[HN Gopher] The human toll of Fallout 76's launch
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The human toll of Fallout 76's launch
Author : danso
Score : 107 points
Date : 2022-06-08 19:52 UTC (1 days 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
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > When I visited I was greeted by an attractive, kind of
| gothy/emo young lady who had visible self-harm marks.
|
| > 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.
|
| That's probably someone who based her whole self-worth around
| impressing people making the games she loved.
| 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.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| If we assume that indeed games are art, it really checks out:
| artists being paid on the free market is an anomaly of the
| recent times, the norm before was patronages and commissions
| paid in advance.
| 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
| cudgy wrote:
| The hand print wall sounds like a hokey HR idea. Seems a bit
| harsh to judge an entire company on it.
| klyrs wrote:
| It's a lot more fun than getting fingerprinted, and you get
| the whole palm, too!
| Geonode wrote:
| It shows you that HR has clout in the company which is bad.
| Where HR is necessary they should be silent paper movers.
| mavhc wrote:
| Everyone else in the company went along with it
| 908B64B197 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.
|
| Someone's therapist is getting a new boat soon.
| robonerd 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_
|
| This sort of thing seems to happen quite a bit. Somebody in
| HR goes baby crazy and starts treating people in the office
| as their surrogate children. You can't say shit about it,
| because _it 's HR_.
| 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)
| ryathal wrote:
| Pizza parties and healthcare are different ends of the
| spectrum. Bad healthcare is simply declining an offer, it's
| part of the compensation package being presented. A pizza
| party is fine for showing appreciation (better than cheap
| swag), I would run from a company that adds this in their
| compensation package though.
| Spivak wrote:
| I feel like these are crazy different magnitudes though.
| Buying a team of 10 the most expensive pizza in town is like
| $150. Giving that same team noticeably better healthcare
| costs...
|
| * $3000/mo to cover employee paid premiums.
|
| * $5k-$30k/yr to fund everyone up to their individual
| deductible.
|
| * $5k-$100k/yr to fund everyone up to their individual oopm
|
| * $36k/yr to fully find everyone's HSA.
|
| I think there's a lot of cheap low hanging fruit that makes
| people happy like pizza, beer, snack, and soda and it's not
| like the choice is one or the other.
| 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.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Also... isn't there just food at the cafeteria?
|
| If there's no food at the office I'd start worrying about the
| company not being able to secure funding.
| tobias__ wrote:
| Facebook managers have used sushi to motivate employees to
| complete the internal employee sentiment survey routinely
| every half for the last n years (something between the
| novelty and properties you describe) makes it attractive to
| folks
|
| Kind of shows the difference in worlds between plain old tech
| (sushi as motivation for a half hour survey) vs gaming (food
| as incentive/etc. for ridiculous hours)
| mavhc wrote:
| Just give me money so I can spend it how I want to, free
| perks at work aren't actually free
| SilasX wrote:
| Naively, yes. But if they gave you the $X to spend
| however you want, you'd have to pay income taxes out of
| it and then sales taxes to buy for yourself. When the
| workplace does it, they don't -- and it's an expense for
| them! Plus, they get the bulk price.
| mavhc wrote:
| In which case let the employees decide what to spend
| things on
| SilasX wrote:
| If they did it that way, it would be taxable income.
| [deleted]
| causi wrote:
| There's something to be said for a guilt-free indulgence.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > 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.
|
| That's not all of it, though. It's also one of those meals
| that are logistically east, because most people are OK with
| pizza. "[S]omething more tasty, healthy, and costly" is also
| the kind of thing that will likely require separate
| individualized orders for each person.
| 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.
| [deleted]
| 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
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Unfortunately, many of the schools that offer people
| creative degrees are also more than happy to charge them
| exorbitant sums of money for tuition - more so for the
| graduate degrees. I have a feeling that there are plenty of
| creative artists in the movie / gaming / etc. industry that
| are sitting on $100k-$200k in student debt, making
| $50k/year in some high cost-of-living area while being
| worked to the bone.
