Dismorphia. Little concerned.

Willeth

I'm currently sitting in a lecture given by the guy behind this.

He's proposed what rings a few alarm bells for me. Essentially they're creating an online browser game to emulate Viking York. However, it seems like they are looking to mine students for assets and content.

He explained it as, paraphrased, "If you create the content for us, and we use it, you'll get your name on the Roll of Honour. What if that gets seen by a million people? What's that worth to you?"

I feel like my work is worth money, and that them getting content from a ton of students and hobbyists to add value to their game, and giving little but a recommendation in return (especially if the game gets popular, it will be very hard to find a single creator).

This seems massively one-sided but a lot of the other guys in this room seem really interested. Am I being paranoid?

mugginns

This is how it works for a lot of projects in college. You'll basically be an unpaid intern. Perhaps you could get credit for it if you take it far enough.

Improvolone

Rule of thumb for a performer: Never work for free. If you do something for free and the expectation of getting more business out of it, you will only get more free business out of it.
BUT
Having a resume is important. I have a lot of stuff on my resume that no one paid me for, but now I've got a good enough background that the only option is paying me.

wasted pixels

Willeth wrote: »

He explained it as, paraphrased, "If you create the content for us, and we use it, you'll get your name on the Roll of Honour. What if that gets seen by a million people? What's that worth to you?"

Absolutely nothing. It won't even be a meaningful credit in a published game, it will be hours of your life and the fruits of your labor wasted on a spot on a "Roll of Honour" nobody will ever look at. You probably won't even get a credit for asset development (i.e. "Character Designer: Willeth"), odds are you'll get jack all.

It's not an internship, it's not "hands-on learning", you're right to call it what it is -- exploiting students for free creative labor. If it isn't part of your grade, tell the guy to fuck off. If it IS part of your grade, see the department chair, that's unacceptable.

Edit: and yeah, Improvolone is dead-on about not working for free: "All you get for giving someone a handout is more people holding out their hands", I've been told. I will gently disagree on his second point, though. I agree that resume builders are important, and uni is a good place to drum some up. "Special Thanks" credit in a mediocre browser-based game, though... that's going to hurt your resume if it does anything, because 1) interviewers will be skeptical of whether you made the contributions you claim to have made (i.e. "Why aren't you credited as a texture artist, then?"), and 2) the net quality of the project is likely to be very low if they're depending this heavily on student labor.

Szechuanosaurus

Where's that GIF of the exchange between a designer and a car salesman...?

Oh, here we go - http://www.popsyndicate.com/images/chris/designer2pe.gif

Basically the same thing. Hell, the deal they're offering isn't even as good as the salesman's deal.

Willeth

I just asked him about it, and his response was essentially that "Yes, the odds are stacked in our favour, but if you want to go ahead and build a server infrastructure and attract millions of consumers go ahead."

The only positive is that you retain rights to any assets you create. But yeah, steering well clear of this one.

EDIT: A little clarification - this is a possible project for a module in our degree final year, and it pales in comparison to some of the other stuff. I guess it does kinda conform to the 'student experience' thing but it just seems exploitative to me, especially as I have my name attached to games already.

Szechuanosaurus

I suppose, as a university project, there is the advantage that a real project could look good in your portfolio when you are job hunting pre-graduation. Basically it's like work experience. I mean, if Codemasters offered to let you come and do work experience with them for a month while you were still at university studying game design...well, you wouldn't turn that down now, would you? And there's a possibility that during that month you'd end up doing work that ended up in a game.

But then again, the Yorvik Viking Centre isn't exactly Codemasters. It's definitely your call, I'd weigh it up both in terms of value on your CV and whether you'd be working with experienced industry professionals who you can learn valuable skills from and whether the work involved, and the value that work will have to them, is seriously sufficiently compensated for by the non-monetary benefits of doing it.

Improvolone

wasted pixels wrote: »

Edit: and yeah, Improvolone is dead-on about not working for free: "All you get for giving someone a handout is more people holding out their hands", I've been told. I will gently disagree on his second point, though. I agree that resume builders are important, and uni is a good place to drum some up. "Special Thanks" credit in a mediocre browser-based game, though... that's going to hurt your resume if it does anything, because 1) interviewers will be skeptical of whether you made the contributions you claim to have made (i.e. "Why aren't you credited as a texture artist, then?"), and 2) the net quality of the project is likely to be very low if they're depending this heavily on student labor.

The free work I've done has either been for friends or my own projects that I traded payment for stage time. Free work is a great resume builder, at least for actors, but there is a point where you need to refuse it and hopefully its early on.
Also, free work for me is a couple of hours or was something for school credit. I can't imagine how long it would take to help build a server infrastructure.

Willeth

It's not really related to the project spec at all and it didn't help that the guy didn't know what he was talking about a lot of the time. At one point he claimed that the DS couldn't connect to the internet.

