Game devs of Resetera, how do leaks impact your work?

[thetrin]

Do you think the industry could shift in that the existence of the product is announced well ahead of time and the peak excitement is the first trailer/media?

Click to shrink...

I don't think it helps much to announce a game well ahead of it being shown at all. Games look ugly and broken very early on in development, so if you just showed a logo 2 years ahead of time, and spent that marketing money, would it be worth it? I'm not sure. People may just forget about it, or post "what ever happened to ____?" threads. Not seeing a game for a long time after announcement might have people lose confidence in the title, because it's taking too long.

People generally don't know how games are made, so they don't realize that the game is going to take a really long time to get made, even in the case of small indie games. It makes more marketing sense to announce it closer to release, when the media they can release is indicative of the final product, and that excitement can directly lead to sales in the long term.

The Marvel example is flawed, because they're the biggest game in town for movies. Not all studios can do that. If we announced 5 game titles with no screenshots, and spent money on the announcement with nothing to show, people would ignore us, and we would've wasted a bunch of money on promotion.

 

[Hey Please]

Yea, I can scarcely imagine this being really frustrating for folks who have been carefully working to craft content to disseminate for the biggest inaugural impact.

Hell, I wish that the gaming side of Era would have a SINGLE E3 Leaked Content thread to mitigate ruination of surprises for other people. I woke up today, as a potential end user, to see myriad "Leaks" in my face. Thus, as aforementioned, I can only imagine what it feels like for content creators whose tasks are rendered rather inert after leaks like these.

I hope this encourages developers to release trailers on their own schedule or pre-release information before E3 (if they think their games will not get sufficient exposure from independent announcement) because people are assholes.

 

[JershJopstin]

Game Developers: We'd rather people wait for the moment we reveal things so you can enjoy what we've been working on and we can enjoy sharing the experience with everyone on our terms, as creators.

Journalists: It's unhealthy to not want what developers have been working toward presented on our terms.

Both sides have their points.

Click to shrink...

Who is 'our' here? Journalists terms? Why should I care? The public's terms? Who gets to decide those?

Meanwhile a lot of care and attention goes into deciding and executing how we want to bring a game into the consumer consciousness, especially knowing how quick gamers are to make assumptions, get things wrong, spread misinformation etc.

Click to shrink...

This really highlights the importance of marketing. People throw the term around with a really negative connotation, as if the entire point of it is to sell you stuff you don't actually want. I wonder how many happy iPhone owners don't realize they might have never bought one if it wasn't for Apple's stellar marketing department?

Marketing can be underhanded and dishonest, but it isn't inherently so, no matter how much the company's worth.

This is a good point. I think RE2 was one of the few games that basically got announced at it's inception. I think there is a better conversation here about the general secrecy in games that creates these bug moments devs wait for.

Click to shrink...

It is pretty rare, isn't it? The only other example I can think of is Iwata announcing Brawl before even talking to Sakurai.

 

[Anno]

I don't think it helps much to announce a game well ahead of it being shown at all. Games look ugly and broken very early on in development, so if you just showed a logo 2 years ahead of time, and spent that marketing money, would it be worth it? I'm not sure. People may just forget about it, or post "what ever happened to ____?" threads. Not seeing a game for a long time after announcement might have people lose confidence in the title, because it's taking too long.

People generally don't know how games are made, so they don't realize that the game is going to take a really long time to get made, even in the case of small indie games. It makes more marketing sense to announce it closer to release, when the media they can release is indicative of the final product, and that excitement can directly lead to sales in the long term.

Click to shrink...

How much of this is just a self-fulfilling prophecy, though? If games were announced early and shown early and talked about from the start then more people would have that knowledge. Maybe it's too late to realistically change things, I don't know, but that would seem like the better alternative.

 

[Leviathan]

It sounds like someone got sick of him putting out insider information and called him out.

 

[Dalcop]

Who is 'our' here? Journalists terms? Why should I care?

Click to shrink...

In the context of the topic at hand, you shouldn't.

 

[Blaaaarrggghhh]

GameDev "We have a surprise for you"

"This was leaked already, had a confirmation just before you got here, and we have concerns."


