
Secret developers of the video game industry - aaronbrethorst
http://www.polygon.com/2015/9/30/9394355/the-secret-developers-of-the-video-game-industry
======
vvanders
Crediting is a much larger issue than just what's referred to in the article.

I worked on a title for ~3 years, many of those being 6-8 months of 75-100hr
weeks. Saw marriages destroyed on that project, people pushed to the edge.

I left ~4 months before ship because I knew if I didn't it would be the end of
me. Twice I blew the stoplight in front of our house because I was so
exhausted. Yet it was insinuated that I didn't work hard enough since I came
in the office at 8am and left at 10pm(everyone else left 12am-2am).

You want to know what I was credited as?

"Special Thanks"

That and many other reasons is why you'll see the game industry burn through
talent. I've never seen a collective of some of the sharpest, creative people
I've ever worked with exploited to such a degree under the misplaced reason of
"Passion".

The place I worked before then was very much white-label, with very similar
issues and working conditions. I think we did get the studio logo on the back
of the box but there was a very clear agreement where no logos could be placed
in-game.

~~~
scrollaway
The games industry has a worker abuse problem.

All those companies proudly talking about their 18 months of crunch? Nooooope,
shouldn't happen. This shouldn't be a thing you're proud of. You shouldn't be
proud of your employees for slaving to death on those projects.

It's very tough. Compared to the "regular" tech industry, people in video
games can be _so_ passionate about what they're making. It almost seems
comparable to founding a startup, except you're just an employee working on a
project.

You, reader, wherever you're working: Imagine if every single member of your
team was _incredibly_ passionate about the work they do. They are building
their own baby. They have the vision, they have the motherly drive that puts
the existence of their baby ahead of their own. You can see how that could be
abused by companies?

It's possible to be passionate without driving yourself crazy like that, but
in the video games industry it's far too common and it becomes the norm. In
fact, I was going to post about this a few minutes ago - and then you yourself
described the problem better than I could.

Credit in your story is not the issue. The 8 months of 100 hour weeks is.

~~~
kls
When I was young, I was in the simulation industry in Orlando and the game
industry was taking off there. Tiburon, who would become part of EA later, was
snapping up the young simulation talent, in the area and I had an offer to
move over. That was the day I decided that web development did not look like
that bad of a tradeoff. Game dev was a cut in pay from simulation salaries,
which where already well under web dev salaries and the work days my friends
where pulling bordered on the insane, crunch mode for 12 months or more with
no ownership stake.

Now I was young at the time and had no issue with a long day, I ended up in a
startup, pulling similar hours but I had a small stake in ownership. My
friends that did go into the field, on the other hand, have very fond memories
of the work (similar to soldiers in battle trying to pull off a heroic effort)
but they have a lot of regrets overall for entering the industry and feel that
they have been damaged as an employee after they inevitably became
disillusioned as happens when you life goals of your 30's and 40's start to
materialize.

Simply put, the game industry has an almost inexhaustible supply of young
bright talent that are falling over one another to get a break in the
industry. My nephew being one of them, I literally staged an intervention with
him and asked him to talk to several of my friends that left the industry. But
he is young and cannot see past his 20's so he is well on his way in the
industry. His college girlfriend just split on him over the hours, as she
wants to go out and be 20 something, but that has not rocked his confidence in
maintaining course in the industry. It is unfortunate, a lot of bright kids
get sucked down that hole, I am thankful I was not.

------
danso
Not to derail an otherwise interesting article, but the OP picked a not-great
anecdote to lead with. The Red Ash Kickstarter was controversial because it
was launched by the studio that was (and _is_ ) behind a high-profile
Kickstarter: Mighty No. 9, a game billed as the spiritual successor to Mega
Man which raised $3.85M. At the time that Red Ash was announced, Comcept
claimed that Mighty No. 9 was pretty much done and that they needed to get
another game into the pipeline. Midway through the Red Ash campaign, people
noticed that Mighty No. 9 was marked by retailers as being delayed. When
Comcept was questioned about this, they claimed that it was a mistake...only
shortly after the Red Ash Kickstarter failed did Comcept admit that Mighty No.
9 would be delayed [1].

As you can imagine, that led backers to think that Comcept had tried to be
hush-hush about the delay so that it wouldn't affect the Red Ash campaign. It
hasn't helped matters since then that Mighty No. 9 continues to be delayed,
even failing to meet a deadline to produce a demo that was meant to make up
for the delay.

So...to use Comcept in the lede of this story, as if it were the use of these
"secret developers" that pissed fans off and caused the Kickstarter to
fail...That just seems...a bit misguided...The OP couldn't find any other
anecdote to lead off with?

