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> Standardizing crediting would be one close to my heart. Oh hell yeah. I did 3+ years on a title, nearly killing myself to ship it. When I realized that doin

> Standardizing crediting would be one close to my heart. Oh hell yeah. I did 3+ years on a title, nearly killing myself to ship it. When I realized that doing that much OT was doing to my personal relationships, health and sanity I left with a generous transition ~8mo before ship(including tossing 2.5mo of PTO because they didn't have to pay it out and I could never take it). Listed under "special thanks" as well, it would have cost them nothing to do proper crediting but instead a giant middle finger for "betraying" the company. There's so many aspects of that industry that are messed up, I heard similar stories across the board form co-workers at the places they had worked at. Since everyone had gone through the hazing process it was a self-perpetuating cycle that didn't stop.

midnightclubbed 7y ago
With less and less titles shipping as boxed-product and very few of those having anything approaching an instruction booklet crediting is almost dead already. Some in-game credit screen buried in the options menu or after completing a 50+ hour campaign is about as un-readable as the end credits on a Netflix TV show. The argument against you getting a full credit is that it would list your contribution to the game as the same as a colleague who worked through the ship process. I'm not sure how it works in the production side of the film industry but I imagine it is not dissimilar. You definitely did the right thing by getting out and looking after yourself and those around you. The industry has and is responding to the loss of good people due to burn-out, not at every developer but some of the most notorious have realized the level of churn hurts their ability to hire and retain the best. The more push-back there is against the onerous work practices the more quickly they will stop.
- sangnoir 7y ago
  > The argument against you getting a full credit is that it would list your contribution to the game as the same as a colleague who worked through the ship process. There should be universally-agreed rules around how crediting works: how about a case where a noob who joined a month before shipping gets credit, but someone who slogged for 2 years but quit gets relegated to "Special Thanks" despite putting more effort. Does that seem fair to you?
  - midnightclubbed 7y ago
    To me no, it is not fair at all (although generally there is little to no hiring in the last few months before shipping). From the game company perspective making the new employee feel good is better than making a former employee feel good. What is interesting with games that are live for multiple years is how often should in-game credits be updated and how do you credit over time as people join and leave the product with differing amounts of tenure and influence. But yes, universally agreed crediting rules would be wonderful. I don't see how the collective industry gets there outside of a union pushing for it.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  This argument is unsympathetic to the millions of creative professionals who deserve credit for their work. It's about a lot more than just a list of names. Authors get credit for their books. Everyone who works on a film gets credit for their contribution. This goes into your CV, resume, IMDB, whatever. It's important.
  - midnightclubbed 7y ago
    I understand but I don't see the industry going back to boxes 30 page with instruction books. Having an industry approved crediting scheme would be wonderful but for the most part the only people viewing it is going to be people on the credits. No games industry recruiter looks at a resume and verify names against the in-game credits (or even IMDB) - they will check against references and people they know that you may have worked with. Same as every other job application. Film may be the last industry where everyone involved still gets credited. TV credits are basically unreadable, streaming music credits only cover the artist, books only list the author. I'm not arguing against credits, just that they are not important outside of being a cool 'thank you'.
    - Tiktaalik 7y ago
      It's simply an issue of respect. That's it. It's incredibly disrespectful to sweep away the efforts of workers that are responsible for the product and to pretend it didn't happen.
      - thu2111 7y ago
        This is very specific to gaming though. The vast majority of people are never credited for anything. If that's the best justification for a union then it's not gonna happen.
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      It's not just about having a name listed in an instruction book or in an end roll, and never has been. You know where most TV/film credits are actually seen? On IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, and other sites. I can go look up my cousin who works in the film industry and see every film he's ever worked on: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4253724/ https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4253724/ That's the primary way that film credits are consumed, and it would be great if we had something similar in our industry (the closest we get is a list of open source contributions e.g. on your GitHub profile). But, for example, I've contributed code to Google Cloud Platform, Android, and the Google Search app, but you'd never know it unless you worked at Google and looked through the monorepo very closely. The closest I can get would be to write my own credits page, but how would anyone verify that? So it's fine if you don't care, but plenty of other people do care about getting credit for their work, and to them it is quite important. This describes most people in many industries. So yeah, it is important.
- vvanders 7y ago
  Yeah except I knew many people in the industry who would cross reference mobygames when a resume came in and not all of our hires were with direct references. Also this was a boxed retail title with no dlc so the credit list was pretty fixed. I'm out of the industry now with no plans to ever return but the whole process just seemed pretty and spiteful. We worked just as hard during those 3 years as I did shipping other titles before that so I don't really buy that leaving early changes the title on which you worked as.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  > I'm not sure how it works in the production side of the film industry but I imagine it is not dissimilar. I don't know about films, but credits on TV shows apparently work more like lifetime achievement awards than like a list of who worked on what. Everyone touches a lot of different things, your total contributions are tracked informally, and when they exceed a certain amount you get an episode credit. You need to have touched the episode, but you might have done much less work on that particular episode than a dozen uncredited people. Source: Mark Rosewater's writing about his time on Roseanne.
taurath 7y ago
> Since everyone had gone through the hazing process it was a self-perpetuating cycle that didn't stop. I find it’s more than people only get one shot to organize their project, and it’s scarier to try something you haven’t vs something that was extremely painful but delivered. There’s a large contingent that believes without massive overtime and crunch a game will never be released.
iguy 7y ago
> it would have cost them nothing to do proper crediting How much does this matter? (Really asking, I know nothing of this industry, nor film.) What I mean is, beyond enjoying seeing your name, does it make a big difference in landing subsequent jobs to have your name publicly listed at this size / under this heading / etc. on past work? Do companies hiring you go and check what you say against the credits, or how does this work?
- vvanders 7y ago
  Yes, very much so. First game I got credited on opened up a ton of doors because everything in that industry is based on what you've done and not your qualifications.
  - scaryclam 7y ago
    But was it the fact you were in the credits, or that you put it on your CV?

