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MJBuddy
Sep 22, 2008

Now I do not know whether I was then a head coach dreaming I was a Saints fan, or whether I am now a Saints fan, dreaming I am a head coach.

Dewgy posted:

Games like Candy Crush ARPU, I agree.

If you don't have an LTV > your CPA in mobile it's just not going to be a big moneymaker.

Which is disappointing about that space. Something (CPA going up) completely irrelevant to game quality changed and pushed out entire segments of games (infinite runners being a whole genre that kinda died overnight) or games that don't monetize aggressively enough.

Now most ads I get in mobile are just outright lies about what a game is, just showing ads for popular game styles or concepts that just aren't even in the game they're advertising just to get the install.

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Zaphod42
Sep 13, 2012

If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

MJBuddy posted:

You have to conceptually separate the candy crushes from the Red Deads of the world. If you're doing a good structured marketing plan, you're comparing your cost per acquisition vs your LTV in mobile space. In box retail it's a bit different.

Candy crush advertised a lot because their game was engaging and had a huge ARPU, so you just turn on the money for CPA and make huge profit.

The big shift in mobile is that CPA jumped massively over the last half a decade so you can't just make a decent game that monetizes okay and advertise and make an easy profit. Your LTV has to be pretty high.

Yeah but isn't Rockstar literally on the record for spending as much or more on marketing than they did on development? Maybe for other AAAs but at least that case in particular...

But R* also has the capital for doing things like that. I think you could extend what you were saying to say that both the red deads and candy crushes of the world are outliers compared to most games.

MJBuddy
Sep 22, 2008

Now I do not know whether I was then a head coach dreaming I was a Saints fan, or whether I am now a Saints fan, dreaming I am a head coach.

Zaphod42 posted:

Yeah but isn't Rockstar literally on the record for spending as much or more on marketing than they did on development? Maybe for other AAAs but at least that case in particular...

But R* also has the capital for doing things like that. I think you could extend what you were saying to say that both the red deads and candy crushes of the world are outliers compared to most games.

Oh definitely. I just meant that mobile games marketing is a function of internal metrics of cycling people into a product. On the box product space marketing has different functions.

There's definitely more than two categories though, even at similar AAA game budgets.

Part of that is capital needs. You don't need to advertise a game launch if it monetizes well. You just get it to people, take your proceeds and reinvest into marketing until you're out of people to buy in and then make another game. That is to say that mobile marketing spend is virtually unrelated to development costs.

In AAA retail you've likely committed the marketing budget years in advance. It's way less agile and need to be planned and spent before you even ask for pre orders. A lot more risk involved. Technically they ALSO care about cost per acquisition and that staying under their launch take, but it's potentially more complicated and probably publisher specific what the ratios are and in what media (digital, tv, etc).

more falafel please
Feb 26, 2005

forums poster

AAA has also gotten much more expensive to produce in the last 20 years -- $100m dev budget is normal for big franchises. Publishers are just starting to test the waters about charging $70 instead of the $60 they've been charging since the 90s. (This has gotten a little better with GaaS, digital distribution, DLC, MTX, etc). In 2001, if you sell a million copies, you're a big success. A million copies of a AAA game gets a studio closed now. Marketing has to be a big budget, because you need to sell way more copies than you used to to break even.

Zaphod42
Sep 13, 2012

If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

more falafel please posted:

AAA has also gotten much more expensive to produce in the last 20 years -- $100m dev budget is normal for big franchises. Publishers are just starting to test the waters about charging $70 instead of the $60 they've been charging since the 90s. (This has gotten a little better with GaaS, digital distribution, DLC, MTX, etc). In 2001, if you sell a million copies, you're a big success. A million copies of a AAA game gets a studio closed now. Marketing has to be a big budget, because you need to sell way more copies than you used to to break even.

I don't know if I buy that, the market is also vastly bigger than it used to be, and AAAs used to market back in the day too. I would say competition is a bigger issue than needing to sell a million copies to be a "success". That's entirely relative to the budget and expected return on the game as well.

mutata
Mar 1, 2003

It's objectively true that game budgets are higher now than they have ever been. Revenue is also at record highs though, but only really for the top companies.

Zaphod42
Sep 13, 2012

If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

mutata posted:

It's objectively true that game budgets are higher now than they have ever been. Revenue is also at record highs though, but only really for the top companies.

I wasn't arguing that point at all, merely saying that not all of this applies to all games. Budgets aren't a monolith and even if they have increased in size, not all games have that same scale. Just pointing out there are exceptions, just like how there are exceptions on the upper end too. Like how we were just discussing that red dead and mobile games aren't necessarily indicative of the whole industry either. Yeah?