It's depressing and like depression, each time this happens it gets harder to get up the next day and continue and do it again for the next project. No one has mentioned how it also cheapens the work that goes into these projects. Seeing posters in here try to dehumanize/invalidate marketing doesn't justify the choices individuals make in regards to leaking information.

Ultimately, I think the tech and gaming industry will evolve and I can see this hurting annual conferences like E3 and Apples Fall press events.

(Work in Tech)

 

[lowlifelenny]

Please, can you explain how money can be lost by leaks of game announcements? I'm really curious.

Click to shrink...

A coordinated, orchestrated, shared trailer reveal is obviously going to generate a ton more buzz, impress players, and make more headlines than a leak. Consider how many history-making, big name trailers we've seen over the years that put a great deal of care into their reveals by opening with deliberate ambiguity and lead in to the return of an iconic character/franchise- God of War, Resident Evil 2, The Last of Us Part II, FFVII Remake, and so on. These trailers aren't just informing customers of a new product. They're leveraging their one shot of impact for all they're worth. Compared to a leaker's abrupt, lazy tweet, there's just no comparison.

 

[elenarie]

Do you think the industry could shift in that the existence of the product is announced well ahead of time and the peak excitement is the first trailer/media?

Click to shrink...

With how many projects get cancelled or dropped on a regular basis, with the Internet going full shit on mode every time that is done, nope.

 

[thetrin]

How much of this is just a self-fulfilling prophecy, though? If games were announced early and shown early and talked about from the start then more people would have that knowledge. Maybe it's too late to realistically change things, I don't know, but that would seem like the better alternative.

Click to shrink...

Considering the fact that people look at set photos from a movie and go "that costume looks like shit" a LOT, it would just be a 100x worse for games. Not to mention the number of times a game gets cancelled, or a team is moved to another project mid development.

 

[EVIL]

As a game developer we craft our experience to the player from the earliest game reveal until you complete the game. These teams spend years and years crafting this narrative to the player ONTOP of actually making a game, and it should not be ruined for the players by others who for them it takes no effort than to type a few words, be this leaks or spoilers.

So for us, its super demotivating to see our hard work be presented before its time. These teams are working incredibly hard to make these games a reality and want people to enjoy them because we are providing entertainment and we want to have the biggest impact since this industry is cut throat. We are all fighting for the attention of you, the players. Leaks can have a huge impact in the way players digest information about our games.

The god of war reveal was a great moment since even when you assumed it was god of war and there where rumors and teases, but to have kratos appear from the shadows and after that dive straight into gameplay was a great E3 moment. Those reactions to a live reveal are huge huuuuuge motivators to the team back home where all their years of doubt are confirmed to pay off and now they need to make the promise work for the final product.

Just imagine you are watching a standup comedians new routine and some guy is ruining the jokes by loudly telling them ahead of time and missing the timing, and making them sound unfunny, totally fucking up the experience for the hard working comedian and the audience.

I want to see the live reaction of a trailer, not have it leaked days before from some shitty off cam shot with shitty sound quality or no sound at all.
First impression are everything and it makes a huge difference how its being consumed.

 

[Falk]

Do you think the industry could shift in that the existence of the product is announced well ahead of time and the peak excitement is the first trailer/media?

Click to shrink...

Projects shift in everything from details to scope to genre (lol) to who/what's involved incredibly often. The entire process can be/is very malleable and what defines a game is what ultimately ships after a countless amount of iteration, trial-and-error, testing, etc. which may or (more likely) may not be exactly what's shown a few years before.

Showing stuff early on and locking in expectations then finding out something simply isn't fun, needs to be brought back to the drawing board, iterated on, from a narrative, gameplay or even conceptual perspective is simply going to disappoint fans who build up some kind of headcanon for themselves over the course of years, or leave a lot of negative press in the form of "wow why is X suddenly not working on Y anymore, LOL THIS PROJECT IS A MESS". This is not even getting into how a game experience can be all there but it doesn't look/sound anything like it would just yet, leading to people either saying 'this looks like shit lol' or crying downgrades or censorship (lol) despite changes often being simply par for the course as games take shape.

