unsustainable path. If you keep treating your people like shit they will go somewhere else where they are paid more. The video game industry is burning itself to the ground with practices like this. This is no surprise as this gen has showed that most companies don't know how to run their business.

From gaf

nacire said:

I like Pachter quite a bit, but I was burned by a studio some years ago as crunch time continued and continued and continued. Promises of compensation pay and or time off were held above our heads constantly as we continued to put in long hours month after month. In the end, we didn't receive one cent of compensation pay nor one minute of time off after the project wrapped.

I really lost my love and passion for creating games at that place and I have yet to really gain it back. It's actually had a ripple effect on my life that I'm still reeling from today, though I'm starting to put things back together. In the end I grew very irritable on the job and it showed in my work. I voiced my disapproval to higher ups on many occasions and was eventually confronted. I was asked, "You aren't happy that you didn't receive compensation or time off, but why can't you just get over it like everyone else has?" Truth was, no one had gotten over it, but everyone was just smiling and nodding.

In the end they let me go. I heard the project manager was let go after myself and then many of the core art team defected shortly after. Many moved on to other studios, while others left the industry altogether.

Anyhow, a word to Mr. Pachter. People may not have certain things in black and white and maybe it is their fault for continuing to work under such conditions, but does abusing your workers because you can make it right? At the end of the day we are all human beings with feelings, families, rights, lives outside of work, etc.

It's an ethics issue.

qKaC3K said:

I used to work in the industry so I dug up my contract and this is what was in it:

contract said:

Overtime

Occasionally projects and work schedules may necessitate working additional hours to satisfy business concerns or project completion dates. It is understood that the nature of the industry and the importance of business success is placed above individual needs in such situations.

The employees may work by arrangement on any days except public holidays provided that either your Project Manager agrees also to work that day. In case the employee works on a public holiday, he shall not be entitled any further compensation apart from the one stipulated in the employement agreement.

My personal experience? Well on one project we crunched for about 4 months 12 hours a day sometimes even more. And we worked on quite a few weekends as well.

Any compensation? The company paid for our dinner (+ launch on weekends) and taxi back home. And that's about it.

Compensation in the project bonus? I can only speak for myself, but my bonus was pretty shitty at the end of the project. And from what I heard it wasn't better for the others either. (AAA project for one of the big publishers)

So Pachter can go and f**k himself honestly. It shouldn't be industry standard to have contracts such as mine was.

People at gaf were making fun of Pachter and claiming it is easy for him to say it is okay to work for so long if you hardly do any work yourself. Pachter actually replied to that.

Pachter said:

I'm taking a break to comment. For the record, I arrived at work at 4:20 this morning (my typical start time), and it's 2:45 p.m. as I write this. Netflix just reported, and I will be on their earnings conference call for an hour, will adjust my model, then will finish writing my note. I should be done by 7 p.m. I didn't take a lunch break today, and never do. I get to do this tomorrow (RadioShack earnings before the open, taping a Bonus Round in the morning, doing a Bloomberg TV interview, then have Electronic Arts and DreamWorks reporting after the close), and Wednesday (THQ) and Thursday (IMAX, RealD, Regal Cinema and Coinstar). I wrote a Netflix note over the weekend, as well.

Anyway, I regularly work 14 hour days, and always work on the weekends. I have for the last 11 years in this job, was an investment banker before that, and held various finance jobs (including tax lawyer) before that. I put myself through school (4 degrees) while working multiple jobs, including non-union factory worker and non-union UPS dock. I averaged around 40 hours a week while in school, and it took me 10 years of that to get through school. I'm really not prepared to take any crap from anyone about how I don't "understand" working hard.

My comments about the Team Bondi situation are purely about overtime. I sympathize with poor working conditions, and if people don't like their employer, they should find another job. We've all had jobs that were sub-optimal, and usually, they prepare us for other jobs. I've had a few of them in my career, but generally learned enough and built enough of a resume each place I worked to get a better job.

I do not think people in the games business on the creative side should expect overtime. It is not regular practice to pay salaried workers overtime, and that is simply a fact. If you take a salaried position, you do so at your own risk, and you must take responsibility for the choices you make. At Team Bondi, I saw no complaints that overtime was promised and not paid; if it had been promised, the complaints would be legitimate. Rather, the complaints reminded me of those of "EA Spouse" or those from the Red Dead Redemption team, who chose game development as a profession, but didn't like the long hours. Long hours are part of many jobs, and while I completely agree that it might be more productive to adequately staff a team and keep work hours sane, that is simply not the practice in the development world.

I did not say that I think it's the right way to run a studio; rather, I said it is the industry practice, and that people can explore working conditions before taking the job. The industry also rewards most workers (Gamasutra said the average industry salary is $80K), and if people are looking for a good job in a fun profession, game development may be for them. If they are looking for a 9 - 5 job with overtime, there are plenty of professions that will give you those hours, but they tend to be less rewarding financially.

I do not get paid for overtime. I get paid to do a job, and get paid when the job is done, regardless of how long it takes. I think it's the same in the development world, and it is important to work for a studio and studio head that has a history of getting things done in a reasonable manner without extended crunch times. I think that people who get into the games business should be prepared to work long hours for the salary they negotiated. If any are successful in negotiating an hourly rate with overtime, they deserve to be paid.

Pachter forgets to mention that a normal salary (according to gaf) of a game developer is 80K and an average  salary of his job is 700K.

Yes, we need Pachter back. If not only to use the awesome theme song.

=-=-

And. I think my week and a half long gaming drought has come to an end. Started Morrowind tonight.  When that opening music kicks in, it's so ... I dunno...

I think Geek mentioned last week that he didn;t think there was a quest log in the game.  There is, it's the white button.  I did not think there was one, but this time I am actually reading the instructions.

Whoa Whoa peeps are getting way out of control here with the random +'s for simple comments.

So I started playing Fallout: New Vegas. Is it me, or are the production values actually BELOW Fallout 3? And I'm playing this maxed out on my PC as opposed to Xbox like I did with Fallout 3. The game looks good, but a little grab and plain in areas compared to F3. Gun animations are not impressive at all. Gameplay-wise, I'm liking the whole faction thing, and how certain groups have control of certain areas. It lends the game an almost Mercenaries, or Red Faction 3, kind of air to it.

Will try to post some screens later.