What is it like working at a company after releasing a negatively-received game?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/ax9uyj/what_is_it_like_working_at_a_company_during_and/

by danso • 7 years ago

247 205 7 years ago

Agentlien8• 7 years ago

This is exactly the kind of post where I'd love to engage in the discussion, but I end up not doing so because I just feel exhausted and demotivated once I consider the necessary disclaimers (not a spokesperson, my opinion is my own, ...), what I am allowed to say and how sure of that am I, what if I make a misstep and it blows up, will I be able to engage in follow-up questions...

EA has a surprisingly open social media policy which encourages employees to engage in discussions as long as they are clear about whether they're an official spokesperson and don't divulge anything they're not allowed to.

Still, every time I see something like this I become really excited, start thinking of what I can say and what not, how I should say it so it's within acceptable .. You know what, never mind. And this is without even considering that what I'm considering is saying "Hi, I'm from EA" in a forum where people generally express nothing but vitriol towards that company.

deadbunny• 7 years ago

Isn't this what throwaway accounts are for? Sure you can't break NDAs and the like but a throwaway can give a lot of freedom from people piecing together stuff if you posted using an account you use daily.

Agentlien8• 7 years ago

I could definitely use a throwaway account. The thing is, I still don't want to say anything I'm not allowed to say. I do feel loyalty towards my employer, and I'm only protecting myself if I stay clear of saying anything which identifies me. And that includes referring to knowledge which I didn't realise not many have or just generally expressing myself with my own idiosyncrasies which I may not even be aware of.

jib2• 7 years ago

For me at least, I would not use a throwaway.

The one thing we get asked to do for social media is always be clear that we have ties to the company but don’t speak for the company when commenting on things that could potentially be a conflict of interest. Both sides of that matter - I.e. I don’t want there to be any risk that someone doesn’t know I work at Blizzard when reading a comment (mostly because of native advertising rules) but I also don’t want them to think I speak for the company (mostly for fair disclosure rules).

I think that’s a reasonable request and I feel like using throwaways goes against that (and make it seem like there’s something to hide when really there is not).

izacus• 7 years ago

Not to mention that you'll probably end up with death threats or worse if you say something that one gamer group dislikes. The behaviour of gamers on social media has been awful beyond belief these last few years.

jfabre• 7 years ago

You mean the behaviour of people.

AmVess• 7 years ago

Things have gotten so bad that people doing voice-overs for characters are getting threats.

The absurdity of this is numbing on so many levels.

colmvp• 7 years ago

A very recent example of this is the passing of Luke Perry, who was the voice of Sub-Zero in the cartoon series of Mortal Kombat.

MK Co-creator Ed Boon expressed him sympathies on Twitter and a number of fans replied to him, asking why he wasn't including specific characters in the next installment in the series.

darksaints• 7 years ago

At Amazon I was friends with a very talented woman who had finally gotten a well-deserved promotion to product management, which she had worked on for well over 4 years. It was a pretty big deal: she was the product manager over video games, specifically new console releases, right around the time that a new console was going to be released.

I still remember her crying to me over coffee about how much her new job sucked. In her words: video gamers are monsters. Apparently they had tracked her down because she had her job title on her facebook page, and even though her facebook page was private, they were able to get some insider at facebook to do the search for them. Once they found her name, they made her life a living hell. Why? Because one of the manufacturers ended up shipping fewer units than they initially promised, and so she had to delay a couple dozen preorders by a week.

Even if I were an avid gamer, there is no way I would work in the industry.

white0ut• 7 years ago

Gaming, especially with the blow-out of BR games, has become idolized by the masses. And the culture around them is changing for the worse.

I can't help but think that this is just the effect of gaming becoming a part of mainstream media. It absorbs the culture of what mainstream internet culture is. A place where the loudest, ugliest voices stand out in the crowd.

philipov2• 7 years ago

It doesn't help EA's image that they decided to call their game launcher "Origin," so we can remember all the game studios they've murdered any time they try to force us to use it. However, I will not blame you, poor cog, for management's unethical behavior. I hope you can find a better job someday.

vaylian• 7 years ago

Thanks for sharing this insight!

In your experience: What is the biggest misunderstanding that customers (or critics) seem to have about the game development industry?

Agentlien8• 7 years ago

Wow, that's a really tough one. Turns out my answer became a really long one and touched on a number of things.

The biggest one is probably that developers aren't hearing or understanding feedback. We're in the same forums, reading the same posts. When players have concerns, the developers have mostly raised the same concerns long before the game was shipped. But identifying a problem isn't enough. Sometimes fixing problems are very difficult or very expensive. Sometimes, thorough design and testing has shown that all the obvious improvements are actually worse in non-obvious ways. So developers do read the feedback. We just, for reasons I already touched on, mostly don't comment.

On a similar topic, it seems a lot of players don't realise that we're not an army of drones in suits aiming to make money. Most of us, by quite a margin, are really passionate gamers who've decided we love games so much we want to make them our vocation and spend at least 40 hours a week on them. Every time I see a post about how "the developers" don't understand what "the players" want, I look around the office and see nothing but players, most of whom share the same feelings and concerns.

Another big one, and this is something I realised that I myself was clueless of before joining game development, is how difficult it is to react quickly to feedback, fix bugs and add features. You often see players complaining that they've raised a concern weeks ago, and it still hasn't been addressed. Being allowed to release a game on consoles requires going through certification with the console manufacturer. This is a really big, costly endeavour which takes a lot of time and requires making sure you adhere to a staggering amount of rules.[0] This and other concerns regarding distributors and retailers mean what's on the physical disc needs to be in place months in advance, making it pretty old once the game is released.

