We Few, We Happy Few, We Band of Brothers

Posted on April 13, 2006 by Scott Jennings| 11 Comments

I thought only people who worked on an MMO live team could be this bitter!

There is a moral core that is missing from the game development community that exists in other industries, even in other entertainment sectors. In movies, you can still make documentaries that right past wrongs. In books, you can seek to help and enlighten. In games? I wonder.

I have my own answer to that, but feel free to leave your own in the comments.

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  • Eso

    See, there’s a fundimental fallacy that his article assumes. He seems to think game developers have souls, when obviously we’re blood sucking demons from the abyss out to corrupt the youth of today.

  • Slyfeind

    As flippant as that response was, I think you may be onto something, Eso. Video games aren’t considered a very mature medium, and aren’t taken very seriously by a lot of people. This puts developers and publishers into a potential trap of not taking THEMSELVES seriously.

  • zabuni

    I think Ebert may have had a point in all of this.

    His insistance was that, because games are interactive, they cannot be art. I don’t agree with that, but the interactivity of the medium makes instilling meaning and morals to them more difficult. It is difficult to stir emotions in an MMOG when 20 in the background are making fart noises.

  • D-0ne

    It was an interesting read. I found his description of game development management matched what I’d envisioned game development management was like based on my playing of MMO games. ;^)

    I’m still stunned that life saving drugs can be brought to market faster than most MMOGs can be.

  • FNORD

    Not to be snarky or anything, but how many (popular) movies are “documentaries that right past wrongs”? Frankly, how many people in any industry can actually say they’re saving lives? Increasing standard of living, maybe, increasing comfort, yes. If you’re working on 3d medical imaging, great, but most people in the software industry aren’t. I fail to see how entertaining people by designing a game is less noble than designing some inventory tracking software to save some retailer $$$. Entertainment is something people want (as proven by the fact that they pay for it). I don’t think it’s really less noble than most jobs. I’ll admit that you don’t get the same sense of moral achievement you’d get from being a doctor or a teacher, but most people don’t get that.

    He makes plenty of other good points about how game developers lives suck. Although others in the industry have pointed out his hyperbole.

    Much of the problem is that game development is, especially from the outside, a “cool” profession. There’s plenty of people who want to work in the industry, so why should managers take the effort to treat the ones they have well? If they complain, there’s plenty more where they came from.

    Also, there’s the no cool projects thing. I’ll attest that that’s irritating from the consumer end, too. Nothing wrong with sequels per se; Oblivion is proving just as interesting as Morrowwind (and both are better than Arena was). But, really, I think the industry is a bit conservative at this point.

  • Freakazoid

    I think game developers have a much tighter time constraint than most software industries. If you’re making a sports game, you need to make a new one every year, and can you do that with people working 8 hours a day 5 days a week? We’ve seen it “work” with EA Sports. I haven’t seen anyone say a lesser worked team of developers could put out an equal or greater project with less man hours.

  • http://serenya_loreden.livejournal.com Loredena

    I don’t know, in industry you have legally imposed requirements, and you have customer imposed requirements, both with tight deadlines. I’m finishing up a project now that had a locked in stone deadline of less then 3 months, and we’re going to finish on time to spec. We’re over budget due to scope creep, yet we still only worked standard 40 hour weeks.

  • http://emprint.livejournal.com Russell

    I’m not a game developer, and I’m actually in a good work environment right now. But, just as a reality check, everything he’s complaining about (except maybe the pay) can get just as bad in other segments of the software industry. More importantly, they can get just as bad in the same ways that he’s describing.

    I’m not saying that the game industry doesn’t have its unique problems. (I used to know a former Live Team guy on UO and E&B. He told some stories.) But sometimes the problem is that you’re in a job you hate more than that your industry is poorly run.

  • Robin Kestrel

    Bartle spends a good chunk of Designing Virtual Worlds talking about how these games could help people actualize their full potential. I tend to view personal development as a possible side-effect of playing rather than a design goal, but I just wanted to point out that there are at least some people who think a game could be more than just an entertaining diversion.

    -/|\\-

  • http://www.topofcool.com Finster

    Ron Moore, producer of Battlestar Galactica, seems to disagree.
    http://blog.scifi.com/battlestar/archives/2006/03/#a000408

  • =j

    The game industry has a remarkable resource. A near infinite supply of starry eyed youths* willing to sell their souls to make games. As long as there is vast store of replacement developers, the industry will continue to chew them up and spit them out.

    *sometimes they are embittered old bastards, but Scott is the exception that proves the rule.