[HN Gopher] The Human Toll of Fallout 76's Disastrous Launch
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The Human Toll of Fallout 76's Disastrous Launch
Author : danso
Score : 50 points
Date : 2022-06-08 19:52 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kotaku.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kotaku.com)
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| It's really a testament to how soul crushingly boring working in
| non-games tech is that people keep eagerly volunteering to be
| abused exploited and disrespected like this (at not even one of
| the very best game companies, just a mid-high tier one!) rather
| than work a Series C startup making 2-3x with good WLB
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I guess this relates to another current thread [1].
|
| The games industry is it's own weird universe of madness at quite
| another level.
|
| I once had business with a large AAA house in Cambridge England,
| in a big glass corporate headquarters. When I visited I was
| greeted by an attractive, kind of gothy/emo young lady who had
| visible self-harm marks. A senior person turned up and there was
| a really weird dynamic. She was obviously not supposed to have
| met me. The guy gave her a look, and her reaction was something
| that stank of domestic violence situations. There was something
| abusive and creepy going on that really threw me off balance.
| This was at least 5 or 10 years before the gamergate and metoo
| stuff.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31664203
| mysterydip wrote:
| "Press Reset" by Jason Schreier has many examples of this cycle:
| crunch, layoff, repeat at next company (or go indie, or exit the
| industry). In many cases, the people responsible for the
| decisions are insulated from the fallout (no pun intended).
| aftergibson wrote:
| I went to several Universities to interview undergraduates for a
| paid summer internship for our small SAAS startup (I was barely
| out of college myself). A huge percentage of technical students
| were hoping for internships at video game companies, many hoping
| to start with testing. So no wonder video games companies feel
| grinding through QA engineers it's a viable strategy.
|
| All we can really do is warn the younger generation to steer
| clear of the video games industry even if video games are a
| passion. You'd think with such a terrible reputation they'd be
| struggling for hires, but there's always fresh blood to grind
| into the ground.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| I've heard so many horror stories in the game industry about
| being underpaid and sleeping under desks.
|
| I don't understand how anyone would want to be such a piece of a
| cog of a wheel just because they love games. You aren't Shigeru
| Miyamoto, you don't get to make creative decisions. You'd make
| twice as much coding boring business logic, it's not "cool", but
| you get to sleep at home.
|
| Is it just me or does being given pizza as an adult feel
| insulting. I get it, I'm a gamer so I obviously don't care about
| healthy choices.
| ajb wrote:
| I visited a place one where the schtick was to get new
| employees to make a paint print of their hand on the wall like
| a primary school kids. I thought, this place infantilises its
| employees, I will never work here.
|
| This comes about because companies see 'culture' as a means of
| manipulating their employees. It works because long-childhood
| tokens are a status symbol - poor people need to grow up
| quickly and demonstrate that they are compliant by wearing
| suits or other uniforms, middle class show that they can afford
| long education by retaining the signifiers of childhood. But
| no-one does this consciously, so people are susceptable to
| being 'rewarded' by these cheap signifiers instead of real
| value
| spread_love wrote:
| > does being given pizza as an adult feel insulting
|
| Yes! Give me better healthcare! I don't care about snacks and
| coffee. If I was healthy I could afford these things myself.
|
| Even worse, using it as bait to return to office. "We're having
| a pizza party in the office today!" (Now a Waffle Party I might
| come in for)
| lapetitejort wrote:
| > Is it just me or does being given pizza as an adult feel
| insulting. I get it, I'm a gamer so I obviously don't care
| about healthy choices.
|
| This is how I know I'm old. Instead of giving me the cheapest
| viable dinner possible, why not spring for something more
| tasty, healthy, and costly? Pizza is the free meal equivalent
| of minimum wage. If possible, they'd offer free off-brand
| animal crackers to everyone crunching.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| First off sleeping under desks is a project management failure
| and not representative of the games industry. Heaps of people
| making games that haven't worked a day of overtime for years
| and years.