This might turn out to be an incredible game and be able to compete with Second Life and RuneScape and whatever (the way he told it, his experience in the industry would do that - "there wouldn't be a Rockstar North without our company") but from what I gather of their background they're firmly out of their comfort zone here. It reads like a businessman's view of what a game should be rather than a designer's, and the briefing he gave us made it seem really disjointed. I'm not confident in the game and I'm not going to attach myself to it.

@Improv - all they want is assets. They have the base game and mechanics laid out, but they need character art and minigame submissions.

Jimmy King

As long as he's not requiring you to do it, I don't see a problem with it. Maybe someone just enjoys writing code and figures they might learn a little something and can add a feature they want to a game they play at the same time? I've written tons of code just for the sake of writing it and/or the learning experience of writing it, if I could manage to get it used in something, that would be great.

While not exactly the same, as no one was turning a profit, I've done exactly that for an expanded version of CircleMUD and for a couple of perl modules on cpan. In a very much more directly almost the same thing, people do this all the time in the form of WoW addons - they write a bunch of code that they don't get paid for and probably won't get them a job anywhere to enhance a product someone else is making a fucking killing off of.

bowen

By the way, that animated image is wonderful.

Szechuanosaurus

Yeah, it's been doing the rounds for a few years now. It is pretty horrible looking, but sums up most people's attitude to graphic design and (I imagine) a lot of other creative-type professions.

bowen

It's actually almost verbatim to what I say to people who want me to do free computer work for them because we're friends or because they're coworkers. Sometimes they actually go for it and I make profit off it still, like a doctor giving me free flu shots, or an exam, or a dentist giving me a free cleaning or something for a little computer work.

But this shit is whack yo, it's not even worth it. However if you get credits or something, it probably is.

CelestialBadger

If you are a student, and want to get into the games industry, and don't have much else in the way of experience, this is probably well worth-while, because you can put it on your CV.

Game companies smile at the signs that someone is interested in games enough to do work on them on a hobbyist basis, because it proves that you are interested in the job itself rather than the sheer kewl of being a game developer. It also gives them something to talk to you about in the interview.

As a student, you are expected to do unpaid things for the experience. It is better to do paid, relevant work if you can. But if not, unpaid relevant work is great.

Dark_Side

I'm not in the industry, but if you're going to volunteer your time on something like this, it just seems far more reasonable to just work on a mod instead. I doubt this is going to be a very good game, I see it more in the area of the MN Zoo's wolf simulator game. I think that at least in the professional games industry work on a highly successful mod would go much farther as a resume builder than building assets for some guy's educational pipe dream.

Szechuanosaurus

Dark_Side wrote: »

I'm not in the industry, but if you're going to volunteer your time on something like this, it just seems far more reasonable to just work on a mod instead. I doubt this is going to be a very good game, I see it more in the area of the MN Zoo's wolf simulator game. I think that at least in the professional games industry work on a highly successful mod would go much farther as a resume builder than building assets for some guy's educational pipe dream.

I agree with this. Whilst Celestial has a valid point about being able to show eagerness to work in games in your portfolio, a self-built mod which you can take all the credit for is going to be more impressive than working as an asset-slave for a company which likely has a dodgy reputation by virtue of the fact that they are willing to utilise student labour to get their game to market instead of having dedicated professionals working on it who may mentor a few students during the process.

CelestialBadger

A self-built mod is also good. Any way of showing willing is good.

DirtyDirtyVagrant

This is like the dumbest idea for a game I've ever seen. Just the description on the front page paints it as a vile husk of a game, reeking with myriad design failures.

Dont put your name on this.

Szechuanosaurus

The shame is, I remember the Jorvik Viking Center being a pretty great attraction. Lots of viking archaeology and animatronic reconstructions of Viking settlements complete with 'authentic smells'.

Why did they decide to call the game Dismorphia? It doesn't really seem...appropriate. Were vikings known for being self-concious about their physical appearance?

supabeast

If the work he wants you to do is part of your class, and he’ll be teaching on an ongoing basis, he’s doing you a favor. If he’s just some schmuck friend of a professor who wants students to do production on his shitty game, don’t waste your time, focus on creating materials your own and control.

Willeth

supabeast wrote: »

If the work he wants you to do is part of your class, and he’ll be teaching on an ongoing basis, he’s doing you a favor. If he’s just some schmuck friend of a professor who wants students to do production on his shitty game, don’t waste your time, focus on creating materials your own and control.

To be clear, this guy is a friend of the lecturer. To the lecturer's credit, he's removed it from the recommended projects because it's not relevant, but that means that it's now firmly not part of the course.

I don't think the game will be a total shitfest as some people seem to here, though.

I guess you can called this solved, unless anyone's got some awesome insight they need to share in the next day or so.