[1] [http://kotaku.com/the-story-behind-mighty-no-9s-shady-
delay-...](http://kotaku.com/the-story-behind-mighty-no-9s-shady-
delay-1722766843)

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
What makes you think there was only one thing that made fans upset? The OP
links to a concerned fan, as well.

------
port6667
It's interesting to hear more about the video game industry insides.

I wonder if id's success helped start this atmosphere. (Read masters of doom)

They were portrayed as rockstars, friends, who busted ass and made a popular
game which made them all rich.

I fell for that idea when i was young, luckily i never got into the industry.
I later read some blog post of an EA developer's wife or something, going on
and on how much he had to work and wasn't compensated for it, etc.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
I love Masters Of Doom, it's one of my favourite books (make of that what you
will). But I guess the main difference is that the id guys were pushing
boundaries and working themselves to the bone on something they truly loved
and felt passionate about. It was self-imposed and unlike the hordes of
faceless developers working in sweatshop conditions to churn out the latest
CoD or whatever, they actually received a huge amount of credit (and the fame
and fortune that goes with it) for their hard work.

I agree, there's definitely this romanticised image of game development in the
developer community. It's something I always aspired to get into but the
sacrifices don't seem to be worth the rewards, at least in my case.

~~~
AimHere
That's a bad example. I'm sure the CoD developers generally think they're
making some of the best games ever, and they have the sales figures and the
plaudits to prove it. Gamers like to sneer at CoD, but I'm certain there's a
lot of care and enthusiasm that goes into each iteration. It just gets sneered
at harder than a lot of games, because it's perhaps overpopular for what it
is.

The people making uber-cynical cash-milkers at Zynga or King, or those German
shovelware job-simulator games with Microsoft-style trade dress are likely far
more likely to fit your description than some blockbusting AAA bestseller like
CoD.

------
patio11
Related and interesting: the IGDA's guidelines on credits:
[http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.igda.org/resource/collection/6C...](http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.igda.org/resource/collection/6CD37C4B-C8E6-42BB-
AC7B-E5A52615F622/IGDA_Game_Crediting_Guide_Draft_9-2.pdf)

~~~
WorldMaker
It's particularly interesting to this conversation because it has no teeth.
IGDA is hope and a dream. It took real unions a lot of hard work to get movie
credits to accurately credit people. Presumably it would take the same for
games.

------
hellbanner
It's not easy for indies, either
[http://gamasutra.com/blogs/QuantumPotato/20150928/254690/iOS...](http://gamasutra.com/blogs/QuantumPotato/20150928/254690/iOS_Game_Discovery_is_Broken.php)

(Disclaimer, I work with for poster's company)

------
crocal
How cute. Sometimes you don't appear on credits. I have been working with more
than 100 people on 2.9 millions of real-time safety critical code for nearly a
decade. It has been unknowingly used by millions of people around the world
and there will never be any recognition for any of us. Grow up.

~~~
patio11
In a few industries, for industry-specific reasons, who appears on credits and
the _exact_ contents of those credits actually does matter for career
advancement purposes. Video games are one of those industries. Film and
academia are two others. It is _critically important to your future_ if you're
an assistant professor or software developer working on the 3-D engine that
your work get recorded in the industry-standard manner. It is difficult to
appreciate this if you're not in academia, but getting your name listed first
(and not second!) in the paper edition of a magazine that no one reads is
actually _really important_.

Many of the rest of us work in industries without this professional norm.
That's wonderful for us, but does not itself fix the problems of this norm for
people affected by it.

~~~
pandaman
There is no industry-standard record of credits in the games, JFYI. Mobygames
is a good collection of crowd-sourced info, but it is far from being
comprehensive (even major AAA games and/or their credits can be missing).
Without a proper record credits cannot be that _critically important_ and they
are not from my experience. Nobody is going to find the games you said you
have been working on and play them through to get to the credits to verify.
Your experience is supported by references (formal and otherwise) and your
portfolio if you are an artist or a designer. Credits are just bragging
rights.

Now, if there had been some kind of official record then credits might have
had a bigger weight but, with a lot of people's experience being in
unfinished/cancelled projects, still it would not reach the level of _critical
importance_ IMHO.

~~~
forgottenpass
_There is no industry-standard record of credits in the games_

No, but that doesn't mean people don't use it as hiring critera. Some software
companies use github profiles to screen candidates. Open source contributions
in general, and github in particular are a comically inept way of evaluating
candidates, even in comparison to credits. But it still happens.

~~~
pandaman
It sure does not. People are free to use whatever criteria they want for
hiring. Even illegal ones would be impossible to prove as long as they are not
advertised. But neither this nor the fact that some companies outside the
games use github as a criterion proves that credits are important. What you
can do is important. What you have already done is too. Credits in movies and
academia are an expression of these things. They are not in the games though.