MJBuddy
Sep 22, 2008

Now I do not know whether I was then a head coach dreaming I was a Saints fan, or whether I am now a Saints fan, dreaming I am a head coach.

more falafel please posted:

AAA has also gotten much more expensive to produce in the last 20 years -- $100m dev budget is normal for big franchises. Publishers are just starting to test the waters about charging $70 instead of the $60 they've been charging since the 90s. (This has gotten a little better with GaaS, digital distribution, DLC, MTX, etc). In 2001, if you sell a million copies, you're a big success. A million copies of a AAA game gets a studio closed now. Marketing has to be a big budget, because you need to sell way more copies than you used to to break even.

There are very high semi-fixed costs in the way publishers actually publish. For an Activision or EA it's probably quite high, because they have a lot of controls and red tape and QA and such that they get through. Some of those companies as a result have to make a decision between backing projects that are likely profitable at other publishers but not worth pushing through the controls. Take two created a second publishing house in Private Division seemingly to address this and get smaller and more flexible to kinda move alongside a lot of the indie+ publishers.

But yeah, like a million isn't worth the hassle of organizing the company around, and not worth revisiting with sequels, so it leads to just kinda "the end" at big publishers.

The dev teams were smaller in 2001 though. Half life 2 was made by fewer than 100 people. Doom 3 less than that. Red dead 2 took over 1600 people.

Zaphod42
Sep 13, 2012

If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

MJBuddy posted:

The dev teams were smaller in 2001 though. Half life 2 was made by fewer than 100 people. Doom 3 less than that. Red dead 2 took over 1600 people.

Yeah but again red dead is a pretty wild extreme case. How many people made something like Doom Eternal? (probably fair to say more than 100 though)

Tried googling to find out and while I didn't, I did find an article that says Id was "crunching pretty hard" while working on it. :negative: this industry, I tell you.

MJBuddy
Sep 22, 2008

Now I do not know whether I was then a head coach dreaming I was a Saints fan, or whether I am now a Saints fan, dreaming I am a head coach.

Zaphod42 posted:

Yeah but again red dead is a pretty wild extreme case. How many people made something like Doom Eternal? (probably fair to say more than 100 though)

Tried googling to find out and while I didn't, I did find an article that says Id was "crunching pretty hard" while working on it. :negative: this industry, I tell you.

id is around 200 people give or take right now including their QA team and have some smaller projects that aren't Doom Eternal.

Zenimax (like a lot of big publishers) does also pull people from other studios to lend a hand on projects though, like Machinegames and Arkane working on Youngblood together and I'm sure some folks from other studios did things here and there in Eternal.

Most of these numbers don't include temp QA staff either, though. It's hard to peg down dev sizes inclusive of QA.

more falafel please
Feb 26, 2005

forums poster

MJBuddy posted:

id is around 200 people give or take right now including their QA team and have some smaller projects that aren't Doom Eternal.

Zenimax (like a lot of big publishers) does also pull people from other studios to lend a hand on projects though, like Machinegames and Arkane working on Youngblood together and I'm sure some folks from other studios did things here and there in Eternal.

Most of these numbers don't include temp QA staff either, though. It's hard to peg down dev sizes inclusive of QA.

Yeah, and I'd be willing to bet they used outsourced art as well. Plus, speaking from experience, plenty of games use outsourced programming support that doesn't end up being in the credits, for any number of reasons.

e: yup, just looked myself up on mobygames, my last credit is a Special Thanks from 2017, and I've been on 3 projects since

chglcu
May 17, 2007

I'm so bored with the USA.
TIL mobygames has a link to my linkedin profile in my credits. Not sure how I feel about that one.

Angryhead
Apr 4, 2009

Don't call my name
Don't call my name
Alejandro




People Make Games made a really good video on the topic of outsourcing and how huge modern AAA teams are:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm7KUE1Kwts

People Make Games posted:

Someone Else's Problem: How Game Publishers Buy Crunch Overseas

We spoke to game developers from Malaysia and Indonesia to better understand how AAA game publishers profit from other people doing their crunch overseas.

Pigbottom
Sep 23, 2007

Time is never wasted when you're wasted all the time.

Angryhead posted:

People Make Games made a really good video on the topic of outsourcing and how huge modern AAA teams are:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm7KUE1Kwts

That's a really good video indeed. Everyone should watch.

