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Secret developers of the video game industry

polygon.com

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Re: Secret developers of the video game industry

#11

Post by pandaman »

patio11 wrote: post #9
crocal wrote: post #7

How cute. Sometimes you don't appear on credits. I have been working with more than 100 people on 2.9 millions of real-time safety critical code for nearly a decade. It has been unknowingly used by millions of people around the world and there will never be any recognition for any of us. Grow up.

In a few industries, for industry-specific reasons, who appears on credits and the exact contents of those credits actually does matter for career advancement purposes. Video games are one of those industries. Film and academia are two others. It is critically important to your future if you're an assistant professor or software developer working on the 3-D engine that your work get recorded in the industry-standard…

There is no industry-standard record of credits in the games, JFYI. Mobygames is a good collection of crowd-sourced info, but it is far from being comprehensive (even major AAA games and/or their credits can be missing). Without a proper record credits cannot be that critically important and they are not from my experience. Nobody is going to find the games you said you have been working on and play them through to get to the credits to verify. Your experience is supported by references (formal and otherwise) and your portfolio if you are an artist or a designer. Credits are just bragging rights.

Now, if there had been some kind of official record then credits might have had a bigger weight but, with a lot of people's experience being in unfinished/cancelled projects, still it would not reach the level of critical importance IMHO.

Re: Secret developers of the video game industry

#12

Post by port6667 »

It's interesting to hear more about the video game industry insides.

I wonder if id's success helped start this atmosphere. (Read masters of doom)

They were portrayed as rockstars, friends, who busted ass and made a popular game which made them all rich.

I fell for that idea when i was young, luckily i never got into the industry. I later read some blog post of an EA developer's wife or something, going on and on how much he had to work and wasn't compensated for it, etc.

Re: Secret developers of the video game industry

#13

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

danso wrote: post #2

Not to derail an otherwise interesting article, but the OP picked a not-great anecdote to lead with. The Red Ash Kickstarter was controversial because it was launched by the studio that was (and is ) behind a high-profile Kickstarter: Mighty No. 9, a game billed as the spiritual successor to Mega Man which raised $3.85M. At the time that Red Ash was announced, Comcept claimed that Mighty No. 9 was pretty much done an…

What makes you think there was only one thing that made fans upset? The OP links to a concerned fan, as well.

Re: Secret developers of the video game industry

#14

Post by InclinedPlane »

vvanders wrote: post #3

Crediting is a much larger issue than just what's referred to in the article. I worked on a title for ~3 years, many of those being 6-8 months of 75-100hr weeks. Saw marriages destroyed on that project, people pushed to the edge. I left ~4 months before ship because I knew if I didn't it would be the end of me. Twice I blew the stoplight in front of our house because I was so exhausted. Yet it was insinuated that I d…

Gamedev has a special, and virulent, form of the same problem afflicting much of the tech industry.

Because the jobs pay well and considered to be desirable there's a huge mass of folks wanting into the industry. So as people burn out and as talent evaporates away to find better working conditions those folks are easily replaced. To the people who are "in the trenches" it becomes very obvious that this is a problem, because they see kids trying to walk around in big shoes and they know exactly why it's not as easy to get things done. This is a huge institutional drag on productivity, product quality, and development velocity, it's one reason why it's pretty common for games to be pretty shit quality when they launch. But because the connection between action and consequence is indirect and diffuse it's easy to avoid working out the cause. More so when there are strong institutional biases from the top down which hinge on distinctly avoiding the idea that burning through employees could be a problematic practice with major real-world consequences for studios and games.

You see the same thing in the rest of tech, though not generally as severe, and with some degree of awareness of it. Look at the way amazon treats devs, for example.

Re: Secret developers of the video game industry

#15

Post by InclinedPlane »

scrollaway wrote: post #4
vvanders wrote: post #3

Crediting is a much larger issue than just what's referred to in the article. I worked on a title for ~3 years, many of those being 6-8 months of 75-100hr weeks. Saw marriages destroyed on that project, people pushed to the edge. I left ~4 months before ship because I knew if I didn't it would be the end of me. Twice I blew the stoplight in front of our house because I was so exhausted. Yet it was insinuated that I d…

The games industry has a worker abuse problem. All those companies proudly talking about their 18 months of crunch? Nooooope, shouldn't happen. This shouldn't be a thing you're proud of. You shouldn't be proud of your employees for slaving to death on those projects. It's very tough. Compared to the "regular" tech industry, people in video games can be so passionate about what they're making. It almost seems comparab…

Precisely.

