14 ms·

Reading the replies there tells me I did the right thing when I decided against a career in game development over a decade ago. It looks like a constant war be

by Netcob 6y ago

Reading the replies there tells me I did the right thing when I decided against a career in game development over a decade ago. It looks like a constant war between developers and gamers now. Developers are investing a lot of time into making their games literally addictive in the worst way possible, and not even remotely by making it fun - it's all about overpriced DLC, gambling and weird reward systems. Which has ruined mobile gaming and is now making its way into console and PC gaming. As an intern I attended a company-wide meeting where the CEO proclaimed that game quality didn't matter and making money is the sole focus. On the other side of the war, a very vocal subset of the gamers is treating gaming as the only purpose their lives have, and will viciously attack developers personally with death threats and doxxing, or review-bomb even unrelated games into oblivion if the game publisher did something wrong. Which will hardly affect the giants at all (what will you do, not buy the next game from a popular series?), but can crush indie developers. Not to mention the whole work culture that expects any game developer to work 80h per week for less pay because you "love gaming". CDPR devs must be close to a nervous breakdown by now. Crunching for months/years despite their bosses promising it won't happen, seeing their game released too early and then ripped apart by critics and fans, and finally getting their personal data leaked.

CraneWorm 6y ago
> what will you do, not buy the next game from a popular series? Yes. The problems you describe are real, and damage both the developers and the gamers and it seems like "the only winning move is not to play". I'd argue that if you don't buy the next hyped title nothing of value is lost. Wait out the hype, if you want to play the big title. The world might be better of if you get it as discounted, second hand or pirated.
- bluefirebrand 6y ago
  Yeah I stopped buying Assassin's Creed a long time ago not because I don't enjoy them but because I didn't like the direction Ubisoft was heading with them.
dirkc 6y ago
Read up on Jonathan Blow [1], sounds like you might like his philosophy. The short of it is that he believes time is valuable and should be respected. I also love Braid, a game he made. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Blow#Philosophy_and_views https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Blow#Philosophy_and_v...
- killtimeatwork 6y ago
  I have sort of opposite take on video games to him. To me, video games fill in the time slots when I'm too tired to pursue anything meaningful - they're just mindless entertainment, which would otherwise be spent re-watching shows or, in the pre-electronics era, reading newspapers or staring into the fire. That's the reason I've never finished Braid - I can spend all those brain cycles on my actual work or interests, not on figuring out made-up complexity. The only complex game I play is Magic: the Gathering, and I play it for the social factor and with physical cards only - it's fun meet with friend/friends once in a while and compete in a mentally challenging game. Our friendship is better for that. I don't really see what exactly I am supposed to be getting out of playing games like Braid or The Witness though. EDIT: There's a minority of population (which is heavily overrepresented in our industry), which enjoys solving pure logical puzzles just for the sake of solving them. Just look at how much praise Factorio gets on HN. Also famously, Feynman enjoyed to figure out keylocks and ancient hieroglyphs as a past time. Puzzle games cater mainly to such audience I guess.
  - ehnto 6y ago
    I flip between thought-games and mindless games, it's no different to when I want to go out and ride my bike or just watch YouTube. Different modes for different moods.
- ehnto 6y ago
  Jonathan Blow is a refreshing character, truly passionate, opinionated but I don't feel like it's at the cost of others, and his games are pure. They don't pretend they're not games, and they eschew allll the bullshit that comes with modern games. I didn't need to sign up for an account, count any Special Points, fuss with menus or anything. Boot up the game, play away.
RGamma 6y ago
I find it disturbing to see how sour gaming has turned. If you would've asked me 15 years ago I would never have been able to imagine this outcome. It's befitting of the economic extremism and pessimistic zeitgeist of our time :( Hope there'll be a corrective force to this sometime soon before gaming turns entirely into a soulless commercialized husk. For all the talk there is about CP2077 superficial mistakes there's really a lack of discussion about the message it's trying to convey. Is anyone even trying to understand or are they just looking at graphics and bugs?
- mysterydip 6y ago
  There are indie developers who are making games that aren't the corporate monstrosities you speak of, some mentioned elsewhere in comments. The problem is there's a lot of cruft too, and the advertising budgets of the good devs are small if existing at all. I wish there was a boardgamegeek equivalent for indie games to help with the discoverability problem.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - RGamma 6y ago
    I always turned to TotalBiscuit for indie recommendations while he was still around... Just had to vent a bit because in my mind CDPR are (still!) the good guys who attempt to hold high standards of old, not least due to GOG. And then they receive this amount vitriol that they publicly apologize (what for? that they made a competent and highly relevant game?) and now this attack. Can we please banish consumerist entitlement and corporate nonsense from the videogame world please?
    - mippenhappen 6y ago
      >Can we please banish consumerist entitlement and corporate nonsense from the videogame world please? That's gonna be a "no" from the world.
- eswat 6y ago
mvolfik 6y ago
