[Nirolak]

I haven't made a job posting based thread in a while, but when I saw GAF's favorite topics combined into one I thought people would want to have a discussion.

POSITION OVERVIEW Award-winning studio Irrational Games, best known for its Bioshock franchise, is seeking a highly experienced Design Manager to serve as a team leader and design advocate for our world-class design team. The Design Manger’s primary responsibility is to schedule, lead and manage the design team on a day to day basis. This role oversees the staffing, organization and professional development of the game design department. REQUIREMENTS • Credit on at least one game with an 85+ Average Meta Critic Review Score. PLUSES • 6+ years as a Senior or Lead Designer in the video game industry. • Strong understanding of the Unreal engine in a multiplatform environment. • Previous level design experience in a first person shooter. • Development on a multiplayer focused game. • Ability to visually represent abstract concepts.

Source: http://jobs.gamasutra.com/jobseekerx...&accountno=362

So, now for the questions:

1.) Do you think it's a good idea to hire with a metacritic requirement?
2.) So, their multiplayer component is sounding larger than originally expected (or it's very large in their next title). Any thoughts on what it is?

[TruePrime]

I would guess that the Multiplayer is going to be bigger, at least more so then I hoped it would have.

As for the Metacritiq, I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing. I know it makes me sad, becaues there are some fucking amazing designers and hard workers that might be coming up, or been stuck on some liscened shit and were forced to drop them before they were ready.

Either way, I do think that this limits the talent pool and could make it so studios could miss out on some great people

[EatChildren]

1.) Do you think it's a good idea to hire with a metacritic requirement?

No, because in order for it to be a good idea Metacritic needs to be an accurate and educated analysis of a persons talent and ability, and it is not.

2.) So, their multiplayer component is sounding larger than originally expected (or it's very large in their next title). Any thoughts on what it is?

New Freedom Force of course.

[picklecannon]

REQUIREMENTS • Credit on at least one game with an 85+ Average Meta Critic Review Score. PLUSES • 6+ years as a Senior or Lead Designer in the video game industry.

They totally got those backwards. Honestly even experience on a mediocre game should account for something. It's pretty sad to devalue(or in this case outright deny) somebodies skills just because the game they worked on turned out poorly.

[Ourobolus]

Considering the vast difference between several reviewers' opinions and the multitude of gamers out there, no. I think it's a terrible idea.

However, given that I'm sure that Irrational is in the money-making business, and not all gamers are apt to think for themselves when making a game purchase, from a business standpoint, it makes sense.

[remnant]

How is that different than other industries having certain requirments? Some animation studios require feature film experience to land senior roles for example.

[Nirolak]

How is that different than other industries having certain requirments? Some animation studios require feature film experience to land senior roles for example.

Do they require the film to have a Rotten Tomatoes score of 85 or higher?

[Wario64]

I think they should hire based on Klout instead.

[balladofwindfishes]

However, given that I'm sure that Irrational is in the money-making business, and not all gamers are apt to think for themselves when making a game purchase, from a business standpoint, it makes sense.

there's no guarantee a high score means more sales, nor a low score poor sales. Wii Play, one of the best selling games ever, has a 60 metascore. And yet Sin and Punishment has a metascore of 87 and bombed

[Wallach]

I love that not only is the Metacritic element a requirement, it's the only fucking requirement. Everything else is of course put on the table for evaluation.

Edit - Nevermind, the quote has a bunch of shit removed. Still, this shouldn't be on the requirements list at all.

[Kalnos]

A metacritic score is the result of an effort of a team, not an individual. It's a dumb metric.

[Nirolak]

there's no guarantee a high score means more sales, nor a low score poor sales. Wii Play, one of the best selling games ever, has a 60 metascore. And yet Sin and Punishment has a metascore of 87 and bombed

There's a correlation between Metacritic scores and sales in a general sense, but to me, it'd only make sense to evaluate an entire studio purchase on the number, since what one individual does on the team might be totally disconnected from the end score of the product.

I love that not only is the Metacritic element a requirement, it's the only fucking requirement. Everything else is of course put on the table for evaluation.

I didn't quote the entire posting for space, but left the pluses since they usually tell you a bit more about the specific project they're making than hard and fast requirements do.

