I didn't know what to expect going in to this at all. Hell, I was even apprehensive, given the art and his voice when I first started watching.
I was pleasantly surprised when this was a hugely insightful and extremely thoughtful video. He's got a damned good point.
This is insightful yet I can't shake the feeling that the artist who drew his caricature draws gay hentai
Totally agree with his suggestion to find games directed by the same people. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory was one of my favorite games, and the gameplay director of that (Clint Hocking) was also the gameplay director of Far Cry 2. You can easily see the impact his direction has on each of those games, and how his absence has changed them (See Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory vs Black List, Far Cry 2 vs 3).
A more recent example is DX:MD, while virtually all of the artistic team is still intact, the gameplay designers have changed, their producer is changed, and most importantly their [I]writers[/I] have changed. This is clearly noticeable within the first few hours of playing the game. Fortunately the director (JF Dugas) has been kept on the project, and is probably the reason Square didn't completely fuck the game up.
Star Citizen has an interesting angle on all of this. And just to get it out of the way, I'm not claiming that their development decisions or track record have been spotless or even correct or that the game is or will be good, I'm strictly addressing their transparency and communication and how it changes how backers/fans view the project and its devs.
[U]This is going to be a bit long,[/U] because not everything can be collapsed into a few tweets. Also, if this post sounds like I'm promoting SC here, I'm not -- just because they're good at communicating the accomplishments of their devs doesn't mean the project isn't still alpha as fuck.
Star Citizen is one of the most transparent AAA-tier game projects ever, and this is almost entirely due to its unusual crowdfunded origins. The project exists because backers crowdfunded it and it doesn't owe loyalty or funding equity to any publisher -- this right away precludes it being "a (publisher) game" as with most major titles. It's correct to say that it is "a Cloud Imperium Games title," but that also means nothing because the company was formed to make this game; their track record is blank.
However, it's also correct to say that it is a Chris Roberts game, and this pedigree is [I]heavily[/I] featured, past and present, in their marketing efforts, beginning with Roberts taking the stage to reveal the project at GDC 2012. Roberts is a passionate, involved creator (some would say too involved, but that's something else) and he understands that his brand is an important aspect of the project. Since the reveal, he has been a very visible and involved face in the public output of the game, from writing frequent memo-newsletter posts to the community every million dollars in funding (until they stopped adding new stretch goals), to hosting a weekly video series where he answers 10 questions from the community, to personally demoing the game to both the press in closed-door sessions and the public in the live presentations at events. He also reads a lot of community discussions and actively combs them for feedback and community sentiments; the man apparently does not sleep because according to devs he'll just fire off an internal email to the designers to look at the feedback/suggestion/whatever in a particular backer comment on page 36 of a forum thread as if that's the most normal thing for the CEO of a four-studio game company with $124mil+ in crowdfunding/preorders to be doing with his off time. [sp]for the love of god I hope he doesn't read our threads[/sp]
Simply put, one look at Star Citizen is likely to inform you that it is (or will be) a Chris Roberts Game™ and everything that means.
But there's more to this story, because as much as the game's early life banked almost entirely on an impressive but pre-rendered trailer and the Roberts name, it has since become so much more than that.
The project's transparency is extensive and basically unprecedented. To qualify what I mean, in a typical week, the website is updated with:
- a post of new original fiction by the project's writers that reveals bits of the rolling lore (the current in-universe date is the present day plus 960 years)
- a weekly news show with updates from the studios and peeks at things being worked on/almost ready; more recently the format has changed from reviewing every studio every week to focusing on one studio each week in a rotating basis and showing behind-the-scenes segments based on that studio's individual specialties
- a weekly livestream that takes questions from backer (not Twitch) chat; with the format change of the news show, the weekly stream went from being the community team and whatever random devs in the LA office (where the community team is based) had the time to being a more focused Q&A with the specific devs responsible/highlighted in the news show's sneak-peek segments
- a video on the history and lore of one of the star systems in the game, hosted by a member of the lore team [B]or[/B] a behind-the-scenes video on a particular bug the devs found with a moderately technical explanation of why the bug happens and how it's been fixed, hosted by a specific coder
- one or more article reruns from the monthly magazine for subscribers (whose [I]optional[/I] subs pay for all of the community content listed above, rather than the crowdfunding budget being spent)
- replies to questions and comments in the forums, with the devs' real names on their dev forum profiles, including many dedicated "Ask a Dev - x specialty" style of threads monitored by one or more devs handling that task; many of the devs read the forums and the subreddit frequently, even if they don't respond directly
- if it is the first week of the month, the previous month's monthly report typically goes up (rarely it's delayed into the next week) and it's [U]full[/U] of info; they're huge and cover submissions from every team in every studio in the project, [URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/15187-Monthly-Studio-Report"]just click on this and scroll down[/URL] until you hit the comments. Also keep the tab open for in a minute.
