Last month a story on IGN called "Why Did L.A. Noire Take Seven Years To Make?" detailed the lengthy process wherein Sydney-based developer Team Bondi worked on the biggest, most expensive video game ever made in Australia. Published by Rockstar Games, L.A. Noire - released worldwide in May - was expansive in scope and revolutionary in concept.
At the story heart's were
eleven testimonials – delivered by former Team Bondi employees interviewed under the condition of anonymity – which detailed the oppressive work conditions that hundreds of staff endured throughout those seven years. Among their complaints were an "ominous crunch" period of development which continually shifted year to year; a studio-wide expectation that staff would work overtime and weekends; a praise-free working environment; and a boss named Brendan McNamara, who one of the sources called "the angriest person I've ever met".
In the last few weeks, the story has been read and reported around the globe. Both fans and the game development community have reacted with contempt for Team Bondi, and for Rockstar Games, who seemingly condoned the Sydney-based studio's incessant whip-cracking. The International Game Developer's Association (IGDA) has declared that they are seeking comments from former Bondi staff as they investigate what they deem to be
"absolutely unacceptable" working conditions.
As the original author of the report I've been contacted by developers who have worked under Brendan McNamara at other studios over the years. All have concurred with the assertions made by the Bondi Eleven. "When Brendan came on board, it became clear that he was a huge bully with no talent, vision or management skill. But he really knew how to intimidate," wrote one. "Fits with my experience of McNamara," tweeted another.
Several more ex-Team Bondi employees have also contacted me to express their gratitude. "On the day the article was posted, I had been linked it by a dozen or so other Team Bondi ex-employees in the first few hours, and then it was re-linked on Facebook for the rest of the day," one source told me. "Everyone I've spoken to is really grateful that it's 'out there', and completely shocked that Brendan agreed to the interview."
Two former Bondi staffers, in particular, have supplied evidence which refutes comments made by Brendan McNamara in my original story, and strengthens the validity of claims made by the Bondi Eleven. Between them the pair spent years labouring under the Team Bondi banner. As with the original Bondi Eleven, the pair have supplied information under the condition of anonymity. Their rebuttals to their former boss follow; their evidence includes time-stamped internal emails and staff employment contracts.
Deterioration of relationship with Rockstar
Source: "It's pretty well reported now that the working conditions were bad. What hasn't been discussed yet (from what I've seen) is the relationship between Team Bondi and Rockstar. I've heard a lot about Rockstar's disdain for Team Bondi, and it has been made quite clear that they will not publish Team Bondi's next game. Team Bondi are trying to find another publisher for their next title, but the relationship with Rockstar has been badly damaged - Brendan treats L.A. Noire like a success due to his vision but I think Rockstar are the ones who saved the project. They continued to sink money into LA Noire, and their marketing was fantastic. Without their continued support, Team Bondi would have gone under several years ago."
"Rockstar also made a huge contribution to the development; their producers were increasingly influential over the last two years of the game's development, and overruled many of the insane decisions made by Team Bondi management. At a lower level, Rockstar also pitched in with programmers, animators, artists, QA, etc. Part of the conflict between Team Bondi and Rockstar was due to Rockstar's frustration with Team Bondi's direction, and eventually Team Bondi's management in turn resented Rockstar for taking lots of creative control. It's also worth pointing out that Rockstar used to be very keen on making Team Bondi something like 'Rockstar Sydney' - the more they worked with Team Bondi management, the more they came to understand that this was a terrible idea. I have a few logs that show the relationship souring – see below."
Date: Tuesday, April 06, 2010.
From: Brendan McNamara [Team Bondi founder]
To: Everybody List [everyone who worked for Team Bondi]
Hi Everyone
I found out this morning that Rockstar have pulled out of the E3 show. I'm trying to find out more information as to why. I don't agree with this decision as I think the case we were going to show is looking great and that we could do some real damage there. Jeronimo [Barrera, Rockstar VP] is talking to the Marketing Team to ascertain what the Marketing Plan is going forward. Once I know what is happening and why I will get back to you.
