Remember when EA featured their designers?

[Arulan]

During the 80s, Electronic Arts released a lot of their games in album-like boxes. In addition to the unique form-factor, these would feature designers and other members of the team, much like you'd see in vinyl albums. EA would refer to themselves as an association of electronic artists.

I always appreciated these details, and encouraged me to seek out additional information on the people responsible for some of my favorite games.

I'm also disappointed that with few exceptions, the industry doesn't make it a point to showcase their developers anymore. I'd love to see details about developers pop-up on the title screen of games and/or making-of videos as a common practice.

What are your thoughts?

These are from my copy of The Bard's Tale:

 

[Nightfall]

He looks like John Stamos.


Apart from that, yeah I always like reading some more information about the people that made my favorite games.

 

[THANKS]

It can be a mixed blessing. Yes, spotlighting a designer can be great for fans but you also create a single point of failure for PR. Look at what happened with Sean Murray or Molyneux. It also puts a lot of pressure on that person when things go wrong. In the age of social media, they'll be subjected to a torrent of abuse as soon as the sentiment turns.

 

[Deleted member 10428]

They don't want to mer everyone know the person behind the game.
They just want people to know that it's an EA game. Maybe the dev team behind it too.

 

[TheUnseenTheUnheard]

It can be a mixed blessing. Yes, spotlighting a designer can be great for fans but you also create a single point of failure for PR. Look at what happened with Sean Murray or Molyneux. It also puts a lot of pressure on that person when things go wrong. In the age of social media, they'll be subjected to a torrent of abuse as soon as the sentiment turns.

Click to shrink...

Yep at first this seemed like it would be a great thing but we can't handle these things correctly as a society.

 

[illamap]

I find that art like video games says enough about it's creators. Having some extra info is typically of little value at the end of day, and there is already places like Twitter of a developer if you really like to know more about the creators.

 

[SirNinja]

It can be a mixed blessing. Yes, spotlighting a designer can be great for fans but you also create a single point of failure for PR. Look at what happened with Sean Murray or Molyneux. It also puts a lot of pressure on that person when things go wrong. In the age of social media, they'll be subjected to a torrent of abuse as soon as the sentiment turns.

Click to shrink...

Basically this. It's just not a good idea anymore for a single developer to be the focal point of a game from a publisher the internet has its sights trained on.

 

[Arulan]

It can be a mixed blessing. Yes, spotlighting a designer can be great for fans but you also create a single point of failure for PR. Look at what happened with Sean Murray or Molyneux. It also puts a lot of pressure on that person when things go wrong. In the age of social media, they'll be subjected to a torrent of abuse as soon as the sentiment turns.

Click to shrink...

That's a fair point. I'm sure there are a lot of people who don't wish to be a public figure.

My initial thought was that corporations don't want to attribute their success to individuals for fear that they may leave or receive a better offer elsewhere, and damage the company value at the same time. A lot of early Japanese titles would try to hide their developers, such as the fake names in Castlevania (NES).

 

[elenarie]

While a noble idea, this can be a heavy burden to hold. Especially in today's social environment, considering that most people really don't want to be exposed to the garbage that is being spread online, and want their work to disappear when their work hours for the day are over.

Not to mention, you may end up dealing with some people with incredible egos, if you are unlucky.

 

[dock]

While a noble idea, this can be a heavy burden to hold.

Click to shrink...

Absolutely this. The name a team decides to put forward is always a proxy to some extent, and it comes with a heavy burden.

I've worked at a few places where the interaction with the community has been very carefully vetted simply to protect the developers, and I've also seen places where this hasn't been the case and devs have burned most of their day dealing with this. I've also seen first hand what happens when fandom oversteps the line.

 

[Arulan]

While a noble idea, this can be a heavy burden to hold. Especially in today's social environment, considering that most people really don't want to be exposed to the garbage that is being spread online, and want their work to disappear when their work hours for the day are over.

Not to mention, you may end up dealing with some people with incredible egos, if you are unlucky.

Click to shrink...

Absolutely this. The name a team decides to put forward is always a proxy to some extent, and it comes with a heavy burden.

I've worked at a few places where the interaction with the community has been very carefully vetted simply to protect the developers, and I've also seen places where this hasn't been the case and devs have burned most of their day dealing with this. I've also seen first hand what happens when fandom oversteps the line.

Click to shrink...

I appreciate the comments. It seems protecting developers could be a much larger reason of why this doesn't happen than I thought.

 

[Daitokuji]

EA from 30+ years ago is not EA of today.

 

[elenarie]

I appreciate the comments. It seems protecting developers could be a much larger reason of why this doesn't happen than I thought.

Click to shrink...

At the end of the day, this is a job, and having the job follow you everywhere would start feeling horrible quite fast.

 

[HadesHotgun]

If people didn't want the attention, then a reasonable course of action would be for a company like EA to allow them to opt out, rather than not presenting the opportunity at all.

The idea that this kind of thing stopped happening to protect people from a social media backlash is pretty obviously at odds with history and even the current reality.

Video games are very much the exception in the entertainment industry in terms of how much publishers are able to minimize the public awareness of who actually creates these popular titles, some of which are massive cultural and financial juggernauts.

 

[Pixel Grotto]

Cool thread. This is kind of a remnant of the older days when game devs were treated like book authors and putting a name on a cover felt like you were getting a more personalized, intimate experience, which I feel might have been more important back in the day when games were still a new medium. Now that it's not a new medium and every game dev is out on Twitter you obviously don't have this anymore - also the fact that most PC games, where this stuff was the most rampant, are sold digitally rather than in big boxes prob has something to do with it.

Not EA, but box blurbs like this were what made me worship Roberta Williams back in the day, I gotta say.