People making jokes about the Facebook services going down make me sick. Anyone who was using an Oculus headset at the time is currently trapped in VR, and if they die there then they die in real life.
Spare a moment's thought for the poor developers on Resident Evil 8 who are frantically rewriting the entire game so that the tall vampire lady is not, in fact, the first act boss who dies 4 hours into the story.
Seeing a lot of Ready Player Two references in the replies/RT. Never read it, but this is a pretty common trope in sci-fi. eXistenZ, .//hack, The Matrix... in fact I think most fictional VR worlds have some variation on this rule 😅 Glad it's alive and well in 2021!
Everyone who worked on a game should be included in the credits. That includes interns, people who left the team or studio, or people who joined temporarily to help the game ship.
"Let's make the combat more Souls-like"
"Can we get a Destiny-style cursor in our menus?"
"It feels like what we need is a crafting system"
"I don't understand what this character being female adds to the story"
I haven't crunched since Assassin's Creed 3, and I've shipped three AAA games in that time. Believing that crunch is a necessary part of making a good game is delusional thinking.
What's especially frustrating is that pressure from marketing and execs to change the gender or race of characters is still fairly common in AAA games: it's just the exact opposite of what angry YouTubers tell their followers (because their business is keeping you angry) (1/?)
If Kotick gets fired today, remember that it's not because he protected rapists and a culture of sexual harassment and abuse within Activision: it's because he lied to shareholders.
Rockstar has been “working 100-hour weeks” on Red Dead Redemption 2
Studio co-founder Dan Houser details the effort put into the upcoming Wild West epic
Don't like to dunk on my peers in the industry, but if you wake up this morning and decide that maybe FPS developers should feel bad about their choices because the USA has been suffering a mass shooting epidemic for the past three decades I don't know what to tell you.
"why does this character have to be a woman?"
"that's two black characters now - can one be white?"
"you can have a playable female character, but we won't put her on the box"
are common refrains. Anyone working in AAA has likely heard these or seen the impacts of them on a game
Shadow of the Tomb Raider's exploration difficulty settings go beyond toggling HUD markers and actually change the world art - I love it! More great accessibility details here . Keep up the good work,
@EidosMontreal
!
The anti-censorship crowd like to argue that developers should be able to make the game they want, without being told to make changes to please the market. Believe me, we're trying: we put diverse characters in games because they represent our teams and our friends 🤷♂️
This blew up, so if you've chuckled at it and have a few $ to spare, please consider supporting The Native Women's Shelter of Montreal. I guarantee it'll make you feel better than racist boomer's memes on Facebook
Absolutely get fucked you pieces of filth.
I hope this brings at least a small crumb of relief for the many (probably hundreds?) of talented game developers who were pushed out of the company - and likely the whole industry - by their predatory behaviour.
Five former Ubisoft executives, including Serge Hascoët and Tommy François, have been arrested following a year-long investigation into claims of sexual assault and harassment
@castpixel
Crypto evangelists are the worse community on this website. Glowing eyes and terrible takes. If crypto is making them all millionaires why aren't they logging off and enjoying their fortunes?
It's genuinely scary that despite extensive reporting and a lot of light being shone on the way GamerGate started and grew, and the kinds of people who were stoking the fires, so many people still parrot the same provably false statements and conspiracy theories 10 years later.
I think it's true that an aspect of the "discourse" comes from game development being pretty secretive and hard to understand from a player point of view, but the current wave of targeted attacks are as usual aimed at the wrong people and made in bad faith.
Breaking my Twitter hiatus to say that I am completely, hopelessly in love with Horizon Forbidden West. Easily the richest, most deeply-woven open world building in recent memory. Side quests are Witcher 3 level in unique characters and narrative. Aloy:👑
GG
@Guerrilla
My first game, Blur (2010) was de-listed from Steam after only a couple of years because Activision didn't renew the vehicle licensing. I'd love to have it in my library! Willing to pay $ for a Steam code/gift.
RTs appreciated 🙏
Including Production Babies and Pets in the credits but not someone who gave a year of their life to the game but chose to leave before it shipped is a Really Bad Look.
