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MJBuddy posted:Have you done any targeted marketing? It's another expense but if your goal is expanding awareness, why not drop ads in like Facebook's ad space for hyperfans of world of warships or some other thematically shared title? I did a little of this much earlier in development, and saw poor returns. Facebook does not make it easy to target ads with the level of specificity I need; you can only target them at things that are big enough deals to be "topics" in their own right. World of Warships is such a topic, but WoWarships fans are not my target audience, because literally the only thing my game and that game have in common is the warship angle. In consequence, the main result I got from those ads was people commenting "wow, this looks like a lovely version of World of Warships, who would ever want to play this", and no discernable improvement in my Steam stats. I'd rather be targeting fans of MechWarrior, Warship Gunner, and various other old "build your war machine and then go blow stuff up with it" kinds of games, but they're not big enough to be topics, and thus I cannot target them. I should probably take another stab at the Facebook ads, since the game has improved visually since then, and my trailer's in better shape too...but man I have so much other work that needs my attention, just, constantly. kirbysuperstar posted:Wow, the press should really look at the Nintendo eShop sometime I'm just passing on what I've heard from other sources 
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Jun 29, 2022 14:24
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Is there a facebook ad topic for the old PSX game Battlestations because the 12 people that remember it would kill for something similar which is what you seem to have
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Jun 29, 2022 16:06
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anyone familiar with ue5 know why this odd triangle flap appears over the inset hall where the elevator door is, at a distance? It disappears when I get closer, I can't even tell if it has that stucco bldg texture on it or just generic grey, and then curious the metal rim somehow pokes through, despite it on the same flat plane as the rest of the wall around it. or maybe this is a general mesh issue, not sure. the geometry for it seems fine to me, it's very simple, but that doesnt mean it's good geometry. there aren't any dupe verts.  i do get "binormal nearly zero tangent mickey t space" something or other errors on model import and I never found the rhyme or reason for which models or parts of models had the issue. stuff is uv unwrapped, normals all normal, textures work as expected according to uv map, and every imported model has looked fine otherwise. The building is kind of weird geometry for me, it's basically a bunch of planes coexisting together as different linked meshes lined up next to one another. Reckon I could just go in and join geometry and merge by distance and connect the meshes into one more contiguous box or plane for each side but idk, doesn't seem that's the issue and I was going to like, make variants of this building with diff textures and number of floors and such. If that was the issue though, I'd expect those overlapping areas to be the issue, as it stands, the weird artifact is just on that one base level facade mesh. I was going to make a seperate elevator box mesh to just jam into walls and alcoves anyway, so maybe I can just cover this error up lol, but I mean, I think I'm going to have a lot of geometry where I just bevel in a face exactly like that spot, so wanna know if that's going to be some issue, or if I've done something else weird here.
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Jul 5, 2022 02:01
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First thing I always check with something that looks like that is lightmap UVs.
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Jul 5, 2022 02:42
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i'm not sure if lightmap UVs are a separate thing but the UV map on my model is kinda strange, some vertices oddly skretched over somewhere wrong, hopefully that will help, ill check tomorrow. thank you.
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Jul 5, 2022 05:01
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The other thing I'd check, since you said it disappears if you get close, is if you have some LOD wonkiness going on.
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Jul 5, 2022 05:21
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv9vETDfnDg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn_R2uqMVDM You guys have motion capture and a bajillion dollars. Why do AAA RPG NPCs still animate and move like this?
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Jul 7, 2022 13:37
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Well I'm SORRY I forgot to tick the "realistic animations" checkbox.
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Jul 7, 2022 15:10
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I was talking with a friend who is peripheral to a regulatory agency and they mentioned an interesting problem. They get drafted in to explain pricing models for games pretty regularly because basically nobody there is conversant in gaming beyond the basics. They were recently asked to explain what was so predatory about Diablo 4 and not only was it difficult for them to understand, it was almost impossible to explain (mentioning the word 'gacha' may have been a mistake). So it was kind of an ordeal and frankly outside of their area of expertise. In any case we got around to thinking that if a regulatory agency can afford a bunch of lawyers then they can drat well also afford a.. monetization engineer? The folks who draw up use cases for daily log-in rewards and arranging nested currencies to avoid lootbox legislation and so on. If anybody can assess how a game is monetized and communicate it to higher-ups, it should be the people who design those systems in the first place. What is that job role called, and what are the qualifications for it? Fruits of the sea fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Jul 7, 2022 |
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Jul 7, 2022 16:21
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Fruits of the sea posted:I was talking with a friend who is peripheral to a regulatory agency and they mentioned an interesting problem. They get drafted in to explain pricing models for games pretty regularly because basically nobody there is conversant in gaming beyond the basics. They were recently asked to explain what was so predatory about Diablo 4 and not only was it difficult for them to understand, it was almost impossible to explain (mentioning the word 'gacha' may have been a mistake). So it was kind of an ordeal and frankly outside of their area of expertise. It's not the engineers hooking up payment systems, it's the product and sales team (working with [often against] economy designers). There's nothing overly predatory about Diablo immortal relative to the rest of the industry, really. From my view, it's relatively tame. I can't speak to Diablo 4, since it hasn't been released and no details of monetization are available publicly.
