|
[The recent Warhammer Online crediting controversy has raised the profile of how games credit developers -- Gamasutra talks to Mythic's Mark Jacobs, the IGDA, Valve's Doug Lombardi and others about what matters in game credits.]
Practically everyone agrees that giving "proper credit" to developers for their contributions to a game is important -- but what is "proper"? Should the game list everyone involved no matter how miniscule their input?
Perhaps only names should be included, not titles? Maybe credit should go to only those hearty enough to have survived until the game shipped? It all depends on which studio you ask.
Which is why discussions within the IGDA -- which began back in 2003 when its Credit Standards Committee was first formed -- continue without final resolution. Clearly, developing one single standard that pleases everyone is problematic.
Just as the open letter from "EA_Spouse" got the industry buzzing about quality-of-life issues, it was a single incident last November that accelerated the chatter about crediting. Jurie Horneman, a producer on Manhunt 2, criticized Rockstar for ignoring over 55 Rockstar Vienna employees in the game’s credits.
And, in his blog, he posted those missing credits, adding that he was "disappointed and outraged that Rockstar Games tried to pretend that Rockstar Vienna and the work we did on Manhunt 2 never happened -- the work of over 50 people who put years of their lives into the project, trying to make the best game they could."
Today, Horneman -- still a game producer -- recalls having received quite a few reactions "from people who told me stories that were similar or worse, many of which are posted on my blog page. Two things seem quite prevalent: not crediting people who leave before the end of the project and not crediting freelance employees."
Indeed, a 2006 survey by the IGDA’s Game Writers SIG revealed that 35% of respondents either "don’t ever" or "only sometimes" receive official credit for their efforts.
Horneman says he supports what he calls "accurate, complete, and fair credits" for two reasons mainly. "They play a role in hiring decisions; the game you last worked on is something that employers use to decide whether to hire you or not. And credits are also important for developer motivation. The bottom line is that they are just the right thing to do."
He hopes that "the more enlightened developers will see that it is in their interest to adopt the IGDA suggestions on crediting and to be seen doing so," Horneman adds.
"I know of some companies that are including them as a clause in their employment contract, which I think is very smart. They are able to use it to entice developers to come work for them instead of the competition."
Capcom/Clover Studio's Okami
But, despite industry reaction to the Manhunt 2 episode, incidents of non-crediting continue.
Six months later, in May of this year, acclaimed Okami designer Hideki Kamiya expressed frustration with publisher Capcom’s decision to omit the original development team credits from the U.S. version of Ready At Dawn’s Okami Wii port. The designer posted a lengthy message regarding the absent credits in a Facebook blog.
|
Printer-Friendly Version
It's this kind of amateur-hour cowboy stuff that prevents the industry from becoming more professional. A concept artist, audio guy, script writer, model maker or gameplay coder may not remain on a project the entire time because there's no point, but that does not mean their work is less valuable than, say bug-fixing QA guys who are the end of a project.
Mythic, and indeed all developers, really need to wake up to the fact that maintaining large teams indefinitely in the hope of continuing work, and treating their staff as cattle, is how the Old Games Industry worked, but is a recipe for eventual closure and the dole for most.
So? last time I checked text compressed very well, so it can't be a disk space issue. If it's the game's ending credits then add an option for customers to break away from it to return to the menu. It's not like the average person watches the complete movie credits.
I don't see what the problem is with a long list of credits.
I think there is real value in this approach for the credit roll within the product itself. In my experience, it can sometimes be tricky to describe and compartmentalize an individual's contribution to a project with any amount of fairness or accuracy in the credit roll. I think this approach acknowledges that an individual's contribution in a videogame development environment is often cross-disciplinary and/or multi-faceted. Additionally I think this approach communicates a sense of studio solidarity to the player, an 'all for one and one for all' attitude, which I find appealing.
That said, for practical reasons, it would be convenient if the type of an individual's involvement was recorded online in some way. While 'linkedin' and 'mobygames' are not ideal solutions to this puzzle for a variety of reasons, I think they do suggest some possibilities for the future.
What I don't fully understand is why a company would choose not to acknowledge someones' contributions at all. That seems uncouth and a little rude.
Get out of the stone ages, you freakin' bureaucrats.
As an aside: GG, that comment's not up to your usual standards.
Creators have a need of more than to be paid money for what we do. They have a need to be recognized. That is their due.
Sometimes society has forgotten basic values like honor and integrity - sacrificing them for convenience, expedience and corporate bottom line.
But the real problem behind this is the corporate attitude of some of these places. It simply manifests itself in the credits.
For example, Rockstar has the attitude that you should feel privileged to be working there. From the way they conduct their projects to the basic treatment of their staff, the company mantra is that you are a 'soldier' for Rockstar. That is supposed to be enough for you. And if you complain about anything, or even ask about what credit you will receive, you can be sure you'll be put on that little blacklist of "people we can do without".
