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The tragic end of Telltale Games

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Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#161

Post by PhasmaFelis »

ocschwar wrote: post #97
tablethnuser wrote: post #71

Don't work in the games industry. This is the par story for game companies. Every little detail of this story I saw repeating on loop in a decade of working in games. The artists grabbing assets to stuff into their portfolios before two years of professional work disappears into a black hole, the ppl moving families across country to be laid off months later, the crunch, the over promising, it is all text book. The g…

I can't even play anymore. I've seen firsthand how the industry treats developers, and I cannot bring myself to send money into the pockets of the fratboy shitheels that run it.

I'm a frequent PC gamer and I haven't bought a AAA game in years. It's a bad time to be an indie dev, but a great time to be an indie gamer.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#162

Post by s73v3r_ »

duxup wrote: post #50
nkrisc wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well then you have to choose between turning down the job for the chance you'll need unemployment insurance or taking the job because you need a job. The rational choice is to take the job regardless.

Depends on your options. The game industry seems pretty terrible to their workers. Either way the employees had to know.

Sure, but that doesn't change anything.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#163

Post by PhasmaFelis »

screye wrote: post #57
lmm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gaming press is more press than gaming; they're often people with writing degrees who are disproportionately fond of "literary" games compared to the buying public.

This is very true. Gaming journos have very little influence inside the gaming community. Many of them do not quite get that "fun" is the most central reason for playing a game. Their articles often read like someone who is hoping for a regular media house to notice and hire them, rather than a gamer writing for other gamers. Gaming's biggest personalities are on YouTube and Twitch. ACG, Angry Joe, TB (rip), Dunkey h…

> Gaming journos have very little influence inside the gaming community. Many of them do not quite get that "fun" is the most central reason for playing a game.

Funny, it seems to me that many gamers don't quite get that not everyone has to have fun exactly the same way they do.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#164

Post by vtange »

chii wrote: post #88
wheelie_boy wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game dev is a meat grinder. While making games is a great way to learn programming, and is a lot of fun, the working conditions make it an untenable career choice for most.

Only way is to either make it a hobby project, and work a day job that pays well. Or, take the risk and go indie - effectively a lottery ticket.

Lottery tickets don't demand that you wear multiple hats and grind for years. Even if you bought a ticket every day it's probably cheaper than quitting your job and eating into your savings for a chance at an indie moonshot.

The hobby project route is pretty much the only way.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#165

Post by InclinedPlane »

tablethnuser wrote: post #71

Don't work in the games industry. This is the par story for game companies. Every little detail of this story I saw repeating on loop in a decade of working in games. The artists grabbing assets to stuff into their portfolios before two years of professional work disappears into a black hole, the ppl moving families across country to be laid off months later, the crunch, the over promising, it is all text book. The g…

A huge problem with GameDev is that there's a huge group of 20-somethings fresh into the job market with tech skills who think of it as their dream job and are fully willing to be abused and exploited in order to work in the industry. It takes years for them to be burned out, at which point there's another batch of eager young go-getters willing to fill their void. This dynamic means that even at the worst companies there is never a shortage of workers willing to grind through the endless crunch-time and put up with horrible working conditions and worse processes in order to get games to market.

Things used to be almost as bad in the software dev industry as a whole several decades back, except software dev moved on and got (a little) better. Additionally, a lot of those folks back then had substantial equity, whereas that's really not the case in GameDev today. There's an endless supply of disposable workers today, and that takes a lot of pressure off the industry to do better. Some places do better, but mostly through their own volition. And, unfortunately, such places are all too rare.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#166

Post by ant6n »

gaius wrote: post #67
falcolas wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company didn't cease to exist; they still had (have?) employees finishing existing contracts. They also tried to raise money to staff back up and finish off the Walking Dead games.

It sucks but if there is literally no money left then the company is simply not able to fulfill its obligations. Like if pay is owed where will that money come from? I don’t excuse management for a second; they must have known the coffers were bare while they were still hiring.

