What Would Matt Do

Or it might be titled, "How EA acts like douches and profits". Here’s the deal. EA posted a new ad campaign right before Comic Con. That particular ad campaign suggested that people at Comic Con find a booth babe and commit an act of lust. I kid you not. Now, of course, in the finer print, they define that as taking a picture with a booth babe.

If you’re new to the video game culture, you might not know that at many major shows the game industry is involved in, they get hot girls to dress up in skimpy and/or tight fighting clothes as either a) some ridiculous character from whatever game they are promoting or b) just a hot girl in small clothes. Ok, booth babe defined. They are the girls that look good to bring in the geeks to the booth and the advertising for whatever game. Yes, it’s much like a car show in that regard. Usually the girls aren’t dressed quite as racy as car shows, but the idea is the same. Whatever your opinion is regarding booth babes, they do exist and they probably aren’t going anywhere anytime soon (they were banned from E3 for one year total before being brought back). Personally, I love me some beautiful ladies dressed up cosplay costumes. I’m not saying that makes it right or that women aren’t being objectified, they obviously are. And to be fair, LOTS of people are dressing up in costumes for these cons, so it kind of fits in.

Whatever the case though, the women working there have a job to do and from what I can see, a fair number of them enjoy it. It’s not like they are forced to be there…well, anymore than I’m forced to be at my job. I do like eating and paying my bills. So, we have these women working a show in tiny clothes with…not always socially well adjusted people. They get pawed, groped, etc from to time. I’ve heard bad stories and I’ve heard good stories.

Here’s where the problem comes in… EA just asked people to commit acts of lust targeted at booth babes for some dumb marketing campaign for their new game where they destroy Daunte’s Inferno (er, bring it to gamers). So now the women working these shows have to deal with added group of people that aren’t always particular socially adjusted and are looking to get pictures of themselves doing whatever they can for a contest to win…a pretend date with some other hot ladies. Great. Go fucking EA. Pretty much par for the course for you guys. They even tried to sound somewhat contrite when it was pointed out…not very convincingly.

Here’s the real problem… the fucking ad campaign worked. Just look around the web. Coverage from the big guys, to the little guys, everyone weighing in, most saying what jackasses EA are, some defending them. Some were so over eager in their defense, the articles they had up about mere days ago have been erased from the site as if it never existed. Yeah, I’m looking at you, BioBreak. No worries, it was an exceedingly dumb article anyway. My favorite gaming blogger (and he should be yours) makes some good connections and points. We’ve also got jackass comments from people claiming to be developers even though they haven’t released a game in 10+ years about how it’s not such a big deal…

What does it all boil down to? EA wins. That’s right, it all comes down to, no matter what booth babes had to deal with or whoever won the contest (best runner up…because he’s declining the reward), EA got exactly what they wanted out of it. Publicity and coverage. That’s awesome. Congrats EA, your marketing team really knows how to generate controversy. To bad your game dev teams can’t make good games (mostly) in the 9 month development schedule you give them. You’d think for all of the money they spent marketing and loving up on this damn game, they could at least make sure the game will be good. It being EA, and the source material considered, I call it now. It’ll suck. Too bad their PR machine is just starting up, this being only the second realm of hell and all… Maybe five different annoying campaigns from now people will catch on. Maybe.

What Would Matt Do: I’ll play along obviously. I’m doing the same as everyone else, promoting EA’s bullshit. I even play their games from to time. Doesn’t mean I’m going to get all crazy on their marketing tactics or really care about the game. I think that’s the thing EA doesn’t realize. By doing all of this, they aren’t just keeping the game in the minds of most gamers, they are making themselves, and their game by extension, look cheesy and juvenile. Could, just may be, potentially, that the game won’t get enough development time and has a very low chance of being a good game. Nah, that doesn’t matter, lets just pimp it and push it out.

I love it.

What Would Matt Do: I’d say the old adage holds true, especially with corporations. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Too bad they had to right a song and release it on the internet for United to pretend to care, but at least they’ll get their guitar paid for.

