The Average Gamer's Knowledge of the Industry
polycounter lvl 7
Hi all!
My boyfriend owns a gaming website and he suggested I should write an article for his site (Gamer Nation) from the side of someone who has some knowledge about the gaming industry and how things work when a game is being made.
This got me thinking over the last couple of days, and I remember back to the times before I decided I wanted to work in the industry, and I was astounded by my ignorance over how things work. Thinking about it, the industry is quite a well oiled machine that many lay persons don't have a clue about/don't care about. Putting a disc in your PS3 doesn't really conjugate a thought as to the 100's of talented people, including many on this site, who come together to put that game in your hands.
And this made me want to ask the people of polycount: does it make a difference how much a general gamer knows about how a game is made?
Do you wish more people who had nothing to do with the industry admired how much work it takes?
My boyfriend owns a gaming website and he suggested I should write an article for his site (Gamer Nation) from the side of someone who has some knowledge about the gaming industry and how things work when a game is being made.
This got me thinking over the last couple of days, and I remember back to the times before I decided I wanted to work in the industry, and I was astounded by my ignorance over how things work. Thinking about it, the industry is quite a well oiled machine that many lay persons don't have a clue about/don't care about. Putting a disc in your PS3 doesn't really conjugate a thought as to the 100's of talented people, including many on this site, who come together to put that game in your hands.
And this made me want to ask the people of polycount: does it make a difference how much a general gamer knows about how a game is made?
Do you wish more people who had nothing to do with the industry admired how much work it takes?
Replies
When was the last time you thought about how a mechanical pencil gets made and all the people that worked to design it to be sturdy, lightweight, and efficient to manufacture cheaply and easily. All the machinery that goes into producing it on a mass scale, the paper needed to produce the cardboard packaging, where and how all the ink came from to create the labels that go on the box.
How much do you know about farming? Think your food would taste different if you understood everything that goes into getting food to the grocery store where you buy it?
We all consume products we know nothing about, and we don't know specifically because there is no need to know. This isn't a media industry thing, it happens in all industries and is really inevitable in a modern economy where everyone focuses on specialization.
but in the other hand, programmer and tech people not having enough exposure as much as artist have. yet they rarely complain ...
You work in video games? You're a programmer. Art/marketing/gameplay just magically assemble themselves.
But otherwise, no one knows/cares; this of course does not help the ridiculous yearly layoffs.
Ignorance of what people actually do in games and how they're put together is pretty rife, but then it's a fairly new industry. Film would have been much the same a century ago.
The worst offenders being those who go so low as to blast mods for taking time to make, that grinds my gears in the most murderous way.
mind you, even in the "how it's made", where they had direct access to the studio, they still made some generalizations; I think it was so people could "understand".
What you're talking about is not really a specific game industry "issue"; it happens across all business sectors.
I was talking to a guy who worked on satellite cell phones; and it blew his mind that I knew the antenna are made from iridium; point is, nobody really expects the layperson to know the details of their work.
And if we're honest wit ourselves, most people aren't vested enough to care; even after they ask you for the details and blindly nod as you explain.
The only legit gripe I heard from a dev is the tools suck: afaik it only ships with example tools, it's an engine not a development suite, you have to make your own tools.
I think this is where the ignorance starts...
but yeah, it's slowly getting more mature and organized.
Personally I don't care if players are ignorant. Even people inside the industry don't know how everything works. Really, does a regular artist know what's going on inside the Riccitiello's or Kotick's corporate meetings with the suits, where they discuss which place to shut down, which genre to focus on, which platform to abandon? Do they know what goes into distribution, marketing, support? Sometimes people don't even know what the guys in the next department really do.
Most people here know how the craft of the industry works (at least within their horizon), but I doubt many of us knows how the industry itself really works.
Even though these "hardcore" gamers raise all kinds of hell on the interwebs...it seems to have a relatively small impact on game sales and whatnot (otherwise call of duty games would never sell.)
Also, I have friends who love to buy modded consoles and pirate games. That pisses me off like nothing else. Nothing better than visiting home after working a 70 hour work week crunching on a game and having a neighbor ask you how to get more games for his modded ps3. I wish people that did this understood how much work goes into making those games, and somehow felt like the developers deserved their hard earned moneyz for those games.
