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Jason Schreier: Naughty Dog enacts mandatory overtime for staff in order to finish Integalactic internal demo

Clear said:
Its mentioned its an internal demo; i.e. its a milestone deliverable.

Which means if it fails to hit its date, then the entire project could get shit-canned and a lot of staff laid-off while they pivot onto something better.

This is how corporate dev works.
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I think that's what you should take from it - the game is not in a good place right now.
 
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I'm just gonna leave this here....

I actually feel bad about them having to work extra(you gotta do what the project demands sometimes)...this isn't a finger to ND or their employees.....but I do recall some things so I'll leave it here for posterity.
 
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Sethbacca said:
Bro, you literally said they should change their business practices to avoid getting death threats. I just can't with the gaslighting here.
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I literally didn't... unless you think a different marketing strategy for a new project is a Business practice... if so, then honestly, there's not much I can do to help in that scenario.

I think you lit your own gas, cause nothing you are saying is actually what i said... like at all
 
Botan32 said:
Actually, Jason says the exact opposite.
Barlog's game is also a PS5 game.

And besides, we won't have any PS6 games for a long time since everything will be cross-gen.
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I believe those 2 would be ps6 or cross gen titles, not like case they came first to ps5 then year letter to ps6,( I am not saying there are not coming to ps5,) they current development speed for those 2 games clearly indicate that they won't come before 2028 and ps6 will released late 2027 or early 2028.
 
SlimySnake said:
Salaried employees (in america) at least dont get paid for overtime. It seems like ND is tracking overtime on internal spreadsheets which means they are planning on paying them for that time spent.

I dont care for working overtime, but i routinely work late, work nights, and weekends at the end of every quarter. It is exhausting putting in 12-14 hour days for a week or two at a time, so i understand the hate for crunch. Especially if unpaid like mine.

But these guys have literally coasted for five years. They were asked to work 10 hour days from october to middle december (crunch is over now that the demo is done). Working 10 hour days after you wasted five years of company time isnt really something you should bitch to the press about.
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Salaried people dont get OT pay in Canada either. If it happens it's going to be very rare.

For those of you who live in Europe or Japan etc.... how often do salaried people get OT there? Is it common? Rare? Never?

Salaried people dont get hourly OT pay because the job itself is hard to break down into hourly wage production like a blue collar guy working on something specific or a bus driver. Also, salaried people get that money guaranteed whether it's an easy day or a tough day, or even if we are sick and dont show up at all. Hourly people get OT pay because it's expected if you work more, you produce more, so you get more $$$. And definitely a lot of hourly paid people dont get comped pay if they miss work. So in return when they work more, they get more while a salaried guy gets the same stable wage all year.

Sounds like these desk job coders want OT pay on top of their big pay.
 
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StueyDuck said:
I literally didn't... unless you think a different marketing strategy for a new project is a Business practice... if so, then honestly, there's not much I can do to help in that scenario.
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This must be a bit, there's no way you actually just said this seriously.
 
Ah, the programmer's end of year crunch. In the middle of one, fortunately we have until February 2026 to update the ONC certification.
 
Druckmann and Sony needs to fire these lazy spineless dirty little rats that go crying to Schreier the second they experience any hardship.

You don't work for some bum indie studio with no expectations, you're at the premier Sony studio aiming for Game of the year, work for it pussies, want it.
 
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Msamy said:
I believe those 2 would be ps6 or cross gen titles, not like case they came first to ps5 then year letter to ps6,( I am not saying there are not coming to ps5,) they current development speed for those 2 games clearly indicate that they won't come before 2028 and ps6 will released late 2027 or early 2028.
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There won't be any full PS6 games with this kind of budget for years.

And with the current situation, even less so.
With concerns about DRAM, SSDs, the economic climate...

It will be cross-gen or PS5.
But there's no chance of it being a PS6 exclusive.

But the most logical thing would be PS5 and a later release on PS6.
 
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Fingers crossed Sony hates it and tells them to cancel it so the bald headed demon lady loses the role of the main character.

I despise looking at her face!
 
Botan32 said:
Actually, Jason says the exact opposite.
Barlog's game is also a PS5 game.

And besides, we won't have any PS6 games for a long time since everything will be cross-gen.
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The line between generations is dead. Consoles will just act like PCs from now on and games will scale to the console you have just like PC games.
 
The bit about making arrangements for people to watch their pets because they have to show up to work 5 days a week is hilarious. Who's gonna watch my heckin pupperino?!

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StreetsofBeige said:
Salaried people dont get OT pay in Canada either. If it happens it's going to be very rare.

For those of you who live in Europe or Japan etc.... how often do salaried people get OT there? Is it common? Rare? Never?

