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CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

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Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#491

Post by detaro »

deeviant wrote: post #130
briga wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, that's great for you, but people are bashing CDPR for a good reason: the last-gen console versions are unfinished buggy messes. In a few hours of playing I've had multiple crashes, constant bugs, drops to 15 FPS, just generally terrible performance. I've literally never played such a buggy game before. For a game that had 8 years of dev time the state of the game is pretty egregious

I actually think the bugs/performance issues are helping CDPR right now. Everybody is talking about them rather than how bad the game actually is. The combat is simplistic. The AI opponents are basically broken. The quickhack system does indeed feel like a quickly hacked together game mechanic. V is stuck in a weird state between existing background (a la witcher) and player action defined: I didn't get the feeling o…

These tweets have some interesting look at the world AIs: E.g. apparently traffic can't handle disturbances at all and it's "solved" by very aggressive despawning of things you don't look at. (To be clear, every open-world game will do some amount of that, but this is extreme and if the AI can't handle existing for longer they can't easily fix it)

https://twitter.com/JumpOvertheAge/status/133892916630199091...

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#492

Post by eru »

munk-a wrote: post #194
pavlov wrote: post #7

This company has probably the shittiest gamified bonus system that I've ever heard of: "CDPR leaders would hand out tokens every month to staffers who went above and beyond, and those tokens were supposed to be transferrable into bonuses if the game met “certain criteria, like critical acclaim and a timely release,” according to the report." [1] Get paid in "crunch mode experience points" handed out by middle manager…

CDPR sounds like a relatively progressively run game company tbh. A lot of game dev companies deny you overtime during the run up to a major release and massively layoff staff after releases. Up here in British Columbia all technical workers[1] are overtime exempt because EA ran roughshod over our labour laws a number of years ago and people are too afraid to change them for fear of driving off businesses. 1. Vaguely…

Programmers in the non-gaming parts of the industry are treated better not because of any labour laws, but because of supply and demand.

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#493

Post by alkonaut »

Wish at least one game studio/publisher would come out and say "We are just like any other software company. We work 40 hour weeks and have a healthy work/life balance. We don't have crunch time".

As the industry grows ever larger, that has to be a good way of attracting talent.

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#494

Post by teamonkey »

munk-a wrote: post #194
pavlov wrote: post #7

This company has probably the shittiest gamified bonus system that I've ever heard of: "CDPR leaders would hand out tokens every month to staffers who went above and beyond, and those tokens were supposed to be transferrable into bonuses if the game met “certain criteria, like critical acclaim and a timely release,” according to the report." [1] Get paid in "crunch mode experience points" handed out by middle manager…

CDPR sounds like a relatively progressively run game company tbh. A lot of game dev companies deny you overtime during the run up to a major release and massively layoff staff after releases. Up here in British Columbia all technical workers[1] are overtime exempt because EA ran roughshod over our labour laws a number of years ago and people are too afraid to change them for fear of driving off businesses. 1. Vaguely…

> deny you overtime during the run up to a major release

This made me stop. Do you mean deny you paid overtime, because actively preventing extra work in the run up to a milestone is absolutely not normal for the games industry. The opposite is far more common.

EA Vancouver might be more carefully watched, but one way of avoiding regulations like this is to make sure employees are only logging normal workday hours - if at all - regardless of how long they actually work.

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#495

Post by climb_stealth »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #480
climb_stealth wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it interesting but maybe not entirely surprising that games can actually crash on consoles. It still surprises me when it happens on my Nintendo Switch. Though my last console experience before that was on a Nintendo 64 and I don't think any game ever crashed on it.

I’m kind of dumbstruck you brought up the switch. I have never — and I am not exaggerating — never had a game freeze on me on a Nintendo system, save for a busted ass cart on a 30 year old NES. Especially lately, I feel as though Nintendo is the only brand who actually cares to provide that “just works” console experience.

I had the same feeling the first time it happened. Though I think it still holds true for Nintendo games. They are rock solid.