In Quebec, administrators are personally liable for owed wages.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#167

Post by InclinedPlane »

k__ wrote: post #4

"years of nonstop crunch culture, toxic management, and frustration from developers who believed the company’s refusal to diversify gameplay had led to creative stagnation" I don't understand why the people who were let go didn't leave in the first place...

Even for people who have considerable talent/experience there is often a peak window of opportunity for leaving and if you miss it then it can become a lot more difficult afterward. Putting yourself out into the job market is difficult, and risky. A lot of people work paycheck to paycheck so any disruption to that whatsoever is a risk. Working crunch constantly also burns you out, depriving you of time, energy, and motivation to seek other jobs. You can also get stuck in trying to rationalize your situation. It's super easy to think "this isn't so bad" because you get to work in an office instead of out digging ditches or whatever, because you get to work on "cool stuff you love", because you get to spend all day working alongside a bunch of "cool/fun people" and friends, and so on. And you may not notice the exact point at which each of your justifications top being true, there may be no one glaring tipping point that pushes you to look elsewhere for work.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#168

Post by manfredo »

tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #157
HBlix wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “upside” is that it’s never been easier to not play AAA games. Between derivative content rehashes yearly, insane microtransaction schemes, content cut into pieces and locked behind multiple season passes and dlc, and the endless busywork “gameplay” designed to maiximize engagement and money over time at the direct expense of fun... fuck it. Look at the new Assassin’s Creed game, which is a reskin of Origins, plu…

Of all the stuff I've read about the new AC game, I'm really surprised no one has mentioned that it's just a reskin. It seems obvious to me.

It's par for the course for AC games. Most of them are reskins of the previous with minor evolutionary tweaks. Brotherhood was a near carbon copy of AC2. AC3 tried to reinvent the series but it was significantly poorly received. Black Flag put more emphasis on sailing ships, but that was already done to lesser degrees by AC3 and Rogue. Origins was really the only one in the series to make a significant change to the combat, progression, and inventory system.

Not that this is necessarily bad, Ubisoft has gotten really good at building these sorts of open world games, and the market seems to agree that having minor changes to the same formula is a good approach.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#169

Post by annywhey »

everyone wrote: post #138
LyndsySimon wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Same thing pretty much, but with more action. That's exactly why we play BR games. These days I play mostly PUBG. Before that, Day of Infamy. Before that, Insurgency. Notice a trend? Each one of those games has a lot at stake (relatively speaking) when you get into an engagement. If you die, you sit out for a while. They're about communication and coordination between players on the same team. PUBG (and Fortnite, t…

Ok then, thats been done many times ages ago in the likes of ARMA, rainbow 6, Operation flashpoint.. etc.

Here, watch this:

https://youtu.be/ffryiLmQb1U

This is Fortnite build battling. BR as a whole just refers to a game ruleset that forces and encourages a last-man-standing situation. That part has been done before there was a video game. But the details of what's being communicated are different. They're different even between Rust and PUBG, despite both of them being military styled. Fortnite is in a class of its own since it's cartoonish and the building and mobility options present a lot of unique options. Even comparisons to Minecraft don't fit since the build system is different.

Performing jadedness about the games being "done before" is basically like saying new movies are just collections of old cliches. Even when they are, they end up saying something different.

Re: The tragic end of Telltale Games

#170

Post by ppseafield »

criley2 wrote: post #19
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #5

I don't get how there is not a general insurance system for people losing their jobs unexpectedly which pays out three months of similar or something similar.

There is "Unemployment Insurance" in America, and companies have to pay into it for their employees by law. Any employee who no-fault loses their job can draw from it. This company used a "cheat" in the legal system in America for labor where they illegally labeled their employees as "independent contractors", which are treated differently under the law. These contractors aren't "employees" and aren't eligible for un…

Not always, at least here in Oregon I received unemployment after being let go from a contractor job. The state tax department had to rule whether or not my contracting work qualified though. They used a couple of factors: whether or not I had set times to be at the office, whether I had to be at the office, how many hours I worked, if they gave me hardware for working there - basically if they were "cheating" as you said.
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