That's probably also the big key difference between film and games. I feel there's a lot more iteration that goes on in games on a general principle than anything that happens in the film industry- once something is shot, that's pretty much it, you handle the rest in editing unless you want to blow a whole load of dosh for a re-shoot. That has a lot to do with the final product of a film being a 2-3 hour experience you watch on a display with a specific framerate and aspect ratio- it's a very uniform experience despite the variety of film genres and budget scopes. Games are far, FAR more varied in what they want to convey and they do so on a smorgasbord of platforms, input methods, hardware profiles, etc. and if an experience simply doesn't work, there's no way to really know that without prototyping a lot of stuff.

 

[Striferser]

Its definitely a bummer, and depend on the leak,dev or publisher might got hit really hard by other parties involved. Like, maybe the gaming leak is not a big problem, but device or properties used...

 

[Anno]

Considering the fact that people look at set photos from a movie and go "that costume looks like shit" a LOT, it would just be a 100x worse for games. Not to mention the number of times a game gets cancelled, or a team is moved to another project mid development.

Click to shrink...

I'm definitely not saying there won't be plenty of ignorance still out there.

I guess I can really only speak for myself, but I've become massively more empathetic for developers (not really the company, but individuals) over the last 5 or 6 years as I've learned more about how games are made. But it's only because of things like early access, Kickstarter and developers like Brendon Chung live streaming their development that I found that information.

 

[Falk]

Oh, from a marketing standpoint, say you tell IGN or Destructoid or whatever "hey we have an exclusive scoop for you" and there's value in that exclusivity.

Except it loses its value because everyone already knows about it.

 

[Noodle]

Click to shrink...

Does he realise this is one step away from Verge's "HE DIDN'T SAVE ANYONE A CLICK AT ALL — HE STOLE AN EXPERIENCE"?

 

[Christo750]

Click to shrink...

It's shitty and completely unprofessional to be told something, have an NDA attached to that, breach the NDA one way or another, and then laugh at people when they feel spoiled? Or get mad when developers call you out on it. NOT saying Jason does this, but there are others.

On the other hand, to Barlog's point, that God of War reveal did not reflect what the finished product would be and the product was downgraded. It happens very often with these big games and I never trust their initial reveals. Maybe leaks will change that approach.

 

[Air]

I can't speak as a Dev, but as a consumer I don't like leaks. I generally like to respect the individuals or organization to reveal something on their own terms because of how much work goes into it. Leaks take that power away (the surprise and theatricality of it as well), and it just makes everything into a chore to get through when announcements officially start coming.

Whether it works for movies is irrelevant though because the industries are different and have adapted differently. Devs seem to like doing these big blowouts so they should at least have the chance to present their product in the best light before it gets to the public.

 

[Kuga]

First impressions and "hype" are very important... But at the heart of this is marketing. It's all about how the game is presented. In some cases the surprise factor is a boon (for example, the Cadence of Hyrule reveal was more impactful since we only knew there was probably a new Zelda game going to be revealed and not the whole details). On the other hand, you have misleading cherry picked content which stretches the trust to fit a marketing narrative, and, in some cases, has outright lies (see Anthem reveal trailer).

It isn't a reporter's job to make the sort of value judgments about whether or not to reveal leaked information.* "Good heavens, won't anybody think of the corporate marketing department?!" falls on deaf ears to me.

*There are certain topics of journalism where leaks need to be sanitized or released responsibly to protect lives, but Gaming isn't one of them.

 

[EVIL]

On the other hand, to Barlog's point, that God of War reveal did not reflect what the finished product would be and the product was downgraded. It happens very often with these big games and I never trust their initial reveals. Maybe leaks will change that approach.

Click to shrink...

In the way games are developed you simply cannot avoid downgrades later down the pipeline since the game you first show is never the game you end up with. Development is incredibly dynamic.
The only way to avoid it is to release the first trailer far later in the processes.

 

[Fafalada]

So devs of Resetera. How do/have leaks impacted your work?

Click to shrink...

