Jim does an episode on CD Projekt.
Basically calls out gamers for what he perceives as excusing "beloved" companies for doing the same stuff everyone shits on the likes of EA and Ubisoft on for.
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The 'CD' Stands For 'Crunching Developers' - The Jimquisition
- Thread starter Sander VF
- Start date
Jim does an episode on CD Projekt.
Basically calls out gamers for what he perceives as excusing "beloved" companies for doing the same stuff everyone shits on the likes of EA and Ubisoft on for.
OP
OP
I've said my piece on CDPR plenty, so I'm not going to retread old ground.
The reaction to this should be fascinating.
The reaction to this should be fascinating.
The too-common aftermath of crunch (besides the emotionally, physically, and mentally distraught employees who go on to be unfairly compensated for their excess labor) is the shitty fact that this industry bleeds amazing talent and abandons them far too often. Experienced developers who could bring insight, who could solve pipeline problems just from practiced knowledge, who could push teams forward in interesting directions instead find the entire endeavor a destructive hellscape that they feel the need to abandon.
We've lost so much potential for amazing games on the consumer-end, but developers are fundamentally lesser for having stripped any motivation or heart from talent to continue on.
Games are a fucking hellscape, and CDPR are as grossly guilty of it as anyone. Fuck em.
We've lost so much potential for amazing games on the consumer-end, but developers are fundamentally lesser for having stripped any motivation or heart from talent to continue on.
Games are a fucking hellscape, and CDPR are as grossly guilty of it as anyone. Fuck em.
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Yeah almost all the ones with notorious crunch have creative leads that are bad at leading projects imo.
yes, and this industry can rely on the "dream job" of many to do these crazy hours with little to no extra pay. i've seen this also in indie space.
It's incredible. More work, less money, and shittier production/project management than enterprise software. Reminds me of the crunch Naughty Dog's animators did, all for shit nobody would have noticed the difference over for what could have been done during work hours.
I would love to see a project manager openly admit they're bad at their job.
reportedly at least ND devs get paid A LOT. a thing most studios don't even care to do. also it's a funny feeling cause as an aspiring animator i would do any shit to get into Naughty Dog or Santa Monica and i do crazy hours writing my book too.
sometimes the passion argument is real too.
i can safely say there will be at least a couple of more jimquisition videos on CDPR/this game in the coming weeks.
Another good video.
Sending in favorable excuses for Jim to use... 🙄 The practice is shit. Doing it is shit.
Sending in favorable excuses for Jim to use... 🙄 The practice is shit. Doing it is shit.
He is right with every single developer he criticized., not just this one.
Gonna watch this later.
Still nothing from the content creators I follow on twitch and youtube about this... oh well. Think they're just too scared to lose their audience and they don't want to miss out on playing the game.
You have your game of the forever. I hope it was worth it.
Still nothing from the content creators I follow on twitch and youtube about this... oh well. Think they're just too scared to lose their audience and they don't want to miss out on playing the game.
You have your game of the forever. I hope it was worth it.
Inb4 the defense of capitalist exploitation and abuse because of defeatist / cynical posters whose belief is that nothing can or will ever get better or change, but hey, they aren't saying it shouldn't!
I love this guy. We need more videos and more gaming channels explaining how shitty the gaming industry is. Hope many people follow his example.
Thank God for Jim
PS: CD Project transphobia video incoming? I don't remember right if he previously did these videos.
Thank God for Jim
PS: CD Project transphobia video incoming? I don't remember right if he previously did these videos.
I wouldn't expect this to be on the front page of the forum for very long. I'd love to be wrong, but it seems that there are an extraordinarily large number of Era posters who will happily do their very best Ostrich impression when it comes to certain developers, and CDPR is right up there. There's no reason to expect anything different from the wider enthusiast media.
For example, it's telling how much discussion there is over Hogwarts Legacy and it's affiliation with transphobia, and then absolutely nothing with Cyberpunk as it prepares to drop in a month.
As a project manager who believes crunch is completely avoidable and has rallied against crunch in every thread - there is a little bit of nuance here, but only a little bit.
