: What do you guys think about this?

-The guy is working on a contract, and he asked for a raise.
Yeah... no. It's not going to happen for a good number of reasons. He should have been paid more than 11 dollars an hour for the work he was doing, but he didn't have room to negotiate. He's working on a contract, hence his job title.

On a similar note, don't take promises of promotion to the bank. He should have asked if the industry standard is to hire contractors who haven't even worked for a full dev cycle on the game. If the answer is 'no', then it's management pep talk.

-His problems with management are a different matter. I agree that the guy probably had an incompetent manager, and his temp agency sounds horrible.
But you know what? That happens in every industry. It's limp-wristed passive-aggressiveness that has read up on Dale Carnegie and decided that you don't actually have to lead to be a leader. Other signs include 'bad news' being delivered by someone several rungs down on the totem pole, rather than by the guy who made the decision himself, or hearing "I'll get back to you on that" more often than you hear an actual solution being delivered.

Hope the guy finds a more gratifying line of work in the future.