Rumors have surfaced that tell of mass layoffs at KMM Interactive, the Australian studio comprised of Brendan McNamara and many his former staffers from L.A. Noire developer Team Bondi. According to reports, KMM’s in-progress game, Whore of the Orient, was supposedly entered into an unannounced publishing agreement with Warner Bros. Interactive. But shortly before the holidays last year, the publisher pulled out, leaving KMM searching for a new home for the game.

A post on the NeoGAF forums offers up a quote that’s implied to be from the friend/significant other/roommate of a laid-off employee, though the details of this person’s identity are sparse:

“We had only been there for a few weeks and had just signed for an apartment, decorated the place and made ourselves comfortable before they hit us with the bad news. Sean’s final working day was to be the 21st of December, right before Christmas. Any new deal with a new publisher would come to late (expected: April) as our visas would be cancelled within 28 days of employment termination. Happy times! We celebrated Christmas with family and New Year watching the fireworks over the harbour, prepared our things for shipping the best we could and left Australia on the 14th of January, in the midst of a blazing heatwave.

As it stands now, we have no idea of where we might end up but I certainly plan to make the best of the snow and ice – whilst secretly hoping it all clears soon!”

Additionally, one of the original sites to report the rumors, MCV Pacific, has updated its post with a statement from KMM’s Doug Mitchell:

“Whore of the Orient is a unique and extraordinary story and game, and we are still actively pursuing the right investor to partner with.”

Not much is known about Whore of the Orient outside of the fact that it exists, and there was word that it was aiming for a 2015 release on next-gen systems. As for the game’s subject matter, when we first learned about it way back in August last year, it was said to take place in Shanghai in the 1930s, featuring “a group of Western cops hopelessly trying to keep the lid on and keep the peace.”

Other than that? Your guess is as good as mine. Layoffs in the game industry seem to be an all-too regular occurrence these days, and considering Team Bondi’s history—not to mention the potential difficulties in marketing a video game with the word “Whore” right there in the title—it’s not surprising that faith in this project might not be too high.

We’ll update this post with any other information if it surfaces.

[Via NeoGAF, MCV Pacific, Eurogamer]

2011’s L.A. Noire from Rockstar Games and Team Bondi was praised for its incredible facial animation and pretty-close-to-realistic display of human emotion, which allowed you as a detective to analyze people’s reactions and emotions when being questioned. These animations were all acted out by professional actors using technology called Motion Scan.

However, you can’t have perfect acting performances without some bloopers along the way. Thankfully, the company behind the technology, Depth Analysis, released a video of just such bloopers. Enjoy.

SURRENDER NOW AND NO ONE HAS TO RAHHHHEHEHHHHAAHH.

KMM Interactive, the studio made up of Brendan McNamara and some of the other remaining core members of Team Bondi, the folks who brought you L.A. Noire, has recently posted some job openings that suggest their next game, Whore of the Orient, will be finished and released in 2015.

Initially spotted by Superannuation (via Joystiq), the employee listings indicate that the game is a “narrative action adventure” that’s “similar in style to LA Noire,” and makes use of the familiar MotionScan technology that brought faces to ultra-realistic life in Team Bondi’s detective somewhat-point-and-click-but-not-really epic.

Full production on the game is indicated to commence full-stride as early as the beginning of 2013 and continue into mid-2015. With a year like that in mind for release, it’s feasible to believe that Whore of the Orient is a next-generation title for consoles and PC. But given the team’s history with L.A. Noire (which took seven years), what with delay after delay and handfuls of production issues… well, we wouldn’t blame you for being skeptical about a 2015 release.

To learn more about Whore of the Orient and its unique Shanghai setting, check out our initial summary article that details former director of development at TB Brendan McNamara’s pitch of the game, in that it’s “one of the great untold stories of the twentieth century.”

Deep, right? Heck, the game’s got “whore” in the title– you can’t get much bolder than that. Well, actually it was pretty bold to put Darksiders 2 on sale for $17 this week, which you should probably look into if you haven’t yet.

[via Superannuation, Joystiq]

Remember Team Bondi? You know, the Australian development studio that took roughly seven or eight years to finish L.A. Noire? And then folded up like a chair late last year after allegations of poor working conditions and their inability to secure funding for future projects?