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Jul 7, 2022 16:34
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leper khan posted:I can't speak to Diablo 4, since it hasn't been released and no details of monetization are available publicly. Lol, woops  Diablo ImmortalI'm not really interested in that example though, just wondering what job role is responsible for developing monetization systems. What job titles and skills would one list in a job posting, for example. Product and sales teams is a start but that seems like a pretty broad tent?
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Jul 7, 2022 16:39
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A truly predatory game does have a lot in common with sales, especially scummy high-pressure tactics. Playing one of them effectively acts as an extended pitch session for an offering made at the exact moment of highest likelihood of conversion
haveblue fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jul 7, 2022 |
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Jul 7, 2022 16:42
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Economy Designer lays out the map of what's to be sold, Content Designers fill in that map, Product Managers overinflate sales and ruin the economy.
Studio fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Jul 7, 2022 |
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Jul 7, 2022 16:43
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Fruits of the sea posted:I'm not really interested in that example though, just wondering what job role is responsible for developing monetization systems. What job titles and skills would one list in a job posting, for example. Product and sales teams is a start but that seems like a pretty broad tent? I'm not sure that it's necessarily something that you can entirely pigeonhole. You're looking at a lot of player psychology around stuff like value judgements, reward systems, and (as haveblue says) vulnerability to pressure tactics, as well as business goals around revenue and how much game freeloaders can get access to. This ends up tying into a lot of aspects of the game, though. Stuff like how long it takes to perform certain animations, what kinds of flashy lights and sound effects are played when certain events happen, how microtransaction items are framed (both literally in the UI, and metaphorically in terms of what they purport to do), and on and on. It's a pervasive aspect of how the game is designed. Think about how much effort goes into optimizing a slot machine's presentation, for example, then apply that thinking to games. As a minor example, consider the visuals around dropping a common item vs. a rare one. You spend a lot of time on the effects around the rare drop to make it feel special, with particle effects, special sounds, etc. You make that as juicy as possible, then you carefully schedule exactly how frequent they need to be, and then you figure out the timing such that you can tell the player "hey, want a rare drop? Only $.99!" and be confident that they'll be jonesing for that instant gratification. TooMuchAbstraction fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Jul 7, 2022 |
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Jul 7, 2022 17:55
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Heran Bago posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv9vETDfnDg Even with motion capture and modern game engine tech, making any one of those 5 second vignettes feel really high quality is weeks of effort for multiple developers, especially if the intent is to make it in any way responsive to the environment or PC behavior. On a large scale open world type game, there are countless such interactions. The cost to focus on each one at a level to make them great is prohibitive, even if you are running a multi hundred million dollar budget and hundreds of developers for years on the project.
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Jul 7, 2022 18:14
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Fruits of the sea posted:Lol, woops It's super hard to explain if you aren't 'into' games. A 'complete' explanation would involve talking about how game systems, goals, and the means to achieve those goals overlap with the store in ways that are both obvious and not-so-obvious. It's hard to explain how the 'upper limit' on spending isn't obvious until you try and reach for it, and what the implications of that is for both whales and F2P players. It's not wrong to say that the Crest system is just a slot machine, but it's like a social slot machine - there is social pressure on you to 'pull your weight' in higher difficulties where you are forced to be in a group, so if you aren't spending money, the group gets less, and you get less. It's super insidious. There are the little things like putting 'free' services further away from the 'content portals' so buying the convenience NPCs feels worth while. Yeah, I have no idea how you explain that to someone not intimate with this kind of stuff and adequately communicate how predatory it is. Diablo Immortal is at least something worth talking about since it's the new thing and it's so full of predatory trash that you get plenty of examples. I'd be interested if you end up with a concise, digestible explanation for that kind of manipulative model. As for the job role, I think a lot of those kinds of teams have a 'Monetization Strategist' or something like that.