You will never get corporations like that to adhere to any standards as long as they are voluntary. This is yet another justification for unionizing our industry.
Nobody's saying that making games is easy. But who needs egos the size of planets making you the worker feel like dirt. You are not lucky to be there, they are lucky to have you.
As for this theory that some creators perform multiple tasks, well, whoop tee doo... Stephen Spielberg both Directs and Produces every single one of his films, and he takes both credits on them all. Clint Eastwood starred in, directed, produced and composed the score for "Million Dollar Baby." Should he have been listed alphabetically with everyone else who worked on the film because it would be "tricky to describe and compartmentalize an individual's contribution to a project with any amount of fairness or accuracy in the credit roll" or to engender an artificial "sense of studio solidarity to the [theatergoer]"? Of course not. Eastwood took four separate credits for the film, and because he did, he was nominated for an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor, and won for Best Achievement in Directing and for Best Motion Picture of the Year as the Producer. At most game studios, however, he would have been forced to accept ONE credit for everything he did on the film, which is utterly ridiculous. If films can somehow manage to honestly credit everyone on them, surely the games industry can figure it out.
Lastly a history lesson for those game producers who think they know what their employees think about any particular subject and who assume that their employees don't care about minor matters like being properly credited: the Writers Guild of America was formed in 1921 by 10 of Hollywood's top writers specifically to address the mismanagement of credits by film studios after the film studio bosses pooh-poohed the writers' concerns that they were being cheated out of proper credits for their work. So instead of reforming themselves and properly crediting their employees, instead a UNION was formed which took the writing credits out of the producers' hands forever. Oh, and while they were at it, the WGA added in a lot of minimum pay requirements and back-end residual payments and health care and pension payments and a lot of other things that the studio chiefs wouldn't have had to pay for and deal with if they'd only been honest about who wrote what movie in the first place.
Those who refuse to learn from History are doomed to repeat it. As the head of the WGA's Videogame Writers Caucus, improper or limited credits is the number one issue I hear about from staff writers, furious that they were forced to choose between a "designed by" or a "written by" credit, incensed that they were listed alphabetically with everyone else, or angry that their credit was left off their game entirely. The examples of Hollywood's major guilds have proven again and again that failure to acknowledge work properly has ALWAYS led to unionization. Why game developers & publishers continue these bad habits with regard to credits is beyond understanding. Maybe the games industry secretly wants to go Union?
Naughty Dog used to list by seniority. The good, it removed all arguments about who gets first credit. The bad, the dog, the receptionist and the networking guy were at the top of the credits while the lead programmer, lead artist and lead designers were way down the list.
Sony lists TOO MANY EFFING PEOPLE. They list every single person at every Sony office that had anything whatsoever to do with the game or not. Every playtester in Europe, US and Japan. Every producer, exec producer, marketing person, and head of division in those locations. At least they put the team first. I don't like that policy of including all those other staff that had nothing to do with the actual *creation* of the game. No other industry does that kind of crap .
Everyone's favorite, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, left all the original staff out of the credits of the XBox 360 Rez port. Only the porting company and their staff are in the credits. Imagine if in transferring a movie from film to DVD the only people listed in the credits were people who made the DVD menus. Or imagine if the music on iTunes was credited to the people who converted the audio to mp3/aac files instead of the musicians.
The problem with crediting only at launch is there are often cases of people that just started on the team vs people that worked on the game for 90% of the project but left before the end. I had something close to this happen on Lords of the Rising Sun although it was a mistake, not a policy. About 2 weeks before shipping a new producer was hired. He wrote the manual. He put his name in the manual and forgot to put mine in. (or maybe he was told not to put it in?) When I complained, since I had actually written several parts of the game and he had only been at the company 2 weeks his answer was "the manual has already been printed, sucks to be you."
Well, listing too many people is way better then not enough. I mean, you are done playing the game!
However there is at least one high profile studio under the Sony umbrella that will not give you credit if you're not there at ship. It is "too many people" for them to list because it reveals their high attrition rate to the public.
I work for an outsource testing house. In total, I've most likely tested over 50 games in the span of two years, for various different platforms. I still have yet to be credited for any one game. There was only one game that actually thought about doing it, but with just the general message "Thanks to our friends at [company name]."
One of my co-workers doesn't see the need to be on the credits, it's definitely a personal issue. Of course, he's at least been named on one or two games already. I'd still like the chance to have ONE game with MY NAME in it. To show my family, "I HELPED MAKE THIS!"
Oh, and that one game with its general message? I have yet to see it ship, or even know if it got canceled or not.
What did I get for all my efforts? I was listed in the Special Thanks section along with a bunch of other people. Nice.
IGDA has a huge problem on their hands when they can't even get the smaller affiliated studios to conform.
As the article mentioned, the credits aren't a resume and shouldn't be used as one. The bad stuff will come out on its own. This is a small industry (relatively speaking) - if someone screws up royally, people will hear whether or not it's credited.