[HN Gopher] Moviemaking and gamemaking are converging
___________________________________________________________________
Moviemaking and gamemaking are converging
Author : pseudolus
Score : 151 points
Date : 2023-03-23 10:01 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| pleb_nz wrote:
| They have been good decades.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| You don't say; I honestly can't tell the difference between most
| AAA titles and Hollywood films nowadays.
|
| No, I don't buy either.
| hackernewds wrote:
| > No I don't buy either
|
| Do you steal them?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Hilariously, no. Those games aren't even worth pirating, let
| alone purchasing.
| aosaigh wrote:
| Why not?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Cheap, vapid stereotypes all the way down.
|
| CoD games from the past decade or so are particularly
| egregious examples, among many others. You could market them
| as Hollywood action thrillers and most people wouldn't notice
| a difference.
| flappyeagle wrote:
| > No, I don't buy either.
|
| If you don't partake, maybe that's why you can't tell the
| difference.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| I don't need to be a world-class chef to tell you there's a
| fly in my soup and the soup is crap regardless.
| qersist3nce wrote:
| >No, I don't buy either.
|
| Nothing of value is lost. Nowadays games are manufactured
| dopamine-gamifying cashgrabs and movies are propaganda outlets
| for whatever care-free non-STEM academics have brewed up as
| "current thing".
|
| 2000s was the golden era of gaming. Just compare remakes of RE2
| and RE3 with the original PS1 ones. Or the new Wolfenstein
| series with Castle Wolfenstein.
| 50 wrote:
| > 2000s was the golden era of gaming
|
| I recently discovered _L.O.L: Lack of Love_ (Dreamcast,
| 2000)[1][2] due to stumbling upon the soundtrack by Ryuichi
| Sakamoto[3], and I 've been meaning to try to find a way to
| play it.
|
| 1: https://lparchive.org/Lack-of-Love/ 2:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.O.L.:_Lack_of_Love 3:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZjeC4BiUuM
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| L.O.L is listed as playable on the Redream emulator
| compatibility list.
|
| https://redream.io/compatibility/
| MayeulC wrote:
| Most game studios from that time wouldn't qualify as AAA
| today.
|
| There are new indie gems all the time. Tunic, Hades, Hollow
| knight, Risk of Rain, Overgrowth, Return of the Obra Dinn,
| Kerbal Space Program, Factorio, and the list goes on.
| Innovative gameplay, music, visuals are everywhere. Often
| indie games cater to niches. They don't appeal to everybody,
| which is part of their charm.
|
| Just like blockbusters are usually average in most respects
| other than their budget. That makes for pretty good results
| on every single aspect, but given the budget, studios won't
| take risks by innovating too much in unknown areas.
| Jensson wrote:
| > Most game studios from that time wouldn't qualify as AAA
| today.
|
| They were still far larger than todays indie studios,
| todays indies are making great games but the kind of budget
| novel ideas had back then rarely exist for novel games
| today.
| MayeulC wrote:
| That's probably true in both gaming and cinema, as the
| genre becomes better known, and the unexplored
| possibilities space becomes smaller.
|
| Still, there are AA games studios, even if most have been
| swallowed due to market consolidation lately.
|
| GSC Game world (300 employees, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.), Team 17
| (200 employees, worms, overcooked, escapists), PopCap
| games, etc.
|
| But I kind of prove your point as most I can fit in the
| above list mostly churn out sequels to their previously
| succesful titles.
|
| On the other hand, making good and technically impressive
| games has become easier and cheaper over the past two
| decades, with indies often reaching or going above the
| bar placed by AAA studios back then.
|
| _Tunic_ was made by a single developer, for instance.
| MattRix wrote:
| Gaming now is much better than the early 2000s. There were
| some great games back then, but these days there is more
| quality and variety in every dimension and in nearly every
| genre (except RTS games which got split into MOBAs and
| factory games).
|
| Just think about modern games like Elden Ring, BoTW,
| Overwatch, TLOU2, Immortality, Celeste and Hades, just to
| name some of the more popular yet interesting titles that
| came to mind.
| Arkhaine_kupo wrote:
| > 2000s was the golden era of gaming.
|
| Things weren't better, you were just younger.
|
| I was a teen in the 2000s and I had free time and every game
| felt new and exciting. There is 0 chance the landscape for
| media isn't a trillion times better now though.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| > Things weren't better, you were just younger.
|
| Games weren't made to be cash grabs that will be edited in
| post.
|
| Say what you want about games in 2000 but people draining
| all their savings on a game was THE news, not just another
| mobile/gacha game.
|
| And if game didn't ship fully done it got panned. Today
| they get score based on number of dinners writer was on
| Arkhaine_kupo wrote:
| > Games weren't made to be cash grabs that will be edited
| in post.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsiman_(video_game)
|
| > And if game didn't ship fully done it got panned.
|
| Bethesda is literally one of the most revered game
| companies and their bugs are as iconoic as their
| questlines
| Ygg2 wrote:
| You're not addressing my point, sure Pepsiman was shit,
| but it didn't bankrot you or cause addictive behaviors.
| There were some Korean MMOs and stuff, but it wasn't
| omnipresent.
|
| > Bethesda is literally one of the most revered game
| companies and their bugs are as iconoic as their
| questlines
|
| *Despite their bugs. And even Morrowind caused uproar
| when it corrupted your saves and what not.
| Arkhaine_kupo wrote:
| > it didn't bankrot you or cause addictive behaviors.
|
| Considering the guy above was talking about RE remakes
| and Lord of the rings, I don't think he cares about gacha
| games as they are not triple A.
|
| And sure those are bad, awful but they are hardly
| videogames. They are rebranded fruit machines. King the
| dumb company behind candy crush etc has more
| psychologists than programmers in their office to help
| people get addicted.
|
| I do not think that is a problem of the gaming industry
| as entertainment, because it is not a videogame, its a
| Skinner Machine with a couple mini games to get the
| conditioning going.
|
| > And even Morrowind caused uproar when it corrupted your
| saves and what not.
|
| But it did not affect their scores, reputation or sales.
| Same as cyberpunk 2077 or probably Starfield later this
| year.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| > I do not think that is a problem of the gaming industry
| as entertainment, because it is not a videogame, its a
| Skinner Machine with a couple mini games to get the
| conditioning going.
|
| Gacha mechanics and its ilk are everywhere, from
| Battlefield to Diablo to Overwatch, etc. Most egregious
| example probably being Genshin Impact.
|
| > But it did not affect their scores, reputation or
| sales. Same as cyberpunk 2077
|
| Sure because rest of the game was amazing, but not even
| CP2077 escaped reviewers wrath. It got panned for poor
| perf and its user score on metacritic is justifiably low.
| GrinningFool wrote:
| > Games weren't made to be cash grabs that will be edited
| in post.
|
| Arcade games were literal cash grabs, dating back to the
| 70s. Insert coin to continue.
| Jensson wrote:
| > There is 0 chance the landscape for media isn't a
| trillion times better now though.
|
| When was the last time a movie like the lord of the rings
| was released? 20 years, when it was released. Since then
| movies went more into soulless 3d rendering and so on. Big
| budget games took a similar path, back then investors
| hadn't figured out that they could churn out the same game
| over and over with new graphics so they funded a lot of
| novel game ideas, but that stopped and now most big budget
| games are very much the same.
|
| The landscape might be better today in theory, but in
| practice the culture that made those days happen is no
| longer there and it wont come back since what made it
| happen was bridging old tech skills with new tech skills,
| the old skills are no longer there.
| [deleted]
| Arkhaine_kupo wrote:
| > the culture that made those days happen
|
| Literally one movie, that was an unexpected hit is your
| contender for better culture?
|
| In 2001 the highest grossing movie was Harry potter, and
| right below lord of the rings was monsters inc and
| jurasic park.
|
| In 2002 Lord of the rings, Harry potter, Spiderman
|
| in 2003 lord of the rings, matrix,nemo and pirates of the
| caribean.
|
| Like how is that any different to now when you have
| pirates, spiderman, some children disney movie and
| fantastic beats which is just more harry potter?
|
| > the old skills are no longer there.
|
| Dune had more practical effects than lord of the rings.
