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[Nydius]

I can understand mandatory overtime and crunch when a game is nearing completion. But to require it for an internal demo is diabolical or it's proof that there's a lot of people fucking around in ND and not doing their jobs. Or both.

 

[mckmas8808]

Sony's new policy under Herman is at least one first party AAA game per year. They can have more but only one is guaranteed.

I thought he said 1-2 a year minimum.

 

[IntentionalPun]

I can understand mandatory overtime and crunch when a game is nearing completion. But to require it for an internal demo is diabolical or it's proof that there's a lot of people fucking around in ND and not doing their jobs. Or both.

Why is that diabolical?

You work on a product for 7 years there are going to be some major milestones that are nearly as important as the release.

It's not "a demo" it's "a bunch of stuff that needs to get done, that we will demo."

 

[Negotiator101]

It was never on the slate for next year.

It wasn't off it either, anyway this sounds like a studio increasing it's work load to get this finished and I'm all for that (obviously with time off over the holidays).

 

[Msamy]

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.

No most logical cross gen, day one on ps6, i don't even know how people think PS6 would released on late 2028 or 2029 as logic thing lol,

 

[midnightAI]

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!

You could just not play it

 

[Msamy]

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.


Fun fact: devs are allowed to bring their dogs to the ND office.



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.


What Jason said is that the game is planned to release mid 2027. Meaning, before PS6 release and clearly not a PS6 title.

That was planned date, he clearly say they missing the many deadlines and for me that indicate it will release on 2028

 

[yurinka]

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.

Yes, internal 'spreadsheets' in gamedev studios (normally there's an internal app or website to track working hours) are to track the extra working hours of each person, to compensate them with extra money and/or extra vacations days, and for producers to detect if certain worker or team is making a lot of overtime, which means that producer has to find the reason and move tasks to other teams if possible or bring more people to that team if possible.

Or, in case the overtime was caused because the tasks done there were dependant of somebody else's completing their own tasks and got them too late, then to make sure next it doesn't happen again and that people have their shit done in time so the guys who depend on them being ready can start to work when are supposed to, helping them to don't have overtime (or to have less).

That was planned date, he clearly say they missing the many deadlines and for me that indicate it will release on 2028

No, Jason Shredder said it IS NOW planned for mid-2027: "The game is slated for release in mid-2027, according to the people familiar with the schedule" and that the demo they needed to have to complete this milestone has been completed "For most staff, the recent period of mandated overtime ended this week as Naughty Dog finalized the demo".

This is the first time they're asked to work overtime in this project, which means that despite having missed a few milestones the project continued on track to be released when scheduled (maybe milestones were missed just by a few days or a couple weeks), and had this few weeks of little overtime to catch up and make sure they achieved this milestone on time.

It's also worth mentioned that when projects are budgeted in terms of time and money, they normally assign some extra time as buffer because they know it's very common to miss milestones or need delays for the project, so they save some extra percent of time to use it when needed and still be on track.

And well, he also said that to complete this milestone they had to make this demo this month, and mentioned that the demo is completed and that next month they'll go back to normal office schedule getting rid of the overtime. Meaning, they're back on track.

 

[ZehDon]

... he wrote an entire article about staff doing no more than 60 hours a week for a couple of months for a demo? Either it's a slow news day, or, he knows Intergalactic is struggling and he's laying the ground work for an expose.

 

[Botan32]

No most logical cross gen, day one on ps6, i don't even know how people think PS6 would released on late 2028 or 2029 as logic thing lol,

A postponement of PS6 is not impossible at all. It would even be the best thing.

 

[LectureMaster]

 

[adamsapple]

... he wrote an entire article about staff doing no more than 60 hours a week for a couple of months for a demo? Either it's a slow news day, or, he knows Intergalactic is struggling and he's laying the ground work for an expose.

I can understand mandatory overtime and crunch when a game is nearing completion. But to require it for an internal demo is diabolical or it's proof that there's a lot of people fucking around in ND and not doing their jobs. Or both.

