
What is it like working at a company after releasing a negatively-received game? - danso
https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/ax9uyj/what_is_it_like_working_at_a_company_during_and/
======
Agentlien
This is exactly the kind of post where I'd love to engage in the discussion,
but I end up not doing so because I just feel exhausted and demotivated once I
consider the necessary disclaimers (not a spokesperson, my opinion is my own,
...), what I am allowed to say and how sure of that am I, what if I make a
misstep and it blows up, will I be able to engage in follow-up questions...

EA has a surprisingly open social media policy which encourages employees to
engage in discussions as long as they are clear about whether they're an
official spokesperson and don't divulge anything they're not allowed to.

Still, every time I see something like this I become really excited, start
thinking of what I can say and what not, how I should say it so it's within
acceptable .. You know what, never mind. And this is without even considering
that what I'm considering is saying "Hi, I'm from EA" in a forum where people
generally express nothing but vitriol towards that company.

~~~
izacus
Not to mention that you'll probably end up with death threats or worse if you
say something that one gamer group dislikes. The behaviour of gamers on social
media has been awful beyond belief these last few years.

~~~
darksaints
At Amazon I was friends with a very talented woman who had finally gotten a
well-deserved promotion to product management, which she had worked on for
well over 4 years. It was a pretty big deal: she was the product manager over
video games, specifically new console releases, right around the time that a
new console was going to be released.

I still remember her crying to me over coffee about how much her new job
sucked. In her words: video gamers are monsters. Apparently they had tracked
her down because she had her job title on her facebook page, and even though
her facebook page was private, they were able to get some insider at facebook
to do the search for them. Once they found her name, they made her life a
living hell. Why? Because one of the manufacturers ended up shipping fewer
units than they initially promised, and so she had to delay a couple dozen
preorders by a week.

Even if I were an avid gamer, there is no way I would work in the industry.

~~~
titanomachy
"They got some Facebook insider to do the search for them"

She should report it, with the timeline of events. People I know at Facebook
say there is zero tolerance for this kind of thing.

------
spinach
The awful comments and attitude that fans of games leave also seems to
correlate with the type of game. Violent, competitive games will have fans
with a similar attitude toward the game. There's a great article where
creators of 'cozy' games talk about their nice interaction with fans.

"The others on the panel also echoed that practical sentiment, and pointed out
that developing kinder, cozier games had led to more positive fan
interactions. The group jovially argued over who had the best group of fans.
"We break their save files every update," said Saltsman, referring to
Overland. "No one complains."" [0]

[0] [https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-11-05-how-to-
des...](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-11-05-how-to-design-for-
coziness-and-kindness)

~~~
maceurt
Or major the violent/ competitive games just entice more hardcore gamers who
care more about the games they play.

~~~
hopler
If they care so much, why do they play games they hate made by companies they
hate? Why equate hardcore with caring? Do hardcore heroin users care the most
about their dope and dealers?

~~~
random_kris
well because they don't actually hate those games / companies and are just
showing their frustration with stuff. I remember when fortnite was released
and updates every week and their pro community stance. everyone was happy on
them, now you go to their discord and is mostly negative

------
_Microft
I rather wonder what it's like to work at Facebook.

Do people still readily tell that they work at FB? With more and more shit
coming to light and no impression that Facebook is seriously interested in
fixing things, I suspect people would question ones judgement to keep working
there? At least I do, to be honest.

~~~
sfifs
Maybe they feel they're building products that are actually adding value to
people's lives? A decade ago, we hardly kept in touch or were aware of lives
of people beyond the immediate circle but now we do? Maybe their products gave
self expression to millions of teens and twenties who found a way they could
share their opinions and shape conversations without political or high society
connections FOR FREE? Maybe they feel they've rescued people from watching
unskippable ads on TV and replaced with far less intrusive ads on the feed?

While I neither work for nor really use Facebook products beyond WhatsApp, I
do think they have added tremendous value to the world and would encourage you
to also explore viewpoints different from the standard narratives.

~~~
tokyodude
This isn't facebook's fault but for me SMS and then social media after I feel
as worked the opposite. I maybe keep mildly aware of people I haven't seen in
months or year because of social media but close friends I used to call daily
or weekly and have long talks. Now it feels like bad manners to call someone
which might disrupt their time when I could have messaged, emailed, slacked,
tweeted instead. The result is I get/have no talks. Just a few short messages
over a week or month.

------
frou_dh
Well the good thing about so-called "AAA" is that there will be so many
hundreds of people in the building that responsibility will feel so dispersed
that you'll effectively be an observer of the spectacle, despite being on the
inside.