And I’m pretty damn sure there won’t be any kissing. Just a quick note in my continuing love story with Valve:

“The PC and the 360 are just more straightforward. We can focus on what we want to do, which is make game experiences, instead of sweating bullets over obscure architectural decisions they make with their platform. [...] I didn’t come into this business in the 90s because of some technical fetish. I came in because I wanted to give people experiences that made them have fun.”

Of course, that’s kind of mean. I mean, why would you say that about such a simple and easy to use product like the PS3. Lets let Sony set the record straight here:

"We don’t provide the ‘easy to program for’ console that (developers) want, because ‘easy to program for’ means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is, what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?" explained Hirai.

Huh? But his explanation didn’t end there.

"So it’s a kind of–I wouldn’t say a double-edged sword–but it’s hard to program for," Hirai continued, "and a lot of people see the negatives of it, but if you flip that around, it means the hardware has a lot more to offer."

Oh, so you made it hard to develop for on purpose… Well, that’s pretty dumb. Turns out that means great developers like Valve aren’t going to be interested in your system at all. Strange, I know.

What Would Matt Do: I can’t help it. I’m going to keep laughing at Sony. Also, I bought Rockband 2 yesterday. This price is just too good to pass up (link will die when the supplies go).

Oh, and I’m sure you got all of your news about E3 from the big boys…but did you see the video of the APB character creator? If you didn’t, try not to get too happy at work while watching this video. Just think of the possibilities. Not to mention we should have NPCs where every single one of them looks different. Bad ass.

Or maybe more imporantly, who didn’t do it. It goes like this… Rumor goes around that CD Projekt cancelled the console version of The Witcher, laid off the entire team. Times are rough, these things happen. Except then we get word that things aren’t quite what they seem:

"Basically, after a few months of not being paid, we stopped," said Masclef speaking to GamesIndustry.biz. "We’ve not been paid for a few months and we had a very nasty broken payment. We had no choice but to put the product on hold. We’ve not been able to find a solution."

Masclef claims Widescreen was also kept in the dark and not informed of new milestone dates for the project, along with added features, which publisher Atari was expecting following discussions with CD Projekt.

"We were not involved in discussions with Atari and CD Projekt. The financial situation seems to have grown more and more difficult," he said.

Hmmmm… They also claim to have not been told about milestones (mini-deadlines):

Masclef claims Widescreen was also kept in the dark and not informed of new milestone dates for the project, along with added features, which publisher Atari was expecting following discussions with CD Projekt.

"We were not involved in discussions with Atari and CD Projekt. The financial situation seems to have grown more and more difficult," he said.

Man, those damn CD Projekt guys (and Atari for that matter)…except well, they have their own take on the situation (check out comment #8):

It is sad that we cannot talk with WSG in normal business way, but communicate through media. It is absolutely not our style of making business, and we answer here as we feel forced to do this to clarify the unclear information:
1. All payments were done on time according to milestone plan.
2. Truth is that payments were later than originally planned but this was solely due to delays in production. The delays were growing in the project due to WSG continued to miss the deadlines.
3. Delays and risks of further development by WSG were unacceptable by CD Projekt (this happened even though CDProjekt RED was constantly increasing main team involvement to help in the production). The most important fact is that development process didn’t make planned release date possible and moreover propositions of the new release date were changing few times. Besides the schedule, technical incapability created a risk of missing planned quality which is absolutely unacceptable. And this brought an end in our cooperation with WSG.
4. Currently the works are on hold. We are evaluating all possible options to continue the production.

So we have a he said, she said situation. Which really sucks. I couldn’t really give a crap whose fault it is…but I was sure looking forward to trying out The Witcher on my 360. Now, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

I couldn’t claim to know who was in the right, nor do I really care. Sucks to see a game that was so potentially close to release get shelved, probably forever (Almost any game put on hold is gone for good).

What Would Matt Do: Play the PC version…maybe I’ll hook up my 360 controller and pretend. Probably not though. /me pours one out for the fallen games…

 (insert bullshit picture here…no really, someone make me a bullshit picture. I have no art skills.)