Feels like they're still reeling / recovering from Factions getting gutted and a lot of staff probably being aimless.

 

[SlimySnake]

I can understand mandatory overtime and crunch when a game is nearing completion. But to require it for an internal demo is diabolical or it's proof that there's a lot of people fucking around in ND and not doing their jobs. Or both.

my guess is sony wanted a demo ready for TGA given how Neil said they would be showing the game soon after the TGA reveal in 2024.

When Neil told them no, we dont have anything to show for TGA, Sony execs got mad and forced them to produce something before christmas as punishment. There is no other reason to mandate such an arbitrary date. This is pure vindicative behavior from herman and maybe the new Japanese CEO who is thinking the same thing you are thinking. i.e., lots of people fucking around at ND since 2020.

In contrast, Ex-Avalanche devs banded together and formed a brand new studio in 2020-2021 and are set to release their new AAA game set in an open world early next year. Looks great. Has a 10 hour campaign with an additional 15 hours of side content. Is going to sell for a meager $25. Meanwhile ND with their 400 person dev team cant even get an internal demo done in 5.5 years since shipping TLOU2.

How long has the game been in development for?

Christofer Sundberg founded the studio in 2020 and the team started to come together in late summer / fall of 2021, when we moved to our first studio space in Nacka, Sweden. The experience we are releasing is built on systems, assets, and ideas developed over the last five years.

 

[Msamy]

A postponement of PS6 is not impossible at all. It would even be the best thing.

We will see.

 

[skneogaf]

You could just not play it

Could but I like their games so if it got cancelled they would move on to something else that would hopefully not have the bald headed demon as the main character.

 

[zaga]

If Naughty Dog is working graveyard shifts then maybe they can bring Joel back from the grave

 

[Msamy]

Yes, internal 'spreadsheets' in gamedev studios (normally there's an internal app or website to track working hours) are to track the extra working hours of each person, to compensate them with extra money and/or extra vacations days, and for producers to detect if certain worker or team is making a lot of overtime, which means that producer has to find the reason and move tasks to other teams if possible or bring more people to that team if possible.

Or, in case the overtime was caused because the tasks done there were dependant of somebody else's completing their own tasks and got them too late, then to make sure next it doesn't happen again and that people have their shit done in time so the guys who depend on them being ready can start to work when are supposed to, helping them to don't have overtime (or to have less).


No, Jason Shredder said it IS NOW planned for mid-2027: "The game is slated for release in mid-2027, according to the people familiar with the schedule" and that the demo they needed to have to complete this milestone has been completed "For most staff, the recent period of mandated overtime ended this week as Naughty Dog finalized the demo".

This is the first time they're asked to work overtime in this project, which means that despite having missed a few milestones the project continued on track to be released when scheduled, and had this few weeks of little overtime to catch up and make sure they achieved this milestone on time.

Lol, I will see you on 2028 with your comment and intergalactic still unreleased, bit on your avatar?

 

[Sethbacca]

If Naughty Dog is working graveyard shifts then maybe they can bring Joel back from the grave

It really wouldn't be that hard for them to do another game with Joel. There's the entire time period between the outbreak and the first game. I don't see it ever happening though.

 

[clappedcheeks]

I thought it was normal to have production milestones that you aim for? This isn't like a production line for a mass producing crisps that is somewhat predictable. When things go wrong is it not normal to be asked to put in some overtime? I'm sure most of us normies have stepped up to the plate when asked. I don't know if it's that developers are a bunch of weenies or it's just Jason being Jason.

 

[Msamy]

my guess is sony wanted a demo ready for TGA given how Neil said they would be showing the game soon after the TGA reveal in 2024.

When Neil told them no, we dont have anything to show for TGA, Sony execs got mad and forced them to produce something before christmas as punishment. There is no other reason to mandate such an arbitrary date. This is pure vindicative behavior from herman and maybe the new Japanese CEO who is thinking the same thing you are thinking. i.e., lots of people fucking around at ND since 2020.