There have also been other community outreach programs in the past that they've retired or replaced, mostly in the form of older shows. The most relevant ones to this discussion are the "Meet the Devs" sit-down interview series with devs where we learned how they contribute to the project as well as a bit about their interests and them as a person. There have also been recurring segments and mini-shows for similar focused topics such as a panel of QA devs showing off their favorite bugs.
The project introduces its devs to the community and recognizes/explains their work, but what's pretty amazing is just how much namedropping actually happens. Go back to the January monthly report I linked and scroll down again, but this time, skim for names. I don't have an exact count but it's well on the way to 100; this number would be even higher but in that month a number of the teams in this particular report opted to say "the x team has been working on y" or simply reword the phrase to not even name themselves. This happens fairly often, but it's not usually the same teams so names filter out. A lot of devs don't get a mention in any given report, but are mentioned in others. They even mention the new hires when they bring them on board.
Curiously, the interest in exposure and credit is cultural; most of the staff of Foundry 42 Frankfurt have little visibility to backers because they tend to prefer not to waste time with on-camera interviews and reading news updates off for the camera -- they have work to do and deliverables to hit. This extends even to the Frankfurt segments of monthly reports, where frequently only first names are used in the write-ups for most teams where there's any named credit at all.
As a result of these frequent exposures to the names and faces of the devs actually building the game, and not just the Shigeru Miyamoto-Todd Howard-George Lucas-Steve Jobs-like visionary figurehead at the top of the project, I actually recognize many of them and can recall what they do. In some cases, I've had to do my own research on what a given dev did prior to getting hired on with SC, as interviewing 300+ people with a weekly format will take quite a while even if they resumed the Meet the Devs series, but those names actually mean something, whereas if they whizzed by in credits of older games, I didn't notice.
But when the credits roll for Star Citizen's single-player campaign (or I pull up the credits screen for the MMO portion), I'll actually know and appreciate who Sean Tracy, Todd Papy, Mark Abent, Pete Mackay, Tony Zurovec, Brian Chambers, and Nathan Dearsley are, among many others. By the project being without a publisher and instead answerable to a ton of gamers who are also the project's primary funding source and reason for existing, the project's relative transparency has led to many great opportunities to pull away the curtain and introduce the devs who make the game happen, including the concept artists and even participating partner studios.
Star Citizen isn't unique for interviewing its devs and encouraging them to engage with the community, but it's considerably larger and better-funded than most indie game projects that introduce the devs to their communities. Hopefully it isn't the last as well as the first big game project to be this open and forward about the faces behind the scenes.
In my experience, unless you are on the Alpha/Beta teams and actually talk to the developers and start friendships with them, you hardly ever learn their names. It's depressing all things considered because without recognition, most devs are seen as replaceable.
Wait, do people really not know who Jason Jones and Amy Hennig are?
[QUOTE=kapin_krunch;51108435]Wait, do people really not know who Jason Jones and Amy Hennig are?[/QUOTE]
Nobody reads video game credits and you never hear their names outside of games press, so yeah.
[QUOTE=kapin_krunch;51108435]Wait, do people really not know who Jason Jones and Amy Hennig are?[/QUOTE]
i didn't know any of the people he alluded to in the first section on movies and music
[QUOTE=Hamaflavian;51108453]Nobody reads video game credits and you never hear their names outside of games press, so yeah.[/QUOTE]
Maybe I'm a bit of a special case, because I watched the bonus DVD that came with Halo 2 all the time when I was younger.