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Jul 7, 2022 19:37
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Canine Blues Arooo posted:It's super hard to explain if you aren't 'into' games. A 'complete' explanation would involve talking about how game systems, goals, and the means to achieve those goals overlap with the store in ways that are both obvious and not-so-obvious. It's hard to explain how the 'upper limit' on spending isn't obvious until you try and reach for it, and what the implications of that is for both whales and F2P players. It's not wrong to say that the Crest system is just a slot machine, but it's like a social slot machine - there is social pressure on you to 'pull your weight' in higher difficulties where you are forced to be in a group, so if you aren't spending money, the group gets less, and you get less. It's super insidious. There are the little things like putting 'free' services further away from the 'content portals' so buying the convenience NPCs feels worth while. At most places I've worked it is a Product Manager (though sometimes under a different title). It SHOULD typically involve a specialized PdM in some way as this is sort of at the core of what product should be focusing on (user behaviors and how best to meet them/encourage interaction with specific models). Product Managers are largely concerned with determining who the users are, who the users should be, what their experience is, what their needs are, and what their experience should be to maximize profits, downloads, retention, or some other relevant KPI, so monetization models fall squarely within that realm at many companies. And to answer the original question as best as possible - there are a very limited number of people who are truly experts in these monetization systems and the majority of them looking for fulltime employment are going to be hired into well-paying roles at the companies deploying these strategies. There is no way the regulatory agency is going to pay a competitive salary to an experienced product manager who could be making 150k+ to simply work for the companies developing monetization systems in the first place, and there's always demand for these sorts of roles. Source: I am a Product Manager who works in gaming (though not focused on monetization models) and occasionally get contacted by random groups/agencies looking to contract me for a speaking engagement or consultation period, often for the exact reason of needing an expert to explain these models to groups that have no experience in the vocabulary or methodology of games monetization. There is no way I could/would do this while employed by a gaming org and unless they paid me a lot to do so, there's no real reason for me to do so if I'm between jobs unless I'm having trouble finding work (not very likely for an experienced PdM with experience in monetization). So yeah I don't really know where you dig up "expert" consultants if you're a government org on a shoestring budget. Studio posted:Economy Designer lays out the map of what's to be sold, Content Designers fill in that map, Product Managers overinflate sales and ruin the economy. drat I Love You! fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Jul 10, 2022 |
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Jul 8, 2022 20:56
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DancingMachine posted:Even with motion capture and modern game engine tech, making any one of those 5 second vignettes feel really high quality is weeks of effort for multiple developers, especially if the intent is to make it in any way responsive to the environment or PC behavior. On a large scale open world type game, there are countless such interactions. The cost to focus on each one at a level to make them great is prohibitive, even if you are running a multi hundred million dollar budget and hundreds of developers for years on the project. .... Yeah, about that....
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Jul 11, 2022 02:57
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Heran Bago posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv9vETDfnDg On one hand, 90% of the problems in these cases have nothing to do with motion capture or the quality of the animation assets, it has to do with what animation asset is playing at what time based on all the different things going on with a character's AI/movement/etc. It's not as simple as "make animation better", it's usually "determine the complex set of blended/IK'ed animations to play based on a set of 90 different inputs". On the other hand, Skyrim sold 20 million copies. There's no real consistent feedback that gamers actually give a poo poo about this, and fixing these problems is really hard. So dev time tends to go to the stuff that players do seem to care about more.
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Jul 11, 2022 23:37
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Yeah...ultimately, the most important thing about the game is that it sells. If you can point to an issue and make a convincing argument that that issue is going to decrease sales more than the NPC animations, then whatever that issue is, it has higher priority. And there are a lot of issues that will affect sales more than NPCs that are obviously kinda janky if you decide to stop and observe them for a bit. Stuff like "this mission is impossible to complete" or "it's too easy to accidentally clip through the terrain" (not even that it's possible, just that it's too easy to do by mistake) or, more cynically, "the first two hours need more polish so people stay engaged until they can't return the game any more." It really bears emphasizing that it's a goddamned miracle that games are as functional as they are at shipping time. You shouldn't be saying "wow, this minor detail looks bad", you should be saying "holy poo poo, they managed to make a mostly-convincing simulation of a city, it only took them $300 million, and it usually even works!"
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Jul 11, 2022 23:51
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djkillingspree posted:On one hand, 90% of the problems in these cases have nothing to do with motion capture or the quality of the animation assets, it has to do with what animation asset is playing at what time based on all the different things going on with a character's AI/movement/etc. It's not as simple as "make animation better", it's usually "determine the complex set of blended/IK'ed animations to play based on a set of 90 different inputs". I'd argue there's pretty consistent feedback that gamers give absolutely zero shits about this.
