Ask A Game Dev! - We Are Your Friend's Uncle

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Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

How does the shift to longer-term DLC "seasons" or the "games as service" model Starbreeze touts, and other equivalents that aim for a long tail of activity and purchasing, effect the development cycle and project management? How do they effect quality of life and job security?

# ¿ Sep 20, 2017 22:11

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 00:00

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Along the same lines, what is the most unhelpful player feedback you've ever heard, either with relation to your own project or someone else's?

# ¿ Sep 26, 2017 15:28

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

How are folks defining "microtransaction" in this context? Its definition is often blurred to suit different complaints, entitlements or controversies.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2017 15:24

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Chunderstorm posted:

I'd also HIGHLY recommend Watch_Dogs as a masterclass in every bad idea happening all at once. It's the only game I've finished out of spite in order to fully understand every confused idea in it, and I lend my personal copy to co-workers when they ask why I'm so upset about it.

As a developer I like to think I'm above the 'gamer rage' and whatnot but that game does terrible things to my psyche. I stopped buying Ubi games for a couple years after it, and not just because of the hype problems.

e2: Apologies if any Ubi folks are in the thread and if you worked on it.

As a completionist trying sadly to eke the last handful of percentage points of completion out of that horrible game, I'd love to hear more about your perspective on what went wrong there, in as much detail as possible. Ubisoft open world games are a sick fascination for me, both to complete and to ogle the mechanical results of such a massive development enterprise.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Sep 28, 2017

# ¿ Sep 28, 2017 20:53

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

As someone who has spent (checks) 110 hours beating my head against WatchDogs 1, and way longer reading about it and watching others dissect it, I've had the opportunity to spot some of the remnants of what was cut, what was changed, etc- and it's pretty weird and horrible what went into development. I'm not a dev, though, so I'll take it elsewhere.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2017 17:27

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

I would imagine this is made more complex in the context of competitive games, or multiplayer settings where mods can effect the experience of other players.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2017 21:10

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

I once considered calling into one of those orderup-type places and buying my favorite game's devteam a ton of pizza.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2017 23:21

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

GC_ChrisReeves posted:

I mean we do have a dominoes like 30 seconds walk from our door, it would arrive nice and hot if you were to lead by example and send us some of that doughy stuffed crust goodness for making your most favourite game ever. I'll have a Large Scrummy.

The company in question works in Sweden and iirc they get free pizzas most days anyways, so I didn�t follow through.
Edit: someone from the game careers thread should take note, this would probably be an effective networking technique

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Oct 10, 2017

# ¿ Oct 10, 2017 14:45

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

What community management tools would it be most helpful to add to steam to deal with the black pit of waste that is its community forums?

# ¿ Oct 31, 2017 16:57

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

I don't understand why developers designing difficulty in a PvE space don't apply cogpsych. Like, there's a massive, relatively well-developed and backed literature on cognitive load, reaction time, perception, all the things that go into low-level decisionmaking, much of it a google away (this is alongside player feedback, ofc, not to replace it). Yet I keep seeing the dumbest decisions being made with regard to difficulty tweaks that don't take baseline cognition limits into account.

"Well, our game initially gave players .45 seconds minimum to respond to incoming fire, but they hungered for a greater challenge. So we added a difficulty where the time was decreased to react in .15 seconds. And we doubled enemy health, halved the headshot damage players could do, and multiplied enemy damage and accuracy by 3. Now people are angry for some reason, talking about 'unfair and unresponsive' difficulty where they 'can't tell what's shooting them before they die' and I have no clue why".

"We just wanted to give players the Dark Souls Experience they were asking for."

# ¿ Nov 13, 2017 18:54

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

It�s worth noting that the reddit posted calculation of time to unlock heroes that was the fountainhead of this was, at best, misleading about the time investment involved.

That pattern of social media attack based on inaccurate claims seems to be becoming common.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2017 21:35

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

The player perception that led to the backlash against Battlefront 2 was about non-lootbox unlocks, and was based on a pretty obviously misleading set of assertions about the amount of time involved. The setup of the reddit post that kicked things off made it pretty clear that the author was looking to kick off a backlash, and that coverage and a significant part (though not all) of the poster's audience complied with that framing.

edit: I'm now seeing that dumb reddit post about the heroes was a parallel, lesser shitstorm than the lootbox complaints, which appear more understandable. My apologies for my confusion- digging into how that "40 hours" came up really annoyed me.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Nov 16, 2017

# ¿ Nov 16, 2017 19:06

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

It's mostly that captain spreadsheet did his darndest to put his thumb on the scales, then when lay press covered his post, they played along by not mentioning the distribution of hero prices, and taking his (by most other reports, incredibly inaccurate) math at face value. User entitlement and outrage in these settings is extremely frustrating, especially when it can be militant and organized enough to sink a game.

edit: by way of explanation, I'm a fairly hardcore payday 2 player.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Nov 16, 2017

# ¿ Nov 16, 2017 19:31

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

In that regard, GaS comes up again- but it�s very difficult to execute, especially with such a toxic userbase problem.