|
| Hard to know what you really like or hate, before working
| with it full time.
| caoilte wrote:
| the movie industry has some good unions. It ain't perfect but
| it's something.
| 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.
| kodah wrote:
| Fair
| robonerd wrote:
| One problem with companies buying pizza is they always buy it
| from whatever pizza shop has the best reputation for reliably
| filling large catering orders, which is never the pizza shop
| that makes the best pizza.
|
| I like pizza, but I only want pizza some of the time. And when
| I want it, I want to buy it myself and get what I want, not get
| something mediocre.
| pornel wrote:
| I went through the game dev -> business dev career path.
|
| The reason was simple: I did not believe there can be anything
| interesting or challenging in non-game dev. To my eyes it
| looked like a choice between making things fly and explode
| (which was cool and relevant to my peers) and being some
| "database accountant" writing boring stuff I did not care
| about.
|
| I was a broke student in my first real job. I didn't even
| consider being underpaid, because I was making more money than
| I've ever seen. I took a while before I've learned that my
| manager was paid literally 3x more than I was.
|
| From the inside, crunch felt like being a hero and shipping on
| time. I enjoyed coding and was in good health, so it didn't
| seem problematic to me.
|
| I did not realize how fucked-up game dev business was until I
| had 3 studios in a row die before releasing their second game.
| entropie wrote:
| > The reason was simple: I did not believe there can be
| anything interesting or challenging in non-game dev.
|
| Every now and then someone creates new piece of software that
| just changes things. Twitter as example (I remember saying to
| myself as I signed up for the bet, "well, that's gonna be not
| useful at all - who the f needs SMS on the internets?).
| Another example, in a more software related bubble one could
| say rails (ruby on rails) was very influential for web
| development overall.
|
| I find thinking out of the box very challenging.
| Geonode wrote:
| The jury is still very much out on Twitter's usefulness.
| Primary engagement is from those who want to be seen and
| heard. Not sure anyone's listening.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| The reporters are. I haven't visited twitter in a couple
| of years, but I see plenty of news articles that start
| Musk, Trump, or somebody tweeted something. It seems to
| be a pretty good press release pipeline.
| viraptor wrote:
| Also on the other less cynical version of that, reporters
| are there - always. If there's something happening on the
| ground, you can get an unfiltered / unedited feed of
| what's happening around the world. For example I've got a
| list of 20 or so reporters from different countries on
| the ground in Ukraine, covering the situation every day.
| I find it much better than reading the published
| summaries.
| acomjean wrote:
| It can be useful when all your infrastructure is down, to
| get the word out. It's a decent second channel. But I'll
| agree I think most tweets seem like shouting at a cloud.
| mbrodersen wrote:
| This is why I left the games industry. I love working on games
| but it doesn't outweigh the cost.
| jayd16 wrote:
| >you don't get to make creative decisions.
|
| You do. I think it's a major appeal of making games. Miyamoto
| is not designing every level, art asset, every shader and every
| post effect.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Because they're passionate, and passion can and is exploited
| because it's irrational.
| newsclues wrote:
| It's not culture but community that young workers seek. They
| want fun friends, not boring old coworkers with kids.
| Termitiono wrote:
| I went to a private game academy in Berlin and stoped after a
| year.
|
| I got more insight into game dev and I think that I'm good but
| you only need a handful of things which are really interesting.
|
| Like the game engine or the ai part or whatever.
|
| Those people are just better than I am due to just being
| smarter etc.
|
| So do I want to be a normal paid tool developer or dialog
| system biluilder or do I want a proper carrier and earn money?
|
| I earn a good amount of money and I do not work in game dev.
|
| I don't regret it and can imagine doing full time private game
| development when I'm 50 and stoped working.
| 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!
| lethologica wrote:
| Unless the coding of boring business logic crushes your soul
| so much that you burn out and end up losing interest in being
| creative altogether.
