15 ms·

What is it like working at a company after releasing a negatively-received game?

247 points by danso 8y ago

Agentlien 8y ago
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.
- deadbunny 8y ago
  Isn't this what throwaway accounts are for? Sure you can't break NDAs and the like but a throwaway can give a lot of freedom from people piecing together stuff if you posted using an account you use daily.
  - Agentlien 8y ago
    I could definitely use a throwaway account. The thing is, I still don't want to say anything I'm not allowed to say. I do feel loyalty towards my employer, and I'm only protecting myself if I stay clear of saying anything which identifies me. And that includes referring to knowledge which I didn't realise not many have or just generally expressing myself with my own idiosyncrasies which I may not even be aware of.
    - hopler 8y ago
      EA's existential problems are crappy games and customer-hostile business practices, not some secret sauce at risk of being leaked.
      - Agentlien 8y ago
        There are plenty of interesting things I'd love to share and fun topics I'd love to respond to which have nothing to do with what you're referring to. I'm talking about a more broad thing where I also find it difficult to join more positively minded discussions.
        eps 8y ago
        nevermind (Quick recap, since there are now replies - EA had a policy of owning everything you produce, including the off hours, and with their constant "crunch mode" they expected you to not have time for any pet projects to begin with. An inherently abusive company, and very brazen at that. It was like that when I interviewed with them several years ago, but I doubt things changed much.)
        mulletbum 8y ago
        I am not from the game industry or anywhere near software mecha. Can you tell me why a company would want to pay you to work on your own pet project with their money without them owning the end result? I am just confused how this is a stipulation at any job. The place I work, if I designed a model for their products on their time, with their money, it is only acceptable that they own said product. Why would they allow me to go off an compete with them?
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        detaro 8y ago
        the key is on their time. Parent explicitly mentions everything while employed there, in your free time as well.
  - jib 8y ago
    For me at least, I would not use a throwaway. The one thing we get asked to do for social media is always be clear that we have ties to the company but don’t speak for the company when commenting on things that could potentially be a conflict of interest. Both sides of that matter - I.e. I don’t want there to be any risk that someone doesn’t know I work at Blizzard when reading a comment (mostly because of native advertising rules) but I also don’t want them to think I speak for the company (mostly for fair disclosure rules). I think that’s a reasonable request and I feel like using throwaways goes against that (and make it seem like there’s something to hide when really there is not).
    - el_cujo 8y ago
      You can still be responsible and give people disclosure while using a throw away. The benefit is you don't have to worry about people mining your entire post history to look for stuff they can use to draw negative conclusions about you/blizzard. You can also never look at that account again after that post so you don't have to worry about any crazies sending abusive messages about Diablo Immortal or whatever.
- izacus 8y ago
  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.
  - jfabre 8y ago
    You mean the behaviour of people.
    - usernam33 8y ago
      And companies.
    - jcora 8y ago
      No, he meant gamers. That doesn't absolve others from bad behaviour but "gamers", i.e. group-conscious, very online, hardcore players congregating on /v/ and many other such places, are probably _the_ most vitrolitic group on the Internet rn., save for those parts of the alt-right that don't play games.
      - whatshisface 8y ago
        How could you ever hope to measure and compare the relative vitriol of internet communities? Anyone's perception will be heavily biased by what the media likes to report on (drama on Potted Plant Watering.com is a lot less likely to make the news than tweets about violent video games, which are on the list of talking points already). The most vitriolic ones are probably sub-forums that we've never even heard of.
        lawlessone 8y ago
        >Anyone's perception will be heavily biased i'd say biased by receiving a lot of death threats.
