Rockstar turmoil afflicting Max Payne 3's August launch?

@ Romeo615.. That has to be one of the most moronic things I have read in a long time. According to you, Having no education, no boss, (Makes me wonder if you are either working under the table or leeching my taxes?) and you are "Almost Rich" ? And now you are spouting off about how much you respect poor people in 3rd world places..... I shudder to think people like you are our future. Please tell me you are in your 40-50's and no longer contributing to our Gene Pool... please. Your comment showed your true jealousy of the very people you rant against. Get back with us after you get a real "JOB" and pay taxes.

@ TripSe7en so glad to see other people see real life for what it is...u said it perfect!!! So many people out of work,lost they homes,and wish they could just find work..i dont know where u people live at or if u even care about others...i see all this job loss n my heart goes out to that person that lost they home..how would u feel if u just couldnt get a job? all the stuff u worked for gone? people better wake up and be thankful... to u young kids that read this...thank ur parents i mean really thank em for keeping ur family together...

so get new jobs or get new wives

Grand theft...employee. Didn't anyone learn from EA?

So? I don't know of very many multimillion dollar businesses and industries that don't have a huge amount of pressure when deadlines are at play.... it's the name of the game man. Just because games are fun for us to play doesn't mean that they are necessarily fun to make. It's a high pressure job, and not many people have the wherewithal and constitution to put up with all the bS, which is why it's becoming less frequent to see a small dev this gen put out a great looking and playing games... it takes too much capital. When countless millions are involved, your gonna see one or more nervous breakdowns on your team.

damn 2010 year is delay year or what? max payne 3, Splinter cell and some other games are delayed :D

"The game's story just went through another total re-write earlier this month (the third that I am aware of in the past two years)" Not the most encouraging thing to read months before a game is suppose to be released!

You know, presentation is very important. A player should be able to get attached to the avatar they play in a game. I simply can't see myself enjoying playing a game as a balding, pot-bellied, over-the-hill bearded dude just because the story is so 'gritty' and 'violent'. I'd rather play a game where I can design my own avatar.

Sorry, 14-16 hours a day, 6-7 days a week is absolutely awful. For those that don't think it's bad or it's part of being in the corporate world apparently have not worked those enough... it kills you. There are a lot of extremely successful tech companies that treat their employees a hell of a lot better than that (I work for one). Family comes first.

well I hope the game never comes out why? I adore the max payne series (as u can tell from my name) I have played thru the 1st one so many times I can barely count I literally can recite the whole game and dialouge for u the 2nd one on the other hand was wayy to dark and depressing ya Max is suppose to be the tragic hero but the game's tone was every emo's perfect fantasy and the gunplay was ehh but now max payne 3 they make him over weight shaved head somehow even older and a completely new setting that boggles the mind why bother then? why even make max payne 3 when the setting and character has such a dramatic overhaul it makes no sense also no spoilers didn't the 2nd one tie up nicely? I thought it did the 1st game was a bit of a cliff hanger but the 2nd one cleared up any if all loop holes

@ BrutalPandaX2 it's called story progression and trying something new.. There's only so many times he can go "running round in a dark city seeking vengence" at least shaving his head and sticking him in a different country keeps it fresher

aaaaaaaaaaaaaa

no problem .....I already have lots of games to play that I can't find space time for them....

15 work hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week? poor guys. i hope they get paid well for this cuz that's bloody hard. i wouldn't mind if the game gets slightly delayed if the poor chaps can have some life in the development process.

what a joke that doesn't look anything like max payne. max payne is about the running around in a dark city seeking vengeance with a gun. noir style.

They would rather be working on the game instead of being with thier old ladies anyway!! So you old bags quit crying!!!!

Just been a bad week for the gaming industry.

The sad thing is, there are probably 1000's of people that would love the chance to work 14-16 hour days 6-7 days a week since they lost their jobs at (insert developers name here). That is the nature of the corporate beast and sadly if you don't like it, you are expendable.