And my own personal career favourite:
"What if we don't tell the players who the winner was, and then they can discuss it over voice chat afterwards? They'll compliment each other's skill and it will be really interesting and dynamic"
Spare a thought for all the AAA game devs coming to work today after a weekend weeping joyous tears over God of War and thinking "how the fuck do we follow this?"
@jasonschreier
I remember the last time my producer emailed the project saying we'd "been Shreier'd" and had to delay even though things were going well in production. Please stop this madness.
Personally I would only make an exception for those who harassed or abused colleagues, especially if their contributions have been removed from the game.
@sjaay
@jasonschreier
Really hard disagree - most game devs aren't necessarily suited for non-games jobs. Can't imagine Google needs many 3D animators, writers, concept artists, gameplay programmers etc. It's also a hell of a time to be looking for a new job.
Reminder to the gamers who promise to "rise up": this is what actual censorship looks like. I know you love your anime tiddies, but maybe get outraged about something worthwhile for once?
What if instead of pursuing the inscrutable target of "AAAA games" we went in the other direction and made smaller, more focused experiences that can afford to fail because they have realistic budgets?
AA? still too big
A? no
...
𝒶 games?
(1/3) Some people mistakenly think that the issue with making diversity a factor in hiring is that you'll hire worse candidates just because their identities are under-represented.
This is false: these candidates are out there and they are awesome. The "issue" is that you have
@jasonschreier
Jason I enjoy your tweets but I worry that time spent reading them is time I'm not spending earning. Do you think you could mint a coin or something to give your followers?
@zachshakked
Wow! Have you considered creating something for yourself, rather than simply stealing someone else's hard work and even using the name of their game?
Crunch is always bad. Always.
Planning to crunch is a deliberate decision to give up on project management and use people as fuel for the fire.
Championing crunch makes you a terrible leader.
There's a reason I never reply to recruiters who advertise their studio as "AAAA"
Here's a thread of links to AAA games industry jobs in Canada for any UK-based folks who are suddenly thinking about a change of scenery.
Just don't call yourself an ex-pat, please! More than happy to answer questions about living & working in Canada after 8 years here 🇨🇦
The devs on Hogwarts Legacy are clearly creative, talented people and deserve recognition for what looks like a stunning game that will probably be a lot of fun to play. Sometimes when you're making a game people associated with your title do and say awful things. Fuck 'em.
This but instead you work on Assassin's Creed for 9 years and when it's uncomfortably hot in summer people complain that they want better AC and you cry and tell them you are doing your best.
Once again,
@osamadorias
is showing his bravery and enormous compassion in speaking out publicly about this. The game industry's silence on Bill 96 is deafening.
We released patch 1.2 of
#TheOuterWorlds
today, and it includes a fix for the dreaded "the game thinks my companions are dead" bug, which I believe I spent more time investigating than I have for any other individual bug in my career (1/18)
I see a lot of people asking about NFTs, so I thought I'd cut through the noise and explain it simply:
No Fridays Thanks
this catchy phrase is a call to action for the 4-day work week. Any other definitions are misinformation spread by capitalists.
Hope that helps!
@Dante012d2
There are many, many consultants and companies that do consultancy for a lot of different reasons: reaching out to people to help make a game set in a historical period more accurate, or helping to make sure we don't make any idiotic mistakes when including a trans character
Hardcore players were annoyed that their Tool slot on the Gear page would never reach gold level. So we fixed it 👍
#ACOrigins
(from Reddit user qwert1225)
@catacalypto
@CandiceLikesYou
The icing on the cake here is the bot in your replies which read your tweet and thought it was celebrating how amazing AI generated images are 😂
Players already complain about open-world games feeling like they are full of filler locations, repetitive content, and NPCs who look like they're built from a box of similar parts.
The people pushing this shit are all massively financially invested in it, just like crypto.
we're entering a new era in AI-first game creation ☀️
up to now AAA games like Red Dead Redemption 2 cost $500M and took over 3,000 people 8 years to make
with generative AI, small teams can ship at near AAA quality but at a fraction of the cost & time
a few thoughts 👇
Activision managers, this absolutely means they're pulling you into special meetings to force-feed you anti-union propaganda.