REQUIREMENTS • 6+ years as a game designer in the video game industry. • 4+ years of experience managing direct reports. • Shipped a minimum of 3 game titles from pre-production through ship. • Proven knowledge of game design, theory and execution. • A strong passion for and experience with First Person Shooters. • Ability to motivate a team with positive leadership. • Excellent written and oral communication skills. • The ability to quickly learn new engines and game technologies. • Strong design documentation skills. • Credit on at least one game with an 85+ Average Meta Critic Review Score.

[DTKT]

Could it be the reason for the delay?

I hope it's not just a tacked on MP mode to have that bulletpoint on the back of the box.

[Paddling Ghost]

Jokes on them, losing out on so much potential talent with the metacritic req.

[Ourobolus]

there's no guarantee a high score means more sales, nor a low score poor sales. Wii Play, one of the best selling games ever, has a 60 metascore. And yet Sin and Punishment has a metascore of 87 and bombed

True, but I'd say that some people are loathe to purchase a game with a low metascore, and more inclined to a high one. A high not absolutely indicative of a sale, but it certainly doesn't hurt.

[SatelliteOfLove]

1.) Do you think it's a good idea to hire with a metacritic requirement?

If it didn't lead to stifling, simplistic sameyness thruout western AAA game development, yes. But it does in spades, so no.

[Cipherr]

What the hell.... it takes a lot of people most times to make a great game, how can you judge a sole person based on a metacritic score. Horrible man.

[Teriyaki]

Sigh...as if a design manager really has that much control over the review scores. PR and Marketing are more than 50% of the fight.

[Open Source]

Just further proof that most developers have no clue how to judge a game designer's ability. It's like businesses that hire based on diplomas. They need some sort of credential, no matter how little correlation it has to someone's ability to perform in a given position.

[SatelliteOfLove]

Sigh...as if a design manager really has that much control over the review scores. PR and Marketing are more than 50% of the fight.

This is an observant, wise man posting this, folks.

[KSai]

Does metacritic let you filter by score and FPS? If someone has an account there they should try to run a filter and then we can see the truth. I'm just guessing that the list will be dominated by Call of Duty and Halo. It would be nice to have a spreadsheet to confirm.

[Flavius]

Sheeeeeeeeiiiit, son...the manger's I've designed have all been rated 85 and above.

Baby Jesus is one of my references, even!

[GhaleonQ]

Do they require the film to have a Rotten Tomatoes score of 85 or higher?

I don't see what's wrong with that, especially since Gamerankings/Metacritic are likely a tighter indicator of future sales than Metacritic for music or movies.

Should Jan Balej hire animators with blockbuster experience to make a feature-length The Little Fish Girl? No, because he has grants and a focus on creating art. Should Pixar? Sure. They push product that needs to meet financial expectations.

Nirolak, as you yourself pointed out, it's likely that the score is not meant to validate how good the game was. Taken in context, it's likely code for, "has managed the sort of blockbuster title that receives high review scores all of the time."

That said, those hiring practices are an unfortunate comment on an artform I really adore. I wish they wouldn't.

[benny_a]

There's a correlation between Metacritic scores and sales in a general sense, but to me, it'd only make sense to evaluate an entire studio purchase on the number, since what one individual does on the team might be totally disconnected from the end score of the product.

Yeah. No example brings this point better home than one of the lead designers of Uncharted 3 and now currently working on The Last of Us.

Jackob Minkoff's previous work before Naughty Dog was being the lead designer on Damnation which currently stands at 36 on Metacritic.

And he is responsible for my favorite levels in Uncharted 2 and some very good parts of Uncharted 3.

I'm only citing him because he is a person that has detailed what exactly he has done via his portfolio, there are probably countless of other examples of people that used to work on bad projects that weren't bad due to them being bad at their job, but due to other factors out of their control.
I think studios with well received games are full of people that worked on bad games before that.

[AkuMifune]

Seems pretty irrational to me.

[DocSeuss]

1.) Do you think it's a good idea to hire with a metacritic requirement?

No, because it helps create an insular community and makes it harder for people without such high metascores to break in. Besides, metacritic isn't entirely reliable, and scores are often skewed towards graphics as opposed to, say, gameplay, which is why AAA games tend to score better than other, equally good games. So if I had worked on Tropico 4, which is a brilliant game, and applied for work at Irrational, they might not want me.

