Bad press led to Team Bondi's closure, says McNamara

LA Noire has become second only to Duke Nukem Forever as a cautionary tale to would-be game developers: this gig ain’t easy. While Noire didn’t reach the status of an industry in-joke, it’s hard to disconnect the game from its well-publicized brutal working conditions that saw dozens of staff walk out of Team Bondi in the title’s six-year development history. Combine that the switch of publishers mid-cycle and the increasing cost of making games in Australia, and you’ve got one of the least likely titles in recent memory to make it through the finishing line.

LA Noire was a success, but Team Bondi has since shut down, along with a handful of other Australian studios. In an interview with Eurogamer, lead designer Brendan McNamara explains why.

“We hadn’t signed another project in the time we needed to,” said McNamara. When asked why Team Bondi were unable to secure another contract, he claimed that the bad press surrounding the game’s production – tales of 70, 90, even 110 hour work weeks, low staff retention rate and former staffers not receiving bonuses, overtime or acknowledge in the credits – marred his reputation, and the company was so focused on finishing the game that they didn’t find the time to secure another project before its release.

McNamara feels he is unfairly singled out. Citing a story of 3-day-straight crunch time at Naughty Dog, he feels that he’s wrongly been painted as the industry bogeyman for harsh working conditions.

“I don’t even think there was an all-nighter on it,” he said. “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.

“I’m not justifying crunch for video games. If there’s a smarter way of doing it we should all do it a smarter way. But the backlash to us compared to the backlash to other people was pretty remarkable, I thought.”

While it’s clear the man was driven and had huge expectations from his staff, and perhaps even bigger from Rockstar, it’s hard to sympathize with him. Sure, bad press can have a negative effect, but stories like these need to be told, because an industry can’t sustain itself when the modus operandi of big companies is to work their teams to the point of burnout. Bad press happens because bad things happen, and no matter how much pressure you’re under, it’s still impossible to justify not even acknowledging the work of those who helped bring your game to life.

Eurogamer [Brendan McNamara: “I’d rather people just ring me up and tell me to f*** off”]