Mark Jacobs doesn't think developers deserve credits

[Brad Wardell]

Originally Posted by idrisz

As a game developer, if you have to worry about lack of toilet paper or other basic necessities at a work place, then it's time to start looking for a new employer.

And that's why I think the analogy works. As a game developer, if you have to worry whether the company is going to screw you on the credits, it's time to look for a new employer.

Why work at a corrupt, dishonest company?

[SwampIrish]

Originally Posted by Brad Wardell

A

Why work at a corrupt, dishonest company?

So they don't accuse you of job-hopping?

[idrisz]

Originally Posted by SwampIrish

So they don't accuse you of job-hopping?

woo, I was actually gonna said that's why I don't work at Mythic or Stardock.

[Aeon221]

Originally Posted by idrisz

woo, I was actually gonna said that's why I don't work at Mythic or Stardock.

Yeah, who wants to work at companies known for making groundbreaking games. Fucking losers don't even have a clear crediting policy. I bet they don't even finish the game before they review it, or properly stock their bathroom with toilet paper and M&Ms.

[idrisz]

Originally Posted by Aeon221

Yeah, who wants to work at companies known for making groundbreaking games. Fucking losers don't even have a clear crediting policy. I bet they don't even finish the game before they review it, or properly stock their bathroom with toilet paper and M&Ms.

Damn Right! Who want to apply to a company like that, when there is about a few dozen other companies that also make "Ground breaking" games that have a standard crediting policy.

[Brad Wardell]

Originally Posted by SwampIrish

So they don't accuse you of job-hopping?

I wouldn't apply at a company that had a reputation for screwing its developers.

Word gets out when companies mistreat employees.

[Brad Wardell]

Originally Posted by idrisz

Damn Right! Who want to apply to a company like that, when there is about a few dozen other companies that also make "Ground breaking" games that have a standard crediting policy.

Such as? Which companies have a standard crediting policy?

I'd really like to know.

Every game developer I know of, and I know of a lot, have the same view on credits as we do - it's a matter of discretion by the producers that's worked out with the teams. And I'm not talking about just indie game studios, I am including the larger ones too.

Except, of course, Mythic which has just announced its standard crediting policy which is the source of this discussion.

[StGabe]

Originally Posted by idrisz

woo, I was actually gonna said that's why I don't work at Mythic or Stardock.

I'm not sure I'd go that far. I actually have a lot of respect for both company's games and while Mark comes off a bit over-the-top, Brad seems like he's probably a well-meaning, decent sort of Benevolent Dictator.

Why work at a corrupt, dishonest company?

No one tries to do that. They just end up there in spite of the best of intentions. Oftentimes, they get sucked in by well-meaning employers who have the best of intentions but can't execute for one or another reason (has happened to me). Our best way to avoid bad companies is to get a lot of information on their policies, on employees past experiences, and to get as much in writing as we can before we start. Things like crediting policies help us to feel more confident about an employer, even though the overall issue isn't as big as others.

Even if the issue at stake is just toilet paper, an employer with an attitude that is basically "fuck you, I can do whatever I want" sets off a lot of alarm bells. In your case, I believe you mean well, but that doesn't convince me that you're in a position to execute or that your well-meaning will always be on my side when I need it as an employee. I'd much prefer to have a consistent, fair policy in place before this stuff becomes an issue.

[Hans Lauring]

Originally Posted by Jafisob

So in England you have job protections even without unions? Wait, off topic. :-)

Many European countries does. But of course it can be argued (and the unions will) that those laws came in place because of the work done by unions.

But my byline is protected by law and not the benevolence of my employer (and I know that a single byline isn't completely comparable to credits for collaboration)

[TheTrunkDr]

Originally Posted by StGabe

I'm not sure I'd go that far. I actually have a lot of respect for both company's games...

I've learned from personal experience (as well as second hand information) that the quality of a game isn't indicative of the working conditions at the developer.

So anyone hear what happened with Mark's "big announcement?"

[mittens]

Originally Posted by Aeon221

Yeah, who wants to work at companies known for making groundbreaking games. Fucking losers don't even have a clear crediting policy. I bet they don't even finish the game before they review it, or properly stock their bathroom with toilet paper and M&Ms.