[editline]26th September 2016[/editline]
[QUOTE=NixNax123;51108483]i didn't know any of the people he alluded to in the first section on movies and music[/QUOTE]
You don't know who made Master of Puppets? You got some music to listen to my man.
B-but I always watch the credits at the end of games. No seriously, I do. I like to see who's behind the game I just finished, even if I don't recognize any of them.
And I definitely do agree with his statements. It just seems like the only people who care are about the creators of their games are those who are heavily invested in video games themselves. People who are game critics, or are game developers/aspiring game developers.
Your average Joe/Jane who just plays video games to pass the time and entertain themselves won't care about the names behind the games, only the name of the game they're playing. And this can even apply to forms of art outside of games. For example, when I was younger, none of my friends knew who directed The Lord of the Rings trilogy. They just knew they were long but good movies based off of some old books.
That's just how the world works sadly. Most people don't care about the huge amount of effort that other people put into their work to entertain them, they just consume the entertainment and move on to the next big piece.
I actually recognized about 90% of the faces in this video, and I knew the names once the names were put to faces. The only reason being I browse /v/ almost daily, and I learned most of them through le dank may mays.
Devs really don't get the praise and appreciation they deserve most of the time, and for A LOT of them when they're in the negative spotlight it's normally the publisher's fault.
People don't blame Guillermo del Toro for Mimic. They say the suits ruined it. People do blame Todd Howard for Skyrim's shortcomings, regardless of the fact he's the sole reason Morrowind ever happened and they don't give a thought to Zenimax fuckery.
Personally, I think this video would have been so much better if he cut it down a bit. The first 10 minutes just revolve around one point in the most drawn out way possible.
The last few minutes, however, bring out some really good points. Hell, I even feel like looking for various people to see if they made anything I would like now.
[QUOTE=Wolverunder;51108703]I actually recognized about 90% of the faces in this video, and I knew the names once the names were put to faces. The only reason being I browse /v/ almost daily, and I learned most of them through le dank may mays.
Devs really don't get the praise and appreciation they deserve most of the time, and for A LOT of them when they're in the negative spotlight it's normally the publisher's fault.
People don't blame Guillermo del Toro for Mimic. They say the suits ruined it. People do blame Todd Howard for Skyrim's shortcomings, regardless of the fact he's the sole reason Morrowind ever happened and they don't give a thought to Zenimax fuckery.[/QUOTE]
I think it's less Zenimax fuckery (if it wasn't for them, Morrowind wouldn't exist either), and more that some of the core talent behind Morrowind (writers/designers) left Bethesda, and Bethesda trying to make their games appeal more to casual audiences than hardcore audiences (which isn't necessarily a bad thing).
A game director (like Todd Howard) does have a lot of influence over a game, but if they don't have the right talent behind them, you can still end up with something that doesn't shine as brightly as their previous works.
At the very least, the core formula and loops of TES remain intact which is really all I ask for. It's more or less the smaller details that have taken a hit in recent years that I hope get some extra love and polish next time around.
Without actually talking about Star Citizen, I'd like to talk about exactly why game directors are not like movie directors, and why they never should be treated as such. I'd like to preface by saying that I [I]do[/I] believe video game developers deserve a lot more love than what they get, and the reason why they don't get it is more of a matter of exposure (In no small part because game journalism is terrible) than that people aren't interested in knowing.
As a bit of a preamble I'd like to mention that this question is as old as videogames themselves, back in the 70's game developers who worked for Atari wanted more recognition for their work as the games they produced ended up for the most part being a one man job. Believe or not, it is out of this constant struggle for recognition that Activision (of all things) was created, back in the day, games didn't even have credit rolls on them, artists hid easter eggs to "sign" their work and show to the world they did indeed work in a particular game. Even after credit rolls became a thing in videogames, Japanese devs were forced to use pseudonyms.