| robonerd wrote:
| I think you have this precisely backwards. Soulless crunch
| work in the video game industry as a code monkey given no
| creative control over the game is more likely to kill your
| interest in playing video games. If regular boring non-
| videogame office work killed people's interest in games,
| there would hardly be a market for videogames at all; who
| would buy them?
| justinhj wrote:
| I let this sentiment keep me in the games industry for 20
| years. Since I left I've had no trouble finding challenging
| and fun work, for better pay and no overtime. Wish I had
| left sooner
| Asooka wrote:
| What is quest design if not heaps of business logic with a
| different name.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Your soul can be crushed in any industry, though, and every
| type of job can burn you out and make you lose your
| creativity. It's up to each of us to watch out for
| ourselves.
| DawsonBruce wrote:
| > And, possibly just as importantly, you'll have time for
| gaming!
|
| Facts. One of the main motivators for me to NEVER become a
| game devs is simply my love for gaming. Anything I've ever
| worked on professionally has become so demystified that the
| things I once loved become unappealing.
| hinkley wrote:
| "Find the thing you love and do that for a living, and
| you'll never work a day in your life," is such bullshit.
| Has anyone over 35 - with half a brain - ever said that? If
| so, then shame on them. Maybe find the thing you love
| second most, and risk resenting that. Maybe.
|
| Importantly, other people are going to exploit your love to
| take advantage of you, getting you to sacrifice some of
| yourself for these ideals you hold, and then not share the
| rewards with you. To you it's your identity. To them it's
| words that save them money.
| 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.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Also anecdotal, but the best self-taught programmers I know
| (or knew, at this point) came from the demoscene and often
| made their careers in game development.
|
| The people you mention made a common mistake. They went to a
| university to study X, and not because they were interested
| in X but because they wanted to do Y and believed that X
| would be useful in it. That's a mistake, because academic
| education does not work like that. Mastering the curriculum
| does not make you an expert in the field. The curriculum is
| only a scaffold. You are always expected to learn more, both
| because you should find the topic interesting and because
| learning more makes sense.
| 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.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Hacking savefiles and similar stuff (yourself, not just
| copying things on the web) help teach the key work habits
| of day to day programming. Problem solving, sticking to a
| problem, visualizing, decoding, basic computer
| architecture, tech docs, self starting, debugging, etc.
|
| Gamer-motivated CS people with those skills will go far.
| dankboys wrote:
| console hackers and game programmers have little overlap,
| though. If you've spent the time to understand VR/ED you
| probably want to do that, in which case you're not
| programming.
| Thaxll wrote:
| Your average AAA dev is usually better than other fields
| because they use C++ and so they need to understand a lot of
| complicated topics.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| It's not quite like the old days, but games and game
| engines frequently require far more math and algorithms
| than the usual programmer just moving bits between database
| and screens.
|
| I basically bombed out of the math sequence at linear
| algebra, at least I gleaned enough to do basic rotations
| and other matrix math on polygons so I could understand the
| techniques used by the apis and big boys.
|
| They also need to do performance tuning, and in consoles
| with uniform hardware, get to optimize code to the hardware
| to ridiculous degrees. The war stories of games dev in the
| Atari 2600 up to the playstation 1 are amazing.
| 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?
| andkenneth wrote:
| I absolutely noticed the gamer attrition between first and
| second year compsci at uni.
| kjeetgill wrote:
| Huh, I guess I always found the exact opposite to be true.
| But I finished university in 2012, prior to the gold rush. CS
| department cohort stereotypes have probably drifted somewhat.
| googlryas wrote:
| Class of 2006 here :)
| 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.
| Asooka wrote:
| Microsoft didn't even reign in 343 Industries when they were
| fucking up their flagship Halo franchise. I don't think anyone
| at the mothership wants to actively manage their acquisitions.
| Let's see if they do something about Blizzard...
| ansible wrote:
| Why are things so bad in the games industry? As compared to other
| IT / programming fields?
| Thaxll wrote:
| Well, paying 100s of employees for years without certitude to
| get your money back is a big risk, that's why lot of them move
| to recurring revenue. ( subscription, game pass, store, MTX etc
| ... )
|
| It's also the reason why you don't see major new IPs, the risk
| is huge, it can lead to mass layoff / studio closure.
