| Former type | Proprietary limited company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer and video games Interactive entertainment |
| Fate | Wound up[1] |
| Founded | 2003[2] |
| Defunct | 5 October 2011[1] |
| Headquarters | Sydney, Australia |
| Key people | Brendan McNamara |
| Products | Video games |
| Website | www.teambondi.com |
Team Bondi ( /ˈbɒndaɪ/ bon-dy) was an Australian independent third-party game developer. The company was founded by Brendan McNamara,[3] who was the former Director of Development for Sony Computer Entertainment’s Team Soho Studio in London and writer and director of The Getaway.[4]
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Team Bondi was founded in 2003 by Brendan McNamara.[2] The company is responsible for the development of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 game L.A. Noire, which was published by Rockstar Games. An in-game trailer was released on 11 November 2010, which subsequently confirmed the release date as 17 May 2011.[5] The company's website stated that it would be developing games for the current-generation consoles only.[4]
On 9 August 2011, numerous outlets reported that Team Bondi's intellectual property and assets had been sold to Kennedy-Miller Mitchell, a Sydney-based multimedia production firm set up by Mad Max maker George Miller.[6]
According to forms lodged with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission the business was placed into administration on 30 August 2011.[7][8]
In further documents filed with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission on 5 October 2011, it was revealed that following a meeting of creditors a decision had been made to that Team Bondi be wound up.[1][9][10]
According to McNamara, Team Bondi closed down because they had not signed another project in the time they needed to. He says it happened because "we got a lot of bad press about what it was like to work with us and our conditions. That, obviously, didn't come at the right time. To do a deal for a major video game probably takes about a year. We didn't start running around doing that stuff until well after the game was finished. That's the problem when a game is all-consuming and you need to get out there and do whatever you need to do to get people to know it and interested. They would probably be the two main things, I'd say."[11] After liquidation, Team Bondi's assets and most of its staff went to Kennedy-Miller Mitchell. Some of the former employees have gone to work in different Rockstar studios. Rockstar retained the L.A. Noire intellectual property. McNamara himself states that he is currently working on a video game about "one of the great untold stories of the 20th Century".[12]
At the start of June 2011, a group of former Team Bondi employees launched a website called lanoirecredits.com, which contained 100 extra employee names that had not been in L.A. Noire's credits list or that had been incorrectly listed in it. The majority of the names were employees that had either left Team Bondi or been made redundant as the game reached completion. The omission of the names "went against the International Game Developers Association’s (IGDA) framework for games crediting which aims for ethical representation of those who contribute to games of all sizes."[13][14][15]
Just over a month after L.A. Noire's release, an article was published on IGN Australia entitled "Why Did L.A. Noire Take Seven Years to Make?". The article contained quotes from 11 anonymous ex-Team Bondi employees, who discussed the managerial style of the studio, the studio's staff turnover rates and the working hours and conditions associated with L.A. Noire. The article also interviewed Team Bondi studio head Brendan McNamara, as well as Erin Hoffman, the author of the "EA Spouse" blog, which focused similar attention on the labour practices of Electronic Arts in 2004.[16] Further internal emails, and comments from staff members were released in July 2011 on Gamesindustry.biz.[17][18]
A week after the IGN article was published, the IGDA announced that it would investigate the claims over working conditions at Team Bondi; with IGDA chairman Brian Robbins saying “Certainly reports of 12-hour a day, lengthy crunch time, if true, are absolutely unacceptable and harmful to the individuals involved, the final product, and the industry as a whole".[19][20]