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe
I want to share a short story involving myself and fellow goon Serth, who has been playtesting my game. I was working on an EMP pulse effect yesterday evening, got it to a point I was happy with, and threw it up on the game's Discord to share around, then went to bed. I came back in the morning to this:

quote:

[12:25 AM] Serth: ....ow. the initial part of that effect is unbearable for me to look at. I'm going to have to ask you to extend the various color effects for about half a second each as they transform through the animation.
[12:28 AM] Serth: Seriously, I...I can't look at it and keep a coherent train of thought.
[12:30 AM] Serth: yuuup definitely need you to remove that animation from the chat. My right eye is still acting up about a minute after i last looked at it
[12:31 AM] Serth: for reference, its the flashy bit at the start of the animation that fucks me up
[12:32 AM] Serth: the latter part is just fine and would be no trouble at all
[12:32 AM] Serth: but the actual burst is hurting my vision and imparing my thought pattern for up to several minutes after
[12:33 AM] Serth: its the mix of light and dark colors changing rapidly over an expanding area that just makes my brain go "gently caress this poo poo im out"
[12:34 AM] Serth: and my right eye still feels like someone is pressing a finger into it (not the owow finger in the eye feeling, just the annoying pressure feeling)
[12:35 AM] Serth: And just to be clear here, I have absolutely no problem with you posting this sort of animations for feedback here
[12:35 AM] Serth: But could you spoiler them and give me an epilepsy trigger warning when you do?
[12:36 AM] Serth: Cause that was 10minutes of hosed up vision since i wasn't prepared for it (knowing that its about to hit me makes a huge difference in how my brain copes with it)
[12:44 AM] Serth: okay there we go, eyeball is completely back to normal and i only have some light nausea left
[12:44 AM] Serth: very effective EMP
[12:44 AM] Serth: would not mount on my own ship

Needless to say, this was distressing. I certainly don't want my game to physically harm anyone! But it simply hadn't occurred to me that it might be a problem. I wanted a fast-moving effect to give the player instant feedback when they pressed the EMP button, and I made it bright and contrasting so it'd stand out and feel satisfying. These are of course exactly the kinds of things that are potential epilepsy triggers.

And since I was asleep, it took about six hours before I was back and able to respond to Serth's request to hide the animation.

For reference, the original, problematic EMP effect is https://i.imgur.com/zPZAjEF.mp4. I worked with Serth to fix it, and ultimately it now looks like https://i.imgur.com/kXSkd9T.mp4 The main changes are to slow everything down by a factor of 2, reduce the intensity of the central lightning burst, and make more of the effects transparent instead of solid-colored.

I want to thank Serth for putting his health on the line and still being willing to look at effects afterwards. He's also said he's willing to act as an epilepsy consultant for other goon devs. I encourage you all to think about any rapid flashes or other big, fast-moving effects your games might have, and to consider how you can tone them down so your games can be more accessible. Let me tell you, just putting a blanket "this game has flashing lights that may be a health hazard for people with certain conditions" disclaimer on your game is not a good solution.

Also-goon AzMiLion has also offered to help with legibility for the visually-impaired. Quote: "I'll gladly throw words at people if it means i get to poke at in dev things."

SerthVarnee
Mar 13, 2011

It has been two zero days since last incident.
Big Super Slapstick Hunk

TooMuchAbstraction posted:


Let me tell you, just putting a blanket "this game has flashing lights that may be a health hazard for people with certain conditions" disclaimer on your game is not a good solution.


Legally I can see how it solves all the problems for a company and that is really all you absolutely have to do in society's eyes. But if you want to actually try to fix the issue and not cause what in this specific case ended up being a 4 hour session of light nausea, brain fog, eyeball pressure (last two only lasted for 20 minutes fortunately) and a visceral feeling of pain through my sight, then drop me a PM or add me on Discord as Serth hashtag one two two four and i'd love to help reduce the risk, to myself and others with more severe cases of epilepsy, of catching what amounts to a flashbang to the face in the middle of what should be a nice relaxing experience.

Crediting or payment is not needed in case you do ask for my help. Just make sure to spoiler things and warn me before i look at things, cause the surprise factor is the difference between a 5 minute irritation and a need to lie down for up to 10 hours with strobe lights dancing behind my eyelids.

AzMiLion
Dec 29, 2010

Truck you say?

SerthVarnee posted:

Legally I can see how it solves all the problems for a company and that is really all you absolutely have to do in society's eyes. But if you want to actually try to fix the issue and not cause what in this specific case ended up being a 4 hour session of light nausea, brain fog, eyeball pressure (last two only lasted for 20 minutes fortunately) and a visceral feeling of pain through my sight, then drop me a PM or add me on Discord as Serth hashtag one two two four and i'd love to help reduce the risk, to myself and others with more severe cases of epilepsy, of catching what amounts to a flashbang to the face in the middle of what should be a nice relaxing experience.