|
| But as you say, boring business logic is boring, so no surprise
| that people would be interested in games for that reason alone,
| but more than that, game programming isn't the same sort of
| work as other programming. Are there jobs for graphics
| programmers working on some business spreadsheet software
| company? If you want to do graphics programming you need to
| work in an industry that needs graphics programmers.
|
| Doesn't really matter that you're not the Miyamoto. There's
| lots of programmers in leadership roles solving hard and
| interesting problems that don't exist in other sorts of
| business software.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| ...and the animation industry
|
| ...and the movie industry
|
| ...and the music industry
|
| ...and the, well - we could go on like this forever. If it's
| creative work, people will endure all kinds of sh!t in order to
| work on the stuff they love.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| stuff they ^ _think_ they love.
|
| most people don't have an objective view of the whole market
| of things they can exchange for, its a compromise of what we
| are exposed to and what makes enough money
|
| then there is a slight gradient containing people that don't
| care for a variety of reasons, such as some passive income or
| other financial security
| kodah wrote:
| I'd be willing to say the wider tech industry isn't much
| better, it's just one degree less shady and disgusting.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| And about 300,000 degrees more lucrative.
| lukewrites wrote:
| > You'd make twice as much coding boring business logic, it's
| not "cool", but you get to sleep at home.
|
| And, possibly just as importantly, you'll have time for gaming!
| whateveracct wrote:
| Or even gamedev!
| [deleted]
| googlryas wrote:
| Anecdotal, but everyone that I can recall from my uni's CS
| cohort who used video games as motivation to learn CS were
| ultimately bad or middling programmers, who were basically only
| employable by these game companies that pay crummy wages with
| bad work culture.
|
| It makes sense somewhat - the skills and talents for, say,
| racing cars has almost nothing to do with the skills or talent
| to design and construct an engine.
| urthor wrote:
| My experience is the opposite.
|
| I've seen many extraordinarily talented people who got into
| this field originally because of the dream.
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| The impression I get from video game hackers (eg. finding
| glitches for speedrunning) are that they are quite talented,
| and console hackers as well (finding that PS5 jailbreak
| definitely requires skill) so I'm not sure if it's the best
| generalization.
| friedman23 wrote:
| I think that would be a bad generalization. Maybe people
| obsessed enough with video games that you find out that's why
| they are learning CS are bad coders?
| jeromegv wrote:
| How would they know? They spent the last 10 years playing video
| games, they literally worship those companies. It's still not
| widespread enough as knowledge that those employers are
| literally all shit. And if that's your first job, how would you
| know it's better somewhere else? Got to learn the hard way.
| snickerer wrote:
| Listen, kids, if someone tells you to do overtime: run!
|
| You-must-do-overtime is a management fail and a strong indicator
| for bad leading.
| danso wrote:
| I had some hope that Microsoft's purchase would somehow change
| things (not that Microsoft is necessarily more benevolent, but
| maybe could realign the team's priorities and politics), but the
| (pure) speculation suggests "no":
|
| > _Bethesda officially became a part of Xbox Game Studios on
| March 9, 2021, which placed Fallout 76 under Microsoft's
| stewardship. When asked whether or not the acquisition had
| improved the internal work culture within Bethesda, several
| sources offered lukewarm responses._
|
| > _One source suggested that Microsoft's emphasis on a "hands-
| off" culture toward its studios meant that the new owners trusted
| Bethesda to take care of its own problems. Sources at Undead Labs
| also mentioned that Microsoft had a "hands-off" policy, which
| they claimed had "allowed dysfunction to fester" at their
| studio._
|
| No quality of game could justify the senseless anti-human
| mentality and processes described. But the fact that Fallout 76
| was just such an abysmal and hated release just increases my
| contempt for Bethesda. Not seeing the moral value in treating
| their employees ethically is bad enough; not even having the cold
| business sense to see how it obviously affects their bottom line
| is just pathetic:
|
| > _Some sources noted that the project drove an exodus of senior
| developers who had worked on some of Bethesda's most prolific
| titles. Many developers developed physical health issues, such as
| tinnitus and back pain. One source said it "wasn't uncommon" for
| artists to have wrist braces. Senior staff who'd remained loyal
| to the company for 20 years finally found their reason to quit.