        twic 8y ago
        It would be a fascinating project, but i confess i have no idea how you'd quantify the vitriol. I suspect that the posters here arguing that gamers are the worse are not familiar with some of the shenanigans going on elsewhere, for example: https://fanlore.org/wiki/What_happened_with_hivliving https://fanlore.org/wiki/What_happened_with_hivliving
- philipov 8y ago
  It doesn't help EA's image that they decided to call their game launcher "Origin," so we can remember all the game studios they've murdered any time they try to force us to use it. However, I will not blame you, poor cog, for management's unethical behavior. I hope you can find a better job someday.
- vaylian 8y ago
  Thanks for sharing this insight! In your experience: What is the biggest misunderstanding that customers (or critics) seem to have about the game development industry?
  - Agentlien 8y ago
    Wow, that's a really tough one. Turns out my answer became a really long one and touched on a number of things. The biggest one is probably that developers aren't hearing or understanding feedback. We're in the same forums, reading the same posts. When players have concerns, the developers have mostly raised the same concerns long before the game was shipped. But identifying a problem isn't enough. Sometimes fixing problems are very difficult or very expensive. Sometimes, thorough design and testing has shown that all the obvious improvements are actually worse in non-obvious ways. So developers do read the feedback. We just, for reasons I already touched on, mostly don't comment. On a similar topic, it seems a lot of players don't realise that we're not an army of drones in suits aiming to make money. Most of us, by quite a margin, are really passionate gamers who've decided we love games so much we want to make them our vocation and spend at least 40 hours a week on them. Every time I see a post about how "the developers" don't understand what "the players" want, I look around the office and see nothing but players, most of whom share the same feelings and concerns. Another big one, and this is something I realised that I myself was clueless of before joining game development, is how difficult it is to react quickly to feedback, fix bugs and add features. You often see players complaining that they've raised a concern weeks ago, and it still hasn't been addressed. Being allowed to release a game on consoles requires going through certification with the console manufacturer. This is a really big, costly endeavour which takes a lot of time and requires making sure you adhere to a staggering amount of rules.[0] This and other concerns regarding distributors and retailers mean what's on the physical disc needs to be in place months in advance, making it pretty old once the game is released. Add to that the fact that bringing out a game patch for PS4 or Xbox is very expensive[1] and requires you going through cert again, and you'll see why many developers try to schedule their patches way ahead of time. Obviously, you want to do rigorous internal testing to make sure you don't have to go back and forth with cert more than necessary. Which suddenly means you have a month-long gap between something being submitted for testing and the patch reaching your loyal paying customers. It's definitely painful, watching the angry comments flow in about an issue you solved weeks ago. Now, I'm not complaining about this. The cert rules and patch restrictions are almost always very logical and there to ensure high quality for the players. But they do come at a cost. [0] https://kotaku.com/so-how-long-do-sony-and-microsofts-approvals-processes-5080083 https://kotaku.com/so-how-long-do-sony-and-microsofts-approv... [1] https://kotaku.com/wait-it-costs-40-000-to-patch-a-console-game-5884842 https://kotaku.com/wait-it-costs-40-000-to-patch-a-console-g...
- PakG1 8y ago
  I think that whole thing came about because of EA Spouse, no? https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-03-28-ea-doesnt-get-enough-credit-says-ea-spouse https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-03-28-ea-doesnt-...
- danso 8y ago
