The ‘Red Dead’ Team’s 100-Hour Weeks Should Be a Red Flag to Us All
So hopefully we’ve all heard by now that the development team behind ‘Red Dead Redemption 2’ worked many 100-hour weeks to get the thing finished on-time.
Now, for anyone who works in game development or has done their research into the work that went into some of the most famous video games of all time, such long hours won’t be a surprise.
Stretches like these are startlingly common across the entire industry. And hopefully we can all agree that abuses of workers’ rights like this are no bueno, to say the very least. But what do we do about it?
The developers have certainly earned much of the blame. Marathon designing is the fault of poor planning, overly ambitious goals for the finished product, and occasional understaffing. But there’s another part of the equation, one that we tend to shy away from.
It’s also our fault. We want bigger, better, almost on a monthly basis. It’s a collective hunger, one that’s been influenced by the increased pace and output of media in general.
And this huge market has been beneficial in some ways, namely in how it helped indie developers get a slice of the pie, and we’re seeing some incredibly inventive and original games as a result.
But especially when it comes to AAA gaming, we ask a lot. No, we never asked for developers to turn into sweatshops, but we also haven’t made an effort to tell these companies that it’s ok if the game comes out late, that no FPS is worth the misery of actual human beings.
Super Spooky Movies for Halloween and Also Just Anytime
Halloween has been completely separated from its religious/spiritual origins, but it’s still pretty fun to stick to some personal traditions during the lead-up to Dress-Up and Drink Night. As a movie geek, I tend to revisit some old favorites, listed below. Hopefully you’ll find a few you haven’t come across yet.
The Witch (2015)
You probably won’t recognize any of the actors, and since the whole thing is played out with period-accurate dialogue, it can be hard to follow sometimes.
But ‘The Witch’ is just one of the best contemporary horror movies of our shared time here on Earth. It’s less mysterious, more terrifying, less jump-scary and more deeply disturbing. It’s also on Netflix right now so go to town, friends.
Burnt Offerings (1976)
This flick has been largely forgotten by history. It doesn’t sit among the ranks of the other late 20th-century classics like ‘Halloween’ and ‘The Exorcist.’ And it’s not strictly horror.
Instead, it relies on a consistently creepy atmosphere and a handful of horrifying images that put their tendrils into your subconscious. You can call it camp, or you can call it dated, just don’t call it a feel-good movie.
Dagon (2001)
Directed by low-budget legend Stuart Gordon, this adaptation of an H.G. Wells short story cost just under $5 million to make, and it shows.
It’s a little corny and more than a little ugly, but the second half of ‘Dagon’ is absolutely horrifying. It never cuts away from realistic and gut-wrenching gore, and it builds beautifully on some very old horror-story monsters.
WNUF Halloween Special (2013)
This one is arguably the lightest of the list, in terms of intensity and overall spookiness. It’s also kind of hard to find. It was originally released only on VHS and is stylized to look like someone’s home recording of a local news station’s Halloween night programming, including news coverage and commercials.
The main story is a POV-style horror narrative that does a lot with very little money, and it balances funny and scary surprisingly well.