This all changed radically in the 90's where games started taking a more movie-like approach to development. All of the big name game directors you can think of come from that era, Chris Roberts comes from that era, so does Hideo Kojima, John Romero, John Carmack, Peter Molyneux, Keiji Inafune, Richard Garriot, etc. Believe me, the industry tried to treat game directors like movie directors, and we learned with the beginning of this millennium that this was a bad approach, the reasons why are twofold:
1) [B]Games are software.[/B] This doesn't mean games are not art, but what it does mean is that they are developed [I]like[/I] software, and software development doctrine emphasizes teamwork and cooperation. Modern games don't have a singular vision, hell, most of them don't even have one designer, everyone in the process, from playtester to director, collaborate to produce a finished product. Unlike movies, games go through several iterations during development, after which a game may end up looking [I]nothing[/I] like it did originally. The role of a game director is not to provide a "vision" like in movies, but rather as a project manager, somebody who is responsible for keeping the team together, but more often than not this game director isn't responsible for a game's visuals, design or programming, those are the responsibilities of several smaller teams who generally have their own "head".
There is no part too small in a development team, and to honor that, games have studio names as their authors rather than individuals, to show how the game was not a one man job. The practice has become so well established that even games that ARE one man jobs use studio names anyway, often in order to not diminish the role of smaller contributors, and to provide a reputation to base future expansion of the team on.
2) [B]We already tried doing that, and it sucked.[/B] The end result can be epitomized in Ion Storm, and even more specifically, John Romero's Daikatana. You probably already know the story, John Romero was riding high from the success of Doom and Quake, he drove a Ferrari, had a Playboy Playmate for a girlfriend, and the offices of his company, Ion Storm, were a lavish penthouse in Chase Tower, Dallas. Daikatana was marketed as the next big hit by a man who was said to have the Midas touch, and it ended up being a complete piece of crap; the best thing to come out of it was the Game Boy Color version of the game of which Romero had no oversight in.
You may say that this is an old example, but the problem with it is that it [I]keeps happening[/I]. Keiji Inafune made a complete disaster out of Mighty No. 9, a Megaman clone, despite him being considered the "father" of Megaman. Sean Murray, another up and coming "visionary", had to run for the hills after the release of No Man's Sky. Peter Molyneux's next big thing Godus turned out to be a shitty mobile game.
The list is endless, perhaps the only exception of the rule is Hideo Kojima, who has for the most part failed at creating a truly shitty game, but the thing is that the only reason why his name is in the title is that his games [I]look[/I] like movies, he provides [I]both[/I] the vision and the project management, but he understands very well that he is nothing without a team: Yoji Shinkawa is the art director of every single Metal Gear Solid game, Mineshi Kimura, Nobuyoshi Nishimura also worked in different capacities in all of the Metal Gear Solid games, and the list goes on.
[B]Games are not a one man job. [/B]Putting one individual's name over everyone else's means devaluing the work of possibly hundreds. There's a whole load of very interesting folk working in videogames right now who have some great stories to tell, but I believe most game developers are fine with not having their name on the cover. Everyone's job matters, no matter the title.
[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;51108152]Star Citizen has an interesting angle on all of this. And just to get it out of the way, I'm not claiming that their development decisions or track record have been spotless or even correct or that the game is or will be good, I'm strictly addressing their transparency and communication and how it changes how backers/fans view the project and its devs.
[U]This is going to be a bit long,[/U] because not everything can be collapsed into a few tweets. Also, if this post sounds like I'm promoting SC here, I'm not -- just because they're good at communicating the accomplishments of their devs doesn't mean the project isn't still alpha as fuck.
Star Citizen is one of the most transparent AAA-tier game projects ever, and this is almost entirely due to its unusual crowdfunded origins. The project exists because backers crowdfunded it and it doesn't owe loyalty or funding equity to any publisher -- this right away precludes it being "a (publisher) game" as with most major titles. It's correct to say that it is "a Cloud Imperium Games title," but that also means nothing because the company was formed to make this game; their track record is blank.
However, it's also correct to say that it is a Chris Roberts game, and this pedigree is [I]heavily[/I] featured, past and present, in their marketing efforts, beginning with Roberts taking the stage to reveal the project at GDC 2012. Roberts is a passionate, involved creator (some would say too involved, but that's something else) and he understands that his brand is an important aspect of the project. Since the reveal, he has been a very visible and involved face in the public output of the game, from writing frequent memo-newsletter posts to the community every million dollars in funding (until they stopped adding new stretch goals), to hosting a weekly video series where he answers 10 questions from the community, to personally demoing the game to both the press in closed-door sessions and the public in the live presentations at events. He also reads a lot of community discussions and actively combs them for feedback and community sentiments; the man apparently does not sleep because according to devs he'll just fire off an internal email to the designers to look at the feedback/suggestion/whatever in a particular backer comment on page 36 of a forum thread as if that's the most normal thing for the CEO of a four-studio game company with $124mil+ in crowdfunding/preorders to be doing with his off time. [sp]for the love of god I hope he doesn't read our threads[/sp]
Simply put, one look at Star Citizen is likely to inform you that it is (or will be) a Chris Roberts Game™ and everything that means.