Add to that the fact that bringing out a game patch for PS4 or Xbox is very expensive[1] and requires you going through cert again, and you'll see why many developers try to schedule their patches way ahead of time. Obviously, you want to do rigorous internal testing to make sure you don't have to go back and forth with cert more than necessary. Which suddenly means you have a month-long gap between something being submitted for testing and the patch reaching your loyal paying customers. It's definitely painful, watching the angry comments flow in about an issue you solved weeks ago. Now, I'm not complaining about this. The cert rules and patch restrictions are almost always very logical and there to ensure high quality for the players. But they do come at a cost.

[0] https://kotaku.com/so-how-long-do-sony-and-microsofts-approv... [1] https://kotaku.com/wait-it-costs-40-000-to-patch-a-console-g...

gambiting2• 7 years ago

I'm not the original poster, but also work at another publisher similar in size to EA, and I'd say that the whole idea of complaining about day-1 patches from both gamers and critics makes no sense, especially in the era of "live" games which receive ongoing support all the time. Like, we're releasing a game this month, right? Do you know when we sent our master builds for submission? In December. It honestly takes nearly 4 months for the game to go from a finished build to a disc you can buy at a store near you. And the team working on this game is something like 600+ people. What are they going to do between closing the master build and March? They continue working on the game, of course. And the culmination of this work comes out as the day one patch. In fact, the day one patch was submitted and approved couple weeks ago, and the game isn't even out yet - we're now working on the second patch that's going to come out few weeks after release.

I'd say in general a misunderstanding of how impossibly long things can take is an issue. Even if we wanted to create and publish an emergency patch for one of our games today, it would take at least 3-4 days before it would go live on PS4/X1. It's just how it is. Bug reports can take days to percolate through support, then to the right studio, then to the right team, then to the right person. Yes, it might be an "easy" fix of just changing a value or two in a text file, but between the customer support taking a report and us pushing a patch out it can take a week or two.

And in general, it's quite frustrating that as a dev I sometimes see someone having an issue on a forum for our game and I know that I can't reply with advice, because if someone found out that I work for this company it could be misconstrued(as an example - I know that you can get around a particular error by using a VPN temporarily, but I can't be in a position where I'm advising people to download and use VPN software) - so instead I say nothing, and it bothers me that I could help someone but at the same time I can't.

PakG1• 7 years ago

I think that whole thing came about because of EA Spouse, no?

https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-03-28-ea-doesnt-...

danso• 7 years ago

Yeah I honestly can't see how an insider, in this particular scenario, could feel comfortable and expressive without being at least 5 years removed from the situation. Seems like there'd be a natural inclination for the memories/discussion to devolve into nasty blaming, and/or the added pain of remembering if the company's disaster coincided with a personal tragedy/downtime.

I've been fascinated with some of the most recent big blowups, like Bethesda's Fallout 76 and BioWare's Anthem. The former seems to be a product of heavy complacency; the latter has been such an unexpected disappointment that the reasons for failure seem like they could be innumerable.

On the other hand, recaps by developers of their successes have almost always been the most fun things to read about, e.g. Starcraft [0], Crash Bandicoot [1]

[0] https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/tough-times-on-the-road-to-...

[1] https://www.naughtydog.com/blog/making_crash_bandicoot_by_an...

TheAceOfHearts• 7 years ago

I always love encountering content and discussions from engineers or game designers who work at big games companies. I've befriended a few game developers over the years and they always have incredibly fascinating "war stories" which they share in private.

Your hesitation is understandable, though. A lot of people forget that there's real humans behind these big faceless companies. There's lots of potential downsides to sharing stuff online, without many equivalent upsides. However, I think if developers were a bit more open and people got to peek behind the curtains a little it would help to humanize these big faceless entities. Even adding minor things like developer commentary to patch notes can cause a drastically different reaction from the community. If I'm often playing a game and something gets changed I think it's reasonable to wonder about the reasoning behind those changes. Being more open and communicating frequently with the community helps set expectations and build trust.

To give a parallel from another industry, all of my favorite book authors are writers who give frequent updates and are quite open about their progress. Informing readers about your expected timelines helps temper expectations and it shows that you care, making people more likely to want to invest time in your series. If there's any kind of delay or a deadline gets missed the best thing you can do is communicate it quickly. Based on my experience, people tend to be incredibly understanding when they actually know what's going on. If all you get from an author is a vague date and it keeps getting moved around without any additional information it kinda feels like you're being jerked around.

Since we're on the topic, I've also encountered people that work at game companies who are incredibly resentful towards their customers, which doesn't seem very healthy. Hating your users is probably a good sign that it's time to move on to something new. Taking on this attitude appears to engage a negative feedback loop as well, causing things to degrade further. The absolute worst attitude I've seen is calling customers entitled because they didn't buy your game, although I'd like to be charitable and say that it was likely due to the person being under an overwhelming amount of stress.

behringer• 7 years ago

I'm sure a lot of casino operators feel the same way.

tru3_power• 7 years ago

To be honest I don’t blame you. I have the same anxiety whenever I consider posting anything on the internet. Once it’s posted, there’s no going back.

scarejunba2• 7 years ago

It's funny. This happens in most Internet forums. People ask questions often to seek validation rather than illumination. So they'll turn on you when you don't validate.

And in the end, throwaway or not, why help anyone who really wants to bite your face off? The insiders will continue to be privileged wrt information because the outsiders can't behave.

mckee1• 7 years ago

The point about 'getting used' to poor features, or indeed even bugs, applies not just to video games but any type of software you work on for a long time (especially personal projects, where you don't have a QA team).

