Today the release date has finally been revealed. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. Along with this, a report was released mentioning that Traveller’s Tales, the studio responsible for LEGO games, has faced serious crunch issues, not only during the development of this title, but for several years.
According to Polygon, who interviewed current and former studio employees, Traveller’s Tales has a serious crunch problem. After the success of LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game in 2005, the British studio was acquired by Giant Interactive, forming the company we know today. Since then, we have seen the creation of LEGO games from Star Wars, Marvel, DC, The Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones and more properties. However, the approach of making an annual delivery led to long working hours, where staying after hours was not an exception, but the rule.
The report mentions that six former employees pointed to Jon Burton, co-founder and creative director of TT Games, as the main person responsible for this problem. Former workers have pointed out that the manager yelled at his employees if they thought to leave their post at the established time, requiring additional hours. This was what was said about it:
“A big problem was that the crunch was premeditated. It wasn’t an emergency protocol for when things went wrong. Instead, it was a tool in the box for production; projects were planned with critical periods in the schedule, or worse, the schedule was the crunch. […] It happened regularly because of the kind of games we made: movie tie-ins and fillers made for kids. They all had deadlines dictated by a holiday event or a movie premiere.”
This was a problem that continued for a long time. When Warner Bros. acquired TT Games in 2007, a change in management was promised, but things continued in a similar fashion for years. With this, employees have reported working between 80 and 100 hours for six days a week, this to increase their salary, or as the result of a blackmail where they were mentioned that leaving early could affect the team’s morale.
A couple of years later, in 2017, the project of LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga began with the promise of delivering big changes to the series formula. Among them, there is talk of using the NTT engine, something that created a number of concerns with employees, since it was something new for them, and involved more hours of work. For their part, some developers insisted on the use of the Unreal Engine, but this was not the case.
Along with this, the managers began to pressure the team to create “the best LEGO game”. Nowadays, lego marvel superheroes It has a rating of 83 on Metacritic. In this way, employees were required to “reach 85”, this in reference to qualifications. This caused a series of changes that were not originally planned. This was what was said about it:
“The director would request new mechanics on a whim, then ask for them to be changed, but never really fixed anything that really mattered. Read every review of a LEGO game. They always say the same thing: ‘The platforms are basic, the camera is terrible, there is no online co-op’. So let’s add a God of War-style combat tree! 5 year olds will love it.
Even if LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga was treated as the studio’s most important project, employees have also mentioned that some equipment was constantly moved among other jobs, causing some elements not to have the level of attention they deserved.
However, since 2020 things have started to change. It all started with the arrival of Michael Denny, former vice president of Sony Worldwide Studios, as vice president and head of the studio. With this, some veterans have since left the studio. Although at the moment it is still too early to talk about substantial changes, it seems that these are beginning to arrive.
To begin with, some employees are happy about the so-called changes to working hours that are being planned, as well as the fact that the NTT engine will be abandoned in favor of the Unreal Engine. However, others are not happy with the fact that the studio will continue to focus on LEGO games, even as it had promised to expand the company’s portfolio.
In related topics, here you can learn more about the release date of LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.
Editor’s note:
It is too early to see what the new management will do. While changes in favor of employees are expected, the culture of crunch is something that cannot be so easily eliminated in a studio that has embraced this way of working for more than a decade.
Via: polygonal