To be blunt, this is a marketing activity and vast majority of time devs get very limited exposure to their plans(need to know basis, and most people don't need to know). Although there are occasions where select devs will be directly involved in custom 'made for event' demos, so you'll potentially be more personally attached to those things leaking.
From my personal view - marketing is usually at least 6 months behind the dev-cycle with their materials, so I'm mostly impatient to show people the up-to date stuff, and frequently frustrated watching reveals of very outdated versions (be it leaked or not) just because I'd rather people see the real thing.

 

[EVIL]

First impressions and "hype" are very important... But at the heart of this is marketing. It's all about how the game is presented. In some cases the surprise factor is a boon (for example, the Cadence of Hyrule reveal was more impactful since we only knew there was probably a new Zelda game going to be revealed and not the whole details). On the other hand, you have misleading cherry picked content which stretches the trust to fit a marketing narrative, and, in some cases, has outright lies (see Anthem reveal trailer).

It isn't a reporter's job to make the sort of value judgments about whether or not to reveal leaked information.* "Good heavens, won't anybody think of the corporate marketing department?!" falls on deaf ears to me.

*There are certain topics of journalism where leaks need to be sanitized or released responsibly to protect lives, but Gaming isn't one of them.

Click to shrink...

Hell yeah its marketing, they are the tool we use to get the most people to see our game that we have spent years making. We the creators want to show off our game the way it is intended to be shown off. The things you see as lies with Anthem is simply a result of the Game development industry being incredibly dynamic and as I said before, a game can change radically mid development. If you would see the changes that sometimes are made it would make your head spin and make you wish you could enjoy that first reveal as a consumer because its a messy process filled with heavy emotions, hard decisions and chaos all to find what we sensed when we started this mad journey of making a game.

 

[Kcannon]

People should NOT equate Leakers with Journalists.

 

[Deleted member 12447]

it has never bothered me but I'm not nearly as big fish is some of the people who responded in here and I understand their perspective.

To me it's just extra time that's wasted preparing an E3 build or such and such that could be spent better.

I've always had a more community first mind and haven't feared interacting with people and just being honest with the players but at the same time the community is vicious and a lot of dev's rightfully both fear and loathe that interaction with their audience.

I know community managers who would have rather than anything else other than their job after some time. There's an argument to be made for revealing stuff earlier and there's an argument against it.

I will say my favorite reveal this year has been Streets of Rage 4. It was both unexpected and not at a massive media show. This I can get behind.

My second favorite reveal was Metroid prime 4. I have seen nothing about the game it is giving me high expectations despite its clearly Rocky development already but at least I know as a gamer that it is being worked on or at least thought about. Nintendo was brave with this announcement knowing it could backfire so horribly in the future. I believe the people you care about playing your game will truly understand.

 

[Deleted member 4367]

It feels like something is very wrong if teams are depending on the excitement of the public to motivate them and keep morale high.

 

[Man-is-Obsolete]

Gaming development has a lot of unique problems (long development time with sometimes hundreds to a thousand people working on it), but some problems are created on their own. The Elden Ring announcement if it were another form of media would have been announced a long time ago and we would all be eagerly waiting for a trailer, photos, anything. Take Denis Villeneuve's Dune, it was announced when preproduction was taking place. So I think it would be in these companies' best interest to tell us what each studio is currently working on and then use these shows to announce those far out projects and update us on previously announced projects. Bethesda did this last year with Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6 , but it needs to be taken steps further. Reveling a title of a game and who is behind it shouldn't be a big leak.

 

[Terminus]

Publications which traffic in leaked information about upcoming games are essentially saying to developers "we value the revenue we can generate from your labor right now more than we value your right to present your art as you see fit." That's it. There is absolutely no public good being served by letting the world know that some people somewhere are working on a new video game. It's parasitic and selfish. I feel like even Schreier himself has vacillated on this over the years.

Leaks exposing unacceptable working conditions or corporate deception of the public on the other hand are a completely different beast and should be encouraged.

 

[Thorrgal]

Click to shrink...

Word

 

[Deleted member 12447]

It feels like something is very wrong if teams are depending on the excitement of the public to motivate them and keep morale high.

Click to shrink...

