The American site carefully waited for WB Games to reveal the release date of its game to put its article online, which is based on the testimonies of more than 30 employees and former employees of TT Games. From the outset, it must be said that the game program is particularly strong. As this long presentation video explains, the 9 main films of the saga are represented, the player having the opportunity to start with the trilogy of his choice. In figures, WB Games boasts the presence of more than 300 playable characters, more than 100 vehicles and 23 planets to be unlocked gradually, but the video also highlights the variety of sequences, in particular thanks to the many emblematic vehicles that we can drive, as well than the freedom of exploration offered by side quests that will allow you to move away from the main thread. There is no denying it, the fan has every chance of getting his money’s worth.
But to give birth to the “Biggest, jaw-dropping LEGO Star Wars game yet“, TT Games had to go through a long, frustrating and grueling development. Polygon’s investigation explains that the development of the game began at the end of 2017 and that its production accumulated problems. Despite a cycle of production announced from the start as longer than average and the adoption of a brand new in-house engine called NTT, nothing could have prevented the team from being devoured by a crunch much more trying than what the studio is used to, he who has not had a single year of respite by releasing at least one LEGO game each year between 2005 and 2019.
TT Games’ problems are not new. In 2008, when the studio had just been sold to the Warner Bros group, the group carried out an internal survey about working conditions and realized that TT Games employees had the lowest level of satisfaction ever seen within organisation. Co-founder and creative director of the studio in 1989 until the announcement of his departure in August 2019, veteran Jon Burton takes for his rank in the article by being described as a sometimes oppressive boss who expected his employees to exceed the usual hours as a sign of loyalty.
Employees say Jon Burton never really took the measure of discontent within the studio, but his successors did no better. In 2013, Jon Burton had already left his position as head of the studio to focus on creation. According to employees, working conditions have not improved under David Dootson (2013-2018) or Paul Flanagan (2018-2020), the directors who have succeeded at the head of the studio.
The culture of overtime has thus remained firmly anchored at TT Games, even if this excess work has always been presented as voluntary and paid. Internally, the crunch was above all presented as a kind of natural and necessary obligation, anyone who does not submit to it runs the risk of being accused of not being supportive. “Half a dozen staff members told us it was not uncommon to work 80 to 100 hours, six days a week“, can we read.
As often, the impact of crunch however, varies by department. According to some sources, programmers, animators and artists in charge of visual effects were among the teams most affected, as well as temporary workers who, as always, are dangled with the prospect of permanent employment in exchange some extra effort. Without forgetting the department of QA testers of TT Fusion who for some say to have had their worst experience in the sector, between crunch, harassment and a very real feeling of being treated like a workforce unworthy of being part of the development team.
To top it off, some sources also mention other known refrains from this kind of survey concerning women, subject to a hostile, macho and discriminatory work environment, both in terms of wages and promotions. Disorders certainly far from being specific to the LEGO games studio, but particularly pronounced here.
The development of LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga unfortunately amplified TT Games’ usual problems, in particular due to the forced and badly negotiated transition to a new in-house engine, the NTT, imposed to avoid having to pay royalties to Epic Games when many employees were eager to boarding the Unreal Engine which would have made the task much easier, according to its followers. Already heard many times at Electronic Arts and its infernal Frostbite engine, the story of the homemade tool imposed despite common sense therefore comes up in the Polygon investigation. Sources claim that the NTT was unstable and incomplete, to the point that making animations that would have taken 2 minutes on another engine could take 10 minutes or more here. For many, forcing the introduction of a fledgling engine on such a colossal project remains a particularly bad decision.
Colossal, because from the start LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga was named as the biggest project in the series and as the one on a mission to resonate with critics like never before. Management would thus aim for an average of 85 on Metacritic, just to beat the current record of 83 held by LEGO Marvel Super Heroes. This is enough to encourage the troops even more not to count the hours of work. But in addition to the engine-related issues, the game itself also went through many direction changes, sometimes wasting months of work. Let’s add that a good part of the team left the project at the beginning of 2020 to focus on another game that has not yet been announced.
Since March 2020, TT Games has been led by Michael Denny, former Vice President of PlayStation Studios in Europe. Since his arrival, Denny has been described as a divisive character within the team. Some see him as someone trying to fix TT’s lingering problems, but others are critical of some of his choices, including the recruitment of his former Sony colleagues Eric Matthews and Mark Green. Two names that had already brought bad luck to the stillborn PlayStation Manchester studio.
“Over the past few months we have heard of some positive steps at TT. Multiple sources close to the company claim that the studio will no longer use the NTT engine for future projects and will eventually switch to the Unreal Engine, which some see as potential progress. Current employees also say that in recent months the company has begun to pay more attention to and limit the amount of overtime staff can work. When it comes to The Skywalker Saga, a mix of current and former employees say they expect the end result to satisfy fans, but they wonder why the team had to endure so much to get there. the“, concludes the investigation of Polygon.