Working conditions for GT6 staff

  • Thread starter Thread starter tube chaser
  • 17 comments
  • 2,166 views
tube chaser

tube chaser

Messages
99
South Africa
London, UK
Messages
PM me.
I'm as desperate as the next gamer for the release of GT6, but at what cost to the health & sanity of the staff at PD is what I'm beginning to ask myself. I'll confess I never thought much about the stories of PD staff sleeping under their desks and not leaving the office for days on end, heck I just want my game and I want it now.

But having just read the two links below, I feel I'm starting to understand what programmers working in what I used to think was one of the best industries, are having to endure. Sure its a billion dollar industry - but at the end of the day they are just games - and I don't want to support games that are making their devs so unhappy that suicide becomes a viable solution. I boycott various clothing brands because their 'staff' (kids more like it) work under horrendous conditions, so why not games.

I guess what I'm asking is how others feel about this, and the direction the games business seems to be headed in. I'm the first to admit to criticising PD, Rockstar, Bethesda et al but what the 🤬 - I don't want their highly talented and skilled staff to have to put up with these draconian working conditions :mad:

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Rock...Diego_employees_have_collected_themselves.php

http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html
 
Last edited:
Some here applaud the sleeping under the desk scenario. I however take a similar stance to you and believe its wrong. Totally unacceptable.
No wonder errors creep into the final product.
 
Great thread, you've given me some food for thought here. I knew the stories about PD employees sleeping in their offices, but just put it down to the Japanese work ethic & thought little of it.


To quote the second article regarding EA;

"The stress is taking its toll. After a certain number of hours spent working the eyes start to lose focus; after a certain number of weeks with only one day off fatigue starts to accrue and accumulate exponentially. There is a reason why there are two days in a weekend -- bad things happen to one's physical, emotional, and mental health if these days are cut short. The team is rapidly beginning to introduce as many flaws as they are removing."


It reminds me of this;

"Suppose you come upon a man in the woods feverishly sawing down a tree.
"You look exhausted!" you exclaim. "How long have you been at it?"
"Over five hours," he replies, "and I'm beat. This is hard."
"Maybe you could take a break for a few minutes and sharpen that saw. Then the work would go faster."
"No time," the man says emphatically. "I'm too busy sawing.""


And the moral of the story is; in order to stay sharp, you need to take a break. Driving your workforce as mentioned in these articles is actually counter productive, & is evidently one of the explanations for all the buggy games being released recently.
 
Those things about PD staff sleeping under their desks aren't just stories. XPlay, around the time that GT4 came out (I think for the Tokyo Game Show of 2004 since they were already in Japan for that), did a tour of PD's old offices and actually showed the people sleeping there; and many more such "office beds" were shown.
 
There's another aspect to this, although I don't know whether it applies to PD, and it's a cultural thing.
A former classmate of mine did an internship in Japan and he told me you could only leave the office when the boss did, if the boss decided to do overwork, so did everybody else.
 
This is almost standard practice for the industry when a release deadline is looming for such a big budget title. I have heard this many times before and I cannot argue with anybody who says it is unacceptable. It is bound to impact concentration and creativeness and this leads to other issues.

Developers tend to work substantial overtime when a game is about to go gold and then get bulk holidays upon completion.

However, comparing studios to sweatshops is a little unfair. Industry staff are well remunerated for their efforts while those in the clothing business work huge hours because they are paid very poorly.
 
ShiftingGears
It's quite inevitable simply because there is such a demand to work in the industry. Same as motorsport.
Click to expand...

I'm certain that you really mean a demand for PROFIT by the owners. Such problems could easily be alleviated by hiring more of these skilled workers, which in Japan I am sure that there exists plenty of young talent.

This would cut into profit, though. And we can't have that.... :irked:
 
Situation seems to be getting better. Looking at PDI website, it looks like they have three new buildings and no longer list the main one they have been in for the last few years. Might be newsworthy on GTPlanet if it is not old already that is :lol:.
Spagetti69
Some here applaud the sleeping under the desk scenario. I however take a similar stance to you and believe its wrong. Totally unacceptable.
No wonder errors creep into the final product.
Click to expand...
It is used more as example in regards to commitment when people say they are lazy. Ideally more people will work on game especially when rival competitor has 3-4 times more people working on their franchise. Hopefully sign of expansion will mean quality and content of games from PDI will go up. Really looking forward to what the top developers can do on better hardware in the years to come.
 