We don't have M&Ms in our bathrooms. :(

Screw this, I can't work in these oppressive conditions.

[Kraaze]

Originally Posted by Brad Wardell

I guess where I differ with some people on this thread is that I don't believe that the responsibility for someone leaving a job is purely the fault of the company.

Sometimes, people leave for reasons that have nothing to do with the company (personal reasons). Other times it's because the managers are just impossible to work with. And some times it's because the person is just an opportunistic job hopper.

I find it interesting how you keep using pejorative phrasing for people who switch jobs for more money. "just an opportunitistic job hopper" being the latest example.

Let me ask a simple question. If a person is switching jobs to make more money, would you not consider it the fault of the management of the job they are leaving for underpaying them?

[beloved one]

Originally Posted by mittens

We don't have M&Ms in our bathrooms. :(

Screw this, I can't work in these oppressive conditions.

I don't know, the big bowl of M&Ms in the bathroom is not quite as great as you'd think it'd be. Ours sometimes gets a little unsanitary, and I sometimes think it might have been a mistake.

[mittens]

Originally Posted by beloved one

I don't know, the big bowl of M&Ms in the bathroom is not quite as great as you'd think it'd be. Ours sometimes gets a little unsanitary, and I sometimes think it might have been a mistake.

Yeah, the more I think about the prospect the less appetizing it sounds.

[RobotPants]

The place I work at solves this by having a men's room, a ladies' room and an M&Ms room. The M&Ms are kept in a urinal, though.

[Dave Weinstein]

Originally Posted by beloved one

I don't know, the big bowl of M&Ms in the bathroom is not quite as great as you'd think it'd be. Ours sometimes gets a little unsanitary, and I sometimes think it might have been a mistake.

Typical developer hubris.

Look, marketing has clear figures, titles developed by teams with M&Ms in the bathroom have an average of 10% greater sales, and are 18% more likely to crack 1 million in sell through.

[Matt Perkins]

The thread has definitely stayed interesting...

Some thoughts:

- Credits are apparently a big issue to some.
- MJB never did make his announcement of awesome?
- Brad must have been burned by "job hoppers" in the past.
- To not credit someone who worked on your project is silly except in extreme cases. Where and how doesn't matter as much to me, but it does to some.

I do find it very interesting to see the difference in opinion of the employees vs. directors/owners. Having been both, I agree with both sides...

As a current employee, I expect the following from the company I work for...to be treated with respect. That encompasses a large swath of physical (pay, tools, etc), mental (vacation, understanding your job isn't your life just a part of it, etc) and more. But it basically boils down to a company treating me like a decent human being and me treating them in the same way.

I don't owe a company anything beyond what they pay me for and the company doesn't owe me anything beyond what they agreed to pay me. That's the bottom line. If a company wants to go above and beyond the lines of the contract we signed, I'd love that. And in return, I will become a company man and believe and strive for the will and the way of the company. It's a two way street.

Sadly enough, it's not easy to find companies or employees like that in lots of cases. That's where all of the rules and regulations come in. That's why we have requirements on who gets paid overtime and when. It's why we have requirements on hiring policies. It's why we have the IDGA releasing guidelines that suggest how credits should be given, because while some companies look out for the employee, a fair number of them do not.

[checker]

Originally Posted by Brad Wardell

I suspect most people care quite a bit whether the company bathroom stocks toilet paper or not. I think they probably assume it does...

Do you let them use the toilet paper if they leave before the game ships? :)

I think this thread stalled out a bit when there was disagreement over whether a credit is like salary or not. I think credits have some similarities to salaries, and some differences. If you think of a salary as "you get paid to do work every day" then a credit is similar in that "you get a credit if you contributed to the game that shipped". We don't leave salaries to the daily or weekly discretion of management (beyond the initial negotiation), it's contractual. If you stop doing the work, you stop getting the salary, but you don't have to pay back the money you've been paid up to that point. In that sense, credit is a form of "recognition of contribution", and by that lens it seems odd that they're revocable...you already earned them, like the money, by contributing. I don't think credits should be a discretionary ex-post-facto perk, like a bonus. Obviously a lot of people would say the salary is a way more important recognition to them than the credit, but that doesn't mean the credit isn't important at all, nor is it that hard to find examples of people who forego payment in exchange for credit in art and entertainment industries.