It doesn't always have to be like this though. Look at Factorio – the devs are happy (looking from the outside, but they are always very enthusiastic about how they love the game), the community loves it (there are infinite remarks of people who sunk thousands of hours into this game, all for a single payment of 25 €), and they don't seem to have any financial issues either. I have not seen many disappointed people around Factorio (maybe that dev of the IR mod [1]). [1]: https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=83197 https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=83197
- MaximumYComb 6y ago
  If they released a $50 DLC that just adds a bunch of super difficult achievements I'd pick that up just to support them. I've sunk 4 figures of hours into that game and I regret not having any of my goals left to achieve. I've done speedrunning, mega factories, difficult map settings, etc.
  - theshrike79 6y ago
    Just figured out that I can start a custom map and turn off the biters. Been playing into the wee mornings for a week now. Got into the logic system heavily. I'm optimising production in my sleep now. Send help. Can't stop.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
      You joke, but I think that this is why "addicting" is never a quality you want in a game, even one like Factorio where it is a product of good-intention game design and isn't just rent-seeking. Addiction is destructive.
    - bloopernova 6y ago
      Off topic: what do you use logic for? I am at a loss on how to use it effectively.
      - MaximumYComb 6y ago
johnnycerberus 6y ago
The most addictive games are not the ones we think about. My friends are into "competitive" gaming, games like CSGO, Dota2. These developers barely bring any content to their games and it amazes me how much profit they make for less work compared to AAA studios releasing blockbusters like RDR2. If your game is not competitive, microtransaction-ready, not a sandbox with procedural, generative stuff, the chances are that the work involved in that is sisyphic. (huge respect for Naughty Dog, Rockstar Games - they found their micro-trans niche through GTA Online though -, CDProjekt, Arkane)
- _Understated_ 6y ago
  This made me wonder: Is there a parallel between the advertising industry and their ever increasing quest to mine more data and the games industry with their incessant need for DLC, microtransactions and whatnot? It seems that middle-management/VC's in both of these industries are pushing the same processes (or could we use "dogma"?) without any empirical evidence that what they are doing is the right thing, all the while patting each other on the back because that's the way everyone else does it... Edit: edited for clarity
  - Netcob 6y ago
    Looking at Epic Games, I don't think a lot of pushing is required when you see people make enormous amounts of money like they did with Fortnite. My understanding is that they are now using all that money to finance their steam-alternative games store (with exclusives), where they can still afford to offer 1-2 games for free every single week (with a lot more around the holidays).
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > Is there a parallel between the advertising industry and their ever increasing quest to mine more data and the games industry with their incessant need for DLC, microtransactions and whatnot? There is: being "data driven", which is a short for "we need to tighten the feedback loop in our revenue optimization algorithm". The most annoying players in both industries are essentially trying to run a PID controller around the people they're monetizing. For that to work, interactions must be frequent, telemetry must be extensive.
izacus 6y ago
This seems like such a needlessly negative take in vein of the "our music was better and now everything is comercialized!!!" syndrome. We live in pretty much the golden age of gaming - the audience has never been bigger, the choice was never greater and there is no lack of evocative, emotional and masterfully crafted games. But just like with every other medium, there's also no lack of cheap cash grabs. You movie cinema is also plastered with cheap romantic comedy dreck and not the greatest works of the year. That doesn't mean that there's nothing there though.
- villasv 6y ago
  Game quality was not the point though, games are great. OP is talking about quality of life as a developer.
- ehnto 6y ago
  I totally agree, games are incredible right now, truly the games of my dreams as a kid. But with that bigger demographic has come the wrath of the commons, and the gaming community is just jam packed with cruelty and entitlement.
Yarnamite 6y ago
tbf people on twitter are fucking insane. there is no middle ground for them, just hate or love. and they always need to have an opinion on everything. its probably the most toxic website i have ever experienced. people on it are treated like the average person when they represent such a massive niche. basically we should purge twitter and other social media sites.
- bzb6 6y ago
  Communities online all seem the same--have you seen Reddit?
ramblerman 6y ago
> a very vocal subset of the gamers is treating gaming as the only purpose their lives have, and will viciously attack developers personally with death threats and doxxing, That reminds me of the gamers on twitter who lost their shit when cyberpunk was delayed... because they had already requested a week holiday.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
watwut 6y ago
PC games were build to be addictive already years ago. For all the complains about mobile gaming, every single addicted gamer I knew or heard about was playing online games on console or on PC. I know it was not your main point, but it is ridiculous how gaming culture constantly blames mobile, but the actual addictive issue happen with games like WoW or LoL.
- notacoward 6y ago
  Way before that. The dangers of "just one more turn" addiction were already well known even with games like SimCity and Civilization. The benefits to the game maker were less obvious, but still very real. As evidence, consider the fact that those franchises are still making money even after this long.
tarsinge 6y ago
