General Gaming Best way to pretend you don't crunch is to just outsource your crunch and pretend it doesn't exist...

[Ghost_MH]

People Make Games posted a great video on how major studios around the world have been avoiding the bad press of forcing their employees to work ridiculous hours by just sending all that extra work to southeast Asia.

 

 

 

Best part is that now the comments are filled with former employees talking about working from 8am to midnight, sometimes later, seven days a week, for months many months straight. They're basically just sweat shops for art assets.

[XxEvil AshxX]

I remember I used to work for a hat embroidery company that got bought out while I was working there. The new owners were a corporation out of Taipei, and they replaced the management with their own people. The new manager didn't speak a whole lot of English, and it was really hard to explain to him that nobody in our company was going to work 60 hours a week. He would just keep asking, "Why not?" He would get furious when he would ask one of the old hispanic ladies that sewed the hats to work late, and they would refuse.  He had an assistant, Mei, this tiny little girl that handled most of his affairs. She also rode to and from the office with him, ate with him, lived with him, and did god knows what else with him. We weren't allowed to talk to her without him around. The only time she talked was when she was communicating with one of the workers about the job. If you ever asked her anything else, even just a "good morning Mei" the only response you'd get would be a slight smile and or a nod. One day Roger, the manager, (that was his name, I'm not making this up) had to go to a meeting and Mei, who usually would have to go with him, couldn't because she was doing something that was apparently too important to interrupt. We weren't privvy that info, so I have no idea what it could have been. Anyways, once he was gone, we actually got her to talk to us. She was extremely unhappy. Her wages were based on Taipei standards, and were pretty embarrassing, even compared to my shitty pay. When we asked her if she could quit, she said she couldn't, that they would send her back to Taipei and she would be back to doing the horrible things that a pretty little girl has to do there to make money. She wouldn't elaborate on that. Even living with Roger and being at his side 24/7 was apparently better than the situation she was in before. 

 

Anyways, Roger and that company were trying to push their ways of doing things, and cutting corners in production quality (remember, the old ladies weren't willing to work 60 hours a week, so they had to work faster). A lot of them quit, which put more strain on the ones there. They fell behind. Roger pissed off the clients (we made primarily golf hats for the courses and the Opens) by being consistently behind on orders, and by shipping out a noticeably lower-quality product. These golf course owners and clubs were a bunch of rich old white guys, so you can probably guess how it went from there. Needless to say, the place closed down only a few months after that company took over.

 

It's a true story. I'm not giving an opinion one way or the other, it's just my personal experience.

[gamer.tv]

And hats the truth.

[Keyser_Soze]

8 hours ago, gamer.tv said:

And hats the truth.