Damn... Well, I suppose another delay is better then a half-finished piece of crap... Especially with the changes R* are bringing to Max Payne - they really need to be careful and make sure everything works.

@roganth Adding more coders to a project never makes the development go faster. There's a famous book (in the programming world) called 'The Mythical Man-Month' where Brooks's law describes how continually adding more developers to his project at IBM, Fred Brooks noticed he missed every new deadline he set. This sounds to me like Rockstar aren't going about the design process in quite the right way and are being given too much leniency by their publishers such that they are able to ditch a project and start again. Their staff are the victims of Rockstars success as it seems like such a desirable place to work. This isn't the first time I've heard otherwise.

Shame its not being made by Remedy.

Max payne deserves to be re-lived again so as long as it takes to make it the best max payne, TAKE YOUR TIME ROCKSTAR don't kill people to make this game or any other game in that behalf.

I worked on a film festival last summer and it was normal working hours in the months leading up to it but during the 10 days of the Festival itself we were working 14-16 hour days and I felt destroyed by the end of it so I can only imagine what it's like working those hours and sitting staring at a screen for all of them to boot.

"desperate housewives" syndrome its happening, omg :S

"enforced crunch mode through to the end of the project," necessitating "14 - 16 hour work days, six or seven days a week." If you worked those hours for one week you would be a zombie, let alone until the end of the project (Q3 2010?) Considering the cost of overtime and the lower productivity of zombies, would it not be cheaper for Rockstar to DOUBLE the number of coders and give them all a 40 hour week? - either that or delay the project. Come on Rockstar, housewives need sex too!

I'm a developer at (not mentioning) we don't do games (sadly!)... media based applications and websites mainly. For all of january i've been working 13 hours days 7 days a week, all coding... staring at the screen... busting my brain. And the hours weren't much better before that heh. The right side of my head almost constantly hurts, there is pain behind my eyes, my arms twitch, my hands hurt alot :( I'm the only developer left running all the sites and building new ones (150 domains!) So i can really feel for these guys... seriously. I'm just about to quit and find somewhere that won't cause me to work hours that leave me no time with my wife and child.... Family > Work I hope these guys get a break.. and that the game is delayed as long as it needs to be to be great! :)

Too bad that the date of release will be push-back, but i don't care as long as the quality is good, not a rush crap game.

The sky darken as I stroll down in the vein of asphalt, closing on the ominous sanctuary. The voices of my adversary begin to creep to my conscious, soon they will be no more. Jungle of concrete stands before me, challenging me to approach it. All I can see is red tint of liquid on my forehead. Focus. Twelve rounds, my shaking arms are still now, the wind settles. Forward--- oh wait no my bad, it says "Q3 - 2010 or further away". And so I wait and pray my game will not suck.

i don't care what Max looks like...though the old look from the first game with the leather jacket and the angry jackass look on his face is classic. I hope the game is as fun as the first with more blood and it would be cool to see bullet wounds in the people(not just a spray from an invisible wound) you shoot to make it feel like your really filling your enemies with lead. I also hope they keep his voice and use the same poetic lines that made Max payne so awesome: "The beretta stirred nervously under my coat". HAHA that game is a classic.

How could a company expect someone to work 16 hours, 6-7 days a week? I don't know about other people, but I work alot better when I get a decent nights sleep, some chill out time after work, and a two day weekend. I'd probably get just as much done with twice the quality if it were a typical 8 hour working day.

@Grey fox1984 Well, one must make exceptions when its as necessary as Metal Gear Solid 4! :P

@TheEldestGod So judging by your (fairly cool i must say) Metal Gear display pic, you skipped Metal Gear Solid 4 because of the old, mustached Solid Snake?