But there's more to this story, because as much as the game's early life banked almost entirely on an impressive but pre-rendered trailer and the Roberts name, it has since become so much more than that.
The project's transparency is extensive and basically unprecedented. To qualify what I mean, in a typical week, the website is updated with:
- a post of new original fiction by the project's writers that reveals bits of the rolling lore (the current in-universe date is the present day plus 960 years)
- a weekly news show with updates from the studios and peeks at things being worked on/almost ready; more recently the format has changed from reviewing every studio every week to focusing on one studio each week in a rotating basis and showing behind-the-scenes segments based on that studio's individual specialties
- a weekly livestream that takes questions from backer (not Twitch) chat; with the format change of the news show, the weekly stream went from being the community team and whatever random devs in the LA office (where the community team is based) had the time to being a more focused Q&A with the specific devs responsible/highlighted in the news show's sneak-peek segments
- a video on the history and lore of one of the star systems in the game, hosted by a member of the lore team [B]or[/B] a behind-the-scenes video on a particular bug the devs found with a moderately technical explanation of why the bug happens and how it's been fixed, hosted by a specific coder
- one or more article reruns from the monthly magazine for subscribers (whose [I]optional[/I] subs pay for all of the community content listed above, rather than the crowdfunding budget being spent)
- replies to questions and comments in the forums, with the devs' real names on their dev forum profiles, including many dedicated "Ask a Dev - x specialty" style of threads monitored by one or more devs handling that task; many of the devs read the forums and the subreddit frequently, even if they don't respond directly
- if it is the first week of the month, the previous month's monthly report typically goes up (rarely it's delayed into the next week) and it's [U]full[/U] of info; they're huge and cover submissions from every team in every studio in the project, [URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/15187-Monthly-Studio-Report"]just click on this and scroll down[/URL] until you hit the comments. Also keep the tab open for in a minute.
There have also been other community outreach programs in the past that they've retired or replaced, mostly in the form of older shows. The most relevant ones to this discussion are the "Meet the Devs" sit-down interview series with devs where we learned how they contribute to the project as well as a bit about their interests and them as a person. There have also been recurring segments and mini-shows for similar focused topics such as a panel of QA devs showing off their favorite bugs.
The project introduces its devs to the community and recognizes/explains their work, but what's pretty amazing is just how much namedropping actually happens. Go back to the January monthly report I linked and scroll down again, but this time, skim for names. I don't have an exact count but it's well on the way to 100; this number would be even higher but in that month a number of the teams in this particular report opted to say "the x team has been working on y" or simply reword the phrase to not even name themselves. This happens fairly often, but it's not usually the same teams so names filter out. A lot of devs don't get a mention in any given report, but are mentioned in others. They even mention the new hires when they bring them on board.
Curiously, the interest in exposure and credit is cultural; most of the staff of Foundry 42 Frankfurt have little visibility to backers because they tend to prefer not to waste time with on-camera interviews and reading news updates off for the camera -- they have work to do and deliverables to hit. This extends even to the Frankfurt segments of monthly reports, where frequently only first names are used in the write-ups for most teams where there's any named credit at all.
As a result of these frequent exposures to the names and faces of the devs actually building the game, and not just the Shigeru Miyamoto-Todd Howard-George Lucas-Steve Jobs-like visionary figurehead at the top of the project, I actually recognize many of them and can recall what they do. In some cases, I've had to do my own research on what a given dev did prior to getting hired on with SC, as interviewing 300+ people with a weekly format will take quite a while even if they resumed the Meet the Devs series, but those names actually mean something, whereas if they whizzed by in credits of older games, I didn't notice.