Originally Posted by Brad Wardell

Every game developer I know of, and I know of a lot, have the same view on credits as we do

I also know a fair number of developers, and this isn't true in my experience. But, dueling anecdotes are not very useful, I guess. I can empathize with you not wanting more contractual friction in hiring/firing, but my guess is that in 5 or 10 years, credits will be part of the normal employment contracts at most companies. If that happens, whether Stardock adopts those terms is obviously up to you, and whether you decide to is up to some combination of whether your opinion changes on the matter, and whether you can continue to hire people at the quality level you want. If you can always find people you want on your terms, there's no reason for you to change anything, obviously.

Chris

[Brad Wardell]

Originally Posted by checker

Do you let them use the toilet paper if they leave before the game ships? :)
Chris

If we had bathrooms we would... :)

[TheJare]

We're just spinning our wheels, we've been looking forward to Mark's announcement "tomorrow" for two days already. Damn developers can never make a deadline.

[corsair]

Originally Posted by TheJare

We're just spinning our wheels, we've been looking forward to Mark's announcement "tomorrow" for two days already. Damn developers can never make a deadline.

Oh no, the schedule is slipping - could it be the dreaded "vaporware"?

[JM]

It's under NDA.

[Dean]

So, a month later with no gripping announcement from Mark, another IDGA newsletter comes out:

Originally Posted by IGDA Newsletter

Dear Members and friends,

In the August newsletter ( http://www.igda.org/newsroom/newsletter_0808.txt ), I criticized Mythic's credits policy specifically, and the industry in general, for not adopting inclusive credit standards. I'd like to set the record straight on a number of things that have happened over the past month.

When the credits story first appeared, Mark Jacobs, the GM of Mythic, was in the middle of a series of interviews in New York. After an interview with N'Gai Croal of Newsweek and Level Up blog, Mark asked N'Gai for his thoughts on the subject. N'Gai suggested simply putting the full credits online. Mark is in the process of implementing N'Gai's suggestion, and in doing so, Mythic will move towards a greater level of credits inclusiveness.

I've known Mark for more than 10 years now, and he's always been a strong proponent of the online games industry and an ethical businessman. Mark was honest about a difficult subject and immediately after the interviews ended, he began a process of formulating new credit policies. Unfortunately, when the previous newsletter was sent out, Mark, unbeknownst to the me, was quietly continuing to work on a new credit policy for the studio. Mark, I regret that my comments caused you personal and professional distress.

The Mythic team is also taking the following steps to address credit policies:
- In-game and manual credits will be reserved for the launch team.
- Mythic will create an online database listing the name and title of everyone who contributed to a project, regardless of current employment status. Additionally, the studio will make best efforts to provide this information for its previous online games.
- Mythic has committed to working with the IGDA, leading game industry history and credit sites and other interested parties to establish a credits feed, listing all contributors, to promote fair and accurate credit reporting across the industry.
- Mark Jacobs will consult with the IGDA Credits Standard Committee to offer guidance on the issues and challenges posed specifically by MMOs.

Fair and accurate credits and transparent standards for crediting remain a pervasive problem in the industry, and I applaud Mythic for taking steps to address this issue. I'm personally looking forward to Mark's involvement with the Credit Standards Committee, not only because of his depth of experience in online games, but because, more importantly, his personal commitment to fair and accurate credits sets an outstanding example for industry leadership.

My newsletter intros usually end with a call to action, and this one is no exception. We must continue the dialogue on credits, and on other topics like quality of life, that have a direct impact on the lives of game developers. Get involved, discuss these issues with your peers, and please join me in recognizing Mythic's new crediting efforts.

Once again, the IGDA's credit standards info is at:
http://www.igda.org/credit/


- Jen MacLean
Chairperson, IGDA
VP Business Development, 38 Studios

So, uh, we win? Everybody wins? Yay?

[Hanacker]

Yay!!

[Sol Invictus]

I was wondering what happened with that, but that definitely seems like the best outcome for everyone.