| Some had been around since Fallout 3 and Skyrim. Fallout 76 was
| their final breaking point._
| sourthyme wrote:
| This is sick. What does anyone learn doing by working like
| this? Is anyone gaining experience from this? It just feels
| like people are ground down so they can't physically work
| anymore.
| fnimick wrote:
| The people running the show see no benefit from their team
| members "learning" or "gaining experience". If they ship the
| game and are so ground down they're burned out and
| ineffective, that's a problem for the next guy; the manager
| who got the game shipped by burning out the team got a huge
| bonus and has leveraged it into a shiny position somewhere
| else by the time any of the consequences rear their heads.
| IME this type of short-term thinking inevitably infects most
| companies, unless there is a very strong culture to combat
| it.
| ansible wrote:
| Why are things so bad in the games industry? As compared to other
| IT / programming fields?
| tmp_anon_22 wrote:
| * very strict deadlines decided by publishers years in advance
|
| * incredible passion making the workforce exploitable and more
| tolerant of abuse
|
| * explosive revenue growth bringing in scammers, hucksters, and
| MBAs
|
| * incredible passion from consumers who will buy the same game
| over and over
|
| * the advent of gambling in the form of microtransactions
|
| * the consolidation of the industry to a handful of big
| publishers
|
| * incredible technical complexity
|
| * exclusive rights on media like star wars or sports like
| basketball giving some publishers a complete monopoly in some
| cases
| extrememacaroni wrote:
| +1 for "incredible passion from consumers". I've never seen a
| mass of customers so easy to fool as gamers are. Imagine a
| washing machine company releasing broken products, and the
| average joe going "yup, I really want another washing machine
| from this company after seeing this ad which showed something
| I like, even though the last time I bought some they were
| barely working and only half washed my clothes, please take
| my money".
|
| If bethesda/microsoft announced Fallout New Vegas 2, everyone
| would lose their shit and preorder instantly.
|
| Also it disgusts me how happy everyone seems when a company
| announces that they won't do microtransactions. If the
| company has a history of keeping promises and releasing games
| without mtx, sure, it's warranted. But otherwise? Are you an
| idiot? They'll update the game half a year after you and the
| other fools bought the game and introduce microtransactions
| then. I wish there were laws that clearly defined what
| monetization in a game means and forbade developers from
| changing monetization schemes during the lifetime of a game,
| I just can't trust cloud-enabled games nowadays that promise
| a non-mtx non-p2w experience. It's worthless promises if you
| can change your mind down the line after I invested time and
| maybe money in your game. First get the money from the gamers
| who think they're really smart for "supporting games with
| fair monetization schemes", then when they're exhausted
| introduce mtx and go after the whales for the big bucks.
|
| Fuck this industry, you don't even know what kind of product
| you're buying anymore. People waiting for "a full review of
| Diablo Immor(t)al to figure out how much money you need to
| spend to get a good build" - what's the point? By the time
| the review is out blizzard probably already changed the
| sliders and everything's different. Although from what I hear
| about the game, the only way they could change them at this
| point would make the game better, so there's that. $100k
| (that's one.hundred.thousand.dollars.) to get a fully
| equipped build. Jesus christ. Go back in time to when Diablo
| 2 is released and tell the gamers that soon they'll have to
| pay one hundred. thousand. dollars. to get a fully equipped
| build in the latest Diablo. They'll just cry and jump out the
| window. An even sadder thing is if you told them the latest
| Diablo will be a mobile game, they'd think "what? you can
| play Diablo anywhere like with a Gameboy? That's freaking
| amazing dude!" ugh. But you need to tell them this before
| telling them about having to choose between a nice house and
| a cool armor for their barbarian, burst that bubble properly.
|
| I hate this. My comment here is the incredible passion from
| consumers, you can see it live now, you're welcome.