Well apparently they’re back, and they’ve brought along the Whore of the Orient with them. More specifically, George Miller’s KMM Interactive Productions acquired the rights to most of Team Bondi’s assets (though Rockstar, the company’s publishing partner for L.A. Noire, retained the rights to that game’s IP). Way back in November, news came out that the studio’s embattled director, Brendan McNamara, was planning on a game called Whore of the Orient, and that KMM had the rights to that project.

Today, it seems, the project has reared its head in the form of an update to Team Bondi’s website. A description of the game reveals that the “Whore” in the title refers, in fact, to Shanghai circa 1936, keeping in line with the time period depicted in L.A. Noire. Not only that, but there’s also mention of the International Police Force, “a group of Western cops hopelessly trying to keep the lid on and keep the peace.” Sounds to me like this is going to be something along the lines of “L.A. Noire: Port of Call Shanghai.” While I’m intrigued, I was ultimately really turned off by L.A. Noire over halfway through…it didn’t feel so much like a game as it did some kind of interactive movie…and a really long, frustrating one at that. I’m hoping that this game can do something new and different.

The description also reveals that the IP is being developed for next-generation consoles and the PC—and hopefully it won’t take them quite as long this time around.

What do you think? Whore of the Orient? Or should it be BORE of the BORIENT? See what I did there?

Via OPM

Team Bondi is no more, as we all know, but the man who was the company’s face and eventual target—Brendan McNamara—has been the source of intense scrutiny and examination since allegations surfaced this year of an aggressive or unfair management style. Things didn’t help when only a few short months later the Australian development studio, responsible for one of the biggest gaming hits of the year, L.A. Noire, filed for bankruptcy and closed its doors.

Today, Eurogamer has posted an extensive and in-depth interview with McNamara, who spoke with the website at the Bradford Animation Festival 2011. The interview is pretty interesting, because at no point does the former studio head shy away from the accusations that have been leveled against him, speaking openly and candidly about how things went down.

Here, a few of the more illuminating and informative excerpts from the interview, in which McNamara weighs in on his bad reputation in the world of gaming, and where he thinks things went wrong with Team Bondi.

On why Team Bondi wasn’t able to sign another project after L.A. Noire:

“Mainly, I’d say because we got a lot of bad press about what it was like to work with us and our conditions. That, obviously, didn’t come at the right time. To do a deal for a major video game probably takes about a year. We didn’t start running around doing that stuff until well after the game was finished. That’s the problem when a game is all consuming and you need to get out there and do whatever you need to do to get people to know it and interested. They would probably be the two main things, I’d say.”

On why Rockstar chose not to pursue working with Team Bondi on a sequel to L.A. Noire:

“We’re all pretty volatile. We had our ups and downs in the making of it. But we’re all big boys. We were all trying to make something that was financially risky. I’ve known Sam [Houser, co-founder and president of Rockstar Games] for maybe fifteen years. We go a long way. We still talk when we need to. Anything that was part of the process is all water under the bridge to me.”

In response to Rockstar taking over the franchise, and whether or not he’s bitter about not working on the IP any longer:

“I feel like they were as much a part of it as we were and they hung in there for a long time when it wasn’t going anywhere. It was never Duke Nukem, but there were periods when it was slow. When you’re in the middle of making games it’s like watching paint dry. You can write as much script as you want but then the actual process is a bit like watching paint dry. I’m not bitter about that at all. They really hung in there with this and we made something great and we made something great together. Hopefully it will stand the test of time. Why would you be bitter about the opportunity? Not many people get to make that kind of game.”

On his bad reputation and where the bad reputation has come from:

“[…] when I read about Steve Jobs—I don’t know if you’re reading the book—I’ve never said anything like that to people. And I’m the bully of the games business. […]I’ve got people who’ve worked with me for sixteen years […] It’s come from people who didn’t enjoy the process of making the game. And that’s fair enough. Everybody has their own opinion. The way I look at it now is that people can say whatever they like, and they will. So I might as well just wear it. That’s where it’s at.”

On the varying reactions to crunch in games in America versus Australia:

“I remember just before E3, Naughty Dog, there was a story in the LA Times about people working there three days straight, and they were walking around like drunks in the office and people were screaming at each other. When you’ve been up for three days you do that. Nobody stayed up for three days making L.A. Noire. I don’t even think there was an all-nighter on it. I’m not saying that stuff is good and people should do it anyway. But they were doing that, and they said it was going to be like that crunch until the end of the game. In America, people expect you to work hard to see results.