  Yeah I honestly can't see how an insider, in this particular scenario, could feel comfortable and expressive without being at least 5 years removed from the situation. Seems like there'd be a natural inclination for the memories/discussion to devolve into nasty blaming, and/or the added pain of remembering if the company's disaster coincided with a personal tragedy/downtime. I've been fascinated with some of the most recent big blowups, like Bethesda's Fallout 76 and BioWare's Anthem. The former seems to be a product of heavy complacency; the latter has been such an unexpected disappointment that the reasons for failure seem like they could be innumerable. On the other hand, recaps by developers of their successes have almost always been the most fun things to read about, e.g. Starcraft [0], Crash Bandicoot [1] [0] https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/tough-times-on-the-road-to-starcraft https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/tough-times-on-the-road-to-... [1] https://www.naughtydog.com/blog/making_crash_bandicoot_by_andy_gavin_and_jason_rubin https://www.naughtydog.com/blog/making_crash_bandicoot_by_an...
- TheAceOfHearts 8y ago
  I always love encountering content and discussions from engineers or game designers who work at big games companies. I've befriended a few game developers over the years and they always have incredibly fascinating "war stories" which they share in private. Your hesitation is understandable, though. A lot of people forget that there's real humans behind these big faceless companies. There's lots of potential downsides to sharing stuff online, without many equivalent upsides. However, I think if developers were a bit more open and people got to peek behind the curtains a little it would help to humanize these big faceless entities. Even adding minor things like developer commentary to patch notes can cause a drastically different reaction from the community. If I'm often playing a game and something gets changed I think it's reasonable to wonder about the reasoning behind those changes. Being more open and communicating frequently with the community helps set expectations and build trust. To give a parallel from another industry, all of my favorite book authors are writers who give frequent updates and are quite open about their progress. Informing readers about your expected timelines helps temper expectations and it shows that you care, making people more likely to want to invest time in your series. If there's any kind of delay or a deadline gets missed the best thing you can do is communicate it quickly. Based on my experience, people tend to be incredibly understanding when they actually know what's going on. If all you get from an author is a vague date and it keeps getting moved around without any additional information it kinda feels like you're being jerked around. Since we're on the topic, I've also encountered people that work at game companies who are incredibly resentful towards their customers, which doesn't seem very healthy. Hating your users is probably a good sign that it's time to move on to something new. Taking on this attitude appears to engage a negative feedback loop as well, causing things to degrade further. The absolute worst attitude I've seen is calling customers entitled because they didn't buy your game, although I'd like to be charitable and say that it was likely due to the person being under an overwhelming amount of stress.
- behringer 8y ago
  I'm sure a lot of casino operators feel the same way.
- tru3_power 8y ago
  To be honest I don’t blame you. I have the same anxiety whenever I consider posting anything on the internet. Once it’s posted, there’s no going back.
- scarejunba 8y ago
  It's funny. This happens in most Internet forums. People ask questions often to seek validation rather than illumination. So they'll turn on you when you don't validate. And in the end, throwaway or not, why help anyone who really wants to bite your face off? The insiders will continue to be privileged wrt information because the outsiders can't behave.
mckee1 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
_Microft 8y ago
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.
- nerdponx 8y ago
  It's in part self-selecting: if you work there, it's because you want to work there in spite of (or maybe because of) what's in the press.
  - _Microft 8y ago
    That would mean that Facebook basically unfixable unless you fire/replace everyone. That doesn't bode well.
    - badfrog 8y ago
      The generous interpretation would be that the people who are there "because of what's in the press" want to fix the problems.
      - hopler 8y ago
        You can't fix things when all the politically important decisions are made in the C suite. Even the Chief Security Officer quit and said Facebook is hopeless.
        throwawaymath 8y ago
        Alex Stamos has never said "Facebook is hopeless." He has also never said anything to that effect in not so few words. His take on Facebook was, and continues to be, nuanced - he has said that Facebook has deep seated challenges, but never intimated that he believes they're insurmountable. In fact, now I'm challenging you to cite this. Why say things like this if they're not true? Any broader point about Facebook doesn't even hinge on the veracity of this claim, I don't get it.