|
| The incredible passion from developers is also me still being
| interested and working on gamedev crap even though I wish I
| could just turn back time instead.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Many of the problems and potential of abuse as present in the
| entertainment industry, with none of the organizing to
| protect workers.
| walrus01 wrote:
| isn't this literally supposed to be why screenwriters,
| actors and others are unionized in the hollywood system?
| and all the behind the camera IATSE members.
| mort96 wrote:
| Yeah, and the exact same reason why the lack of
| unionization in VFX is such a large problem.
|
| Unions work.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| Because a lot people want to work for games so there is high
| supply of willing talent. You can run them ragged and then
| replace as needed.
| neaden wrote:
| At the end of the day basically all jobs little kids dream
| about (actor, doctor, astronaut, making video games) are
| either really hard to get into (like doctor) or pay very
| poorly for the majority of people (like actor and making
| video games).
| exdsq wrote:
| Video game devs aren't paid 'very poorly', they're still
| comfortably above a countries median, they're just lower
| than roles requiring a similar skill. My friend is a game
| dev at Epic and loves it, FWIW. He doesn't give a shit
| about money if he can pay his mortgage, cover his wife and
| child, splash on toys, and save a bit.
| tmp_anon_22 wrote:
| > You can run them ragged and then replace as needed.
|
| Until you can't. A good case study is Dice Stockholm, perhaps
| best known for their stewardship of the Battlefield
| franchise. They butchered the launch of two titles in a row
| and lost much of their senior staff.
|
| FWIW BFV became a good game. But the churn BFV (+Firestorm
| Battle Royale mode) caused has taken BF 2042 to a new low.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| IMO this is true for every field that has a similar draw.
| Working on anything that's perceived as "fun" or for the
| greater good will allow for lower comp and worse working
| conditions. I believe that that's also a factor why teachers
| in the US can be so underpaid and treated badly and why Musk
| gets away with some of the rougher working conditions at
| Tesla and SpaceX (at least the pay seems good at those
| companies though).
| sourthyme wrote:
| There's so much hype and expectation compared other software
| that it hits harder when bad software design appears in gaming.
| Bad software/project design still exists for regular software
| but users are more understandable when deadlines change.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Bethesda need just let obsidian make the fallout games from now
| on.
|
| They don't understand the franchise's message or the lore, they
| can't write very well, and they also really struggle with
| technology apparently.
| ssully wrote:
| I won't say it will never happen, but Obsidian has basically
| already made their own property in the style of Fallout with
| The Outerworlds.
| uejfiweun wrote:
| It seems pretty clear to me that in the video games industry (and
| pretty much any 'art' industry for that matter) great results are
| driven by singular, great people. Todd Howard was the mind behind
| TES and Fallout 3/4. Hidetaka Miyazaki was the mind behind Souls
| / Elden Ring. Shigeru Miyamoto was the mind behind Mario. And
| it's because these people really care about the product they are
| making. They have PASSION.
|
| When it comes to a game like 76, which was clearly mandated by
| some greedy executives who don't play games, the lack of passion
| permeates the whole game. From what the article describes it
| seems like nobody wanted to work on this thing - not the QA, not
| the devs, not the managers. The end result is no surprise. Nobody
| cared.
|
| If I was a games exec, I would do everything to empower the great
| minds that produce great games to pursue the projects they are
| passionate about. Unfortunately there are a lot of very
| successful companies out there that do the exact opposite of
| that, but the tide seems to be turning.
|
| EDIT: I want to clarify that part and parcel with being a
| talented passionate game director is the ability to build a great
| team and keep the team motivated. Obviously passion isn't the
| only ingredient to make a great game. As with any other massive
| undertaking, teams of humans are what get the job done. I simply
| observe that these singular figures have the two-part gift of
| understanding what makes a great game, and also being able to
| attract others who can help execute that vision.
| antisthenes wrote:
| > Todd Howard was the mind behind TES and Fallout 3/4.
|
| If your example of a great game is Fallout 4, then you've
| already lost the argument.