The AAA term in gamedev makes me laugh. As if it's some kind of status symbol.
Just call it industrial-scale or factory-farming.

~~~
SlightRespect
No raindrop feels responsible for the flood

~~~
Can_Not
And most of them shouldn't, the raindrops on the art team didn't create always
online DRM for a single player game.

------
supermw
I don't think this discussion will be as interesting as people think.

When a game or piece of software you write is shit, you know it's shit, unless
you are completely delusional. Thus once it's actually released you'll
probably feel some relief that at least it's finally done and you can move on
with your life, putting it behind you. Negative reviews aren't a surprise,
they are expected. And in large companies there must be some satisfaction
being able to say "I told you so" to fools who thought otherwise.

I think it'd be more interesting to find out what it's like being a small
indie developer who banks it all on one game they've been working on for
years, and then when it finally releases it's mediocre and mostly ignored,
making little to no money.

~~~
scoutt
But I don't think it has to be necessarily _shit_. It can be a good game, and
you can be proud of it, but at some point a manager comes in and says "upper
floors want to add microtransactions and DLCs here and there". You know as a
gamer that it's (or it will be perceived as) a _shitty practice_ and will be
negatively received.

That could be for example a nice anecdote to tell (maybe the EA developer in
the upper comments?).

------
ben_jones
As a angry and cynical gamer I want to take a moment to thank Game Developers
of negatively received publishers, specifically EA and Blizzard who I am most
familiar with.

First of all, I have never seen a triple A game in recent years that did not
exhibit the passion of its developers somewhere in the game. Even the most
rushed, MTX-riddled, poorly architected, games in recent memory would always
have something that made me think, as a fellow developer/product manager,
"Damn somebody worked their ass off to make that cool". Whether its extra
effort put into a 3d model/animation, a unique UI enhancement, a piece of well
thought out dialogue, something is always there and I appreciate it because it
reflects nothing but extra effort - the game could have shipped without it but
somebody did it anyways.

Second, gamers need to stop expecting infinite replayability. No game can be
played 10 hours a day and stay fresh, engaging, and new. This is a particular
problem with multiplayer and competitive games such as Battlefield or
Overwatch. It prompts a vocal minority to complain and negatively impacts
perception of a game which, if played a couple hours a day, would be received
much better. It also promotes game types with more replayability, causing
fewer RPG and single player games and more BR games that can be binged by
streamers and fans to an unhealthy level.

Third, like the airline industry consumers force policy with their spending
habits. They want to pay once for a game that gets constant updates, has
progressive updates, and quality customer support. On paper I suppose this is
fine but for large titles involves retaining large amounts of staff that have
to be paid for somewhere in the process. Collectively we've by and large
rejected most monetization strategies, leaving us with the current "game-as-
service" model which I don't think anyone is truly happy of.

Finally, and again, thank you for your work. Gamers are vocal and often
unreasonable, but we still think you are good developers and good people. So
are gamers, we need to find a better way to support each other. I am not a fan
of the oligarchy of modern triple A game developement (with EA, Activision-
Blizzard, and 2k) hold all the cards. Hopefully with the democratization of
Unity and Indie game development we can break the painful cycle soon.

~~~
Agentlien
From a passionate programmer at EA: thank you!

I really needed that, because it's far too rare. It's really tough spending so
much time and effort trying to make something fun and only ever hearing
complaints about how your company is evil and don't care.

~~~
eq_sd_
I second this, also as a developer at EA.

------
mckee1
The point about 'getting used' to poor features, or indeed even bugs, applies
not just to video games but any type of software you work on for a long time
(especially personal projects, where you don't have a QA team).

This will no doubt be familiar to many of us on HN.

~~~
frou_dh
That's my understanding of what "Hallway usability testing" from the classic
'Joel Test' meant. Having fresh eyes on a thing vs. the same people 'testing'
it forever.

There's a similar phenomenon when looking at an electronic todo list. You get
used to reading it top-to-bottom and skipping over certain uncompleted items
every time. It's nice if there is a feature to randomise the order of the
list, to give you a jolt into properly considering each item individually
again.

------
zenpaul
This comment from accpi jumped out...

Engineers take the Kondo approach to Jira. The ticket doesn't spark joy, so
they discard it.

------
ryandrake
It's sad that "We all know it's bad, but we'll keep doing what we're doing,
and then release it and all get laid off" is still a common thread. Most of us
have worked in places like this, too, and not just in game software. Totally
demotivating. I guess I'd just say there are companies that don't have this
attitude--look for them instead.