In any professional artistic/creative activity, there is always a tension between artistic freedom and profits. It's up to each individual/company to position the cursor. It's the same with movies and music, the production can be more or less profit or artistic driven. The indie studio that has a surprise success is the same as a indie band, don't expect the same output after corporate take over. And yes sometimes planets are aligned and you get a masterpiece even in a profit driven production.
- Bakary 6y ago
  I'm not a cultural relativist by any means, but it's a bit destructive to focus on whether something is artistically driven. Millions of people have a positive relationship with mass-market games such as FIFA: they just have a different utility model. These games in turn tend to derive some of their value from the social interactions that they facilitate. The fact that something is profit driven is thus not at odds with its intrinsic worth. Meanwhile, there are tons of nominally artistic games that don't really tread new ground or say anything. It often has more to do with chance (multiple factors and talented people coming together by accident) than careful artistic consideration. That's why game studios often struggle to repeat the same magic across different titles, and why even indie bands with the least corporate influence struggle after the first album.
arcturus17 6y ago
> Developers are investing a lot of time into making their games literally addictive in the worst way possible, and not even remotely by making it fun - it's all about overpriced DLC, gambling and weird reward systems I quit the games industry for similar reasons. I worked in a management position at Nintendo and couldn't see anywhere evident to step up, with very few options to even step horizontally. All the potential step ups in the so-called extrinsic motivators of work (salary, reputation, nice places to work, etc) came from pay-to-win mobile studios and the like. I could never find the intrinsic motivation to go there - I felt it's not what I signed up for when I started to work in the industry. To add, I don't think that all micropayment models are necessarily predatory. For example, Nintendo finally caved in to mobile gaming (it started under Iwata IIRC), and from what I hear (and have very briefly seen with their Fire Emblem mobile game) their microtransaction policy is pretty fair. Hell, we had microtransactions when I was a kid with arcades. I feel a bit of pity about my former self and all the other kids spending all those quarters on fleeting moments of entertainment (the PC and home console were so much better value for money!), however I wouldn't call the whole affair exploitative. But indeed, games as close-ended artistic works are a fairly small part of the market now, and if that's your jam, you may need to prepare yourself to navigate a niche rather than an entire industry.
ArkanExplorer 6y ago
These are just symptoms - the fundamental underlying factor is the 30% commission taken by Valve, Microsoft, Sony, Apple, Google. Take these values down to 10-15%, and the game development business becomes a lot higher-margin, encouraging new entrants and supporting better salaries and conditions for staff. The other problem is that games are unique that they are entirely B2C, retail products. As a result, the full taxation burden falls on them. Its not uncommon for developers to actually receive only 50% of spent revenue, after global sales taxes, platform commissions, refunds, chargebacks are taken into account. By contrast general IT companies - if providing B2B services (including advertising) - have a much lower commission and taxation burden.
- Netcob 6y ago
  With the exception of small indie developers, I'm too cynical to believe that the difference would end up benefiting the staff.
  - ArkanExplorer 6y ago
    On Steam, larger developers are charged a 20% commission, whereas Indie developers are charged a 30% commission. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-12-03-indie-developers-are-unhappy-with-steams-new-revenue-sharing-tiers https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-12-03-indie-deve... You are put at a fundamentally poorer economic position if you quit your AAA job and make Indie games and release them on Steam.
- villasv 6y ago
  And the evidence for that diagnostics is...? Got any reference that links margin to company culture? The few people I know from the mobile gaming industry tell me the margins are insanely high. They’d spend x on ads and get back 2~5x in microtransactions. Also development costs were even lower than marketing costs.
  - ArkanExplorer 6y ago
    This is the conclusion of the American Federal Trade Commission... https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-01-08-ftc-wary-of-apple-and-google-squeezing-developers https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-01-08-ftc-wary-o... ""heavy taxation" by Apple and Google means developers are forced to use monetisation models that "rely on surveillance, manipulation and other harmful practices.""
lentil_soup 6y ago
As a game developer I can tell you that while there are problems in many companies and part of the industry can be toxic it is not always the case. Not sure even if it's that much different to other software development industries. I understand that there's a lot of interest in the industry which places it in the spotlight in the press but the truth is way milder than people think. Most of the people I work with have a normal 40hr a day job with a normal life.
s_dev 6y ago
The mobile industry tries to make addictive "games" but I've a friend who asked Valve to remove Civilization VI from his account. Thats an addicitve game -- just like Scorcese dismisses the avengers as "Theme Parks or Rollercoasters" and not cinema. I'd dismiss many mobile games as "games" and more like digital slot machines. It doesn't help that the gambling industry chooses to use the euphemeism "gaming" as in "gaming laws".
tinus_hn 6y ago
It comes with the territory, you can’t make a 200 million dollar game just because you ‘love gaming’.
gameswithgo 6y ago
welcome to earth
everdrive 6y ago
