I've found that the answer to this is simple, and may be broadly applied to any bad actor in the gaming industry: They make games people want to play.
This isn't even (remotely) limited to people who don't read the news stories. I have personally spoken with scores of people who will (for example) express displeasure over Ubisoft's culture of sexual abuse, and not blink an eye when it came time to purchase Assassain's Creed: Valhalla. Or of Rockstar's culture of abusive crunch and equally abusive Twitter presence while buying premium versions of TLOU2.
So long as they pump out decent-to-good games, no amount of bad press will impact the number of games (and microtransactions) purchased. And sadly even bad games won't dent their reputation that much, especially if followed up by a good game again.
Bioware, as an example, is being lauded in the press and by gamers in general again because they announced that they're making another Mass Effect game. There's very little hesitation before gushing about it, even given ME: Andromeda and Anthem.
Even the press releases about The Witcher 4 are filled with praise for a company that just released a turd of a game (though you'll still find plenty of people who heap praise upon CP2077 because they have the blessed combination of PC components).
The video game software development industry is fundamentally broken in its corporate culture. I simply do not understand where they're finding people who are willing to work 'crunch' 60 to 75 hour work weeks without overtime to ship a game quicker. There is seemingly a near infinite supply of young, somewhat naive people who can be recruited by video game development studios to do so.
I work in a role where there is a real possibility that I might be woken up at 3am by an on-call alert. Or that I might have to work the occasional work week far past 40 hours due to an emergency. But it's in service of a critical infrastructure project (carrier-of-carrier ISP backbone links), not a video game. There is no video game on the planet that is so important people can't work a normal 40 hour work week.
If a video game developer can't build, QA and ship a game with a team of people working normal office hours, then in my opinion their priorities are grossly out of whack.
I have lost track of the number of instances I have seen of big video game development studios treating their employees in an abusive manner.
And yes, I suppose I'm somewhat of a hypocrite here. I bought a used copy of Assassin's Creed Odyssey for $20 on ebay. I bought a copy of Fallout 4 for $18 on the xbox one game store. Am I contributing to the problem? Very likely.
> I simply do not understand where they're finding people who are willing to work 'crunch' 60 to 75 hour work weeks without overtime to ship a game quicker. There is seemingly a near infinite supply of young, somewhat naive people who can be recruited by video game development studios to do so.
It seems obvious the games industry is manufacturing its own supply of naive young programmers who want to make games. People are drawn to work in this industry after years of consuming the product of the same industry. Extant exploited game developers produce the propaganda that will indoctrinate the next generation of exploited developers.
Video games have real magic in them: a powerful motivator to work shitty dead end jobs for too many hours and inadequate pay. Hopefully more aspiring developers will develop independently, I would rather do hardscaping than work in a studio where my labor didn't belong to me.
A good chunk of anime translators come from the fan translation scene, and the problem with that scene is that it's brainwashed people into think they should work for recognition instead of money. This results in some really fucked-up dynamics, such as:
1. Bootleg streaming sites that charge you for fansubs. This has been a particular thorn in the side of the licensed translation business because the old unspoken rule of "don't translate licensed works" has long since been forgotten. They rely entirely on unpaid labor throughout the chain, and are absolutely parasites on everyone. (If there was one compelling argument for "stop-having-fun-guys" levels of copyright maximalism, it would be these sites.)
2. Crunchyroll's absolutely terrible translator wages. This particular site actually used to be one of those old bootleg streaming services, so when they did "go legit", they kept the underlying mentality of paying people peanuts. They're basically parasites dressed up in a fancy suit.
3. People in the legit side of the business (save for Crunchy) having extremely negative aspersions on anyone who had a history of working in the fan translation scene. Occasionally this is for proper CYA reasons, but more often it's a weird form of elitism.
Quite honestly, I think we should start looking at any industry with fan passion surrounding it as a huge exploitation smell. For every person risking millions of dollars in copyright liability by making a cool fan project, there's probably 9 or 10 more people who became trained professionals the "proper" way and wound up getting jobs at these big companies where they were chewed up and spat out. Any business that has the potential to live off the backs of fan labor is probably doing so, even by accident.
I agree 100% something is wrong. What's curious to me is why it's not fixed.
It's possible it's impossible to make anime and pay a good wage I suppose but ... assuming it is possible you'd expect some animators to quit and start their own company and attract all the talent by paying well and not over-working their employees. So what's preventing that from happening?