That's a pretty simplistic take on it, but people wish for recognition and as a game dev the only ways you can get this most of the time are from trailer hype, and a successful launch. Internally everyone is appreciated by their peers, but as a people we all want to just be appreciated. I don't have a fix for this, and can't really tell you it's 100% part of the issue as I've never experienced it personally.

I will say this much though, it is pretty stimulating when you launch a trailer and are barraged by good feedback on it, or launch new content and people love it and such. I get why people want to keep this feeling. It feels good. I just think there needs to be more ways to get this feeling.

I absolutely loved communicating with my player base. It was both so dangerous and so rewarding. Back when I started doing it, honesty wasn't something we were good at. We weren't dishonest, but we were also very dodgy and when I started to just shoot straight with our players a lot of the vitriol died down. It's difficult. I'm not saying I was a good at it or anything. I understand why devs don't do this, and why hiring community managers is a thing.

 

[SoldToIna]

There is absolutely no public good being served by letting the world know that some people somewhere are working on a new video game.

Click to shrink...

Not the case at all. An injection of public interest can help with financing as well as team morale.

 

[EVIL]

It feels like something is very wrong if teams are depending on the excitement of the public to motivate them and keep morale high.

Click to shrink...

You ever did any creative work? The amount of time we invest into something we feel is very important to us and to get praise for that journey we all took is a huge boost! We do not depend on it but game development is a very uncertain industry because you ever know how your project turns out and consumers are vicious fucks that tear your hard work into pieces in an instant. So until its revealed to the public, in your mind it can go both ways and once it gets received well its a great feeling.

 

[Charcoal]

It sucks that Jason has this mindset that he's fighting the corporate marketing machine by publishing these leaks.

Sorry man, you're not doing anyone justice, even if you say you have respect for the devs involved.

 

[Terminus]

Not the case at all. An injection of public interest can help with financing as well as team morale.

Click to shrink...

That is by definition not a public good. If the defense of publishing game leaks amounts to "it can maybe bolster private investment sometimes", that is no defense at all. In the absence of transgressions against basic rights or indeed actual criminality, it is no one's right but the creators themselves to decide when and how to present their work.

 

[AgentLampshade]

, I wish that the gaming side of Era would have a SINGLE E3 Leaked Content thread to mitigate ruination of surprises for other people. I woke up today, as a potential end user, to see myriad "Leaks" in my face. Thus, as aforementioned, I can only imagine what it feels like for content creators whose tasks are rendered rather inert after leaks like these.

Click to shrink...

With Threadmarks being a thing, this is a really good idea and one I wish was implemented.

 

[Jeb]

On team fuck leakers.


A good chunk of them just want their moment in the spotlight while a lot of them are liars.

 

[Deleted member 4367]

That's a pretty simplistic take on it, but people wish for recognition and as a game dev the only ways you can get this most of the time are from trailer hype, and a successful launch. Internally everyone is appreciated by their peers, but as a people we all want to just be appreciated. I don't have a fix for this, and can't really tell you it's 100% part of the issue as I've never experienced it personally.

I will say this much though, it is pretty stimulating when you launch a trailer and are barraged by good feedback on it, or launch new content and people love it and such. I get why people want to keep this feeling. It feels good. I just think there needs to be more ways to get this feeling.

I absolutely loved communicating with my player base. It was both so dangerous and so rewarding. Back when I started doing it, honesty wasn't something we were good at. We weren't dishonest, but we were also very dodgy and when I started to just shoot straight with our players a lot of the vitriol died down. It's difficult. I'm not saying I was a good at it or anything. I understand why devs don't do this, and why hiring community managers is a thing.

Click to shrink...

It's probably not close enough to really compare, but I'm a brewer, so I also produce things in a passion industry that's overworked and underpaid so they aren't entirely dissimilar. I have simply never really desired outside validation of my work, depending almost entirely on my own satisfaction with the job I'm doing. So that may be affecting my ability to empathize with a strong reliance on customer enthusiasm in influencing my own workplace morale. I certainly know tons of brewers who do rely on outside validation to feel good about what they are doing, and that might let them do a better job responding to market trends but I think it makes their job satisfaction much more variable.