“I’m not justifying crunch for video games. If there’s a smarter way of doing it we should all do it a smarter way. But the backlash to us compared to the backlash to other people was pretty remarkable, I thought.”

Make sure to head over and read the interview in its entirety, as there’s plenty more to check out about this controversial figure in gaming. And when you’re done with that, take a look at this other Eurogamer post, in which McNamara hints at a new project he’s shopping around to developers…

Via Eurogamer

When I first saw the previews for L.A. Noire from Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive, I nearly pissed my pants. The game looked so awesome, and right up my alley.

But when I finally played it, I was actually pretty disappointed. Gone was the freedom and creativity that came with Red Dead Redemption, the game that converted me to Rockstar, and the interrogation mechanic was severely flawed and made for a frustrating and non-fun game experience.

Still, I recognized that there were a lot of solid elements that still made for a great gaming experience—and Take-Two has recognized that as well, despite the game’s developer, Team Bondi filing for bankruptcy recently.

According to a post on Eurogamer, during an investor call yesterday, Take-Two’s CEO Strauss Zelnick discussed the importance that franchise will have for the company, noting that it was their “most successful new release” in this fiscal year:

“This groundbreaking title from Rockstar has set a new standard for video games with cinematic art and has become an important franchise for the company,” he’s quoted as saying.

I’d say that given this statement, sequels and/or follow-ups set in the L.A. Noire-verse would be likely. I mean, you don’t talk about how important a franchise is and then close the door on it. The thing made money, and has tons of potential. Here’s hoping they keep going with it—but fix the interrogation stuff so that “wrong” answers don’t make you want to shove the controller through a wall.

I’m still picking drywall out of the controller’s many small crevices.

Via Eurogamer

Today, Rockstar announced the release date for the “Complete Edition” of L.A. Noire on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles: North America will get it on November 15, while it hits all over the world on November 18.

Like the PC version, the Complete Edition will have the full game, including all of the DLC that’s been released for the title: “The Nicholson Electroplating” Arson case, “Reefer Madness” Vice case, “The Consul’s Car” Traffic case, “The Naked City “ Vice case, “A Slip of the Tongue” Traffic case, the Badge Pursuit Challenge, and all the weapons and outfits that have been so far made available.

While the press release doesn’t include pricing information, a post on Joystiq has confirmed that the release will be $49.99. Bam.

If you’re an L.A. Noire fan, you better jump on this when you can. Now that developer Team Bondi has closed its doors, even though Rockstar owns the IP, don’t count on any more games in this series for quite some time…

The economy’s in the toilet, a fact we all know. And despite the fact that people are still paying plenty of cash for video games, other economic forces continue to punish the industry just like every other. This is being felt especially hard in the Australian video games developing scene, where KMM Brisbane has reportedly shut down less than a year after it opened its doors, Gamasutra reports.

The company—which was rumored to have absorbed laid off staff of the also-shuttered Australian developer Team Bondi—was working on the video game adaptation of Happy Feet 2. According to the Gamasutra post, the studio failed to secure other projects after Happy Feet 2’s completion, leading to 40 or so employees losing their jobs. The post also quotes Jason Stark, the studio’s art director, who commented that the lack of tax breaks for Australian video game studios and the strong Australian dollar have kept the country’s developers from being quite as attractive for publishers when compared with overseas developers who are able to keep expenses lower.

“The writing has been on the wall for a long time,” Stark is quoted as saying. “But it’s maybe a little surprising the extent to which it has happened. We’ve all expected the industry to be shrinking—it’s been bad times. It’s gone from being a mild contraction to being pretty much obliterated.”

Let’s hope that this is the last such story we hear about in a while, and that holiday game sales will buoy the industry a bit. Our sympathies go out to everyone affected by this latest closure.

Via Gamasutra

About a month ago, we reported that Team Bondi, the Australian developer responsible for creating L.A. Noire, had gone into “administration,” which is the non-American-English term for “bankruptcy.” Now, sometimes companies can emerge from bankruptcy-type proceedings with a new organization and a plan to satisfy debts to creditors—but that isn’t the case with Team Bondi.