Gaming is mainstream now. What this means practically is that there are a bunch of big players pushing junk, and a smaller portion making amazing, wonderful games. This is the problem of the mainstream. Video games are no longer a niche interest, so there is a lot of money. Anyhow, there are more amazing games available now than any other time in history. (especially since all the old games are still available for the most part) The problem is that per capita, modern games are quite bad. In raw numbers, though, there are more amazing games out there than ever before. Much like the rest of modern media, the challenge is in filtering out the junk. There's more choice and abundance, and much of it is of poor quality.
ehnto 6y ago
Gamers are the most toxic community I have ever encountered. Nothing but parroted vitriol and entitlement. I don't even look online anymore, I just play the games and make my own opinions.
- Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > Gamers are the most toxic community I have ever encountered. Nothing but parroted vitriol and entitlement. I don't even look online anymore, I just play the games and make my own opinions. Sadly, this is kind of the one part that I blame CDprojectRed for even though I think they delivered an awesome product, albeit super buggy and limited one; they built the hype up so much and pushed the narrative of an immersive in depth World on e day 1 with tons of layers in the storyline and took years to develop. Had they just been honest to pre-buyers and say,'listen, please understand we wanted all these features on launch, but they're just not on day 1, so this will be released as a beta with limited features and bug fixes to come. If anyone wants a full refund we will accommodate it.' Which they eventually were forced to do for physical copies, and then gave Sony a black eye by forcing them to issue refunds from the PS+ store etc.. The Watchdogs team did that, and they also delayed their launch date to October despite it being Q1 2020 with almost no backlash because they were open about it and the price of the digital version then physical copies reflected that set of circumstances, the media didn't even bother commenting on it either despite Online play not being available to this day. Also, this shows just how sad most gamers lives really are, between paying twitch players and spending every waking hour either playing or commenting on video games on social media one can easily see they don't have much or any real social life. It's actually really sad, and makes me think about that part of the anime 'Welcome to the NHK' about NEETism and the prevalence of dropping out of Society and creating your own virtual existence Online to fill the void. It's sad because I was also a gamer up until Sophomore year of university when I just got way too busy going FT and Summer classes and running a business, preparing/repairing my car and going to and training for real motorsports events/weekends and being in even casual relationships--there was simply no time to put in the 5+ hours on Gran Tursimo to refine my lines at Fuji, Suzuka, Laguna Seca or the Nordschleife like I could when I was in HS. Sadly, for me Nismo's GT academy would later prove it to be a proper outlet and use of my time had I continued as they picked drivers for their lineup in GT racing series from the challenges Online, but by then the eventual financial crash of 2008 crisis was already setting things into motion (early 2007ish) so I couldn't be bothered and I needed to graduate ASAP.
sleepybrett 6y ago
My first jobs in the industry were for games companies (in the late 90s). After about 5 years I decided that there is better money and less stress for engineers to be found in what I would then considered 'boring ass software'. Now I enjoy playing games and reading blog posts about their engineering techniques. But I won't regret working mostly 40h weeks with vacation I can actually take and not thinking I'm going to get laid off every time I ship a project.
Bakary 6y ago
Ironically, I now find industry drama to be more engaging than many high-profile games. >On the other side of the war, a very vocal subset of the gamers is treating gaming as the only purpose their lives have, and will viciously attack developers personally with death threats and doxxing, or review-bomb even unrelated games into oblivion if the game publisher did something wrong. Which will hardly affect the giants at all (what will you do, not buy the next game from a popular series?), but can crush indie developers. Not to mention the whole work culture that expects any game developer to work 80h per week for less pay because you "love gaming". It bothers me that so many dysfunctional people occupy so much space in gaming culture, but it is a fundamental feature of the hobby given its structure, consequences, and accessibility. That said, there has never been as much absolute human activity focused on making high quality games in positive settings. It's just that there are so many projects around that just getting an understanding of the market and which games would give you memorable experiences requires hours of research and discovery. Don't let the negative aspects that get disproportionate air-time color your perception exclusively.
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
It's especially sad to me because CDPR was one of the major developers who really seemed on the right side of things. The Witcher games never offered micro-transactions, and the DLC constituted substantial, supplementary extensions over the base game. (And it was sold DRM-Free to boot.) Even as someone who never cared for their games, I really appreciated them as a developer. I can't say whether The Witcher contained compulsive/addictive elements, but CDPR was not incentivized to do so, which IMO is what matters. I don't know whether or not this says anything about the industry, it's just a shame.
oliwarner 6y ago
It certainly seems likely to be unpleasant there at the moment. A lot of other AAA developers do so much worse, treating salaried developers like contractors, making them crunch for no additional remuneration and then closing down the studio after the job's done. Hell, even contractors have contracts to protect them from this sort of abuse. But I think gamedev clearly runs at two levels. There's AAAs and then there's everyone else. The smaller teams either running as a hobby or only just scraping by, and every so often there's a Mojang that makes it big. But yeah, much easier doing B2B development work.