This will no doubt be familiar to many of us on HN.

frou_dh2• 7 years ago

That's my understanding of what "Hallway usability testing" from the classic 'Joel Test' meant. Having fresh eyes on a thing vs. the same people 'testing' it forever.

There's a similar phenomenon when looking at an electronic todo list. You get used to reading it top-to-bottom and skipping over certain uncompleted items every time. It's nice if there is a feature to randomise the order of the list, to give you a jolt into properly considering each item individually again.

_Microft3• 7 years ago

I rather wonder what it's like to work at Facebook.

Do people still readily tell that they work at FB? With more and more shit coming to light and no impression that Facebook is seriously interested in fixing things, I suspect people would question ones judgement to keep working there? At least I do, to be honest.

nerdponx• 7 years ago

It's in part self-selecting: if you work there, it's because you want to work there in spite of (or maybe because of) what's in the press.

_Microft3• 7 years ago

That would mean that Facebook basically unfixable unless you fire/replace everyone. That doesn't bode well.

badfrog6• 7 years ago

Most people who work there believe the press is wrong or overblown.

I suspect people would question ones judgement to keep working there? At least I do, to be honest.

You're part of a small minority. 99% of people you talk to in the real world still just think Facebook is a fun app for memes and baby pictures.

mijamo• 7 years ago

I can't say about your environment but at least in France it is completely wrong. The general opinion on Facebook is extremely negative. It does not prevent people from using it, but they have as bad a reputation as oil companies. Even when talking to random peopme in the countryside it is a very negative view.

The main reasons are ads, fake news, data stealing, tax evasion from Facebook and in general a dislike of big American tech companies thinking they are better than everyone else (the importance of those factors obviously varies depending on the person).

petercooper• 7 years ago

People working on React at Facebook don't seem particularly fazed to me, but I think it's weird when people declare that working at Facebook is bad because Facebook does some bad things.

The countries we live in do lots of bad things but we can still be proud of our country, pay taxes, and keep ourselves away from the ethically dubious activity. Similarly, someone working away on React in Facebook doesn't have to get involved in face tracking or whatever.

_Microft3• 7 years ago

Isn't it like working in the supply chain of a questionable business? Ofcourse you are not doing bad things yourself but without you, others might not be able to.

hopler5• 7 years ago

It's one thing to work on the roads and sewers, and psychology distance yourself from the military drone program. It's another when the core business model and the CEO's own stated goals are hostile to humanity.

zepto2• 7 years ago

Except that it’s not that Facebook ‘does some bad things’. Those bad things are pervasive and fundamental to facebook’s relationship with its users.

rkangel• 7 years ago

I think it's weird when people declare that working at Facebook is bad because Facebook does some bad things

It's about making ethical decisions when a choice is available. One of the advantages of being a software engineer is that there are too few of us to go around: if you are halfway competent then you get some choice as to where to work. Involving some ethics in that decision is appropriate. It would be different if you were unskilled and needed any job to pay the bills.

You don't get to choose what country you are born in. You do get to choose who you vote for (in many countries), and that's the place where your ethics comes in.

ionised2• 7 years ago

The countries we live in do lots of bad things but we can still be proud of our country

I've always found the idea of 'being proud of your country' to be a strange one. Pretty much all of my country's accomplishments were before I was born, and even the ones after I was born were done without any involvement by me.

So what's left? Should I be proud that I happeend to be born on this patch of land? Why?

“The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen.

The man who is endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short, since their failings will be constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.”

    — Arthur Schopenhauer

sfifs• 7 years ago

Maybe they feel they're building products that are actually adding value to people's lives? A decade ago, we hardly kept in touch or were aware of lives of people beyond the immediate circle but now we do? Maybe their products gave self expression to millions of teens and twenties who found a way they could share their opinions and shape conversations without political or high society connections FOR FREE? Maybe they feel they've rescued people from watching unskippable ads on TV and replaced with far less intrusive ads on the feed?

While I neither work for nor really use Facebook products beyond WhatsApp, I do think they have added tremendous value to the world and would encourage you to also explore viewpoints different from the standard narratives.

badfrog6• 7 years ago

I definitely agree with that, but I've started to hear a lot of people argue that social media is inherently bad. Reasons I've heard include wasting people's time, giving a false sense of community, and causing depression.

JMTQp8lwXL2• 7 years ago

After college, many people busy with their lives don't post much on FB. There's a particular subset of friend I don't feel like I know very much about-- they're busy with their careers, relationships, etc. I couldn't passively watch my feed to know what's going on their lives, I'd have to pick up the phone and call.

birksherty• 7 years ago

I connected with long lost people on facebook. Most of them just upload a fake happy life on social media and it made me compare my life with them more.

After deleting my facebook profile it never felt like I lost something. I don't want to know what's going on with everyone's life everyday. I just use phone call to connect with people I care about and few real friends now. It feels much better.

tokyodude• 7 years ago

This isn't facebook's fault but for me SMS and then social media after I feel as worked the opposite. I maybe keep mildly aware of people I haven't seen in months or year because of social media but close friends I used to call daily or weekly and have long talks. Now it feels like bad manners to call someone which might disrupt their time when I could have messaged, emailed, slacked, tweeted instead. The result is I get/have no talks. Just a few short messages over a week or month.

blueboo• 7 years ago

Lol, what precious, hysterical overstatement. You think hat ten years ago we hardly kept in touch with people beyond our immediate circle because you were 13.