But when the credits roll for Star Citizen's single-player campaign (or I pull up the credits screen for the MMO portion), I'll actually know and appreciate who Sean Tracy, Todd Papy, Mark Abent, Pete Mackay, Tony Zurovec, Brian Chambers, and Nathan Dearsley are, among many others. By the project being without a publisher and instead answerable to a ton of gamers who are also the project's primary funding source and reason for existing, the project's relative transparency has led to many great opportunities to pull away the curtain and introduce the devs who make the game happen, including the concept artists and even participating partner studios.
Star Citizen isn't unique for interviewing its devs and encouraging them to engage with the community, but it's considerably larger and better-funded than most indie game projects that introduce the devs to their communities. Hopefully it isn't the last as well as the first big game project to be this open and forward about the faces behind the scenes.[/QUOTE]
Battletech devs do something similiar with their BattletechRPG they run on the side and the Q&A sessions they hold.
Its the reason I'm excited for the new game because McCain was lead dev on Shadowrun, and now he has the original creator of Battletech, Jordan Weissman and the lead dev behind MechCommander Gitelman working on it as well.
[QUOTE=kapin_krunch;51108435]Wait, do people really not know who Jason Jones and Amy Hennig are?[/QUOTE]
I only know of Amy Hennig through Legacy of Kain. I didn't even know she worked on Uncharted until like last year or so.
I need a new Mark Pacini Metroid game.
[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Pacini#Works[/url]
Just look at what this guy's directed. Not a lot, but daaamn. His newest game is called "ReCore", and ooh. [url]http://www.recoregame.com/[/url] "From Keiji Inafune and the makers of Metroid Prime"
[QUOTE=Big Bang;51109213][B]Games are not a one man job. [/B]Putting one individual's name over everyone else's means devaluing the work of possibly hundreds. There's a whole load of very interesting folk working in videogames right now who have some great stories to tell, but I believe most game developers are fine with not having their name on the cover. Everyone's job matters, no matter the title.[/QUOTE]
Well, movies for that matter, aren't either. There will be tens and maybe hundreds working on them as well. Potentially devaluing their work in that case.
If one person is the visionary of the project and mostly responsible for the direction it's taking, then it's fine to have that persons name on the cover.
I think Metal Gear is the best example used in this video. We all loved it when Kojima was involved, but interest has dwindled since his departure.
[QUOTE=RB33;51109463]Well, movies for that matter, aren't either. There will be tens and maybe hundreds working on them as well. Potentially devaluing their work in that case.
If one person is the visionary of the project and mostly responsible for the direction it's taking, then it's fine to have that persons name on the cover.[/QUOTE]
No but movies aren't as designed by committee. Depending on the film, the studio, and the backers, the vision of that can come down to one, or two people alone. Some studios don't interfere, as strange as that sounds, and those people are the modern day "Auteur". An artist in full control of their own craft.
I don't believe that's even possible in games unless it [B]is[/B] a one man game which there are plenty of those out there.
I feel like games are going through the same kind of slump that movies were back in the studio era. We don't have the same theater monopoly problem, but we have the same issue where most of the biggest decisions on big name titles are made by the money managers trying to pump out a popular and lucrative product and not by directors with a vision. We had directors like Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, just like we have our Hideo Kojimas, but those are the exceptions.
For those mentioning the disasters of John Romero and Peter Molyneux, Hollywood was never immune to that. Look at George Lucas, the Wachowski Sisters and M Night Shyamalan.
Hopefully there will eventually be a movement for artistry and auteur theory in video games, but who knows when that will come. Hollywood is already regressing back into the designed-by-committee garbage that it was during the studio era and we're getting movies like Suicide Squad that are ruined by producers at the last second despite the best efforts of their directors. Fortunately, those movies are bombing, so hopefully Hollywood will learn. I don't know if the gaming industry will.
[QUOTE=AkujiTheSniper;51107176]This is insightful yet I can't shake the feeling that the artist who drew his caricature draws gay hentai[/QUOTE]
just at a glance I can all but guarantee the artist draws captain america porn, and after listening to a few minutes of speech I wouldn't be surprised if that's how he found the artist
[quote=big bang]Games are not a one man job. Putting one individual's name over everyone else's means devaluing the work of possibly hundreds.[/quote]
I remember a kotaku article that was either totally unaware or just really sassy, where there was a quote of a developer saying the media tends to just attribute games to a single name like that, and they capped the quote off with "-[name], creator of [franchise]". trying to find it at the moment
[QUOTE=RB33;51109463]Well, movies for that matter, aren't either. There will be tens and maybe hundreds working on them as well. Potentially devaluing their work in that case.