Salaried people dont get hourly OT pay because the job itself is hard to break down into hourly wage production like a blue collar guy working on something specific or a bus driver. Also, salaried people get that money guaranteed whether it's an easy day or a tough day, or even if we are sick and dont show up at all. Hourly people get OT pay because it's expected if you work more, you produce more, so you get more $$$. And definitely a lot of hourly paid people dont get comped pay if they miss work. So in return when they work more, they get more while a salaried guy gets the same stable wage all year.

Sounds like these desk job coders want OT pay on top of their big pay.
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im a desk job coder and im currently posting on gaf during my work lol

the thing is these companies were taking advantage of their workers forcing them to do 12-14 hour days for weeks if not months. thats 9AM-11PM. I have done that a lot over the years and its mentally and physically exhausting. But what ND has been asked to do is 10 hour days. So 9-7PM for a few weeks. Thats not really that bad. Especially considering the fact that they have done no crunch in the last five years. the only game they shipped in the last five years was another studio's game which they only took over after that studio's execs rage quit over ND's meddling.

So a few weeks to get a demo done and then get paid for those extra 10 hours of extra time is really not that bad. Cant believe anyone would go to the press over it.

If I was schrier i would do a different story. A story on neil and the development of this game which seems to have been a clusterfuck since the very beginning. no one should take 5 years to get a demo done. Especially not their flagship studio. this is a management issue.
 
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Breaking news! Game dev studio asked their workers to work betwen 2 to 4 extra hours a day during a few weeks because were late to reach a milestione after having missed multiple ones in this project. C'mon, this is really news worthy? This is just common sense to bring back the project on track, it isn't even crunch.

This isn't crunch, crunch is to work way more hours even during weekends and to do it during months.

BennyBlanco said:
The bit about making arrangements for people to watch their pets because they have to show up to work 5 days a week is hilarious. Who's gonna watch my heckin pupperino?!
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Fun fact: devs are allowed to bring their dogs to the ND office.

SlimySnake said:
So the game is in development hell which is why it didnt show up at the TGA this year.
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SlimySnake said:
this really depends on whether or not Sony likes the demo. For all we know Sony would give feedback which would either cancel the game or force a redesign that would add years to the project.

If sony is forcing them to get a demo done then the game is in really bad shape and the execs over at sony are not happy. or were not happy with whatever they saw before the demo was commissioned.
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Nah, they aren't in development hell.

After having missed a few milestones they've been asked to work a few extra hours during a few weeks to catch up and don't miss another one they were going to miss. This is just normal business and in fact it's surprising that they were allowed to miss the previous ones without doing some extra hours.

And no, the article didn't say they were planning to show it in the TGA this year. It said that at the end of its month they have a milestone that (like in the case of most milestones) includes having a demo of the game that gets reviewed by the higher ups. This demo is to see what the team did in that milestone: the features and content they implemented, the current state of some specific things, how it feels at this point, etc. It's a common practice to show the rest of the team and specially the bosses what everybody did and how the project is progressing. It doesn't imply at all anything bad, and very rarely causes them to make a project reboot or cancellation.

It just helps them to see in what state they have the game, specially because often in this demos is when for the first time they assmeble some pieces of the project together that until then were developed separatedly, and help them see if the stuff they did until then is working or if it needs some extra iteraton, and to better see if they need to focus more or less in this or that area during the next milestone etc.

Msamy said:
If what Jason said is true this game won't come out before 2028, clearly ps6 title
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What Jason said is that the game is planned to release mid 2027. Meaning, before PS6 release and clearly not a PS6 title.
 
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asdasdasdbb said:
I think that's what you should take from it - the game is not in a good place right now.
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Hard to tell really. Trouble is most people have never done game-dev and are clueless about how unpredictable it is, and which parts of the process eat all the time.

I get the sense that a lot of folks think its like assembling a very big jigsaw puzzle, where its just a matter of assembling parts to get to a desired picture at the end. This is very far from the reality, and the greater the ambition and the higher the expectations you have to live up to the tougher the task becomes.

The real killer is the bigger the team, the greater the need to be tightly adherent to timescales and targets, because your cash burn-rate per month is higher, and you have marketing and that whole final-push spend dependent on being able to deliver time and date to the market.

I wouldn't say indie is "easier" per se, but it disincludes a lot of the external pressures that can often lead to "quick fixes" being made in haste to appease some external stake-holder.

Bottom line is big games can take years to make, and along that lengthy time-line new ideas crop up, bad ideas are revealed and stuff is constantly tried and tested. You have to craft the experience, it can't be pre-planned and prototyped to perfection. But all the time money is burned through, so there have to be deadlines and target dates.

