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kunst nugget · 25-04-2019 12:05pm

So they made Outworld great again by bringing back slavery?

EoinHef · 25-04-2019 12:21pm

Retr0gamer wrote: »

And as contractors they risk losing their jobs if they do and no reason needs to be given. It's a Catch 22.

Well its hard to seek improvement if your not willing to take action. In some ways in these articles of late its like there trying to get the court of public opinion to get the change done. Which is not a great strategy imo.

Look at what the ryanair workers had to do to get representation.

Azza · 25-04-2019 12:27pm

Robert ninja wrote: »

I've been told twice now to ignore it. And I'm being told by review systems that DRM, EULAs, ideological drivel, sex appeal, MTs and political signalling are not things that I should care about or even be allowed to be considered when judging a game/publisher. Don't think about it. Definitely don't talk about it. Just spend money and shut up.

In principal I am against DRM but in actual practice I've been PC gaming since the late 90's own 100's of games with multiple forms of DRM which have had next to no impact on me. From games using Securerom, Starforce, Denuvo, games with online activation, activation limits and online only (well partially online only) the entire list of inconveniences I've had is one game (Silent Hunter III) not working on an newer OS than the the DRM was designed for which can be resolved in a minute or so by going to the DRM website and getting an update for it and a couple minutes of connection issues with the online component of Hitman (2016 game).

EULA, never read them, don't see a reason too, don't know what effect they have on me. Never had an effect on me buying or enjoying a game.

Sex appeal and whole women in games debate. Personal I feel yeah women have been generally been over sexualized and typecast as the victim or are often only in the game to be rescued. Of course there are exceptions but if there is a push for abit more balance in this regards I wouldn't really mind.

Microtransactions, I think developers have the right to sell a product however they want, we as consumers have the right to decide if its value for money.

pixelburp · 25-04-2019 12:36pm

Dave_The_Sheep wrote: »

Just watched the Jax MK11 ending, as I'd heard people were upset about it. Won't be getting the game, never planned on it anyway, was never in any way interested.

**** me, there are some whiney ****ers out there. There's nothing bloody racist about it, it doesn't even mention white people. It literally says that the world is better for everyone. And this is just one character's ending.

Mocked and ridiculed indeed.

Depressingly, there's a small demographic in America - and one that has also bubbled to the surface elsewhere, particularly in Britain re. India - who would plead that slavery wasn't as bad as is made out; that slaves were mostly well treated, educated and surely better off thanks to the teaching hand of Americans / Britains guiding them from savagery. It's reprehensible, and they're by no means constitute any kind of consensus, but they exist.

Not saying that the MK11 ... 'controversy' (facepalm) is tapping into that, but because this is 2019 in the worst timeline, a simple message of "hey, slavery was sh*t, imagine if it never happened" is too political for some folks' blood.

super_furry · 25-04-2019 12:38pm

pixelburp wrote: »

Depressingly, there's a small demographic in America - and one that has also bubbled to the surface elsewhere, particularly in Britain re. India - who would plead that slavery wasn't as bad as is made out; that slaves were mostly well treated, educated and surely better off thanks to the teaching hand of Americans / Britains guiding them from savagery. It's reprehensible, and they're by no means constitute any kind of consensus, but they exist.

Not saying that the MK11 ... 'controversy' (facepalm) is tapping into that, but because this is 2019 in the worst timeline, a simple message of "hey, slavery was sh*t, imagine if it never happened" is too political for some folks' blood.

Couple that with the Gamergate crowd and we're back on the 'SJWs in muh vidyagames' merry-go-round and how there's too much political correctness in a videogame where this happens......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84sfvPAc_3w

Varik · 25-04-2019 12:44pm

EoinHef wrote: »

Well its hard to seek improvement if your not willing to take action. In some ways in these articles of late its like there trying to get the court of public opinion to get the change done. Which is not a great strategy imo.

Look at what the ryanair workers had to do to get representation.

Ryanair workers were the exception, most in their industry were already unionised at least in the west.