Sometimes the day to day game project management team/game director can be overruled by higher-level stakeholders (publishers, editorial, etc) which can cause crunch. A publisher deciding you need feature X that your game never planned for can throw things into a tailspin. However this does tie back to bad project management, it's just not from the Game Director tier level of employee. That's the real heart of the problem, the entire project management silo needs to change for game production to properly avoid crunch and for games to launch with proper deadlines.
With that said: Avoiding crunch should honestly be priority number 1, since taking care of the physical and mental health of workers on the project creates a more sustainable workforce, less churn, etc.
Maybe they just don't care.
The "We" Jim uses when talking about the criticisms of crunch is a small percentage of the gaming community. He's absolutely right in what he says but people largely either don't know the circumstances in how the games they enjoy are made or don't care to know.
And that's fine for the wider public. Being an ethical consumer is fucking hard.
It's shitty when the enthusiasts and enthusiast press who are well aware of all of this turn a blind eye to it though.
EDIT: the problem in a nutshell.
In addition to the above:
Your tone of voice determines the pronouns assigned to you in Cyberpunk 2077
It seems that you do not choose your pronouns, you choose your voice, if you have a high voice you are automatically "she" and if you have a low voice you are automatically "he". I don't even know what to say. https://www.thegamer.com/cyberpunk-2077-voice-gender-pronouns/ EDIT: Also in...
www.resetera.com
This fetishized in-game ad from Cyberpunk 2077 raises some questions about how the game may depict LGBT (NSFW) [See Staff Post Before Posting]
Note the crotch of the person in the enlarged image. This is really yikes. It might not be so bad when divorced from context of the company's issues with transphobia, but even then it's disheartening to see. It reeks of fetishism. :/ Image in question:
www.resetera.com
Polygon: CDPR responds to sexualized trans advertisement in CyberPunk 2077 (Read Staff Post Before Posting)
Original thread on controversy with Staff Post that applies here as well: https://www.resetera.com/threads/this-fetishized-in-game-ad-from-cyberpunk-2077-raises-some-questions-about-how-the-game-may-depict-lgbt-nsfw-see-staff-post-before-posting.122649/ EDIT: please don’t say something like...
www.resetera.com
Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter account makes transphobic joke (READ OP)
MOD EDIT: There were originally two concurrent threads about this which resulted in a record shattering 12 permanent bans and numerous smaller infractions. If that gets your attention then please read carefully: "Did You Just Assume My Gender?" is a well known meme that has been used to...
www.resetera.com
Oh yeah absolutely especially in regards to the press side. I guess I just see "enthusiasts" are mostly only interested in the end product these days which that tweet goes to show. You can see the same attitude here on the regular.
Hopefully game developers can find a way one day to come together, find a voice and force a change, I don't know if said change comes in the form of unionisation or mass walkouts or whatever but it's never gonna come from players, who in general have no idea this shit is happening, let alone care about it.
I'm not sure I'm gonna pick up Cyberpunk yet, not due to the news of crunch (I'm a massive cynic and believe it's happening at vast majority of studios), it just hasn't resonated me with yet and they've avoided showing console footage which tells me it's not gonna be pretty.
When it comes to crunch in general, I recall Jason's story with crunching RDR2 devs who were asked about whether people should boycott the game to support the devs and how they felt about it. I recall some didn't want that to happen because they wanted people to experience what they'd put in so much hard work over. I don't know if we'll get an article like that with CDP devs but I'm sure it's an opinion shared by devs in other studios, along side y'know being treated better and paid better in general.
A lot of people are gonna treat this as a black and white issue, and while the base topic is black and white (treat your fucking workers better!), when it comes to boycotting this game or buying it used, it's a bit more grey to me because if you do one of the above, you are also hurting the devs that crunched because if I remember rightly CDP have a policy where at the end of the year their workers get a share of the end of year profits.
I'm not sure I'm gonna pick up Cyberpunk yet, not due to the news of crunch (I'm a massive cynic and believe it's happening at vast majority of studios), it just hasn't resonated me with yet and they've avoided showing console footage which tells me it's not gonna be pretty.
When it comes to crunch in general, I recall Jason's story with crunching RDR2 devs who were asked about whether people should boycott the game to support the devs and how they felt about it. I recall some didn't want that to happen because they wanted people to experience what they'd put in so much hard work over. I don't know if we'll get an article like that with CDP devs but I'm sure it's an opinion shared by devs in other studios, along side y'know being treated better and paid better in general.
