Team Bondi, the recently closed Australian developer that brought us L.A. Noire has gotten quite a bit of heat over the past couple of months, as information regarding poor working conditions has cast the studio and its boss Brendan McNamara in a negative light.
McNamara recently spoke out against these allegations in an interview with Eurogamer, saying:
I remember just before E3, there was a story in the LA Times about Naughty Dog working there 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.
Yeah, 110 hour weeks are tough. But not many people worked 110 hour weeks making L.A. Noire, I can tell you that. And it wasn’t mandatory. Yeah, it was hard, and it was brutal, but I would say, most of those triple-A games, when you aren’t sure of what the technology is, and you aren’t sure what the process is, it’s going to be pretty difficult. Time’s a finite thing. You can’t extend it forever. We certainly had plenty of time.
Were the working conditions over at Team Bondi really blown out of proportion? There’s no doubt that developing a triple-A game takes a lot of work and sacrifice, but it should never compromise the well being of your employees.