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Jul 11, 2022 23:51
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I've seen projects go wrong due to people insisting on feet not slipping, and burning years of effort trying to cope with all the possible edge cases. Nintendo 1st party games have never given 2 shits about feet slipping, and it hasn't held them back much.
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Jul 15, 2022 11:29
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OzyMandrill posted:I've seen projects go wrong due to people insisting on feet not slipping, and burning years of effort trying to cope with all the possible edge cases. Nintendo 1st party games have never given 2 shits about feet slipping, and it hasn't held them back much.
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Jul 15, 2022 12:43
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I’d love to hear more about the IP licensee experience.
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Jul 15, 2022 14:17
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I vaguely worked on a game that was supposed to be a movie tie-in, the movie got shitcanned but we still made the game. Vin Diesel apparently insisted on recording all his lines in complete darkness, so facial animators had literally nothing to go on. It's funny because now he's famous for his insane amount of expressiveness saying the same three words.
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Jul 15, 2022 15:25
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Discendo Vox posted:I’d love to hear more about the IP licensee experience. It's always a giant pain in the rear end.
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Jul 15, 2022 15:26
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One thing that took me by surprise is that actor likenesses are licensed as their own separate thing and not necessarily included in a license for an IP that featured them, even one that's defined by that likeness in the cultural imagination. I was on a team that did games for Top Gun and Days of Thunder, and our artist spent a lot of time trying to perfect images of Maverick and Cole Trickle that strongly reminded you of Tom Cruise while not actually looking like Tom Cruise at all. The Top Gun license also didn't include the rights to Danger Zone, but luckily we were able to afford a cover of it.
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Jul 15, 2022 15:40
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Mad Max is an example of this. It got all rights to Fury Road, except for Tom Hardy's likeness. The game has a decent lookalike, and its good.
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Jul 16, 2022 10:23
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Does anyone itt work for Activision Blizzard? A recruiter just reached out to me about a position and while I’ve heard horror stories about the game industry, and this company specifically, I think I’d prefer to hear it from the source. Send me a PM if you have
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Jul 16, 2022 19:21
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PIZZA.BAT posted:Does anyone itt work for Activision Blizzard? A recruiter just reached out to me about a position and while I’ve heard horror stories about the game industry, and this company specifically, I think I’d prefer to hear it from the source. Send me a PM if you have The games industry in general is rough, but ActiBlizz is particularly dire. This thread might have more answers for you. I know some past AB folks have posted there, it might have a more targeted audience to answer your question if you don't get any responses here.
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Jul 16, 2022 20:04
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I know a few folks who work at Blizzard and lots of folks who have worked there in the past 6 years, and it's got problems, and it's in the middle of turning into whatever it's going to be next, but everyone I know who's worked there has generally good experiences. All of these people have worked in actual production, though; primarily artists, so I'm sure that affects things.
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Jul 16, 2022 20:31
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PIZZA.BAT posted:Does anyone itt work for Activision Blizzard? A recruiter just reached out to me about a position and while I’ve heard horror stories about the game industry, and this company specifically, I think I’d prefer to hear it from the source. Send me a PM if you have The people that run proletariat are generally cool. One is a goon, but he doesn't post much anymore. Your experiences will vary heavily by location and team.
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Jul 16, 2022 21:42
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Fwiw the people I know who've worked at Sledgehammer like it a lot, less so people from central teams.
foutre fucked around with this message at 03:24 on Jul 17, 2022 |
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Jul 17, 2022 03:22
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RIP ZEEZ
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leper khan posted:The people that run proletariat are generally cool. One is a goon, but he doesn't post much anymore. Hey, that's us / me! I like that "generally" doing a lot of lifting... I can't really speak to ABK at large, only for the newly minted Boston team and with only a few months of experience on WoW. So if it was one of our recruiters, I can tell you all sorts of (good) things about our team at least!