| In 2001 the TV golden age had not started. Shows like the
| sopranos and the wire where struggling to find an
| audience. Friends and CSI reigned. Nowadays House of the
| Dragon and Last of US two high quality shows, with good
| use of practical effects are doing better than comparable
| mediocre daytime tv.
|
| Even blockbusters are in many ways better. Andor is a
| million times better than anything from the 2000s
| prequels.
| bakugo wrote:
| Things were better.
| lovehashbrowns wrote:
| How quick people forget what exactly happened in the 2000s
| lmao. Bethesda's horse armor, Blizzard releasing the cash
| shop in what many people believe is the best World of
| Warcraft expansion, and Valve introducing purchasable hats in
| TF2. Golden era lmao
|
| Horse armor in 2006. Oblivion was also commercially
| successful and showed a game would still be successful even
| if it was a buggy mess on release.
|
| Blizzard introduced WoW's cash shop in 2008 and sold its
| first pet, all as part of the incredibly successful Wrath of
| the Lich King expansion. Although really the first sign of
| things to come was with the trading card game and its in-game
| tie-ins. That was released in 2006. First pet in 2008 and the
| first mount available for cash at the battle.net shop was in
| 2010 with the Celestial Steed. Oh yes, people were upset and
| mad. But that mount was /everywhere/ in-game.
|
| Worst offender by far was valve's introduction of TF2 hats in
| 2009 and their continuation of cs:go loot boxes in the 2010s.
| This is not some outsider company btw, this is industry
| veteran and industry darling valve.
|
| Golden age is such a joke.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| I'm sorry but _holy shit what a bad take_.
|
| >whatever care-free non-STEM academics have brewed up as
| "current thing".
|
| Ah nevermind you're one of these people that think that not
| being in STEM is a crime, my bad, I thought we could have a
| rational discussion.
|
| >Or the new Wolfenstein series with Castle Wolfenstein.
|
| So, better in every possible way, with more brutal and
| satisfying fighting than Castle Wolfenstein ever had, still
| killing nazis (something that everyone ought to be happy
| with) ? I sure hope you're not angry about the fact that your
| crew is made up of a polish man, a jew, a mentally ill man
| and other kinds of people the nazis called undesirables
| making it a fun clap back at them. Right ? That's definitely
| not what your problem is, _right_ ?
|
| I'm sure that you have no problems with games now including
| deeper themes like death and being a father (God of War),
| vengeance (The Last of Us Part 2), atonement (The Last of
| Us), paranormal activities (Control), or just being straight
| up absolutely great games with good stories like Prey, RDR2,
| Divinity, Outer Wilds, Disco Elysium, Octopath Traveler being
| varied and relaxing like Stardew, Terraria, being better
| metroidvanias than anything that came out before like Hollow
| Knight, Ori, amazing roguelikes like Hades, Dead Cells,
| Returnal, or just an infinite variety if I just go even in
| the last ten years.
| MattRix wrote:
| Agreed completely, the parent comment is completely out of
| touch with the actual state of the game industry.
| pipo234 wrote:
| Same here, but I'm curious what you think causes this
| mediocrity?
|
| I'm assuming the AAA game studios and Holywood know what
| they're doing, and money is definitely an objective. But why do
| they not succeed in telling an interesting story? Is it the
| focus on production quality? Is that the result of compromise
| between too many middle managers? Or simply: too much money, no
| one cares?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| I think it's very simple: In a bid to satisfy everyone, they
| end up satisfying noone.
|
| If you try to create a product for everyone, you will end up
| with a product so bland and void of character that noone will
| want it. A good product has its fair shares of fans and
| detractors, a bad product either has only fans or detractors.
| jl6 wrote:
| It's a tempting explanation, but were Hollywood movies ever
| _not_ aiming for the biggest audience possible?
|
| I buy the argument for games though, which historically
| have been much cheaper to produce and hence could be
| targeted to a smaller audience.
| LegitShady wrote:
| Hollywood movies have become open propaganda as a
| platform for beat you over the head messaging. They want
| the broad audience but they chase them away at the same
| time when they see the films. It makes people cynical and
| reduces interest over time.
| pipo234 wrote:
| So are you saying it's simply bad marketing research? Ie.
| if they would be able to narrow the target audience from
| "everyone" to a proper niche (say 18+ or teen age girls)
| they might succeed? That is: target a smaller market but
| server them better?
|
| I feel that somehow, even with all those dedicated,
| inspired (and underpaid) creatives working insane hours,
| organizational structures (middle managers?)
| unintentionally prevent all that creativity from bubbling
| up. (I'm saying _unintentionally_ here to suppress sarcasm
| but also because obviously a successful product is in the
| organization 's best interest.)
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >So are you saying it's simply bad marketing research?
| Ie. if they would be able to narrow the target audience
| from "everyone" to a proper niche (say 18+ or teen age
| girls) they might succeed? That is: target a smaller
| market but server them better?
|
| Yes.
|
| Consider games like Octopath Traveller which aim for and
| sell to a specific audience (fans of jRPGs from the 90s),
| they succeed where the likes of CoD don't. Successful
| products begin by knowing who you want to sell to and
| why.
|
| Developing and selling a one-size-fits-all product to
| everyone, that is "the Average Man", simply won't work
| because the Average Man doesn't exist. The US Air Force
| will be happy to educate anyone on this. Noone wants a
| bland, vapid, sanitary product "for everyone".
| pipo234 wrote:
| > Noone wants a bland, vapid, sanitary product "for
| everyone".
|
| Well, empirically you're wrong. Unfortunately, there's
| enough of a market for Marvel movies and big-ass games
| titles to make huge profits, even if _we_ feel they 're
| too average, too mediocre to spend a single dime.
|
| ...But I get what you're saying. ;-)
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| >Consider games like Octopath Traveller which aim for and
| sell to a specific audience (fans of jRPGs from the 90s),
| they succeed where the likes of CoD don't. Successful
| products begin by knowing who you want to sell to and
| why.
|
| 2.5 million sales for Octopath Traveler (and OT2 doing
| awful).
|
| Do I really need to pull out the sales numbers of Call of
| Duty, or do you admit right now that you made a horrible
| bad faith argument?
|
| And please, do not use the "but sales don't mean it's
| good" argument either. You can _easily_ find 2.5 million
| people that truly enjoy Call of Duty.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > And please, do not use the "but sales don't mean it's
| good" argument either. You can _easily_ find 2.5 million
| people that truly enjoy Call of Duty.
|
| People enjoying it does not mean it's good.
|
| Otherwise McDonalds is the best cuisine of all time.
| raincole wrote:
| It's "good" marketing research. Those AAA games with
| movie-like scenes do sell. Marketing research isn't "Hey,
| Dalewyn, what kind of game do you want us to make
| personally?"
| lizardking wrote:
| It's been this way for awhile. AAA games have felt more like
| universal studios rides than games for the the last decade or
| so. I mostly stick to indie games or games from smaller studios
| at this point.
| not_enoch_wise wrote:
| Finally, the gameplay of a Michael Bay movie combined with the
| story of Super Mario
| unixhero wrote:
| Unreal Engine 5
| em500 wrote:
| For those who missed the Matrix tech demo from last year:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU0gvPcc3jQ
| the_af wrote:
| Besides the article being a bit behind the times ("Blizzard has
| turned World of Warcraft into a subscriber service", really, The
| Economist? You just discovered WoW?), most of the games it
| mentions are the kinds of games I find uninteresting.
|
| WoW, PUBG, "games that retain players", no thank you.
|
| For me, it's all about self-contained single-player games with no
| subscription or DLC (which I ignore), and no grandiose longterm
| plans. I hate "seasons" in games or DLC or any attempt at
| retaining me. I vastly prefer small, innovative indie games.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I think them not understanding Gaming as well as the Hacker
| News audience is expected. This is true of loads of fields;
| _football_ presenters for example make statements about clubs
| that their fans find to be regularly incorrect, but then how
| can one person stay updated to the same level of detail for all
| clubs that a fan does for one club? This happens everywhere.
| strken wrote:
| Football presenters are often former players, and they're
| seldom wrong on the same level as not knowing how the
| consumer fundamentals of how an MMO takes money from players.