by Netcob 6y ago

CraneWorm 6y ago

> what will you do, not buy the next game from a popular series? Yes. The problems you describe are real, and damage both the developers and the gamers and it seems like "the only winning move is not to play". I'd argue that if you don't buy the next hyped title nothing of value is lost. Wait out the hype, if you want to play the big title. The world might be better of if you get it as discounted, second hand or pirated.

bluefirebrand 6y ago
Yeah I stopped buying Assassin's Creed a long time ago not because I don't enjoy them but because I didn't like the direction Ubisoft was heading with them.

dirkc 6y ago

Read up on Jonathan Blow [1], sounds like you might like his philosophy. The short of it is that he believes time is valuable and should be respected. I also love Braid, a game he made. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Blow#Philosophy_and_views https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Blow#Philosophy_and_v...

killtimeatwork 6y ago
I have sort of opposite take on video games to him. To me, video games fill in the time slots when I'm too tired to pursue anything meaningful - they're just mindless entertainment, which would otherwise be spent re-watching shows or, in the pre-electronics era, reading newspapers or staring into the fire. That's the reason I've never finished Braid - I can spend all those brain cycles on my actual work or interests, not on figuring out made-up complexity. The only complex game I play is Magic: the Gathering, and I play it for the social factor and with physical cards only - it's fun meet with friend/friends once in a while and compete in a mentally challenging game. Our friendship is better for that. I don't really see what exactly I am supposed to be getting out of playing games like Braid or The Witness though. EDIT: There's a minority of population (which is heavily overrepresented in our industry), which enjoys solving pure logical puzzles just for the sake of solving them. Just look at how much praise Factorio gets on HN. Also famously, Feynman enjoyed to figure out keylocks and ancient hieroglyphs as a past time. Puzzle games cater mainly to such audience I guess.
- ehnto 6y ago
  I flip between thought-games and mindless games, it's no different to when I want to go out and ride my bike or just watch YouTube. Different modes for different moods.
ehnto 6y ago
Jonathan Blow is a refreshing character, truly passionate, opinionated but I don't feel like it's at the cost of others, and his games are pure. They don't pretend they're not games, and they eschew allll the bullshit that comes with modern games. I didn't need to sign up for an account, count any Special Points, fuss with menus or anything. Boot up the game, play away.

RGamma 6y ago

I find it disturbing to see how sour gaming has turned. If you would've asked me 15 years ago I would never have been able to imagine this outcome. It's befitting of the economic extremism and pessimistic zeitgeist of our time :( Hope there'll be a corrective force to this sometime soon before gaming turns entirely into a soulless commercialized husk. For all the talk there is about CP2077 superficial mistakes there's really a lack of discussion about the message it's trying to convey. Is anyone even trying to understand or are they just looking at graphics and bugs?

mysterydip 6y ago
There are indie developers who are making games that aren't the corporate monstrosities you speak of, some mentioned elsewhere in comments. The problem is there's a lot of cruft too, and the advertising budgets of the good devs are small if existing at all. I wish there was a boardgamegeek equivalent for indie games to help with the discoverability problem.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- RGamma 6y ago
  I always turned to TotalBiscuit for indie recommendations while he was still around... Just had to vent a bit because in my mind CDPR are (still!) the good guys who attempt to hold high standards of old, not least due to GOG. And then they receive this amount vitriol that they publicly apologize (what for? that they made a competent and highly relevant game?) and now this attack. Can we please banish consumerist entitlement and corporate nonsense from the videogame world please?
  - mippenhappen 6y ago
    >Can we please banish consumerist entitlement and corporate nonsense from the videogame world please? That's gonna be a "no" from the world.
eswat 6y ago

mvolfik 6y ago

It doesn't always have to be like this though. Look at Factorio – the devs are happy (looking from the outside, but they are always very enthusiastic about how they love the game), the community loves it (there are infinite remarks of people who sunk thousands of hours into this game, all for a single payment of 25 €), and they don't seem to have any financial issues either. I have not seen many disappointed people around Factorio (maybe that dev of the IR mod [1]). [1]: https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=83197 https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=83197

