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Cyberpunk 2077 has involved months of crunch, despite past promises

polygon.com

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Re: Cyberpunk 2077 has involved months of crunch, despite past promises

#51

Post by pie_flavor »

0xy wrote: post #10
nightski wrote: post #2

What is even more baffling to me is the sheer rage and lack of humanity of fans towards the developers when they delayed it several times. There was a lot of hate including death threats to the developers. I understand the internet brings out the worst in people but I can't imagine anyone desiring to be a game developer at this point.

The delays were sheer incompetence and are far from normal in the gaming industry. You don't guarantee to fans personally that the game will definitely come out at a date (which is less than a month away) then delay it the next day. This indicates that nobody even knew how bad it was. There's also rumors developers found out about the delays from social media. CDPR execs are just incompetent and unable to set realist…

Argue from personal interest if you like, but arguing from business interest suggests that you have a better idea what makes them money than their execs do; the final delay can't have been done for much more than money.

As for my personal interest: "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." - Shigeru Miyamoto

Re: Cyberpunk 2077 has involved months of crunch, despite past promises

#52

Post by 0xy »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #19
0xy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The delays were sheer incompetence and are far from normal in the gaming industry. You don't guarantee to fans personally that the game will definitely come out at a date (which is less than a month away) then delay it the next day. This indicates that nobody even knew how bad it was. There's also rumors developers found out about the delays from social media. CDPR execs are just incompetent and unable to set realist…

Who cares? It’s a game . Incompetence or not, harassing and threatening devs is not okay.

Reread the OP. It's not exclusively about threats. This is also a giant billion dollar corporation that deliberately misled customers (who in many cases have already paid them for the product).

How did they deliberately mislead them? By saying things like only a natural disaster would stop the latest release date, only for it to slip with less than a month left.

That's an actual lie and false advertising. As someone with project management experience, the people making those claims are either incompetent or lying.

So yeah, customers who paid them money and were lied to have an absolute right to be furious. Death threats is an excuse. 99.99% of the criticism was justified and without intimidation or threats.

Re: Cyberpunk 2077 has involved months of crunch, despite past promises

#53

Post by krastanov »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #12
nightski wrote: post #2

What is even more baffling to me is the sheer rage and lack of humanity of fans towards the developers when they delayed it several times. There was a lot of hate including death threats to the developers. I understand the internet brings out the worst in people but I can't imagine anyone desiring to be a game developer at this point.

Given that the promotional strategy seems to have focused on engaging the GamerGate portion of their fanbase, I’d say it’s not baffling at all. https://www.polygon.com/2020/12/4/22058784/cyberpunk-2077-ma...

I was confused by this article. I am interested in understanding better the point of view of the author and if you have insight in it I would appreciate if you can elaborate on your comment. The criticism of the character creation surprised me: sure it could be better, but is it not also the most embracing version created yet in any AAA videogame that we known of. Same with the poster: is it not cool to have a buff trans protagonist - they are objectified, but that is the point of posters (see captain america or black widow posters). Please assume good faith in my questions: I understand the topic is sensitive but while I have tried to read up on it, my surprise at the tone of the article seems to mean that I am definitely missing something.

Re: Cyberpunk 2077 has involved months of crunch, despite past promises

#55

Post by nonbirithm »

Aeolun wrote: post #3

That’s dissapointing. Especially after they ‘promised’ they wouldn’t do it. I wonder what the solution is here. Boycotting the game is hardly going to help the employees there. I guess this is just one of those things that the law should mandate, but does not for some reason.

The people complaining about it being delayed are probably the people least likely to change their minds because of the delays and not buy the game when it comes out. Empty promises about crunch and lost trust won't matter as much to those people when the game comes out. Also, does the general gaming subculture still care about Red Dead Redemption 2's development and the livelihood and mental health costs it caused to its devs? Or Grand Theft Auto V, seven years later? Will 2077 only be remembered in the future as a very good title with no acknowledgement of the unnecessary toil the devs were put through?

One problem is that there is too much hype. No Man's Sky proved that with too much effective advertising you can hype yourself into a corner, not have enough resources to finish the product properly, and guarantee the disappointment of the people expecting too much. Some game developers seem to not know when to scale back their ambitions and align the hype they generate with a time schedule and human resources management that is healthy. There's just too much passion in some game development areas that isn't left unexploited.

For GTA VI, Rockstar will only release a smaller sized game and instead add sizeable updates spread out over time, which makes it sound like they've finally started to learn from the past.

https://kotaku.com/18-months-after-red-dead-redemption-2-roc...