| That seems like an error comparable to a presenter not
| knowing that football stadiums sell food.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| Maybe for AAA games - granted, of which some are good. But the
| type of games I sink most time in (like factorio, satisfactory,
| stardew valley, terraria, ...) are not
| doomlaser wrote:
| It's an exciting time. Unreal Engine is being used to great
| effect in things like _The Mandalorian_ :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUnxzVOs3rk
|
| The latest developments in large language models are another area
| interesting to me personally as a developer. Since the beginning
| of the video game medium, limitations in programming game AI have
| left video games stuck in a corner, where they use violence as
| the primary means of driving immersion, simply because it's just
| too complicated to model human-like behavior outside the domain
| of simple carnival games. Some games try and brute force their
| way around this by explicitly picking from a set of predetermined
| branching paths at predetermined critical moments. But the latest
| AI tools, first seen in stuff like the GPT-3 powered _AI Dungeon_
| , reveal that there will soon be new methods of maintaining a
| coherent story in a simulated game.
|
| We won't have to always resort to violence and fancy carnival
| games for much longer.
| sukruh wrote:
| For what it's worth telling GPT-4 you want it to simulate a
| text adventure game that lets the user enter their actions and
| dialogue, and pasting the setting and some characters works
| much better than AI Dungeon did when I tried it last year.
|
| GPT-4's context size is much larger, and when it starts to
| misbehave, you can just remind it how the game works and it's
| good to go again.
|
| I'm sorry or you're welcome.
| localplume wrote:
| [dead]
| the_af wrote:
| While I agree that violence in videogames is the "easy way
| out", the default mode of interaction that unimaginative
| designers reach for, I disagree this is because of limitations
| in AI.
|
| Game design has a lot of tools in its toolbox. "Emerging play",
| "intelligent actors", etc, are only _some_ , but not even the
| most important factors for interesting gameplay that is
| nonviolent.
|
| AI is not the be all, end all of game design. Not even close to
| it.
| teamonkey wrote:
| > While I agree that violence in videogames is the "easy way
| out", the default mode of interaction that unimaginative
| designers reach for, I disagree this is because of
| limitations in AI.
|
| You have an obstacle in your way. You use your skills to aim
| the crosshairs correctly and pull the trigger at the correct
| time. If successful, you are rewarded with the obstacle being
| removed. Then the loop repeats for just long enough so that
| you don't feel fatigued. It's a power fantasy and satisfying
| when balanced so that it's just within your reach.
|
| Mapping it to guns, combat and violence is definitely the
| easy way to do things. Also one that sells a lot.
|
| If you think about it, though, a similar loop exists pretty
| much anywhere there is a challenge in a game, violent or
| otherwise. You can turn that loop into a social skills
| challenge, but it's generally easy to see through those to
| the rules behind them, making them feel mechanical and
| hollow. That's one area where AI may be able to help, it's
| hard to tell.
| the_af wrote:
| This is an interesting conversation!
|
| I agree with your characterization of the mechanisms for
| violence in videogames, and I also agree that if you
| abstract them a bit, they generalize beyond just violence.
|
| Where I disagree is in your assumption that there is a
| similar loop "anywhere there is a challenge in a game".
| Deduction-based games aren't like this (e.g. Return of Obra
| Dinn). Puzzles aren't like this. Boardgame-like videogames
| aren't like this. Traditional point-and-click adventures
| aren't like this (they suffer from other problems though,
| beyond the scope of this conversation). Portal 1/2 are not
| like this in its core gameplay elements. Story-heavy, on-
| rails games aren't like this (though only because there is
| barely any gameplay to them -- and let me be clear that I
| think "movie-like" games are a game design dead end).
|
| I do enjoy mindless fun and I'm not against violent games;
| I just think they are the easy way out for game designers.
| But I think ultimately making a "good" game goes beyond
| replacing shooting with some magic silver bullet (AI or
| whatever): ultimately you need _good game design_ , there's
| no escaping this.
|
| I don't think it's a coincidence the games I find more
| engaging are those that break the mold somehow, even when
| there's no "novel" gameplay element to them.
| Molleindustria's "Every Day the Same Dream" moved me
| profoundly, but there's no real tech breakthrough in it.
| It's just a bog standard Flash game.
|
| I do think AI could be successfully employed in text
| adventures, or games where conversation with an "agent" was
| a core gameplay element. Imagine being able to Voigt-Kampf
| a replicant in an hypothetical Blade Runner game! (no, not
| Westwood's, which had a sucky VK implementation).
| teamonkey wrote:
| So the way this framework works with puzzle games is
| similar but slightly different. The important thing is to
| think about it in terms of what player skills are being
| tested to overcome a problem.
|
| Instead of being a challenge to players' reflexes and
| coordination - physical input on the keyboard/pad - it's
| a mental challenge instead - exploration, observation,
| reasoning, etc. In this case the physical input is
| trivial but the challenge loop has the same shape.
|
| In the case of Obra Dinn, each time you add something
| correctly to your journal you're completing that same
| challenge loop. In an abstract, theoretical way, of
| course, but I find it useful (I am a game designer).
| Other games blend physical and mental skills together and
| of course there are many different skills for different
| games to test.
|
| You're probably right in that this doesn't apply to every
| kind of gameplay, but most games drive you forward by
| putting some kind of challenge in your path, even if
| they're not violent. I don't know if that's because it's
| easiest, if it's a convention from the early days of
| video games that has stuck, or if it's a fundamental part
| of human nature.
| the_af wrote:
| Well, you need a _challenge_ for it to be a game.
| Something to "play with". I suppose only aimless sandbox
| games escape this.
|
| I don't think simply saying "this has an obstacle to
| overcome before you move to the next obstacle" is enough
| of a similarity. The gameplay loop of Counter Strike is
| nothing at all like the one in Obra Dinn or Return to
| Monkey Island. I don't see any similarity beyond "you
| need to solve a problem in order to continue". CS is like
| an e-sport; Obra Dinn and Return to Monkey Island are
| like theater plays with puzzles. One is made for
| replaying because you get better with experience; the
| others are meant to be played once, because once you
| solve the puzzle that's all there is to it. And so on.
|
| Which skills are getting tested also makes a world of
| difference. If something tests my reflexes, it's
| radically different from something that tests my logical
| thinking. It's why gamers are drawn to some games but
| reject others!
|
| In my opinion, all they have in common is that they are
| games.
| Hendrikto wrote:
| > AI Dungeon, reveal that there will soon be new methods of
| maintaining a coherent story in a simulated game.
|
| Somewhat coherent, for a few paragraphs. Still impressive.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Exactly! I'm excited for NPC to act like AI, and have full
| fledged conversations. Now, if they're allowed to have previous
| memories of their interactions of not could be interesting,
| since that is currently banned by ClosedAI
| atchoo wrote:
| I fear how buggy that could make future games.
|
| Some essential NPC interaction gets stuck in a weird loop /
| starts speaking Chinese / gets triggered into a Tay like
| paranoid Nazi rant while adamently denying the existence of
| the key it is holding that it's meant to give to the player
| to progress.
| sophacles wrote:
| Well there's a headline ive been reading since the 90s.
|
| What seems to have changed is that the stories were presented
| back then as a way for video game makers to tap into larger
| audiences, and to benefit from being in the good graces of the
| film industry. These days it seems to be a story about a
| Hollywood past its prime seeking to maintain relevance by
| partnering with game studios.
| qwery wrote:
| That's what I thought, but what's different now is that
| someone's about to make a photo-realistic gaming simulation and
| shoot a movie in it. From the article:
|
| > "somebody's going to invest in a [gaming] simulation that's
| photo-realistic. And then they're going to shoot a movie in
| it," says one Hollywood executive. "It will happen. And it's
| probably not too far away."