[MBJ]

Folks,

Yeah, sorry it took so long but, as you can imagine, with all the parties involved, the announcement took a wee bit longer than I hoped. Also, with the launch of WAR, well, if this had come out during WAR's launch week it would have gotten a bit lost. Now I can talk about it more fully and it will get some attention as I hoped it would.

There's also going to be a larger story about this in the next week or so and I'll go into even more detail after it's released.

I wish I could have talked about it during the last few weeks but once I talked to Jen and other members of the IGDA it was clear that her initial letter to the IGDA was unintentional and as her letter makes clear, she was sorry for that. From that point on I had to wait till everything was cleared through all the appropriate channels (I did underestimate the # of people who needed to sign off) before I could say anything. I also didn't want to attack Jen or the IGDA for the first letter since again, it was unintentional. They had no reason to know about my chat with N'Gai or what was happenng behind the scenes.

Hopefully that clears things up a little.

Mark

[EvilIdler]

Big yay!

[Chuck Jordan]

"- In-game and manual credits will be reserved for the launch team.
- Mythic will create an online database listing the name and title of everyone who contributed to a project, regardless of current employment status. Additionally, the studio will make best efforts to provide this information for its previous online games."

I must've missed something, because I fail to see how this warrants a "yay" or a celebration, or a lengthy open-letter apology. What's improved, exactly?

The credits that ship with the creative work still don't have to list the names of the people who contributed to that creative work. Putting them online does two things, one of which is "jack." It's the equivalent of a notice reading "a copy of our public health assessment is available on request," instead of just putting the damn grade on display in the first place. It's still manipulating the basic facts (these people worked on this game) in an attempt to reward employees for some screwed-up concept of "company loyalty," when the company isn't showing them the basic loyalty of publicly acknowledging their contribution to a project.

All this crap about proper channels and the IGDA and proper accreditation practices and committees is just another sign that the videogame industry has gotten too big. You shouldn't have to form a committee to ensure that people just do the right thing in the first place, especially when it's over something this simple and something that should be non-controversial. Forgive me if I don't start jumping up and down and congratulating somebody for continuing to fail to do the right thing.

[Dave Weinstein]

My personal preference would be to add an optional credit to the IGDA standards.

"Launch Team: Optionally, the launch team may be specifically credited. This consists of all team members at the time of launch/RTM. This credit will be in alphabetical order, and must be in the credits after all credits required by the IGDA standards if it is given".

[TheTrunkDr]

Originally Posted by Chuck Jordan

"- In-game and manual credits will be reserved for the launch team.
- Mythic will create an online database listing the name and title of everyone who contributed to a project, regardless of current employment status. Additionally, the studio will make best efforts to provide this information for its previous online games."

I must've missed something, because I fail to see how this warrants a "yay" or a celebration, or a lengthy open-letter apology. What's improved, exactly?

The credits that ship with the creative work still don't have to list the names of the people who contributed to that creative work. Putting them online does two things, one of which is "jack." It's the equivalent of a notice reading "a copy of our public health assessment is available on request," instead of just putting the damn grade on display in the first place. It's still manipulating the basic facts (these people worked on this game) in an attempt to reward employees for some screwed-up concept of "company loyalty," when the company isn't showing them the basic loyalty of publicly acknowledging their contribution to a project.

This part I agree with. Putting them online is good for additions, such as the live team or in the case of WAR as a stop gap measure since the credits were probably finalized a long time ago. However, doing it as a matter of policy isn't any better. There's nothing special about being employed at launch time, it's no more of a meaningful contribution. Everyone should be in the manual and on the disk, even if they're not employed at the time of launch.

Originally Posted by Dave Weinstein

My personal preference would be to add an optional credit to the IGDA standards.

"Launch Team: Optionally, the launch team may be specifically credited. This consists of all team members at the time of launch/RTM. This credit will be in alphabetical order, and must be in the credits after all credits required by the IGDA standards if it is given".

What's the purpose of this? I'm not sure I understand how being employed at launch is somehow more meaningful than what your actual contribution was. If some junior person is hired two weeks before launch why is he/she gaining additional notoriety than someone who spent 4 years on the project but wasn't around for that specific date?