MaximumYComb 6y ago
If they released a $50 DLC that just adds a bunch of super difficult achievements I'd pick that up just to support them. I've sunk 4 figures of hours into that game and I regret not having any of my goals left to achieve. I've done speedrunning, mega factories, difficult map settings, etc.
- theshrike79 6y ago
  Just figured out that I can start a custom map and turn off the biters. Been playing into the wee mornings for a week now. Got into the logic system heavily. I'm optimising production in my sleep now. Send help. Can't stop.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    You joke, but I think that this is why "addicting" is never a quality you want in a game, even one like Factorio where it is a product of good-intention game design and isn't just rent-seeking. Addiction is destructive.
  - bloopernova 6y ago
    Off topic: what do you use logic for? I am at a loss on how to use it effectively.
    - MaximumYComb 6y ago

johnnycerberus 6y ago

The most addictive games are not the ones we think about. My friends are into "competitive" gaming, games like CSGO, Dota2. These developers barely bring any content to their games and it amazes me how much profit they make for less work compared to AAA studios releasing blockbusters like RDR2. If your game is not competitive, microtransaction-ready, not a sandbox with procedural, generative stuff, the chances are that the work involved in that is sisyphic. (huge respect for Naughty Dog, Rockstar Games - they found their micro-trans niche through GTA Online though -, CDProjekt, Arkane)

_Understated_ 6y ago
This made me wonder: Is there a parallel between the advertising industry and their ever increasing quest to mine more data and the games industry with their incessant need for DLC, microtransactions and whatnot? It seems that middle-management/VC's in both of these industries are pushing the same processes (or could we use "dogma"?) without any empirical evidence that what they are doing is the right thing, all the while patting each other on the back because that's the way everyone else does it... Edit: edited for clarity
- Netcob 6y ago
  Looking at Epic Games, I don't think a lot of pushing is required when you see people make enormous amounts of money like they did with Fortnite. My understanding is that they are now using all that money to finance their steam-alternative games store (with exclusives), where they can still afford to offer 1-2 games for free every single week (with a lot more around the holidays).
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > Is there a parallel between the advertising industry and their ever increasing quest to mine more data and the games industry with their incessant need for DLC, microtransactions and whatnot? There is: being "data driven", which is a short for "we need to tighten the feedback loop in our revenue optimization algorithm". The most annoying players in both industries are essentially trying to run a PID controller around the people they're monetizing. For that to work, interactions must be frequent, telemetry must be extensive.

izacus 6y ago

This seems like such a needlessly negative take in vein of the "our music was better and now everything is comercialized!!!" syndrome. We live in pretty much the golden age of gaming - the audience has never been bigger, the choice was never greater and there is no lack of evocative, emotional and masterfully crafted games. But just like with every other medium, there's also no lack of cheap cash grabs. You movie cinema is also plastered with cheap romantic comedy dreck and not the greatest works of the year. That doesn't mean that there's nothing there though.

villasv 6y ago
Game quality was not the point though, games are great. OP is talking about quality of life as a developer.
ehnto 6y ago
I totally agree, games are incredible right now, truly the games of my dreams as a kid. But with that bigger demographic has come the wrath of the commons, and the gaming community is just jam packed with cruelty and entitlement.

Yarnamite 6y ago

tbf people on twitter are fucking insane. there is no middle ground for them, just hate or love. and they always need to have an opinion on everything. its probably the most toxic website i have ever experienced. people on it are treated like the average person when they represent such a massive niche. basically we should purge twitter and other social media sites.

bzb6 6y ago
Communities online all seem the same--have you seen Reddit?

ramblerman 6y ago

> a very vocal subset of the gamers is treating gaming as the only purpose their lives have, and will viciously attack developers personally with death threats and doxxing, That reminds me of the gamers on twitter who lost their shit when cyberpunk was delayed... because they had already requested a week holiday.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

watwut 6y ago

PC games were build to be addictive already years ago. For all the complains about mobile gaming, every single addicted gamer I knew or heard about was playing online games on console or on PC. I know it was not your main point, but it is ridiculous how gaming culture constantly blames mobile, but the actual addictive issue happen with games like WoW or LoL.

notacoward 6y ago
Way before that. The dangers of "just one more turn" addiction were already well known even with games like SimCity and Civilization. The benefits to the game maker were less obvious, but still very real. As evidence, consider the fact that those franchises are still making money even after this long.

tarsinge 6y ago

In any professional artistic/creative activity, there is always a tension between artistic freedom and profits. It's up to each individual/company to position the cursor. It's the same with movies and music, the production can be more or less profit or artistic driven. The indie studio that has a surprise success is the same as a indie band, don't expect the same output after corporate take over. And yes sometimes planets are aligned and you get a masterpiece even in a profit driven production.