Same with games.
One idea (which I don't like), the odds of making a game or anime that make it's money back is extremely small. Either you make Minecraft (game) or One Piece (anime) or you more likely make "Tower Miners" or "Comic Party" (I just googled failed games and failed anime).
Just like saying "I'm going to be a music Rock Star/NYT best selling author/Movie star", the odds that you will be the next hit star are extremely low. It's no different for games. And if it's not a hit you lose money which means you don't make a living wage.
Is that the reason those industries pay so low? Because the odds of them making their money back are like 1000 to 1 against and so they have to keep budgets as small as possible just to survive until they hit the 1 out of the 1000?
Is there some other way to get a $$$$$$$ budget to pay 10-15 people a living wage while the odds of making back that money on sales are 1000 to 1?
PS: I know the story in anime is that prices that broadcasters / publishers pay are low because of history but that seems irrelevant in 2020 when you can reach fans via the internet.
EA is notorious for long hours and mediocre pay. But they pretty much know any game they make will be profitable. I think this is true of many large game companies.
> I simply do not understand where they're finding people who are willing to work 'crunch' 60 to 75 hour work weeks without overtime to ship a game quicker. There is seemingly a near infinite supply of young, somewhat naive people who can be recruited by video game development studios to do so.
I think you kind of answered your own question. There are a lot more "young and somewhat naive people" interesting in working for a gaming company than your "critical infrastructure project". Sure, many of them may get jaded and decide it's not worth it so change industries, but there is a new crop every year.
The truth is, a lot of industries are abusive like this, unless you make it into a top echelon (size varies by industry).
Look at the hours for drawing or animation. Or in the film industry, there are unions, but work conditions are similar in non union productions, and unions are often abusive to younger and newer members.
Unlike most posters on HN I cannot speak for the whole industry, since I actually had been working there for a couple decades so I can speak only about my motivation. First of all it's interesting. All I do is solve interesting math problems and get paid for that. Then there is money: I get paid a bonus based on the game's sales. And some vanity too - there are games around whose authors are already dead yet they are remembered because of these games and their creations left a significant impact on millions of people.
> I have personally spoken with scores of people who will (for example) express displeasure over Ubisoft's culture of sexual abuse, and not blink an eye when it came time to purchase Assassain's Creed: Valhalla. Or of Rockstar's culture of abusive crunch and equally abusive Twitter presence while buying premium versions of TLOU2.
You say this as if these people are being inconsistent. I'd argue they are not. Any individual sale of a mass market good has as-close-to-zero-as-possible impact on the publisher's bottom line. But it increases the quality of life of the purchaser who is then better equipped to make a difference through advocacy.
> And sadly even bad games won't dent their reputation that much, especially if followed up by a good game again.
People buy individual games not reputation. Sometimes people buy nostalgia, but often regret it. Giving money to a company based on reputation is a donation. I think it's important to keep in mind that buying and donating are separate things with separate motivations.
> You say this as if these people are being inconsistant.
They absolutely are. If you disapprove of a company’s practices, the first move is to not financially support that company (no matter how small your individual contribution). The second move is advocacy.
Citing mass market purchase numbers when buying from a company someone morally disagrees with is merely a justification to assuage their own guilt at making the purchase. And it’s a pretty a poor one at that.
> People buy individual games, not reputation.
CDPR’s release of CyberPunk 2077, and the hype leading up to that puts lie to that assertion. It was bought more off the reputation of CDPR based of the Witcher series than any merits it had on its own. This was evident in almost every discussion leading up to it. In fact, aside from marketing, CP2077 had no real reputation of its own when it busted preorder records.
> If you disapprove of a company’s practices, the first move is to not financially support that company (no matter how small your individual contribution).
As a general rule, I do find this is often difficult to actually put into practice.
However, you are exactly right when it comes to video games. It's a crowded market of entertainment products. You can find an alternative that you will enjoy just as much with less hypocrisy.
People act the same with movies & hollywood. The story of the abusive director with a short fuse is so common it's a TV trope. #metoo first got traction in the movie industry after all.
In the first class of a film elective I took in college, the professor read a list of movies and their directors we would be watching. When he got to Roman Polanski, he paused and glared around the room, as though daring anybody to voice an objection.
The problem I have is the gushing praise for the director's technical or artistic skill, without any mention of anything else. The movie industry has protected and defended this guy for decades. Film professors who only want to talk about art, not the artists, play a role in perpetuating this ongoing injustice.
