Credit Where It's Due

There's been some debate over on the MTV blog about game makers not getting enough credit. I mostly ignored it as the people being interviewed weren't ones I really wanted to hear from (known blatherers and CEOs). But then a crime occurred, and I couldn't ignore it. I probably should have, but I couldn't.

The crime was mangling some beautiful game cover art by obscuring it with giant blurbs of credits, then pointing to it and saying "If Video Game Boxes Gave Credit, They'd Look Like This". That article title was a lie, of course. They wouldn't. DVD boxes don't. The credits go on the back. But some commenters on a previous post apparently said the credits could fit on the front, and she wanted to prove them wrong. Maybe they were big jerks, deserving of the comeuppance, but defacing some beautiful box art failed to deliver any, was an abuse of power over the commenters by the blogger, and really ticked me off.

I posted a nasty note in the comments, which I immediately tried to back away from as I realized it wasn't helping (and wasn't even coherent :P ). Then I tried to come back and really address the issue, but the comment system on the MTV blog is garbage. There's no notification when someone responds, and all newlines are collapsed, so instead of nicely formatted paragraphs, it's a giant ugly blob. So now I'm writing it up here because I'm just not done with it. If you don't care about who makes your games, feel free to stop reading.

My current understanding of the situation is that it's not uncommon for there to be no credits in a game manual. The credits are often available for perusal if you boot up the game and go to the extras menu. So if you want to actually take down all the credits for the game, you have to try and write them down as they scroll by (or maybe record a video so you don't have to watch them six times to get everything). I personally don't think this is an acceptable minimum standard.

I think the developers of the game agree, as two of them (Steve Riesenberger and Mark Burroughs) commented on the MTV blog that Mark's name was misspelled on the horrible mock up for Boom Blox. It was weird though, because Steve was arguing that only things that sell the game should go on the box. If that's true, then how can it possibly matter that one man's name was misspelled on a mock up of the box that no consumer will ever use to make a purchasing decision and maybe a handfull of people on the internet will even read? :P

For me, it's just a matter of history. The horrors of the Hollywood studio system forced people who worked under it to unionize. (Often times, unions are the employees way of saying we think we'd be better treated by the mafia than management.) This forced certain standards of recognition.

The gaming industry has had some similar problems. Voice actors want percentages. The spouse of an EA employee exposed horrible working conditions there which EA had to respond to. But none of these things has come to a head, so the body that gives out the guidelines for these things (the International Game Developers Association) doesn't seem to be very driven. They're currently taking a poll about how devs want their credits so that they can put it into a standard that started development in April of 2007?

"We kept it gray." :P (That's a reference to the ridiculous Central Bureaucracy from Futurama.)

When I hear an industry veteran like Steve (According to MobyGames, I believe he's been making games for fifteen year, although they don't have Boom Blox or any other recent work listed, so maybe that's a different guy.) arguing for the publisher and against his self interest, it just sounds incredibly naive. But maybe that's just one guy. Sure, a veteran creative director may make less than ninety thousand a year, but a game can take a long time to develop, so maybe his average per game is right up there with a Hollywood director per movie.

Or maybe people are so happy to be working on games at all that they don't want to press their luck because they know there are hungry college grads out their willing to work for less.

Wait a minute. I thought this article was about having some credits on the back of game boxes. What happened?

What always happens happened. I start trying to follow the money. But I don't really know where it goes. (Which is it's own issue as many studios say movies cost far more to produce than they actually do to avoid paying taxes / investors. Could game publishers be doing likewise?) And then my raging paranoia takes over. Sigh.

Let's see if I can sum up my feelings without bringing up a host of new issues.

I hate MTV blogger Tracey John. :)

I suspect but can't prove that game creators as a whole aren't being treated well and won't be until they have representation.

Cut! Print! Run away!