Bakary 6y ago
I'm not a cultural relativist by any means, but it's a bit destructive to focus on whether something is artistically driven. Millions of people have a positive relationship with mass-market games such as FIFA: they just have a different utility model. These games in turn tend to derive some of their value from the social interactions that they facilitate. The fact that something is profit driven is thus not at odds with its intrinsic worth. Meanwhile, there are tons of nominally artistic games that don't really tread new ground or say anything. It often has more to do with chance (multiple factors and talented people coming together by accident) than careful artistic consideration. That's why game studios often struggle to repeat the same magic across different titles, and why even indie bands with the least corporate influence struggle after the first album.

arcturus17 6y ago

> Developers are investing a lot of time into making their games literally addictive in the worst way possible, and not even remotely by making it fun - it's all about overpriced DLC, gambling and weird reward systems I quit the games industry for similar reasons. I worked in a management position at Nintendo and couldn't see anywhere evident to step up, with very few options to even step horizontally. All the potential step ups in the so-called extrinsic motivators of work (salary, reputation, nice places to work, etc) came from pay-to-win mobile studios and the like. I could never find the intrinsic motivation to go there - I felt it's not what I signed up for when I started to work in the industry. To add, I don't think that all micropayment models are necessarily predatory. For example, Nintendo finally caved in to mobile gaming (it started under Iwata IIRC), and from what I hear (and have very briefly seen with their Fire Emblem mobile game) their microtransaction policy is pretty fair. Hell, we had microtransactions when I was a kid with arcades. I feel a bit of pity about my former self and all the other kids spending all those quarters on fleeting moments of entertainment (the PC and home console were so much better value for money!), however I wouldn't call the whole affair exploitative. But indeed, games as close-ended artistic works are a fairly small part of the market now, and if that's your jam, you may need to prepare yourself to navigate a niche rather than an entire industry.

ArkanExplorer 6y ago

These are just symptoms - the fundamental underlying factor is the 30% commission taken by Valve, Microsoft, Sony, Apple, Google. Take these values down to 10-15%, and the game development business becomes a lot higher-margin, encouraging new entrants and supporting better salaries and conditions for staff. The other problem is that games are unique that they are entirely B2C, retail products. As a result, the full taxation burden falls on them. Its not uncommon for developers to actually receive only 50% of spent revenue, after global sales taxes, platform commissions, refunds, chargebacks are taken into account. By contrast general IT companies - if providing B2B services (including advertising) - have a much lower commission and taxation burden.

Netcob 6y ago
With the exception of small indie developers, I'm too cynical to believe that the difference would end up benefiting the staff.
- ArkanExplorer 6y ago
  On Steam, larger developers are charged a 20% commission, whereas Indie developers are charged a 30% commission. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-12-03-indie-developers-are-unhappy-with-steams-new-revenue-sharing-tiers https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-12-03-indie-deve... You are put at a fundamentally poorer economic position if you quit your AAA job and make Indie games and release them on Steam.
villasv 6y ago
And the evidence for that diagnostics is...? Got any reference that links margin to company culture? The few people I know from the mobile gaming industry tell me the margins are insanely high. They’d spend x on ads and get back 2~5x in microtransactions. Also development costs were even lower than marketing costs.
- ArkanExplorer 6y ago
  This is the conclusion of the American Federal Trade Commission... https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-01-08-ftc-wary-of-apple-and-google-squeezing-developers https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-01-08-ftc-wary-o... ""heavy taxation" by Apple and Google means developers are forced to use monetisation models that "rely on surveillance, manipulation and other harmful practices.""

lentil_soup 6y ago

As a game developer I can tell you that while there are problems in many companies and part of the industry can be toxic it is not always the case. Not sure even if it's that much different to other software development industries. I understand that there's a lot of interest in the industry which places it in the spotlight in the press but the truth is way milder than people think. Most of the people I work with have a normal 40hr a day job with a normal life.

s_dev 6y ago

The mobile industry tries to make addictive "games" but I've a friend who asked Valve to remove Civilization VI from his account. Thats an addicitve game -- just like Scorcese dismisses the avengers as "Theme Parks or Rollercoasters" and not cinema. I'd dismiss many mobile games as "games" and more like digital slot machines. It doesn't help that the gambling industry chooses to use the euphemeism "gaming" as in "gaming laws".

tinus_hn 6y ago

It comes with the territory, you can’t make a 200 million dollar game just because you ‘love gaming’.

gameswithgo 6y ago

welcome to earth

everdrive 6y ago

Gaming is mainstream now. What this means practically is that there are a bunch of big players pushing junk, and a smaller portion making amazing, wonderful games. This is the problem of the mainstream. Video games are no longer a niche interest, so there is a lot of money. Anyhow, there are more amazing games available now than any other time in history. (especially since all the old games are still available for the most part) The problem is that per capita, modern games are quite bad. In raw numbers, though, there are more amazing games out there than ever before. Much like the rest of modern media, the challenge is in filtering out the junk. There's more choice and abundance, and much of it is of poor quality.

ehnto 6y ago

Gamers are the most toxic community I have ever encountered. Nothing but parroted vitriol and entitlement. I don't even look online anymore, I just play the games and make my own opinions.

