NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
Friendly reminder: This is NOT a “W”
Yes, it is better to have incentives tied to metacritic scores and units sold rather than… your actual existence.
But it is still the same bullshit. That is even worse in the era of chud influencers looking for the latest game to blame all the sins of the world on.
As the article says, this should be the norm, not the exception, but how can we expect it to become the norm if they don’t even get positive press for it?
It sure beats “Thanks for your hard work. Now that we’ve released, we don’t need you anymore, so good luck on the job hunt.”
No. This shouldn’t be the norm. How “successful” a game is on metacritic and sales has shockingly little to do with the actual dev team. At best it is marketing and PR. But even that pales in comparison to whether a disgusting hateful bigot says his audience should buy it or threaten to rape the families of every single person who worked on that game and a few others to boot.
It sure beats “Thanks for your hard work. Now that we’ve released, we don’t need you anymore, so good luck on the job hunt.”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma for no apparent reason.
But yeah. That is the bullshit that gets pushed around. Oh, that is just how business works and we are business people and you should understand business. Wait… the CEO doesn’t have significant portions of their salary and existence tied to a metacritic score? Well, that is because the CEO is good at business.
What should be the norm then?
If we’re going to criticize the way things are done, one has to offer an alternative that is better. Not saying that the current way is necessarily the best way.
Believe it or not, but you can actually criticize a business practice without solving all the problems in the world.
That said? Less of a focus on widespread acquisitions and immediate profits and more on realizing how many games have long tails and how the profits from a game that company (so not even studio) released five years ago can still fund development. Also, much more transparency in game development and regular credits updates so that people don’t have a giant five year blank spot on their CV that will never get filled in unless they crunch for six months to make sure they were employed a day before release.
And actual salaries and not “incentives”.
It was bonuses, added PTO, and a Switch. You’re acting like they were facing a pay cut if the DLC didn’t perform well. If they get a material reward for the big windfall they helped their employer get, that’s a good thing. You could argue they deserve pay raises instead, and I’d be inclined to agree, but then we’re agreeing on the principle and just quibbling over the extent.
Its not a false dilemma, devs getting the boot after release, is fairly common in this industry. Also not sure why you keep bringing it back to chuds and bigots, since that has nothing to do with the topic.
Guess what impacts sales figures and even metacritic scores these days?
Assholes like asmongold. Because getting your game review bombed and having all the twitch streamers checking out your game have their unpaid moderators run triple time because they didn’t sticky a clip of them calling the character generator “woke trash”? That severely impacts sales. And Games Media is in a horrible state and the more corporate outlets (but also even a lot of the independent ones) just aren’t going to want that smoke for daring to say a game was fun if it is the latest “culture war” game.
It was bonuses, added PTO, and a Switch. You’re acting like they were facing a pay cut if the DLC didn’t perform well.
There is a reason that it has increasingly become a good practice to refer to “total compensation”. Because, yeah, everyone loves getting told by the CEO that they are essential and saved the company and are awesome and everybody gets a day off … but only if they give the CEO time to peel out in his new ferrari first. But the reality is that that is baked into the expected salary and you are effectively taking a pay cut any year you don’t meet those arbitrary criteria… which are almost always never something YOU have any control over.
And you know who DOESN’T get a pay cut in the years where half your department got fired on a Thursday?
I agree with all of your points, but if we don’t even shine a positive light on steps in the right direction, then what are we supposed to do? Wait until we’re in a utopia, then start acknowledging improvements?
This isn’t a perfect final solution, but it’s a positive step, so is still say worth celebrating.
This isn’t a perfect final solution, but it’s a positive step, so is still say worth celebrating.
It is a “positive step” up from the hellscape that has been used to underpay and screw over devs for decades now.
I get we all want to feel good and not have to give a shit about actual labor issues and compensation of workers. But… this is just the kind of shit that makes it even easier to continue abusing the people who make the games we love and make sure that the golden parachute upper level managers get to have 500 person studios all on the back of having been at a meeting for a successful game.
Initiateofthevoid@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
The entire point is this:
In a world where companies boast record profits in the same breathe as announce mass layoffs, this is good news.