If you care about your employees, you should find yourself unfortunately too busy to attend 🤷♂️
Home safe and sound.
Thanks for everyone's concern, but as far as I know everyone is safe and just shaken from the experience. I'd never seen SWAT in person before, and hope I don't have to again.
#ubisoft
This is bananas. Surely there must have been a handful of lowball questions to choose from? Sorry for the D4 team who are probably shooting daggers at marketing.
So
@Blizzard_Ent
and
@FutureGamesShow
put out a "Diablo 4 Devs Answer YOUR Questions" video, but the questions seem... off. Luckily, they included the handles of the "people" asking these questions so we can easily verify them! SURELY nothing wack is going on... 🧵
The only "news" is that a games studio got robbed. Anyone reporting on the contents of what was stolen is encouraging others to do the same. There's no public good here, no investigative reporting, no whistleblowing.
Put Spider-Man's mask back on that kid. You didn't see shit.
It's SHAMEFUL that publishers and studios aren't speaking out against the continued efforts to eradicate the Palestinian people. Thank you IGN for being better.
@Dante012d2
But the idea that anyone is coming into a game studio and forcing them to include or not include anything is just bizarre - these people are contracted to come in and do a job, whether it's to write some dialogue for quests or to consult on something like I gave examples of.
I can't find my vague tweet from 2019 about a cool feature that was finally working, but now I can reveal that it was:
DOORS
We managed to include them in Assassin's Creed Valhalla - a series first - but we had to overcome... The Door Problem.
#gamedev
🧵
@MikeMayoral
@Gaming_Updates_
I don't work for Sony or MS, I just make videogames. I'm not marketing anything - just sharing my excitement for completing a long project 🙂
A good start.
Once get rid of the sexual harrasers and abusers (and the systems that protected them) we're going after the people who like to yell at their colleagues so they can feel like a big boy.
Anyone shipping a game in 2020 is a hero, and I'm proud to have worked with a lot of them on this one.
Can't wait to see what people think on November 10th!
We're extremely proud to share that Assassin’s Creed Valhalla has gone gold! 🎺
On behalf of everyone working on the game, we can't wait to see how your own Viking saga unfolds.
Your journey to glory starts on November 10.
#AssassinsCreed
hey
@Variety
what the fuck? Why do you need to do PR for a CEO who ignore an epidemic of sexual harassment in his organisation and threatened* to have his assistant killed? Anyway, don't forget to work the balls.
*ᵃˡˡᵉᵍᵉᵈˡʸ
“Playing games is such a visceral experience,” Activision Blizzard CEO Kotick explains. “We’re getting to the point that the game itself is able to create its own content in real time. That will be exquisite.”
There's no stopping this train. 4-day week with no change in compensation is coming whether companies like it or not - especially when there appear to be no downsides!
(3/3) confirm that they'll never really be "a good fit for the the studio culture"
We MUST take decisive and visible action when we encounter toxic people, because I will always take a positive, diverse team over a "genius" asshole who creates more problems than they solve.
(2/3) to prove to folks that they are welcome in your predominantly cis white male workplace and should apply. And the truth is that often they are NOT welcome, because you can champion diversity and inclusivity all you like, but it only takes one shitty person to
There's nothing new here. But I still hear "we should hire the best candidate..." from well-meaning people who don't appreciate that you can't confidently hire the best if you ignore or actively discourage huge swathes of your potential talent pool.
@Dante012d2
Most of these companies offer a great many services, and being asked to take a look at a script and make sure that an Indian character is written in an authentic way (for example) is usually just one thing they might be asked to do.
@chhopsky
It's absolutely insane (as in I feel like I'm going crazy) that we as devs can just describe our 10+ years experience in the games industry and people just say "no you are lying".
Like...if they've already decided what they want to believe, there's just zero point in engaging 😔
When talking about "the player" amongst the dev team I've been mixing in female pronouns for a couple of years. I think this was one of the many smart things proposed by
@briecode
that burrowed its way into my brain and got stuck there.