[TRENCHES] Thursday, October 11, 2012 - Referendum
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Referendum
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/referendum
Love and Care, Forcefully Removed
AnonymousMy story isn’t a happy one.
Sometimes you find yourself on development projects. For me it was one of those AAA reboot titles for a series that hasn’t been around for years, and was still in development for an indefinite amount of time. You find yourself playing the game over and over, slowing learning the plot as new levels are finished. You get familiar with the characters, you spend all day interacting with these characters, learning their story, living their lives. Never did I expect to find myself *caring* about the game I’m working on. (You can only be so attached in QA after a couple months of the same project)
It’s rare to find yourself on a game that is truly a labor of love by the developers. You can tell they’ve all been working on required sequels and rehashed yearly releases for decades. This was a time for them to shine.
Then it starts to happen.
Crunch time comes and some producer steps in and decides the game needs to be streamlined. The next day you come in and realize the reverse is happening. Your character’s personalities are changed and new voice work is integrated. Whole levels and worlds are condensed and combined, whole story arcs removed.
The game isn’t streamlined. It’s gutted. As it gets closer to release more and more people are excited, you bracing yourself for impending disappointment. When you finally walk away you find yourself really upset. Some producer destroyed the characters for the sake of making it more “friendly” and mainstream. The developers you thought were lazy all this time were actually dealing with the heartbreak of releasing a shell of their former product.
It’s upsetting, but it’s how it goes sometimes. It’s why good developers leave good jobs to make games that aren’t trying to make a buck.
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Read: Most of the time. Thank god for Kickstarter and crowd source funding. These 'producers' are normally employed and brought in by the Publisher. Money is pretty much their sole driving incentive.
Well gosh, I suppose I might as well settle in for a nice cuppa ...... this is gonna be good!
Uhhhh i'm sorry that just doesn't compute. Unless you're Non-Profit Organization, your main drive is to ... actually make money? Is that like a new bad thing now? And i'm gonna have to contradict you too on the idea that kickstarters are somehow not aimed in the general direction of making money because that is also the main objective.
So if a developer wants to take a few extra weeks to get the game polished, or is willing to make less money in order to put out a better product, they are MUCH more likely to get the go-ahead on a kickstarted product than they are with publishers.
Of course developers want to make money. But they are also much more responsible for making sure that the game is well-liked and successful. Wereas if the game sucks but makes money the publishers are happy; they don't lose face or have a more difficult time getting their next project off the ground.
Good points. Also your avatar earns you +1000 internet points.
Cora was almost back into my good books but that last strip she just went right back into the CANT STAND HER zone.
On the other hand, exactly what you said can be read this way: With Kickstarters there's no accountability to anyone who actually controls the purse strings. Kickstarters usually frontload the funding to the developer, and if the developer slacks off and is a year late with delivery, there's no authority to say, "Hey, maybe you ought to go ahead and get that out the door."
Isn't it kind of early to develop a viable metric of this? The first (high profile) game to receive funding was funded back in March. Game development isn't exactly a speedy process.
PSN ID: fearsomepirate
That is what I'm saying.
Welcome to kickstarter, enjoy your stay!
In the end, you theoretically get access to a better product, with nothing but people complaining on the interwebs to keep the publisher to any sort of schedule. And potentially the lack of publisher oversight can lead to risky gambles that wouldn't have been allowed being taken, and projects not being finished ever because of this.
I recommend personally that if you're going to kickstart something, at least make sure there's evidence of project management somewhere in the mix, because it's really easy to not plan anything and run out of money halfway through a project if you have no idea what you're doing and nobody connected to the project has done this before.
This is what I keep telling people. Kickstarter is a fantastic idea. But its still in its early stages with games. When one of these multi-million dollar projects ends up being a awful game (or doesn't get released at all), were going to see alot of the shine come off it. My suggestion is people better take advantage of it while they can cause its going to happen sooner or later and its going to be much harder to get donations at that point.
I think the term "main drive" here is misleading. Businesses are designed to make money. Making money is the only reason a business is created and how much money it makes is the criterion against which all of its decisions are based.
Individuals want to make money sure, but that is normally in service of some other goal, like pursuing your hobbies. So, when you work for a big corporation where no individual voice really stands out (Microsoft, Google, EA, Amazon) then it can be really frustrating to work on something you love and think is great, only to have it canned or gutted to agree with "business goals."
Most of the developers I've met are passionate about what they do (especially game developers), and they want solve cool problems and make new things that other people will like. It must be very frustrating to have all this work you spent 60-80 hours of your weeks working on get thrown away so the business can make more money.
FTL was finished via kickstarter. If you take a gander at the G&T thread you will see some of us are kind of big fans.
True, businesses ultimately must focus on profits, or they won't exist. Public corporations are led by CEOs who have to answer to stockholders who want to see increasing profits/stock price over time. So the CEO's focus is on profits as well.
