next »

[gimymblert]

Seems we have irrational now:
http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/6/5474722/why-did-irrational-close-bioshock-infinite

[gimymblert]

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/AnthonyFarmer/20140304/212281/Please_fix_your_hiring_practices.php

[Udderdude]

Reading this thread makes me glad I don't have to deal with "The industry" ..

(I still don't get why this thread isn't in Business or something)

[ink.inc]

Moved

[gimymblert]

http://www.quora.com/Zynga/What-went-wrong-at-Zynga

http://kotaku.com/why-game-developers-keep-getting-laid-off-1583192249

[airman4]

Wow
Ken levine is loved a lot there xd

[gimymblert]

http://kotaku.com/sources-crytek-not-paying-staff-on-time-ryse-sequel-d-1594967505

From the comments:

   DemosthenesJason Schreier
Tuesday 12:07pm

This sounds like EVERY studio I've ever worked for in this industry.

There is absolutely no advocacy for developers as the supply of naive, fresh out of university, 20-somethings is quick to fill whatever ranks are depleted by burned-out veterans with actual experience.

This is a problem that far transcends one studio and is a cancer killing the industry. No one enters into a game developer role expecting to retire at a studio, let alone stick around for more than a few years (at best). You want a family, or even a long-term relationship? Good luck.

Crytek's "bureaucratic environment" is born from the rampant cronyism that places ill-equipped managers into roles they have no business being in while also artificially promoting allied cronies with no experience. I can count several instances where I've witnessed the people that actually made positive contributions losing their jobs in layoff rounds as the dead weight remains unaffected due to their immunity cards gleaned from corporate BS.

This lack of focus on talent retention is why studios collapse: inept management/leadership and poor planning lords over the development process while the few "nerds" are surrounded by the "jock" majorities who only keep their positions because of political maneuvering. The result is a small band of overworked actual workers that end up producing sub-par (and bug-ridden) products while the majority of the team posts photos of their latest alcoholic beverages to Facebook. The ensuing layoffs end up culling the actual workers even further while the parasitic cronies cling for dear life (and/or establish additional social "networks" in anticipation of golden-parachute deployment as the eventual studio closure occurs).

There is absolutely NO reason for unpaid labor in this day and age but, because the supply of workers far exceeds their demand, unscrupulous and predatory employers can afford to continually play their crony-collection games while millions of game developers are forced into an itinerant lifestyle that would make an army brat's childhood look stable.

I really hope a reform comes to this industry because, the last decade of my life has really made me question why I even bother anymore: game design doesn't really exist these days anyways —in mobile development, you're more of a statistician or economist than an actual game designer and AAA game development is so risk-adverse that it's more about copying already existing systems and features than actually designing new ones or refining existing conventions.

Crytek's anti-employee practices are just par for the course and this really needs to stop if this industry ever hopes to deviate from the mediocrity train it's riding toward a certain New Mexican landfill.

[GG-Works]

http://kotaku.com/sources-crytek-not-paying-staff-on-time-ryse-sequel-d-1594967505

From the comments:

   DemosthenesJason Schreier
Tuesday 12:07pm

This sounds like EVERY studio I've ever worked for in this industry.

There is absolutely no advocacy for developers as the supply of naive, fresh out of university, 20-somethings is quick to fill whatever ranks are depleted by burned-out veterans with actual experience.

This is a problem that far transcends one studio and is a cancer killing the industry. No one enters into a game developer role expecting to retire at a studio, let alone stick around for more than a few years (at best). You want a family, or even a long-term relationship? Good luck.

Crytek's "bureaucratic environment" is born from the rampant cronyism that places ill-equipped managers into roles they have no business being in while also artificially promoting allied cronies with no experience. I can count several instances where I've witnessed the people that actually made positive contributions losing their jobs in layoff rounds as the dead weight remains unaffected due to their immunity cards gleaned from corporate BS.

This lack of focus on talent retention is why studios collapse: inept management/leadership and poor planning lords over the development process while the few "nerds" are surrounded by the "jock" majorities who only keep their positions because of political maneuvering. The result is a small band of overworked actual workers that end up producing sub-par (and bug-ridden) products while the majority of the team posts photos of their latest alcoholic beverages to Facebook. The ensuing layoffs end up culling the actual workers even further while the parasitic cronies cling for dear life (and/or establish additional social "networks" in anticipation of golden-parachute deployment as the eventual studio closure occurs).