Today, it’s been reported all over the gaming-web that the developer responsible for one of 2011’s biggest cross-platform hits has closed its doors for good. According to a post on Edge, the accounting firm deVriesTayeh that had been appointed by the company’s creditors submitted forms that a liquidator had now been appointed. The liquidator will, well, liquidate the company’s assets in an effort to satisfy as much of the company’s debt as possible.

Earlier reports from this summer had said that much of Team Bondi’s staff had been offered positions with KMM, the production company responsible for the Happy Feet franchise of movies and games, but there’s no official word on who took those jobs and what’s happened to the majority of the staff.

It’s questionable what could’ve been salvaged at Team Bondi after the extensive reports and allegations against the company came to light earlier this year. And the fact that it took the company a full seven years to make this one game might point to its own set of problems about management of time and resources, so the fact that it’s closed its doors might not be as much of a surprise as it would’ve been otherwise.

The Edge post notes that Brendan McNamara, the head of the studio who had been the target of many of the accusations of poor management practices, will be at the BAF Game Conference in London next month to discuss how MotionScan, the techniques that allowed for such fine motion capture in L.A. Noire, was developed. Perhaps we’ll get more answers to some of the unsolved mysteries about the fall of the company then.

Via Edge

The latest developer to be hit with accusations of unfair treatment of employees is German studio Crytek, and news of the story is making the gaming press rounds. An anonymous Tumblr blog has been posted that lambasts the Crysis 2 developer for unlawful hiring and firing policies, where senior staffers were made to fear for their jobs with threats of being replaced by junior staff members.

Some damning testimony from the Tumblr:

“The atmosphere in the office for a couple of years now has meant that staff feel uncertain of their futures within the company and either jump ship, or get fired unlawfully and are forced to legally settle their dispute in the courts. Several ex-Crytek employees have already been successful in mounting legal battles and won settlements, yet Crytek still treat staff as disposable pieces of meat to be discarded at will.”

I don’t know why “pieces of meat” always get such a bad rap in situations like this. I rarely dispose of my pieces of meat. I usually savor and value them immensely. I think “pieces of garbage” would be more appropriate. But anyway, I digress.

Another illuminating passage from the anonymous blog:

“The work of all individuals responsible for the games should be immensely proud of what they have achieved under the circumstances of a bullying mentality given at CEO level. Monthly meetings were met with speeches worthy of YouTube in hilarity with lines such as ‘You should all be so proud to work for Crytek,’ yet demanding six months of crunch time due to project management failures. This caused certain members of staff to suffer both in medical and personal ways.”

Now, much like Team Bondi’s Brendan McNamara spoke to IGN about the allegations leveled against his studio, so too has Crytek’s co-founder Avni Yerli been interviewed by Develop in response to these accusations.

Specifically, Yerli challenges the blogger’s assertions that several ex-employees have won legal disputes against the company, saying:

“…the most important thing to say is that nine resigned, one was a contractor, and four were released. Two of those ended in court cases which we won. So never have we lost a case in accordance to labour cause…‘Won’ the lawsuits isn’t the right term. I don’t want to make glory out of this. We are not proud of ‘winning’. This is something sad that happened between us and people we used to work with. We haven’t been found to have unlawfully fired these people, but we don’t want to go to court with our co-workers either. Respecting our staff is crucial at Crytek.”

An important difference between Yerli’s responses in Develop and those that McNamara offered to IGN is that Yerli is denying, while McNamara more or less tacitly admitted to being “passionate” about his “vision,” and other euphemistic ways of saying that he wasn’t a fun person to work for. Yerli’s flat-out denial and explanation does make it seem a somewhat fuzzier situation than the more “black-and-white” situation that faced Team Bondi, which is now going through administration (bankruptcy for us Yanks).

We’ll see what happens from here. Another key difference between this situation and Team Bondi’s is that several former employees came forward to corroborate the allegations against McNamara’s company, while so far only one person has made accusations against Crytek—and it’s not even clear as to what relationship, if any, this anonymous blogger has with the company.

Via HireAndFireCrytek and Develop

We knew this was coming. After reports of poor working conditions a few months ago, as well as rumors of acquisition by Happy Feet studio KMM, L.A. Noire developer Team Bondi has gone into administration. For all us American folks, that’s the European (and UK, Australia, and New Zealand, etc.) equivalent of bankruptcy, with a few minor differences. In short, it means that Team Bondi’s debts outweigh their assets.

