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And just two months ago, Electronic Arts’ Mythic Entertainment studio got slammed in the press for choosing to credit only those developers who were still on staff when MMOG Warhammer Online: Age Of Reckoning was released.
Mythic VP and general manager Mark Jacobs was quoted as saying: "Over the years, we’ve had hundreds of people work on the game, and we thank everyone who helped us bring our Warhammer passion to life, but only current employees that have continued until the end will be credited in the final game."
Reaction was swift, including that of Jennifer MacLean, who is both chair of the IGDA board and VP of business development at Maynard, MA-based 38 Studios. In her commentary in the IGDA newsletter, she called Mythic’s policy "disrespectful of the effort of the game developers who worked on the game," and misleading to "both consumers and game industry peers."
But Mythic’s Jacobs says that his crediting policy had nothing to do with disrespect and everything to do with consistency.
"An MMO requires 3-4 years of crazy work," he explains, "and people come and go and the list of names gets ridiculously long. So we’ve always had a standard policy -- we credit the people who are here at the game’s launch. That’s it. We make no other distinction. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been here for a day, a week, or all four years. If you’re not here at launch, you don’t get credit."
But while Mythic’s policy was consistent right up to the time the story about that policy broke, it has since been "modified," Jacobs reveals.
"The in-game credits are going to continue to list the guys who were here at launch," he says, "but now we’re building a tool so that everybody who ever worked on the game will be credited online so that future employers or anybody can see it. That will be the case with Warhammer and all of our other games going forward. I believe that’s going far beyond even the IGDA’s suggestions."
EA Mythic's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
The modification, he explains, is the result of a suggestion made to him, one he had never considered previously. "I wish somebody had suggested that to me years ago; it’s so simple and yet so brilliant. The more glorious credits go to those who were here at launch because they saw the product through to the end, and the online credits are for everybody."
His new policy pertains to Mythic only, says Jacobs, not necessarily to parent company EA.
"Now it’s up to EA to talk about it and their studios can make up their own mind," he says. "What I think is really crucial is that studios need to each have their own policies. I don’t want somebody dictating to me how we credit."
"Guidelines are fine, but if the IGDA intends to come up with a standard that says every studio must credit identically, I’d be against that. Frankly, I think the market will sort itself out. If a studio is particularly mean-spirited and doesn’t want to credit its people, no one will want to work there."
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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.