Union membership is in the minority in most STEM fields unless it's public sector jobs or certain areas of medicine, there's societies and professional body but there not the same thing.

gizmo · 25-04-2019 1:23pm

Azza wrote: »

Unfortunately poor working conditions appear really common at game developers and seemingly have been for a long time. Kinda ironic that Epic are coming under fire for work conditions on fortnite when they claim ending Steams monopoly (its not a monopoly but they do have the dominate market position) is good for game developers on a whole.

Fortnite schedule aside, those conditions have been prevalent at Epic in various guises for years. Back in 2008, then President of the company, Mike Capps spoke about it during an IGDA conference claiming that the culture there was "very different than the traditional forty hour work week kind of stuff". Greg Costikyan, who was at the talk, ripped him a new one at the time, summarising his talk as saying that:

...working 60+ hours was expected at Epic, that they purposefully hired people they anticipated would work those kinds of hours, that this had nothing to do with exploitation of talent by management but was instead a part of "corporate culture," and implied that the idea that people would work a mere 40 hours was kind of absurd.

Profit sharing defense at the time aside, Capps later defended his position in a Joystiq interview and further justified it by pointing to the company's low turnover rate as evidence that employees were ok with it.

Rod Fergusson, the Gears of War Producer, also weighed in on the subject more generally when he claimed that crunch time in a development project is sometimes necessary and that it "should be driven by the ambition of the team, and not the inaccuracy of the schedule." Which is a bit ****ing rich coming from a Producer...

EoinHef wrote: »

Well its hard to seek improvement if your not willing to take action. In some ways in these articles of late its like there trying to get the court of public opinion to get the change done. Which is not a great strategy imo.

In the US it absolutely is a great strategy. You're dealing with a country with fundamentally ****ed labour laws where, hilariously enough, the only realistic way conditions are going to improve on a wider scale is if employees unionise. To go back to the Fortnite article..

“I know some people who just refused to work weekends, and then we missed a deadline because their part of the package wasn’t completed, and they were fired,” said another source. “People are losing their jobs because they don’t want to work these hours.”

This should straight up be illegal.

In the meantime, incidents like the EA and Rockstar Spouses have been central to both shining a light on and, in some cases, helping to change attitudes within those companies. If anything good is going to come from Anthem, it's hopefully a change in the working environment at Bioware and one can only hope a similar expose is written about NetherRealm to haul them over the coals too.

EoinHef · 25-04-2019 1:43pm

gizmo wrote: »

In the US it absolutely is a great strategy. You're dealing with a country with fundamentally ****ed labour laws where, hilariously enough, the only realistic way conditions are going to improve on a wider scale is if employees unionise. To go back to the Fortnite article..

You may say it would work but crunch in software development is nothing new,yet it still happens. The only chance they have is lobbying government and even then who has more lobbying power?

The multi billion dollar games companies or developers who are un organised and have no real representation as a group? Which means no collective bargaining on their behalf.

Im not saying its an ideal situation for devs to have to band together givin it may affect their jobs but thats true of any un unionised industry thats trying to get representation. You have to fight for what you want.

gizmo · 25-04-2019 2:33pm

EoinHef wrote: »

You may say it would work but crunch in software development is nothing new,yet it still happens. The only chance they have is lobbying government and even then who has more lobbying power?

The multi billion dollar games companies or developers who are un organised and have no real representation as a group? Which means no collective bargaining on their behalf.

Im not saying its an ideal situation for devs to have to band together givin it may affect their jobs but thats true of any un unionised industry thats trying to get representation. You have to fight for what you want.

Hmm, I thought I was quite specific there. To clarify, I'm saying that given the situation in the US with regards labour laws, I believe it is more likely that employees in the games industry will see an improvement in their working conditions across the board if they unionise because I do not think the labour laws are going to improve on a federal level. Getting public opinion on their side is something that can only be beneficial in order to reach this goal.

This has nothing to do with a belief that it will be the end of crunch, it specifically addresses the scenario where not participating in crunching will result in being sacked.

CatInABox · 25-04-2019 3:08pm

The more I learn about the videogame industry, the more I'm thankful that I never went down the path of trying to break into the industry. It was a childhood dream of mine to become a videogame developer. Of course, I turned out to be way too lazy to actually do something about it, so yay me, I guess....

