Gaming is Made of People

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

I'm sad to see you go, especially after an article this good.

So Sean, as a gamer who needs to just calm down and think on the human level - I salute you.

You know, if you change your mind we'll still be here.

-and yes! You can always come back! Maybe stop by sometime.

 

[britterly]

*Pushes the Like-button*

 

[Low Key]

Good article.

Duke catches flack on a completely different level. When Yahtzee likened the development of the game to howler monkeys banging on keyboards, it was only to abbreviate what the team might as well have been doing, not what they were actually doing. I hope people see that. It was the lead developer's fault that the game, and ultimately the company, failed. Scrapping everything and starting over only works for so long before the return on the investment is expected. Same goes for music, movies and television.

 

[Altorin]

A lot of that mindset comes because the industry is largely faceless. Games wear their companies like a mask, and the few masterminds who make their faces and names known, are lightning rods for ridicule. They're either the soulless corporation guys, CEOs like Riccitiello and Kotick, or the masterminds who will go down with their games if they fail, like Will Wright, Peter Molyneux or Sid Meier. Men who stand on a pedestal and tell us how they've reinvented gaming, and when they fail, we burn them for it.

I do agree though, that we do need to remember the people that made our games, but again, the individuals wear the team as a mask. Bungie, Ubisoft, Lionhead, Valve... can we name 10 people out of the hundreds that made our games? I can't. So it's hard to see them as individuals pouring their souls into their work with one hand, and in the other, label them largely anonymous members of a team and judge them as a whole.

It's a sad state of affairs.

 

[theultimateend]

Gaming is Made of People

In Sean Sands final Press Released, he asks that you remember the people behind the videogames.

Read Full Article

People don't forget that gaming is made up of people.

People are assholes and don't care.

Now I say that blanket like because that is the only way I can. Because when you meet individuals they act quite a bit different (almost always). But people...

People are different.

There is something about when a person joins in with people that changes them. It isn't permanent and indeed they change back once they are a person again. But for that short dark time when they are people they do bad things.

I burned Will Wright personally for not acknowledging how short SPORE came up to what it was going to be. That was me being part of the people, once I went back to being a person I recalled the many different things I've tried to do that all fell short of my dreams and how much I tried to convince myself they hadn't.

But yeah...in short people are assholes.

Oh yeah...speaking of this topic.

The reason people bash games as if they aren't made by individual human beings is because of how games are made. Lemme find a quote from a game that was originally from a person to make the point clearly.

Corporation
Renaissance Era
?Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.?
- Ambrose Bierce

People hide behind the shield of their company when they fail but will rise to the front when they succeed. This isn't always true but it left most consumers bitter and unwilling to accept failure.

 

[PlasticTree]

Goddammit Sean. Not you too. I'm sure this was a decision well made, but I'm not less pissed of about it. I started reading these columns a long time ago with a 'let's see what this is all about'-attitude, but every time I now see one of your columns it makes me a little bit happier. Damn you.

So, could you tell us what you are going to do? Whether it's something in the game-industry or not, I'd be delighted to know.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Putting a face on a product is a very smart marketing message but putting 200 faces on it is probably less smart. A lot of companies seem to put some person who has very little to do with the craft of making the game as a figure head while the people doing the work live lives of quiet desperation, so to speak, or maybe not.

Is it wrong to be irreverent about games? Is the sense of entitlement of users ruining the games industry while the noble game makers desperately try to save it?

Firstly, games are very irreverent. They treat human lives as if they were worthless, apart from a handful of story characters. Companies insult the intelligence of their consumers. Religion, art, music, architecture, science, just about all aspects of human life are treated very irreverently by video games. What sort of hypocrisy is it that says that everything is fair game but games themselves should be handled with kid gloves so the people behind the scenes don't have their feelings hurt? Yeah, negativity is a downer and it is better to be enthusiastic but let's be a little realistic.

Entitlement is maybe too strong a term when all people have are expectations. Honestly, if game creators can't fulfil the expectations of their customers then they really need to take a look at what they are doing. That is their job if they are making commercial games. They could try to "manage expectations" if they like but other companies may just be sneaky and actually give the customers what they want behind their backs.

 

[StriderShinryu]

Good article. I think one thing that needs to be considered is that gaming journalists are the ones who should be giving us a look at what goes on behind the scenes, as well as who is sitting behind the keyboards. Whether we as gamers will care about the faces behind the scenes is largely irrelevant until someone with the access we don't have tries to bring them to us. I know that I, at least, love reading things about the developers themselves as well as columns like EGM's old Afterthoughts series.. but we just don't get that enough. I guess it's just sexier to churn out the 675492nd preview of Next Big Game X.

 

[messy]

A fitting end, I for one shall miss you; cheers

Good article actually, personally I preferred the one before "who's got next" but this still was rather well done

 

[ben---neb]

May the force be with you.

It had to be said.

 

[Dhatz]

for paralells, let's look at avatar, how much better would it be if it wasn't so mass-centered?
and making a game that finally gets canceled or low sales/ratings also counts. it is shiftload of experience.
If I will ever get a team and make a game of bigger epicness othan GTA, I sure must put some game developer as one of main dudes, a guy that would explain trainload of stuff to the palyer.

 

[GoldenRaz]

Quite a thought-provoking article, really good read. It even made me feel somewhat guilty for those few times where I've skipped the credits.
Anyhoo, I wish you all the best, Mr. Sands.

 

[high_castle]

You'll definitely be missed, Mr. Sands. With any luck, though, you've given folks something to think about. Games aren't made by tossing some ideas and a disc into a machine and pressing a lever. Too many folks forget about the human side of the equation, or that careers can be made and lost on one success or failure. But no one likes to think about that because it doesn't affect them personally. Society as a whole seems to have gotten very self-centered, which is a very disheartening sign.

 

[Sean Sands]

Thanks now and for years of feedback. I rarely respond in these thread -- I always figure I got to have my say and now you guys get yours -- but I wanted to say one last thanks.

I will still be reading The Escapist -- too many outstanding writers and creative types here to not -- and occasionally submitting for a feature here and there. I'm not retiring my column so I can move on to greener games-writing pastures. I am simply focused more on my "Real Life" career these days which is something entirely different and wholly outside the business of games.

A very public thanks go out to the people who run The Escapist, whom I consider my friends. From the absolute top on down, this is an establishment run by honorable, intelligent and deeply talented people.

 

[Magnalian]

This was one hell of a goodbye.

 

[geldonyetich]

No doubt about it, game developers are one of the hardest working, least appreciated guys around. Even a guy who cleans out septic tanks gets paid several times more per hour, isn't required to work overtime as often, and probably lives longer in terms of the impact stress would have on a game developer.

That said, I'm not very sympathetic with game developers who just produce toys for casual gamers. It seems to me that there's a lot more game developers who just go through the motions in the name of appeasing a status quo versus ones who actually are pushing the envelope.

So, as long as that's the case, I'm still going to bust some chops. You want to make money and live comfortably by pandering to casuals? Nay! Suffer for your work, artist!

 

[Shurikens and Lightning]

This is one of the few writers I actually enjoy reading. Its a shame you have to go.

I have to admit I hardly ever see the human side of the industry and I think its because of the 9/10 and up mentality.

 

[PlasticTree]

Ah, good luck with this 'Real Life' stuff you are talking about, then. And don't forget that occasional feature.