Crediting or payment is not needed in case you do ask for my help. Just make sure to spoiler things and warn me before i look at things, cause the surprise factor is the difference between a 5 minute irritation and a need to lie down for up to 10 hours with strobe lights dancing behind my eyelids.

Yeah, the response was disturbing to see happen in discord. Had me worried for a sec. Anyway I'm the freelance legibility for visually impaired persons advice giver.
I don't need credit or payment or what have you. If you need someone to look at your stuff and provide feedback hit me up on Discord. AzMiLion hash Six Nine Five One

djkillingspree
Apr 2, 2001
make a hole with a gun perpendicular

SerthVarnee posted:

Legally I can see how it solves all the problems for a company and that is really all you absolutely have to do in society's eyes. But if you want to actually try to fix the issue and not cause what in this specific case ended up being a 4 hour session of light nausea, brain fog, eyeball pressure (last two only lasted for 20 minutes fortunately) and a visceral feeling of pain through my sight, then drop me a PM or add me on Discord as Serth hashtag one two two four and i'd love to help reduce the risk, to myself and others with more severe cases of epilepsy, of catching what amounts to a flashbang to the face in the middle of what should be a nice relaxing experience.

Crediting or payment is not needed in case you do ask for my help. Just make sure to spoiler things and warn me before i look at things, cause the surprise factor is the difference between a 5 minute irritation and a need to lie down for up to 10 hours with strobe lights dancing behind my eyelids.

I am under the impression that there are semi-automated tools that will help control for this, so you don't have to suffer. But I don't know how widely available they are!

SerthVarnee
Mar 13, 2011

It has been two zero days since last incident.
Big Super Slapstick Hunk
Oh that's nice to know. All I've known about attempts to mitigate epilepsy episodes in previous games have been: will fix poo poo that gets mainstream attention, will make disclaimer slightly bigger.

Besides, sometimes the effects are still there even years after an online game releases.

There was a river in Everquest 2 that completely hosed with the heads of several of my friends even though they didn't have epilepsy or similar issues normally. (It was not fun for me, I had to point the camera in another direction and put myself on follow if we had to go anywhere near that thing.)

There was also a Maelstrom/Tornado thing in one of the expansion zones that messed with my head, slowly but steadily sapping away my brain power until I needed help remembering how breathing worked. That thing was annoying as it was visible across the entire zone and it had a mesmerizing effect on me.

Guild wars 2 had a couple of zone events in one of their swamps where the visual distortions made by a few specific bosses caused me to have strobe lights going off behind my eyelids for the next several hours. It was even worse if I tried to have my eyes open or do anything other than lie on my back with my eyes firmly shut.

Black Desert Online and Final Fantasy 14 could both suckerpunch me by firing off about 10 player ability graphical effects on top of each other simultaneously.

Many many games have had me forced to cover my eyes and ask a roommate to tell me when the cutscene or fancy event animation is over because the immersion was attempted by making all kinds of bullshit flashing of the lights with the camera warping around.

Borderlands 2 had me in tears of visual pain during the intro to their Torque campaign dlc, (they do some colorful signal disturbance as Torque and Tanis fight for control of the transmission and it just makes my eyes bleed).

So the tools might be there and the most deadly effects are (hopefully) screened out, but sometimes its the little things that just cause a small subset of people mild to severe discomfort and if I can help mitigate that by offering up my time and doing some testings in a setting where I am ready for the fuckery? That would mean a lot to me. Seriously all of those things I've mentioned have been more or less fine once I know about them and can use coping strategies or workarounds (including turning off the screen until i hear the cutscene is over). Its when it comes as a surprise that it just fucks up my entire day.

SerthVarnee fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Mar 5, 2021

Gromit
Aug 15, 2000

I am an oppressed White Male, Asian women wont serve me! Save me Campbell Newman!!!!!!!
I would expect epilepsy or similar sensitivities to be so variable across the spectrum that it would be impossible to test each case effectively, but I am FAR from knowledgeable on this subject. Is it really the case that one person can test the effects, or will you just end up with a game that is fine for one but not others? I would hate to get a false sense of security about it.

When I read the words and clicked on the link to the first video I was expecting something absolutely mad - whole screen flashing different colours rapidly for half a second or something. What I saw looked so mild I would never have even considered it remotely unpleasant for anyone.

SerthVarnee
Mar 13, 2011

It has been two zero days since last incident.
Big Super Slapstick Hunk

Gromit posted:

I would expect epilepsy or similar sensitivities to be so variable across the spectrum that it would be impossible to test each case effectively, but I am FAR from knowledgeable on this subject. Is it really the case that one person can test the effects, or will you just end up with a game that is fine for one but not others? I would hate to get a false sense of security about it.

