The division between Team Bondi and Rockstar grows even more after the lead programmer from Team Bondi's L.A. Nore project lashes out in a letter to the IGDA.
The letter both defended Team Bondi's management practices involving the disputed long hours while also lashing out at former employees and Rockstar who are upset at the studio.
Quote:
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 L.A. Noire, on top of the weekend working payment.
... I can't say that no-one ever worked 100 hours per week, but 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.
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The letter also questioned the motives of former employees who have ben verbally attacking the company as either an attempt by those former workers to spread lies or even try to get Rockstar to shut down the studio.
Although the letter does not mention why those employees suddenly banded together to lash out at the company nor why Team Bondi decided to leave out almost 100 names from the credits list of LA Noire.
The letter does admit that some mistakes were made as is normal in any game development but also admitted that the studio works hard on finding and listening on ways to improve to both benefit its employees and future projects.
http://www.giantbomb.com/news/team-b...-company/3485/
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Quick News Round-Up:
1) Rockstar is rumored to be working on a huge open world project for the Nintendo DS but unlike their last game on the system, this game is going to be 3D-based instead of 2D-based. The same studio that worked on GTA Chinatown Wars is working on the current project.
2) The lead gameplay designer for Mass Effect 2 and 3 leaves both EA and Bioware to join Riot Games as their new lead designer. This news comes only 24 hours after EA announced the creator of the NBA Jam series, Mark Turmell, has left to join Zynga.
3) Ubisoft is rumored to be the next company to join the Online Pass system with their pass being called "Uplay Passport" and will debut with the Driver: San Francisco game.