To sort things out, creditor-appointed administrators from the accounting firm deVriesTayeh are going to be figuring out ways to best satisfy the company’s debts. The difference between this scenario and that of filing for Chapter 11 in the US (based on my limited understanding of my brief research this morning), is that Chapter 11 filings allow the company’s management to stay in place while the company is restructured—again, with the purpose of best satisfying debts to creditors.

While it’s possible for companies to come out of Chapter 11 to start anew, it doesn’t seem as though Team Bondi’s administration period will be so kind to them. According to a post on SmartCompany, calls made to Team Bondi’s office were met with reports that the company was no longer there. In addition, it’s still unclear as to whether or not the company’s staff were actually absorbed by KMM.

All told, this is a pretty sad end to a company that delivered one of 2011’s biggest hits.

Team Bondi—we hardly knew ye.

Via SmartCompany

Rumors of a forthcoming acquisition of embattled game developer Team Bondi seem to have been confirmed today. Develop reports that KMM, the production studio behind the in-progress Happy Feet 2 movie sequel, have taken on Team Bondi following weeks of allegations and scandal.

To offer a quick review of the events so far: shortly after the release of Team Bondi’s L.A. Noire, allegations of unfair and abusive working conditions were leveled against the company, accusing studio-runner Brendan McNamara of a harsh and unreasonable management style as well as a constant state of crunch. Scores of employees are said to have fled the company during L.A. Noire’s seven-year development time because of the alleged bad conditions—many of whom wound up at KMM, in fact. After the accusations were reported, the IGDA launched an investigation into the company, the results of which have yet to be reported. Last week, it was reported that McNamara took a tour of KMM, and that was when rumors of the possible acquisition began to swirl.

Now, reports the article from Develop, Team Bondi held a meeting with its staff offering two choices: positions within KMM (which also has a game studio, in addition to its movie and animation production studios), or taking a severance package. The source Develop cites reports that KMM now holds Team Bondi’s assets and intellectual properties (not including L.A. Noire, which belongs to Rockstar Games). As to whether or not Team Bondi has gone bankrupt is not yet known.

Adding yet more drama to the situation is the presence of the aforementioned former-Team Bondi staff-members now at KMM. What effect will McNamara’s move to KMM have on these employees? In fact, last week’s reports indicated that KMM was having difficulty meeting its deadline for Happy Feet 2, and that director George Miller was impressed with McNamara’s reputation for commitment to meeting deadlines and goals—no matter the cost.

While the acquisition still hasn’t been formally or officially announced, it seems all but certain at this point. We’ll update more as the story develops.

I’m trying to picture this situation. Now, I’m going to offer a dramatic inner monologue, written in the voice of a fictional former Team Bondi employee, now happily at KMM, working on a movie about dancing penguins:

Phew! I sure am glad I no longer work in a harsh and abusive video game development studio! Crikey (they’re all Australian), I sure did miss my wife and young children. Working such long hours for such a thankless and abusive boss was the pits!

Wait…what’s that I hear? That voice! I recognize that voice! I must be having one of those “waking nightmares” the doctors keep telling me about! Just keep it cool, keep it together…have a drink of Fosters that you keep in your desk drawer…(ALL AUSTRALIANS DRINK FOSTERS ALWAYS)

Those footsteps…that bald head…good lord, it’s him…he’s here…

I feel like some kinda bloomin’ boomerang, I do! I’d better go eat a steak from Outback Steakhouse, because I’m Australian, and that’s what all Australians do when we’re upset.

And scene.

Via Develop

Today, rumors around the fate of Team Bondi have taken a surprising twist. According to anonymous sources within Dr. D, the animation studio at director George Miller’s production company, Team Bondi’s Brendan McNamara is in talks to have his company absorbed by Miller’s game studio, KMM Games. Miller is the director of the Happy Feet film franchise, and KMM is working on the game adaptation of the in-production Happy Feet 2.

Remember Happy Feet? The movie that managed to blend March of the Penguins with Footloose, Lord of the Rings, Westside Story, and An Inconvenient Truth? Yeah.