Shiminay · 25-04-2019 3:45pm

Crunch happens in all software companies. I've have 3am nights as a software developer a few times - never on a systematic basis like the culture's described in some of these gigantic companies. The usual source of crunch is a mistake in the planning process rather than a specific failure in it.

To give some examples of how an innocuous small project becomes a nightmare: I've sat down with managers to run through the requirements of a project and estimate how long it'll take to implement. I say, for example that something's a week's work and the manager says "ok, maybe we can get it done in 4 days rather than 5 and have the 5th for the client to test and approve it so it can go live for their preferred deadline of Monday morning?" So suddenly I'm squeezing 5 "man-days" (40 hours) into 4 working days, so I've immediately gone to a 10 hour working day. And you agree to it because it does seem to be the best thing for the company and the client and because you'll be thankful for that 5th day of testing and rejigging anything that's not correct cause it won't feel as panicked, but in actual fact, you're now onto your 6th man-day of work on a 5 day project

And when the sht has hit the fan and the thing you've built, despite the client signing off on the design and requirements documents you've sent them for approval, is not at all what the client wanted and suddenly you're back at square one with a weekend of doing 40 hours of work ahead of you cause your client thinks it's your fault they signed off on something different to what they wanted...

Now, imagine your client is your own company and the "creative" team keep changing those requirements as seems to be the scenarios described in Bioware specifically with their "Bioware Magic" nonsense. You don't want to let your co-workers down cause you know they're working really hard too and that they're trying to make the best possible product and you are too.

It's very easy to see why people will just do the insane hours rather than take a step back and say "hang on folks, this is nonsense" cause it's a big case of not seeing the forest for the trees.

Cordell · 25-04-2019 3:54pm

CatInABox wrote: »

The more I learn about the videogame industry, the more I'm thankful that I never went down the path of trying to break into the industry. It was a childhood dream of mine to become a videogame developer. Of course, I turned out to be way too lazy to actually do something about it, so yay me, I guess....

It is a very interesting experience, crunch time included. At this point people going in do know what they're signing up to, so no excuse and no sympathy from me. I've been there and I f*ing enjoyed it (until I didn't so I moved on).

johnny_ultimate · 25-04-2019 3:58pm

Cordell wrote: »

At this point people going in do know what they're signing up to, so no excuse and no sympathy from me.

They have plenty of sympathy from me. People should be able to work the job they’re good at and enjoy, in an industry that’s financially lucrative - and typically in hugely successful companies - without having to work in miserable working conditions that put their health and well-being at risk.

Cordell · 25-04-2019 4:04pm

The working conditions are far from miserable, and crunch time is usually offset by lots of free and flexible time.
Nurses for example have my whole sympathy, gamedevs don't really as they can easily move on to regular 9-5:30 jobs.

johnny_ultimate · 25-04-2019 4:15pm

Feeling pressure to or being told to work 60-70 hour weeks is a pretty miserable working condition as far as I’m concerned, no matter how much time in lieu or benefits you get. The increasing volume of game workers’ testimonies suggest the toil of crunch is not worth it for most. No video game is worth it. I can only imagine how intense it is for developers with young families or health conditions or other commitments.

It’s a job. No matter how much one enjoys it, it’s still a job. There’s mounting and convincing arguments that 40 hours is too long a work week, let alone up to double that. The shifting attitude and backlash to crunch practices is long overdue and absolutely vital.

pixelburp · 25-04-2019 4:20pm

Cordell wrote: »

The working conditions are far from miserable, and crunch time is usually offset by lots of free and flexible time.
Nurses for example have my whole sympathy, gamedevs don't really as they can easily move on to regular 9-5:30 jobs.

So I'm guessing you've never actually worked 8+ hours per day in an office for long periods, or you're one of those people who has done and feels everyone else should just suffer too - which just perpetuates the exact sh*tty cycle this discussion is about.

I've only had a brief, 6 month stint of consistent 10-12 hour days (design in the marketing industry, another poorly managed industry) and I've never felt more unhealthy, sick, depressed, and lately found myself wondering if I'd have even met my wife were I still working in that environment. It was abominable, and I sympathise with those locked into an industry because of their niche skills.

And you're kind of making the point for us here: nurses shouldn't be pulling down excessive hours, especially as their job is literally life and death. Triaging patients on 48 hour shifts is lunacy.