All of your “maybe they...” rhetorical questions have a firm answer outside your bubble. You’re not going to like them

MivLives• 7 years ago

I have a friend who works at Facebook. I actually asked him this question.

His answer was something along the lines of: "I don't use facebook, the problems I have to solve are interesting, and it's management that makes those decisions."

I left it at that, I've known the guy for a long time and I think that goes pretty well with his mindset. It might be a different story if he was working on a data gathering team.

bvinc• 7 years ago

That's probably what I would say if I worked at Facebook. The uncomfortable line of questioning would be if you asked me WHY I don't have a Facebook. And I would explain why I don't like giving my attention to an AI driven news feed and how I don't think Facebook is having a positive effect on most user's lives. Then I'll start wondering what I'm doing with my career.

misiti3780• 7 years ago

there are literally hundreds of companies in SV solving interesting problems - i would ask him why he doesnt look for a new position

Calashle0202• 7 years ago

The worst part isn't when the game launches and does poorly, but during development.

Most devs are passionate gamers themselves, and even if our own priduct doesn't turn out great, doesn't mean we don't know what makes a good game. So most of us know that the product we're working on isn't gonna be a GOTY.

There's a few stages to it, similar to the stages of grief:

    Denial: "If I pull extra hours, I can fix this feature. We can turn this around."

    Anger: Frustration and anger that's usually directed towards upper management ("why did we have to make this decision? why don't we have enough staff? why are we launching in three months?"

    Acceptance: "Whatever, you can't always bat 1000. As long as my job is secure after all this, I'm fine."

And worst of all, apathy, where the passion you once had has been sapped from you, and what you thought was a dream job, has turned into just another routine motion you go through.

anc84• 7 years ago

While you can still edit, please use a different style for your quotes. Using code formatting makes them a pain to read. Just make them cursive with the star characters. Thanks! :)

jessaustin3• 7 years ago

It's mysterious that people think this (fixed width for anything other than a short code listing) is a rational formatting decision on HN. Does anyone use a wide enough screen to accommodate that "anger" line above?

bobwaycott• 7 years ago

Using asterisks makes the text italicized, not cursive.

Agentlien8• 7 years ago

My experience is that developers are generally very well aware of all the issues mentioned in reviews and player feedback, but might not be prepared for how those are weighed against the good points.

dfxm122• 7 years ago

know that the product we're working on isn't gonna be a GOTY

Is there more than one game of the year? Is it more important to get the adulation from critics or from gamers (I guess measure in sales?). Or do gamers really listen to critics?

thecatspaw3• 7 years ago

Yes, everyone and their grandmother can be a critic and there's about an equal amount of GOTY's

however, I took that more as an indication that they know the game wont be well received, rather than literally not beeing GOTY

SmellyGeekBoy2• 7 years ago

Why is this the top comment? It's literally just a copy and paste of one of the linked Reddit comments (and badly formatted to boot).

philipov2• 7 years ago

Woa, have people started stealing top comments and crossposting them to farm karma?

sk5t• 7 years ago

Seems reasonable to flag it--new account, straight-up copy and paste even including "priduct", karma farming, no good can come of it.

spinach• 7 years ago

The awful comments and attitude that fans of games leave also seems to correlate with the type of game. Violent, competitive games will have fans with a similar attitude toward the game. There's a great article where creators of 'cozy' games talk about their nice interaction with fans.

"The others on the panel also echoed that practical sentiment, and pointed out that developing kinder, cozier games had led to more positive fan interactions. The group jovially argued over who had the best group of fans. "We break their save files every update," said Saltsman, referring to Overland. "No one complains."" [0]

[0] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-11-05-how-to-des...

maceurt2• 7 years ago

Or major the violent/ competitive games just entice more hardcore gamers who care more about the games they play.

hopler5• 7 years ago

If they care so much, why do they play games they hate made by companies they hate? Why equate hardcore with caring? Do hardcore heroin users care the most about their dope and dealers?

Sharlin• 7 years ago

”Caring more” or not, antisocial behavior is antisocial behavior.

coldtea3• 7 years ago

Violent games attracting more violent types is an easy deduction to make. So the grandparent's comment makes sense.

But why, as you imply, more violent games would attract people "who care more about the games they play" (over other types of games)?

Don't e.g. chess players care as much "about the games the play", perhaps more so than some violent FPS player in times spent? Or RPG players?

cleansy• 7 years ago

I wouldn't say that somebody who plays a violent/competitive game is more of a "hardcore" gamer than others.

If you look at the hours played per user grand strategy games and simulations seem to be on the front row. And grand strategy gamers are probably one of the most balanced individuals I've met.

The only definition that I could come up for in the few minutes I spent thinking about it is that the "usual" flaming, hating and insulting gamers just seem to have an unhealthy emotional balance. Some of these I know in "real life" seem to be very disconnected from emotions "offline". But as soon as they turn on the computer, they release all of these stored emotions.

SmellyGeekBoy2• 7 years ago

I'm not one to define what makes a gamer "hardcore" (much as I despise the term), but surely someone who follows the industry and takes risks on unknown indies and genres is more "hardcore" than someone who will blindly buy the new AAA shooter-of-the-moment every year?

mattbrewsbytes2• 7 years ago

The competitive gamers that play PvP have a lot of feedback for game developers since bugs, design flaws, etc. can impact their gameplay and chance of winning. At least from the perspective of a gamer that is.

