Game developer's demand that employees have naked sauna sessions sparks controversy

midian182

midian182

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WTF?! Revelations about a game developer's unsettling request that employees have naked sauna sessions are gaining attention on social media. Spectrum Studios is making a game about a "saunamaster," so getting your clothes off and experiencing the real thing is "not negotiable" as the "entire team needs to understand the product."

The bizarre request, highlighted on LinkedIn by Patryk Suchy, Lead Recruiter at 8bit (via Dexerto), was made by Spectrum Studios creative director Jacek Piorkowski. "This dude, a creative director, requires NAKED SAUNA SESSIONS as a part of work in his studio," Suchy writes.

Screenshots showed Piorkowski responding to a developer on LinkedIn about a job. Narrative designer and writer Aleksandra Wolna told Piorkowski, "From what you said, you consider naked sauna sessions part of the work responsibilities in your studio. I told you that was a dealbreaker for me."

Piorkowski's response, which he has since edited, was "You had a lot of time to prove me wrong. To write scene in sauna without being in sauna… Instead, we are wasting time on social media."

"My narrative girls had to go to sauna with me to came up [sic] with amazing script for proof of concept," he added. "I absolutely adore the fact that they could use their sauna experience to write awesome scenes"

The unusual mandate is apparently so those working on Spectrum Studio's new game, in which the main character is a "saunamaster," can understand the product. An ad for the game claims it is a mix of Life is Strange, Final Fantasy, Heart of Darkness, The Turyst, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, oddly. The ad itself states that attending sauna sessions is not negotiable – being able to use the sauna free of charge is highlighted as a benefit.

Piorkowski wrote in another post that they are able to organize female-only events, which they already did. As for why people have to be naked and can't just wear a towel, he says towels get extremely wet after a few seconds in a sauna and may result in fungal infection. He tried to justify the demand by saying you wouldn't hire a cloud engineer that doesn't understand the idea behind cloud, or an engineer to build a plane that doesn't understand the physics about why plane actually fly.

A game company immersing development teams in scenarios that help them understand the characters or story doesn't sound unusual, but there should be limits. One assumes, for example, that the developers of Dead by Deadlight didn't go around killing people to make a better game, or the makers of Hatoful Boyfriend didn't date any birds.

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Game developer's demand that employees have naked sauna sessions sparks controversy

 
My god, the next thing you know, they'll be requiring firefighters to step into dangerous burning buildings!

noel24 said:
Cannot imagine what for example GTA or CP2077 devs would have to go through If someone told Them They have to kill a man to understand the product They are making.
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Um, you realize that getting into a sauna is legal, right? Whereas murder is not.
 
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Sauna are hot and boring as hell to be in, why would anyone want to play a game about sauna sessions?

Goat Simulator....I was like, WTF? Okay, it's kind of silly and I can see how some people would want to play something silly that can make for good laughs.

Truck Simulator - not my thing, but I do know a couple of people that really like this type of game, just driving around a big rig.

Tram Simulator....okay, this is just odd, but I guess some people like the idea of being stuck on rails and managing your own tram team.

Now there's going to be a sauna simulator? How the hell can you simulate a sauna? Oh, fun! Get a group of people to sit in a small enclosed room and sit there doing nothing for hours on end. All while you just sit there at your computer and watch it all unfold on your screen. What's next, paint drying simulator? Grass growing simulator?
 
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It would all probably descend to a bunch of overweight IT guys sitting in a sweat box staring at a middle manager in a hand towel while he wonders why he can't write on the white board. Actually not too dissimilar to many places I've worked.
 
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GreyOmega said:
Poor comparison, it'd be more like requiring the firemen at the station to have to receive a full body massage by the fire chief and making it mandatory to keep their job.
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Backwards logic. Firefighters don't give or receive massages to douse fires. But understanding 'the sauna experience' is certainly integral to writing content for a sauna simulator.

hahahanoobs said:
Are they naked?
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Firefighters normally don't fight fires naked, no. However, many sauna goers do. See the difference?

Neatfeatguy said:
Now there's going to be a sauna simulator? What's next, paint drying simulator? Grass growing simulator?
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This was my first thought too. However, even more asinine games have succeeded. Why not this one?
 
Neatfeatguy said:
Now there's going to be a sauna simulator? How the hell can you simulate a sauna? Oh, fun! Get a group of people to sit in a small enclosed room and sit there doing nothing for hours on end. All while you just sit there at your computer and watch it all unfold on your screen. What's next, paint drying simulator? Grass growing simulator?
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Simulation Simulator:Simulated - Simultaneous Edition.
 
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Endymio said:
Backwards logic. Firefighters don't give or receive massages to douse fires. But understanding 'the sauna experience' is certainly integral to writing content for a sauna simulator.
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Sorry, it's your logic that is backwards. They could all perfectly understand the sauna experience without also being required to attend it naked with their coworkers or superiors. Which is no different than requiring a firefighter to awkwardly receive a body massage by their superior, it's the same degree of nonessential to their main job.
 
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GreyOmega said:
Sorry, it's your logic that is backwards. They could all perfectly understand the sauna experience without also being required to attend it naked with their coworkers or superiors. Which is no different than requiring a firefighter to awkwardly receive a body massage .
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I'm not sure why logic is so difficult. Let's attempt a syllogism:

Mine:
"Experiencing a sauna" --> (helps with) -> designing a sauna experience.

Yours:
"Getting a massage" --> (helps with) -> extinguishing major fires.

See even the slightest difference in the two? You seem hung up not on the sauna attendance itself, but the 'naked' portion. However, I would assume this game is predicated upon players receiving some sort of prurient vicarious thrill from the simulation, which certainly justifies the requirement.
 
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Endymio said:
Um, you realize that getting into a sauna is legal, right? Whereas murder is not.
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The point about how this guy's logic would have applied to GTA developers was well made regardless of legality. If he wants developers to understand saunas to develop a sauna video game, he could ask them to go to the sauna on their own and then have a clothed brainstorming session together. Whereas, requiring having naked, sauna "brainstorming" sessions is sketchy AF. Best case, he's eccentric, but that's a stretch.
 
Sounds like the requirement is put into the job description. I would only have an issue if someone previously hired was forced into choosing between agreeing or losing their job. While this request isn't common which may make it weird, it's no worse than actresses interviewing for a tv/movie with nudity or sex scenes. In fact, some writers should be forced into those scenes too to write them less awkwardly.
 
Show me a job where I get paid to be in a sauna relaxing and if the pay is enough to live in that area and I'll take it. Sounds awesome.
 
Mihai S said:
If he wants developers to understand saunas to develop a sauna video game, he could ask them to go to the sauna on their own and then have a clothed brainstorming session together
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I'm sorry, but -- like the artificially outraged developer of this story -- you utterly fail to understand the cultural significance here. Poland, Finland, the Baltics, parts of Russia -- all have a lengthy history of the sauna as a communal bathing experience, not just with the family, but with friends and neighbors as well. An integral part of the experience is the socializing that occurs within.

Despite what you might think, there are many different types of "sauna experiences" -- dry vs. wet, relaxing vs. beating each other with birch twigs, and the mixed-sex (but clothed) of the Finns, vs. the gender-separated, but naked tradition of the Ruska Bania. The notion that a person could slink into one sauna session alone, then "brainstorm" with authority on the issue is patently absurd.

Beerfloat said:
What a weirdo. How is this even a thing?
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It's always surprising to me that those who profess to care about diversity and multiculturalism are the first to criticize cultures with which they disagree, on even the smallest of issues.
 
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