Melting_Harps 6y ago
> Gamers are the most toxic community I have ever encountered. Nothing but parroted vitriol and entitlement. I don't even look online anymore, I just play the games and make my own opinions. Sadly, this is kind of the one part that I blame CDprojectRed for even though I think they delivered an awesome product, albeit super buggy and limited one; they built the hype up so much and pushed the narrative of an immersive in depth World on e day 1 with tons of layers in the storyline and took years to develop. Had they just been honest to pre-buyers and say,'listen, please understand we wanted all these features on launch, but they're just not on day 1, so this will be released as a beta with limited features and bug fixes to come. If anyone wants a full refund we will accommodate it.' Which they eventually were forced to do for physical copies, and then gave Sony a black eye by forcing them to issue refunds from the PS+ store etc.. The Watchdogs team did that, and they also delayed their launch date to October despite it being Q1 2020 with almost no backlash because they were open about it and the price of the digital version then physical copies reflected that set of circumstances, the media didn't even bother commenting on it either despite Online play not being available to this day. Also, this shows just how sad most gamers lives really are, between paying twitch players and spending every waking hour either playing or commenting on video games on social media one can easily see they don't have much or any real social life. It's actually really sad, and makes me think about that part of the anime 'Welcome to the NHK' about NEETism and the prevalence of dropping out of Society and creating your own virtual existence Online to fill the void. It's sad because I was also a gamer up until Sophomore year of university when I just got way too busy going FT and Summer classes and running a business, preparing/repairing my car and going to and training for real motorsports events/weekends and being in even casual relationships--there was simply no time to put in the 5+ hours on Gran Tursimo to refine my lines at Fuji, Suzuka, Laguna Seca or the Nordschleife like I could when I was in HS. Sadly, for me Nismo's GT academy would later prove it to be a proper outlet and use of my time had I continued as they picked drivers for their lineup in GT racing series from the challenges Online, but by then the eventual financial crash of 2008 crisis was already setting things into motion (early 2007ish) so I couldn't be bothered and I needed to graduate ASAP.

sleepybrett 6y ago

My first jobs in the industry were for games companies (in the late 90s). After about 5 years I decided that there is better money and less stress for engineers to be found in what I would then considered 'boring ass software'. Now I enjoy playing games and reading blog posts about their engineering techniques. But I won't regret working mostly 40h weeks with vacation I can actually take and not thinking I'm going to get laid off every time I ship a project.

Bakary 6y ago

Ironically, I now find industry drama to be more engaging than many high-profile games. >On the other side of the war, a very vocal subset of the gamers is treating gaming as the only purpose their lives have, and will viciously attack developers personally with death threats and doxxing, or review-bomb even unrelated games into oblivion if the game publisher did something wrong. Which will hardly affect the giants at all (what will you do, not buy the next game from a popular series?), but can crush indie developers. Not to mention the whole work culture that expects any game developer to work 80h per week for less pay because you "love gaming". It bothers me that so many dysfunctional people occupy so much space in gaming culture, but it is a fundamental feature of the hobby given its structure, consequences, and accessibility. That said, there has never been as much absolute human activity focused on making high quality games in positive settings. It's just that there are so many projects around that just getting an understanding of the market and which games would give you memorable experiences requires hours of research and discovery. Don't let the negative aspects that get disproportionate air-time color your perception exclusively.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

It's especially sad to me because CDPR was one of the major developers who really seemed on the right side of things. The Witcher games never offered micro-transactions, and the DLC constituted substantial, supplementary extensions over the base game. (And it was sold DRM-Free to boot.) Even as someone who never cared for their games, I really appreciated them as a developer. I can't say whether The Witcher contained compulsive/addictive elements, but CDPR was not incentivized to do so, which IMO is what matters. I don't know whether or not this says anything about the industry, it's just a shame.

oliwarner 6y ago

It certainly seems likely to be unpleasant there at the moment. A lot of other AAA developers do so much worse, treating salaried developers like contractors, making them crunch for no additional remuneration and then closing down the studio after the job's done. Hell, even contractors have contracts to protect them from this sort of abuse. But I think gamedev clearly runs at two levels. There's AAAs and then there's everyone else. The smaller teams either running as a hobby or only just scraping by, and every so often there's a Mojang that makes it big. But yeah, much easier doing B2B development work.