In contrast, Ex-Avalanche devs banded together and formed a brand new studio in 2020-2021 and are set to release their new AAA game set in an open world early next year. Looks great. Has a 10 hour campaign with an additional 15 hours of side content. Is going to sell for a meager $25. Meanwhile ND with their 400 person dev team cant even get an internal demo done in 5.5 years since shipping TLOU2.

And that $25 game will likely looks far better than Intergalactic on terms of graphics

 

[rkofan87]

I thought it's coming next year ?

If not what Sony has for next year ? Wolverine only ?

they have Marvel tokon and saros as well.

 

[Msamy]

they have Marvel tokon and saros as well.

Have really good impression about wolverine, insumniac currently are the best sony studio on terms of quality and productivity

 

[rkofan87]

See, back in the day I'd understand. Being in software development myself, I've had 4 months of crunch recently, working till midnight almost every night, and it's a horrible time, truly.
(but because of poor management, thank goodness i've been moved to a different and frankly more important project)

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.

i hate this mental health day trash just take a nap in the break room

 

[Kagoshima_Luke]

This is rough. Feel real sorry for these devs.

 

[Kokoloko85]

I thought it's coming next year ?

If not what Sony has for next year ? Wolverine only ?

Wolverine, Saros, Marathon as of now.
GTA6 maybe lol

 

[yurinka]

Sony's new policy under Herman is at least one first party AAA game per year. They can have more but only one is guaranteed.

Hermen's policy is at least one TENTPOLE (new non-GaaS big AAA SP game) first party game per HOLIDAY SEASON.

Meaning, in a holiday season they may release more than one tentpole games, plus GaaS games, plus experimental / small games, plus remasters/remakes/ports.

Which also means outside the holiday season can also release additional tentpole, GaaS, experimental / small games there rest of the year, plus remasters/remakes/ports.

As an example, this year they had the tentpole Yotei for the holiday season, but also had the tentpole DS2 outside that period, plus some experiments like to publish a small Chinese project from China Hero Project, or to license three old low selling Japanese IPs to Bandai Namco, or to publish some indie western and experimental indie GaaS like Midnight Murder Club. Plus to have Days Gone Remastered and some ports and even a mobile game: Destiny Rising.

For next year they already have minimum Marathon, Marvel Tokon, Saros, Wolverine, Convallaria plus a few mobile games and the DS2 PC port. This is another busy year of first party stuff.

I can understand mandatory overtime and crunch when a game is nearing completion. But to require it for an internal demo is diabolical or it's proof that there's a lot of people fucking around in ND and not doing their jobs. Or both.

There's nothing diabilical on asking to work a little overtime during a couple of weeks after having missed a few milestones to ensure they don't miss another time and that they go back on track.

And having a milestone demo is a common practice made in almost all milestones, it's needed to put together what all the teams are doing from time to time and see how the game is progressing.

Nothing rare or bad, it's just normal business. Same goes with having missed a few milestones. It's normal to need a few extra days or a handful weeks. This often later gets compensated either using part of the buffer time they added for the project, or cutting a few low priority tasks/features/content to be made in future milestones to catch up.

The project doesn't mention anything bad or wrong about the project, other than having some crybaby in the team who went to a hitmen journalist to complain about having to work a few hours of overtime for the first time after 5 years in the project, when in teams like this one years ago they had cruch periods that lasted several months each and where they working way more hours and also including weekends.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Conversely, the biggest contributor to video-game crunch culture is people voluntarily putting in extra hours because they're proud of what they do and want to see it take the best shape possible.

And there we go. "Drama" over. Like even Schreier says the obvious part out loud here but you've got tons of people on the same purple forum playing armchair virtue signalers, when their whole lives & identities revolve around consuming mass-produced corporate products.

Like please, you aren't boycotting anything. Not anymore than you did Hogwarts Legacy, even your own mods purchased that on the DL while posturing in posts

 

[Sethbacca]

And that $25 game will likely looks far better than Intergalactic on terms of graphics

You're high if you really believe this. Naughty Dog gave us graphics the level of TLoU2 on the PS4. You can hate Druckman and whoever, but Naughty Dog don't generally miss on the graphics front.