I do feel like we should be appreciated more though and the amount of effort that goes into creating a game. But I don't really bother with gamers in general because it doesn't really matter.
What really bugs me though, what really grinds my gears is gaming journalists/critics or famous bloggers who don't know shit. You'd think they'd know more about it since they get a much more intimate experience with the actual process of creating a game. They get to visit the studios, play the games at early stages, even interviews with developers.
Just look at the latest ME3 fiasco. It's embarrassing for a game-making giant to bow down like that. The amount of disrespect for the endings of ME3 is ridiculous. Yeah sure the ending might not suit everyone, but complain about it and petition to change the ending? I'm a 100% sure the game-devs and the writers put a lot of effort and thought into the endings.
Organized chaos, it's surprising how unorganized AAA-titles can be. It's shocking at times :P
Yeah but my point is that I don't see a display of that understanding in the populace as much for those fields (although music...)
basically what I was getting at. Yes they're a minority but I simply don't see these attitudes displayed by the respective book/movies/music etc. fanbase
I know people like free things they can get away with, but y'know it just seems so much deeper than that; there just doesn't seem to be much research into the psychology. Personally I don't get my Jimmies rustled by these people, but it's one of those social constructs that is just aching for a better understanding. Alas, we cannot talk about it here.
I've worked with GameBryo, and I'd say it was the worst piece of middleware I've had to work with. It's basically a scenegraph and nothing else. It lacka a complete renderer, physics implementation, and very certainly lacks tools. It's also not very well organised or written and had little to no documentation. This was however about five-six years ago, so things may well have changed since then, but we had a really, really hard time getting started with it and realised rolling our own solution would have been both cheaper and quicker.
think the difference is that games are interactive and players feel a sense of ownership. for something like me3 where the player is encouraged to be emotionally invested in the characters and setting over three games, the response isn't that surprising
This is the dilemma that arises when games try to give players more authorial control of the narrative through their actions and decisions. Doubly more dangerous in a game which attempts to maintain a coherent linear narrative.
Yes that's right I suppose. games are a medium above all others to be 'placing' its audience within it. As a relatively young art, I'd say there is still a great deal to learn about how it fits into society.
The difference here is what it takes to make a game, and what gamers think it takes to make a game. Kotaku is great for comments like 'The characters are too muscular, it must be made in the Unreal engine!'. lol!
EDIT: The site's looking great BTW! Very swish.
Yes, I agree.
Correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't the journalist's job to tackle a matter objectively? To present a situation from all angles, so that the readers can be informed and after that form an opinion by themselves?
I can't count how many times i've read articles in popular magazines (german ones mostly), where the author just bashed a developer (company) for certain decisions, without researching under what conditions the decisions were made.
The author just threw his ignorant personal opinion to the readers, without thinking about WHY something was done the way it was. He expressed his personal opinion while representing the magazine, and by that making this the "right" opinion.
Now i know that you can't be objective when reviewing a game. But you can definitely approach problematic areas with an objective perpective, so that you can find all factors that lead to a decision or mistake, for the reader's sake. If you write your personal opinion, then at least state that this your opinion and not the opinion of the magazine that fully researched (or at least should have) the matter.
Examples:
1) I read an article, where the author calls Obsidian unprofessional und lazy for not fixing the bugs in the game, for recycling models and textures etc.
He also said that he thinks obsidian is going down the tubes, with fallout: new vegas as "proof".
Later it became known that the publisher actually insisted on the bugs being ignored, and that because the publisher set a very close deadline they were practically forced to recycle models.
2) Diablo 3: Another journalist wrote how blizzard lost their touch, became detached from the community, were confused, unorganized and had no project planning, because they were often changing gameplay mechanics. Even as the release date came very close.
AFAIK it is very common that in all projects content is changed, sometimes also last minute. The only difference is that the company does this without telling the public. Blizzard did tell and the author bashed them for doing something everyone does. And the fact that maybe the mechanics didn't work, and were changed because of that didn't seem to interest him at all.