Re: Cyberpunk 2077 has involved months of crunch, despite past promises

#56

Post by quibbler »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #12
nightski wrote: post #2

What is even more baffling to me is the sheer rage and lack of humanity of fans towards the developers when they delayed it several times. There was a lot of hate including death threats to the developers. I understand the internet brings out the worst in people but I can't imagine anyone desiring to be a game developer at this point.

Given that the promotional strategy seems to have focused on engaging the GamerGate portion of their fanbase, I’d say it’s not baffling at all. https://www.polygon.com/2020/12/4/22058784/cyberpunk-2077-ma...

What is "exploitative" about the mix it up poster? I know people like that. Have they no right to exist?

Re: Cyberpunk 2077 has involved months of crunch, despite past promises

#57

Post by [deleted] »

nightski wrote: post #2

What is even more baffling to me is the sheer rage and lack of humanity of fans towards the developers when they delayed it several times. There was a lot of hate including death threats to the developers. I understand the internet brings out the worst in people but I can't imagine anyone desiring to be a game developer at this point.

[deleted]

Re: Cyberpunk 2077 has involved months of crunch, despite past promises

#58

Post by 4cao »

0xy wrote: post #10
nightski wrote: post #2

What is even more baffling to me is the sheer rage and lack of humanity of fans towards the developers when they delayed it several times. There was a lot of hate including death threats to the developers. I understand the internet brings out the worst in people but I can't imagine anyone desiring to be a game developer at this point.

The delays were sheer incompetence and are far from normal in the gaming industry. You don't guarantee to fans personally that the game will definitely come out at a date (which is less than a month away) then delay it the next day. This indicates that nobody even knew how bad it was. There's also rumors developers found out about the delays from social media. CDPR execs are just incompetent and unable to set realist…

While this comment is problematic because of the entitlement it exudes, it draws attention to two important phenomena:

(1) the issue would have likely been avoided if the studio did not set a day-definite release date (announcing it more generally as e.g. Q4 2020 instead);

(2) there is a general problem with how game pre-orders work: people put their money down but it isn't really clear what they are getting for it in return, or when they will be getting it; many pre-orderers make certain assumptions to this effect, and when promises fail to materialize later, the disappointment runs deep.

Re: Cyberpunk 2077 has involved months of crunch, despite past promises

#59

Post by dathinab »

vvanders wrote: post #42

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Once with a 6 months crunch, second time closer to 10 months of 14 hour days. That was enough for me to swear off the entire industry despite working towards it for most of my younger life. Saw it what it did to our team, destroyed multiple relationships, the product suffered for it and overall both titles we're a disaster. It cuts in more than one way, aside from some really r…

I did crunch time once. (In my case ironically I was the problem, it was fully unnecessary and no one but me involved).

Thinks I learned from it:

- It's very daunting.

- It's quite bad for your health, especially your mental health.

- It's bad for productivity. Which means it's a fatal cycle: you do crunch time => because of stress and exhaustion you are less productive => you need to do even more crunch because you where not productive enough.

- It's bad for quality. Sure all your tests pass and the many problem(s) seems fixed, but there is a good chance that you will have to pay extra in the long run due to technical dept or just sub-optimal design.

- It's bad for creativity. I could more than one time majorly reduce my work by just reflecting on what is actually needed (in difference to what seems to be needed, is asked for by your team lead (i.e. not your customer)). The chance for this to happen under crunch is continuously decreasing with increasing frequency of crunch.

- EDIT: Because of the last 3 points, it's bad for getting things done in time as they will likely take longer on a "work done per hour" scalar.

Re: Cyberpunk 2077 has involved months of crunch, despite past promises

#60

Post by pie_flavor »

memonkey wrote: post #50
sim_card_map wrote: post #11

And billions of profits go to owners and shareholders, while developers crunch 80 hours/week for $2000-3000/month.

You're getting a lot of hate for this comment but I think it's an important discussion. It isn't easy to "just go somewhere else" or "start your own thing" for a variety of reasons. The reality is that the majority of these game developers aren't getting job offers every day and don't have access to the kind of capital necessary to start a company. It's flippant to suggest that these developers can just find another…

You perhaps miss the point of 'then start your own thing'. It is not meant as a realistic suggestion of where to take your career. It is meant to point out that the employer/employee relationship is one-directional for relative profit because it's the other direction in relative stability and investment. You are correct in your analysis that developers don't have access to the kind of capital necessary to start a company. That's the point - you can't predicate an argument on 'the actual workers only get a small fraction' when minus a stable job you would only be able to output a small fraction.

Plus the development abstraction layer influences public perception as much as it does developer perception. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/04/11/the-development-ab...

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