Part of Tropico 4's low score stems from the fact that when you play it, it seems identical to Tropico 3, but if you go back to Tropico 3, you see just how drastically different it really is. Tropico 4 is like the Age of Empires II of Caribbean dictator simulators. The people who worked on that were awesome. Should a metascore affect their reception? No!

Then you've got AAA games. Fallout: New Vegas, for instance, is simultaneously better and worse than Fallout 3. While it gets the RPG stuff a lot better, it completely fails to pick up on the fact that Bethesda's games are all immersive sims in nature, so it's got this dead, dry world with predictable enemy spawns and excessive amounts of flatness (and anyone who says that the "real place" is flat can fuck right off--fire-breathing, giant ants aren't real critters). The game was simply boring to traverse and explore, despite having more interesting characters and quests. So it got an 84.

New Vegas, in other words, had a massive success and a massive failing. A game developer should want to hire the person who worked on the good parts of game, but not the bad parts.

Oh, and then you've got bugs and things that are the result of bad engines and a lack of good QC. Those can negatively impact an otherwise great game.

2.) So, their multiplayer component is sounding larger than originally expected (or it's very large in their next title). Any thoughts on what it is?

None. I don't really care for multiplayer unless they're making SWAT V. I mean, if they show something inventive and unique and interesting, I'm all for it, but of what we've had in the past, I'm not all that interested.

Jackob Minkoff's previous work before Naughty Dog was being the lead designer on Damnation which currently stands at 36 on Metacritic.

This goes to show how great visuals can overwhelm people and convince them that terrible games are a lot better than they really are. Naughty Dog is so bad from a gameplay perspective, but it's offset by witty banter and great visuals, so nobody really cares. That's how a lot of bad games get away with great metascores.

[NBtoaster]

If only every publication gave the same scores for the same reasons.

Example:

http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-...ly-premonition

[Nirolak]

I don't see what's wrong with that, especially since Gamerankings/Metacritic are likely a tighter indicator of future sales than Metacritic for music or movies. Should Jan Balej hire animators with blockbuster experience to make a feature-length The Little Fish Girl? No, because he has grants and a focus on creating art. Should Pixar? Sure. They push product that needs to meet financial expectations. Nirolak, as you yourself pointed out, it's likely that the score is not meant to validate how good the game was. Taken in context, it's likely code for, "has managed the sort of blockbuster title that receives high review scores all of the time." That said, those hiring practices are an unfortunate comment on an artform I really adore. I wish they wouldn't.

Do you feel people at ILM who work on Avatar or Transformers are incapable of making good animation though?

Because both of those are below 85 on the Rotten Tomatoes score.

I can understand wanting like AAA experience since that's different than an art game, but a Metacritic score seems to miss what the person actually does.

[benny_a]

This goes to show how great visuals can overwhelm people and convince them that terrible games are a lot better than they really are. Naughty Dog is so bad from a gameplay perspective, but it's offset by witty banter and great visuals, so nobody really cares. That's how a lot of bad games get away with great metascores.

... and great user scores.

What is usually brought up to a counter argument to Metacritic is how much in line critics are with the game buying public.
In film the known critics are informing the public about good movies, in video games the critics are aping the consumer.

[remnant]

Do they require the film to have a Rotten Tomatoes score of 85 or higher?

In animation circles feature film experience is the best footage you can have in your reel. It's essentially having an 85% metacritic score.

Edit: and this is assuming this is a hard requirement. Like in most instances these requirements are meant to discourage people from applying.

[inky]

Although having it as a requirement sounds absolutely stupid in theory, I'm hopoing the people hiring are not dumb enough to turn a good potential prospect down just because it doesn't fit that specific criteria. I'm pretty sure that if they think they found the right person, that fits the company and what they expect from him/her, that "requirement" will be brushed off during the interview process. I remember Ken Levine talking in one of his podcasts about playing one of the transformers games and being absolutely amazed at the transformation process of the character models that they just looked for the dude responsible and hired him due to that. I would bet the last thing on his mind was the metacritic rating of the games he's worked on. These are smart guys; that just seems like dumb company policy that can be overlooked by people with enough common sense.

That said, Metacritic is dumb and I wish it would just go away.

