Ex-werknemers Team Bondi willen studio kapotmaken

Team Bondi, de makers van L.A. Noire, zitten in de problemen. De afgelopen weken zijn zij vooral slecht in het nieuws gekomen. Zo zou iedere werknemer elke dag gigantisch moeten overwerken, was de sfeer een drama en stonden veel mensen hun naam niet op de eindcredits van de game. Dit heeft er onderandere toe geleid dat Rockstar niet meer samen wil werken met Team Bondi. De Lead Programmer van Team Bondi: Dave Heironymus, zegt dat dit allemaal een groter plan is om de studio kapot te maken. Hij probeert in een blogpost alles goed te maken.

“I know, I know. I’ll be labelled as [studio manager] ‘Brendan McNamara’s sock puppet’ or worse,” zei hij “You’ll just have to take my word that I’m doing this because I enjoy working at Team Bondi and don’t want to see it destroyed by anonymous ex-employees.”

Hij zei het volgende over de motivatie van de ex-medewerkers:

“What is the motivation behind these attacks on Team Bondi? If the motivation were to see improvement in the working conditions at Team Bondi, then I’m all for it… All of the management and staff at Team Bondi want to improve our processes so we can make even better games in a decent timeframe, without burning people out along the way However, some of these comments in recent stories seem to go beyond that. Some ex-employees who left the company years ago want to see Team Bondi destroyed. They want to see 35 game developers out of a job. That seems to me to be a less laudable motivation.”

De ex-werknemers klaagde vooral over de werktijden. Zo was het schijnbaar de laatste 1/2 jaar normaal om bijna 100 uur in de week te werken aan de game. Dave Heironymus brengt het allemaal wat genuanceerder:

”During the early years of L.A. Noire, we generally worked 9 to 6. Occasionally we’d do some late nights towards the end of a milestone, but by and large it was pretty smooth sailing. Unfortunately as time went on we failed to make as much progress as we’d have liked and there was growing pressure to work longer hours. There were times when it seemed too hard to keep on going. Work kept piling up, potential release dates slipped by, and frustration grew. At these times we lost people, who legitimately decided that they weren’t willing to keep on pushing. Recognising that working on the weekend was inevitable, Team Bondi put in place a scheme to (generously) reward employees for their weekend days spent at work. Additionally, in the last 6 months of the project a scheme was put in place to reward employees for staying back late on weeknights, and this resulted in myself and most of my team getting an additional 4 weeks of leave upon completion of LA Noire, on top of the weekend working payment.”

Was het dan allemaal wel zo slecht bij Team Bondi als gezegd? Het lijkt erop dat dit nog een lange strijd tussen de huidige werknemers en de ex-werknemers kan gaan worden. Toch is Dave het er mee eens dat ‘crunchtime’ (de tijd waarin de releasedate nadert en er vaak wordt overgewerkt) niet goed is.

”Saying all of this, no-one at Team Bondi is under the illusion that crunching is a good way to work and we’re actively working to learn from our mistakes for our next project. The people at Team Bondi are great to work with and I’m confident that we can make Team Bondi a leading game studio on the international stage.”