Where Credit Is Due
Both Scott “News For Lunch” Jennings and the MMOG news avalanche that is Massively commented on a Shacknews piece in which Mark Jacobs spoke concerning WAR’s credits:
“Over the years, we’ve had hundreds of people work on the game, and we thank everyone who helped us bring our Warhammer passion to life, but only current employees that have continued until the end will be credited in the final game.”
The article includes comments from a former employee that make things sound a bit shady, but I did want to mention one aspect of this issue that I haven’t seen brought up yet.
I think contributors who leave a project before launch should be included in the credits, provided that their work is actually present in the product at launch.
Many MMOGs are in development for years, and people often come and go from a team during that time for a variety of reasons. Someone might do work on the game early on, or shoddy work along the way, that is later replaced with something better. In such cases, I don’t think the studio should be required to include that person’s name in the credits (although nothing will stop such a developer from including the game on his or her resume).
So I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions based solely on the Shacknews article, because we don’t know all the details on the work done by the anonymous former employee cited as a source. But regardless of the circumstances in this case, I am in favor (as you might imagine) of having standards in place so that those who are due credit properly receive it.
I agree, I’d like to see a simliar standard put in place (just as a policy, nothing so formal as the movie/screenwriting credit system) so employees who put their heart and soul into developing and supporting a game, especially those developers with unforgiving crunch times up to 14hr days.. get the credit their due regardless of whether they managed to last until the bitter end up until the publisher releases it.
Would it be fair for a guy who got hired for the last 3 months till the games release was included in the credits, but the guy who coded on the game for 3 yrs (say 1yr before it was released) left to take another job but was left off the credits?
I don’t understand the point either, of if that same employees work was thrown out after 3yrs of his work, and rewritten, why he still shouldn’t be given any credit? Was his not valuable and contributing to that project and not worthy of some recognition? Sure, if he was fired for incompetance, or on poor terms I think they should be able to strike credits, but not in cases where development took a different turn of direction, nor moreso than if the employee himself took a different turn of direction to quit before release.
I never understood credits while working in the game industry. They never meant anything when I was hiring people. The time one spends at a company and the project(s) just goes down on the resume regardless of its shipping or success\failure. If games did not have E3 or other tradeshow presentations and credits (internal drama factory) they would have 20% more features and content. You did what you did no matter what is documented on a piece of paper somewhere on the release date.
I tend to agree with your point. A contribution is a contribution, whether you subsequently moved on or not. I don’t like seeing people’s efforts short-changed for what a non-industry person like me sees as pettyness.
On the subject of Massively, I prefer “Newsgurgetation” to “Avalanche.” I’m just sayin’.
Maybe they do not have enough database space to put in all the names of the people who contributed to the project. Anything else is just disrespectful
Everyone should be credited regardless, IMO. If all they did was to discover that a specific approach to something was completely wrong (and so wasn’t the implementation used in the final product), they still contributed to the final product.
It’s not as if including a name in the credits carries along any additional legal or financial baggage. There’s just no good reason to credit some of the people who contributed and not others.
If devs have to fight publishers for credits, devs will win that fight and royalties, too (and then lots of other things). Better for publishers to just put the names of the people who worked on the game in the credits.
Even if the only thing this or that name contributed to the project was the knowledge that they shouldn’t have hired this or that person for the project…
Costs nothing to credit them, and hey, that’s useful knowledge, too.
Mark Jacobs is 100% wrong here. The pay in the video game business is so low and the working conditions so abject that at the very least if you have contributed to a video game project you *should* get credit. Giving someone credit costs absolutely nothing.
In the portal game sector, there has been a recent controversy I read about in one of the latest editions of Game Developer Magazine that talked about how portal companies are not giving developers credit for the games they are hosting on their portal sites. Also early on in the video game business companies like Atari refused to give the designers and coders any credit whatsoever.
I see this is a disturbing trend that needs to be fought tooth and nail. It’s just more evidence that artists, designers, producers and coders need to start organizing much like the TV and motion picture industry has.