I am cool with this lolAmong Us team crunched like hell in the game after it exploded in success. Stardew Valley guy too, if you read the Jason's book.
If we are making these rules, better to just end the TGAs.
I am cool with this lolAmong Us team crunched like hell in the game after it exploded in success. Stardew Valley guy too, if you read the Jason's book.
If we are making these rules, better to just end the TGAs.
Fuck the devs, amirite?A good game's a good game, crunch shouldn't have anything to do with being more or less rewarding of an award, so I completely disagree.
Moreover, you'd have to disqualify a lot of nominees because most games are made with crunch.
Wasn't Sakurai working with an IV instead of taking time off just to make sure Smash came out
Being obtuse? What? The point is maybe we should award that behavior. Especially when there's another nominee in the category that doesn't practice it. What the fuck are you talking about
Sakurai isn't a Nintendo employee, he's a freelancer. You could admittedly argue Nintendo should reign him in, and it's possible they ended up doing that given Ultimate's dev cycle was supposedly far smoother.Wasn't Sakurai working with an IV instead of taking time off just to make sure Smash came out
I'm glad to see this article because the tiny amount of discussion this has had is frustrating. People need to stop praising the director for putting out "such a polished product", as if that severe amount of detail was even necessary
If you can't fulfil your creative vision properly without copious amounts of worker abuse, you compromise it.
Whatever, I'm arguing semantics. The people saying "well technically that has nothing to do with direction" just don't want to talk about the crunch, or the ethics behind heaping so much praise on the game's director without addressing it.
Sakurai's a freelancer, not a Nintendo employee. There's literally nothing Nintendo themselves can really do to stop Sakurai from over-working himself.
That and Sakurai's a single project lead; he's not the entirety of the Smash Ultimate development team.
Sakurai's a freelancer, not a Nintendo employee. There's literally nothing Nintendo themselves can really do to stop Sakurai from over-working himself.
That and Sakurai's a single project lead; he's not the entirety of the Smash Ultimate development team.
I'm not a "TLOU 2 hater". I think it's a good - at points great - game. I have no problem with the Big Controversial Plot beat nor its politics. I do, however, also think it has some serious flawsAre you for real? Bringing up Polanski and Nate Parker as a point of comparison?
Wow.
TLOU2 haters are wild.
Nobody even knows what the fuck Best Direction of a game even means
But we do know the conditions of the production of this game. And many games, thanks to devs and journalists working together to bring it more to light.
This becomes semantics so I can tell we'll never agree. Unethical working conditions should not be rewarded, I know we both can agree on that at least.
Imagine equating ND crunch with a pedophile rapist.If you really want to discuss technicalities like that, one could argue that a "creative vision" that drives people to crunch and such unhealthy work conditions is not one worthy of an award.
But this doesn't even matter. It's not about this. Take the Cesar's earlier this year in which Roman Polanski won best director and caused outraged because of it. Would you argue the outrage was unwarranted because the category descriptor didn't mention the director must not be a pedophile piece of shit? Or maybe when Nate Parker's Birth of a Nation fell off the awards race because of the rape allegations against the director? That also had nothing to do with the categories descriptors.
Look, it's fine to play videogames made under less than ideal conditions. It's pretty much impossible to avoid them and the politics of the videogames industry is more often than not at odds with the progressive ones this forum adopts. But when you have something like The Game Awards, when you are celebrating the industry and have the unique opportunity to award something that's special, I really don't think it's too much of an ask to say these awards should go to games that promoted healthier work practices.
(Also, Best Direction is replacing the old award for Best Studio. Even more reason why TLOU2 shouldn't have gotten it)
I somewhat understand crunch when a game studio desperately needs to ship the game on time in order to stay in business, and keep people employed. I don't like it in any situation, but if a delay is make or break for people's continued employment. Then, you know, I can justify it in my head.
But Rockstar Games? EA? Naughty Dog? CD Project Red?
There's no excuse but *greed*.
Yes definitely end awards. It will stop crunch culture
At the same time, Naughty Dog, as part of Sony, has access to so much more resources than Supergiant when developing TLoU. The studio could have hired far more people to reduce the invidual burdens or they could have accepted that, to get normal working schedules, the game should have been released in 2021 instead of 2020. They have the money that an indie does not.
And they still crunched. Shouldn't we take that into consideration, also?
I mean, I wouldn't care about ending TGAs altogether, lol. I find them pretty vapid and cringy and hype culture annoys me. But we're getting off-topic, which isn't about whether or not TGAs should continue to exist.
This is difficult or nearly impossible to regulate.Disqualify them then. Promote the games that were made ethically. "Lots of studios do it" is an awful defence.
