Episode 43: The Good, the Bad and the Crunch

Hey Save Roommates, gather around the campfire for another weekly episode of The Save Room. This week we get all sorts of spooky as we dish on getting lost in the new Netflix series Haunting of Hill House and fight our way back through the Baker Estate in Resident Evil 7. Kevin is also hanging dong in the Order 1886 while Daniel talks on Playstation Now and confesses his unholiest confession of never having played a Rockstar game before this week. Also: Shuhei is letting us change our PSN names, Skybound wants to employ former Telltale employers to finish TWD, Red Dead 2 is releasing on two discs, Days Gone is delayed, and Gooigi is actually a thing! We also decided to flip the script a little this week by making our news pieces shorter and rearing up for a bigger topic. If you didn't know, the gaming industry was set afire last week following an interview that Rockstar's founder Dan Houser had with Vulture. The interview comes on the heels of the highly anticipated release of Red Dead Redemption 2 with Houser's statement about 100-hour work weeks spawning numerous conversations about the nature of work "crunch" and how working conditions are across Rockstar's many studios. Rockstar has known to be private in the past and following this story, we've had countless behind-the-scenes accounts emerging that shed light on what's actually going on. While the story is still ongoing and being investigated further by Kotaku's Jason Schreir, we put our spurs to the topic and heavily discuss what we know so far, how we feel regarding excessive overtime across the gaming industry and what needs to change. While we're no experts on the topic, we wanted to present the subject in its fullest details while giving Rockstar the benefit of the doubt until the whole story comes out. So strap on your boots and get your saddles ready--this one is going to be a wild ride. ----------------------------------------- ---Cuts---- 0:00:00--Intro/What We've Been Playing 0:27:20--Quick Hits (or "Next Level News") 1:14:18--Topic: Rockstar and the Problem of Crunch in the Industry ----------------------------