When I read the words and clicked on the link to the first video I was expecting something absolutely mad - whole screen flashing different colours rapidly for half a second or something. What I saw looked so mild I would never have even considered it remotely unpleasant for anyone.

Yeah....that's the problem really. I can only tell you what causes me issues. My epilepsy is very mild (haven't had a full blow seizure in 20 years thank gently caress) and it is mostly stress induced.
But some visual inputs can and will completely gently caress with my day in various ways. Its kinda like driving a car down the road you've driven for years and years, and when you get to the stop light you look up to to see if it is red, yellow or green. Instead you get a strobelight and bullhorn while someone puts pressure on your right eye with the blunt end of a pencil.

The mindfuck from having that sprung on you leaves you completely unable to gather a train of thought, sometimes this keeps up for hours.


I know others that suffer from color triggered epilepsy can get blindspots from seeing certain color contrast combinations. those blindspots (like staring at the sun for a few seconds) can last for WEEKS.

SerthVarnee
Mar 13, 2011

It has been two zero days since last incident.
Big Super Slapstick Hunk

Gromit posted:

I would expect epilepsy or similar sensitivities to be so variable across the spectrum that it would be impossible to test each case effectively, but I am FAR from knowledgeable on this subject. Is it really the case that one person can test the effects, or will you just end up with a game that is fine for one but not others? I would hate to get a false sense of security about it.

When I read the words and clicked on the link to the first video I was expecting something absolutely mad - whole screen flashing different colours rapidly for half a second or something. What I saw looked so mild I would never have even considered it remotely unpleasant for anyone.

I can give you a rundown of the feedback I gave to TooMuchAbstraction in the case of that animation. Hopefully it will of some use to you.

The initial burst is in my head divided into three sections.
The bubble expanding upwards, the lighting intensity in the center and the forks moving out along the surface.
The three parts in themselves are fine although the central lighting is quite intense.
When you combine the light with my eyes focusing on the bubble expansion and then throw in the forking lights it becomes an overload.
Effect is much less annoying when it is in a vacuum interestingly enough ( i would have expected the reverse of that).
So its an issue of the setting being dark and the the effect catching my attention with the bubble, throwing me off balance with the lighting burst and then overloading me with the forks (my attention tries to divert itself too all branches simultaneously, which gives me a fun wannabe migrane when the lightburst goes into peripheral observation from many angles at the same time.
The longer you give me to adjust to the animation (IE slowing it down) and the less contrast you put in compared the background, the less it will bother me

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe

Gromit posted:

I would expect epilepsy or similar sensitivities to be so variable across the spectrum that it would be impossible to test each case effectively, but I am FAR from knowledgeable on this subject. Is it really the case that one person can test the effects, or will you just end up with a game that is fine for one but not others? I would hate to get a false sense of security about it.

When I read the words and clicked on the link to the first video I was expecting something absolutely mad - whole screen flashing different colours rapidly for half a second or something. What I saw looked so mild I would never have even considered it remotely unpleasant for anyone.

So, my take on this is: sure, I can't reasonably expect to make a game that's accessible to everyone. But it's churlish of me to refuse to make any effort at accessibility, especially when what's being asked requires relatively little effort (it's a lot easier to change a visual effect than it is to, say, add voice controls for hands-free playing). Ideally these are things that I anticipate in advance, rather than getting caught out when I've already caused harm -- not just because of the harm done, but because it's less work if I do it right the first time. And my understanding of epileptic triggers is that while the specific thresholds and triggering factors will vary from person to person, there's a general set of guiding principles that it behooves us to be aware of, which will minimize harm done if followed. So it's reasonable to assume that if Serth has problems, then there's many other folks who would similarly suffer if I left the effect unedited.

The same kind of thing applies to poo poo like not having sexist/racist/bigoted content, and I think we can all agree that it's worth us striving, as an industry, to eliminate that kind of stuff, and the harm it does, from our games.

To take a more pragmatic approach to the problem: one of the big ways I'm trying to make my game stand out is by taking firm social stances. The cast is diverse. The story tackles some tricky issues around disability. You can customize your ships with pride symbols. One of the loading screen tooltips specifically declares that there are no Nazis in the game's universe, because gently caress Nazis. I lose credibility if I take these stances and then say "but you, I don't care about you."

Zaphod42
Sep 13, 2012

If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.
I just had a really successful first phone interview with a game studio :toot:

The role seems like a perfect fit for me, its a backend sever engineering role for a multiplayer game, so my background of being mostly in general software and not shipping games isn't so bad.