Seeing alt-right channer types trying to use EA anger to mainstream themselves, and succeeding, is pretty horrific.

# ¿ Nov 27, 2017 16:17

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Mother, how do you feel about the Games as Service/seasons model, as a business practice? What are the pros/cons compared with the lootbox approach?

# ¿ Nov 29, 2017 01:32

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

I'm a payday 2 whale, ama.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2017 16:57

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

John Murdoch posted:

How do we rate whale-ness when it comes to games with Steam marketplace integration, because I'm pretty sure UnknownMerc has you beat there.

OK yeah good point, forget I said anything, I'm a dwarf sperm, he's a blue.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2017 17:24

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Canine Blues Arooo posted:

Good words

Payday 2's been one heck of a ride when it comes to company practices and design, lemme tell yah. There's probably a book somewhere just in the saga of development changes and nightmarish PR that the game has inflicted upon itself- but turnover's been so high, I'm not sure anyone other than the CEO has been there for the whole thing.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2018 16:09

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

I'm papering over virulent abuse as "trash talk" to explain why people get reported.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Oct 13, 2018

# ¿ Oct 13, 2018 21:17

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Great answer, Chewbot. Hypothetically, what about giving players a sort of accept/reject/deflect option at the very start of the narrative, determining the scope of narrative role and engagement? Give an option for the role-players, an option for the passive narrative accepters, an option for the conversation "winners" (perhaps, it'd be resource-intensive in this setup), and (gulp) an option for the next button hammerers?

Is shifting major plot elements mid-development also a nigh-universal writing problem? I see the telltale signs of these issues often in "AAA" productions. What strategies do games writers use to adapt to it/prepare for sudden 90 degree turns in, say, event order?

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Dec 4, 2018

# ¿ Dec 4, 2018 01:00

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

What are your project management pet peeves?

# ¿ Dec 24, 2018 03:06

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Falcorum posted:

Edit: Alternatively, Hansoft.

What about Hansoft do you hate?

# ¿ Dec 24, 2018 21:28

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

lovingly rendered condom normal maps

# ¿ Jan 4, 2019 18:02

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

That glitch makes me want some sort of 2d/3d hybrid multiplayer shooter, like Splatoon but with actual character models and assets rapidly popping into and out of flat surfaces on walls, like mario galaxy

# ¿ Jan 23, 2019 16:46

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

I'm curious if anyone would care to share their own experiences regarding the sorry story of Starbreeze:

The fall of Starbreeze

There's a tremendous amount to go through here, but this quote stands out:

"It's very hard to be on a train when you see it's wrecked," one person said. "There's nothing you can do about it. We're going to fail in six months, you just don't want to admit it, and you're lying to yourself and you're lying to the team."

# ¿ Jan 28, 2019 19:53

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

g0lbez posted:

This thread is a great read but I burned through it pretty quickly and my only remaining curiosity would be an elaboration on already answered questions so if anyone can share some links to some more insider developer stories (preferably trainwrecks as they're more entertaining) to help my workday go by easier that'd be great!

Gamasutra is loaded with postmortems and development blogs and other such articles, with varying amounts of self-promotion.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2019 00:41

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

I have had people telling me that the Ooblets response was intentionally designed to get them targeted, threatened, and harassed, and damaged their ultimate profitability, all so that they could...um, benefit...somehow? "they were asking for it", presented literally.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2019 17:53

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

mutata posted:

Rage Gamers are out of order and gross, but plenty of Indies have accepted similar deals and handled it WAAAAY better than the Ooblets people have. Their announcement and subsequent back and forth absolutely made things infinitely worse for themselves and others. Tim Sweeny also escalated the situation for no reason.

This particular situation is a quagmire of bad and no one is being healthy about it.

There's not real parity between what the devs or Sweeney did and what Gamers Rising Up are doing to them, though.