Calashle0202 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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?
    - Agentlien 8y ago
      It would fit fine on my 4k monitor, but it still gets wrapped in a box with scrollbar so that I can only see the first 2/3 of it.
    - hopler 8y ago
      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
spinach 8y ago
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-design-for-coziness-and-kindness https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-11-05-how-to-des...
- maceurt 8y ago
  Or major the violent/ competitive games just entice more hardcore gamers who care more about the games they play.
  - hopler 8y ago
    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?
    - loa-in-backup 8y ago
      Your comment seems almost tautological, especially the last part.
    - ed312 8y ago
      Hate is probably not the right word - someone (entirely out of your control) is tinkering with your favorite hobby in ways that you feel are bad. The strong reaction probably speaks more to the fan's deep connection vs actual hatred. I imagine if that same fan was taken on a trip to visit the devs/studio, their attitude would be very different.
    - random_kris 8y ago
supermw 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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?).
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- rizzin 8y ago
  Unless it's a "game as a service" and even after release you have to keep on polishing the turd.
frou_dh 8y ago
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 8y ago
  No raindrop feels responsible for the flood
  - draw_down 8y ago
    I’ll trade you for two: “the fish rots from the head”, and “a witty saying proves nothing”.
  - rossdavidh 8y ago
    I realize they didn't come up with this, but I first read it here: https://despair.com/products/irresponsibility https://despair.com/products/irresponsibility
  - Can_Not 8y ago
    And most of them shouldn't, the raindrops on the art team didn't create always online DRM for a single player game.
    - scorn_tool 8y ago
      You know the business model. If it's toxic you get out. I might not have been involved in choosing that casinos are horrible, but when I learned that I was developing software to support them, I left - quickly.
- pnw_hazor 8y ago
  Same for those who work at Facebook and Google I imagine. "It's not my fault my company is hurtling us towards a dystopian surveillance society." History is full of people like that.
dschuetz 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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_with_a_blind_parents_what_are_habits_you/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ax7cfl/folks_wit... 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.
- cableshaft 8y ago
  Small and indie companies have their own problems and can also have games that aren't received well. In those cases it tends to put the company out of business entirely, as opposed to just some people being laid off. I've worked for three small game companies, two of which shut down after a poorly received game and one that laid off 90% of its people and limped along for a few more years before shutting down. I'm no longer in the game industry (I am working on games in my spare time, though, but progress is pretty slow).
ben_jones 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
zenpaul 8y ago
This comment from accpi jumped out... Engineers take the Kondo approach to Jira. The ticket doesn't spark joy, so they discard it.
ryandrake 8y ago
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.
arkitaip 8y ago
From the comments: "Engineers take the Kondo approach to Jira. The ticket doesn't spark joy, so they discard it."
tablethnuser 8y ago
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.
gdulli 8y ago
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.
joshuakcockrell 8y ago
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.
mrkeen 8y ago
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?"
stevenwoo 8y ago
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.
_mrmnmly 8y ago
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.
pferde 8y ago
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-suffers-from-a-rough-launch-on-consoles-and-pc/ https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/03/05/left-alive-suffe...