Shouldn't some blame fall on Sony and other publishers footing the bill? Then you can say scale down projects but what if things are in full swing and the publisher slaps a timeframe on them that will cripple them? That's not entirely the directors fault. But I agree they shoulder most of the blame
More like literally any product launch ever.
2. And this isn't to pick on the quote, that people wouldn't be so myopic about crunch. Some people in this thread are dividing things into "There is crunch" or "There isn't crunch". Tons of software development/game development have small periods of crunch, only a couple of days, maybe 1-2 weeks. And to be fair, even those periods of crunch are necessary. The crunch reports people like Jason Schreier have put out, and the potential that reports about Cyberpunks 1.5 years of crunch are true, should not even be in the same category as some of these other games.
If your staff has to constantly work overtime to get their work done, it's either a failure on their part or a failure on the leadership team for not having priorities straight.A good game's a good game, crunch shouldn't have anything to do with being more or less rewarding of an award, so I completely disagree.
This is how I see it too.Direction is more creative though, no? Producers are responsible for keeping things on track and pushing back if things are going off track from budgetary and timeline perspectives. I think you can still have great direction but poor planning and production.
"Awarded for outstanding creative vision and innovation in game direction and design"
It has nothing to do with project management. And it can't because even if we do have reason to believe that Naughty Dog's studio management is problematic, we extremely little information with which to judge the working practice of any studio. Awards like these judge the product. They can't judge the production because we know so little about the production.
How you verify they have been made ethically?Disqualify them then. Promote the games that were made ethically. "Lots of studios do it" is an awful defence.
I'm not a "TLOU 2 hater". I think it's a good - at points great - game. I have no problem with the Big Controversial Plot beat nor its politics. I do, however, also think it has some serious flaws
I brought up these two extreme examples because they were recent and concrete, not just hypothetical. Maybe they were too extreme and I apologize for that, but the point still stands. Context always has mattered in all awards
And even then, Ubisoft did have multiple nominations last night even with all the accusations of sexual harassment.
This is the recurring problem when every developer want to make "our biggest and most ambitious game ever".
Cyberpunk 2077, TLOU 2, RDR2, MK 11 and God of War are prime examples of this exact expectations and all these studios had to go through years of development and a lot of crunch to deliver their product. The fact that all these games proved to be successful in one way or another even with the "crunch" is just going to legitimate all these studios to continue with their modus operandi for their next product.
MK12 or IJ3 are going to be NRS biggest project ever, so will God of War Ragnarok, GTA 6, The next Witcher and ND next project and the same cycle will repeat.
How many places have you worked where if the lead is working their ass off, they let the people under them do less work than them?
Like I said a few posts ago, I'm not equating them. I might've been too extreme, I apologize. I'm just saying that context has always mattered in awards even if it had nothing to do with the categories descriptors.
Direction is more creative though, no? Producers are responsible for keeping things on track and pushing back if things are going off track from budgetary and timeline perspectives. I think you can still have great direction but poor planning and production.
Why would a "game awards as a business" enterprise not support the business practices of their primary customers?
Its like some of you don't even realize what the "product" being sold at TGAs is.
That's fair enough. I'll edit my post to remove names and make it a more broad statement. I didn't want it to be seen as bait or needlessly inflammatory.Mate, those examples are way too inflammatory to make a comparison. There can be no sane discussion if we're suggesting Druckmann should be censured and excluded from awards in the same way as two rapists.
Supergiant Games
Insomniac
Respawn Entertainment
Iron Galaxy
Obsidian
Valve
Moon Studios
Are some of the studios that don't actively crunch on their projects.
The big problem are the big premiere studios, and they crunch A LOT, but since they release good games the press will hardly care.
Rockstar
CDPR
Santa Monica
Naughty Dog
Netherrealm Studios
If you can't fulfil your creative vision properly without copious amounts of worker abuse, you compromise it.
Whatever, I'm arguing semantics. The people saying "well technically that has nothing to do with direction" just don't want to talk about the crunch, or the ethics behind heaping so much praise on the game's director without addressing it.
All those companies can comfortably afford to delay a game.
Direction is more creative though, no? Producers are responsible for keeping things on track and pushing back if things are going off track from budgetary and timeline perspectives. I think you can still have great direction but poor planning and production.
You can do a lot when your company is structured around fostering talent as opposed to massive hiring sprees followed by huge layoffs.Nintendo claims their average work day is 7 hours 45 minutes per day
Average Nintendo Japan employee earns $80,000, works less than 8 hours per day
Nintendo has revealed some interesting stats about its work culture, including average working hours and salary.A recru…www.gamesindustry.biz
You can choose to not believe them, but that's what they say.
And yet a panel of experts thought The Last of Us Part II was the best example of a game with 'outstanding creative vision and innovation in game direction and design', so it obviously didn't compromise it that much.