A lot of people are gonna treat this as a black and white issue, and while the base topic is black and white (treat your fucking workers better!), when it comes to boycotting this game or buying it used, it's a bit more grey to me because if you do one of the above, you are also hurting the devs that crunched because if I remember rightly CDP have a policy where at the end of the year their workers get a share of the end of year profits.
Thank you SO muchIn addition to the above:
Your tone of voice determines the pronouns assigned to you in Cyberpunk 2077
It seems that you do not choose your pronouns, you choose your voice, if you have a high voice you are automatically "she" and if you have a low voice you are automatically "he". I don't even know what to say. https://www.thegamer.com/cyberpunk-2077-voice-gender-pronouns/ EDIT: Also in...This fetishized in-game ad from Cyberpunk 2077 raises some questions about how the game may depict LGBT (NSFW) [See Staff Post Before Posting]
Note the crotch of the person in the enlarged image. This is really yikes. It might not be so bad when divorced from context of the company's issues with transphobia, but even then it's disheartening to see. It reeks of fetishism. :/ Image in question:Polygon: CDPR responds to sexualized trans advertisement in CyberPunk 2077 (Read Staff Post Before Posting)
Original thread on controversy with Staff Post that applies here as well: https://www.resetera.com/threads/this-fetishized-in-game-ad-from-cyberpunk-2077-raises-some-questions-about-how-the-game-may-depict-lgbt-nsfw-see-staff-post-before-posting.122649/ EDIT: please don’t say something like...Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter account makes transphobic joke (READ OP)
MOD EDIT: There were originally two concurrent threads about this which resulted in a record shattering 12 permanent bans and numerous smaller infractions. If that gets your attention then please read carefully: "Did You Just Assume My Gender?" is a well known meme that has been used to...
You can drive yourself crazy, fighting all the moral battles in this world. Most people just concentrate on what is affecting them currently.
Yeah, I get that, but it's the hypocrisy I struggle with.
Every Hogwarts Legacy thread is full of people claiming to be trans allies and saying "Fuck JKR". Nowhere near that energy for CDPR though, and we all know why.
JK Rowling super blatant from someone in a powerful position, It's very visible in your face that she's spewing some hate speech. The stuff I see from CD projekt Red is nowhere close to as blatant to the point where some people could give them benefit of the doubt.
And therein lies the problem.
People are fine with CDPR's brand of transphobia because
1. They make super hyped AAA games
2. They're more subtle about it so people don't have to feel guilty about supporting them.
Yeah, I love Jim's humor (big fan of Boston's Favorite Son) but these bits in the Jimquisition never work for me, to the point where I always skip them now.
That's honestly almost worse. It's subtly put in a way that won't be blatant for people attacking it to point out without being namecalled. Transphobia is transphobia.
Yes but JKR is sort of a more abstract owner of the IP. The moral question of paying for a Hogwarts game is whether to attempt to damage her status/revenue because of her attempts to actively argue against trans rights. But the game itself is not the immoral act exactly, it is 3 degrees downstream. The game materially benefits a bad actor, but it is not itself immoral.
When it comes to crunch, if you believe it is bad, in a particular case, it is a 1st order input into the game itself. If the crunch is bad, the game that results from it is directly morally compromised. Crunch exists only to serve the game, there is no separation. There is no even theoretical ability to "separate the art from the artist" or something.
Don't have time to see the video and I understand the criticism, but won't Jim also buy and play this game and praise it? OR at least give it some attention, good or bad?
As for the problem itself, can't developers or the people affected by a lot of the crunch just negotiate to have a pool of profits from the games they make. Now I get that they might need a union and other things in place to get it done, but in general, creating a pool of money that goes to the people doing crunch based on the earning would be great.
As for the problem itself, can't developers or the people affected by a lot of the crunch just negotiate to have a pool of profits from the games they make. Now I get that they might need a union and other things in place to get it done, but in general, creating a pool of money that goes to the people doing crunch based on the earning would be great.
*forum equivalent of nodding in agreement*
It usually misses with me as well but:
- I'm to lazy to skip
- Having Craig dance in a reindeer outfit did get a chuckle out of me
Untrue, There's good hearted people being unintentionally transphobia, you got to give people opportunity course correct. We don't judge every murder the same.