>Film professors who only want to talk about art, not the artists, play a role in perpetuating this ongoing injustice.
I agree that there is an injustice in the willful ignorance one must have to abstract the art from the artist during discussion -- but frankly if we were to focus more heavily on the damaged artist during the discussion of art :
A) the topic drifts from aesthetic appreciation to a mix of criminology/sociology/psychology/hearsay/pop-culture trivia information
B) it's an on-going philosophical/ontological debate as to whether or not the actions of the artist should be considered within the scope of the discussion of the art.
To expound on B : It's fairly well understood that if I showed a painting of nearly any skill level to 3 groups of people, and I differ the backstory between the three of them, I can easily manipulate the surveyed aesthetic appreciation from each of the test groups.
If that effect is well demonstrated, and the topic of study and discussion is 'Art', and i'm asked to create an analysis of the aesthetic of a specific piece .. should I consider the artist backstory as a confounding factor with regards to any analysis I might do on the art piece?
Some people consider those confounding factors to be within the scope of artistic discussion -- some people don't.
Personally I find that only classical depictions of artists get a lot of heat about their personal lives : painters, directors, photographers, writers.
Meanwhile certain industrial designers and architects are on record as being wildly racist or misogynist, and no one mentions it or bats an eye... but then again industrial design and architecture are on the fringes of art where many seem not to realize the artistry element exists at all.
> filled with praise for a company that just released a turd of a game
Hey now, that's harsh. If you have a decent-spec gaming PC you have the "blessed combination". The console releases were a trainwreck but unless you're calling Skyrim and Fallout 4 turds as well I wouldn't put CP2077 in that category.
Even if you don't experience performance problems, the game is buggy as all hell, and some of those bugs are game breaking.
Besides, the issue at hand here is company reputation. CDPR knowingly released a game to consoles that is damn near unplayable. It was a blatant cash grab at the expense of their customers, and if you honestly believe they didn't know what the state of the game was prior to release then I have a bridge to sell you.
Sony actually has pretty strict certification criteria from what Ive read, so the assumption is that CDPR promised a day 1 fix for all of this stuff and they failed. Miserably.
Cool for you, I'm glad. We have thousands of streams showing people with high end rigs running into ridiculous bugs, and it's completely irrelevant in regards to the console versions.
There has not been thousands of stream that is complete hyperbole at least for PC, but yes granted console has been a complete shitshow and is inexcusable.
Try not to... uhhh... collect too many items... while playing your RPG... I guess. Top notch QA, really (though I think we both know deep down it's not really a QA problem.)
You call me an asshole and somehow I'm the jerk? I'm saying your point is both wrong and irrelevant, which it is. Maybe you're the one with the problem.
In one sentence, I will give my justification for calling it a turd:
8MB save file size limitation.
Every other bug aside, that you can crash your game by collecting too many items in the game, and your recourse is to “collect less items” is utterly inexcusable.
That doesn’t even mention getting kicked off an entire platform after being launched. A feat only achieved by one other game in history.
Ehh collecting items will never do it craft is what does it every item crafted will add a section to the save file detailing the items stats that doesn't go away when you sell or get rid of the item.
I agree, that bug is probably the most ridiculous. To be honest I'm trying to fathom how it even exists, it seems so easy to just up whatever limit is imposing that size.
I wouldn't be surprised if there's literally a variable called SAVEGAME that's a char[8192] array somewhere in the serialization path and that's what's causing the corruption.
This isn't even (remotely) limited to people who don't read the news stories. I have personally spoken with scores of people who will (for example) express displeasure over Ubisoft's culture of sexual abuse, and not blink an eye when it came time to purchase Assassain's Creed: Valhalla. Or of Rockstar's culture of abusive crunch and equally abusive Twitter presence while buying premium versions of TLOU2.
So long as they pump out decent-to-good games, no amount of bad press will impact the number of games (and microtransactions) purchased. And sadly even bad games won't dent their reputation that much, especially if followed up by a good game again.
Bioware, as an example, is being lauded in the press and by gamers in general again because they announced that they're making another Mass Effect game. There's very little hesitation before gushing about it, even given ME: Andromeda and Anthem.
Even the press releases about The Witcher 4 are filled with praise for a company that just released a turd of a game (though you'll still find plenty of people who heap praise upon CP2077 because they have the blessed combination of PC components).