3) Brink: A third author wrote how splash damage really don't know anything and didn't care about the gaming community, because they promised more (with tv-ads and marketing statements etc.) than what brink really is.
But the author did not even consider, that marketing and PR is really the publishers job or at least he didn't research IF it was.
4) Battlefield 3: Different journalist; How DICE screws people over and don't care if their customers are discomforted, in regards to the whole unique pre-purchase DLC fiasco. When later DICE stated that EA was in fact in charge for all DLCs, be it their distribution or their content, he said that these were just excuses, because they surely could have done something about it (which they did, but the author ignored that).
The above examples are NOT quotes, I am merely paraphrasing to emphasize.
I am not saying that ALL journalists do that, but definitely some of them do.
tl;dr
IMO Journalists are the gateway to the community and it's essential that they have a good inside knowledge of the industry, development and business wise. If they come to the conclusion that mistakes were made, then it's their job to explain it in a constructive way and not bash and blame people.
edit:
Gamers don't HAVE to know more about the industry, but if they want their opinions to be heard, they must learn to research and be less bashing and more constructive. Everytime feedback from the gamer to the devs is thought through, constructive and professional, the devs will at least read it. I don't know if that's the case in AAA projects, but it certainly works for Indie and smaller titles.
Probably a lot less viable though.
Or we look at it from the other side of that coin, the fact that people did know what was going on and the fact that stuff is not forgotten so easily shows that developers cannot say one thing and do another.
No more selling the pig in the bag and ending up with the pig being made of clay.
the only reason release date exist is to torture gamers so they want it more.
honestly though as game creation/design becomes larger endovour(like big budget hollywood movies have become) comprehension of what's required will decrease as people's expectations rise. as a counter to that pointing out any number of indie/small team's game can show how expectations/realities of game creation can be ludicrous.
Honestly It probably doesn't matter for gamers to know how much it takes to get a game released unless they are dilusional enough to think they came make the next gears by themselves.
or, and this is probably the only reason they need to how much effort it takes is to explain why some games are highly polished(look good,play well.) and why some game are less so, at least so the might keep an open mind to games that don't look like,or play like the next COD or Gears or whatever, but are still fun(for a given value of fun)
TL;DR Not Really.Maybe if they want to keep an open mind about the kinds of games they play
Film/Television is pretty well documented and well recognized. I think they've done a great job of showing how difficult it is/can be.
To a lesser extent music, with all the major bands/artists heavily documenting their recording process/tours.
Many people actually think our fulltime job is to go into work, play games all day, and miraculously 3 years later a game is somehow made.
While I dont agree to the extent that some of those gamers went to by harassing people at Bioware I feel they have every right to be upset and petition for a change to the ending if they saw it.
Having been heavily invested in Mass Effect and having finished 3 I totally see and feel from where they, as the consumer, are coming from. From the get go Bioware gave the impression that your choices would have a significant outcome to the end of the game. Even on the box they say that your choices dramatically change the ending of the game. And yet that was a huge lie. To people who invested in there character, invested in the trilogy that ending would be like a slap in the face.
Even throughout the game all they "choices" you made were undone. If you killed the Rachani in the first game, it didnt matter because they somehow brought them back in the 3rd. If you wiped out the Geth in the second game it didnt matter because they brought them back in the 3rd game too. All the "choices" you made had no real impact, they just tried to give the illusion that what you did mattered, but you will still experience the same content no matter what. Same for the ending. In the end it didnt matter what you did, there were 3 choices you could make and all 3 still ended the same.
I think the Mass Effect thing really brought to life to developers that gamers wont sit down and be lied too I think. It would be nice if gamers understood how hard/lots of times impossible it would be to change the ending of a game like that, but at least Bioware is making the effort to add in an epilogue to bring some more closure.
Once you throw in DLC controversy, of which there is plenty as of late, players blame the developer before they blame the publisher. The poor souls working at the dev may have had nothing to do with how content is split yet they eat most of the criticism. It's just a shame.
I don't know. If you're talking traditional natural media artists, maybe. By our nature, 3d artists *must* know the technical details that make their work, well, work.