Dyr · 25-04-2019 4:24pm

long, long hours are usually the symptom of an industry with an excess supply of young staff. As long as game development has that, it won't change.

25-04-2019 4:26pm

Azza wrote: »

In principal I am against DRM but in actual practice I've been PC gaming since the late 90's own 100's of games with multiple forms of DRM which have had next to no impact on me. From games using Securerom, Starforce, Denuvo, games with online activation, activation limits and online only (well partially online only) the entire list of inconveniences I've had is one game (Silent Hunter III) not working on an newer OS than the the DRM was designed for which can be resolved in a minute or so by going to the DRM website and getting an update for it and a couple minutes of connection issues with the online component of Hitman (2016 game).

EULA, never read them, don't see a reason too, don't know what effect they have on me. Never had an effect on me buying or enjoying a game.

Sex appeal and whole women in games debate. Personal I feel yeah women have been generally been over sexualized and typecast as the victim or are often only in the game to be rescued. Of course there are exceptions but if there is a push for abit more balance in this regards I wouldn't really mind.

Microtransactions, I think developers have the right to sell a product however they want, we as consumers have the right to decide if its value for money.

Fire up one of your Securom games and see how far you get now, and wait until Denuvo hits end of life, we'll be in the same situation as its the same shower behind it.

Cordell · 25-04-2019 4:27pm

You do a lot of guessing and use said guesses to reinforce your point

I worked very long hours for weeks in a row (I said I did crunch time, didn't I?) in both office and out of office, outdoors, in harsh weather. But this is not about me (or you).
Crunch time is a reality is many industries, and it's not going away no matter what we do.

Games are art pieces. When you turn the gaming dev into a product making industry with fixed hours and perfect planning, you will stop getting art, you will get bland and boring products. Be careful what you wish for.

pixelburp · 25-04-2019 4:47pm

Cordell wrote: »

You do a lot of guessing and use said guesses to reinforce your point
I worked very long hours for weeks in a row (I said I did crunch time, didn't I?) in both office and out of office, outdoors, in harsh weather. But this is not about me (or you).
Crunch time is a reality is many industries, and it's not going away no matter what we do.

Games are art pieces. When you turn the gaming dev into a product making industry with fixed hours and perfect planning, you will stop getting art, you will get bland and boring products. Be careful what you wish for.

So, right, precisely the "it's bad in other industries, just suck it up" fallacy. Crunch is a not an inevitability of (game) development, it's a choice of bad management, or a lack of employee cohesion / unionisation. And hiding behind the "games are art" argument doesn't wash either: this isn't some tortured soul working in the Sistene Chapel, it's a systemic and cyclical case of companies treating employees like an infinite resource, where burning someone out is solved by simply swapping one contractor for another. It's Sword of Damacles employment: work every conceivable hour or we fire you.

Working your employees to the bone is not a required part of some equation to success, some ineffable artistic quality; recent weeks have shown this precisely, as Anthem is not exactly the pinnacle of artistic endeavour here.

Azza · 25-04-2019 5:44pm

Cake of Tremendous Power wrote: »

Fire up one of your Securom games and see how far you get now, and wait until Denuvo hits end of life, we'll be in the same situation as its the same shower behind it.

According to PC gaming wiki securerom still works on the newer versions of Windows. My securerom disc based games are in an attic in my brothers house at the moment but I might try one or two of them in the next week or so to see how they work.

Robert ninja · 25-04-2019 8:05pm

chalkitdown1 wrote: »

The only people offended by Jax's ending are racists themselves. Imagine being upset over the idea of slavery not existing.....

Like Jax's lame woke ending or you're a racist? Yeesh.

As for DRM. The law is moving towards making it illegal to crack DRM (already is in some cases/countries). Just making your games playable again makes you a criminal.

@Azza
Well it's up to you to decide what things matter in games right? My main point is that review systems (steam) have discounted such reviews from their scores because they have decided it's not important. I'm of the opinion that the customer decides what is important to a game.

Dravokivich · 25-04-2019 8:31pm

Crazy reading about neather realm there, because I know a guy who works QA with them for years and he always seems excited about it.

