Ex-employees of Team Bondi, the Australian ontwikkelstudio that detectivespel L. A. Noire delivered, complain about the working conditions, such as long work weeks, unpaid overtime, poor management and a high turnover of staff.
The Australian branch of website IGN did research into the working conditions at Team Bondi, the Australian developer of detectivespel L. A. Noire. An employee of the website spoke with eleven ex-employees of the studio, which is out of the cloths were, how the working conditions in the studio were during the seven years of L. A. Noire has been wrenched. The site explained the symptoms, then to Brendan McNamara, the director of Team Bondi.
McNamara would, according to the complaint itself provided a major contribution to the poor working conditions at the studio. So would the director employees publicly flashing and the tussenkader ignore by individual employees directly, and unexpectedly, new orders to give. McNamara gave the first to admit he loudly expressed their opinion on the activities of employees, though there was, according to him, no question of verbal abuse. He also gave that he directly gave orders to whomever he wanted, from the reasoning that the project was where everybody worked, since he is the writer of the game.
Also about the long working weeks does McNamara is not difficult; these are needed in order to succeed in the games industry. “The expectations are a bit strange here; thinking that you do this kind of things you can do without yourself to soap, to help. Well, that’s not right. You compete against the best people in the world and you must be willing to do what they do in order to succeed,” says the director. McNamara gave further that everyone has the same long weeks, made the leadership of the company. The ex-employees complain, however, that there very much was asked. So complained a programmer that he is three weeks behind the other days of 15 hours made to get a working demo to get it off, that the press should be shown, to later find out that the demo is not to be used and the work that he had performed also largely deleted.
Another programmer came in the service when, according to the management board for less than twelve months were needed to finish the game to get. When he was two and a half years later resigned at Team Bondi, thought the board still think there is less than twelve months, would be necessary. “I do not know or management lied or just naive”, it asks the programmer. McNamara blames the problems on three factors. The game would in the first instance by Sony to be released exclusively on the PlayStation 3 appear. When Team Bondi on the project began, there was the PS3, however, still only on the drawing board. The final design of the console turned out differently than expected, which meant that a part of the work had to be done. Team Bondi used a new technique that allows the expression on the faces of the characters in the game more realistic image could be. Furthermore, McNamara that the in Australia is difficult to keep experienced staff.
The ex-employees suggest, however, that Team Bondi sloppy with the own staff and associates. There was a high turnover at the studio. There would be more than a hundred employees are that the game worked without the end of the development process. This group is not in the credits of the game and will also receive the overtime will not be paid. In the contracts that Team Bondi shut down, is a passage which states that all overtime work only three months after release is paid and only to people who are still in the studio working. McNamara is also aware of no evil. Him has anyone neatly the additional hours been paid.
The situation at Team Bondi reminiscent of that in a private studio of L. A. Noire’s publisher, Rockstar. In early 2010, protested the women of a number of employees of the studio in San Diego that the workload to be very high. The studio was working on Red Dead Redemption. Also Rockstar Vancouver, where working on Max Payne 3, would the working conditions are bad. Also about other publishers, there are complaints. At the end of 2004 wrote a group of women employees at the studio of the publisher Electronic Arts, a similar protestbrief. There, too, there were the persistent long working weeks of workers questioned. That letter eventually led to a lawsuit in which EA was condemned to pay 15 million dollars in past due salary over the many worked overtime.