@viral-venom13 Agree with you here, however, it sounds like not only are they working in the same area but are also redoing alot of the content since the story has been rewritten 2 or 3 times, according to the source in the article. This has to be aggravating especially if you would have to go back and redo an entire level that took you hours to finish all because someone decided to tweak an aspect of the story that totally effed a part of that level. If people look at it that way I think alot of people would start to sympathize with what these guys are going through. Also, If these guys are working 14-16 hour days, that doesn't leave alot of time to sleep or catch up with loved ones' lives. Remember there are only 24 hours in a day, and if you work 14-16 hours that leaves a maximum of 10 hours to eat, shower and what not, and then sleep. Not to mention the added time driving back and forth to work and home.

@ Jack_n_Coke07 It might not be hard work to you but if you were to be in a position where your around the very same computer monitors, in the very same environment doing the very same thing over and over to fine tune and perfect what is being created for hours on end non-stop and it even gets in the way of your relaxation weekend or atleast 1 day out of the week where you seriously need 2 take a break away from it all, how do you think that would make you feel (note what you "say" now and what is "actually experienced" in the field are 2 completely different things)!! It's always good to be hard at work perfecting your craft but when your body becomes weary that directly affects how you work which may not result well for the project (in this case the game). You'd seriously have to be...phsss, i dunno, a robot with no life or something to actually hold up to that vision that your indirectly stating there!! I don't mind the game being delayed, as long as they hit it out the park, tie the saga together and give us gamers a thrill ride, then i'm good!! Who knows...perhaps the Brazil setting is only a front to kick start the story and from there it returns to the original NY City setting to wrap things up. The saga's story is told mainly in paintings so the writers could easily accelerate time a few years ahead returning Max to his old look without a beard, his hair back on the head, wearing his black jacket and well being back to where his story originally began in NY!!!

I'm just happy for any Max Payne sequel. I was expecting this game as soon as I bought Max Payne 2.

All I can say is I hope these guys are getting paid by the hour. If not... Sucks to be them. What really sucks is that they're working so hard on an old bald Max Payne game that I'm not even gonna fool with.

Why are you guys trippin on what Max Payne looks like now? What, you expect him to look exactly the same as he was before? That cant happen, mainly because of what all he's been through, so yea, the guy's gonna eventually look like hell. Should that determine whether the game is gonna suck or not? No. So just leave it up to Rockstar. I mean seriously, Rockstar took Red Dead Revolver from another company, and look how great that turned out to be. Besides, Rockstar are the ones that helped publish/make/do stuff to the earlier Max Payne's so its not like they don't know the guy. lol

great that's just F*%king great

I agree with biggest_loser. I hope Rockstar decides to restart the game development from the beginning like Ubisoft did with Splinter Cell Conviction. Right now Max Payne 3 doesn't have anything to do with Max Payne 1 e 2.

Rockstar, treat your employees well. They are after all what made you a juggarnaught game developer.

Why are all of these devs acting like their being deprived? It's not like you're doing extremely hard work. Go work in the Alberta oil fields for a day, that'll quit your whining.

Rewriting the games story 3 times suggests to me that the narrative is not contextual with the environments like the first games. Every place you went to was tied to the story. The longer this game is delayed the better. There is no need for this sequel, especially since Remedy isn't involved.

crunch mode for months sounds appealing.

Valen: Nope. Development and quality assurance are at the end of the cycle and sh__ always rolls downhill. So you have a starting point with someone in sales or some VP lining up a product and date to make financial timelines. Then a creative team comes up with ideas, changes them, tweaks them, responds to something else in the industry, and maybe makes more changes. Then it all finally gets handed off to development. Let's say the published date is July 2010. If we development didn't get the requirements until Feb of 2010, guess who goes into crunch time to make that financial goal that has already been promised to shareholders? Development.

Why the heck is max payne bald

Oh man those danm wives

No offense to the people that work at the game companies, but isn't crunch time when you get to the last 6 months of development something that has been well known for a while, I mean how could the not have expected this going into the industry?

I hope they started from scratch, whatever this guy is, he is not Payne.

I hope this game never sees the light of day. They've ruined the Max Payne image and gave us a steaming pile of you know what.