Mostly, if the team I'm working with is happy with the beer we are making, that is enough for me personally feeling good about my job. When a beer I love doesn't sell well, it doesn't make me question my performance because I'm confident in my ability to judge my own beer. It makes me think our tastes simply didn't align this time and I'll try to figure out why. Same for when I think a beer sucks and it's super popular.

I guess I'm just trying to say that depending on a fickle public and big pops at a convention for your workplace morale isn't as healthy as depending on your team and own personal evaluations of your work. But I also understand how big a bonus to morale those pops would be.

You ever did any creative work? The amount of time we invest into something we feel is very important to us and to get praise for that journey we all took is a huge boost! We do not depend on it but game development is a very uncertain industry because you ever know how your project turns out and consumers are vicious fucks that tear your hard work into pieces in an instant. So until its revealed to the public, in your mind it can go both ways and once it gets received well its a great feeling.

Click to shrink...

The biggest difference between our creative fields is definitely the amount of time focused on one specific product.

Putting out a new beer every couple of weeks will naturally lead to a much smaller level of frustration when you release a dud versus spending years on something that flops.

But that to me makes it even more important to look elsewhere for job satisfaction than the public reaction. Public opinion is so fickle that it seems almost random sometimes.

 

[Terminus]

It's probably not close enough to really compare, but I'm a brewer, so I also produce things in a passion industry that's overworked and underpaid so they aren't entirely dissimilar. I have simply never really desired outside validation of my work, depending almost entirely on my own satisfaction with the job I'm doing. So that may be affecting my ability to empathize with a strong reliance on customer enthusiasm in influencing my own workplace morale. I certainly know tons of brewers who do rely on outside validation to feel good about what they are doing, and that might let them do a better job responding to market trends but I think it makes their job satisfaction much more variable.

Mostly, if the team I'm working with is happy with the beer we are making, that is enough for me personally feeling good about my job. When a beer I love doesn't sell well, it doesn't make me question my performance because I'm confident in my ability to judge my own beer. It makes me think our tastes simply didn't align this time and I'll try to figure out why. Same for when I think a beer sucks and it's super popular.

I guess I'm just trying to say that depending on a fickle public and big pops at a convention for your workplace morale isn't as healthy as depending on your team and own personal evaluations of your work. But I also understand how big a bonus to morale those pops would be.

Click to shrink...

It's certainly healthier to have a sense of self-worth capable of weathering the ups and downs of external validation, but using that perspective to defend game leaks is like throwing out someone's entire makeup drawer right before they make a TV appearance and asking why they care so much what other people think. It's just not anyone else's place to tell someone how to present themselves and their work.

 

[Screen Looker]

I'm not a game dev, but I work at a high profile, extremely leaky tech company.

Leaks have really damaged the internal company culture, causing information to be not as openly shared within the company. Leaks made is so that upper management can't really give the employees honest "real talk", because anything they say that's too raw could be leaked and taken out of context, and sound really bad to the public. As a result, internal company communication has become very PR-like itself, which really hurts giving the employees and honest understanding of what's going on in the company.

Click to shrink...

So you work at Apple? :)

 

[Duxxy3]

I found the company responsible for the leaks.

Spoiler

Too many secrets

 

[Deleted member 27471]

Just curious - and I completely understand if you can't answer - but how do you know the money? Is it because of lost advertising revenue due to contracts? Or because it can lead to a loss of sales because it's not on your terms - but if so, how do you quantify this?

Apologies if this sounds like the stupidest question ever - I'm a teacher and so far, none of my lessons have been leaked early.

Click to shrink...

Please, can you explain how money can be lost by leaks of game announcements? I'm really curious.

Click to shrink...

I know I'm not the person your asking, but if you look at what Jason's tweet is saying, it makes it sound that they're losing money on the hype machine.

They probably have data on this.

Leaks deflate the hype bubble. The point of marketing is to get everyone to hit that preorder button and lock them in. So when someone sits here and tells you that they're losing money its probably because they lose a bit of control of customer will power. Jason is saying don't let them tell you otherwise.

 

[sn00zer]

Good discussion in here, I'm learning a lot. Thanks to those who are sharing.

 

[Refrain]

Imagine spending time setting up a surprise birthday party for your friend and then some asshole told your friend about it a few hours before.