Something has got to give. You can compromise, and cut scope and features, in order to hit the milestones but its far from ideal. Alternatively, you can sprint when you need to, because although that sucks too, at least there's the possibility of getting a better result at the end which is obviously beneficial to staff and public alike.
 
StueyDuck said:
But how much of this crunch now is because of all their blue hairs are taking mental health days, fighting the chuds on twitter, and work simply isn't being completed on time.

Old weenie boy will also fails to mention that these west coast crazies are being paid absolute trucks of money.
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So much this, do your work 9-5 and stop comparing dicks in the women's bathrooms and you may get it done on time, also as you rightly pointed out, these fucks are getting paid a fortune and Boohoo'ing over an additional 8hrs sat at their desks prodding their waifu dolls.. fuck off and go work on a building site in winter and see how lucky you are
 
Glad they are doing crunch again

They need to ignore woke retards like Schreir who have never worked a day in their life and would have zero clue how to make a game truly great. Naughty Dog never needed to change their work ethic. Don't listen to any retards from the purple bubble
 
Love how the stories of E3 days of old were all like "...and we had to get a demo ready for the show in time" & "we had to split up parts of the team to work on it while traveling/in their hotel room as well as the show demo" ect. Yet, today, the big budget devs & CO. cant even lock in on a goal of a (supposedly) planned demo.

Sure, some deadlines become more than one thought they could chew but like...do you even enjoy making what you make?
 
I've worked every Saturday since November and have worked every other Sunday since then with more Saturdays in January and February to make up for lost production before the end of the fiscal quarter. Shit happens, you work overtime, It seems like the video game industry is just filled with a bunch of fucking crybabies.
 
sodstall said:
Love how the stories of E3 days of old were all like "...and we had to get a demo ready for the show in time" & "we had to split up parts of the team to work on it while traveling/in their hotel room as well as the show demo" ect. Yet, today, the big budget devs & CO. cant even lock in on a goal of a (supposedly) planned demo.

Sure, some deadlines become more than one thought they could chew but like...do you even enjoy making what you make?
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Seriously. Go watch even as recently as the GOW 2018 demo in the documentary where they talk about grinding to get that demo done. Crunch and working hard for a big payoff was a point of pride. Then Schreir comes along and crusades against it, having never done a day of work in game development in his life. Now we have the best devs in the industry taking double the time to get a game out
 
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IntentionalPun said:
Creative leads use "developing" pretty damn loosely.
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kaizenkko said:
That doesn't mean it's true. But yes, it could be true; however, there are different phases of development, and at most what they did in 2020 was the conceptual phase.
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ND released TLOU2 in mid 2020 and had separate dedicated teams working in TLOU Online and the TLOU1 remake.

So the over 200 hundred people they had working on TLOU2, after some post release vacations must have moved to Intergalacting, because a studio can't have over 200 people doing nothing during months or years.

They obviously started Intergalactic production in mid 2020, as people completed their tasks in TLOU2 (for most people this happens weeks or months before release), those who didn't move to TLOUJ Online or TLOU1 (meaning, most of the people) had to be moved to Intergalactic.

Intergalactic's preproduction had to be completed and the project ready to start production once they started to get many people who completed their job in TLOU2.
 
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sodstall said:
Love how the stories of E3 days of old were all like "...and we had to get a demo ready for the show in time" & "we had to split up parts of the team to work on it while traveling/in their hotel room as well as the show demo" ect. Yet, today, the big budget devs & CO. cant even lock in on a goal of a (supposedly) planned demo.

Sure, some deadlines become more than one thought they could chew but like...do you even enjoy making what you make?
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It was a different time then. Modern AAA has become more rigid. Things can change at a whim from the folks upstairs. Its no longer just a small bunch of nerds making some cool shit together. Its a huge coordination over multiple teams with a way larger scope and complexity than back then. Plus, way more money injected into the thing.

AAA devs can't be "loose" like they were back then. Then again, maybe that's part of the problem AAA is facing.
 
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StueyDuck said:
that's a wishy washy answer and you know it.

Show me the written statement from Dice and the BF6 team. like Druckman had to do for his team?

show me from any of the well received games this year? E33, Arc Raiders, KCD2, DS2?

It's ludicrous to suggest that en mass people are just threatening development teams like they did to TLOUp2 and ND.
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BRO lol...........it has happened before on multiple occasions.
 
Why is this news? Bitch ass Jason this isn't journalism— this is pussy boy virtue signaling.

I imagine this cunt gets paid a dumb amount to sit around all day most days just being terminally online. This cock sucker hasn't worked a real day in his life.

Deadlines, overtime, etc are normal when you're playing around with hundreds of millions of dollars.

But please tell me more boo hoo click bait Jason you irrelevant twat waffle.
 
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