For example they play a battle royale genre game and 20-30 minutes into a match they are one of two teams left and then die blaming some perceived thing that happened like game physics getting in the way, it appears they were shot through a wall, etc. The immature gamer (aka 10-20 years old and maybe beyond) may believe their talents are greater than reality.

chapium• 7 years ago

I see the poor attitudes more with other types of games. "MOBA" games are only mildly violent but have a terrible reputation. I blame the all or nothing win conditions and that a typical match takes 30-40 minutes. You can easily lose because of one player, which can seem unfair.

Whats changed over the years I think, are there are more sore losers. The internet provides enough anonymity that they get away with it.

Also, some people are literally addicted to the games, so they are unhappy to be playing and lash out at anyone getting in the way of their fix.

NeedMoreTea2• 7 years ago

I call convenient excuse. Only because most games do as little as feasible to get adequate behaviour from the users and fans. In many games it's encouraged, whether overt or implicit matters little, as far as they can get away with. Far too much abusive and offensive behaviour is simply ignored, presumably as it increases overall sales.

AAA titles are far more likely to moderate when you become strident and critical or running a bot. Offensive or entitled jerk gets a much easier time - they always get away with it. There is a lot competitive, violent games could do to preserve accountability as the correlation did not used to be there. Design mostly goes the other way in the way PvP, leagues, matchups and competition that tends to temporary, one off, pair ups and teams. It's encouraged.

It's one of the main reasons I avoid online titles now. I'm having a much happier time with games that treat online as a secondary or optional component, or entirely solo, and are from Indies.

cloverich2• 7 years ago

I think part of it is, despite being around for a long time now, our technical culture hasn't caught up to this fact: If you host an online community, you are responsible for providing and investing in moderation.

duxup• 7 years ago

I used to moderate a really busy gaming forum back in the day. The GTA forums were always the worst.

The Civilization and other TBS type game forums were spotless as far as behavior goes.

One day they made a change on the forum and moderator names looked different from other users (it wasn't intentional but some old formatting that accidentally was leaked out). I was posting like usual on the Civilization forums and they noticed my username looked odd, folks were surprised to hear there even WERE moderators. There simply had been no moderator action on those forums that anyone could remember. The community simply policed itself and users corrected their behavior on their own in a way that could never happen in GTA forums.

That was also the place you saw "reasonable" criticism of the game and respect for it from everyone. It wasn't all positive all the time, but it was balanced in terms of understanding the ying and yang of game development decisions.... and an acceptance that maybe as a user they don't know everything.

MrMember• 7 years ago

Flight simulator forums are also generally pleasant to use.

el_cujo2• 7 years ago

I think a lot of it has to do with the games being popular rather than violent, though I guess you could say in the current culture of gaming, violent games are more popular. For example, parts of the Pokemon community are extremely vitriolic and relentlessly criticize every new entry in the series. As a fan base gets bigger, its easier for people to dehumanize each other over the internet and thus be meaner to one another, where as smaller fan communities don't have that problem because you see a lot of the same names around and maybe even have an easier time talking to the actual devs. It's less of an anonymous mob, so people are less terrible to each other.

mattigames• 7 years ago

I'ts both, FPS games trying to look like COD get a lot of flak even at small scale, and the cute stuff like Pokemon gets a lot of flak because the fanbase is in the millions and therefore includes all kinds of people, specially when people with completely opposite opinions but equally passionate about it meet each other ("best pokemon game ever!" then "shut up! its the worst pokemon game ever!")

AtlasBarfed• 7 years ago

When I'm on gawker sites, the sarcasm is pretty high, but it is still jarring when I end up reading a Kotaku story: the distinct air of spoiled entitled teenager runs through their comments and stories in a way the other gawker sites do not, and considering the trashrag nature of most of the gawker stories, that says a lot.

But that is the nature of their target demographic. Why can AAA studios drop a repolished doomclone/shooter turd each year and do good sales? Same reason there are always preteen pop groups every couple of years: because there's a new crop of kids each year to sell your crap to.

I almost like the fact that these games are now polluted with lootboxes, it just lays bare the contempt the studios have for the players, even if it probably is producing a generation of gambling addicts.

logfromblammo4• 7 years ago

There is a personality classification system for gamers based on the four suits of playing cards.

Hearts game for the positive social interactions. They like to chat, and give each other "hugglepounces" all the time (whatever those are). They're the ones joining RP guilds, perfecting their avatar appearance, decorating residences, and organizing player-led events for participants from level 1 to level 1023. They actually use the emote gestures. Might cyber with you, if you are nice. If they kill you, it is mainly to watch the victory dance.

Diamonds game for the glory. They want to climb to the top of the leaderboards. If the game gives points, they have a lot of them. They lead PvE dungeon raids, and give helpful tips on how to increase your DPS by 0.1% with only a complicated series of keypresses that must be memorized and replicated with perfect timing. They have max-level characters, with all skills unlocked, and several have solo'd the Big Bad Boss designed for group raids. They do speedruns.

Clubs live for PvP. They lead AvA raids and guild wars. They feel that AI opponents are no challenge at all, and the only way to truly master the game is by defeating human players of equal or greater skill. All griefers are majority Club.

Spades wish to dig up all the secrets. They explore every area, and know where all the easter-eggs are hidden. They have done every quest and read every FAQ, and have likely contributed in some fashion to the wiki. They perform complicated experiments to verify hypotheses regarding formulas and mechanics. They may make obscure references to in-game lore and real-player history and expect you to get them.

