The internet’s come alive with recent exposes on the horrid working conditions behind the art of game development. First IGN pulled the covers off of L.A. Noire’s slave-whipped genesis, and then your humble games.on.net took a long, telling look at the badness underpinning Gameloft. It’s currently a hot-button topic where software’s concerned, so you can trust Michael Pachter to have his say. It was a say that’s seen the industry at large get very annoyed indeed.
On his regular GameTrailers ‘Pach Attack’ spot, Pachter took the unpopular stance of chastising L.A. Noire’s jilted former worker bees for their outcry.
"I've never heard a developer say 'I don’'t work overtime and I don't work weekends'," Pachter stated. "If you're getting into the industry, you are going to work plenty of hours. If your complaint is you worked overtime and didn’t get paid for it, find another profession."
Understandably, this angered people who actually slave away in the industry. In an email to Pocketgamer, Spilt Milk Studios managing director Andrew John Smith fired back:
“I've got to give a few words over to the enormously insensitive and out of touch garbage that Pachter has seen fit to dump all over the internet recently. Pachter is being poisonous. He's saying that people wanting to get a job in games should be willing to crunch unpaid for weeks at a time - they should sacrifice their personal lives and interests and families for the games they work on. We all know this is bullshit. Certain individuals may want to do that, and that’s fine, but the majority of people won’t want to."
A large part of Pachter’s rationale centers around the fact he believes the people who worked overtime on L.A. Noire will receive bonuses later: "I think [the point] that everyone is missing is that, if a game is good – and L.A. Noire was good – there will be a profit pool, and there will be bonuses.”
"Add '...for company owners' to the end of that and we're getting a little more accurate," Smith retorted. "It's the exact reason I set up my own company. I want to make good money off of my own games. Working for a company other than your own makes this little more than a pipe dream for most people. He name drops the success of games like the Modern Warfare series as an example to back him up. I'd love to see him take a look at the vast majority of companies. Of course staff at Infinity Ward, Rockstar North and Blizzard get lovely bonuses – they make the best selling games there are. But they are a completely non-representative segment of the industry, and are a ridiculous basis to start making generalisations."
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