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| And that's awesome because its going to basically democratize
| film making the way radio and TV were democratized by
| podcasts and youtube.
| coldacid wrote:
| Haven't I heard this one before? Multiple times? Over the past
| 20+ years?
|
| What's different this time?
| kristianpaul wrote:
| Everything its a remix (look for the documentary)
| qwery wrote:
| With the torrent of live service games failing spectacularly over
| the last several years, the Economist is here to tell you about
| why making good games is bad for business, that single-player is
| dead, what a 'live service' is (now and looking ahead to 2017),
| and the infinite money circle powering some of the sexual
| predators at Ubisoft.
|
| Also,
|
| > Developers used to finish making a game and go on holiday.
|
| Citation needed? Maybe they meant: _" holiday" /s/s/s_
|
| I assume 'developers' refers to the people who make the game, as
| the company can't really "go on holiday". With that in mind,
| developers used to, and still do, after (nearly dying) shipping a
| game, get laid off.
| bkq wrote:
| Archived link: https://archive.is/xzPtR
|
| The article says that there are similarities between the two
| industries, I see these similarities too between how the
| workforces are treated. Whereby Hollywood VFX workers are
| overworked and underpaid, and some even end up going under, and
| the Academy is always there to stomp out their protest during the
| few minutes they get at the Oscars [1]. Much like with game
| development, where waves of contractors are hired, then
| subsequently fired [2], or being just subjected to endless crunch
| [3]. I think it's fair to say that game dev companies are the
| sweatshops of the tech industry, and I feel for anyone who wants
| to break into what otherwise could be a creative industry.
|
| [1] - https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/la-
| xpm-2013-f...
|
| [2] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-
| games/2021/12/03/raven-...
|
| [3] - https://www.polygon.com/2019/4/23/18507750/fortnite-work-
| cru...
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| Well that may be true, but they get to work on stuff that is
| legitimately cool.
|
| I know a guy that worked on StarTrek for years as a VR
| architect and general 3D modelling type of work. He worked
| longer hours than your average Torontonian, but nothing
| absolutely crazy. I've worked longer weeks.
|
| He loved his job.
|
| I'm not saying it is this way for everyone, but part of life is
| deciding if you want to work hard, have impact on things that
| matter, work on cool stuff, earn a lot of money, etc.
|
| There are places where it truly gets exploitative, but in my
| humble opinion that's usually places where the people involved
| have almost no options other than to move to another town or
| country. I'm not against industries or companies where the up
| front expectation is hard work. Some people want that, at least
| some of the time.
| ocimbote wrote:
| It's alright and quite frankly understandable to be motivated
| to work on a "big project with big cash and big name".
|
| The problem is when the producers use it in an exploitative
| way to have people work insanely longer hours than billed, or
| to lower the costs of labour so that the workers can have the
| "pride" of writing "big name" on their resume.
|
| Unfortunately, this is common practice.
| onion2k wrote:
| _they get to work on stuff that is legitimately cool_
|
| Like most things, working on the cutting-edge, successful,
| top-tier stuff is cool, but most people in the industry
| aren't doing that. If you look at something like
| https://steamdb.info/upcoming/ you'll see a small number of
| "Yeah, it'd be cool to make that" games, and _a lot_ of "Who
| the hell buys this crap?" games. Most people employed to
| build games are working on the second type of game.
| bkq wrote:
| >I'm not saying it is this way for everyone, but part of life
| is deciding if you want to work hard, have impact on things
| that matter, work on cool stuff, earn a lot of money, etc.
|
| VFX people in Hollywoord are some of the most underpaid
| workers in the industry. Sure, it's cool that you can be a
| part of a team that helps make a movie. No doubt it must be
| pretty cool to see your work on the big screen, or even the
| small screen, and know that you played a part in bringing it
| there. But I think something the workers would also value is
| having some autonomy over their work, and being paid for it.
|
| I'm not easily convinced by the argument of, "you get to work
| on cool stuff", working on cool stuff doesn't make up for
| risking povery, debt, or unemployment when you're underpaid.
| Furthermore, there's a difference between hard work, and
| exhausting working. And being put under crunch is exhausting
| work, not hard work.
| jollofricepeas wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| Screw cool. I'm an adult.
|
| Working on "cool stuff" is for people in their 20s or the
| perpetually naive...
|
| The perpetually naive usually come to their senses when
| they're old and recognize they don't have any savings,
| don't have a home to live in and can't retire.
|
| I'll take a fair wage, health insurance, and balanced work
| hours every time. I can find cool things to do on my own
| time when not putting in 16 hours a day.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| Ok great good for you! You're (presumably) in the West
| and can choose what you value, and you value a life with
| balanced work hours and, well, you call it fair, but in
| global standards it is high.
|
| Either way, for people with the skills to choose between
| working for Google and making $400k a year or working for
| Hollywood and making $70k a year, then they go and work
| for Hollywood and complain about the hours and pay, I
| just don't really know what else to say other than it's a
| choice.
|
| You get to see your work on the big screen, hang out at
| cooler parties, etc. Google people, generally speaking,
| do not get the same thing in life. Unions have their
| place, of course, especially with monopsonies or mining
| towns, but when it comes to _a whole industry_ I just
| think some things naturally come out that way due to the
| motivations and dynamics.
| jnovek wrote:
| I didn't realize that Google is paying nearly half a
| million dollars a year for VFX artists these days.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >part of life is deciding if you want to work hard, have
| impact on things that matter, work on cool stuff, earn a lot
| of money, etc.
|
| One man's happiness is another man's hell, and so forth.
|
| The question of happiness is a very subjective one, with
| everyone having a different answer.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| > _Well that may be true, but they get to work on stuff that
| is legitimately cool._
|
| So? How does that justify being exploited and treated badly?
|
| I've seen the same arguments made against teachers, nurses
| and other people who get to do "meaningful" work whenever
| they want fairer wages, and I do not see the logic. Do they
| need to be punished for doing a job where the result of their
| hard work doesn't make them hate themselves?
|
| I see the _reverse_ logic: pay jobs that nobody _wants_ to do
| well to make them attractive. But the need for carrots does
| not imply the need for sticks.
| unclad5968 wrote:
| Nobody is being punished. It's simple supply and demand. If
| you don't want to work on marvel movies there are millions
| of young men and women that would do it for pennies. Why is
| Disney going to pay them more if they don't have to?
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| I think that movies and videogames industry need to get the
| hell out of America. Wages are too high. Making a triple A game
| takes a staff of 500 these days.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Read the credits at the end of any CGI heavy movie from
| Disney, or AAA game like GoW and notice how many Indian names
| show up. It is a highly outsourced biz model, and most of the
| grunt work is humans doing repetitive tasks over and over for
| $1 to return $1.01
| bearmode wrote:
| Oh no, paying people what they're worth instead of exploiting
| those in poorer countries, how terrible
| elif wrote:
| Is it exploitation to pay someone above the average salary
| in their country?
|
| I would posit that it is more akin to exploitation to keep
| rich nations rich and poor nations poor.
| drewcoo wrote:
| Somehow paying someone relatively well in a low-paying
| country does keep the rich rich(er) and at the same time
| creates a larger pool of poor people.
|
| It's possible to be the worker who's paid relatively well
| and still be exploited. That worker then becomes
| complicit in the exploitation.
|
| Pitting one workforce against another is an old trick
| used to control them all.
| ta8645 wrote:
| > Pitting one workforce against another is an old trick
| used to control them all.
|
| It's not a trick, it's the same as you choosing the
| cheapest product on a shelf between two competing brands.
| It's the foundation of a competitive market that puts
| high incentives to produce products the most efficiently
| and most cost effectively. Which is a huge boon to
| consumers and has lead to us all having a better standard
| of living than anyone else in history.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Sigh.
|
| Being in country A and able to choose products made in
| country B is the result of specific political and legal
| choices made by the power structures of both countries.
|
| Historically, there was nothing inevitable about the free
| movement of capital, goods and profit, but over the last
| half century or more, this has come to be seen as
| "normal".
|
| Your argument is the classic one in favor of removing
| restrictions on the movement of capital, goods and profit
| ( _not_ labor!), and has been the justification for
| almost every free trade agreement over the last 75 years.
|
| The evidence of it being a net benefit to everyone is now
| starting to skew against that claim. The distribution of
| negative environmental externalities to poor countries in
| particular argues against it (i.e. country X can make
| your widgets cheaper because they have less regulation
| about waste and pollution).
|
| We're all consumers, it is true. But we're all citizens
| and employees too, and we spend more of our lives in
| those roles. Global free trade may be a boon to our lives
| as consumers, but it's been fucking over our lives as
| citizens and employees for too long alread.
| andsoitis wrote:
| What is you solution?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Either allow labor to always move as freely (or a un-
| freely) as capital & profit, or move back towards less
| international trade, certainly between countries with
| highly disparate income levels and legal systems.