According to a post on Kotaku, which cites anonymous sources, Team Bondi’s studio head was taking a tour of Miller’s studio yesterday—an appearance which caused some friction with former Team Bondi employees currently at Dr. D:

“Brendan McNamara was seen walking through the buildings of Dr. D yesterday, where Happy Feet 2 is being made… Because Dr. D is filled with former Team Bondi employees who left due to the abusive work conditions, this unexpected visit was quite… unsettling—to put it mildly.”

The Kotaku post goes on to explain that McNamara’s reputation for sticking hard to deadlines and refusing to bend his creative vision impressed Miller—which points to how much fun it must be to work for him.

The source at Dr. D puts the potential acquisition bluntly:

“The word is going round that Team Bondi is being folded into KMM studios, Team Bondi is pretty much doomed after the scandal and can’t find any new supporters, so by doing this they can hide their name.”

Goddamn!

Kotaku tries to confirm the Dr. D source’s claims with a different anonymous source at Miller’s KMM Game studio, and reports that while the rumor couldn’t be confirmed, the KMM source “would be surprised if it wasn’t true.”

Another interesting facet to this story, says the Kotaku post, is that Miller has had to put work on a new Mad Max movie and game on hold. Why? He has to put all of his resources toward finishing Happy Feet 2 by a deadline that “many within Dr. D believe the team can’t make.” Could McNamara be just the taskmaster they’re looking for?

I’m kind of loving this, for many reasons. Happy Feet was a weird fucking movie. And McNamara has been made out to be some kind of super-villain in recent weeks, after the reports that Team Bondi’s employees were worked too hard. And now there’s talk of his studio being absorbed by the guy who’s sweating over making a sequel to a movie about a tap-dancing environmentalist penguin?

WHAT

THE

FUCK?

This is straight out of comic books, I swear. I’m half expecting the next news report to be of human-kangaroo-penguin hybrids being bred to finish work on Happy Feet 2 and to develop the company’s next game, Antarctica Noire.

Via Kotaku

Another week, another industry abuse allegation.  Today, games.on.net published a story by Tim Colwill detailing the abusive work conditions of the New Zealand arm of Gameloft, a worldwide mobile gaming company with a looooong list of credits to their name (including the above-pictured Oregon Trail mobile game).  Glenn Watson, the former Head Studio Programmer in the company’s Auckland branch, makes some troubling accusations regarding the studio’s practices.

“Some weeks I was work­ing 100 to 120 hours a week,” Watson is quoted as saying.  “Starting at 9:30 AM, going home at 2:30 AM, and then com­ing back into the office at 8:30 AM to start work again was not unusual.”

Watson said that the company set unrealistic and unnecessary deadlines in order to “encourage a frantic sense of constant crunch,” the industry term for working overlong hours in order to meet deadlines.  In fact, Watson says that the practice came to be known as “golding” within the studio, “a reference to being constantly told that they were under crunch time to make gold on the game.”

Watson describes one particularly troubling incident where he tried to stand up for his coworkers, only to be shot down by the studio:

“It was 11:30 at night,” says Glenn, “everyone had been there since 8:30 in the morning, and even our most reli­able pro­gram­mers were mak­ing mis­takes. I went up to see the stu­dio man­ager and the pro­du­cer and said ‘Listen, these guys are mak­ing mis­takes, they are tired, and they need to go home’. The producer replied that they needed everyone to be there, and the deadline had to be met. Later, I found out that one of the junior pro­gram­mers had actually worked a 24-hour straight stint in the office.”

At a certain point, Watson couldn’t go any further, describing his breaking point to Colwill:

“There were other times when I would be called back into the office at 11:30 PM by the studio producer, only to head home again at 2:30 AM,” he explained. “It was after I worked four consecutive weeks of fourteen-hour days—including weekends–that I realized I needed to resign.”

Colwill’s article notes that Watson was motivated to speak out by the recent furor surrounding the allegations against Australia’s Team Bondi, saying that “he and developers like him in the industry should not have to ‘put up with the crap’ any further.”

Unlike IGN’s Team Bondi exposé, which featured reactions to allegations by studio head Brendan McNamara, games.on.net’s article sought comment from Gameloft and was met with silence.