Maybe it's just me though, I've always been in this sort of half-programmer/half-artist limbo.
Heh, I've noticed that too. And when a game is great, the publisher gets the praise instead of the actual developer
The gist of it is that the average person doesn't need to know much to function. Like how we don't know precisely how our body works - but a doctor needs to. As long as we leave the thinking up to the doctors - it's fine.
Anyway, to relate it a bit more to the topic at hand... the whole Mass Effect 3 Debacle can be seen as people going to the doctor and ordering them to prescribe a certain drug. It can work out well, but it's definitely risky.
I mean games are my job and I take my job serious, but taking a game serious like this and going tho the lengths those people did....sheesh. It's almost as crazy as those deranged MMO folks crying over a lost pixel swords and threatening people with lawsuits. Sometimes I really don't understand our customers. Good I'm not working in customer support or PR. Guess that's the downside of a strong IP, having to deal with lots of very vocal whiners if things go wrong - and I don't think they'd be less whiney if they understand the industry. All that would help those folks would be some time out to think if it's really that damn important to get worked up over all this and if they don't have more important things to channel their energies into.
The cusp of the argument comes from the fact that it was repeatedly misadvertised as a product which did things that it didn't deliver. People blew it way out of proportion, but the legitimate argument is there. If you bought a new machine that advertised a solid sound card, but it didn't have one at all when you recieved it, you'd complain right?
You've got to understand that in games like World of Warcraft, the rarer items have a real value and represent a very substantial investment in both time and money. If it takes literally hundreds of hours to obtain an in-game item, along with a subscription fee for playing the game, then that item is concievably worth a substantial amount of money, potentially thousands of dollars due to the investment required in obtaining it. This is why gold farmers and account sellers exist.
to get back to the point. i agree that it wouldnt hurt if journalists would know more about industry processes, a positive example being gametrailers.com. but i dont think that gamers in general need to be better informed. if they want to be, they can, but there is no reason to force them or anything. that wont make them buy more games, and that ultimately is most important.
As much entitlement as there has been a complete disregard of consumer rights, to have people side with developers even when they would completely and blatantly deny anything they've said earlier only to have fellow gamers meet another lied to consumer with a "it's just a game".
On one side people will say "it's not the developers fault, it's the publisher" to the next moment going "this is the developers artistic choice!" even in a clear situation where a studios is fully owned by a publisher and where a game has to be released in time and within a certain budget.
But as I said, many were perfectly content with buying the pig in the bag, or in this case the game in the dvd package, without even caring much for what was in, others were worried about what was going to be in the game and asked questions about it, that is what consumers do, make sure what they're getting is what they're getting.
And this is where the topic becomes valid again: Gamers these days are much better at documenting things, what developers have said, what they've promised, what the information on a page about the game says, they might not have the full ability to understand how a game is made exactly, but they know misinformation and lies when they see them.
I'm quite aware of this - I played UO for years. I invested tons of cash and time into it and while I was playing it I too though of things having "value" and that I "own" the stuff in the game and what not.
But now, years later, with some distance, I really wonder how I could get so attached to something, take something so serious, that at its core is a game, that should be enjoyed for fun, and not treated like work or an investment. Because I don't think that's what people make games for. They make the game for you to have fun along the ride, not to "invest" whatever you feel you're "investing".
Plus it's only an investment when you have the chance of getting something back. Otherwise it's just spend time or money for leisure.
I won't even get started about this misadvertisement claim. I doubt the same people regularly return their burgers because they never ever look like the "misadvertisements" posted right above the fastfood counters. Or maybe they also sue soap opera makers because they "invested" time watching this garbage and they want compensation... you could sue pretty much everyone this way.
Storm in a waterglass anyway.
the interactive and (more often than not) personal nature of playing a game creates a completely different experience in people, that affects and is affected by the perceptions of the player. I'm not saying that gamers are not *buzzoword* ( so sick of 'entitlement') or that they should be free to be, but simply that we have little understanding of how they connect with the medium to the point where their attitudes are affected. there are so many variables, and games add so many more.