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| Labor being a global commodity peeves many in the
| business of solidarity.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Actually, the peeve is that capital (and profit) is now
| permitted to be mobile, while labor is generally not. The
| EU trade zone is the one, shining notable exception.
|
| That is: we move our money into whatever markets we want,
| we withdraw our profits as we choose, but heaven forbid
| that labor should be allowed to move as it pleases.
| bkq wrote:
| This is something they do, Marvel rely on outsourcing and
| using ununionised labour [1], and it shows in the recent
| films and TV shows they've made. There's a drop in the
| quality of the VFX. Wages for VFX artists aren't too high, as
| I've said, they are some of the most underpaid workers in the
| industry, and their protest against this is always stomped
| out. For a VFX worker it must be highly frustrating working
| in an industry where other workers are unionised, but they
| aren't.
|
| [1] - https://www.cnet.com/culture/entertainment/marvels-vfx-
| artis...
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Some of the Bollywood VFX is _amazing_. The movies may not
| be my cup of tea, but they do good CGI.
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| RRR on Netflix was my first Bollywood experience and I
| quite liked it. The cgi was pretty bad though.
| flerchin wrote:
| Can you point me to a clip on YouTube that you would
| consider to be good Bollywood VFX? I've mostly been
| exposed to the most comically bad Bollywood VFX.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I can try and find a couple of the movies. Like I said, I
| don't watch them, so I've basically only seen the sizzle
| reels.
|
| I'll bet there's some folks here, that actually watch the
| movies, and could point to better stuff.
| illiarian wrote:
| They are not exactly bad, they are mostly over the top,
| and that could be a cultural thing.
|
| RRR wouldn't be out of place in a Hollywood blockbuster.
| sporkl wrote:
| I cannot speak for videogames, but I have a family member who
| was in the movie industry doing CG stuff, and it is already
| heavily outsourced to other countries than the U.S.,
| particularly Canada, India, and Australia. I've been told
| that the movie industry is essentially dead in the U.S.,
| besides having rights holders/production managers/etc.
| beauzero wrote:
| Not so in the Atlanta area. Mostly thanks to Tyler Perry.
| https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/douglas-county/lionsgate-
| in...
| indigochill wrote:
| I'm not sure that game dev as a gig economy would be the worst
| thing. Make a thing, get paid, move on. Especially since a
| traditional game (not MMO or "game as a service") has a natural
| beginning, middle, and end of development.
|
| Plus I assume if you're an independent contractor (not working
| in an outsourced sweatshop) you have more leverage to stand
| your ground against nonsense like crunch. But I'm fantasizing
| that because I've never done contract work so I don't know if
| that's really the case.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Independent contractors would have no leverage because there
| are too many people who will do the job. Also, companies
| won't like someone paying per hour when they can push 80+
| hour workweeks on salaried employees.
| ozim wrote:
| Are there?
|
| Even for Amazon warehouses they churned through people
| faster than they could find new ones and that were jobs
| where you basically have to be healthy enough to carry
| things so not requiring much.
|
| Development or working on game requires quite some
| knowledge of specialized tools. Then that toolset in game
| industry varies a lot.
|
| I don't think there are that many Unity developers one can
| hire on the spot.
| whitemary wrote:
| Your assumption is 100% wrong and I couldn't imagine what on
| Earth gives you that idea. In fact, I am not convinced you
| actually believe that yourself. I don't believe you've
| thought about this at all.
| jasondigitized wrote:
| Are you going to provide your reasoning besides saying
| "you're wrong?"
| illiarian wrote:
| Literally every single example we have of gig economy
| results in lower wages and less worker protections.
| kabouseng wrote:
| That's capitalism for you...
| Jensson wrote:
| Being able to earn money whenever you want so you don't
| have to build your life around your work would be huge
| even if it makes you earn a bit less. Developers earn a
| lot already, many would take that trade.
|
| Edit: That would make game development much more
| palatable, since gig work implies no overtime unless you
| want it. Just do some game development and earn money
| rather than doing it for free on a hobby project. And
| since it is just a gig you can easily try it out and do
| something else if you don't like it.
| [deleted]
| Ralfp wrote:
| How would gig economy not result in game dev being more
| exploitative than it is now? Oh, you dont want to do
| overtime making those car models? No problem. We have
| contact to 10 other people just waiting to do it in your
| place. And we will pay them less than we pay you, and
| then we will pay even less to those who will replace
| them.
|
| Keep system running for decade or two and you have
| another area where people work to don't die from hunger.
| Because thats how gig economy worked for every other
| market.
|
| And what is your retirement plan? Keep working until your
| health prevents you from working anymore and then die on
| streets?
| illiarian wrote:
| > Being able to earn money whenever you want so you don't
| have to build your life around your work
|
| And yet, every instance of gig economy pushes wages way
| down, pushes all the externalities (like health
| insurance, travel, equipment etc.) onto workers and makes
| their life revolve around work.
|
| > That would make game development much more palatable,
| since gig work implies no overtime unless you want it.
|
| As others already mentioned: then you'll be out of the
| job, because there will always be people willing to work
| overtime for the same money.
|
| And since it's "just a gig", you can be let go even
| faster than it is now for workers in the US.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "and the Academy is always there to stomp out their protest
| during the few minutes they get at the Oscars"
|
| Hm, I have no knowledge or connection to the events, but
| "stomping out protests" made me expect a bit more dramatic
| events, than stopping someones speech, after his time was up.
|
| "But Westenhofer's speech was cut off mid-sentence after he
| used up his allotted time"
| bkq wrote:
| It's something the Academy has always engaged in, is with
| cutting of the microphone of the VFX artists. Other people
| are not treated like this.
| tough wrote:
| Fuck the academy
| StrangeATractor wrote:
| They lost all sense of credibility when Peter O'Toole was
| snubbed for _Lawrence of Arabia_ , and then for the rest
| of his career.
|
| It's just an industry meat parade designed to get you to
| watch their bullshit.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Did they ever have credibility?
|
| The academy awards are literally nothing more than any
| other industry group awards: it's just people in the
| industry telling each other how awesome they are.
|
| They are, and always have been, utterly meaningless.
| StrangeATractor wrote:
| No they didn't but giving Gregory Peck an Oscar over
| Peter O'Toole should have destroyed any notion of
| credibility.
| messe wrote:
| To be fair, of the nominations that year, I'd have given
| it to Jack Lemmon for _The Days of Wine and Roses_. So
| it's not like it's uncontentious that O'Toole was
| snubbed.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| They may be harsher with VFX people, but speakers _ar_ e
| routinely "played off" the stage with music before cutting
| mics.
| [deleted]
| citizenkeen wrote:
| Anecdata: My wife was addicted to the story in God of War
| Ragnarok.
|
| She walked through the living room during the opening cut scene
| and exclaimed "Is that Toby Ziegler ZEUS?"
|
| She ended up hanging out in the living room crafting, reading,
| playing on her phone, or watching her own shows while I ran
| around smashing and killing, and then would pay attention
| whenever a cut scene happened.
|
| Movies and games are not the same thing.
|
| But blockbuster amusement park movies and AAA video games
| increasingly are.
| bmitc wrote:
| It has never been clear to me why people want movies and games to
| be the same thing. Most AAA games that are "cinematic" are just
| bad or mediocre movies that wouldn't get made or have already
| been made. For example, even some very famous video game
| designers have mentioned that they would rather make movies. Why
| don't they then? I think it's because the threshold to make a
| story good enough for a movie is a bit higher than a video game,
| even with the bar falling a bit in modern times for movies.
| There's even a question as to why gamers want movies made out of
| their favorite game. There's a reason why these usually fail, and
| it's usually because the underlying story is just not that
| interesting.
|
| In my opinion, a video game should be a game and not a larping
| simulator for movies. Games like _Journey_ , _The Witness_ , _The
| Last Guardian_ , _Shadow of the Collossus_ , _Hellblade: Senua 's
| Sacrifice_, _Mirror 's Edge_, etc. should be the standard for
| video game designers.