|
| Making AAA game is risky and expensive.
| 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.
| cudgy wrote:
| Why must players have a "fully equipped build" to enjoy the
| game? If a player only cares about skins and other bling,
| are they playing a game or are they building a showcase to
| display to their friends?
| ansible wrote:
| A lot of the Asian MMOs are pay-to-win, and it wouldn't
| surprise me that more Western game companies are moving
| in that direction... it is very profitable.
| extrememacaroni wrote:
| Geez man, we got to the point where if you're poor in
| real life you're also poor in the game, and you're fine
| with that I guess. When the opposite could so easily be
| true if not for greed.
|
| You can not care if you want, I think it's just a lame
| thing in general to do so.
| cudgy wrote:
| I agree that it is lame, but one can still play the game
| for free without having the latest gear.
| 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.
| drdebug wrote:
| While I've always understood overtime for startups, or to solve
| an unexpected problem, I simply do not understand why people put
| up with systemic overtime for large companies making large amount
| of money. They are simply abusing your time, you should refuse.
| They are saving money by not hiring enough people. It's
| management saving money, or being incompetent, but then it's
| management's problem, not yours. Of course, during difficult
| times one may have no other choice, but I'd just run asap.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Are there any good examples of single player -> MMO that were
| successful?
|
| I loved Fallout and Elder Scrolls but absolutely hated ES:O and
| FO:76. I loved those games for having my own little world that
| was my own. Lack of multiplayer was a feature itself, not
| something I wanted to be implemented.
|
| As with most MMO's I feel like I wanted to play an MMO I'd just
| mainline WoW, not some crappy imitation reusing IP.
| 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.
| panzagl wrote:
| I think FO76 is better than 4- nearly all of the RPG systems
| (dialogue, perks, crafting) have been improved, the world
| design is much more interesting, and the map has a ton of
| hidden corners to poke around in.
| 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.
| robonerd wrote:
| I first played Morrowind two or three years ago, a few
| years after I first played Fallout 4. No nostalgia glasses
| for me, I had _negative_ interest in games like Morrowind
| when Morrowind was new.
|
| But playing Morrowind made me realize just how crap Fallout
| 4 is as an RPG. Fallout 4 has almost no choices to make and
| all the characters worship you as a messiah five minutes
| after meeting you. Morrowind is _very_ rough around the
| edges, the roll-based combat system was a very hard
| swallow. But despite the rough /exploitable mechanics and
| the bad graphics, Morrowind still manages to be a much more
| immersive world because the people in it actually make
| sense. They have their own agendas and biases and they
| don't care about you until you give them a reason to care.
| In Morrowind you join a faction and are given orders by
| some regional flunky, or worse, that regional flunky tells
| you to buzz off and do shitty odd jobs for another
| apprentice in the faction. In Fallout 4 you approach a
| faction and immediately meet the faction leader who tells
| you that you're Howard's own gift to humanity.
| 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.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I think most of F and ES games are pretty boring, and the
| chart is about as compelling as cable ratings the Big
| Bang theory is a great show. It has mass appeal. It's a
| very successful game. But they seem dull to me. The newer
| ones at least.
| lostmsu wrote:
| The chart is more compelling than your (or mine) personal
| opinion. Especially, when it is not substantiated.
| [deleted]
| 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.
| D13Fd wrote:
| That's funny. I played them both at release.
|
| I thought Fallout 1 was incredible. I remember getting
| the trailer literally on VHS tape and being so hyped for
| it, and it totally lived up to it. It was unlike anything
| else at the time.
|
| Fallout 2 felt kind of watered down by comparison. The
| whole idea to move the series back by 80 or so years was
| terrible. The enclave was a terrible idea. The first
| Fallout made sense 80 years after the war. Everything
| looks basically the same. People still live in bombed out
| buildings. Nothing makes sense. The second and later
| Fallouts were all set way too late.