Any given player can exhibit multiple types. A Diamond-Club likes to hit the top of the PvP leaderboards, specifically. They want to be named Emperor, or Warlord, or Arena Champion, or whatever title is awarded to the best at PvP. A Diamond-Spade has earned all the possible achievements, especially the secret/hidden ones, 100%ing the game. A Diamond-Heart will group with you to help you earn levels, and will gift you with a master-crafted set of equipment. Heart-Spades will organize scavenger hunts and make puzzles with user-created content. Club-Spades obsessively analyze the metagame, and invent weird character builds specifically to defeat the most popular builds. Club-Hearts are rare, and may do things like organize a fight club of RP duelists.

In my opinion, it's the Diamonds and the Clubs that tend to ruin a game's fan community, with elitism and anti-cooperation. Too many Hearts can make it a bit saccharine, and too many Spades make it nerdy, but as long as either of those two types dominate, the community remains civil. A non-competitive, casual game, or one that favors strategy over twitch/reflex skills tends to drive off the Diamonds and Clubs. While griefer Clubs can make a game tedious for others, a guild of Diamonds is the worst--they're like the cool kids clique in high school, and you aren't good enough to eat at their table. If a game cannot effectively insulate Heart-ish players from the Diamond-dominant and Club-dominant, they will abandon the game, and the community will grow toxic.

If your game does not cater to Hearts, you probably won't want to moderate its message boards.

supermw• 7 years ago

I don't think this discussion will be as interesting as people think.

When a game or piece of software you write is shit, you know it's shit, unless you are completely delusional. Thus once it's actually released you'll probably feel some relief that at least it's finally done and you can move on with your life, putting it behind you. Negative reviews aren't a surprise, they are expected. And in large companies there must be some satisfaction being able to say "I told you so" to fools who thought otherwise.

I think it'd be more interesting to find out what it's like being a small indie developer who banks it all on one game they've been working on for years, and then when it finally releases it's mediocre and mostly ignored, making little to no money.

scoutt• 7 years ago

But I don't think it has to be necessarily shit. It can be a good game, and you can be proud of it, but at some point a manager comes in and says "upper floors want to add microtransactions and DLCs here and there". You know as a gamer that it's (or it will be perceived as) a shitty practice and will be negatively received.

That could be for example a nice anecdote to tell (maybe the EA developer in the upper comments?).

rizzin• 7 years ago

Unless it's a "game as a service" and even after release you have to keep on polishing the turd.

frou_dh2• 7 years ago

Well the good thing about so-called "AAA" is that there will be so many hundreds of people in the building that responsibility will feel so dispersed that you'll effectively be an observer of the spectacle, despite being on the inside.

The AAA term in gamedev makes me laugh. As if it's some kind of status symbol. Just call it industrial-scale or factory-farming.

SlightRespect• 7 years ago

No raindrop feels responsible for the flood

draw_down• 7 years ago

I’ll trade you for two: “the fish rots from the head”, and “a witty saying proves nothing”.

rossdavidh• 7 years ago

I realize they didn't come up with this, but I first read it here: https://despair.com/products/irresponsibility

Can_Not• 7 years ago

And most of them shouldn't, the raindrops on the art team didn't create always online DRM for a single player game.

pnw_hazor• 7 years ago

Same for those who work at Facebook and Google I imagine.

"It's not my fault my company is hurtling us towards a dystopian surveillance society."

History is full of people like that.

AnIdiotOnTheNet• 7 years ago

And so is the present, which is something we'd all do well to remember.

dschuetz• 7 years ago

Of course, none of the mentioned AAA developers are taking part in this conversation. "What's it like?" - "Dunno, not in the AAA business, but it sucks, at least in the indie business!"

I'm not sure what the question aims at. Should developers avoid AAA publishing studios altogether? Or should they leave AAA development for indie? The problems of shitty games mostly stem from the business/investment and management part of development, not exactly due to lack of talent. But, without good management even the most talented artists are prone to failure. Rare exceptions confirm the rule.

drivers99• 7 years ago

It’s quite common in AskReddit threads especially if the target of the question is too specific. If it’s asking for people of type X, comments will often start: “I’m not X, but...” or the self-aware version: “Obligatory ‘not X but’...”

Checking AskReddit for a specific one that is there at the moment: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ax7cfl/folks_wit...

2nd top comment (sorted by best), starts “I don't have a blind parent, but I taught a child who did.“ There are a lot of responses that fit the wording of the question but a lot of others that have specific examples addressing the general topic.

Sounds like you’re thinking the question must have an agenda. I think it’s just opening up the topic of what is it like to work on a technical product that gets bad reviews.

cableshaft2• 7 years ago

Small and indie companies have their own problems and can also have games that aren't received well. In those cases it tends to put the company out of business entirely, as opposed to just some people being laid off. I've worked for three small game companies, two of which shut down after a poorly received game and one that laid off 90% of its people and limped along for a few more years before shutting down.

I'm no longer in the game industry (I am working on games in my spare time, though, but progress is pretty slow).

ben_jones• 7 years ago

As a angry and cynical gamer I want to take a moment to thank Game Developers of negatively received publishers, specifically EA and Blizzard who I am most familiar with.

First of all, I have never seen a triple A game in recent years that did not exhibit the passion of its developers somewhere in the game. Even the most rushed, MTX-riddled, poorly architected, games in recent memory would always have something that made me think, as a fellow developer/product manager, "Damn somebody worked their ass off to make that cool". Whether its extra effort put into a 3d model/animation, a unique UI enhancement, a piece of well thought out dialogue, something is always there and I appreciate it because it reflects nothing but extra effort - the game could have shipped without it but somebody did it anyways.