And because of that enthusiasm there's always someone else in the funnel if anyone burns out or leaves.

Also, because games are art the most successful franchises can get away with completely broken processes as long as it doesn't go over some threshold (which appears to be very high judging by the success of even very broken releases).

Re: Secret developers of the video game industry

#16

Post by com2kid »

vvanders wrote: post #3

Crediting is a much larger issue than just what's referred to in the article. I worked on a title for ~3 years, many of those being 6-8 months of 75-100hr weeks. Saw marriages destroyed on that project, people pushed to the edge. I left ~4 months before ship because I knew if I didn't it would be the end of me. Twice I blew the stoplight in front of our house because I was so exhausted. Yet it was insinuated that I d…

I hire a lot of ex-game devs.

"yeah so in the two months leading up to RTM I might need ya'll to work until 10PM and occasionally another four or so hours on the weekend. I'll be taking dinner requests for weeknights and lunch requests on the weekend."

Tired developers write /shit/ code. Every time we end up in bug regression hell it is because we (as a team) panicked and fixed something with too little sleep and not enough critical thinking.

I put in 80hr weeks for a month one time. I wouldn't want to do it again. (I was hourly at a good rate, so I didn't mind crunch time for a month too much!)

The interview process is nice though. "So there may be an occasional 60 hour week, is that OK?" and they look at me like I am crazy for saying such a low number...

Re: Secret developers of the video game industry

#17

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

port6667 wrote: post #12

It's interesting to hear more about the video game industry insides. I wonder if id's success helped start this atmosphere. (Read masters of doom) They were portrayed as rockstars, friends, who busted ass and made a popular game which made them all rich. I fell for that idea when i was young, luckily i never got into the industry. I later read some blog post of an EA developer's wife or something, going on and on how…

I love Masters Of Doom, it's one of my favourite books (make of that what you will). But I guess the main difference is that the id guys were pushing boundaries and working themselves to the bone on something they truly loved and felt passionate about. It was self-imposed and unlike the hordes of faceless developers working in sweatshop conditions to churn out the latest CoD or whatever, they actually received a huge amount of credit (and the fame and fortune that goes with it) for their hard work.

I agree, there's definitely this romanticised image of game development in the developer community. It's something I always aspired to get into but the sacrifices don't seem to be worth the rewards, at least in my case.

Re: Secret developers of the video game industry

#18

Post by crocal »

sdrothrock wrote: post #8
crocal wrote: post #7

How cute. Sometimes you don't appear on credits. I have been working with more than 100 people on 2.9 millions of real-time safety critical code for nearly a decade. It has been unknowingly used by millions of people around the world and there will never be any recognition for any of us. Grow up.

But you can put it on your resume if you change jobs or go work as a freelancer, right? That's the problem -- imagine you have a decade of blank space in your resume.

You can work on classified project and still mention them in your resume. I have plenty of resumes like that in the team. As long as I have a way to verify skills (by calling someone), it's perfectly fine. I don't need to know the details. No one should leave a blank line in a resume.

Re: Secret developers of the video game industry

#19

Post by sdrothrock »

crocal wrote: post #18
sdrothrock wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can put it on your resume if you change jobs or go work as a freelancer, right? That's the problem -- imagine you have a decade of blank space in your resume.

You can work on classified project and still mention them in your resume. I have plenty of resumes like that in the team. As long as I have a way to verify skills (by calling someone), it's perfectly fine. I don't need to know the details. No one should leave a blank line in a resume.

The article cites "white label" companies that aren't allowed to mention what they've worked on, though. I'm not sure how that would work other than you saying that you worked at X company, but not being able to cite a single product you worked on.

Re: Secret developers of the video game industry

#20

Post by pjmlp »

vvanders wrote: post #3

Crediting is a much larger issue than just what's referred to in the article. I worked on a title for ~3 years, many of those being 6-8 months of 75-100hr weeks. Saw marriages destroyed on that project, people pushed to the edge. I left ~4 months before ship because I knew if I didn't it would be the end of me. Twice I blew the stoplight in front of our house because I was so exhausted. Yet it was insinuated that I d…

That type of experience is what made me never really get into the industry, although I used to attend GDCE on my own, be an IGDA member, had interviews at known UK and DE studios, and still do know some devs in the field.

I was never a type of person to put work before family and friends.

And even though general IT also has its crunch time, it doesn't come even close to those hours.

Additionally, in many countries, unions are also present in IT companies.

So, I just kept it as yet another hobby.

Apparently the industry prefers to destroy people life's than make it more pleasant to newcomers, thanks to the dream everyone has to work in the field.

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