 

[EVIL]

It's probably not close enough to really compare, but I'm a brewer, so I also produce things in a passion industry that's overworked and underpaid so they aren't entirely dissimilar. I have simply never really desired outside validation of my work, depending almost entirely on my own satisfaction with the job I'm doing. So that may be affecting my ability to empathize with a strong reliance on customer enthusiasm in influencing my own workplace morale. I certainly know tons of brewers who do rely on outside validation to feel good about what they are doing, and that might let them do a better job responding to market trends but I think it makes their job satisfaction much more variable.

Mostly, if the team I'm working with is happy with the beer we are making, that is enough for me personally feeling good about my job. When a beer I love doesn't sell well, it doesn't make me question my performance because I'm confident in my ability to judge my own beer. It makes me think our tastes simply didn't align this time and I'll try to figure out why. Same for when I think a beer sucks and it's super popular.

I guess I'm just trying to say that depending on a fickle public and big pops at a convention for your workplace morale isn't as healthy as depending on your team and own personal evaluations of your work. But I also understand how big a bonus to morale those pops would be.



The biggest difference between our creative fields is definitely the amount of time focused on one specific product.

Putting out a new beer every couple of weeks will naturally lead to a much smaller level of frustration when you release a dud versus spending years on something that flops.

But that to me makes it even more important to look elsewhere for job satisfaction than the public reaction. Public opinion is so fickle that it seems almost random sometimes.

Click to shrink...

We are fueled by our project, sense of family, sharing heavy emotions working together for a common goal, fueled by a belief in what we are making and not just the public reaction, and its why I use the words BOOST, since knowing that the customer likes what you are working on is a huge validation on top of what you already believe in, that the path you are on is valid but its obviously not the only one. in the end Customers keep us in business, which makes it so scary that just a slight fail on your end can undermined years of incredible hard work, but on the flipside if received well its an amazing feeling and it just wants you to dive headfirst into the next project! Its a tight rope with on one side, lava, and on the other feathers. there is very little middle ground.

 

[Budi]

Not a dev so I just share an interview with Mario + Rabbids director Davide Soliani and composer Grant Kirkhope https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-08-03-whats-it-like-when-your-video-game-leaks

"We were aiming to do a big surprise at E3," explained creative director, Davide Soliani. "And unluckily that was not the case. Of course, it was quite a bad backlash for the entire team. Discouraging. Quite hard on the team morale."

"When you leak, normally, it's never good stuff being leaked," said Soliani. "I didn't know what the company would think about that, both Ubisoft and Nintendo. Is it going to change something for our reveal at E3? Is it going to be okay?"

"Of course I tried to, let's say, reassure everyone that we had a good game and our team is not composed of stupid guys, so they knew they were doing something quality-oriented. But of course, there is no way to avoid not feeling anything towards this kind of feedback. We're passionate guys and not just doing this as a job, but also for the pleasure of giving emotion to the player."

Click to shrink...

They talk about it in another interview. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-07-17-the-fanboys-making-the-next-mario-game

"When the game leaks, no one is happy," Soliani says. "Also, let's be honest, the reaction at the beginning was not 'sceptical' - it was a little bit worse than that. It was quite hard on the team morale to read some of those comments. I asked for Grant's opinion, [since he] has way more experience than me. 'Do you think they will love it? Do you think they will hate us? Do you think that we've done everything wrong?' I was very, very worried. Because, you know, people on the internet can be very, very, very harsh."

Grant continues: "Davide was completely panicking. I kept saying to him not to worry and that everyone was going to love it."

That's why Soliani had warned his team to prepare for the worst at E3. His best hope, he tells us, was that someone would think, "It's OK for a strategy game". A good result would be to come away with one E3 Award nomination.

Click to shrink...

 

[Deleted member 5334]

So, I have some ties with the anime industry, both with some level of work (I do occasional freelance work for Discotek), and elsewhere, and honestly... If the Japanese side of Game Developers is anything like how the Anime industry operates, they absolutely hate leaks. Like, it often causes so many headaches to the parties involved overseas when something ends up leaking ahead of when it's supposed (even something as what could arguably be considered minor by some people, a reveal, and do NOT get me started on what happens when an actual episode and movie leaks).