The only thing that worries me a little bit is the salary range we loosely discussed was honestly significantly higher than I expected, considering the game industry. I'm not sure if its because they're in California (and the cost of living there) or because they're expecting me to be something I'm not, but that's probably imposter syndrome talking. Looking over the job posting I match all the requirements to a T.

dreamless
Dec 18, 2013



djkillingspree posted:

I am under the impression that there are semi-automated tools that will help control for this, so you don't have to suffer. But I don't know how widely available they are!

I worked on a rhythm game for Activison in the late '00s, and QA would send us bugs that certain timestamps in particular tracks exceeded whatever threshold their analyzer was looking for, but as a programmer I didn't pay a lot of attention to what the tool was called or what tips they gave the artists to fix the offending sections. But it existed!

Zaphod42 posted:

I just had a really successful first phone interview with a game studio :toot:

Congratulations!

giogadi
Oct 27, 2009

Zaphod42 posted:

I just had a really successful first phone interview with a game studio :toot:

Woooooooo, congrats! I've also had a couple of solid interviews this week with some game companies in Austin. I was also pleasantly surprised by the salary ranges they provided. I just need to not gently caress up the next round of interviews. I'm such a huge nervous wreck while waiting for the interviews to begin, but once they start I tend to kinda enjoy them. But it's hard to remember that when I'm literally sweating from nerves for the 2-3 hours before an interview starts. This has to be bad for my health.

Gromit
Aug 15, 2000

I am an oppressed White Male, Asian women wont serve me! Save me Campbell Newman!!!!!!!

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

So, my take on this is: ...

Sorry mate, I didn't have any issue with you fixing it for the person in question - my comment had nothing to do with your response. I was curious about the condition itself and how I figured it would vary considerably across the board. Purposely ignoring a problem that was both easy to fix and have zero impact on other players would be a dick move in the extreme.

SerthVarnee
Mar 13, 2011

It has been two zero days since last incident.
Big Super Slapstick Hunk
I remembered another example of how my specific issues can cause odd visual impairments:

When Diablo 3 came out it was....well many words have been said about Diablo 3, so nevermind the gameplay and story and all that. What I remember the game for was the weird visual effects it had. I played a monk so I didn't even have all that much bling going on during combat. However if I was fighting 4+ enemies I would consistently loose the ability to see my mouse courser. There was simply too much bling going on that melted into one large clusterfuck. When I was fighting 10+ enemies I would no longer be able to see my character and would mentally have lost track of his position even though the camera obviously centers on him. Intellectually I knew exactly where he should be. In reality I could no longer distinguish his features from the mess of colors and explosions going on. He was in no way obscured or blocked it just seemed to me like someone had taken the lid off a lot of paint cans and mixed them all together.

None of my friends had any such issue so I chalked it up to being a side effect of epilepsy and in the end I just played something else instead.

But when you combine this experience with the others I mentioned, I am starting to see a pattern.

Lighting contrasts work fine.

Multiple arcs of intense activity works fine.

Suddenly altered patterns in an animation works fine.

Two of these combined is taxing but doable.

Three of these combined is confusing, tiring and stressful but doable.

Three of these combined without warning or expectation of this being a possibility will cause an instant repulsion of input between my eyes and my brain and will leave several physical signs of stress (pressure in the eyeballs, nausea, complete loss of higher brain functions, loss of life critical brain functions like remembering how to draw breath (note I'm not saying forgetting to breathe, I'm saying forgetting HOW to breathe. It loving suuuuucks).

If you slow down the animation, reduce the intensity of the light or color contrasts, stagger the various effects in the animation instead of simultaneously triggering them, then you reduce the workload and thus risk on my broken brain immensely. If you get good at it, you will be doing it in ways that noone else will even notice, not even the people with epilepsy themselves.

In the end I know that the onus is on me to not play games that I simply can't handle. Of course it is and of course it should be. Development work is a matter of allocating limited resources to meet a make or break deadline and honestly it is up to me to be the adult and look at the splash screen warning about things that might kill me and take it seriously. You should not be forced to risk the economic future of your company and your career because I ignore the warning signs put up in advance. But if you want to and have the option to take the time to run anything you feel could be an issue past me, I would be honored to help you with feedback.

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe

Gromit posted:

Sorry mate, I didn't have any issue with you fixing it for the person in question - my comment had nothing to do with your response. I was curious about the condition itself and how I figured it would vary considerably across the board. Purposely ignoring a problem that was both easy to fix and have zero impact on other players would be a dick move in the extreme.

Ahh, sorry for leaping on you. I agree that it'd be nice to have a rigorous set of guidelines, but as you noted, trigger thresholds vary depending on the person. That said, a little googling turned up this service which will test videos for you, for a fee. The fee isn't cheap but it's also not so high that indies shouldn't consider doing something like this IMO. A 5 minute video would be GBP35 / USD48, for example, and odds are you can compile everything that might be remotely problematic into 5 minutes.