But many (most?) businesses are started because the founder(s) thought he or she had a better product or service to deliver. They wanted to do what they loved, and provide themselves with a living wage while doing it. The great corporations hold onto that mission, that purpose, that first guided the company when it started. Profits are a necessity to fulfilling that mission, but not the main goal.
But after the founder leaves a company, and a stockholder-elected board starts hiring CEOs to pursue short-term goals, is when we often see the company turn away from the original purpose.
If Mary Cagle is drawing the strip now... give her the credit. Is she credited somewhere? 'cause if she isn't, that's atrocious.
Tweets don't count.
What these guys said.
Ya beat me to it!
Exactly. I'm not against making money, but at least with Kickstarter, the devs are not so pressured as to compromise their vision. As for these current community funded games not being released yet and with not guarantee they will be, same could be applied to the standard release model for games
helllooooooo Duke Nukem Forever.
Well gosh, I suppose I might as well settle in for a nice cuppa ...... this is gonna be good!
Agreed.
STEAM
It's been my contention for a while that game developers and publishers simply don't have a handle on the demands of development yet, because of the way the industry exploded. There's always stories of months of work being discarded because the concept was going nowhere, or multiplayer having to be added way too late in the process, and people have to attend fifteen meetings a week instead of being able to actually do their damn jobs. Right now, game development feels like a Rube Goldberg device.
Plus, the studio system doesn't seem to work out, anymore. There just isn't an equal and constant demand for a set number of employees in every department, so that's another difficulty, unless you're a big studio working on multiple titles.
And above all, I think it's the hardest to swallow for gamers that the industry is now so financially controlled, because it started out with developers who were content with making a living, not a fortune. Passionate people, putting out their product from their basements. And opposed to the movie industry, somewhere along 90% of the significant games coming out are similarly huge financial risks, whereas movies with a reasonable budget can still make ripples.
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That just on that matter. I know it's discouraged, but I'm really curious what game this was... There's so many games, particularly franchises, and particularly franchise reboots, that seem to be wasted opportunities, or be removed from greatness because of a lacking story. Would be nice to know which developer actually made the effort, but couldn't present it.
(see EDIT in the post below)
At the end of the day Cora should have been fired ages ago yet she's still there and has somehow been promoted, but she has not learned anything. Sure it 'sucks' for the users but eh, that's life. It's just not a fun comic to read
I think her idea is that the company needs to communicate with the customers and tell them "rollback will occur on this date, and this is what you can expect" instead of just steath patching.
Nothing pisses players off more than a company making major changes to a game without at least giving advanced notice.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
Well color me embarrassed.
@Scott Kurtz
Do you stand and watch over her shoulder while she does?
"I would have done that differently."
"Oooh.... no it's fine. Go on. If you wanna go that way, it's cool."
"Are you sure? Really? Ok... Ok. Just saying, that's all."
STEAM
twitch.tv/Taramoor
@TaramoorPlays
Taramoor on Youtube
Don't be an ass. Don't you think if she wasn't happy with whatever arrangement regarding pay/credit they have going currently she would have... I dunno... stopped drawing for him? Do you really think they have her locked in a tower chained to a drawing tablet?
She posted in this thread too if you didn't notice. Don't white knight a lady who is clearly capable of speaking up for herself.
STEAM
I didn't go as far as TychoCelchuuu, I just thought it was a pretty annoying mistake; i.e. they forgot to credit you.
But how is there a discussion? ©[year] Concept & Story by: J. Holkins, M. Krahulik, S. Kurtz, Art by: M. Cagle; or at the very least make a notification in the "About the Authors" rider. A line. "Since [date], the strips have been drawn by Mary Cagle."
As professional creatives, these guys should know how hard it is out there, particularly for cartoonists. Proper credits are no discussion.
Problem is that M&PR most of the times couldn't recognize good production/design-related decisions from bad ones (what to cut and HOW to cut it, while retaining the game's integrity and 'fun' factor) to save their asses.
And since most developers have not the least bit of power to resist them and stick to their guns or renegotiate more money, it all gets washed down the toilet.
As for the strip, I think Cora is about to get introduced to a harsh dose of reality.
I do not know. She is very pretty and talented. Men do stupid things when coming across quality girls. Fear of losing them is usually the first thing that busts down the door onto the brain-partment and throws logic out the window.
Maybe playing tower assault games throughout our lives was just a preparation for us to save the damsel!
(I kid, natch)
Regarding the credit thing, this is very clearly a private matter. Given the very large public exposure this site gets, i highly doubt that anything less than a prefectly agreeable arrangement is considered.
It's alright PaperPritt, I forgives ya!
*gently fist taps him on the chin*
Well gosh, I suppose I might as well settle in for a nice cuppa ...... this is gonna be good!