|
| It pales in comparison to Fallout NV, Fallout 2 and even 3 in
| many regards. It's an extremely dumbed-down RPG experience,
| plagued by a lot of the same issues that are present in 76,
| including lack of passion and generic, tropey NPCs and
| environments.
|
| I think it would be more fair to say that most studios and game
| designers have their masterpieces, and then most of their other
| work is mediocre, simply because it trends towards the mean.
|
| Some great studios and designers can replicate their initial
| success once or twice more, but those are extremely rare.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| I loved Fallout 4, I'm sorry. Every second. I think a lot of
| people see the older games through nostalgia lenses when
| their lives were better/minds were younger/they were first
| experiencing an engrossing RPG. I played NV after 4 and NV
| was good too. Fallout 3 I keep giving up on and I'm not a
| quitter. It just doesn't draw me in like the other ones. It
| seems crude and simple comparatively, due to its age I guess.
| ericd wrote:
| It's not just nostalgia, go play Fallout 2, GoG has a copy
| that should work. It holds up extremely well, because it's
| just a much better game than the Bethesda versions. The
| writing, the humor, the world building, it feels a lot more
| alive and real than the much more technically advanced
| iterations. Fallout 1 is less polished, but also great.
| Fallout 3+ always felt like a reskinned Elder Scrolls to
| me.
| lostmsu wrote:
| I did exactly that. Multiple times, including before
| Fallout 3 came out, after, and also pretty recently.
| IMHO, Fallout 2 sucks in comparison with anything F3+.
| Worldbuilding might be there, but the gameplay simply
| isn't.
|
| There's nothing wrong with being "a reskinned Elder
| Scrolls". Elder Scrolls is a great game (series). It is
| up there in the hall of masterpieces along with GTA and
| CS.
|
| If you don't believe my word, look at Steam stats:
| https://store.steampowered.com/stats/
|
| Like many here I also believed F3 and NV had better
| storytelling. But many hours of playing later, I see that
| I actually prefer F4.
| kaibee wrote:
| Try Fallout 2.
| antisthenes wrote:
| > I think a lot of people see the older games through
| nostalgia lenses when their lives were better/minds were
| younger/they were first experiencing an engrossing RPG.
|
| Yes, they do. But it is absolutely not the case here,
| sorry. F4 is just a worse game.
|
| It's not the worst game in the series or the genre, but it
| is utterly mediocre and not at all an example of a
| resounding success in Bethesda's history as a game company.
| Metacritic's 5.6/10 User score agrees with me.
|
| Doesn't mean you have to stop liking the game. There are
| plenty of bad games we all play as guilty pleasures.
|
| Also, just FYI, I think Fallout 1, the first game in the
| series is a pretty awful game. It's extremely short, the
| side quests are all boring fetch/kill quests, the open
| world is mostly dead. F2 was a huge improvement upon it.
| uejfiweun wrote:
| Haha, that's fair. I certainly didn't like it the first time
| I played it. However, I recently tried again on survival mode
| after a friend's recommendation, and it feels totally
| different. No fast travel and saving only at beds changes the
| game completely. Suddenly vertibirds are useful, settlements
| are mandatory, and the world feels absolutely gigantic rather
| than a sandbox separated by loading screens. Highly recommend
| checking it out (although it still won't scratch your RPG
| itch).
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Hero worship is bad in games development because it can lead to
| just as tortuous experiences for those working under a supposed
| visionary who takes the praise and becomes a megalomaniac.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| > It seems pretty clear to me that in the video games industry
| (and pretty much any 'art' industry for that matter) great
| results are driven by singular, great people. Todd Howard was
| the mind behind TES and Fallout 3/4
|
| There are also many great results that are a team effort.
|
| And according to this article Todd Howard was also part of the
| problem. For example:
|
| "[A]lmost none of the Bethesda designers wanted the game to
| launch without NPCs. The design teams at both Rockville and
| Austin wanted NPCs to fill out the world of Fallout 76, but
| they say executive producer Todd Howard was not willing to
| budge all the way up 'til launch."