Second, gamers need to stop expecting infinite replayability. No game can be played 10 hours a day and stay fresh, engaging, and new. This is a particular problem with multiplayer and competitive games such as Battlefield or Overwatch. It prompts a vocal minority to complain and negatively impacts perception of a game which, if played a couple hours a day, would be received much better. It also promotes game types with more replayability, causing fewer RPG and single player games and more BR games that can be binged by streamers and fans to an unhealthy level.

Third, like the airline industry consumers force policy with their spending habits. They want to pay once for a game that gets constant updates, has progressive updates, and quality customer support. On paper I suppose this is fine but for large titles involves retaining large amounts of staff that have to be paid for somewhere in the process. Collectively we've by and large rejected most monetization strategies, leaving us with the current "game-as-service" model which I don't think anyone is truly happy of.

Finally, and again, thank you for your work. Gamers are vocal and often unreasonable, but we still think you are good developers and good people. So are gamers, we need to find a better way to support each other. I am not a fan of the oligarchy of modern triple A game developement (with EA, Activision-Blizzard, and 2k) hold all the cards. Hopefully with the democratization of Unity and Indie game development we can break the painful cycle soon.

Agentlien8• 7 years ago

From a passionate programmer at EA: thank you!

I really needed that, because it's far too rare. It's really tough spending so much time and effort trying to make something fun and only ever hearing complaints about how your company is evil and don't care.

eq_sd_• 7 years ago

I second this, also as a developer at EA.

Retric• 7 years ago

Chess and poker are examples of games with extreme replayability. The issue most AAA games have is how shallow they end up being.

RPG’s for example often represents choices as who do you want to win? That kind of story telling ends up being really expensive in development, but rather meaningless to a player. Choosing side A or B ends up being the same as picking the page in an adventure book. This can be engaging the first time, but replay ability ends up being is this book/movie good enough to read a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc time.

Sohcahtoa82• 7 years ago

Second, gamers need to stop expecting infinite replayability.

Or even long games. Not every game needs to have 100+ hours of content, especially single-player games.

I'm perfectly happy paying $10-15 on a game that I can complete in 2-3 hours. It's really no different than paying $10-15 to go see a movie in a theater.

zenpaul• 7 years ago

This comment from accpi jumped out...

Engineers take the Kondo approach to Jira. The ticket doesn't spark joy, so they discard it.

ryandrake• 7 years ago

It's sad that "We all know it's bad, but we'll keep doing what we're doing, and then release it and all get laid off" is still a common thread. Most of us have worked in places like this, too, and not just in game software. Totally demotivating. I guess I'd just say there are companies that don't have this attitude--look for them instead.

arkitaip• 7 years ago

From the comments: "Engineers take the Kondo approach to Jira. The ticket doesn't spark joy, so they discard it."

tablethnuser• 7 years ago

Surprising lack of actually qualified respondents but I'm not about to make a Reddit account to help out. Instead HN gets my reply. Worked at Zynga during "the good years" as both a programmer and a designer.

Launched game after game for our target audience, casual gamers. These are players who don't identify as gamers but probably play games for as many hours or more as those who do. These games were well-received. 4-5 star ratings, letters and gifts from players thanking us for making them feel less lonely at home or have a new way to connect with their grandkids or whatever.

On the flip side you are universally hated by self-identifying gamers who aren't even your target audience. And worse, you're hated by other professional devs in the industry. For a couple years at GDC I would walk around with my badge flipped or my employer obscured cuz it was better to make a first impression and _then_ reveal you worked for the dog. Eventually I would rep my employer proudly, even wearing obnoxious internally-gifted whatever-Ville shirts, just to ruffle feathers. This was the start of my growing resentment for self-identifying gamers, be they players or developers, which eventually led me to leave the industry.

Zynga was a "clone shop" because they understood that their target audience doesn't trade in mechanical novelty. Find something that already works, polish it, and extend it. That was the strategy. Game ideas are meaningless, literally every employee has a dozen good ones. Execution is all that matters. Your feathers are probably ruffled by now but we adopted this strategy from EA and the rest of AAA who do exactly this year after year for the very audience that condemned Zynga for it. You think all those open world games aren't really clones of Assassin's Creed? Cuz that's how they're all pitched. It's the game industry equivalent of "Uber for X". Everything is Assassin's Creed or Halo. Open world or on-rails. Chocolate or vanilla. Then you add the sprinkles ("this time they're toffee!") and ship it. Would you criticize Ben & Jerry's as a clone shop? I mean all they're doing is releasing the same ice cream over and over!

That should be enough pretext to answer the question. Obviously it feels like shit to work somewhere where people have decided you're cancer. But deep down you know they're wrong. There are plenty of ppl out there who enjoy your game, but they aren't the loudest ppl who write the public narrative. You're on your own to reconcile that. How I did it was to accept that self-identifying gamers are entitled brats who have no idea how the things they're critiquing actually work. I use the term 'self-identifying' so often because it's an important piece of the puzzle. These are ppl who consider playing games to be their thing, in the way that a Hot Topic shopper might consider dark clothes and Jack Skellington to be their thing. When you disrupt their internal reality, say by releasing a clone of Scrabble with more power-up tiles and a chat box, they feel like you are offending them and will now spend hours online spreading hate and misinformation. It's a little like politics.