While one possible reaction to these kinds of allegations are simply, “well, quit your job, dummy,” being stuck in a bad situation can often alter a person’s perspective, almost giving them a distorted kind of “Stockholm Syndrome.”  Many of the folks working at these developers are probably desperate to hold on to these positions, having finally gotten their foot in the door in the games industry.  But, from my own ongoing experience working as a writer, I can sympathize–there’s something about being “in it” that makes it hard to make that leap.  I had a hard time quitting a newspaper job that was working me to the bone.  While I wouldn’t go so far as to say I worked 100 hour weeks, I was definitely underpaid and overworked.  Part of what kept me there was the thinking that, 1) this was my “dream” job (getting paid to write), and 2) there’s nothing else out there in this field, and I don’t want to be a pariah.  So, from a personal perspective, I can understand how these kinds of abuses can keep happening.

It’s very possible that this isn’t the last such story of abuse that we’ll hear as the weeks go on.  Could these stories be the catalyst for sweeping changes to how the games development industry does business?  Or are these stories merely outliers, unique to their own companies?  Time will tell.

Via games.on.net

An interesting new wrinkle has arisen in the unfolding Team Bondi story with a blog post from Lead Gameplay Designer Dave Heironymus on Gamasutra. In his post, Heironymus fires back at accusations that Team Bondi and founder/studio head Brendan McNamara had exacted unreasonable demands on their development team during the production of L.A. Noire, the results of which are a pending investigation by the International Game Developers Association, or IGDA.  The post itself largely consists of a letter Heironymus sent to the IGDA.

Tagging himself as one of the “Aussie Five” who were first hired at Team Bondi’s Sydney studio, as well as facetiously calling himself “part of the ‘management goon squad,’ Heironymus writes that “the recent coverage on working conditions has been very one-sided. At no point did the journalist who wrote the original IGN piece ask me for my side of the story.”

Heironymus describes the working conditions at the studio and explains how they evolved into extended periods of “crunch,” the industry term for working far longer hours than normal in order to meet deadlines and milestones:

“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. It was not any one person’s fault that we weren’t making progress, responsibility for that has to rest with the entire team. 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.”

He adds that a “generous” pay reward scheme was put in place to compensate for weekend work, and that “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 L.A. Noire, on top of the weekend working payment.”

Heironymus estimates that towards the end of the project he was working “around 65 hours per week,” and that “apart from a few isolated cases…this was the highest my regular hours ever got to, and at no time did I ever work 100 hours a week.  If you think about it, that’s 14 hours per day, 7 days per week, which is huge.”  He goes on to write that it’s possible other employees may have worked 100 hours a week, but that “those sorts of hours were not encouraged. In fact, if someone on my team was working that hard I would have done my best to stop them.”

He adds:

“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.”

In the introduction before posting his letter to the IGDA, Heironymus makes some bold claims as to the motivations of those who spoke to IGN about their story:

“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.”

Here are a few things to consider in regards to Heironymus’s letter and post.

First, while I will definitely grant that IGN’s piece had a bias towards those making accusations, it was not “one-sided” in the least.  That’s because half the article was intercut with responses from studio head Brendan McNamara himself.  Throughout the piece, IGN posted McNamara’s response to the allegations–allegations that he often shrugged off as a standard part of the business.

Second, many of the accusations revolve around McNamara’s unstable and unpredictable management style, one saying that McNamara was “the angriest person” he’d ever met.

“It’s one thing for him to be angry behind closed doors, but it was incredibly common for him to scream at whoever was pissing him off in the middle of the office,” said the source in IGN’s article.

McNamara’s response was, “Am I passionate about making the game? Absolutely. Do you think that I’m going to voice my opinion? Absolutely. But I don’t think that’s verbal abuse.”

Interestingly, Heironymus doesn’t touch this one with a ten foot pole in his response.  Admission through omission?

Third, it seems that Heironymus is making a bogus claim when he says that the accusers in this case simply want to destroy the studio and “see 35 game developers out of a job.”  I find it hard to believe that 11 people would get together to plot revenge just to bring their former employer down.

Frankly, while Heironymus’s letter is a response to the allegations, it isn’t much of a defense.  It seems–to my eyes–to tacitly admit that what the accusers said were true, making claims that the ex-employees are monsters because they’re airing the company’s dirty laundry in public, instead of just keeping quiet and letting things stay as they were.

