Rockstar hasn't made a good game since PS2 IMO. Pandemic's Mercenaries greatly surpassed GTA in the PS2 gen and Rockstar has just been making the same game over and over again (from a design standpoint).Fieldy409 said:
AAA games have rarely been good for these last 2 gens.Samtemdo8 said:
When gamers stop tolerating it just because it's from the company that makes their favorite thing.Samtemdo8 said:
Not sure how well transparency applies here, but...Drathnoxis said:
Guerrilla games has the same rating as EA and Activision Blizzard at 3.7 and is only .2 points off from Rockstar at 3.5. Riot Games has 3.6 and Gearbox Software is 3.0. If we go by these numbers they are all fairly good places to work. Telltale only manages a score at 2.9 post collapse, but I guess there isn't really much of a point reviewing it after everyone was let go.hanselthecaretaker said:
Ah, well that's quite different. It doesn't load for me for most companies I search, though.hanselthecaretaker said:Drathnoxis said:
I guess I was mainly looking at CEO approval ratings
I honestly think that's the wrong question to ask. Letting the developers of games have a better working environment and work stability are perfectly valid goals in and off themselves. In a similar fashion, when I campaign for the eradication of child labor or better working conditions for the people in Sweat Shops in Bangladesh or the Philippines it is not because I believe that the clothes I buy will be of better quality, but because I actually want those people to have a better life.Samtemdo8 said:
Focusing on the quality of the games and being able to produce them for as little as possible is what got us into this situation.Samtemdo8 said:
It's kind of funny when entertainment media is making fun of Corporations. "Fuck the Corporation! also support the corporations that made this piece of entertainment" There are all part of the same system as much as they deny it.hanselthecaretaker said:
This isn't ever over. This isn't ever fixed. Corporations will always put profit first, that just the system we live under. You may see it as sensationalist outrage, but in actuality it is a necessary balance. Corporations will always value profits over people. Whether its customers or their own employees, to a company they only exist to exploit for maximum profit. Media reporting on bad behavior and outrage over said behavior is the only thing protecting us from slave wages, massively overpriced products, sweat shop conditions, etc. As long as we remain a capitalist society (whether you think that is good or bad) this is a necessary, never-ending cycle.Samtemdo8 said:
Radical thought. Maybe cut back on the ultra edge maximum realistic graphics a bit that no one really needs. Maybe cut down on the overly bloated marketing too. Just a couple of things that would save the company money so they can afford to pay the devs decently and not rush games out.Abomination said:
erttheking said:
It SEEMS like Sony is easily one of the best publishers because it seems like they let their devs make what they want to a decent amount of the time like Team ICO games, Guerrilla making Horizon, David Cage making what he wants to, etc. What other publisher would give Kojima millions to make Death Stranding for example? I think that's what makes Sony the better 1st-party publisher over Nintendo because they allow their devs to take way more chances whether it results in a Knack or a Horizon.hanselthecaretaker said:
My main point was about how the quality of games are being hurt, not the state of working conditions (which is important as well). Rockstar fired a guy because he wanted to fix the 2 generation dated combat Rockstar games have. The main reason video games aren't as "mature" as they could be is because of how immature and simplistic game design currently is along with the utter incompetence of video game writing. Don't you think there's a reason why basically no quality writing talent wants to work in the video game industry? Look at how the board game industry is flourishing with regards to game design, there's always drastically new and fresh games coming out. Whereas in AAA video gaming, we have almost nothing but copy-cat game design whether it's open world, Arkham combat, Souls-like, looter shooter live service, battle royale, etc. Ubisoft basically makes only one game now and just puts different names on the box. And a lot of the copied game design wasn't even that solid to begin with like say Souls design isn't very well thought-out, loot systems don't really accomplish much outside of being a Skinner box, etc. Not to mention, video game gameplay is obsessed with killing hordes of enemies, can't we not have like every game be about killing 1,000s of enemies? Not only does violence sell (like other mediums) but on the video game side, it's also easier from a game design standpoint whereas making a good action movie isn't easy to make so that's why gaming is stuck in this loop of constantly making games about killing (violence sells and it's easy as hell to make).Batou667 said:
Trust me, I would love nothing more than for CEOs of AAA companies to stop being massive bumblecunts. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be on the agenda for anytime soon for the more serious offenders.hanselthecaretaker said:
Was that their version of events, or his?Phoenixmgs said:
Big budgets mean big stakes and big pressure to be profitable. Inevitably that means sticking at least some of the time to a proven formula and pitching the product either at a fanbase who is loyal enough to be guaranteed to buy it, or else wooing the mainstream. That's how blockbuster movies work, that's how pop music works, that's how adventure novels work. I think a bitter pill we need to swallow is the realisation that just because our favourite medium is falling short of its potential (especially the lofty standards we set in our own demanding headcanon), that doesn't mean there's anything "wrong" with it. That's mass media for you. And, objectively, if it's selling, it must be doing something right.