247 points by danso 8y ago

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.

deadbunny 8y ago
Isn't this what throwaway accounts are for? Sure you can't break NDAs and the like but a throwaway can give a lot of freedom from people piecing together stuff if you posted using an account you use daily.
- Agentlien 8y ago
  I could definitely use a throwaway account. The thing is, I still don't want to say anything I'm not allowed to say. I do feel loyalty towards my employer, and I'm only protecting myself if I stay clear of saying anything which identifies me. And that includes referring to knowledge which I didn't realise not many have or just generally expressing myself with my own idiosyncrasies which I may not even be aware of.
  - hopler 8y ago
    EA's existential problems are crappy games and customer-hostile business practices, not some secret sauce at risk of being leaked.
    - Agentlien 8y ago
      There are plenty of interesting things I'd love to share and fun topics I'd love to respond to which have nothing to do with what you're referring to. I'm talking about a more broad thing where I also find it difficult to join more positively minded discussions.
      - eps 8y ago
        nevermind (Quick recap, since there are now replies - EA had a policy of owning everything you produce, including the off hours, and with their constant "crunch mode" they expected you to not have time for any pet projects to begin with. An inherently abusive company, and very brazen at that. It was like that when I interviewed with them several years ago, but I doubt things changed much.)
        mulletbum 8y ago
        I am not from the game industry or anywhere near software mecha. Can you tell me why a company would want to pay you to work on your own pet project with their money without them owning the end result? I am just confused how this is a stipulation at any job. The place I work, if I designed a model for their products on their time, with their money, it is only acceptable that they own said product. Why would they allow me to go off an compete with them?
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        detaro 8y ago
        the key is on their time. Parent explicitly mentions everything while employed there, in your free time as well.
- jib 8y ago
  For me at least, I would not use a throwaway. The one thing we get asked to do for social media is always be clear that we have ties to the company but don’t speak for the company when commenting on things that could potentially be a conflict of interest. Both sides of that matter - I.e. I don’t want there to be any risk that someone doesn’t know I work at Blizzard when reading a comment (mostly because of native advertising rules) but I also don’t want them to think I speak for the company (mostly for fair disclosure rules). I think that’s a reasonable request and I feel like using throwaways goes against that (and make it seem like there’s something to hide when really there is not).
  - el_cujo 8y ago
    You can still be responsible and give people disclosure while using a throw away. The benefit is you don't have to worry about people mining your entire post history to look for stuff they can use to draw negative conclusions about you/blizzard. You can also never look at that account again after that post so you don't have to worry about any crazies sending abusive messages about Diablo Immortal or whatever.
izacus 8y ago
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.
- jfabre 8y ago
  You mean the behaviour of people.
  - usernam33 8y ago
    And companies.
  - jcora 8y ago
    No, he meant gamers. That doesn't absolve others from bad behaviour but "gamers", i.e. group-conscious, very online, hardcore players congregating on /v/ and many other such places, are probably _the_ most vitrolitic group on the Internet rn., save for those parts of the alt-right that don't play games.
    - whatshisface 8y ago
      How could you ever hope to measure and compare the relative vitriol of internet communities? Anyone's perception will be heavily biased by what the media likes to report on (drama on Potted Plant Watering.com is a lot less likely to make the news than tweets about violent video games, which are on the list of talking points already). The most vitriolic ones are probably sub-forums that we've never even heard of.
      - lawlessone 8y ago
        >Anyone's perception will be heavily biased i'd say biased by receiving a lot of death threats.
      - twic 8y ago
        It would be a fascinating project, but i confess i have no idea how you'd quantify the vitriol. I suspect that the posters here arguing that gamers are the worse are not familiar with some of the shenanigans going on elsewhere, for example: https://fanlore.org/wiki/What_happened_with_hivliving https://fanlore.org/wiki/What_happened_with_hivliving
philipov 8y ago
It doesn't help EA's image that they decided to call their game launcher "Origin," so we can remember all the game studios they've murdered any time they try to force us to use it. However, I will not blame you, poor cog, for management's unethical behavior. I hope you can find a better job someday.
vaylian 8y ago
Thanks for sharing this insight! In your experience: What is the biggest misunderstanding that customers (or critics) seem to have about the game development industry?
- Agentlien 8y ago
  Wow, that's a really tough one. Turns out my answer became a really long one and touched on a number of things. The biggest one is probably that developers aren't hearing or understanding feedback. We're in the same forums, reading the same posts. When players have concerns, the developers have mostly raised the same concerns long before the game was shipped. But identifying a problem isn't enough. Sometimes fixing problems are very difficult or very expensive. Sometimes, thorough design and testing has shown that all the obvious improvements are actually worse in non-obvious ways. So developers do read the feedback. We just, for reasons I already touched on, mostly don't comment. On a similar topic, it seems a lot of players don't realise that we're not an army of drones in suits aiming to make money. Most of us, by quite a margin, are really passionate gamers who've decided we love games so much we want to make them our vocation and spend at least 40 hours a week on them. Every time I see a post about how "the developers" don't understand what "the players" want, I look around the office and see nothing but players, most of whom share the same feelings and concerns. Another big one, and this is something I realised that I myself was clueless of before joining game development, is how difficult it is to react quickly to feedback, fix bugs and add features. You often see players complaining that they've raised a concern weeks ago, and it still hasn't been addressed. Being allowed to release a game on consoles requires going through certification with the console manufacturer. This is a really big, costly endeavour which takes a lot of time and requires making sure you adhere to a staggering amount of rules.