midnightclubbed 7y ago

With less and less titles shipping as boxed-product and very few of those having anything approaching an instruction booklet crediting is almost dead already. Some in-game credit screen buried in the options menu or after completing a 50+ hour campaign is about as un-readable as the end credits on a Netflix TV show. The argument against you getting a full credit is that it would list your contribution to the game as the same as a colleague who worked through the ship process. I'm not sure how it works in the production side of the film industry but I imagine it is not dissimilar. You definitely did the right thing by getting out and looking after yourself and those around you. The industry has and is responding to the loss of good people due to burn-out, not at every developer but some of the most notorious have realized the level of churn hurts their ability to hire and retain the best. The more push-back there is against the onerous work practices the more quickly they will stop.

sangnoir 7y ago
> The argument against you getting a full credit is that it would list your contribution to the game as the same as a colleague who worked through the ship process. There should be universally-agreed rules around how crediting works: how about a case where a noob who joined a month before shipping gets credit, but someone who slogged for 2 years but quit gets relegated to "Special Thanks" despite putting more effort. Does that seem fair to you?
- midnightclubbed 7y ago
  To me no, it is not fair at all (although generally there is little to no hiring in the last few months before shipping). From the game company perspective making the new employee feel good is better than making a former employee feel good. What is interesting with games that are live for multiple years is how often should in-game credits be updated and how do you credit over time as people join and leave the product with differing amounts of tenure and influence. But yes, universally agreed crediting rules would be wonderful. I don't see how the collective industry gets there outside of a union pushing for it.
CydeWeys 7y ago
This argument is unsympathetic to the millions of creative professionals who deserve credit for their work. It's about a lot more than just a list of names. Authors get credit for their books. Everyone who works on a film gets credit for their contribution. This goes into your CV, resume, IMDB, whatever. It's important.
- midnightclubbed 7y ago
  I understand but I don't see the industry going back to boxes 30 page with instruction books. Having an industry approved crediting scheme would be wonderful but for the most part the only people viewing it is going to be people on the credits. No games industry recruiter looks at a resume and verify names against the in-game credits (or even IMDB) - they will check against references and people they know that you may have worked with. Same as every other job application. Film may be the last industry where everyone involved still gets credited. TV credits are basically unreadable, streaming music credits only cover the artist, books only list the author. I'm not arguing against credits, just that they are not important outside of being a cool 'thank you'.
  - Tiktaalik 7y ago
    It's simply an issue of respect. That's it. It's incredibly disrespectful to sweep away the efforts of workers that are responsible for the product and to pretend it didn't happen.
    - thu2111 7y ago
      This is very specific to gaming though. The vast majority of people are never credited for anything. If that's the best justification for a union then it's not gonna happen.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    It's not just about having a name listed in an instruction book or in an end roll, and never has been. You know where most TV/film credits are actually seen? On IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, and other sites. I can go look up my cousin who works in the film industry and see every film he's ever worked on: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4253724/ https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4253724/ That's the primary way that film credits are consumed, and it would be great if we had something similar in our industry (the closest we get is a list of open source contributions e.g. on your GitHub profile). But, for example, I've contributed code to Google Cloud Platform, Android, and the Google Search app, but you'd never know it unless you worked at Google and looked through the monorepo very closely. The closest I can get would be to write my own credits page, but how would anyone verify that? So it's fine if you don't care, but plenty of other people do care about getting credit for their work, and to them it is quite important. This describes most people in many industries. So yeah, it is important.
vvanders 7y ago
Yeah except I knew many people in the industry who would cross reference mobygames when a resume came in and not all of our hires were with direct references. Also this was a boxed retail title with no dlc so the credit list was pretty fixed. I'm out of the industry now with no plans to ever return but the whole process just seemed pretty and spiteful. We worked just as hard during those 3 years as I did shipping other titles before that so I don't really buy that leaving early changes the title on which you worked as.
thaumasiotes 7y ago
> I'm not sure how it works in the production side of the film industry but I imagine it is not dissimilar. I don't know about films, but credits on TV shows apparently work more like lifetime achievement awards than like a list of who worked on what. Everyone touches a lot of different things, your total contributions are tracked informally, and when they exceed a certain amount you get an episode credit. You need to have touched the episode, but you might have done much less work on that particular episode than a dozen uncredited people. Source: Mark Rosewater's writing about his time on Roseanne.

taurath 7y ago

> Since everyone had gone through the hazing process it was a self-perpetuating cycle that didn't stop. I find it’s more than people only get one shot to organize their project, and it’s scarier to try something you haven’t vs something that was extremely painful but delivered. There’s a large contingent that believes without massive overtime and crunch a game will never be released.

iguy 7y ago

> it would have cost them nothing to do proper crediting How much does this matter? (Really asking, I know nothing of this industry, nor film.) What I mean is, beyond enjoying seeing your name, does it make a big difference in landing subsequent jobs to have your name publicly listed at this size / under this heading / etc. on past work? Do companies hiring you go and check what you say against the credits, or how does this work?

vvanders 7y ago
Yes, very much so. First game I got credited on opened up a ton of doors because everything in that industry is based on what you've done and not your qualifications.
- scaryclam 7y ago
  But was it the fact you were in the credits, or that you put it on your CV?