 

[MiguelItUp]

Crunch to meet deadlines still very much exists all throughout the software and games industry. Sure, some studios have established specific workflows where crunch isn't mandatory. Which, hey, good for them. But there are many that still lean on crunch and overtime to meet deadlines as it has always worked out just fine for them.

For as long as I've been in the industry, it has existed across the board. People that are happy and passionate about games and working in the industry do so expecting it to come at some point, and they don't mind it. At least some of them. I mean, it's not for everyone. But I've known too many people that just know that it's a thing that exists, and they do what they gotta do.

Some don't mind it at all. Some don't mind it as long as it's in small bursts, etc. There's a lot of variables. But it's wild how many people clutch their pearls or get offended for people that actively do it and don't have an issue with it, lol.

Me personally, do I mind it? No, not at all. Because my experiences were never forever. I was fortunate enough to be a part of projects where I'm proud of the team, and what everyone accomplished. So, the crunch is typically during certification and going gold. So, the team does what's necessary to make everything that was done up to that point count. I've had some great and fun memories during crunch, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

 

[Putonahappyface]

 

[Msamy]

You're high if you really believe this. Naughty Dog gave us graphics the level of TLoU2 on the PS4. You can hate Druckman and whoever, but Naughty Dog don't generally miss on the graphics front.

They kindly miss on last gameplay part of first trailer, hopefully this wasn't representative of the gameplay graphics,

 

[Sketchball]

Lmao overtime is expected in my industry every month of the year. Where is my headline? The fact that these people would run and cry to Bloomberg about it is a joke. Welcome to corporate America. You really think they are gonna pay you 100-200k plus to work from home 40 hours a week? If so, tell me where to go I'll pack my bags now.

 

[6502]

Obviously Naughty Dog and every Sony studio needs to unionize so they can go on strike over this. Workers rights are human rights.

Working for a unionised company I find that so long as people are paid there are more complaints about not getting overtime than having to work it. I hated contractual overtime until my first month of it hit my pay. then I put in for it every chance I got.
Despite how wierd anti worker rights Americans and blue haired misfits try to portray them for their own ends; unions are workers and workers want money. A few exceptions for personal circumstances (caring for terminal relatives etc) is all a sensible union would demand.

 

[Msamy]

Lmao overtime is expected in my industry every month of the year. Where is my headline? The fact that these people would run and cry to Bloomberg about it is a joke. Welcome to corporate America. You really think they are gonna pay you 100-200k plus to work from home 40 hours a week? If so, tell me where to go I'll pack my bags now.

They even work from office 3 days per week, lol

 

[HRK69]

I can understand mandatory overtime and crunch when a game is nearing completion. But to require it for an internal demo is diabolical or it's proof that there's a lot of people fucking around in ND and not doing their jobs. Or both.

Screams poor planning from the top imo

But then again, the office life/work cycle gets more toxic when leadership treats an internal demo like a do-or-die milestone instead of just good project management

 

[icecold1983]

So 48 hours a week? That is not a lot. The requirement that you go to an office to work is also no grounds for complaining.

 

[W11d]

Sony had enough of waiting ND to deliver at least something this gen. And they probably the most expensive to operate

 

[MiguelItUp]

I can understand mandatory overtime and crunch when a game is nearing completion. But to require it for an internal demo is diabolical or it's proof that there's a lot of people fucking around in ND and not doing their jobs. Or both.

Yeah, honestly it just all screams like a huge issue with management, production, and just the over all shot callers on the project.

I've worked on several projects where we were also developing a build for expos/shows while still developing the full release. I think there was one time we had to crunch for a newer build for one of the PAXs, but that's because we were cutting it so close due to last minute decisions. (Which, last minute decisions kind of point to what I said initially, lol.)

 

[cormack12]

I want to work for one of the top studios in the world.
I want to work on cutting edge visuals and animation.
I want to have parts of my creativity transcend the medium.