[0] This and other concerns regarding distributors and retailers mean what's on the physical disc needs to be in place months in advance, making it pretty old once the game is released. Add to that the fact that bringing out a game patch for PS4 or Xbox is very expensive[1] and requires you going through cert again, and you'll see why many developers try to schedule their patches way ahead of time. Obviously, you want to do rigorous internal testing to make sure you don't have to go back and forth with cert more than necessary. Which suddenly means you have a month-long gap between something being submitted for testing and the patch reaching your loyal paying customers. It's definitely painful, watching the angry comments flow in about an issue you solved weeks ago. Now, I'm not complaining about this. The cert rules and patch restrictions are almost always very logical and there to ensure high quality for the players. But they do come at a cost. [0] https://kotaku.com/so-how-long-do-sony-and-microsofts-approvals-processes-5080083 https://kotaku.com/so-how-long-do-sony-and-microsofts-approv... [1] https://kotaku.com/wait-it-costs-40-000-to-patch-a-console-game-5884842 https://kotaku.com/wait-it-costs-40-000-to-patch-a-console-g...
PakG1 8y ago
I think that whole thing came about because of EA Spouse, no? https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-03-28-ea-doesnt-get-enough-credit-says-ea-spouse https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-03-28-ea-doesnt-...
danso 8y ago
Yeah I honestly can't see how an insider, in this particular scenario, could feel comfortable and expressive without being at least 5 years removed from the situation. Seems like there'd be a natural inclination for the memories/discussion to devolve into nasty blaming, and/or the added pain of remembering if the company's disaster coincided with a personal tragedy/downtime. I've been fascinated with some of the most recent big blowups, like Bethesda's Fallout 76 and BioWare's Anthem. The former seems to be a product of heavy complacency; the latter has been such an unexpected disappointment that the reasons for failure seem like they could be innumerable. On the other hand, recaps by developers of their successes have almost always been the most fun things to read about, e.g. Starcraft [0], Crash Bandicoot [1] [0] https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/tough-times-on-the-road-to-starcraft https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/tough-times-on-the-road-to-... [1] https://www.naughtydog.com/blog/making_crash_bandicoot_by_andy_gavin_and_jason_rubin https://www.naughtydog.com/blog/making_crash_bandicoot_by_an...
TheAceOfHearts 8y ago
I always love encountering content and discussions from engineers or game designers who work at big games companies. I've befriended a few game developers over the years and they always have incredibly fascinating "war stories" which they share in private. Your hesitation is understandable, though. A lot of people forget that there's real humans behind these big faceless companies. There's lots of potential downsides to sharing stuff online, without many equivalent upsides. However, I think if developers were a bit more open and people got to peek behind the curtains a little it would help to humanize these big faceless entities. Even adding minor things like developer commentary to patch notes can cause a drastically different reaction from the community. If I'm often playing a game and something gets changed I think it's reasonable to wonder about the reasoning behind those changes. Being more open and communicating frequently with the community helps set expectations and build trust. To give a parallel from another industry, all of my favorite book authors are writers who give frequent updates and are quite open about their progress. Informing readers about your expected timelines helps temper expectations and it shows that you care, making people more likely to want to invest time in your series. If there's any kind of delay or a deadline gets missed the best thing you can do is communicate it quickly. Based on my experience, people tend to be incredibly understanding when they actually know what's going on. If all you get from an author is a vague date and it keeps getting moved around without any additional information it kinda feels like you're being jerked around. Since we're on the topic, I've also encountered people that work at game companies who are incredibly resentful towards their customers, which doesn't seem very healthy. Hating your users is probably a good sign that it's time to move on to something new. Taking on this attitude appears to engage a negative feedback loop as well, causing things to degrade further. The absolute worst attitude I've seen is calling customers entitled because they didn't buy your game, although I'd like to be charitable and say that it was likely due to the person being under an overwhelming amount of stress.
behringer 8y ago
I'm sure a lot of casino operators feel the same way.
tru3_power 8y ago
To be honest I don’t blame you. I have the same anxiety whenever I consider posting anything on the internet. Once it’s posted, there’s no going back.
scarejunba 8y ago
It's funny. This happens in most Internet forums. People ask questions often to seek validation rather than illumination. So they'll turn on you when you don't validate. And in the end, throwaway or not, why help anyone who really wants to bite your face off? The insiders will continue to be privileged wrt information because the outsiders can't behave.

