The hours were sold as part of the product

Red Dead Redemption 2 released on 26 October 2018. Shortly before launch, Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser told an interviewer that the team had worked hundred-hour weeks several times that year. The line travelled instantly. The studio clarified that this referred to a narrow group of senior writers over a three-week period, not to the company at large.

Then employees spoke, and described something more complicated: mandatory overtime stretching across years, salaried contracts with no overtime pay, and annual bonuses tied to sales. Though those same people also said conditions had improved since the first game's production.

What interests me is not the number but the genre of the statement. This was a promotional interview. The hundred hours were not raised in a defence or dragged out by a journalist — they were offered as an argument in the game's favour.

Labour was being sold as a property of the product. And it worked: the game really was praised for how visibly the work had gone into it.

That formula deserves caution from anyone writing about games. You can see how much went into this is not a claim about quality. No reader can tell forty worked hours from a hundred by looking at a screen, but praise for visible labour rewards a practice that has nothing to do with the result.

Judge the result: does the scene work, is this detail necessary, is anything better because a hoof leaves a print in snow. If it is, praise the detail. If a detail is defended on the grounds that it cost someone dearly, then no argument for the detail itself was found.