If one person is the visionary of the project and mostly responsible for the direction it's taking, then it's fine to have that persons name on the cover.[/QUOTE]
Games don't work the same way as movies, that's the thing. A director has complete oversight over the final work. While of course there's different directorial styles, some being more hands on than the other, the production of a movie is a very straightforward, on track kind of deal, what in software development would be considered a waterfall model: there's a pre-production stage, followed by production, then post-production, of which the director has complete control over, but cannot return to the previous stage. The end result is that a movie can only be as good as the director as what the director makes out of each of these stages.
A game [I]can[/I] go back to the drawing board even if it's at the very final stages of completion, it transforms, it evolves, every single bit of input can transform it into something radically different at every iteration, thus, it has less of a one track mind, and responsibility for the project is distributed more evenly.
I do think that below-the-line staff at movies tend to be very unappreciated by movie audiences, but that has to do again with the industry and how the media covers it, very few effect and makeup designers are well known despite having a key role in a movies' appearance, and despite actually winning Oscars every now and then.
This was a well put together video raising a good question, though I'm having a hard time understanding that question. His question seemed to roughly be "Why don't we hold games in the same artistic regard as other mediums?" and uses well known designers to compare and contrast. This is an incredibly vague question with no real argument that can be made. The question is too big.
That being said, it's worth mentioning that a director is far different from a designer. Directors lead projects under a united vision. A designer uses mechanics and systems to engage a player. Many of the people mentioned in the video are directors, and may have had little input on your favorite aspects of games beyond giving a thumbs up or down.
It's much easier to understand a person, so we attach ourselves to names. I would argue that this is a disservice to crediting the efforts of game developers. Referring to them by their studio's name gives equal credit to everyone involved, which is how I think it should be done.
Holy shit, that's Dark Cloud 2 music!
[QUOTE=AkujiTheSniper;51107176]This is insightful yet I can't shake the feeling that the artist who drew his caricature draws gay hentai[/QUOTE]
Guess what?
You're right.
[url]http://jade-draws.tumblr.com/tagged/nsfw[/url]
[QUOTE=Zakkin;51109389]I need a new Mark Pacini Metroid game.
[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Pacini#Works[/url]
Just look at what this guy's directed. Not a lot, but daaamn. His newest game is called "ReCore", and ooh. [url]http://www.recoregame.com/[/url] "From Keiji Inafune and the makers of Metroid Prime"[/QUOTE]
That's not that bad of a game... it's just got a lot of rough edges. For what it's worth it's a pretty good action platformer but the rest of the mechanics around that (leveling up, crafting, etc) don't work well. It does have the same structure of get power up > backtrack > progress from the metroid games.
Worth checking out if you find it real cheap imo.
Noticed how most of the directors he names are Japanese. Could this have something to do with different dev cultures? I bet most western directors don't get nearly as much input on the projects as a whole, they're more of a collaborative effort compared to Japan where it might be more movie-like.
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;51109617]No but movies aren't as designed by committee. Depending on the film, the studio, and the backers, the vision of that can come down to one, or two people alone. Some studios don't interfere, as strange as that sounds, and those people are the modern day "Auteur". An artist in full control of their own craft.
I don't believe that's even possible in games unless it [B]is[/B] a one man game which there are plenty of those out there.[/QUOTE]
That concept still exists but for the most part its exclusively limited to Japanese Devs.
I personally could name a whole lot more Japanese Directors, Composers and Artists more than their western counterparts and this is probably due to the fact that Japanese video games tend to place a lot of control over the people in charge.
I remember reading about how some teams are practically under dictator rule from their project leads and make stuff under their heavy supervision. That along with the fact that a lot of Japanese publishers actually don't do regular check-ups on their developers leave a lot of breathing room for their directors and producers to make things however they want as long as they fulfill project deadlines.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.
