This happens every single day with companies like mine with strong talent making major contributions to the big games. We are actually only credited on about one percent of the games we work on. We can contribute two or three million dollars work on a project and not see a single credit. That does not mean we do not take credit for our work as we do show it regardless, once it is released. I can say that most the dev teams and publishers who are probably being supportive of this action by the IGDA, have contracts for their outsourcing partners which forbid showcasing work or do not have any credits for the talented people working on their games. This issue goes industry wide....not just the Mythic team. Pick a top ten game being made right now. Odds are we have worked on it...and not one ounce of credit will be given. We only put up a fight when they try to make us not claim we did any work, or not show the work we do when it is released. The latter is a deal breaker. Credit would be nice though...I am sure people would appreciate it.

I wanted to add...that I agree with Taylor on this one. When I got my start at Black Isle they had all their developers speaking and interacting with the community and press through their message boards. This was the reason Bioware and BIS had some of the first successful online social networks and what led to the millions of people in those communities. It also made their devs more valuable assets as their interaction with the community drove not only games sales but additional press and PR for free. That is why our group is of the opposite mentality to the closed doors and windows policy the industry tries to use. We promote our artists to showcase professional skills, leadership abilities, and to share ideas with others. To do that, though, a team has to trust it's culture. Since we are able to drive our own traffic (we too built a social network based on my experiences with BIS and the online art world), we are able to add considerable value to anything we do. With a push of a button we can reach 1.2 million eyeballs each month. Without credit, and without open promotion, we would not have done it. We would have considerably higher marketing and recruiting costs as well. Taylor is completely right on that note. There are many reasons to both give credit and allow visibility for the developers. From the publisher side, the increase of sales (taylor is a good example) that come when the people working on the projects are industry names and not just numbers, is a good thing. The industry inhibits it's own success with this issue currently raised.

I agree with Taylor and Manley.

It also makes the critic's job a lot easier when they can tell who is responsible for what. It's hard to give a proper assessment of a game when they can't trace the identities and influences going on. Just knowing the game designer's past games, seeing how their work has evolved, and how that relates to the rest of the game gives great insight into what's going on. The same applies for art, programming...all of it really.