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GTA 6 Developers Unionize

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Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#541

Post by bananaboy »

asdff wrote: post #520
bananaboy wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It barely resembles id tech 3 at this point (I am an engine and pipeline programmer at Sledgehammer Games). There are very very few remnants of it in the codebase. I occasionally do some spelunking to see what’s left and these days it’s just the occasional comment and function names (although the content of the functions will have changed significantly).

I'm guessing its cheaper to iterate the old engine like this than to try and rebuild a new one from scratch one day, then move everyone onto that new engine and have them be as familiar as they were with the old one made of a couple decades of mostly duct tape it sounds like now.

Exactly! Armchair enthusiasts and gamers and such will talk about some game release and its "new engine" but throwing away the entire codebase is rarely a sensible choice financially speaking.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#542

Post by deaddodo »

ranguna wrote: post #530
deaddodo wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, when you're getting paid 40-60% for doing more complex work than app/web development...yeah, the drop-off is almost inevitable. Eventually people (unless they just really love making games) just go "f this, my career is more important". If you wanna do low-level code, you can go into embedded, sponsored OSI-companies, Microsoft, etc and get paid the same to more than gamedev with 10% of the stress and no crun…

> because you made the industry suck to work in. What do you mean they "made" the industry suck to work in?

Just read everything that came before that line.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#543

Post by jhatemyjob »

oreally wrote: post #444
jhatemyjob wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, and also, if you just take a step back and think of the bigger picture, the work isn't valuable. There's a lot more value in pushing ads, a CRM, an email app, etc than keeping a 14 year old kid entertained. I don't really buy the supply/demand argument everyone else is saying here. The end product just doesn't provide value to people's lives. The amount of effort you'd need to put in to provide value to someone…

> The end product just doesn't provide value to people's lives. You're waaay too tuned in to the corporate ideology to be saying something like this. I suggest you zoom out. The top heavy games do make a ton of money, so evidently there's value in entertaining people and giving them some good playtime compared to the drudge that is corporate life (PS. in case you didn't know not all people love to work for some other…

Entertainment isn't inherently valuable.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#544

Post by jhatemyjob »

jhatemyjob wrote: post #422
maccard wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry - you said it’s “grunt work”, not low skill. > There's very little value there. As opposed to the 373rd X-as-a-service crud app with AI features?

Ok so now you're lying. I never said that.

Okay, sorry. I retract that. I responded to the original comment saying "this", which implies that I would have said that myself. So... you got me there.

As for the second part of your comment, well... yeah, I don't disagree with you there. That doesn't have any value either. Those people are probably not making that much money.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#545

Post by moondance »

matchbok3 wrote: post #96
keybored wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-unionists are here to tell us that consumers might possibly suffer. Higher prices and delays on a video game. Which has not seen a release in this series in half this century so far. For all this consumer cares, great. Make it 20% more expensive. Make it 50% more expensive. A hundred. If that helps the greater union cause I can take more walks in the woods to pass the time instead.

What a luxury you have to spend so much money on things, then. Hint: most people don't live that way.

In other words: people are entitled to cheap entertainment, but the people who labor to produce that entertainment aren’t entitled to good working conditions. Boo

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#546

Post by ionwake »

Capricorn2481 wrote: post #471
matchbok3 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this "management" is so incompetent and ineffective, the workers shouldn't need them, right? They should just start their own company. Didn't think so. This simplistic view of "management" is detrimental to a productive conversation and doesn't reflect reality.

This is a puzzling comment. Are you asking why the famously underpaid game developers don't bootstrap their own company? Because the answer seems fairly obvious, and it says nothing about the quality of Rockstar's management. Does the concept of redundant middle management scandalize you? It's a relatively common experience, even if it's sometimes exaggerated. It actually takes a lot to be a good manager, and most pe…

Its actually brilliant I mentioned someone behaved like butthurt management last time and now its happening again with random insults and platitudes.

Now we get to hear about how obviously great management at Rockstar is compared to the worker there. Apparently its just obvious because otherwise, those workers would be management themselves.

If I was younger i would think this was a troll but Ive genuinely met managers like this. They think they are just better than people who are not themselves managers. Which literally makes no sense. As if the only purpose in a career is rank. They take no responsibility and feel personally attacked when its suggested.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#547

Post by account42 »

Animats wrote: post #326
sonzohan wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game dev here, have worked on AAA and indie. First off let me get on my high horse and say the engineering in video gaming is generally more complex than the engineering I've done working in big tech. You need a lot more creativity and ingenuity to solve the unusual problems you run into in gaming. From there, as others have said, it's a simple supply and demand issue. Nowadays I am a university professor, nearly eve…

> First off let me get on my high horse and say the engineering in video gaming is generally more complex than the engineering I've done working in big tech. Yes. Having done everything from mainframe OS internals to proof of correctness to autonomous vehicles, video games are the most difficult. At the beginning, game dev looks easy, because the tools are good and modern hardware is very capable. But as you approach…

> At the beginning, game dev looks easy, because the tools are good and modern hardware is very capable. But as you approach a big, highly detailed, photorealistic world, the easy approaches hit a performance wall. Then the necessary optimizations become insanely complex. That's the tyranny of the frame rate.

This is really a self inflicted problem though because game developers insist on making easily marketed games (=pretty screenshots) over fun ones. You don't need insane optimizations to make the next Minecraft or whatever. And let's be honest, most games run like dogshit because they leave very easy optimization opportunities like unaddressed.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#548

Post by account42 »

rowanG077 wrote: post #482
Xirdus wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gothic has always been a niche franchise, and G3 was poorly received not because of bugs, but because of bad worldbuilding (orcs speaking human language, magic runes disappearing, a powerful kingdom getting wholly conquered in basically no time, pretty small open world) and uninteresting story compared to previous titles. Sure it did have bugs, but so did G1 and G2. And that one AssCreed game where people's heads dis…

> Gothic has always been a niche franchise, and G3 was poorly received not because of bugs, but because of bad worldbuilding (orcs speaking human language, magic runes disappearing, a powerful kingdom getting wholly conquered in basically no time, pretty small open world) and uninteresting story compared to previous titles. This is just not true. Gothic 3 is still pretty alive in terms of modding and improvement prec…

> This is just not true. Gothic 3 is still pretty alive in terms of modding and improvement precisely because the base underneath the bugginess was good. You don't have a good community after 20 years if you have bad bodybuilding and uninteresting story.

You do realize that Bethesda's excuses for worldbuilding are some of the most modded turds out there, right?

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#549

Post by keybored »

nixon_why69 wrote: post #431
wahnfrieden wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting choice to blame FAANG demise on its workers

Its not like the CEOs unilaterally said "we want to suck now". It's the cumulative effect of many people optimizing for the promotion process within the company and then coaching their mentees to do the same.

Are not the CEOs responsible for cumulative/emergent effects?

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#550

Post by rowanG077 »

account42 wrote: post #548
rowanG077 wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gothic has always been a niche franchise, and G3 was poorly received not because of bugs, but because of bad worldbuilding (orcs speaking human language, magic runes disappearing, a powerful kingdom getting wholly conquered in basically no time, pretty small open world) and uninteresting story compared to previous titles. This is just not true. Gothic 3 is still pretty alive in terms of modding and improvement prec…

> This is just not true. Gothic 3 is still pretty alive in terms of modding and improvement precisely because the base underneath the bugginess was good. You don't have a good community after 20 years if you have bad bodybuilding and uninteresting story. You do realize that Bethesda's excuses for worldbuilding are some of the most modded turds out there, right?

Gothic is not by Bethesda, they are very different games. I'm not sure what exactly you want to say with your comment
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