| poisonarena wrote:
| I was a fan of all of them but 4 just felt really dumbed
| down as far as the story and rpg elements.. I grew up on
| 1-3 and didn't play NV until last year when I was 36, and I
| really loved it. It seems to really focus on the crafting
| and base building and for me that part was not so fun, even
| though I like the idea
| [deleted]
| 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).
| na85 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.
|
| Pretty sure this attitude is what led to Daikatana. Cults of
| personality are universally bad.
| 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.
| synu wrote:
| I've never once experienced the "face" of a game doing all
| the hiring, or even being involved in too many interviews
| (except for marketing purposes, of course, but I mean
| hiring interviews). It's quite a full time and important
| job to do the PR.
| debug-desperado wrote:
| Maybe Todd was trying to just ship the dang thing to satisfy
| Zenimax. Build the games-as-service sandbox, let it fail,
| parent company head honchos leave you alone and your teams
| get to go back to working on the kind of games they actually
| want to build.
| 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.
| LegitShady wrote:
| the vision of fallout 76 was the issue. They took out all
| the interaction with characters and left in the junk
| collecting and base building, which for many players were
| the least interesting parts of fallout 4. The vision
| sabotaged the product.
| 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."
| synu wrote:
| That's why marketing teams work hard to create that
| perception in the audience.
| urthor wrote:
| The difference is that, having worked in the industry, I
| can say that film directors are given exactly the power
| they are advertised as having.
|
| The film industry has learnt through many trials and
| errors it has to happen this way.
|
| Software hasn't.
| synu wrote:
| So less that in the video games industry great results
| are driven by singular, great people today, but games
| would be better if they were?
| urthor wrote:
| Games and films are both an exercise in project
| management.
|
| Films are an exercise in getting everything you need in
| your 70 or so days of filming. The days you've rented the
| exorbitantly expensive cameras, trailers, lights, etc.
|
| Games are similar, except over a few years.
|
| Only the auteur leadership model is able to make those
| project management tradeoffs quickly, under a lot of
| stress, and well, to deliver high quality output.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| More like it is a good signal because someone was willing
| to risk or build his reputation by putting his name on it.
|
| The Civ games have been around for a while, then it became
| "Sid Meier's Civilization". Not because he went back in
| time and did more work on Civ, but because he built his rep
| and wanted to use it to sell a couple of more copies.
| GVIrish wrote:
| It's not about passion at all. Plenty of passionate work
| themselves to the breaking point and end up with crappy games
| or failing to release at all.
|
| It's that making ambitious games is hard, and if your
| organization doesn't have good engineering practices, good
| project management, a clear achievable vision, a realistic
| timeline, and capable team members, you will have difficulty
| succeeding.
|
| And even with less ambitious games, studios fail all the time
| for the same reasons. It's not just the AAA games.
|
| Clearly a smaller team with a smaller scope has an easier
| time because as you increase headcount, communication
| overhead increases exponentially, and bigger teams are
| usually trying more technically difficult things than a
| smaller team would try to tackle.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Firstly as other people have pointed out, teams build great
| products, not some individual with a messianic vision. That's
| just marketing.
|
| Secondly, Todd Howard _is_ the greedy executive who pushed out
| Fallout 76 and keeps rereleasing skyrim year after year after
| year. He has passion yes, but it 's for raking in the
| benjamins. Making great games is strictly secondary.
|
| Thirdly FO76 was such a total fiasco that people seem to have
| forgotten that Fallout 4 was insanely buggy at launch and even
| when they got through that was mediocre at best. In Fallout New
| Vegas there are interesting puzzles to solve and different ways
| to progress through the quest. In Fallout 4 you go places and
| then shoot people. Occasionally you get presented with 4 dialog
| options which are "yes", "yes", "no, but actually yes", and
| "close this dialog for now and be forced to come back later and
| be presented by the same choices".
| 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.
| swivelmaster wrote:
| As soon as a project is known internally as the one the B
| team was assigned to because all the "favorite" people went
| to the "better" project, it's basically doomed. This has
| happened so many times, the game industry has enough people
| who should know better, and yet...