There is absolutely NO reason for unpaid labor in this day and age but, because the supply of workers far exceeds their demand, unscrupulous and predatory employers can afford to continually play their crony-collection games while millions of game developers are forced into an itinerant lifestyle that would make an army brat's childhood look stable.

I really hope a reform comes to this industry because, the last decade of my life has really made me question why I even bother anymore: game design doesn't really exist these days anyways —in mobile development, you're more of a statistician or economist than an actual game designer and AAA game development is so risk-adverse that it's more about copying already existing systems and features than actually designing new ones or refining existing conventions.

Crytek's anti-employee practices are just par for the course and this really needs to stop if this industry ever hopes to deviate from the mediocrity train it's riding toward a certain New Mexican landfill.

I remember reading similar articles about the BS stuff game developers pull from the days of EA and Activision.  It's one thing to have passion for what you love, but those people want to take advantage of that passion until they burn you out. 

[s0]

Gimmy, serious question: Would you ever want to work in the game industry again? Also what made you quit in the first place?

[MorleyDev]

From what I've seen and heard as someone with no experience in the games industry itself but with experience in the software development industry, it seems like the games industry is where all software was 10 years ago but combined with the worst parts of other entertainment industries like the music industry.

Whilst in the general software industry conditions have improved (a move away from waterfall, avoiding crunch time, encouragement of cross-team co-operation, focus on self-managing teams and flatter management structures, it all seems to limit the main causes of stress). Problems and horror stories are still not rare, but as a whole developers are pushing for more and seem to be, as a whole, getting it.

In the games industry, people are still doing things the old way, and management isn't too keen on changing that. So, when they burn out, they're leaving. Some leave and move into regular software, others found their own company and try and do things better. But that's difficult without going to the big publishers, who perpetuate the cycle.

[gimymblert]

To be frank, It's not that is keeping me away, it's more like I wanted to explore risky and difficult idea. I acknowledge that R&D cannot be planned in advance, and the kind of goal is both R&D and artistic/culturally aware stuff. The latter being WAY more difficult that I anticipate despite aiming "low".

For example, let's say I want to aim as low as making a simple rpg. RPG are riffed with mechanics that evolved from a colonialist perspective on things ... Loot for example justified the genocid of tribal and savage creature that barely had a souls, replace orc by native american and heroes by settlers and you have the same narrative, rpg is reenactment of the eldorado myth applied to not so glorious period of europe (dark age name that way for a reason) only to glorify it. This idea that exotic land are made to be mastered and controlled by pillaging, kill and and subjugating the local for personal growth and gain. That's just one mechanics!

Now if the context of that RPG is in the caribbean, whose history is literally just that, made by descendant of slave (like me), something rings as awfully wrong. It makes also hard to work with other people because that realization of the real message of typical will make them dissonantly awkwards or outright dismissive. But also raised the question, how do you represent things in a way that does not tie into those awful things? How do you stay true mechanically to a culture but in a positive way (especially important in alienated culture like mine)?

However I feel the need to say that you should not idealized the industry, especially when entering it, especially if despite all of that you want to work inside it, you must prepare yourself because it can leave you broken. The turn away rate of the VG industry is one of the highest, what over industry you became a senor in just 5 years (1 project)?

[ryansumo]

For example, let's say I want to aim as low as making a simple rpg. RPG are riffed with mechanics that evolved from a colonialist perspective on things ... Loot for example justified the genocid of tribal and savage creature that barely had a souls, replace orc by native american and heroes by settlers and you have the same narrative, rpg is reenactment of the eldorado myth applied to not so glorious period of europe (dark age name that way for a reason) only to glorify it. This idea that exotic land are made to be mastered and controlled by pillaging, kill and and subjugating the local for personal growth and gain. That's just one mechanics!

This is way off topic but wanted to respond to something specific.

This seems a bit of a stretch, to say that mechanics are somehow inherently bad or that they have some genesis in colonialism.  Tribes looted each other and there were heroic quests way before any empires and colonies existed.