Brendan
Source: "The context on this second one is that our Production Designer (Simon Wood) posted an email with links to a new L.A. Noire logo designed by Rockstar (which Brendan hated). The announcement apparently had a Rockstar logo, but no Team Bondi logo alongside it. Brendan's reply was only supposed to be to Simon, but he replied to everybody at Team Bondi by mistake. He claimed he was only talking about commenters on news articles, but it was pretty clear to everyone that this wasn't true."
Date: Monday, October 11, 2010
From: Brendan McNamara [Team Bondi founder]
To: Everybody List [everyone who worked for Team Bondi]
Every dog has its day and there's going to be hell to pay for this one. I'll never forget being treated like an absolute **** by these people.
Source: "We were constantly told that the project was only six months away from being done to justify the long hours - it was always "the final push". There are so many emails like this talking about a 'final push'; I don't have all of them, but it was a constant theme. Management knew this was untrue, but maintained the lie anyway to keep people working. I only recall one time where a lead confirmed that they knew we weren't going to hit a release date but that they were maintaining the lie to keep the hours up, and it was just in a private discussion, so can't post any email/chat transcripts for you. Our first official internal release date was some time in September of 2008."
Date: Tuesday, September 11, 2007
From: Vicky Lord [Team Bondi general manager]
To: Everybody List [everyone who worked for Team Bondi]
Since January this year, we have been liaising with Rockstar in regard to the release date of L.A. Noire. As we are close to finalising this with them now Take 2 have announced to their financiers where this income will be reported, as they have not yet reported any financials to them so far to-date. This has prompted articles and speculation on the net to develop. Rockstar are close to confirming to us when our release date will be and as soon as we have it confirmed in writing, we will notify everyone.
Jeannette has been working with the Leads over the last couple of months to assess the amount of work still required. As soon as we have the release date, we'll sit down with everyone and go through the plan to get us to the finish line.
Thanks, Vicky.
Source: "The context for this email is that we had our internal release date as September 2008, but there were rumours circulating on the net that the game had been delayed due to Take 2's financials not reporting about it. Vicky was trying to assure us that the release date would still be in that same ballpark, but they just needed confirmation from Rockstar."
Date: Monday, Jan 01, 2009
From: Brendan McNamara [Team Bondi founder]
To: Everybody List [everyone who worked for Team Bondi]
This is the year when we release our game to the world so its going to be very exciting to see what the world thinks of our endeavours. We will be having someone from Rockstar here for most of the year starting in February and will be doing a number of trailers as well as press visits from online and print journalists. Your leads will be working through pay review letters today and will discuss these with you individually hopefully tomorrow.
Brendan
Subject: Getting to the finish line
Date: Tuesday, August 04, 2009
From: Brendan McNamara [Team Bondi founder]
To: Everybody List [everyone who worked for Team Bondi]
Hi Everyone,
As Naz announced a few weeks ago, we are moving into the latter stages of the game and we are currently in Sub-Alpha. Features are being polished and the game experience as a whole is being pulled together by the gameplay, design and animation teams. The art-team are working on optimization, bugs and adding polish to locations from feedback driven by R* and the design team. I'm working with Oly putting together a plan for motion capture and scanning.
This is an amazing result for 4 hard years and I'm proud of what we've achieved this far. The game is huge in size and scope and will be a real breakthrough. We have almost re-invented the adventure game whilst including the action elements that people expect in a modern game. Its these action elements that we really need to tighten up.
That said, anyone who has worked on a game or film before knows that to make a AAA title is going to take a big push at the end to get it complete. This is not uncommon within our industry and while it's not ideal, it is what we need to do to get a polished result to the standard of the competition.
To achieve this result we're introducing two new working practices, effective immediately:
The first is a longer working day, standard hours will be 9am to 7pm. This will include Fridays and beers on Friday will be available but not until 7pm. The first day of longer working hours will be Thursday 6th August. Without this additional time I don't believe that the project will be completed to the standard required within the time we have left. Many of you already do this on a regular basis (and much more) which is very much appreciated. Luke, Nick, Steve and Sam, to name a few seem to live here. As we get closer to the finish line we will need to work Saturdays, and then Sundays as well. The first two Saturdays that we require you to work are this Saturday (8th August - 10am to 5pm) and next Saturday (15th August - 10am - 5pm). The reason being is that we have people here from Rockstar and we need to maximize their time with the team. Obviously some people will have situations that they can't avoid but in general I would like you all to come in. The hours on Saturday will be compensated through the weekend working scheme, giving everyone the opportunity to take payment at the end of the project, or an extended holiday period.