Akuma
Sep 11, 2001


OneEightHundred posted:

As far as I know, VFX for TV/Hollywood is one of the main exit plans there.
Oh it just occurred to me that could have read as "technical designer" but I actually meant technical director, lol whoops

cubicle gangster
Jun 26, 2005

magda, make the tea

Akuma posted:

Oh it just occurred to me that could have read as "technical designer" but I actually meant technical director, lol whoops

TD also means technical director in vfx.

Akuma
Sep 11, 2001


cubicle gangster posted:

TD also means technical director in vfx.
Interesting...

I know practically nothing about the VFX industry, except that I hired a programmer that had written a renderer for a VFX house but had basically zero games experience and she quickly learned that very little of the actual way of doing things or even really any of the concepts were directly transferable. She's super smart, though, so picked up games graphics very fast.

Akuma fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Mar 6, 2021

Hyper Crab Tank
Feb 10, 2014

The 16-bit retro-future of crustacean-based transportation

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

A 5 minute video would be GBP35 / USD48, for example, and odds are you can compile everything that might be remotely problematic into 5 minutes.

Not going to lie, if this last series of posts has taught me anything it's that my perception of what might be problematic content is completely off, if that video linked earlier is anything to go by. That wouldn't even be on my radar for potentially being an epilepsy problem let alone something I would ask someone about to double check.

Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Mar 6, 2021

Studio
Jan 15, 2008



Zaphod42 posted:

I just had a really successful first phone interview with a game studio :toot:

The role seems like a perfect fit for me, its a backend sever engineering role for a multiplayer game, so my background of being mostly in general software and not shipping games isn't so bad.

The only thing that worries me a little bit is the salary range we loosely discussed was honestly significantly higher than I expected, considering the game industry. I'm not sure if its because they're in California (and the cost of living there) or because they're expecting me to be something I'm not, but that's probably imposter syndrome talking. Looking over the job posting I match all the requirements to a T.

Some companies are more competitive than others, and it depends on who they're trying to recruit from. Like Machine Zone (RIP) was trying to be competitive with Bay Area tech companies. They didn't have anywhere near the stock valuation to offer competitive options, so their pay was super high to compensate. If it's a California company trying to fight over FAANG engineers, they'll pay quite a bit.

I wouldn't be too concerned about more being expected, you had interviews, they laid out requirements, etc. You may not know Everything, but that's okay!

SerthVarnee
Mar 13, 2011

It has been two zero days since last incident.
Big Super Slapstick Hunk

Hyper Crab Tank posted:

Not going to lie, if this last series of posts has taught me anything it's that my perception of what might be problematic content is completely off, if that video linked earlier is anything to go by. That wouldn't even be on my radar for potentially being an epilepsy problem let alone something I would ask someone about to double check.

Well, if in doubt, send me a PM and a link and I'll be happy to double check things for you. I have years of experience with having epilepsy and I am fortunate enough to only get the seizures if I am really really stressed. Since I live on disability in Soviet Sweden, stress isn't really an issue these days, so I get the light (only up to half a day's worth of potential issues) reaction without being in actual mortal danger. Better I suffer from some potential nausea and discomfort than some less fortunate soul gets a life changing reaction to a random animation.

Zaphod42
Sep 13, 2012

If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

giogadi posted:

Woooooooo, congrats! I've also had a couple of solid interviews this week with some game companies in Austin. I was also pleasantly surprised by the salary ranges they provided. I just need to not gently caress up the next round of interviews. I'm such a huge nervous wreck while waiting for the interviews to begin, but once they start I tend to kinda enjoy them. But it's hard to remember that when I'm literally sweating from nerves for the 2-3 hours before an interview starts. This has to be bad for my health.

Literally same. Its surprising how sweaty I get on the day of an interview, I usually don't sweat much but its like non-stop until the interview gets going.

SerthVarnee
Mar 13, 2011

It has been two zero days since last incident.
Big Super Slapstick Hunk
Oh I thought of another example of seemingly minor things doing nasty stuff to people with epilepsy (and bear in mind here that Epilepsy is not a disease. Its an umbrella term describing several issues that cause similar symptoms, so what fucks me up might be perfectly fine for someone with much more severe cases of epilepsy).

When you load up Red Dead Redemption 2 there is a couple of unskippable cutscenes showing you the various studios that worked on the game. One of them has a little video of a shotgun being loaded and fired. The flash occuring when the gun fires forces me to look away. I can't look at it without getting a mental whiplash across the eyes.

