Rumor: L.A. Noire's Troubled Development Detailed

Rockstar Games has been roundly (if anonymously) criticized over the past couple of weeks by employees or associates from their San Diego, New York and Vancouver studios. Now, a Twitter poster [thanks Kotaku] has claimed that trouble has been brewing at Team Bondi, while working on the Rockstar published L.A. Noire.

The Twitter poster describes the development of The Getaway, saying how Brendan McNamara hoped to make it a “masterpiece of crime fiction” and as a PS2 launch title. He was unable to meet his original deadline and his bosses at SCEE were worried that the product had already been surpassed by GTA III, and they pushed to have The Getaway release in 2002 over McNamara's objections.

At that point, McNamara returned to Australia and helped found Team Bondi. Despite requests by SCEE to continue work on The Getaway franchise, he was disinclined to do so, but did sign with them for his new crime noir title.

“Work on this launch title began in 2003, and a lengthy three-year development plan would allow the game to be complete by his standards. By the next year, the game was well into development; the team grew into the dozens. Things were seemingly well. Then McNamara saw GTA: San Andreas; it was absolutely epic and went beyond the action basis. The present game plan would no longer suffice,” the poster describes. “Little local control would grant McNamara unhealthy amounts of autonomy, allowing Team Bondi to miss every milestone without consequences. By 2005, the studio had far exceeded SCEA's expected price tag for the game; tens of millions had spent on new proprietary tech in a year.”

“It became obvious that year that McNamara had little clue what he was doing and was just following his arbitrary whims. He had no clue how to manage a work environment--creating a horrible standard for quality of life with an ineffective human resources team," continued the poster. "SCE's development structure changed that year, and McNamara found himself again under the more keen eye of his old SCEE superiors. The new bosses found that Team Bondi had little to show 2+ years of development, except an unplayable game filled with superfluous content. However, the project had already cost Sony USD 20 million+; a cost high enough that they attempted to spend the few months salvaging LAN. The game was now titled L.A. Noire--the 'e' came from a programmers typo of 'noir.'”

“Towards the end of 2005, the first group of employees--including some that moved from Europe--left Team Bondi. This exodus would lead to an extraordinary turnover for Team Bondi; employees are still consistently leaving the developer. Team Bondi's turnover rate is extremely high, even by standards of high turnover for gaming studios. The number of employees presently at Team Bondi who were there in 2005 is in the single digits," the poster noted. "After those few months, Sony dropped the game--a situation that threw the studio into disarray. Strangely, McNamara quickly found hospice in his former rivals--the Houser brothers--and L.A. Noire was picked up by Rockstar in spring 2006. Sony and Take-Two came to agreement that the former wouldn't pursue the costs incurred for development in exchange for a franchise exclusive. Obviously, Sony wrote off the costs associated with the development of L.A. Noire.”

“The 2006 LAN teaser was a target render done by an art outsourcing firm in Sydney. Since then, the game has been revamped, ported, and delayed four times. Rockstar spent more Sony in their efforts to make it not suck. Also, if you want to go to that Rockstar SD Spouse post and replace studio names and games, you have a good idea of Team Bondi as of present," the poster concluded.

Certain parts of the story are certainly verifiable while others are news to the world at large. Regardless, the yarn seems plausible and is a testament to where a lack of development direction will take you, just like with Duke Nukem Forever.