I actually had to double check and make sure I haven’t already used that title since it’s so obvious and I end up spending a lot of time kicking Epic in groin (not they don’t deserve it). What do we have today in the continuing saga of Epic stupidity? We have yet another reason to never work at Epic:

Mike Capps, head of Epic, and a former member of the board of directors of the International Game Developers Association, during the IGDA Leadership Forum in late 08, spoke at a panel entitled Studio Heads on the Hot Seat, in which, among other things, he claimed 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.

Now, of course, the idea that a studio head, which Capps is, would have such notions is highly plausible; but he was, at the time, a board member of the IGDA, an organization the ostensible purpose of which is to support game developers. Not, you know, to support management dickheads.

(seen via Lum via ZenofDesign; which I can’t get to load right now)

Scott gives pretty good coverage of why crunch time is dumb and he links the most important study of all. It explains when they figured out crunch time didn’t work…the mother fucking 1900′s. That’s right, about a hundred years ago:

So, yes, Crunch Mode can increase output over the short term. But, at 60 hours per week, in no case should "the short term" be defined as anything more than eight weeks long. At that point, the costs strongly begin to outweigh the advantages. Not only have you lost all the gain those increased hours bought; you’ve also got tired, angry, burned-out workers. When you return them to a 40-hour week, their output will be sub-par for some time while they recover.

Read the whole study. No, really, go there now and read the whole thing. It’s that important for anyone that works in any industry where crunch time is seen as the norm. It completely debunks anything Epic could ever say about why they work 60 hour work weeks by default.

Singling out Epic isn’t really the point though. We all know Epic will do stupid shit. It’s kind of their way. What about the industry as a whole though? I don’t know of one guy working in the game industry that doesn’t have crunch time as a part of their regular job. Sometimes just for months, sometimes for years.

Why won’t the industry get a grip? Why do they think that they can defy science, conventional wisdom and common sense and continue with their ways forever?

Because game developers just don’t have the power the normal software industry guys do. And they often don’t know any better or feel trapped into it. Between the two, the ways aren’t changing. Back to Epic for a sec…they are, by all accounts, a wildly successful, development house. But not only are they not pushing for more quality of life at the job, they actively countering it AND they are, or were, a part of the body that is supposed to have some say for developers…

Publishers push unreal timelines on developers. Developers agree because they like having projects so they can get more projects and survive. Look at Obsidian. They did Knights of the Old Republic II. One of my all time favorite RPGs, even though it was never finished. They aren’t alone by any means, but that’s a good example. We see games released all of the time that either a) aren’t done or b) done, but severly limited from the original scope. That doesn’t even get into time for playtesting, beta, changes before release, etc. Another example… Relic just released Dawn of War II a little bit back. They called the game gold AND THEN had a playtest for the multiplayer.

You know what Stardock is going to do? They are working on their next game, and when they think it’s good, they are going to have a beta test. They’ll invite any that preordered it to play it not only for a quick stability check, but to have at least some input into the game about what’s fun and what’s really broken. How long are they going to do this for? Until they feel it’s ready. But hey, what do they know, they just make mad money in a dying market.

The question is though, what needs to happen to fix this? For one, game developers obviously need to get better at knowing how long projects are going to take AND telling publishers that there is a testing/beta window where the public will have feedback on their game. Two, game development houses need to get together and start telling publishers to go to hell. I’m not going to single any specific dev houses here, but anyone that has successful titles under their belt and is still taking on crunch time as part of life, is part of the problem. We have shining examples of the right way to do it (Valve, Stardock and Blizzard to some extent), but they are completely darkened by the business as normal routine most developers start games with.

As I said above, game developers obviously need to get better at both telling the truth about how long projects will take and about accturately figuring that out. None of that is going to change the fucked up relationship of the industry though. Maybe the likes of Stardock and Valve can change it on their own…

Quality of life. It’s more important than whatever dumb ass game you’re trying to release. Companies in general need to get back to working for employees instead of using them until they dry up and can’t handle it anymore. Not just in the game industry, in all industries. But while I dream about moon ponies and wish for fish with my wish making ish, I continue to hope at least a few more companies come around.

What Would Matt Do: Were it up to me, all corporations would be tasked with first taking care of their employees and secondly their plan to make money. Whatever the case, I won’t ever again work for a company where crunch time is just a part of the company creed. See, I like my family…