I can’t know what conditions were like there, since I wasn’t there.  And I don’t believe that Heironymus is writing this letter under duress as “Brendan McNamara’s sock puppet,” as he says people will accuse him of doing.  I honestly believe that Heironymus has the best intentions for his studio in mind with this letter and post.  However, I have a feeling that this letter and its somewhat lackluster defense of the extended crunches that went into L.A. Noire won’t do much to persuade the IGDA to drop their investigation.

Via Gamasutra and IGN

Developmental hell has alluded to Rockstar having no future plans of working with Team Bondi, the developer of LA Noire, even with the title’s apparent success. Despite issues over the horrid working conditions of Team Bondi employees, Rockstar was seemingly more upset over creative differences and having to overrule LA Noire managerial decisions. Two sources from Team Bondi’s development team have come forward with information about the relationship and reported break-up of the two companies.

One source claims that Team Bondi is looking for a new publisher for their next project because ties with Rockstar have been stressed. The source claims that Studio Head of Team Bondi Brendan McNamara attributes the game’s success to his creative vision, but without the financial support of Rockstar his company would have gone under years ago. The source also says that it was Rockstar’s brand and their excellent marketing campaign that made LA Noire the success it is today.

The other source says that at one point Rockstar was thinking of changing Team Bondi to something of a “Rockstar Sydney,” but that never came to fruition due to bad relations with management. The source claims that Rockstar was frustrated over the direction Team Bondi was taking and had to become increasingly influential over the last two years of LA Noire‘s development. In turn, Team Bondi began to resent the creative decisions Rockstar had made.

This seems like a bad relationship that has ended in a bad break-up, except there are tons of dudes involved. I feel like they should meet somewhere in Scandinavia with weapons and work out their differences there. That would be my proposal to them, but I do think HR would have some issues with my plan.

via IGN

Waves of criticism and complaints have prompted the International Game Developer’s Association to cast a critical eye on Team Bondi and its founder, Brendan McNamara.

“Certainly reports of 12-hour a day, lengthy crunch time, if true, are absolutely unacceptable and harmful to the individuals involved, the final product, and the industry as a whole,” IGDA Board of Directors Chair Brian Robbins said.

Robbins is avoiding any outright damning comments until they get a clearer picture of what actually went on at Team Bondi during L.A. Noire’s development. To do that, they’re soliciting information from Team Bondi employees.

“We encourage any Team Bondi employee and/or family member to email qol@igda.org with comments about the recent past and current situation – positive or negative,” Robbins said.

This happened in response to a piece written by Andrew McMillen that characterized Team Bondi Founder Brendean McNamara as particularly uncaring about the harsh nature of his work environment.

“If you wanted to do a nine-to-five job, you’d be in another business,” McNamara said

In addition, McNamara is not remorseful about what both he and his employees went through in the development of L.A. Noire.

“I’m not in any way upset or disappointed by what I’ve done, and what I’ve achieved. I’m not even remotely defensive about it. I think, if people want to do what I’ve done – to come here and do that – then good luck to them,” McNamara said. “If people who’ve left the company want to go out there and have some success, then good luck to them. If they don’t want to do that with me, that’s fine, too. It’s like musical differences in a rock and roll band, right? People say they do want to do it; some don’t.”

It’s becoming an unfortunate routine for Rockstar employees to revolt violently following the release of any game. Odds are we’ll hear of the hellish conditions at Rockstar Studios after Max Payne 3 comes out (if it ever does).

[via Develop Online, IGN]

Over 100 developers behind L.A. Noire are claiming their names are completely absent from both the in-game credits and the game’s instruction manual. To rectify this problem, the snubbed developers have created their own credit roll and hosted it on LA Noire Credits.

The site also provides some explanation behind the website, which amounts to way more than vanity. As they explain, a credit in a game allows the developers to credibly list that work on a resume. Without a credit, whatever work they put into a game is essentially nonexistent, which can prevent them from securing future work.

They also explain the circumstances around their exclusion. Apparently, a substantial portion of the uncredited developers were victims of redundancy as development progressed. They were let go from Team Bondi against their wishes, and since they weren’t present in the final months of development, were excluded from the final tally of developers.

According to guidelines laid out by the IGDA (International Game Developer’s Association), credits should be awarded regardless of HR issues – basically, even if you have to fire someone for getting drunk on the job and exposing himself, you need to credit him/her for their work.

If true, it’s great that these guys are taking a stand for their rights. If not… well, you guys made me write all this stuff for nothing! Jerks.