------
joshuakcockrell
Back in 2011 I was a game tester on Hasbro Family Game Night 4. Definitely not
an official spokesman here. It was so bad that we opted out of even having
public reviews for the game from the large review sites.

Morale went way up once we released the game because everyone was so sick of
working on it and knew the game was terrible. It was a product of having a low
budget and tight deadlines. Sounds like my experience lines up with most of
this Reddit discussion.

I think it may be different if, for some reason, the team is convinced their
game is amazing before shipping. But in my experience game developers usually
know if their game sucks.

------
tablethnuser
Surprising lack of actually qualified respondents but I'm not about to make a
Reddit account to help out. Instead HN gets my reply. Worked at Zynga during
"the good years" as both a programmer and a designer.

Launched game after game for our target audience, casual gamers. These are
players who don't identify as gamers but probably play games for as many hours
or more as those who do. These games were well-received. 4-5 star ratings,
letters and gifts from players thanking us for making them feel less lonely at
home or have a new way to connect with their grandkids or whatever.

On the flip side you are universally hated by self-identifying gamers who
aren't even your target audience. And worse, you're hated by other
professional devs in the industry. For a couple years at GDC I would walk
around with my badge flipped or my employer obscured cuz it was better to make
a first impression and _then_ reveal you worked for the dog. Eventually I
would rep my employer proudly, even wearing obnoxious internally-gifted
whatever-Ville shirts, just to ruffle feathers. This was the start of my
growing resentment for self-identifying gamers, be they players or developers,
which eventually led me to leave the industry.

Zynga was a "clone shop" because they understood that their target audience
doesn't trade in mechanical novelty. Find something that already works, polish
it, and extend it. That was the strategy. Game ideas are meaningless,
literally every employee has a dozen good ones. Execution is all that matters.
Your feathers are probably ruffled by now but we adopted this strategy from EA
and the rest of AAA who do exactly this year after year for the very audience
that condemned Zynga for it. You think all those open world games aren't
really clones of Assassin's Creed? Cuz that's how they're all pitched. It's
the game industry equivalent of "Uber for X". Everything is Assassin's Creed
or Halo. Open world or on-rails. Chocolate or vanilla. Then you add the
sprinkles ("this time they're toffee!") and ship it. Would you criticize Ben &
Jerry's as a clone shop? I mean all they're doing is releasing the same ice
cream over and over!

That should be enough pretext to answer the question. Obviously it feels like
shit to work somewhere where people have decided you're cancer. But deep down
you know they're wrong. There are plenty of ppl out there who enjoy your game,
but they aren't the loudest ppl who write the public narrative. You're on your
own to reconcile that. How I did it was to accept that self-identifying gamers
are entitled brats who have no idea how the things they're critiquing actually
work. I use the term 'self-identifying' so often because it's an important
piece of the puzzle. These are ppl who consider playing games to be their
thing, in the way that a Hot Topic shopper might consider dark clothes and
Jack Skellington to be their thing. When you disrupt their internal reality,
say by releasing a clone of Scrabble with more power-up tiles and a chat box,
they feel like you are offending them and will now spend hours online
spreading hate and misinformation. It's a little like politics.

I was pitching in on a mobile design for a game about collecting and raising
dragons, cuz that was a hot mobile thing at the time, right around when the
Tiny Tower debacle happened. To catch everyone up, Tiny Tower was a successful
mobile game by a small indie studio. Zynga had released a clone called Dream
Heights and the devs decided to weaponize the frothing self-identifying gamers
in a FUD campaign to protect their game from a competitor. Pretty soon the
Zynga version, which previously enjoyed 4 star rating and had a growing
following of fans, got inundated with negative reviews from ppl who had no
interest in the game at all. The company dropped the game because the target
audience can't tell this is what happened. They just think the game is bad.
Zynga actually winced pretty hard internally from this. It started cancelling
other clones out of fear of a trend starting. In my opinion this was Zynga
listening to the haters which is never the right thing to do. That dragon
breeding game I was telling you about though; it was a clone so after nearly
two years of development by a team of 40+ it was cancelled. When a game is
cancelled before launch you can't really put it on your resume. If you're an
artist you have to smuggle the art out of the company to use it in your
portfolio, labeled as concept art or something. Obviously it would be better
if two years of your life amounted to a name you could drop on your resume.

And ultimately that's what it feels like to work at a company after releasing
a negatively received game. The frustration of being burned alive by a witch
hunt mixed with the suffocating feeling that your career has stalled.