| 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.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Even still this isn't correct, even building a great team
| isn't the work of one person and plenty of great games are
| built by teams lead by people who don't get press as
| visionaries. You're falling for marketing, both personal
| (where extreme charisma does help) and company lead where
| wheeling out a famous name sells units. Which isn't to say
| famous people are all rubbish but that the hype and the
| reality are very different to one another.
| 127 wrote:
| Only proof I've seen Todd being good at is marketing. That's
| it.
| 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.
| robonerd 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._
|
| Nah. What actually happens is you have one [or more] driven
| people and a team of others helping guide them and restrain
| their excesses. After a few commercial successes, the rest of
| the team gets forgotten or left behind eventually and the
| single celebrity creator, now unrestrained (and ego inflated by
| fans), starts producing crap.
|
| Hideo Kojima, I'm looking at you.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| >Effective multiplayer design requires precise mathematical
| knowledge of how long it will take for players to clear
| encounters
|
| This sounds interesting, but I don't really understand what it
| means. Why would they time encounters in a multi-player game?
| Wouldn't those have to be run in a separate instance if they are
| timing sensitive, especially if you don't want other players to
| interrupt the event?
|
| But I have 0 knowledge in game design and I'm pretty sure they
| are probably talking about something completely different! :')
| stagger87 wrote:
| I don't know the exact issue they are referencing, but if I had
| to guess... these sorts of multiplayer games typically have
| respawning enemies that are shared with everyone in the world.
| If you respawn them too slowly, then you will have tons of
| people standing around waiting for an enemy to respawn. A quest
| might require you to kill 10 of those enemies. You can see how
| this might be a problem. Smart games do this dynamically based
| on current populations.
| 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.
| friedman23 wrote:
| Everyone in my company is interviewing and we hire very
| few of the applicants because few are qualified. Having
| to spend 2 hours of every single employee's time a week
| and each employee is being paid close to 1/3rd of a
| million dollars or more is difficulty in hiring. Oh, and
| when you do find someone qualified they have 5 other
| offers.
| 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
| poulpy123 wrote:
| How the fact that they are easily replaceable justify to treat
| them bad ?
| j_schmuck wrote:
| Why are megaprojects so reliably running into these protracted
| fucked launches? What are the actual managerial processes like?
| How are basic failures of planning and scope and quality so
| constant for the biggest players in the industry?
|
| What actual ingredients are missing?
| scotty79 wrote:
| Acceptance of mismatch between reality and pre-agreed plans?
| glitchc wrote:
| Megaprojects are difficult to execute without a clear vision
| and a core group of individuals (less than 5) driving that
| vision to fruition. Every other style of management results in
| failure to deliver a product, either through feature creep,
| death by a thousand cuts, or misaligned incentives.
| 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.
| paskozdilar wrote:
| > own it
|
| Own _what_ , exactly? Is "metaverse" just a new word for
| "cyberspace"?
| bobkazamakis wrote:
| effectively, yes, but don't tell the MBAs. We'll continue
| to go down the route of individual, centralized "meta-
| spaces" in the sense that people will hang out on discord
| like they always have, except now with a VR avatar.
|
| Rinse and repeat for everything else done online.
| 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"?
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Same as your incentive to make games for the App Store.
| Market access.
| Animats wrote:
| Second Life is "a cash machine", according to its owners.
|
| Turns out that no advertising, rent land, sell memberships
| works.
| lithos wrote:
| It is an absolute cash cow around three million usd a
| month: http://www.gridsurvey.com/ (website works it's just
| painfully slow). Able to run on server hardware from the
| early 2000s. (There are also other major sources of income
| related to currency exchanges between Lindens and USD, and
| non-landtier subscriptions).
|
| Personally I see it as a reason why the current metaverse
| schemes are a scam, since there are numbers right there
| that profit is from selling what are essentially indirect
| server rentals (that becomes more profitable as time goes
| on as server prices drop). Rather than a one time 'crypto'
| purchase silliness, that scammers have essentially set
| their sites on.