Speaking of which, just to be sure folks are aware of this:

Dehry posted:

The list of everyone sent media credentials for E3 (game industry expo) was found to be hosted on a public site over this past weekend. It had full names, addresses, and phone numbers of everyone registered. The larger companies had people use their business address, but there's a shitload of bloggers and streamers who used their home address. Fortunately my friend had moved since E3 but his phone was getting all sorts of calls over the weekend.

https://kotaku.com/e3-expo-leaks-the-personal-information-of-over-2-000-jo-1836936908

# ¿ Aug 6, 2019 20:10

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

mutata posted:

You're right, and just to be clear, I never claimed (nor will I ever claim) there was parity. I only said that the way they handled things actively made the response worse and has made the entire Toxic Gamer Tribalism situation worse.

Edit: If a year from now I'm reading an article all about how in retrospect this was the right way to go about it, then I'll happily eat crow, though.

Sorry, I'm hypersensitive to it because so much oxygen is spent on the right way for the devs to speak, versus really digging into the preexisting, root cause Toxic Gamer Tribalism.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2019 22:44

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

See, I am from a communication background and in my eyes the devs did most of that 90% right. Their initial response, while it had some snark (matching the tone of all their other releases, which is appropriate), it was indeed upfront about their motivations and rationale, using person-centered language.

The challenge is that the respondents, the hornets you mention, aren't good faith interlocutors. General PR rules and practices aren't really able to handle the people who are only involved because they're looking for a soft target to stab, who are actively spreading false information across multiple media. Gamer Culture is uniquely horrific in how often this abuse mob manifests itself, and the degree of bad faith involved. Food or oil execs don't have people doxxing them or falsifying social media posts from them, even if their companies are hated. It's closer, I fear, to mutata's Eye of Sauron situation, where if a critical mass of the core of psychos decides you're vulnerable, there is literally nothing you can do. And let me be clear; I do think the main reason the Ooblets devs are being targeted is not because they did anything wrong, PR-wise or with regard to Epic, but simply because they are vulnerable. People at Valve and Epic, or even the larger game teams, don't usually get this level of targeted, clearly malicious abuse. If this is because they have PR and social people, then bear in mind that means many full-time dedicated staff- it's a colossal expense only a handful of the largest companies can use.

I studied and will likely soon be working in a comms-adjacent positon in a sector that has some of the same problems, though there are significantly different market factors. My observation is that very few companies even begin to have the resources to theoretically respond to this situation once it begins. The usual tactics that big companies use in bad press situations involve three general methods, often used in combination:

1. Indeed, going dark is the main tactic; some companies suspend communications almost entirely until the media cycle passes. This is less of an option for products with strict launch dates and massively diminishing sales curves. Besides, the mob remembers the company and people with a fervency that's uncommon in other areas. I can say a software developer's name ("Double Fine", e.g.), and all the past slights and outrages resurface almost immediately.
2. Hiring crisis communicators and trying to disrupt mediated narratives - "getting our story out there", in their euphemistic language. This is very, very resource intensive and not effective in this situation where so much of the information is going through places like the chans.
3. Writing off and/or completely rebranding the product sequence, to redeploy down the line. Again, not really an option with games- the social media connections to individual devs are too direct, the companies are too resource-poor, and the market churn is far too high.

All of these are reactive, and they only serve to limit harm, not prevent it. As far as I can tell the only real preventative solution in gaming is to be very big, very socially separated from users, and to never let any staff member give any inkling of weakness that the mob might seize upon. I'm aware of how unfair and unrealistic and horrible this is, which is why I keep circling around to the other side of the equation. I think the solution has to lie there.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Aug 7, 2019

# ¿ Aug 7, 2019 02:56

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

I just want to reiterate three things here before I drop this:

1. The successful examples you have are two white men who (at present) have large, established backings and reputations. That's a factor we gotta keep in mind.

2. I definitely appreciate the value of rhetorics of authenticity; again, it's my background to do similar work in a different setting. In your example of the Anthem interview, a part of discussing the "authenticity" constraint is "Everyone in this is dressed way to nicely and it just immediately alienates potential interested gamers right out of the gate". Like, think about that in context for a second. Don't dress that way, too nicely, or you might alienate the gamers...and they may send you death threats. Don't use jargon, make sure they can relate to you. Don't just professionally edited content, that seems artificial. You literally have to "win points with the community" starting from a deficit, maintain a facade of direct social engagement, and never, ever fail to meet the expectations of your audience. If at any point you show too much vulnerability, too much professionalism, too much inauthenticity, you have to worry that incredibly damaged people will target you, individually, for the rest of your career.