[Xav]

Great, the game got delayed so they could join the crowd and do a multi-player component that I probably won't even touch. Do developers really think that we have time to grind through all these multi-player games.
Everyone will continue to play Call of Duty & Halo and whatever is left goes to stuff like Gears of War. Come on Ken did you not see how Bioshock 2 multi-player turned out? Just stick to what you do best.

[CambriaRising]

So fucking stupid.

[Arkam]

I think its pretty lame to have a metacritic based requirement as many great people work on games that are not well received despite being good. Hell a lot of those even sell really well!

That said, like all job posts, those details are for their IDEAL candidate. That does not mean they will not gladly take much less. I know I have gotten jobs in the industry that I totally didn't meet their posted "requirements". If you are a good candidate and know your stuff they will want you.

[Femmeworth]

A Metacritic requirement? Oh for fuck's sake.

[AlphaTwo00]

How is this new or interesting? IIRC last year Visceral Games asking for 90+ metacritic for average of 3 shipped titles.

Metacritic enables everyone to do stupid things, and I know I've had my chances reduced greatly with the opening question: "what's your metacritic score" even if I wasn't senior enough (or on the project long enough) to affect anything on a project.

[Cameron122]

My eyes saw "Irrational" and "XP" and I thought Freedom Force.

My dreams shouldn't be so...Irrational. Hyuk hyuk hyuk.

[DTKT]

At the same time, an HR might have written the posting. I'm sure that to someone outside the industry, metacritic must seems like a great way to size up a potential employee.

[Somnid]

Sounds like a red flag to me.

[ShowDog]

I haven't made a job posting based thread in a while, but when I saw GAF's favorite topics combined into one I thought people would want to have a discussion. Source: http://jobs.gamasutra.com/jobseekerx...&accountno=362 So, now for the questions: 1.) Do you think it's a good idea to hire with a metacritic requirement? 2.) So, their multiplayer component is sounding larger than originally expected (or it's very large in their next title). Any thoughts on what it is?

No doubt they already have someone in mind and this is just another way to easily eliminate additional applicants.

[Alucrid]

they should have a "liked by neogaf" requirement

it would still end up being more useful than metacritic.

[cityhunter]

I find that it's very short-sighted move that totally devalues a person's worth and talent. Similar to the boom, that still exist, that you must have at least 2 or more "AAA" titles shipped. That's just for an artist position. I think I've even seen some entry level positions that had that too at one point. It's just further blocking new talents and making the industry more closed off.

Sometimes you have to start somewhere to achieve greatness. Gaining experience is what makes a person grow. It's hard to do when you don't have a team to support you or telling you that you're doing it wrong, especially with this industry where techniques are closely guarded secrets because it's very competitive.

[element]

They are having to replace Design Manager Jeff McGann, who was the Creative Director at RedStorm, but recently jumped ship to join Sucker Punch. Looking at Facebook and Linkedin the design department has taken a hit the last month or so with Jeff, Ken Strickland (senior system designer/weapons) leaving, and Steven Gaynor a while before that.

I'm hoping the game turns out well, since I have lots of friends there still.

The Metacritic stuff is insane IMO.

[Hobbestetrician]

Yeah, I would never hire someone who worked on Fallout: New Vegas...

(ignoring the multiplayer requirement)

[speedpop]

I miss the days of multiplayer games being created by young and adventurous sorts who wanted to take the field a bit further beyond.

[Takao]

How is this new or interesting? IIRC last year Visceral Games asking for 90+ metacritic for average of 3 shipped titles. Metacritic enables everyone to do stupid things, and I know I've had my chances reduced greatly with the opening question: "what's your metacritic score" even if I wasn't senior enough (or on the project long enough) to affect anything on a project.

Does Visceral even meet that requirement? lol

[HP_Wuvcraft]

New Freedom Force of course.

Don't give me boners.

REQUIREMENTS • Credit on at least one game with an 85+ Average Meta Critic Review Score.

There are no words.

[Margalis]

As a plus whatever, as a requirement obviously very silly.

[Visualante2]

Merged HR and PR into one.

they should have a "liked by neogaf" requirement it would still end up being more useful than metacritic.

Only for community manager jobs...

[herod]

Most of my favourite games have scores below 85 on metacritic.