| doe88 wrote:
| It might be countertuive but I've developped a sort of
| claustrophobia watching heavy cgi/vfx movies, I can't stand
| layers and layers of fake peoples, cities, ships, cars... It
| might not be aligned with my political views and might be sad to
| disclose but I kind of find relaxing watching the true cows,
| horses and landscapes of Montana in Yellowstone.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| It's not mentioned in TFA, but Unreal Engine is also used by the
| BBC to create real time virtual studios for its various football
| punditry programmes [0]
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N-XVHqUUOY
| zirgs wrote:
| Gambling industry has been using it for a while now.
| TheUndead96 wrote:
| I have increasingly become disinterested in CGI-heavy movies. I
| have taken to watching more foreign-language films, which seem to
| still be more interpersonal and grounded in reality. I say this
| as a person who would usually prefer sci-fi and fantasy over
| other genres, which are the genres which are historically the
| most heavy in CGI and VFX.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| The thing is, as I understand it, CGI are everywhere now, even
| in movies that are "grounded in reality". It saves money over
| building props, it can be "fixed in post", etc... Unless the
| film makes a statement of not using CGI, and it is often an
| expensive choice, you can assume there is plenty of it. Crowds,
| wild animals, mirrors, dust, etc... are often added digitally,
| because it is so much cheaper and convenient.
|
| Edit: Here an example for the movie "Parasite"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3tfIem4ckE
| elteto wrote:
| Well, that's ok. Well-done CGI should be "invisible". I don't
| really care if the set is a set in the physical world or in a
| computer for as long as it looks good and doesn't fall into
| the uncanny valley.
| onion2k wrote:
| _I have increasingly become disinterested in CGI-heavy movies._
|
| Most of the writing talent for Hollywood has moved on to
| writing for TV. There's more money, more scope, and they can
| write things that don't need to be 'spectacular' enough to get
| people to pay $20 to see. They have enough scope to actually
| build plots and give characters interesting lives rather than
| the 2.5 hours a film affords them. TV shows are getting better
| at the same pace that films are getting worse.
| dandellion wrote:
| The problem I have with TV is that most of these stories with
| interesting characters drag on until they get cancelled,
| depriving me of my favourite part of any story: the ending.
| Most movies on the other hand have an ending, even if it's
| open.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| Yeah, that's a problem now a days.
|
| I've pretty much taken to waiting for a series to end and
| then binge watching because too many I've been interested
| in just get canceled in the middle of the story.
|
| Probably part of the problem since I don't show up in the
| weekly viewing stats but, oh well.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| The production quality of TV has exploded. The writing
| quality, on the other hand, has taken a notable nosedive in
| the last decade. A notable recent example are things like the
| newest Lord of the Rings show, or the Foundations series.
| Incredible production values hampered by awful writing.
| Dialogue in the last years, in particular, has been awful in
| 90% of TV. Basic dialogue rules (like don't say exactly what
| the character is thinking or feeling) are broken for the sake
| of expediency and simplifying for the lowest denominator. The
| golden age of TV was a fairly distinct moment in prestige
| television making where a showrunner and some writers had
| enormous control over the show's direction and tone.
| Nowadays, most shows, like most hollywood movies, have a
| stupid amount of producers and the writing feels like a
| committee of YA-book authors put together the season's
| scripts in a weekend. A lot of modern TV is the sausage meat
| in the content factory of streaming services.
| danielbln wrote:
| TLoU, Severence, Succession all quite wonderful. Even stuff
| like Peacemaker. There are a lot of nuggets with great
| writing, it's just that is is just SO MUCH content now,
| that there is bound to be more crap than good stuff out
| there.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| These are all non-episodic TV shows which have yet to
| conclude. I reserve judgement until they have concluded
| as to whether the writing will hold up. For the vast
| majority of these shows, writing is great for a few
| seasons, then nosedives because they can't figure out how
| to conclude it or the plot becomes an ever expanding
| fractal of loose ends.
|
| The reason for this is simple. Due to the nature of how
| studios are run now, you gotta keep making the popular
| stuff until it ceases to be. Even if it was better to
| just leave it at one or two seasons. Everything has to be
| renewed to make evn more money and to offset the endless
| treadmill of cancelled-after-one-season garbage that
| Netflix and HBO etc are pumping out.
|
| I love Succession, but I hope this 4th season is the last
| one.
|
| EDIT: named the wrong season.
| danielbln wrote:
| The upcoming Succession season is the 4th one and HBO as
| well as the show runners have confirmed that it will be
| the last and conclude.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Oh it's the 4th, not the 3rd, my bad.
|
| Good.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Most modern day blockbusters also seem to have transparently
| obvious CGI. All these Marvel movies aren't even trying to hide
| that the visuals on-screen are all CGI. The post Infinity Wars
| movies are particularly egregious.
|
| There are movies like the Mission Impossible series that use
| plenty of CGI but most of the time you won't even catch it.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Game of Thrones used tons of CGI too. But they did it right.
| They built out parts of the set, then did the rest in CG.
| This allowed them to create something which looked real(for
| the most part).
|
| Problem with these Marvel "films" is there is so much CGI
| there's nothing left to ground them in reality, and then it
| looks fake no matter how many millions they poured into it.
| Arrath wrote:
| MI has the bonus that the 'meat' of the stunts are actually
| being performed by real people, and the CGI is dressing
| around it. A big draw, in my opinion. Superhero movies where
| the majority of the action is CGI? Eh.
| christkv wrote:
| How many years until a small team of less than 10 people can
| produce a full feature film with generative tooling?. I'm pretty
| exited about the potential of powerful storytelling being in the
| hand over everyone without needing massive amounts of capital,
| especially if it shatters the entertainment semi-monopolies.
| mejutoco wrote:
| One of the most common uses of unreal engine for film is to use
| it to render in huge screens around the actors (instead of
| chroma), so you can record with the right light hitting the
| actors, or maybe even with the background already there.
|
| I am curious how expensive these screens are, and the computers
| to drive it, but I imagine they are not cheap.
| bsenftner wrote:
| You'll still need massive amounts of capital to market the
| film, and that is where they The Industry That Demands The Same
| Same captures you. If the product is not just like all the
| others, the marketers have 0 idea how to sell it. I've been
| there: made a Mario style game for the original PSX during the
| 90's with a major animation studio... and no marketing firm
| could sell it, because at that time all PSX titles were "teen
| targeted" and they literally did not want to market the game
| because they themselves were not interested in playing it.
| silvestrov wrote:
| I think this has changed with Netflix and other streamning
| services: if you can get Netflix to buy it then the only
| marketing needed for Netflix is to put the movie online.
|
| You no longer need to convince 1000s of cinemas and
| journalists that this movie is worth seeing.
| Dah00n wrote:
| It is harder with a game though even with Game Pass and
| PlayStation Network.
| bsenftner wrote:
| Good point. Now I'm curious the swag and favors bestowed on
| the Netflix Gatekeepers - they've got quite the power seat.
| [deleted]
| rco8786 wrote:
| I was chatting about this with a friend as we were watching John
| Wick (2, I think)
|
| Straight up 3rd person Shooter but as a movie.
|
| And similarly, watching The Last of Us you can see how they broke
| down the screenplay into "levels" or "missions". Maybe a bad
| example since it's explicitly a video game crossover though.
| Arrath wrote:
| Watching the Mandalorian straight up felt like watching someone
| live an Open World game, complete with sidequests (his
| bounties) and quest rewards and gear upgrades (here, for
| turning in that bounty you get another ingot of beskar steel
| and bam! new breastplate)
|
| The only thing missing was Mando landing on a new planet and
| climbing the comms tower at the Spaceport to highlight all
| nearby Points of Interest.
| qikInNdOutReply wrote:
| They are not.
|
| The gamedesigners who are all "Show" not "play" are the worst.
| Same as authors who wan to "tell" and not "show" in movies.
|
| Those who have "cool" scenes in there heads, which they want to
| make into a game, make for the worst, cause not interactive game
| experiences. Stop conflating a passive medium and a active
| medium.
|
| Its even worse, if they glue singleplayer "movies" into
| multiplayer without gameplay considerations. As if the the ten
| other players want to wait for that cool "finnish" him cinematic
| to play the 100 time over.