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe
I'm trying to gauge the cost:benefit for advertising for my game. I'm pretty clear that trying to handle all of that myself, on top of everything else I'm doing, is a bad idea. I had a meeting with representatives from Novy Unlimited today, on potentially handling my game's PR/marketing needs. They offer a pretty wide selection of services, though those services don't come cheaply, starting at $5k for a basic PR plan. Of course, if you told me "spend $20k on this and you'll get 5k extra sales, spend $100k and you'll get 50k extra sales", then I'd be taking out a loan and throwing money at you...I just really don't have a sense of what an appropriate budget is for this. Anyone have any recommendations for where to start or how to think about this?

BULBASAUR
Apr 6, 2009




Soiled Meat
Could you get a breakdown of what exactly these PR/Marketing services get you? I think it would be easier to gauge based on that.

The math you're talking about is typically the land of paid media, where you spend money to buy traffic and then measure your spend against your uptick in sales. I'm not a paid media expert so I can't tell you if its worth it with a smaller budget, especially after the IDFA changes, but that's one thing this company might be offering. Other channels are usually more subjective, and might be a better bet for you, but require some form of prior relationship. Getting your game included in a game steam, podcast, or featured on some youtube channel for example. This service could have those sorts of connections, or you might just be paying for them to do that sort of outreach for you.

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TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe
Sure. This is copy-pasted from an email they sent me:

quote:

Public Relations
A PR-only launch campaign will run $5,000-$7,000 flat. Here are descriptions of each package:

Standard = $5,000 flat
Includes two press pushes (pre-launch pitch + launch pitch and press release), store analysis, strategies & tactics doc, and an impressions playthrough report. We'll also handle media relations, follow-up outreach, and coverage reporting (with metrics).

Enhanced = $6,000 flat
Everything in the Standard Product Launch package – with the addition of enhanced deliverables: sales assessment and mock reviews.

Premium = $7,000 flat
Everything in the Enhanced Product Launch package – with the addition of a third press push in the form of a pre-announcement or post-launch update (pitch + press release) and a custom add-on (e.g., in-game text edits, story analysis, audio assessment, SEO audit).


Marketing
A marketing campaign can be provided as a discounted add-on. Here's a summary:

Standalone Marketing Package
6-week campaign = $5,000 if paired with a PR campaign (normally $6,000)
12-week campaign = $10,000 if paired with a PR campaign (normally $12,000)

A marketing campaign incorporates all of the following:
social media (copy, assets, strategy, and management)
community (outreach, management, and engagement)
advertising (display, social, search, influencers - spend not included)
promotion (contests, giveaways, competitions)
(there's also an option to pay them a monthly retainer instead, but that gets expensive fast, so I probably won't be going for it)

From the meeting I had with them, they claim to have tens of thousands of contacts (press, streamers, youtubers, enthusiasts, influencers, etc.), which they've divided up by type, genres, and presumably a bunch of other criteria. Some of my notes from the meeting:

quote:

Once launch date is set, 1 week before launch, do pre-launch to allow press to have access before public. Lets press get ready, do early reviews, etc. Pre-launch involves pitch, key request, trailer, screenshots, etc. Then do it again at launch, with a formal press release and pitch (pitch is like a cover letter). Then a followup round 1wk after launch ("license to nag" where people who touched in didn't follow through with their content), with sentiment responses.

All services include reviewing Steam page

6. Marketing: pay people to put ads out (social media, community management/outreach, promotion, advertising).
6b: social media: all assets (GIFs/screenshots) and copy, mechanics of tweeting/posting, meme GIFs and other composites. All gets approved by me before posting. Posted/tweeted 5-7 days per week.
6c: community management: engaging with my community. Help with Discord server, subreddit, etc. Outreach is going outside of our networks and looping in new groups. Very good at Reddit. Also do some videos: tips and tricks, guides, narrated guides, streams, etc. Also do multiple languages (i.e. giving customized attention to people from different countries), as well as localization as a separate service.
6d: contest giveaways and competitions.
7: Advertising: display ads, social media ads, video ads, paid influencers, reddit ads,
7b: I set an ad spend, they run numbers for me, but I pay directly. I set a budget, they give me a set of mixes on how that money could be spent, as well as recommendations. They set up a media plan spreadsheet.

My experience with trying to do PR and marketing on my own can be summed up as:
- After close to two years on Twitter, I have a little over 500 followers
- After about three months on Steam, my game has 400 wishlists
- I bounced hard off of trying to make, run, and optimize Facebook ads (this company can also do "creative" work, e.g. trailers, if I want, but that's extra cost of course)

These numbers just frankly aren't big enough for me to think the game has a prayer of succeeding.

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