I’m someone who occasionally receives the evil eye from my wife for a bad deadpan joke among people that don’t know me well enough to get my humor. But there’s no way I would’ve touched that line with a ten foot pole.
Let’s face it, it’s monumentally dumb for any foreign invasion of the US to occur at all.
But yeah, quite apart from the realism of the scenario, fixing on NK in the face of objections from the team shows such colossal arrogance and stupidity as to beggar the imagination.
The real question is why anyone would want to work in the studio at all under those conditions.
I know from experience that staying at a job with a really dysfunctional company culture usually happens organically. You stay because you started out really liking it. You like the job because it’s exciting or challenges you. You like the people you work with. Slowly, things change. The job no longer really makes you happy. It just becomes a source of furstration. Leadership changes result in muddled directives. The end product no longer inspires you. Throughout it all, you tell yourself that things will get better. You can hang in there and move on to the next project. Eventually, you dread coming in to work, but you have to. Leadership is now actively hostile. You hate your job, but it feels too late to leave. Perhaps you’re new-ish, so you don’t feel you have the chops to go back out on the job hunt. Perhaps the local area limits your job choices. In the back of your mind, you still hold out faint hope that things will get better. You stay despite your urgent need to get out. Finally, things collapse. The lie is over.
That’s a fairly accurate summation of my prior job. :)
I agree with some of that. I stayed on too long at one or two places myself. But the reason I stayed was that it was easier to stay than to go; while the work was variously dumb or pointless, it wasn’t heavy and it was well paid.
I question why anyone would stay on in a long-term crunch situation run by a dictatorial moron. In a situation like that, sure, some junior staffer who doesn’t know any better might conceivably not think to leave, but surely all the senior people will be able to leave and find better positions in any event, and will also be able to explain to the junior people how they shouldn’t have to subject themselves to these conditions.
For that matter, if they are otherwise invested in the project or in the past of the studio, a group of senior people ought to be able to present an ultimatum to management, because it’s not like the project can continue if they quit.
I think we’ve discussed that bit of oddness with regards to the games industry before. I know some devs love it because they think it fosters teamwork or something. I’ll just reiterate that I’d never even go into a career that regularly required that kind of BS. If crunch started I’d know that things are going seriously wrong with the current project rather than being a normal state of affairs for finishing.
That’s game development. You all have blood on your hands. BLOOD!!
Where was Kaos located, if I recall correctly, they aren’t near a major hub. That can contribute, as it can be much more of a pain to relocate your family, sell your house, etc.
The other is just people being too new to know any better, as others have stated. There is also some sort of Stockholm-like syndrome, where people seem to like it or feel they can’t abandon their teammates, or think every place will be like that. Or that they just don’t have time to interview, because they are too busy working 14 hours a day.
Kaos was in NYC. Which has it own problems, including requiring relatively higher wages in order to match the cost of living.
Also, because they were the only major developer in town, it may have been difficult to attract the right amount of talent. On the other hand, people who were there may have been reluctant to leave in the face of bad work environment, because there’s nowhere else to go.