I would question whether modern games are more reliant on killing as a mechanic than games 20, 30, 40 years ago. I mean, I can see why it works so well as a mechanic, as it provides immediacy, motivation, an intuitive win/lose condition. Self preservation is a universal human motivation; it requires no tutorial or instruction manual. Dodge the thing, shoot the onrushing enemy, run from the monster, neutralise the enemies. But I would say gaming has taken a real demographic shift over the last 10 years. A significant proportion of gamers now engage with games purely through mobile devices. Many gamers play nothing but "casual" games which have themes including puzzle, simulation, world-building, relationships, rhythm action, and gambling. The landscape is actually pretty diverse.
Hoo boy, are you wrong on this point. Art has two components, the product and the process. We all want to sit back and be wowed by the finished product, but the process is often every bit as banal and backbreaking as digging a ditch or ironing laundry. Think of the man-hours dedicated to extraneous art assets, filters, shaders etc in an animated movie that you might catch in the background of one scene. Have you heard about the conditions Japanese manga-ka work in to churn out comic strips? Most people working collaboratively on a product, even a piece of art, will be completely removed from the creative design process and will be required to do dull, monotonous and decidedly unglamourous work.
Sure, in the real world people don't just flounce out of the office on a whim because they're upset they aren't living a dreamlike existence of unimaginable ecstasy. Unless you're very fortunate, just about everybody turns up to work at least partially for the paycheck, and they do that because the alternative is starvation and homelessness. Modern slavery! ...well, no. First it's unrealistic and just plain entitled to expect your employer to provide you with fun, pleasant work all the time AND pay you for the privilege of turning up and having a ball from 9 to 5. Work by definition includes an element of labour, right? Physical, intellectual or emotional. That's why it's called "work", not "vacation". You expend energy to add value to a product or process and are compensated for it. Secondly, the existence of inescapable pressures on your life doesn't mean you have no choice or ability to improve your situation. You can move laterally by changing roles or careers, and you can move vertically by excelling at the boring dogsbody work and eventually becoming part of the decision-making elite.
I believe it was a colleague of the dev that got fired, the bit starts at 4:30 in the video. It checks out logically just due to why Rockstar are the only devs making games where you have to continuously tap a butter to run or have the default aim for shooting to be lock-on. We're way past the days of Syphon Filters and Winbacks where shooting controls were such shit that you needed lock-on to play properly.Batou667 said:
AAA gaming is far far more homogeneous that other mediums. Big time studios like Marvel and DC give hundreds of millions to indie directors from Christopher Nolan to James Gunn for example. They are allowed to write and direct the movie they want to vs getting a checklist handed down from marketing for everything that needs to be in the movie. And you can see how much failure happens when artists are forced into making something very exact like how just about every other studio's cinematic universe has failed spectacularly from Sony's Spiderman to DCEU to Universal's monster universe. The audience can tell when something was made with passion vs being only ever a product and nothing else.
I'm talking about the AAA landscape only. The best "video games" are now digital board games because the game design is just so much better. A few years back, Scythe was one of the biggest board games released (in production quality) and the subject matter was steampunk WWII Europe with mechs and combat happens only about 1-5 times a game among all players (I played a game with no combat at all happening once). Why can't we get high production non-combat games in the AAA landscape? They'll sell if they're good, David Cage games sell for example and they're not very good. One of the best video game RPGs coming up is going to be the Gloomhaven game based extremely heavily on the board game.
There's a difference between working a monotonous and unglamourous job for 40 or less hours a week and working that job for 60+ hours a week and having no life. Just even a few hours past 40 seems like you don't have any time but for your job.
Again, there's quite a difference between fun and pleasant job and a job that respects the employee's time of not having them work overtime for prolonged periods. Sure, probably a lot of people think their career choice is more glamorous than it actually is when they're in college, but that's not what's being complained about here. You learn a skillset and you can't just willy-nilly change jobs unless you wanna make quite a bit less money at a much less skill-specific job. When the majority of the industry is run like the video game industry and that's your skillset, you more so need to get lucky with regards to a good job than anything.
This. A thousand times this. Nobody asked for all the game dev money to be poured into graphics just for the reveal trailers. I couldn't care less if your game has ray-tracing or volumetric anti-aliasing post-processing V-sync rendering or any of that other superfluous bullshit we usually turn off to get the game running smoothly anyway. Whenever anyone complains about games being expensive to make these days, I can't help but wonder: who's fault is that? Maybe if publishers weren't all trying to make the next Crysis all the time they'd have put out 3 or 4 AA titles in the same timeframe for half the cost and reeled in twice the profit since they wouldn't all have to be lowest-common-denominator generic games every time.erttheking said:
