What're your thoughts on situations like Portal 2 (and I think Portal 1, not sure though) where people who worked on the game were, for the most part, just in one long list? So it shows they worked on the game, but not necessarily what they did to it?
It should be illegal to not have the full team that worked on it in the credits. Whether it be video games, movies, or anything else. And the credits should be of easy access to view, whether the game was beaten or someone just wants to know who worked on the game.
I agree. none should ever be uncredited, even if it was an "grave offense". If someone made something, they have to be credited, be the good or bad thing. We have way too many people being thrown out of their jobs because their offense was "being late" or some rumor the management didn't want to deal with.
@@Naa45702 If he did plagiarism completely, he didn't do anything and the guy who he plagiarized from should be credited. If he did somethings which made into the final project, he needs to be credited for what he actually did and the original author for what he did.
@@thidios You... could... credit them and simultaneously call out their grave offense. Probably would waive getting credited at all though. Like "Hey, Joe is our lead designer! Also he molested our lead artist so..."
@@maxi_rv_raxor You got a link to that? Sounds interesting. Is the problem that listing every role as one person comes across as egotistic? Or that it could mislead about the developer's level of expertise, like the lead artist example in this video? I've been working on my own game so this sort of thing would be really helpful.
@@PlebNC ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-N4UFC0y1tY0.html (not sure if this is the one they're referring to, but it's still an excellent talk about crediting one-self)
@@SuperDeadzombeh lead designer: me Lead artist: me The lazy boi: me The "Why am I alone, please help, I'm scared" programmer: me The guy who is listing his name all over the credits of a game made entirely by him instead of doing something productive: me
This is one of the things where an outsider would have no idea that this is a prevalent issue. This is a type of game video that Extra Credits does well most of the time.
Most of the games I play (that aren't on my phone) are from Blizzard who put very extensive credits on their games. I enjoy reading all names at the end of Diablo II and III. I like looking up the voice actors to see where else I remember that voice from.
I dunno, don't you have other ways of proving that you worked on a game, other than the literal credits at the end of one? I mean, when you submit the list of games you worked on to your potential, future employer, do they go to RU-vid and watch the credits of a game to make sure?
@@ALookIntoTheEulenspiegel It's a simple method of providing proof that is hard to deny. There are definitely other ways to do it, but a couple of them hit the NDA with the previous company, and the really good ones can't be mass-produced the way credits are.
That problems stems from another, deeper and more pressing problem : the lack of any kind of worker's right union in the videogame industry. It would be a good idea to touch on that matter, even if it's slightly political.
Seb K He did say "without collective bargaining", and mentioned the actors' union, which I think touches on it. I do hope they put out a video on how to unionize your game studio, tho.
4:44 - SOMEONE SAID "UNIONIZE" !? Of course. Every sector should be unionized to prevent from greedy bosses gaining too much power over their employees.
I remember sitting through the credits of some game I'd played with a couple of friends, age ~10. And we all agreed that our goal in life was to see our own names on that list. One of us is actually a game dev.
A little story from back when I worked with a mobile game company back in 2011/2012. The company had a "no credit" policy and they refused to give me a document stating the games I worked on as a kind of out of game credit. In one game, I added a little easteregg. The game was a simple "tap on the good guys, let the bad ones pass, and that in funky patterns at high speed". The last level was a guitar hero stage with the credits morsed with good and bad guys, lead with an SOS as hint. I have no idea if anyone has ever found this hidden little secret, but I like the idea that someone found it and read our names there.
I've worked for a games studio that was asked to take over work on a game from another studio (so they could work on another project) and even though the game had been released they didn't have any credits in it at all, so we decided to add credits in a patch and reached out to the old studio for a list of people that had worked on the game (including people who left the company) to be included in the credits along side the people from our studio. I'm very happy that the studio I work at has a good enough work environment to support doing that.
Haha EA bad now gimme likes, ignore the fact the recent EA games have had no season pass and all free maps and weapons, that’ll interrupt the circlejerk.
I heard a story about a studio that planned on crediting the producers as "A game by..." and everyone else as "With help from..." No positions, no ranking, no idea what each individual person actually did. It was shot down pretty hard, but the idea alone is just scary.
I thought EC put out a video a while back describing the "producer" role as more of a people-manager than an actual contributor with artistic or technical input on the game.
Why is it scary? In this case whith out the individual tasks of every person listet this person can now state themself in a job application what they did for said game. Let's say X did during the development of this game work in programming and QA but would normally get listed as Programmer but now wants to land a QA job. Putting "I did QA in this game" without being listed as such in the credits would contradict their claim. If you wouldn't list anyones jobs in the credits such problems wouldn't happen
@@takatamiyagawa5688 The "Producer" title can be a mixed-bag, depending on the size of the company/team/project, but there is usually a managerial aspect, including supervisory and budget/planning duties. Depending on the type of producer, you may well get a say in design direction, hiring/contracting, feature prioritization & culling, and resource allocation (budget/time/people), so your decisions can definitely affect the artistic & technical aspects. In the old days, it wasn't unusual for the producer to also wear another major hat on the project as well, so there's that too.
Can work in indie gamedev, maybe? The "no positions" thing is icky, but if 70% of the game was made by a single person, that version sounds way cleaner than a row of positions each with the exact same name in them.
The art world is littered with the corpses of disgusting financial decisions to abuse the staff. No matter if it's games, or cartoons or just straightforward brushes on a canvas.
Whats needed is, as was mentioned, a standardized crediting system. That way it both makes figuring out who should be credited for what easier for the developer, and makes it easier for employers to determine the nature of a potential employee's contribution to some past project on their resume was.
Excellent piece, and as a designer who had his own multi-year design work on a major game knocked into the “Special Thanks” section, this is an issue dear to my heart. Many of my fellow devs have come to agree that credits should include a category for “Additional Design” (or additional art/production/programming/etc). This section would include anyone who worked for less than half of the game’s development, or who otherwise did meaningful work but doesn’t want it as their main role. Of course, not every studio agrees, for the exact reasons you describe. Yet another reason gamedevs need a union/guild.
I work in the theatre industry, and some of the theatres that I’ve worked for will have an email sent out so people can make sure that their names are spelled correctly and that they have the correct job title(s) in the playbill. It’s done once a season or every show depending on where you work. Theatre and film often have multiple people doing the same job, and when they list it in the playbill or credits it’s usually in alphabetical order by last names. Looking at other industries might help the game industry give everyone the credit that they deserve.
About 10 years ago I received the opportunity to work with a veteran set designer, and I learned many things in the process, but one of the most important was making sure my name was on the product. When you're not listed, you don't exist. When you don't exist, you don't have to be treated appropriately. I sit through obscenely long credits to this day because every one of those individuals (and often far more) put their all into the thing I'm experiencing.
Extra suggestions for credits: make it easy to access the credits in a format that doesn't require players to watch them slowly scroll down. Make them a menu I can sift through, like in MGS 2. Video games aren't - and never needed to be - movies, so there's no need for me to watch a 10-minute-long credit sequence just to figure out who worked on a game without going to places like iMDB every time.
that would be the wrong summary. The summary would be to credit people regardless of what they did, and they can do different things to do so. Whether or not they should unionize was not talked about in the video.
@@icarue993 But just asking companies to play nicely, won't do anything. Or not enough. Employees need representation and bargaining power, and that's what unions are there for. They only mentioned unions in passing, but the topic they talked about for the whole video is one where unionising is hugely relevant.
Sadly, openly supporting a union is the single surest way to get fired. At will contracts that are standard industry practice mean you can be fired at any time for any legal reason. Good luck trying to prove it's because you used the "U" word.
@@varana Agreed. It's relevant, but it's not what they talked about. Adnan's comment make it seem it's the EC 's message is different to the one they are saying. This is a change that can be brought about in small studios and large studios. So the message in not strictly solved by Unionization. You need to know what to change when you unionize, otherwise you'll just be repeating the same thing over and over.
@@feralgrin Yeah... But that's endemic to the software industry (and probably most industries) in general. Things aren't a heck of a lot better in the non-games software development world: there's almost NEVER staff credits in commercial software, least of all in a place readily accessible to end users, and a lot of companies have official policies prohibiting employees from giving references or recommendations for past employees.
Back in the late 80s and early 90s, a lot of Sierra adventure games had copy protection. Quest for Glory, however, instead had a note at the beginning of the game basically putting the player on the honor system: saying that the game was the product of many writers, programmers, musicians, artists, and other hard-working folks, and that making unlicensed copies was basically the same as stealing from them. I didn’t really appreciate it when I was a kid, but knowing who worked to make the games I play possible is pretty important to me now as an adult. Leaving someone uncredited seems a lot like leaving a cited work out of a bibliography. It’s a disservice to the customer too.
5:49 to 5:55 That's funny, it's exactly my case in the illustration, I was credited in a game published on Nintnedo Switch and the studio I worked on closed its doors. ^^
An additional level of credit-lessness happens as soon as you outsource to agencies working with freelancers for your game for stuff like localization. The agency has even more of a motive for not letting their freelancers get into contact with the game studios for fear of them cutting out the middle person. Thus, the studios usually don't even know the freelancers and won't be able to credit them even if they wanted to, which of course means the freelancer stays dependent on the agency.
Any young kid that goes into game development is crazy. I’ve never heard anything good about the industry except the love of game development. Low pay. Overtime with no compensation. Compulsory long hours, layoffs, and now no credit to trap you.
Candidly, if you think AAA developers will just blithely accept unionization you're more delusional than the biggest MAGAt. They'll move development offshore faster than you can say Jimmy Hoffa.
@@JukeboxTheGhoul Over time it should work out. The companies that would outsource their work would be avoided, those that work with unions should build up a better reputation.
@@Madhattersinjeans Not even outsourcing. Ubisoft had several teams in some of the wealthiest countries. EA is a perfect example of how hard it is to boycott an entire gaming company. I think unionisation could start with places that are powerful and are usually associated with good practices in businesses probably the EU. That may put more pressure of the US companies to uniform their union policy and an international organisation could be founded.
This is a new one: In my previous company they credited me properly, but after they had to let a few of us go because of the low amount of work, they removed our names from the credits in the very next patch. Nice people in the industry.
How I would handle credits would be: 1) Everyone that worked on it gets credited. 2) Everyone gets credited for everything they did. 3) If multiple people worked on the same thing, then they get listed in the order of who did the most to who did the least. 4) And lastly, if multiple people worked on the same thing the amount, then they get listed in alphabetical order by last name.
if you made 90% or more of the movie you get credit, if less you are entitled to nothing. although most studios will put your name in the special thanks section.
The credits from Portal 2 offer another solution that I'm shocked you didn't bring up. Valve simply listed everyone who worked on the game, alphabetically by last name. That's it. Even GabeN ended up towards the middle for that reason, but the point was simply to credit everyone
My dad got shot my a cop on July 3rd and Your videos have help me a lot by to focusing on that every minute your video have help me a lot thanks for that.
I remember Insomniac games used to make an intermediate tactic for this issue: they kept the name on the credits but didn't show their role on the company.
Fear of poaching is a hideous symptom of the industry. If people leave they should be treated fairly and have their desitions respected. Its not an evil rival "stealing" your designers. Companies dont own their employees and instead of making people want work there, they prevent them from working anywhere else. Its disgusting.
I never understood the logic behind removing people's names if they stop working for the company. By that logic, shouldn't the studio or publisher disown itself and all its executives if it goes out of business? Oh right, it's just a thinly veiled way to apply control over employees with the threat that they'll be disacknowledged from their work.
Well, at least Marvel forced people to sit down and watch the credits for some special post-credit scenes. It's quite a brilliant idea. Putting sneak peaks and teasers for the future work after all the credits to incentivize people to watch the credits.
A smart move is paying for employees a fair salary and creating a good working environment so that they won't want to leave. Not crediting your staff is a scum move and those companies shouldn't be supported.
damn... never would've thought it's happening like this. And finding a job without credits is hard! i am trying to do it, and failing, so the very idea of finally getting a job, working 3 years on a game and leaving with empty credit again makes me shiver
I don't know how it is in your country but here in France it's bonkers. For junior jobs they want someone with a degree, 2y of experience and/or having worked on a shipped title, preferably AAA. So basically your network and internships mean the world and oh boy do they exploit interns. So a big portion of game devs don't find jobs after obtaining their diplomas and go the indie / freelance route. And then we've got a number of indie studios that can't take interns because they can't afford it. If you look at LinkedIn profiles it's hilarious to see that more than half of the people with a stable job did an internship at either UbiSoft or Quantic Dreams at some point.
Thanks for always bringing up important industry problems! I’m not in the industry, but hopefully bringing such issues to light will make the situation better for all those who make games.
this was great and I love it but if you ask me this is just another argument for why people who work on video games in any way, shape, or form should unionize cause there is too much up in the air when it comes to this topic and the large gaming corporations have already proved they can't be trusted, it personally bothers me to think there are hard working devs out there making passionate art that moves me and many others to then leave whether or not they get credit in the hands of people who just see them as dollar signs
I actually don't understand the problem. You're watching this on youtube here. There's no credits to the people who built its video player, its recommendation algorithm, or the infrastructure beneath that. In fact, no one in software does credits. Ever seen credits on a webshop? And still, people manage to get hired. It's not that googlers or random webdevs are particularily unionized, they are not. The problem you describe is hiring. People need some kind of proof, that if they claim "I worked on X" for the employer to find our whether that's right. But you know...that's what the hiring interview is for. If an employer is unable to verify a claim from a person solely by this particular person's actions, then surely the skill cannot have any kind of relevance for the later job.
5:04 I can see why you'd want to recognize that somebody held a position longer than someone else, but having a hierarchy of who goes first causes a lot of problems. In academia, there are plenty of weird customs for when you're writing a paper about who is the first author, presumably the most "important" author, and in what order everyone else goes, and that can lead to arguments about who deserves that position, and it's usually determined by seniority/popsition. In mathematics, however, the custom is just to list authors in alphabetical order, to treat everyone equally. If you are applying for a job, you can just point to your name on the credits, and then say that you were there the majority of the time, and then somebody filled in for you at the end, and ask your boss to corroborate for you. In general, that should be how this works, and credits wouldn't have to be something the employees have to fight for, but some companies go under and some bosses suck.
Given the huge variety of different roles involved in making a game, this does present an issue in terms of recognition for type of work done though, as stated in the video. It's helpful to at least break things down by section, rather than straight up alphabetical
Cloud [2512] Why? If a programmer wants to land an arts job he either is qualified or not. So listing people alphabetical and someone claiming work he didn't do won't help this person in the long run because either someone will ask their former employer/coworkers and it'll turn out as false or they will just not be able to accomplish their given tasks since they don't have this profession... I don't see a problem with not listing what roles person X had on the project especially given that many people did multiple roles and making it fair for them and the people who only did one role throughout the whole project or making it fair for people who left, joined or stayed the whole project is hard and leads to a lot of disputes.
Anyone interested in how the movie (and by extension TV & theatrical) industries got to the unionized state of today ought to go look into the history of MGM-United Artists. Basically top-talent ultimately had to put their money where their principles lay, and set a new standard.
The film (and TV and theater) industries only got to that point after long, sometimes very violent struggle. It also took the big-name stars working alongside the rank-and-file members to force change. The games industry needs their own modern version of Douglas Fairbanks.
You overstate this issue immensely when you start working in any company you have to sign a contract with them and when the contract says something like game developer for x years for company y you can show that as proof to a new employer that you worked on the titles that company made during that time even if that previous company removed you from the credits. There are also many other ways to cheese companies that don't want to give you credit for your work.
Yep. Also worth noting contractors and freelancers almost never get credit. Either because they're not on the project at the end, or many companies just have a no-credit policy for contractors. Not only that but you also tend to get perpetual NDA's, meaning you're contractually not allowed to even mention you worked on that project. Most of the ones I've had don't even void after the game is released, meaning if you ever did try to use them as a reference they could sue you for breaking NDA. While i don't think they'd sue, i wouldn't be surprised, many of the companies behind studios are incredibly petty with legal action. =
I was a play tester for an RPG game. It's was only one session, but they gave me credit when the book was published. I take great pride in this. I'm in favour of all people getting credit, but rank the credit by contribution.
So on point, excellent recommendations! Don't work in game design, but in my line of work I face similar issues. The passion and drive is why I put in crazy hours, and not getting acknowledged/recognized outright hurts. Sure, it's nice to see the fruits of your work - but sometimes you need to honors as well instead of the usual posterboys/girls. If anything, as evidence for a future employer.
Even though I don't know the people working on a game. Whenever I finish a game and see the credits I always stay tell the end. Some games make viewing the credits beneficial. Like seeing a bonus scene or snap shots of your progress in the game.
May I add something? And sorry for the caps AWARDS SHOULD CREDIT THE ARTISTS DOING THE JOB AND NOT JUST THE GAME Especially indie awards where most if not all the work is done by a single person It's already hard to stand out on the indie scene. They should not be burried on a nameless award (I'll add unnamed animation studios on league to my complaint)
I can't think of any other industry that regularly uses Date and Time stamped contribution systems (Version Control) that DOES NOT use that system to tract detailed contributions for proper credits. Proper version control can even drill down to % Bit changes. Of course doing that would show just how OVERWORKED the average "grunt" employee is. And often how little work upper management does. It would also highlight exactly when and where Leads and Directors make catastrophically bad decisions. The "documented" development of EA/Bungie's Anthem would show the absolute disaster of indirection that occurred.
I'm curious what the consensus is on how Valve has done their credits for Half-Life and Portal, where it's just a running list of everyone in alphabetical order with no indication of their roles.
A few years ago, I thought it would be cool to have collectible cards for game designers & artists (et al) like baseball cards. Back when I was in school for game production, I would hear about all these interesting game makers and wished there was an easier way to learn about a lot more of them across the whole industry. Once you know a name and company you can always look up more about them. There are so many games and game studios out there that finding anyone not on some gaming sit top ten list seemed daunting. Plus, it sounded like fun. If I ever met someone I admired at a convention, I'd have something they could sign. Studios as teams, positions as positions, games as games... it's a pretty simple idea but a lot of work to create a good set. It might not be a huge money maker, so you'd probably have to do it for the love of it.
So, when you apply for a job in the games industry, the people interviewing you won't take your word for having worked on a title and will instead go on RU-vid and watch the Credits of a game to see if you're in them? It sounds silly to me, but is that how it works?
A solution for the problem "2+ worked on the same" (like Lead Designer example at 2:40 - 3:00) could be: a percentage value behind the name, that indicates the amount of done work in the end product. For the above example it could be: Lead Designer [Person 1] (80%) // the core part // [Person 2] (20%) // the polishing // There could also be an exact list of done work (mostly only the things that are in the end product) from the person. It could also be split in groups. Example: Meshs [Name of Person 1] // could be in alphabetical order // [Name of Mesh 1] [Name of Mesh 2] and so on up to the next name, and then the next group and so on. That will cause a damn long list, so maybe it would be better to put that in an excel table inside the installer folder and/or downloadable on the homepage. If 2+ worked on the same thing, then the thing is listed first, then the names optionally with percentage value.
There is a musical called "Working" which talks about some of the same stuff as in here, just in the world of more blue and white collar work. Especially check out the song 'Something to Point To'
Instead of separating people by role, what if we list people then what role they played. Name by seniority in the company, then follow by their roles, either from contribution or in chronological order. The only exception should be if the game was directed or written by a major person, then they should be first.
That union would be too strong, in my opinion. Too strong that a single strike might send an entire company to an early grave. The video game industry is pretty much a creative industry, where the developers are both the source of creativity as well as employees that churn out products. Their job requires them to make a new product every time, from updates and patches to an entirely new game. A car manufacturer can have strikes at their plant, but they still have the rights to the plans of the car that can be made by completely different people. In video games, however, should the devs went on strike, the dream for said game could just be lost until their demands are met.
I work at Gameloft. The policy here is: If you leave the company, on the next update of a game you worked on, your name will be removed from the credit.
This. It would be really cool looking up the credits of a game I liked and look on wich games these people also worked on. I right now do this with studios on wikipedia but there is no way of keeping track of individual people like "I liked this games music. Where can I find more music from these people" since often people leave studios etc.
Thanks for tackling this issue. Although I think you forgot to mention contractors and studios that received externalized work. How do deal with those? Even people from core teams tend to resent the idea to give credit to "outsiders". There's also the problem of projects that take place in multiple counties. This happens all the time in localisation, which is my field. There's nothing unions can do in that regard.
@@abudgie6909 America has a love/hate relationship with socialism. Folks claim to fear it, but watch how they react when Medicare/Social Security are threatened.
Hi, dont wanna go against the video, its totally correct about its premise. Yet this is rarely a problem when it comes to finding a job, the interviewer is a human after all and usually asks about past experience in details. Its quite enough to say you have worked for a company as an X for a Y amount of time to raise those questions in the interview. In this way you may avoid situations where a fair credit is missing or equal to another while it shouldnt be. The situation with the art lead should never happen, Mostly because art lead doesnt neccessarly means the person managed employees, if so, at most gave them advice, directed / unified their work / technique / approach. Also the interviewer will probably ask about past experience with managing employees.
If the game had two lead designers than both should get the credit. Maybe with a note about the time frames if it's absolutely needed. My biggest complaint about credits is when they're this unskippable chunk at the end of a game. Mainly because they're usually moving past too fast to read or generally a meh thing I don't care about. But I do think that all the people who worked on the game should be credited and that the credits should be done in an accessable way. So that you can easily look up who did what on a game or movie.... Or really any project...
It's crazy to me that Film, Television, and Theatre are basically completely unionized, and yet Game Development isn't. It just isn't fair; the artists who make games deserve just as much protection much as their counterparts in other entertainment forms.
The fear of poaching is completely founded though. I agree that credits should be shown also. I was really hoping you would have addressed the poaching concern or some solutions after addressing why credits are important. I know small studios can get absolutely gutted because big AAA comes along and makes an offer the small studio can't compete with.
Now you gotta ad an "not so extra credits" section to your channel description. We know who's who, but you've just laid out a few points why credit's should be there, and easy to find.