|
| The technology base might be merging, but god safe us from the
| merging of the creator bases.
|
| I wish this myth would die, once and for all.
| Dah00n wrote:
| A lot of people enjoy games that are basically interactive
| movies. Hell, there's a whole market for people that want a
| game to progress all the way through while all they do is click
| the same button over and over again. Saying they have nothing
| in common is no different from trying to keep digital artists
| down because it is not "real art" like a painting or sculpture.
|
| Unless you are a purist that only want completely analog movies
| and completely digital games then the creators and tools are
| already merged. Look at the direction of Unreal Engine for a
| great example and how movie producers are joining game studios.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The first Uncharted game is a great example.
| bullen wrote:
| They have to diverge for the medium/media specific traits to
| emerge.
|
| The 3D action MMO is the final medium/media.
|
| Nobody is working on that.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| It has tried and failed more than once in the past.
|
| I guarantee someone is working on it now again, and eventually
| one of them will stick.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I am glad I moved from game industry some time ago. The company I
| worked for wasn't bad, but it went bankrupt. Staying in the
| industry meant they I had to deal with less than great employers
| at some point, being overworked, having a smaller salary and my
| future growth perspectives to be limited.
|
| That being said, I've enjoyed the years I worked as a game
| programmer, I had fun and I've learned interesting stuff.
| enbugger wrote:
| Overall, game development feels _much_ better when it is a
| hobby unlike a full-time job. You can experiment, without
| deadlines, but no money back on the other hand.
| capableweb wrote:
| I feel like this is true for most jobs.
|
| Doing 3D/animation as a past-time? Super fun. As a career?
| Stressful and annoying
|
| Doing programming as a past-time? Super fun. As a career?
| Stressful and annoying
|
| Doing movies as a past-time? Super fun. As a career?
| Stressful and annoying
|
| Doing music as a past-time? Super fun. As a career? Stressful
| and annoying
|
| Literally any time I've gotten good enough at a hobby so I
| could earn a living doing it, and try to make a living doing
| it, it got way less fun and relaxing for me.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| Being a solo indie dev isn't that fun either. You're looking
| for an investment of 1-4 years, without pay and without a
| guarantee that you're going to get it shipped and that it's
| going to pay you back.
|
| Game development can be risky, especially if you've got
| bigger ambitions for your game. It all sounds great in your
| head, but progress is much slower. I spent 8 months on Unreal
| Engine, 8 months that I'm never going to get back, and I was
| never able to ship anything. Game development takes time and
| if you're someone who doesn't already have an expertise in
| asset creation, it's going to be even harder.
|
| Speaking from a 3D game developer perspective, It also
| requires investment, not just hundreds of dollars but
| sometimes thousands because you can't do everything on your
| own. It's more than just 3d models, it involves animations,
| sound design, texture work, putting it all together and
| presentation and story and voice acting. So much stuff for a
| single person to handle.
|
| It's great when you do not mind failure and putting 2-3 years
| into void, terrible when you expect something better than
| mediocrity.
|
| Regular software development (web apps and apps) imho is much
| more rewarding. It takes less time to build an MVP, you can
| do it almost everything for $0 these days.
| reidjs wrote:
| It's only risky if you feel a need to ship and profit from
| it. If you treat the game development process as an
| artistic endeavor, you can enjoy the time you are spending
| on it. Like an amateur painter creating a piece, just for
| something to put up in your own mantle, only for their
| friends and family to see. If you feel that you have to
| ship and monetize, then the process loses its magic.
|
| This approach also requires that you work a day job,
| unfortunately.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| I got this strange feeling that this article is behind the Times.
| The gaming industry has been getting progressively closer to the
| movie industry for about 20 years. I think they already have
| converged
| TOMDM wrote:
| Agreed, games like God of War, and the sequel Ragnarok cemented
| this for me.
| tonyoconnell wrote:
| Moviemaking, gamemaking and education are converging. I can see
| the day when blockbuster education games/apps are built with the
| budget of a Hollywood movie.
| raincole wrote:
| And is it a good thing or not? Both industries are notoriously
| for overtime and underpayment.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| That's mostly because filmmaking is ceasing to be filmmaking, at
| least for big movies and TV shows.
|
| I tend to ignore new TV shows these days. Why? I just know
| they're gonna be great for a few seasons at best then start
| sucking, and I don't feel like wasting my time in the meantime. I
| can count on one hand non-episodic TV shows in the last 25 years
| that have maintained their high quality throughout.
| The Wire The Sopranos Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul
| Mr. Robot
|
| Honourable mention for Twin Peaks: The Return, although Twin
| Peaks didn't exactly maintain its quality throughout season 2
| even if Lynch swooped back in to save it near the end.
|
| All cases where one person or a couple people had strong creative
| control of the project throughout.
|
| I could sit here all day listing shows that started out really
| good but then it became clear the writers had no idea what they
| were doing, or the writers who did left.
|
| These shows are all written by committee now. All these garbage
| Star Trek shows. Westworld has really neat sci fi premises for
| each season but other than season 1 they always devolve into
| action schlock because the writers don't understand how to
| actually write good sci fi.
|
| As for big movies, they feel like they're written by marketing
| people not writers. They're optimised for getting people into the
| theatre and everything else is an afterthought.
|
| There's still a handful of auteurs making great movies you could
| think of as big. People like Tarantino, Scorsese, the Coen
| brother. Christopher Nolan gets lucky sometimes, but most of his
| sci fi is ruined by sloppy writing for me(Interstellar...)
|
| One thing is certain for me though. I can't think of a single
| recent movie I've enjoyed that had lots of CGI in it. The movies
| with the best writing are pretty much never the ones with huge
| effects budgets.
|
| The true art of filmmaking lies in the writing. You can have all
| the effects in the world, the best actors and directors. Doesn't
| matter one bit if the script is terrible.
| censor_me wrote:
| [dead]
| The-Bus wrote:
| I would also highly recommend FX's The Americans.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I'd add Mad Men and GoT, but it doesn't change the point you've
| made.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Haven't finished Mad Men, so I couldn't speak to it. Though I
| am planning to because it's become a lot more interesting to
| me as I've grown older compared to when it was new.
|
| As for Game of Thrones, it doesn't fit into my list because
| the quality of the writing really nosedived, starting in
| season 5 to my mind, though seasons 6 and 7 is where it took
| a turn for the drastically worse. And season 8 was a
| disaster. So it's exactly in the opposite group that's too
| long to exhaustively list.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > Honourable mention for Twin Peaks: The Return, although Twin
| Peaks didn't exactly maintain its quality throughout season 2
| even if Lynch swooped back in to save it near the end.
|
| Yeah honestly I didn't care for it much. The casino plot felt
| like tedious filler, certain interesting characters from the
| original completely were completely sidelined, and at times it
| just felt like the horror surrealism was over the top to force
| some extra shock value.
|
| More egregious to me though are the remakes of Hawaii 5-0 and
| Magnum PI. Those make me legitimately angry when I see them.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Taste is still taste of course. It's extremely... Lynchian.
|
| This is mostly because Lynch changed a lot as a director
| since the original Twin Peaks. He brought that growth with
| him into The Return, and so it's basically a completely
| different beast. It was never going to be anything like the
| old show.
|
| I loved it through and through. I enjoyed it even more on
| repeat viewing when I wasn't constantly waiting for Coop to
| "wake up".
|
| Lynch is an acquired taste though, I get that for sure.
| citizenkeen wrote:
| As a lifelong Star Trek fan, Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks,
| and Prodigy are as good as its ever been. The writing on all
| three is incredibly tight.
|
| Disco and Picard... have been a struggle.
| Arrath wrote:
| I enjoyed Lower Decks and Nope'd out of Picard after a couple
| episodes. The high-water mark for ST imo is DS9, and that's
| awfully hard to beat. I'll have to give SNW a try.
| kuschku wrote:
| The third season of Picard is actually good again, I can
| really recommend it.
|
| A bit weird, but it's definitely evoking much more of the
| Star Trek feeling than the previous seasons did.
| bena wrote:
| How?
|
| Like Season 3 is definitely better than Season 2 and maybe
| Season 1, but besides the majority of the actors being in
| Starfleet uniforms on a Starfleet ship, it still feels way
| more Discovery than TNG. It's just cramming the nostalgia
| down your gullet so often that you don't have time to not
| care.