If there needs to be a moral to the story, it's to not let the entertainment
you consume become your identity. It will make you a worse person.

~~~
MAGZine
Interesting insight. But saying "all games are clones," and using that as
justification to take an indie studio's idea doesn't come across very well.

Yes, a lot of the games but studio's churn out are all very similar. It's by
design. Games are so expensive to produce that if you have a formula that
works, you follow it.

Conversely, small games are a labour of love from studios. Devs often quit
their jobs to work on them. And frequently, the large studios/producers will
eventually buy the fresh idea though an acquisition, since they don't want to
gamble on new IP themselves.

By appropriating another's idea, the freshness is lost for whoever plays
whichever game first, and in this case, the company with marketing dollars is
going to win. I can see the Injustice there. The player banks are at least
probably separated but not mutually exclusive. If Zynga successfully cloned
Minecraft, do you think it would have been the cultural phenomenon it is
today?

Anyhow, you are certainly right that gamers frequently drag whatever they love
to hate at the time through the mud. Sometimes I feel it's justified,
sometimes I don't. I have a hard time rushing to defence of a company that
rips off games because "everyone does it."

I think it's wise Zynga's leadership pulled back, but curious that they didn't
see it coming to begin with.

------
gdulli
I worked at the two companies that made the two most important games I ever
played. My experience at the first directly led to me keeping a bit of
detachment the second time.

At the first, the company made some decisions that were unpopular with
players. I was young and got caught up in frustration over those decisions on
behalf of players, as a player myself, and over the damage to the company's
image.

The second time was years later and I was able to advocate on behalf of
players while not getting so emotionally caught up in the outcome of those
decisions to affect my career there.

------
stevenwoo
It's depressing, but keep in mind for a lot of people in game development that
do not have a lot of credits - they just want to complete a game to add it to
their CV. It used to be (back in the 90's/2000's not sure how true this is
now) that companies would not even look at your resume if you had not worked
on a game that shipped for a lot of positions. I can remember being surprised
at my first job in game development how passionate the arguments were in team
meetings about how people were listed in the credits.

Also, I've worked separately at a publisher and company that contracted
development of work to smaller development studios and I can remember it was
much more common in my experience for the publisher or primary company looking
at the milestone work and deciding it was not good enough and to terminate the
contract and then having to look at the source code/assets and trying to
assess the state and resurrect those games and that was no fun either, just
sad to think about the opportunity cost for those involved and people who were
probably going to get laid off, though usually one could look at the code and
see the big picture problems in a day or two.

------
mrkeen
The atmosphere feels exactly the same as in this thread.

The discussion isn't about the game. The discussion is about the discussion
about the game.

It's not "Should we do loot boxes?"; it's "Reddit trolls are being toxic about
loot boxes. How can we deal with toxicity?"

------
pferde
A little bit late to the party, but this article about a prematurely released
game seems like a good addition to this thread, as an example how the releases
are rushed by executives:

[https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/03/05/left-alive-
suffe...](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/03/05/left-alive-suffers-from-
a-rough-launch-on-consoles-and-pc/)

------
_mrmnmly
I would suggest to read Jason Schreier's book: "blood sweat and pixels" \- it
opened my eyes about the process of building AAA games - which sometimes is
soo chaotic that is hard to believe they could build anything.

------
arkitaip
From the comments: "Engineers take the Kondo approach to Jira. The ticket
doesn't spark joy, so they discard it."

------
Calashle0202
The worst part isn't when the game launches and does poorly, but during
development.

Most devs are passionate gamers themselves, and even if our own priduct
doesn't turn out great, doesn't mean we don't know what makes a good game. So
most of us know that the product we're working on isn't gonna be a GOTY.

There's a few stages to it, similar to the stages of grief:

    
    
        Denial: "If I pull extra hours, I can fix this feature. We can turn this around."
    
        Anger: Frustration and anger that's usually directed towards upper management ("why did we have to make this decision? why don't we have enough staff? why are we launching in three months?"
    
        Acceptance: "Whatever, you can't always bat 1000. As long as my job is secure after all this, I'm fine."
    

And worst of all, apathy, where the passion you once had has been sapped from
you, and what you thought was a dream job, has turned into just another
routine motion you go through.

~~~
anc84
While you can still edit, please use a different style for your quotes. Using
code formatting makes them a pain to read. Just make them cursive with the
star characters. Thanks! :)

~~~
jessaustin
It's mysterious that people think this (fixed width for anything other than a
short code listing) is a rational formatting decision on HN. Does _anyone_ use
a wide enough screen to accommodate that "anger" line above?

~~~
hopler
One of HN design principles is that usability is irrelevant because people
come here for the community and minimizing software development effort is a
point of pride.

