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Does it matter? Like, yeah, there's a seeming incongruity at first pass. But that doesn't mean it's important. Games are a consumer product meant to widely av

Does it matter? Like, yeah, there's a seeming incongruity at first pass. But that doesn't mean it's important. Games are a consumer product meant to widely available and a big part of them is visual spectacle. Some of the visuals designed in creating that product are kept secret. I see the apparent contradiction, but the lede of this article calls that "one of the greatest injustices." You what mate?

hwestiii 3y ago
yes. AKA “business”
seanhunter 3y ago
Precisely. A huge amount of work in every field never sees the light of day. That doesn't mean it's not important, it just means the person doing the work is curating what goes "above the waterline" and what stays in the background as prep. The obvious example of this same thing in literature is Tolkein, who invented whole alphabets and languages but only included tiny fragments of them in his published works (prior to his death - obviously his estate has been releasing everything remorselessly). Or an example from a totally unrelated field, there are lots of cases in say maths where you have to do a bunch of work to choose a value but that's considered "scratch work" so gets removed when you submit the final version. So everyone sees your epsilon-delta proof of a limit for example, they see your brilliant choice of delta but the work you put into finding the delta isn't part of the proof. The proof just shows that choice of delta makes the proof work for any epsilon. Noone reading it gets to know how you figured that out, because that's not what a proof is for. In the case of games, the artwork that isn't released is part of the worldbuilding and refining the concept for the game. It's absolutely not wasted effort even if it's never seen by anyone outside the dev team.
corysama 3y ago
The meat of the article is not talking about an injustice to the consumer. It's arguing that there's an injustice to the artist because artists' portfolios are critical to their career advancement. It's not enough to say "I worked on this team." You need to literally show your personal results in detail to get your next job. But, artist employers are requiring that the majority of their results be locked in a vault forever. Some are even pushing to claim ownership of all art made during employment. That's blatantly a move to repress the employee's negotiating power.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  I don't buy the argument, there are way too many game studios for them all to be like that, some will offer friendlier terms and will become somewhat more attractive to artists, while the restrictive studios will become somewhat less attractive.
  - corysama 3y ago
    I get what you are saying. I also received a settlement check from a group of major game & movie studios who admitted to actively colluding to suppress wages. This case isn't even explicit collusion. It's a "That's just the way it is, kid. Deal with it." implicit collusion.

hwestiii 3y ago

yes. AKA “business”

seanhunter 3y ago

Precisely. A huge amount of work in every field never sees the light of day. That doesn't mean it's not important, it just means the person doing the work is curating what goes "above the waterline" and what stays in the background as prep. The obvious example of this same thing in literature is Tolkein, who invented whole alphabets and languages but only included tiny fragments of them in his published works (prior to his death - obviously his estate has been releasing everything remorselessly). Or an example from a totally unrelated field, there are lots of cases in say maths where you have to do a bunch of work to choose a value but that's considered "scratch work" so gets removed when you submit the final version. So everyone sees your epsilon-delta proof of a limit for example, they see your brilliant choice of delta but the work you put into finding the delta isn't part of the proof. The proof just shows that choice of delta makes the proof work for any epsilon. Noone reading it gets to know how you figured that out, because that's not what a proof is for. In the case of games, the artwork that isn't released is part of the worldbuilding and refining the concept for the game. It's absolutely not wasted effort even if it's never seen by anyone outside the dev team.

corysama 3y ago

The meat of the article is not talking about an injustice to the consumer. It's arguing that there's an injustice to the artist because artists' portfolios are critical to their career advancement. It's not enough to say "I worked on this team." You need to literally show your personal results in detail to get your next job. But, artist employers are requiring that the majority of their results be locked in a vault forever. Some are even pushing to claim ownership of all art made during employment. That's blatantly a move to repress the employee's negotiating power.

MichaelZuo 3y ago
I don't buy the argument, there are way too many game studios for them all to be like that, some will offer friendlier terms and will become somewhat more attractive to artists, while the restrictive studios will become somewhat less attractive.
- corysama 3y ago
  I get what you are saying. I also received a settlement check from a group of major game & movie studios who admitted to actively colluding to suppress wages. This case isn't even explicit collusion. It's a "That's just the way it is, kid. Deal with it." implicit collusion.