The games I have had crashes with have all been ports from other consoles.

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#496

Post by tsss »

XorNot wrote: post #464
sergiotapia wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take away the bugs and cosmetic performance problems; the game is just lousy. Every mechanic it implements is lousy and half-baked. From the driving, to the shooting, to the looting, to the AI, it's just mediocre. Try this tonight: make sure you're absolutely alone and shoot someone. A cop will spawn behind you. No AI, no chase, no nothing, just bloop here's a cop. The game has destroyed the reputation of this compan…

I mean I'm pretty sure the cop spawning itself is a placeholder mechanism they just never got around to. If you think about, the crime-notification probably calls a "spawn law enforcement" handler which basically just runs the spawn economy and drops them in, with a comment along the lines of "TODO: waiting on NPC driving mechanics" (which are also missing).

The whole game is a placeholder. What did they even do in all those years? By now you'd think that in a _released_ game that people paid $60 for, they would have "gotten around" to replacing those placeholders. If I buy a dish washer I expect it to wash dishes and not just that squirt them with a water gun because "washing is a placeholder that they never got around to implementing".

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#497

Post by moritonal »

alkonaut wrote: post #493

Wish at least one game studio/publisher would come out and say "We are just like any other software company. We work 40 hour weeks and have a healthy work/life balance. We don't have crunch time". As the industry grows ever larger, that has to be a good way of attracting talent.

It exists. The result is a slower-paced release process and "smaller" (as in, not absurd attempts at simulations of megacities) games, but instead forcing them to rely on story-telling and strong art. See SuperGiant games and their recent enormous success with Hades.

https://kotaku.com/the-secret-to-the-success-of-bastion-pyre...

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#498

Post by davedx »

gambiting wrote: post #489
SeanBoocock wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true of EA, at least in the United States. EA hires junior employees as non-exempt for their first couple of years. They are also in my experience among the most progressive big publishers when it comes to overtime and work/life balance. Not perfect, but certainly trying in a real way across most of its studios. Source: Worked for, but not currently employed at, several EA studios over the last decade, including…

I work at Ubisoft(in the UK[0]) and overtime and crunch are heavily discouraged, to a point where as a matter of policy, we are asked to report to higher management if anyne is asked to do overtime - it just shouldn't be happening at all. I've worked on two big AAA releases in the last 6 years and my total overtime was statistically zero, I did some extra hours in the last 2 weeks leading to release, but that was mos…

Yeah the games company I used to work for has gradually improved over the years - I have one good friend who stayed the whole time, and it's gone from "mandatory unpaid weekends" to "a bit of paid overtime here and there".

The key part I think is just making overtime paid, then the incentives all align much better.

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#499

Post by djbebs »

willis936 wrote: post #262
john_minsk wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A sign that Investors in this company are not looking to build long term fundamental business. They are there only to rip off immediate profit. Too bad.

Is this not a fundamental truth of shareholder value theory? No one should be surprised when a duck quacks.

No it isn't. Shareholders have no interest in owning a failing company, it is in their best interests for the company to be sucessful and profitable because they are the ones with skin in the game.

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#500

Post by killtimeatwork »

climb_stealth wrote: post #468
blub wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm playing on a PS4 slim and the game is fine, I really don't understand all the negativity (v 1.0.4). I had 2-3 crashes and saw some bugs like objects hanging in the air or the weapon not being visible. Performance is fine. Bought the game a couple of days after launch and after reading the reports about horrible performance while downloading, I disabled everything under graphics, but then after a crash it reset it…

I find it interesting but maybe not entirely surprising that games can actually crash on consoles. It still surprises me when it happens on my Nintendo Switch. Though my last console experience before that was on a Nintendo 64 and I don't think any game ever crashed on it.

> I find it interesting but maybe not entirely surprising that games can actually crash on consoles. It still surprises me when it happens on my Nintendo Switch.

Yeah. What about the testing that is a part of mandatory game certification process? Do console vendors look the other way for key games?

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