Also there are surely ways that you can upend a game's mechanics to suit the narrative that you want to tell.  For example, I too am from a colonized country (The Philippines) and we have a long history of blaming colonialism for many of our modern day ills. I want to challenge that notion by making a mod of Europa Universalis (colonialism to the max!) that allows the player to unite the Philippines and boot out the Spanish colony before it can grow too much.  Not that I'll ever have time to properly do that. :|

[gimymblert]

I haven't said it is inherently bad!!

I say they communicate value and might reflect hidden cultural ideal, in my case I use colonialism as a context because the setting is the caraibean, so it fit the dissonance. Also because the setting of most rooted in medieval time.

However that colonialism is responsible for many modern ill is a facts of history. I'm from teh first generation who hasn't been directly cripple by this mentality and until recently many story was left untold (for example mai 67 in guadeloupe, etc). There is a whole set of attitudes that are inherited (such as denial) that alienate the cultural growth by having a fleeting sense of devalued self or devalued culture. When basic link are broken the whole social dynamics became subtly skews.

That's thing I had to learn on the spot and accept as the weirdly pressing injunction of "i don't have to do that" from everywhere just because I happen to have a black character as the main protagonist, show me the pressure are indeed there. The same pressure did broke any alliance I had with people that were part of the team that were starting to question the success of the project (as an excuse to bail out) any time a challenge present itself, especially when it deals with cultural and appearance specificity.

And slowly learning history and how the local culture was forged to maintain a kind of cultural mind control (as it was the focus in the old days), back in the days and how it has shape belief later, lead to me see the direct origin of many weird behavior of todays where I am. There is also the facts the more educated you became toward the subject, the more people see you as an activist (just for sharing the knowledge time to time), and god that's BAD in their eyes!

I understand the attitude to say we can't just say it's the fault of (any systems) as it is a easy way out to self responsibility, at the same time this acknowledgement is important to identify the correct root cause and correct them. It's important to see that this realization is only made not so long ago (and made it inside the population mind) so the way to cope with it isn't completely solved.

My work is precisely to create counter narrative of self worth (not just for the alienated people but also those who see them) instead of blaming the current state of affair. Effectively a narrative of empty revenge will only lead to more resentment as we "wake up from the dream" as there will be a discontinuity from reality and the rewriting. More interesting are narrative that allow to reinvent reality in a positive and constructive way. By re positioning symbol and giving them new meaning taht hhelp with self worth.

One example of the many narrative I'm working for is one where:

- There was, once upon a time, a tyrannic ice queen, who ruled over the snow land and its peoples, that lured people of the sun out of their country into hers, because she fear they would use their powers someday to melt and destroy her, because that's what she would do. She befriended the queen of the sun and then betrayed her to take over her land.

- As people of the sun arrived in the snow country of the ice queen to be enslave they slowly lost their sun power because the sun is hidden behind the snow cloud of the queen. The ice queen, to prevent alliance with the snow people, made the snow people believed they were the master of the sun people. However the encounter of sun people and snow people created a new great power, the power of steam.

- Using the steam, some snow people and sun people allied together to overthrow the tyranny of the ice queen, thus begin a new era where snow people and sun people try to lives together thanks to the power of steam. However the lies of the snow queen still run invisibly between the people and created dissent into their heart, and the absence of the sun queen left sun people confused about themselves.

- However a hidden secret have yet to be unveiled, that the snow people were long long ago sun people who moved into the snow land and had to summon the ice queen to help them survive in this new land. The ice queen lend them her power in exchange to having them working for her.

[gimymblert]

http://pando.com/tag/techtopus/

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/business/pixars-ed-catmull-emerges-as-central-figure-in-the-wage-fixing-scandal-101362.html

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=137115&page=2

vfx industry but we know there is overlap

[gimymblert]

[gimymblert]

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/PaulTozour/20150120/234443/The_Game_Outcomes_Project_Part_4_Crunch_Makes_Games_Worse.php

Crunch make game worse the study

[gimymblert]

http://kotaku.com/the-pizza-party-where-everyone-got-fired-1685455125

[gimymblert]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/03/it-felt-like-robbery-tomb-raider-and-the-fall-of-core-design/

via http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1020901

[gimymblert]

http://www.lostgarden.com/2015/04/minimum-sustainable-success.html

[gimymblert]

http://kotaku.com/crunch-time-why-game-developers-work-such-insane-hours-1704744577