As I said this isn't ideal, but it is typical of what it takes to get a game finished. It's now time to look at whatever you are working on and say what needs to be done to make it shippable and competitive with the best games that are out there. We need to iron out sucky controls, animation glitches and bad AI so that the experience is cohesive and the glitches don't constantly pull you out of the experience. We need to trim the script and make it snappier. Don't blame Daniel. That one is with me.
The second new working practice is that we're going to eliminate the lockdowns associated with the weekly build. We have been sending daily builds to Rockstar for the last couple of weeks, each day selecting a stable build for submission. From this point onwards we will treat each day as a daily "build day", eliminating the differentiation between this build and the weekly build. In short this means we do not need to have the restrictions of lockdown, allowing people to work efficiently all week.
Thank you to everyone for all your efforts.
Best,
Brendan.
Source: "This next one is from Vicky. It's from January 2009; you can see she mentions a few topics. She asks for the big push, talks about how marketing is just around the corner (our first real press was in Game Informer's March issue 2010, so 14 months after she wrote the email), and Team Bondi working on a new project at the end of 2009?"
Subject: Summary
Date: Tuesday, January 13, 2009
From: Vicky Lord [Team Bondi general manager]
To: Everybody List [everyone who worked for Team Bondi]
Dear all,
Thank you all for your time this afternoon. To summarise the discussion you all had with your Lead.
We have two milestones left to complete the game content and features before we head into the Test phase of finishing the game. The first one Milestone N10 finishes in six weeks. We will need to have the Homicide and Vice cases in good shape by the end of that milestone. Following that there is a four week Milestone Sub-Alpha period where we will be getting the game ready for Alpha Submission and will mean that we need to complete Arson case revisions as well as any code features and art optimisations. Cut scene and Scripted sequences will be an ongoing process and added to the game right up till Master.
So we are going to change to the way we have completed milestones in the past. It's no longer going be about just completing your schedule for the milestone. We will all be working in the office the last two weekends prior to the delivery of Milestone N10 (21st & 22nd Feb and 27th & 28th Feb). As many of you have families or weekend commitments, we are giving you notice of this to allow you to make alternative arrangements to enable you to be in the office. If we can be of any assistance, please see myself or Denise. During the last week of the milestone you will be required to work through your tasks for N10 and if they finish before N10 ships to keep going on your sub-alpha tasks until the milestone ships. That means that everyone is required to keep going until the milestone ships or your lead informs you that you have done all that you can for N10 and sub-alpha. Specifically this means in the last two weeks of the milestone you can expect pretty long days. It's "one in all in" until we get the Milestone shipped and get the game ready for testing. We need teamwork to get the game finished to the quality that we are after and that means being here to help a tester, a designer, an artist or programmer who needs your support to get their work finished.
You are not required to work round the clock everyday up until the milestone ships but for the next six months we will need more from you than we ever have asked from you in the past. That's the nature of getting a AAA title out the door and into the hands of the playing public. Getting a result with this game means that the public finally get to enjoy the fruits of your hard work. It also means that we get to take a good break later this year and come back refreshed to work on some exciting new ideas for future projects.
Josh from Rockstar will be coming back to the studio in February to work again with the design team and Brendan has been discussing press activity, which will be starting soon. As soon as we have information regarding this we will communicate to everyone.
For Brendan, myself and the 5 guys who came from London to set up Team Bondi, this is a real milestone for us. To have created something so amazing from absolutely nothing is such an achievement, and we've only been able to do this because of the team that we have around us and effort that each and every one of you continue to give - thank you! We should all be proud of our achievements, and excited at the result to come.
Many of you had questions regarding Alpha, Beta and Master and once we have a breakdown of this we will post it on the intranet.
Thanks everyone, any questions please do not hesitate to ask me.
Vicky.
. اونها به اندازه کافی استودیو خانگی دارن و رابطه شون با سازندگان مستقل فوق العاده ست. فک نمیکنم نیازی TB داشته باشن با توجه به سابقه هردوتاشون. 
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