I don't want to do the necessary overtime or collective graft to push the project over the line.

Guess what? There's a line of thousands of people who will. That's what a competitive market is. That's what it takes to work at a top studio.

I remember the article about the expectations of the interns at Goldman Sachs. Very little sympathy there.....

Bottom line is if you're aspiration is to work at a top studio with this pedigree it comes with pros and cons and you have to decide what is important to you. No-one ever reached greatness while wallowing in mediocrity.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Lmao overtime is expected in my industry every month of the year. Where is my headline? The fact that these people would run and cry to Bloomberg about it is a joke. Welcome to corporate America. You really think they are gonna pay you 100-200k plus to work from home 40 hours a week? If so, tell me where to go I'll pack my bags now.

And tech and gaming companies are also big into free perks. Free food, bring your pet to work, come to work dressed like a slob etc... Every time you see tech and gaming workers at head office it's always super nice offices and desks, and pending the company tons of free perks. And big pay.

Like when Bungie used to pay for company cooking lessons and knitting classes. They cut them a couple years ago when they were going through hard times with layoffs and company morale dropped.

That's the kind of pampering atmosphere somehow tons of tech companies razzle dazzle with. And they wonder why products stink, employees can be dinks and the ship sinks.

It's like when that Deviation Games studio was around and had a website. It had nothing to even do with games. It's was basically a party recruiting page where the first thing you saw were people playing tug of war, bowling and watching 3D movies in a theatre. If you didnt know it was a games studio, you'd probably think it was one of those corporate event companies where they are hired to organize company scavenger hunts and BBQ day.

 

[mayham2199]

And there we go. "Drama" over. Like even Schreier says the obvious part out loud here but you've got tons of people on the same purple forum playing armchair virtue signalers, when their whole lives & identities revolve around consuming mass-produced corporate products.

Like please, you aren't boycotting anything. Not anymore than you did Hogwarts Legacy, even your own mods purchased that on the DL while posturing in posts

This makes a lot of sense and is part of the reason I got away from PC gaming. When there is an issue it ticks that part of my brain that can't let it go until I fix it. I couldn't get Arkham City working on my PC when I wanted to play it and spent a good 3-4 hours trying to get it to work. Even reinstalled windows and that finally got it working (until I updated my nvidia drivers). Worst part is even when I got it working I played for like 1 hour realized I didn't like the game and moved on. PS is much better for me it either works or it doesn't.

Had an issue with a server running updates and had to restore it from a snapshot when I got home. I started looking up what the issue could be and had to stop myself and close the laptop.

 

[TerribleAtThisGame]

'overtime? overtime?! fuck that shit, bitch!'...

Two weeks later

 

[Madflavor]

All this for 1 PS5 Era game starring the most obnoxious looking Protagonist ever.

 

[FalsettoVibe]

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!

Come on now. Grow up. Maybe the game just isn't for you. You have to be ok with that and just play other games...

 

[AmuroChan]

they have Marvel tokon and saros as well.

And they always have MLB. People keep forgetting that SIE San Diego is a 1st party studio.

 

[recursive]

Oh know! People have to get their shit done to meet business objectives! Fuck me!

 

[Embearded]

I had this discussion with my colleagues a few days ago and most of them were willing to work overtime as long as they got paid for it.

Doing hours upon hours of unpaid overtime is widespread across all fields in Greece and most employers are expecting you to do so.

For ND's case, I get why they wouldn't like it, i really do. But they need to step back and consider for a moment the caliber of the studio they are working for and the expectations their customers have because of their previous products.

 

[Kikorin]

If this means I'm going to play some good
first party on my PS5, let's get the work done!

 

[mckmas8808]

If this means I'm going to play some good
first party on my PS5, let's get thé work done!

BOOM!

 

[viveks86]

The hell? Why is this newsworthy? People doing a little extra to meet a deadline isn't the end of the world. This is barely crunchy. Crispy, may be. Deal with it?