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Jul 18, 2022 01:31
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PIZZA.BAT posted:Does anyone itt work for Activision Blizzard? A recruiter just reached out to me about a position and while I’ve heard horror stories about the game industry, and this company specifically, I think I’d prefer to hear it from the source. Send me a PM if you have Worked there for 3 and a half years. Plenty of good and bad experiences, and I know several of the people who have publicly commented on the various scandals and lawsuits and have every reason to believe them. That said, there are a lot of good, caring, passionate people there doing cool stuff so I have a ton of respect for the individual people still working there on the ground. Outside of the news cycles, Blizzard is both a good and bad place to work. Everyone there loves the games and the culture on the ground is good. That also means you're working with a bunch of lifers who are taking big pay cuts to work on the games they love, and so promotions, raises, and opportunities are few and far between. Blizzard could also very clique-y and political on many of the teams, so if your goal is to climb the ladder in any way you need to be ready to directly ask for what you want and be prepared to manage up to the power brokers if you want anyone to notice you or be aware of what you're doing. Likewise if you're joining one of the less-favored teams, be prepared to get little support and have your resources reallocated to other teams. It was VERY clear in my time at Blizzard which teams mattered to leadership and which were more or less tolerated I Love You! fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Jul 18, 2022 |
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Jul 18, 2022 05:32
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PIZZA.BAT posted:Does anyone itt work for Activision Blizzard? A recruiter just reached out to me about a position and while I’ve heard horror stories about the game industry, and this company specifically, I think I’d prefer to hear it from the source. Send me a PM if you have I worked at blizzard for 7 years. Agree w/ above post - getting noticed and promoted can be quite challenging, and the culture changes a lot depending on the team you're on, or even on the sub-team you're a part of. In general in both my experience and from what I've heard from peers, the "average" A/B experience is pretty typical for the mainstream game industry, which obviously both says a lot about how much the typical mainstream game industry sucks but also that like, if you're willing to work at riot/ubi/EA/etc etc then I don't think A/B will be dramatically worse. And some indies are as bad/worse. Like, for example, blizzard QA was underpaid for the quality of work they did but was also paid substantially more than other QA in the Irvine area, so... take from that what you will. The game industry, folks!!!!!
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Jul 18, 2022 23:19
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As much as I wanted to similarly end my post with a "The game industry, folks", I do think there's something for how aggressively unapologetic AB has been while covering up its well-documented abuse and discrimination scandals to the best of its ability. I can't speak for every single accusation but I'll say for every one that has come to light I can think of another that was talked about behind closed doors and that everyone inside knew about or had witnessed firsthand. Bonus: One of my favorite experiences from my time at Blizzard was when the lead HR rep for our department got super into Trumpism and was making constant anti-BLM and pro-facist posts on social media (where the entire team was connected) I Love You! fucked around with this message at 01:43 on Jul 19, 2022 |
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Jul 19, 2022 00:52
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I Love You! posted:As much as I wanted to similarly end my post with a "The game industry, folks", I do think there's something for how aggressively unapologetic AB has been while covering up its well-documented abuse and discrimination scandals to the best of its ability. I can't speak for every single accusation but I'll say for every one that has come to light I can think of another that was talked about behind closed doors and that everyone inside knew about or had witnessed firsthand. Oh yeah, I mean the public responses from management have been awful but on the other hand they’ve been so awful that they managed to get themselves acquired. Whereas I think in a lot of the other cases (Ubi and riot come to mind) the company publicly professes contrition and then investigates themselves to discover, gee, actually nobody in upper management did anything bad. I do agree a lot of the worst behavior that’s come out at a/b was worse than what’s come out about those other studios. I don’t have a lot of faith that the culture that lead to a/b being how it was was substantially less prevalent at other big studios. Though certainly it’s clear that the management at the time had no interest in addressing it or was complicit in it. I guess just I’ve seen/heard about so much bad behavior in the industry go unpunished at so many places it feels to me like you can’t really trust that just because a studio doesn’t have a bad rep yet that there isn’t a bunch of horrific poo poo happening there. I’ve just seen the “bad place” hop around from EA to Riot to Ubi to A/B and now it kinda feels like “they’re all bad and the only major difference is what’s come out”.
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Jul 19, 2022 19:09
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djkillingspree posted:Oh yeah, I mean the public responses from management have been awful but on the other hand they’ve been so awful that they managed to get themselves acquired. Yeah, all very real points. Though to be fair, Blizz definitely did the "we self-investigated and found nothing" special tactic as well - https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23171447/activision-blizzard-investigation-sec-filing
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Jul 19, 2022 19:17
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I Love You! posted:Yeah, all very real points. Though to be fair, Blizz definitely did the "we self-investigated and found nothing" special tactic as well - https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23171447/activision-blizzard-investigation-sec-filing Oh yeah, absolutely. Though they were even more head-assed about it and didn't really even try to act with a bare minimum of contrition, which I think lead to even more investor lack of confidence and spiraled into them getting acquired imo. Or at least didn't help - hard to know what the version would have looked like where they didn't send the iraq war criminal pr team out
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Jul 19, 2022 19:56
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