| uejfiweun wrote:
| Yeah, its my bad for not articulating this in the post.
| Obviously, any giant product like a modern movie or game is
| made by teams. I think one hallmark of a great director is
| the ability to build a great team around you, which is just
| as important as being passionate and understanding the
| medium.
| bradhe wrote:
| Having a vision is "part of the problem?"
| kristofferR wrote:
| If the vision is bad then obviously.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Lots of visions are mediocre, incoherent, or superficial.
| synu wrote:
| I worked in the video game industry for a long time. This is a
| story you're being sold - it's the teams who build great games,
| not some singular great passionate mind. It's a way for
| marketing teams to build a brand, not much more than that.
| izzydata wrote:
| I don't think it comes down to a singular person, but I'm
| pretty sure it is about passion. Modern large game studios have
| removed all the passion and turned game development into an
| assembly line of 100s or more people working on it. Creating a
| very large game and also having it be good seems more like an
| exception at this point.
|
| Games with small teams probably have a much easier time
| creating a game they are passionate about even if the scope of
| the game has to be smaller.
| urthor wrote:
| I find the presence of the "auteur" is valuable because it's
| a signal to people.
|
| When there's a single leader who's highly motivated to do
| critically acclaimed work, it signals to talent that this is
| a project aimed at critically acclaimed work.
|
| Now, said auteur also makes great margin calls and leadership
| decisions.
|
| But keep in mind it's not just "great man syndrome."
| meheleventyone wrote:
| > It seems pretty clear to me that in the video games industry
| (and pretty much any 'art' industry for that matter) great
| results are driven by singular, great people.
|
| I can assure you from working inside said industry that this is
| not often the case, if ever.
|
| Edit to add: great results are driven by great teams.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I agree. Producers and designers that frontline a successful
| project get the visibility but they have to be backed by
| highly effective teams of equally gifted folks that
| collaborate effectively. I don't think this is different for
| any complex human endeavor. Often times the front liner isn't
| the one who built the team - there's often an anchor person
| more in the middle of the project that attracts talent and
| creates the atmosphere of collegial collaboration. Smart
| front liners bring those folks along to the next projects.
| From the article it sounds like that was Starfield, not 76,
| which is probably why it was so miserable.
| uejfiweun wrote:
| That's a totally fair point, and I completely agree. I should
| have clarified this in my original post. If you're passionate
| about games, but nobody wants to work with you, then that
| passion won't permeate throughout the development team. All
| these gaming visionaries tend to have the gift of extreme
| charisma and strong passion for games - you need both IMO to
| make a great result. You may have a great idea, but you need
| to get people fired up about it too and articulate it in a
| way that can be understood.
| pacetherace wrote:
| What you mean to say is that there are guys who get much more
| credit than they deserve when a game or for that matter any
| product becomes a success.
|
| Fallout 76 seems to be a classic case of unrealistic
| development and testing deadlines.
| bradhe wrote:
| I'm all for the unionization of labor in this industry. But this
| article absolutely has a spin on the whole thing. They're
| painting QA in a light where by they're underappreciated despite
| their deep talent comparable to engineering and art. Am I wrong
| in thinking that, indeed, while their skills are important,
| they're easily replaceable as compared to developers or artists?
| Avshalom wrote:
| what makes you think devs and artists are difficult to replace
| at Bethesda's scale. or indeed at any scale in the video game
| industry.
|
| more expensive maybe, but that's not the same as difficult.
| friedman23 wrote:
| Devs are absolutely hard to replace in any industry right now
| given that I have to give 2 interviews a week in my current
| job.
| Avshalom wrote:
| so at minimum two people apply and get past HR's filters
| per a week.
|
| hard to replace is when there are no interviews a week.
| thedz wrote:
| I don't know that replaceability (true or not) should have that
| much of an outsized impact on the expectations of humane
| treatment
|
| I realize capitalism rewards scarcity here, but imo this is a
| piece explicitly about the tolls that tends to bring
| Animats wrote:
| Union, yes!
