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Comment on Lies of P: Overture devs actually rewarded for making a solid DLC in rare industry W: Getting a bonus, 2 weeks vacation, and a free Switch 2

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NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

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.

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otacon239@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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.

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- NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  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.
  
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ceenote@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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.

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- NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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?
  
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Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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.

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- NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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”.
  
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  - Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I mean if you think a system doesn’t work well it’s because you are able to identify why it isn’t working well and can visualize somewhat of an alternative. If that isn’t the case then you cannot be fully sure that there is a better way to do things, and maybe the system is working as well as it can be given the environment the system needs to operate in.
    
    I’m not a dev myself so I can’t speak too much about the pov of being a worker in the industry and the issues you describe with credits. But from a management perspective the problem is that it is simply not possible to accurately predict which games will have a long tail. So if you plan for a long tail and the game isn’t received as well as you expected, what happens then? The game makes a loss. The studio might need to close because they overcommitted resources to the project etc. it’s much safer to assume that all the sales will happen in the first 6 months and forecast for that, and if the game turns out to be more successful than expected then that’s free money basically from a planning POV.
    
    The intention of live service games is pretty much that, creating games that will purposefully and predictably have long tails, but the problem is that even if a game is designed to have a long tail it doesn’t mean that it will find an audience that will give it the momentum needed in the first place.
    
    As for bonuses being tied to reviews or sales, they both have pros and cons. Maybe it should be a little bit of both, because well received game might make lackluster sales while a badly received game might make crazy sales numbers (most AAA games).
    
    As for getting review bombed or getting panned by influencers. That is always a risk in every industry. I find that most games get the reception they deserve, For example a lot of people want to frame the latest Dragon Age for flopping because of chuds, but that is not in fact the case, because those same chuds probably sunk hundreds of of hours into BG3 which is by all chud metrics also a “woke” game. So the problem, very often is the quality of the game. Chuds are more than willing to put up with politics they don’t like in games when the game is objectively (subjective to the expectations of the intended audience) good.
    
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    NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    But from a management perspective
    
    Of course this model fucking benefits the managers. They aren’t tied to those incentives. They get to keep their jobs when some assclown wears a “dark maga” hat to the keighelys and the game craters.
    
    And… fuck the managers. They are already doing great.
    
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