|
| Look, Riker. Yay. Crusher! Yay. Worf's back, yay. He said a
| non-stereotypical Klingon thing, hilarious, he's not like
| the other Klingons. Oh. Now he said a stereotypical Klingon
| thing. He's still got the heart of a Klingon. Ooh.
| Changelings. Dominion War. Wolf 359. Locutus. Wow. Much
| Star. Very Trek.
|
| All in all. I'd say Season 3 of Picard would have made for
| one of the better TNG movies. But considering that most of
| them were not good, that's not really a high bar to clear.
|
| Lower Decks is the closest thing to old-school Star Trek
| that is currently being produced. But that's mostly because
| it wants to be a pastiche of TNG-era Trek.
| kuschku wrote:
| Season 3 of TNG is definitely better than at least half
| of S1-S3 of TNG. Old-school Star Trek never was _that_
| good either, it took quite a while to figure out the
| formula to get good content.
|
| Only by the time DS9 and VOY came out did they have a
| well-working formula, but at that time it became a bit
| too formulaic.
|
| Still, it's entertaining, and there's enough quality
| there to enjoy it.
| bena wrote:
| You talk about it evoking the feeling of Star Trek more
| so than the previous seasons. Which I assume means Star
| Trek of the TNG era.
|
| And it doesn't. At least no more so than Discovery. It
| crams in a lot of reference and characters from that era,
| but it's still an action show set in space.
|
| Even if the first couple of seasons of TNG don't have a
| lot of bangers, the spirit of the show is still there.
| I'm also tired of the trope that they aren't good.
| There's a lot in both seasons that carry through the
| show. Plus, The Measure of a Man is one of the best
| episodes of the series.
|
| And that's the thing, when you look to TNG's best
| episodes, you'll come to episodes like The Measure of a
| Man, The Inner Light, and Darmok. Where there's either no
| action or the action really only exists to forward the
| real central conflict. Episodes which make us question
| what it means to be conscious, what it means to live a
| fulfilled life, what it means to be able to communicate
| with others. You get these meaningful explorations into
| humanity by forcing the issue through the extremes
| provided by science fiction.
|
| In this season, we get told that Picard kinda, sorta
| regrets not being able to be a father to Jack Crusher.
| But we don't actually get to explore that within the show
| itself. We're way more concerned with surfing the
| gravimetric waves. Or the portal gun. Or changelings
| taking over the crew.
|
| All the real conflict is physical and confrontational.
| The show is about saving the galaxy, not about what
| humanity means.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| I have my doubts about all of them. Anything Alex Kurtzman
| touches turns to total garbage. So if it really is good he
| must not be meaningfully involved, or it's not as good as
| people seem to think it is(my guess).
|
| I have a feeling it's gonna be like The Orville, just
| rehashing of good Trek ideas from the past. But I've yet to
| see it. If some of the critics I trust endorse it, I might.
| coremoff wrote:
| The quality of writing in big budget media is truely shocking;
| they have no idea how to write a tight plot, or what
| verisimilitude means, or why consistency is important.
|
| Looks at Rings of Power; absolutely gorgeous, and some great
| dialog sprinkled here and there, but the plotting, world
| building, tone, and story-beats are amateurish.
|
| There's also far too much fan service in almost every popular
| franchise, and writers have absolutely no patience; an old
| example, but one I think highlights this, is the movie "Solo";
| I quite liked the movie, much more than I expected and more
| than the general public did, but it was infuriating how they
| _had_ to put in every single plot point that Han Solo mentioned
| in the original trilogy, as if without it we wouldn 't
| understand who Solo was, or how clever the writers were.
|
| Similarly Black Panther 2; so much good stuff but ruined, in my
| opinion anyway, by too much exposition given to us as dialog
| rather than flashback - Namor's backstory was probably
| unnecessary, and if it was necessary it would have been better
| as an opening sequence (not to mention the movie being at least
| an hour too long).
| revelio wrote:
| They do know how to do it. Check out "Puss in Boots: The Last
| Wish", it's really nicely done. They just don't do it often
| because when it comes to hiring writers and senior execs they
| prioritize ideological compatibility over proven skill:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/DSy9zoy.jpg
|
| (the woman in black runs the Star Wars franchise)
|
| So you get these car-crash scripts with holes a five year old
| could spot, but they hammer home the message and so the
| people at the top feel good about themselves.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > The movies with the best writing are pretty much never the
| ones with huge effects budgets.
|
| The contrast was highlighted on a recent flight I took. I
| watched Zoolander while the guy next to me watched some
| Avengers movie starring Thanos. Not only were the colors more
| vibrant in Zoolander, the camera was always in focus. Even with
| $200mil on VFX, it was still blurry and soft-focus.
| nwoli wrote:
| It'll be fun and exciting if text-to-video can disrupt this.
| (Seems very likely. Shows might be totally revived to high
| quality within 3 years or so.)
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| No, text to video will not improve writing. GPT will also not
| improve writing.
|
| I can already imagine fully generated TV shows. But they're
| not gonna be good, they'll lack cohesive vision and smart
| writing. This technology will only enhance the ability to
| produce more garbage at ever increasing rates.
| nwoli wrote:
| My point is mostly that there exists a ton of talented
| writers and people with imagination who aren't getting a
| chance to actually produce movies and tv shows. (I don't
| think the issue is lack of talent doesn't exist on the
| planet, I think they just aren't lifted to the highest
| positions in hollywood, like they used to in decades past.)
| Admittedly there's gonna be a ton of garbage via gpt too.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| As a life-long fan, Star Trek has always had plenty of garbage
| writers and terrible episodes. (The original series is
| hilariously bad by modern standards.) The only thing that's
| held the series together are amazing actors and that the good
| episodes are really good.
|
| Strange New Worlds has had an amazing first season. Hope that
| continues. :)
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > Strange New Worlds has had an amazing first season
|
| I don't get why people keep saying this. Don't get me wrong,
| it was pretty decent. Mount was the highlight of the
| otherwise mediocre-at-best Discovery S2 and he's still
| killing it in SNW, Peck is actually a great Spock, and the
| acting in general is high quality. But the writing was really
| kind of all over the place and their best episode cribbed
| Ursula Le Guin even harder than Voyager cribbed Robert L.
| Forward[0].
|
| My personal opinion is that it has potential to be really
| good, but it hasn't been demonstrated that the writing
| competence is there yet.
|
| [0] Credit where it is due: if you're going to be unoriginal,
| you may as well crib from some of the best.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Sure there are lots of terrible Star Trek episodes. But being
| episodic, that's fine. These new treks are all just aping off
| the old shows. One which is basically just the Voyager
| premise done again. And one(or two? I've lost count at this
| point) that tries to cash in on TNG nostalgia.
|
| I'm sure Strange New Worlds is the most competent rehashing
| of old ideas so far, but meh! Make something original. Go to
| the 25th century, make all new characters, a new ship, new
| technologies, new aliens, new concepts. That's what I want
| Star Trek to be. If I want nostalgia I'll throw on an episode
| from TNG season 3.
|
| It just has this stench to me of retreading old stuff.
|
| And no, TOS still holds up. It has some terrible episodes,
| some weird 60s moments that feel cringey, but it also has
| episodes that are fantastic sci-fi. And yeah, it looks like
| crap. I don't care. Sci-fi is not about special effects.
| ghaff wrote:
| If you look at Star Wars over the past decade(?) there's
| generally an inverse relationship between how good the
| series/movie is and how close it is to the original story
| arc.
|
| TOS can live apart from modern standards; you have to give
| it the benefit of historical perspective. And there was
| real chemistry between the case. And, because it was
| episodic, you can pick out 15-20 episodes and enjoy them as
| historical SF.
| xdavidliu wrote:
| > One is that labour markets and production techniques for gaming
| converge with those of the film business, to the point where some
| envisage a single production process.
|
| Seriously? "envisage"? Is that word really necessary to express
| this point?
| bioemerl wrote:
| I am tempted to argue that this has been in the process of
| happening ever since the first episode of Red versus Blue back in
| the early (mid or late?) 2000s
| ChoGGi wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diary_of_a_Camper
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