Robert ninja · 25-04-2019 8:56pm

Steam emulator that emulates steam online features. Lets you play games that use the steam multiplayer apis on a LAN without steam or an internet connection.

https://gitlab.com/Mr_Goldberg/goldberg_emulator

Forgot to post about this when it was news but still interesting.

Penn · 25-04-2019 11:49pm

Robert ninja wrote: »

Like Jax's lame woke ending or you're a racist? Yeesh.

There's a difference between not liking it and being aggrieved by the idea of a black man undoing history so slavery never happened and everyone in the world is happy.

How that classifies as "woke" is beyond me.

Dravokivich · 25-04-2019 11:52pm

Penn wrote: »

There's a difference between not liking it and being aggrieved by the idea of a black man undoing history so slavery never happened and everyone in the world is happy.

How that classifies as "woke" is beyond me.

Undoing history... how far back does he go?

Retr0gamer · 25-04-2019 11:57pm

Robert ninja wrote: »

Like Jax's lame woke ending or you're a racist? Yeesh.

Ah here. If you can't see it for the absurd comedy gold it is then you are taking things too seriously. I think it's genius and has a nice message behind it as well.

Robert ninja · 26-04-2019 4:02am

Penn wrote: »

How that classifies as "woke" is beyond me.

Then I guess actually watching the ending is beyond you because he says it's "woke" in it. That's the whole point of it by its own admission.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Ah here. If you can't see it for the absurd comedy gold it is then you are taking things too seriously. I think it's genius and has a nice message behind it as well.

It's definitely a laughable ending I'll give you that. But calling it out for its wokeness doesn't make someone a racist not does it mean we can't still laugh at it.
The message is pretty weak though. What is it other than "we wish things were different in the past"? Time-travel changing the past is literally the laziest kind of writing, no? There's no detail on how anything was actually changed, either. Did he go to west Africans and punch their faces in with his metal fists (that I'm sure they'd take kindly to) before they could sell their POWs to western europe? Did he keep that up for 4 centuries? :rolleyes:

Penn · 26-04-2019 8:06am

Robert ninja wrote: »

Then I guess actually watching the ending is beyond you because he says it's "woke" in it. That's the whole point of it by its own admission.

It's definitely a laughable ending I'll give you that. But calling it out for its wokeness doesn't make someone a racist not does it mean we can't still laugh at it.
The message is pretty weak though. What is it other than "we wish things were different in the past"? Time-travel changing the past is literally the laziest kind of writing, no? There's no detail on how anything was actually changed, either. Did he go to west Africans and punch their faces in with his metal fists (that I'm sure they'd take kindly to) before they could sell their POWs to western europe? Did he keep that up for 4 centuries? :rolleyes:

I did watch the ending actually. Just because he uses the word "woke" in that context (as in, he's not waiting centuries for people to treat black people fairly), doesn't mean the ending itself or the intention of the developers, is "woke".

As for how he does it, by beating the main boss he controls the flow of time from the start of time and can shape the entire universe how he sees fit, so he simply changes the course of events that leads to slavery to prevent it from ever happening. Other characters do similar things in different ways. It's their arcade mode endings. Not canon to the story, and not something anyone should get their panties in a twist over. Definitely not something someone should think that the idea a black man might prevent slavery from ever happening is "woke". Though of course, you'd know those story points if you'd played the game rather than just complaining about it.

super_furry · 26-04-2019 8:12am

Robert ninja wrote: »

Then I guess actually watching the ending is beyond you because he says it's "woke" in it. That's the whole point of it by its own admission.

It's definitely a laughable ending I'll give you that. But calling it out for its wokeness doesn't make someone a racist not does it mean we can't still laugh at it.
The message is pretty weak though. What is it other than "we wish things were different in the past"? Time-travel changing the past is literally the laziest kind of writing, no? There's no detail on how anything was actually changed, either. Did he go to west Africans and punch their faces in with his metal fists (that I'm sure they'd take kindly to) before they could sell their POWs to western europe? Did he keep that up for 4 centuries? :rolleyes:

Jesus. It's the one of 25 different character endings in a daft fighting game about pulling people's faces off that has it's own huge story mode. Why is this so important? Do you not think you're blowing up the significance of this a bit?

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