We know job is not getting done so they should either hire more staff, whether on-site or outsourcing, or keep working after hours. There are no more alternatives to hard work.

It's not about the competition, which has a lot more staff and is moving at least 3 times faster than PD, but about not finishing a single top notch product in 8 years and counting.
 
avens
We know job is not getting done so they should either hire more staff, whether on-site or outsourcing, or keep working after hours. There are no more alternatives to hard work.

It's not about the competition, which has a lot more staff and is moving at least 3 times faster than PD, but about not finishing a single top notch product in 8 years and counting.
Click to expand...
Job is getting done to a reasonable level. People have much higher expectations of PDI than other development companies on here. Majority of userbase seems quite satisfied going by user reviews on various retailers and gaming websites.

It is your opinion they have not finished a single top notch product in 8 years, there is probably be others who share that same opinion. Everyone at the end of the day is entitled to their opinion. They are on a good path to make a better game in the next iteration and hopefully without resorting to current long hours.
 
Last edited:
Saidur_Ali
They are on a good path to make a better game in the next iteration and hopefully without resorting to current long hours.
Click to expand...

Hope your right. Next gen games I would imagine would cost a fair bit more to produce. Even more programming and workloads too.
 
Spagetti69
Hope your right. Next gen games I would imagine would cost a fair bit more to produce. Even more programming and workloads too.
Click to expand...
I think in a way for the top development teams, it will be easier on them. They will have more room to breathe so to speak. They can finally do stuff they want to do without having to resort to ways that make it run on current systems with weak GPUs and lack of ram.

It is the consoles after that will really start pushing them but I think they will have that covered quite well. Lack of system power is more of a concern for top developers I would presume as there is always ways to make system work harder like ray tracing but will need assetts to back it up in future generations. Good job quite a number of developers are starting early in that regard. The extra power however is more of an issue for the smaller teams as they will have to invest more in making assets at high quality than they currently do but can spend less on system optimisation than they currently do.
 
*sigh*
I sincerely hope that Kaz doesn't overwork the employees. Sure, working overtime is sometimes neccessary to meet a deadline or whstever, but to the point of illness is just plain unacceptable.
I don't mind waiting 3, 6, 8, or even 10 years for GT6 because I don't want PD employees overworking themselves. I would rather them work in an environment where they can be focused and on task, but at the same time be able to do things like take days off, go see doctors, just generally be able to come to work in a good mood knowing that they are not under severe pressure trying to meet a deadline.

I saw things in there speaking of employees not being able to see doctors and no compensation/rewards for their hardwork and makes me sick.
I hope GT6 and the PD team do not suffer from anything like this.
 
Another good URL for the OP: http://trenchescomic.com/. The webcomic itself is average at best but the Tales of The Trenches (under the comic) from anonymous people in the gaming industry make the site worth visiting.

Eks
I don't mind waiting 3, 6, 8, or even 10 years for GT6 because I don't want PD employees overworking themselves.
Click to expand...

I agree 100%. Nowadays I keep reading stories of current-gen console games being rushed to meet deadlines because they can simply release patches later on. I grew up on cartridge games (Atari 2600 and the Nintendo Entertainment System) and in most cases companies were more than happy to push back a release date because game-breaking bugs were irrepairable and destroyed sales. At the same time, we didn't have the internet so we had to rely on video game magazines and our own patience just to see any developer progress and articles/interviews for a particular game.

To my understanding Sony has a history of rushing PD when it comes to GT because frankly GT is the killer app for the console racing market. GT5 continues to get updates and seasonal events even two years after its release and I hope that will take the pressure off the GT6 team because GT5 players will continue to be entertained, especially thanks to sites such as this one. I would love GT6 but it's not worth rushing it just to be a release-day title for the PS4 or whatever it will be called.
 
Last edited:
I'm against them working for too long, the quality of the game might suffer. GT5 though was a bit disappointing for me, they need to improve the realism with some hands on racing. :sly:

child-labor-india88_26_kM5mI_3868.jpg
 

Latest Posts

Back