Given those Bamco E3 leaks, I imagine some heads probably turned at that (especially given I imagine the Tales of announcement was supposed to be revealed along side the Tales of Festa event).

Still, I can't stress to try and be understanding to certain groups when leaks happen. It causes headaches for parties involved (usually people at the bottom end of the scale) and definitely take note to heart of what some of the devs in this thread have posted.

 

[mocolostrocolos]

I know I'm not the person your asking, but if you look at what Jason's tweet is saying, it makes it sound that they're losing money on the hype machine.

They probably have data on this.

Leaks deflate the hype bubble. The point of marketing is to get everyone to hit that preorder button and lock them in. So when someone sits here and tells you that they're losing money its probably because they lose a bit of control of customer will power. Jason is saying don't let them tell you otherwise.

Click to shrink...

I think this is the case, but I would like to have a more accurate statement from who is saying so.

 

[Deleted member 27471]

I don't think it helps much to announce a game well ahead of it being shown at all. Games look ugly and broken very early on in development, so if you just showed a logo 2 years ahead of time, and spent that marketing money, would it be worth it? I'm not sure. People may just forget about it, or post "what ever happened to ____?" threads. Not seeing a game for a long time after announcement might have people lose confidence in the title, because it's taking too long.

People generally don't know how games are made, so they don't realize that the game is going to take a really long time to get made, even in the case of small indie games. It makes more marketing sense to announce it closer to release, when the media they can release is indicative of the final product, and that excitement can directly lead to sales in the long term.

The Marvel example is flawed, because they're the biggest game in town for movies. Not all studios can do that. If we announced 5 game titles with no screenshots, and spent money on the announcement with nothing to show, people would ignore us, and we would've wasted a bunch of money on promotion.

Click to shrink...

I look at it being less about marketing announcements and it being about transparency.

Knowing what studios are working on shouldn't be a problem. However, the industry has created a behavioural problem within its consumers. The secrecy, showing inaccurate representations of games, being obtuse up until after release about features and so on have made this whole discussion unhealthy. Now a developer can sit here and say, "see how you all react!? We need to be less transparent". Most studios have yet to ever be honest when they're trying to be transparent.

But I also understand one of the major differences between movies and games is that a game, its graphics and features can change so much from one year to the next. I don't think games should be shown until a very close representation of it is ready. But knowing that the project is being developed and other small pieces of info isn't to hard to do.

I personally like how Kojimas new game was rolled out. Got little bit of info every year and it was great, but I don't think every studio needs to do this.

Eventually everyone will get used to this flow of info, and if games get cancelled so be it, and people will move on. The issues now is that the industry and it consumers are in such an unhealthy place that this all seems impossible. I highly doubt it's going to cost marketing bucks for developers to release info on upcoming projects, VA's and any other minor projects details that can be given. That's easy enough to tweet out. I'm sure one day, gamers can handle this.

 

[JABEE]

It sucks that Jason has this mindset that he's fighting the corporate marketing machine by publishing these leaks.

Sorry man, you're not doing anyone justice, even if you say you have respect for the devs involved.

Click to shrink...

He's covering a beat. The information is newsworthy. It's his job to report what he knows is true. This is how it works for everything that isn't video games.

 

[MerluzaSamus]

My work so far has been on sports, so it aint much to leak since it's annual.

Still, it's incredibly harmful to show a game before it's ready, because a lot of players (even in ResetEra) don't seem to understand how volatile game development is, and how ugly things can look or change before certain milestones, so most of the time people are looking at stuff that is not ready, plain and simple.

All it does is generate false expectations and/or reduce the impact of the reveal, which, is very important. Since we need it to leave the biggest mark possible on the public's attention, so the game is not forgotten by the time of release.

 

[Thorrgal]

Game Developers: We'd rather people wait for the moment we reveal things so you can enjoy what we've been working on and we can enjoy sharing the experience with everyone on our terms, as creators.

Journalists: It's unhealthy to not want what developers have been working toward presented on our terms.

Both sides have their points.

Click to shrink...

I really don't get your second point... unhealthy to not want? What?