That is hosed. Other industries, with other consumer bases (including other entertainment fields), do not have to deal with this. It is an intensely unnatural PR situation, even compared with PR in other fields, to be forever engaged in a direct, highly social communications strategy partly motivated by fear. This is the product of a unique and terrible confluence of social and market forces in videogames that we've discussed around here before. I know, you can't address it individually without reaping the same response, you have to do what you can to protect yourself, but I want y'all to understand that looking in from outside, it is really weird to see how normalized this abuse has become.

3. All the above doesn't really matter that much. We like to think that comms training helps because it gives us a sense of control over how audiences respond, and given what's at stake, it can be very tempting to overinterpret the efficacy of communications training. The reality is that companies who have perfect PR, who have staff occupying privileged societal positions, who have plenty of funds, can still do something that "gamers" may not like (including people who would never interact with their product elsewhere), and just get destroyed. The biggest determinant of avoiding a mob is luck, followed by pure monetary power, followed by privilege.

I'm glad to see that a broader discussion of this pattern is kinda, sorta, happening. Just, uh, don't read the comments.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Aug 7, 2019

# ¿ Aug 7, 2019 06:06

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Kanine posted:

I remember the Facepunch forums had a ton of stolen SA icons (that forum really was just an SA clone wasn't it)

Their emojis menu had a "we stole these from SA" section.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2019 01:10

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Steam has a reputation for structural, severe problems with how it handles the visibility of products, in many ways, much worse than it has any reason to be.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2019 22:23

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Contracted program management explains so much about the colossal failures of planning/resource management I've noticed in some AAA games.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2020 20:13

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Newell was, iirc, already a billionaire upon leaving Microsoft, and Valve's model from the very beginning has functioned largely due to being able to spend money in ways that only Epic can now come even with.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Mar 3, 2021

# ¿ Mar 3, 2021 06:08

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Skwirl posted:

Imagine being that loving rich and still not making Half-Life 3.

Newell et al have always run Valve on a similar goal of establishing market-controlling tech or products, from game engines to monetization to platforms to hardware. Every new development, successful or not, is intended to be a market controlling killer app of some kind (though it's more comfortably phrased as something like "pushing the medium forward"). IPs matter only as extensions of the next control vector. Despite frequently throwing away millions on dead ends (the whole project management flat/T-shaped/internal scuttlebutt/release delay mess reflecting the problems of this sort of approach), they continue to succeed in part just because of inertia, and the raw power of living in the heads of everyone else in industry.

Valve's influence is such that each time they release something, or even talk about developing something, or release a design video, the market warps in response. Other companies have that happen to some degree (producers saying "give me a game like Call of Duty", the spate of games based on early trailers for the Witness, etc) but few have done it so continuously on so many levels. Valve products get absolutely ripped apart and every decision is pored over and analyzed and moved forward into other products and models, whether or not the decisions were ultimately important. There's a GDC talk valve did on stylized character design in TF2 and I guarantee you a bunch of people in this thread are having it flash before their eyes just by reading this sentence. Items like developer commentary nodes wind up creating entire sub-assumptions about development that get built into other products, like water flow and map design.

Dear god, imagine if they released a cryptocurrency.

Oh, wait.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2021 06:28

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Skwirl posted:

Didn't that trading card thing sorta fall flat after initial speculation booms? I looked at selling the few random cards I had and realized it wasn't even worth the amount of effort it would take to hit the "sell" button.

But also, if I had a billion dollars I'd make a Half-Life 3.

Valve developed several parallel currency structures, from the "Wallet" to gems to cards; all of them are used for moneylaundering. You may recognize one of the names involved.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2021 16:04

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

The Thief and the Cobbler was famous for being produced to run at 24 frames per second; it's also a) a film, so it has a more static amount of material to work through, and b) famous for having never been finished.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2021 17:48

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Skwirl posted:

Yeah, the only practical application of blockchain I've seen is to pay for things that are illegal, which isn't necessarily wrong, like drug sales and sex work are still gonna happen and laws against them just make the whole thing more dangerous for people involved and take resources away from law enforcement actions that would actually improve society (imagine if all the money spent on vice departments was spent on investigating and prosecuting wage theft and OSHA violations?) But beyond that, it's just ponzi schemes.

Even for illegal actions, you're creating a permanent transfer record.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2022 15:23

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 00:00

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

You may find that itch and https://buried-treasure.org/ are potentially useful resources in this regard.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2022 03:49

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Ask A Game Dev! - We Are Your Friend's Uncle

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