People use the code identuse there is no way to create a blockquote

~~~
jessaustin
As GP said:

 _Just make them cursive with the star characters._

That's a block quote!

~~~
52-6F-62
For even further clarity, I like the very prescient '>' in combination with
italics:

> _this is a block quote right here_

It's very clearly a distinct block

~~~
jessaustin
In a sense, this is right back to the original problem, because there is no
natural beginning to lines in prose.

> _This line looks fine._

> _How about this line? It 's quite a bit longer so it may wrap around to the
> beginning of the line, depending on screen size and other factors... where
> would one place additional ">"s?_

~~~
52-6F-62
I think it makes sense just to wrap it. The block ends when the contiguous
text ends, no?

> _Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vivamus non
> sagittis sapien. Fusce ut lacinia ligula. In accumsan efficitur eros, ac
> ullamcorper mauris. Fusce consequat, magna id lobortis convallis, ante nibh
> tristique dui, sed laoreet elit tellus non augue. Pellentesque a vulputate
> mauris. Donec ac nunc venenatis, ultrices nibh nec, congue urna. Duis justo
> leo, auctor ac tempor at, faucibus id felis. Cras et neque in dui commodo
> faucibus eget eu erat. Donec tempus sapien felis, ac tristique est dapibus
> ac. Donec sed suscipit velit. Praesent leo ante, volutpat nec aliquam ac,
> tempor eu magna. In blandit purus a enim molestie posuere. Sed suscipit
> suscipit nulla a pharetra. Vivamus fringilla id neque accumsan sollicitudin.
> Nulla rhoncus fermentum lorem eget iaculis._

Though you might use multiple '>' for multiple paragraphs, eg:

> _Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vivamus non
> sagittis sapien. Fusce ut lacinia ligula. In accumsan efficitur eros, ac
> ullamcorper mauris. Fusce consequat, magna id lobortis convallis, ante nibh
> tristique dui, sed laoreet elit tellus non augue. Pellentesque a vulputate
> mauris. Donec ac nunc venenatis, ultrices nibh nec, congue urna. Duis justo
> leo, auctor ac tempor at, faucibus id felis. Cras et neque in dui commodo
> faucibus eget eu erat. Donec tempus sapien felis, ac tristique est dapibus
> ac. Donec sed suscipit velit. Praesent leo ante, volutpat nec aliquam ac,
> tempor eu magna. In blandit purus a enim molestie posuere. Sed suscipit
> suscipit nulla a pharetra. Vivamus fringilla id neque accumsan sollicitudin.
> Nulla rhoncus fermentum lorem eget iaculis._

> _Vivamus cursus mi diam, a euismod augue tincidunt quis. Ut et arcu feugiat
> turpis luctus dignissim. Morbi ornare, leo ut porttitor euismod, leo urna
> suscipit neque, ut lacinia metus velit ut ipsum. Duis ac lorem interdum,
> congue magna sit amet, accumsan odio. Nam eu tempus metus. Praesent
> venenatis tortor lacinia dapibus blandit. Mauris semper odio in faucibus
> feugiat. Praesent id nibh nulla. Phasellus fringilla risus vitae lacus
> sollicitudin, et pharetra odio ullamcorper. Phasellus at lacus in nulla
> egestas maximus a eu libero. Nulla sodales nulla vitae ipsum laoreet varius.
> Donec quis gravida erat._

------
dschuetz
Of course, none of the mentioned AAA developers are taking part in this
conversation. "What's it like?" \- "Dunno, not in the AAA business, but it
sucks, at least in the indie business!"

I'm not sure what the question aims at. Should developers avoid AAA publishing
studios altogether? Or should they leave AAA development for indie? The
problems of shitty games mostly stem from the business/investment and
management part of development, not exactly due to lack of talent. But,
without good management even the most talented artists are prone to failure.
Rare exceptions confirm the rule.

~~~
drivers99
It’s quite common in AskReddit threads especially if the target of the
question is too specific. If it’s asking for people of type X, comments will
often start: “I’m not X, but...” or the self-aware version: “Obligatory ‘not X
but’...”

Checking AskReddit for a specific one that is there at the moment:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ax7cfl/folks_wit...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ax7cfl/folks_with_a_blind_parents_what_are_habits_you/)

2nd top comment (sorted by best), starts “I don't have a blind parent, but I
taught a child who did.“ There are a lot of responses that fit the wording of
the question but a lot of others that have specific examples addressing the
general topic.

Sounds like you’re thinking the question must have an agenda. I think it’s
just opening up the topic of what is it like to work on a technical product
that gets bad reviews.