I was pitching in on a mobile design for a game about collecting and raising dragons, cuz that was a hot mobile thing at the time, right around when the Tiny Tower debacle happened. To catch everyone up, Tiny Tower was a successful mobile game by a small indie studio. Zynga had released a clone called Dream Heights and the devs decided to weaponize the frothing self-identifying gamers in a FUD campaign to protect their game from a competitor. Pretty soon the Zynga version, which previously enjoyed 4 star rating and had a growing following of fans, got inundated with negative reviews from ppl who had no interest in the game at all. The company dropped the game because the target audience can't tell this is what happened. They just think the game is bad. Zynga actually winced pretty hard internally from this. It started cancelling other clones out of fear of a trend starting. In my opinion this was Zynga listening to the haters which is never the right thing to do. That dragon breeding game I was telling you about though; it was a clone so after nearly two years of development by a team of 40+ it was cancelled. When a game is cancelled before launch you can't really put it on your resume. If you're an artist you have to smuggle the art out of the company to use it in your portfolio, labeled as concept art or something. Obviously it would be better if two years of your life amounted to a name you could drop on your resume.

And ultimately that's what it feels like to work at a company after releasing a negatively received game. The frustration of being burned alive by a witch hunt mixed with the suffocating feeling that your career has stalled.

If there needs to be a moral to the story, it's to not let the entertainment you consume become your identity. It will make you a worse person.

diegoperini• 7 years ago

You changed my mind, so, thank you :)

MAGZine• 7 years ago

Interesting insight. But saying "all games are clones," and using that as justification to take an indie studio's idea doesn't come across very well.

Yes, a lot of the games but studio's churn out are all very similar. It's by design. Games are so expensive to produce that if you have a formula that works, you follow it.

Conversely, small games are a labour of love from studios. Devs often quit their jobs to work on them. And frequently, the large studios/producers will eventually buy the fresh idea though an acquisition, since they don't want to gamble on new IP themselves.

By appropriating another's idea, the freshness is lost for whoever plays whichever game first, and in this case, the company with marketing dollars is going to win. I can see the Injustice there. The player banks are at least probably separated but not mutually exclusive. If Zynga successfully cloned Minecraft, do you think it would have been the cultural phenomenon it is today?

Anyhow, you are certainly right that gamers frequently drag whatever they love to hate at the time through the mud. Sometimes I feel it's justified, sometimes I don't. I have a hard time rushing to defence of a company that rips off games because "everyone does it."

I think it's wise Zynga's leadership pulled back, but curious that they didn't see it coming to begin with.

neetodavid• 7 years ago

I happily worked at a small shop that made clones of popular mobile games. I spent about 2 years maintaining and releasing new content for Match-3 games.

The team was great and I learned a lot from them.

I would typically respond to 'what do you do' with something like 'You know Candy Crush? Yeah? I don't work on that but I do work on a clone of it.'

It was nice to learn while working on a frivolous game. Felt weird thinking about who was spending money and how much, though.

meditate• 7 years ago

I still chalk this behavior up to the walled-garden nature of the publisher platforms (mobile, consoles, Steam, etc). When customers have no recourse against companies doing things they don't like, they resort to mob behavior. Remove the friction from customers moving from one clone to another and you will see this disappear. However, I have no idea how you would get there.

soared• 7 years ago

This is excellent commentary and gave me insight into gaming in a way I hadn't considered. Thank you.

gdulli• 7 years ago

I worked at the two companies that made the two most important games I ever played. My experience at the first directly led to me keeping a bit of detachment the second time.

At the first, the company made some decisions that were unpopular with players. I was young and got caught up in frustration over those decisions on behalf of players, as a player myself, and over the damage to the company's image.

The second time was years later and I was able to advocate on behalf of players while not getting so emotionally caught up in the outcome of those decisions to affect my career there.

joshuakcockrell• 7 years ago

Back in 2011 I was a game tester on Hasbro Family Game Night 4. Definitely not an official spokesman here. It was so bad that we opted out of even having public reviews for the game from the large review sites.

Morale went way up once we released the game because everyone was so sick of working on it and knew the game was terrible. It was a product of having a low budget and tight deadlines. Sounds like my experience lines up with most of this Reddit discussion.

I think it may be different if, for some reason, the team is convinced their game is amazing before shipping. But in my experience game developers usually know if their game sucks.

mrkeen• 7 years ago

The atmosphere feels exactly the same as in this thread.

The discussion isn't about the game. The discussion is about the discussion about the game.

It's not "Should we do loot boxes?"; it's "Reddit trolls are being toxic about loot boxes. How can we deal with toxicity?"

stevenwoo• 7 years ago

It's depressing, but keep in mind for a lot of people in game development that do not have a lot of credits - they just want to complete a game to add it to their CV. It used to be (back in the 90's/2000's not sure how true this is now) that companies would not even look at your resume if you had not worked on a game that shipped for a lot of positions. I can remember being surprised at my first job in game development how passionate the arguments were in team meetings about how people were listed in the credits.

Also, I've worked separately at a publisher and company that contracted development of work to smaller development studios and I can remember it was much more common in my experience for the publisher or primary company looking at the milestone work and deciding it was not good enough and to terminate the contract and then having to look at the source code/assets and trying to assess the state and resurrect those games and that was no fun either, just sad to think about the opportunity cost for those involved and people who were probably going to get laid off, though usually one could look at the code and see the big picture problems in a day or two.

_mrmnmly• 7 years ago

I would suggest to read Jason Schreier's book: "blood sweat and pixels" - it opened my eyes about the process of building AAA games - which sometimes is soo chaotic that is hard to believe they could build anything.

pferde• 7 years ago

A little bit late to the party, but this article about a prematurely released game seems like a good addition to this thread, as an example how the releases are rushed by executives:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/03/05/left-alive-suffe...

What is it like working at a company after releasing a negatively-received game?

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