| kaibee wrote:
| This is good motivation to make a metaverse. It is not a
| good motivation to enter one as a developer.
| filoleg wrote:
| Presumably, the stuff you develop in metaverse would
| allow you to monetarily benefit from it as well, and that
| should be good enough of a motivation for a lot of devs
| to enter the space.
|
| For a rather primitive example: look at Roblox (the
| closest functional approximation of a proto-metaverse)
| and see how much money some Roblox games can make. In
| 2020, Roblox devs generated about $328mil in revenue,
| with 32 of them getting paid over a $1mil. And that's not
| even mentioning that a lot of them were made by one
| person.
| 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?
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Fortnite makes billions just selling skins, which people
| can only use one of, no?
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Meta will be taking approximately 50% of all sales on their
| metaverse platform IIRC.
|
| Seems a bit much.
| Asooka wrote:
| Metaverse is already successful, but it's called Second Life
| and VRChat and Club Penguin and...
| Justsignedup wrote:
| This is a Kotaku article, and given the quality of the reporting
| there, for all I know every developer save 1 on Fallout 76 loved
| working on it, and it was the project that drew engineers to
| Bethesda!
|
| I don't trust this source. It sounds like something close to
| accurate based on previous game industry insights, but again, I
| don't trust Kotaku for telling me if it is currently raining
| while we're standing outside.
| 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.
| Asooka wrote:
| Embedded usually pays worse than equivalent jobs writing "big
| iron" software. Is robotics any different? What would you
| recommend as an entry point to the field?
| ModernMech wrote:
| Robotics is great, you can make bank and it's not a
| saturated job market. I would say get started at one of the
| driverless car startups, they are at the forefront of the
| robotics industry now as it would relate to gaming. Things
| like industrial robotics and control heavy systems (think
| Boston Dynamics) might not appeal to game devs.
| 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.
| TylerE wrote:
| Tech for me is "not demanding" for the most part.
|
| Demanding is hauling 50lb concreate blocks or stocking
| store shelves all day, or something maybe less physically
| strenuous, but..distasteful, like working with sewage or
| garbage)
| 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.
| panzagl wrote:
| I thought the game was much better without NPCs- it was creepy
| and sad with unexpected outbreaks of violence. I still love it,
| though- I play maybe once a week with my brother and we just
| wander the map looking at messed up stuff, collecting junk and
| hunting for cryptids. I think we were exactly the audience the
| game was intended for- but unfortunately that is not the
| audience the gamer press caters to. Those people are still on
| /r/fo76 simultaneously bragging about grinding out 50 levels
| over a weekend and complaining that there's not enough end game
| content.
| ben7799 wrote:
| The games industry seems to be massively overrated. People who
| think non-game software is devoid of interesting problems to
| solve have blinders on. We hear so many more problems about bad
| working conditions at game companies than any other type of
| software.
|
| All this BS about siloing QA off is ridiculous. The celebrity
| worship of project managers/game designers/executives at game
| companies is way out of context. The whole idea of spending
| hundreds of millions of dollars to produce a game and then
| selling each copy for $50-60 and having to rely on millions of
| fickle gamers to buy it is hugely problematic and inferior to
| other types of businesses. The whole adjacency to the
| entertainment industry is problematic. The vast # of
| creatives/artists & non-technical employees doing "toil" is
| problematic.
|
| I have been working 22 years.. if you asked me when I was 13 or
| 18 I would have said I wanted to build games. By the time I was
| 21 I already knew it was a bad industry. All my friends who did
| go into the games industry left within a few years. Everyone is
| vastly more happy now that they went to work on
| commercial/enterprise stuff.
| 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).
| cudgy wrote:
| Many state that game devs and qa make less money. How much less?
| The article rambles on about working extra hours at a deadline
| (for which almost all companies require at times) and receiving
| overtime pay (which few tech companies pay), but I read no actual
| numbers.
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