|
| I'm waiting to see how this "metaverse" thing works out, as it
| moves from the dreams and bullshit stage to the actual
| implementation stage. Big, high-quality shared virtual worlds are
| hard. There really are no off the shelf solutions that Just Work.
| Epic is spending US$2 billion on this. Roblox has 90 dev teams.
| The NFT crowd has announced lots of stuff, and shipped only very
| basic worlds such as Decentraland.
|
| Bored Ape Yacht Club's "Otherside" supposedly launches in mid-
| July, with very ambitious goals. We'll see.
| paskozdilar wrote:
| Honestly, the whole metaverse thing has always felt to me like
| a bunch of baloney. Why exactly would anyone want to join
| metaverse? What purpose does it serve?
| TrevorJ wrote:
| I view it as something that is inevitably happening in
| _spite_ of all these large companies who are tying to own it.
| They are to the metaverse what AOL was to the worldwide web.
| danuker wrote:
| > how this "metaverse" thing works out
|
| Not looking too good. Especially since the interest rate hike
| (the free money faucet was tightened), but the timing might be
| coincidence.
|
| https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&plat...
| yarg wrote:
| I still can't believe that Facebook trademarked a prefix.
|
| (I'm not surprised they tried; but surely they should have
| failed.)
|
| The metaverse will succeed if it breaks free of the walled
| gardens; a federated distributed internet - controlled by the
| users.
|
| Otherwise the users will continue to be the product, eating an
| illusion of freedom that only ever tells them what they want to
| hear and think they already know.
| Hamuko wrote:
| What is my incentive as a game developer to make a "big, high-
| quality shared virtual world"?
| Animats wrote:
| Second Life is "a cash machine", according to its owners.
|
| Turns out that no advertising, rent land, sell memberships
| works.
| kaibee wrote:
| This is good motivation to make a metaverse. It is not a
| good motivation to enter one as a developer.
| devwastaken wrote:
| Connections and sale of assets. Look at VRchat.
| Macha wrote:
| But the only ways to give money for VRChat is the
| subscription for extra avatar bookmarks and a fancy
| nameplate. And from what I understand, the deeper into it
| people get, the more likely they are to stick to one
| avatar.
|
| This is a pretty good deal for the users, but it's not
| going to pay for a Meta quantity of developers.
|
| Yet if they put in all the mobile money extraction
| mechanisms into it, why would people choose Meta's product
| over VRChat?
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Meta will be taking approximately 50% of all sales on their
| metaverse platform IIRC.
|
| Seems a bit much.
| siskiyou wrote:
| If anyone looking for a career in the tech industry says they
| love games and game development, please tell them not to work for
| a gaming company. I suppose they're not all horrible, but the
| percentage of horrible companies in the gaming industry is too
| damn high.
| ModernMech wrote:
| Tell them to work in robotics instead. A lot of the technical
| challenges you find in games can be found in the computer
| vision and robot simulation spaces.
| TylerE wrote:
| This is true of pretty much of any job people want to do
| (performer, commercial pilot...)
|
| Jobs are generally; Demanding, Requiring Skill, Well
| Compensated... pick 2
| siskiyou wrote:
| I had great experiences in the tech industry for over 25
| years with very little overwork, great pay, and though I have
| some skills, really nothing special. My way to win was
| getting along in teams, and being vigilant on behalf of
| customers/company. I have a high school diploma. This was
| easy money for me.
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| Sad. 76 is one of my favorite things. I didn't bother to play it
| until they added NPC's though. Fallout with no NPC's is like a
| Hershey's bar with no chocolate.
| friedman23 wrote:
| Video game QA (really any qa) seems like an absolutely terrible
| job. If you are young and reading this, don't choose professions
| that require 0 qualifications and have a massive line out the
| door of willing applicants.
| tmp_anon_22 wrote:
| I think a lot about the emotional abuse the Overwatch team has
| faced over the years. They created a once in a generation
| experience which outperformed every reasonable expectation (OWL
| was not a reasonable expectation unless you are on shrooms).
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