mckee1 8y ago

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 8y ago
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.

_Microft 8y ago

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.

nerdponx 8y ago
It's in part self-selecting: if you work there, it's because you want to work there in spite of (or maybe because of) what's in the press.
- _Microft 8y ago
  That would mean that Facebook basically unfixable unless you fire/replace everyone. That doesn't bode well.
  - badfrog 8y ago
    The generous interpretation would be that the people who are there "because of what's in the press" want to fix the problems.
    - hopler 8y ago
      You can't fix things when all the politically important decisions are made in the C suite. Even the Chief Security Officer quit and said Facebook is hopeless.
      - throwawaymath 8y ago
        Alex Stamos has never said "Facebook is hopeless." He has also never said anything to that effect in not so few words. His take on Facebook was, and continues to be, nuanced - he has said that Facebook has deep seated challenges, but never intimated that he believes they're insurmountable. In fact, now I'm challenging you to cite this. Why say things like this if they're not true? Any broader point about Facebook doesn't even hinge on the veracity of this claim, I don't get it.

Calashle0202 8y ago

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 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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?
  - Agentlien 8y ago
    It would fit fine on my 4k monitor, but it still gets wrapped in a box with scrollbar so that I can only see the first 2/3 of it.
  - hopler 8y ago
    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

spinach 8y ago

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

maceurt 8y ago
Or major the violent/ competitive games just entice more hardcore gamers who care more about the games they play.
- hopler 8y ago
  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?
  - loa-in-backup 8y ago
    Your comment seems almost tautological, especially the last part.
  - ed312 8y ago
    Hate is probably not the right word - someone (entirely out of your control) is tinkering with your favorite hobby in ways that you feel are bad. The strong reaction probably speaks more to the fan's deep connection vs actual hatred. I imagine if that same fan was taken on a trip to visit the devs/studio, their attitude would be very different.
  - random_kris 8y ago

supermw 8y ago

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 8y ago
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?).
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
rizzin 8y ago
Unless it's a "game as a service" and even after release you have to keep on polishing the turd.

frou_dh 8y ago

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 8y ago
No raindrop feels responsible for the flood
- draw_down 8y ago
  I’ll trade you for two: “the fish rots from the head”, and “a witty saying proves nothing”.
- rossdavidh 8y ago
  I realize they didn't come up with this, but I first read it here: https://despair.com/products/irresponsibility https://despair.com/products/irresponsibility
- Can_Not 8y ago
  And most of them shouldn't, the raindrops on the art team didn't create always online DRM for a single player game.
  - scorn_tool 8y ago
    You know the business model. If it's toxic you get out. I might not have been involved in choosing that casinos are horrible, but when I learned that I was developing software to support them, I left - quickly.
pnw_hazor 8y ago
Same for those who work at Facebook and Google I imagine. "It's not my fault my company is hurtling us towards a dystopian surveillance society." History is full of people like that.

dschuetz 8y ago

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 8y ago
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_with_a_blind_parents_what_are_habits_you/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ax7cfl/folks_wit... 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.
cableshaft 8y ago
Small and indie companies have their own problems and can also have games that aren't received well. In those cases it tends to put the company out of business entirely, as opposed to just some people being laid off. I've worked for three small game companies, two of which shut down after a poorly received game and one that laid off 90% of its people and limped along for a few more years before shutting down. I'm no longer in the game industry (I am working on games in my spare time, though, but progress is pretty slow).

ben_jones 8y ago

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 8y ago
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.

zenpaul 8y ago

This comment from accpi jumped out... Engineers take the Kondo approach to Jira. The ticket doesn't spark joy, so they discard it.

ryandrake 8y ago

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.

arkitaip 8y ago

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

tablethnuser 8y ago

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.

gdulli 8y ago

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.

joshuakcockrell 8y ago

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.

mrkeen 8y ago

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?"

stevenwoo 8y ago

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.

_mrmnmly 8y ago

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.

pferde 8y ago

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