Kris Roberts worked at Rockstar for years, first tuning the vehicles for the Midnight Club games and then leading the design of Red Dead Redemption's multiplayer modes. He says the final six months of development on Rockstar's cowboy epic was the worst period of crunch he's experienced in the game industry, and he argues that the overtime wasn't even really about making the game better. Instead, it was about putting on a show for executives.
With his transition from Midnight Club to Red Dead Redemption, Roberts went from an hourly employee to a "full-time" dev working what Rockstar called "core hours," as he explains in a new interview with Kiwi Talks on YouTube. "There was the expectation that you'll be there by 9:30 and we're going to stay until 6:00. If you're staying after that, there's dinner available and blah blah blah."
