Because people are idiots when it comes to video games. People still keep buying $60 games at launch despite obvious issues, so there's not really incentive to change anything. They can just lie and dissemble until they've made as much as they can before switching to being honest.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Former BioWare Emloyee Review of company sheds distuburing light on MEA's development
- Thread starter MasterMenace
- Start date
Because people are idiots when it comes to video games. People still keep buying $60 games at launch despite obvious issues, so there's not really incentive to change anything. They can just lie and dissemble until they've made as much as they can before switching to being honest.
Tension & mood just ....gone! Scene looks flat void of emotion. WTF BioWare.
Wishmaster92
Member
Yeah that's a pretty massive downgrade.
InquisitorAles
Member
Well, this is probably one of the most blatant downgrade i've ever saw.DISCLAIMER: Things change during game development, marketing trailers are usually not representative of the final game, this comparison doesn't really mean anything:
AlexFlame116
Member
Oh no.....DISCLAIMER: Things change during game development, marketing trailers are usually not representative of the final game, this comparison doesn't really mean anything:
Do you guys not realize that the leaked footage is pre-rendered video not using the in-game engine? This is not some gameplay downgrade or the result of changing employees. It was never going to look like that in-game. Look at those effects... as someone else mentioned, volumetric smoke effects are a pretty big giveaway
Alter_Fridge
Member
Isn't this PR generally used in so far as 'don't worry about it being a bit rough, it's gonna look much better when it's finished' not 'please don't think this is too awesome, because we're probably gonna downgrade it by release'?
I wonder what ultimately constituted such a visual downgrade in the final product? I normally wouldn't even bat an eye at differences like this, but after DICE created Battlefront and BF1 using Frostbite 3; the visual devolution literally makes no sense. I wonder if the team had to downgrade the lighting tech and assets, not for performance reasons, but because they didn't have enough time to create the rest of the game at such a high quality bar? Thus, the team just decided to bring down the quality of the better scenes to conform with the quality of the scenes and scenarios they had to rush?
At first I was thinking^^
But then:
Hmmm. Both good points but which is true in this instance?
Leaning towards the second scenario atm considering dev cycle of this game.
Laevateinn
Member
This is all pretty interesting but have you considered that the real problem might be that SJWs forced EA to let women work on the animations?
/s
Taliban Stan
Member
I like that one of the big complaints is that they only get a 30-minute catered lunch.
That's not bro culture. That's being cliquish. Cliques exists across all demographics and aren't an inherently bro thing. It's also like every job, ever.
That's not bro culture. That's being cliquish. Cliques exists across all demographics and aren't an inherently bro thing. It's also like every job, ever.
Depends on what type of marketing or trailer we are talking about.
If it's finely edited trailer with minor scenes and constant cuts, it's probably going to be touched up for presentation purposes so we can expect the game to not look as good.
If it's a gameplay walkthrough with long sequences without any cuts, it's probably going to be a bit rough, so we can expect that it's only an initial build that *might* be improved later on.
If they would have given us a more linear game along the lines of the original trilogy they probably would have been able to hit that target, but nope, another fetch quest filled open world that increased the amount of "content" needed which caused an overall lower quality bar to be set.
If only.
At the moment it looks like nobody worked on the animations so they pulled the Janitor in for 5 minutes and had him take over.
Veritigo_X
Member
The problem is lunch gets cut from 1 hour to 30 minutes while working hours are drastically increased. Only getting a 30 minute break while working 12+ hour days aren't good working conditions.
Dreamwriter
Member
Oh no, instead of crunching they have their lunch hour cut to 30 minutes, and the food is free! For two whole months! What a catastrophe!
The guy doesn't say they worked 12+ hour days, he says they did the 30 minute lunch thing instead of crunching. 30 minute catered lunch instead of 60 minute bring-your-own-lunch isn't bad working conditions at all.
The Futurist
Member
Being in an abusive or generally negative work environment is terrible.
No doubt about that.
I think at this point I'm just tired of seeing these topics come up over and over on a forum where so many people are young and haven't entered the work force (in any sort of professional or at least post graduate capacity) and have no concept of the difficulty the average person can face at any job.
People crying about "crunch" is the most annoying aspect.
Yes, every 2-3 years (or longer) you have to suffer for a few months.
Give me a fucking break.
Game developers based on stories like these seem like the biggest whiners I've seen in any industry.
Go cry about a 30 minute lunch break when millions of people regularly eat lunch at their desks every single day. Or the people working in hospitals that are on 36-48 shifts where they can't go home. Or even the dude bros in finance that work 12-14 hours days for years.
This is the real world kids. Sorry if you assumed you were going to go out and have an amazing fun time at the office every single day.
If you're not happy, leave and find some place new.
No doubt about that.
I think at this point I'm just tired of seeing these topics come up over and over on a forum where so many people are young and haven't entered the work force (in any sort of professional or at least post graduate capacity) and have no concept of the difficulty the average person can face at any job.
People crying about "crunch" is the most annoying aspect.
Yes, every 2-3 years (or longer) you have to suffer for a few months.
Give me a fucking break.
Game developers based on stories like these seem like the biggest whiners I've seen in any industry.
Go cry about a 30 minute lunch break when millions of people regularly eat lunch at their desks every single day. Or the people working in hospitals that are on 36-48 shifts where they can't go home. Or even the dude bros in finance that work 12-14 hours days for years.
This is the real world kids. Sorry if you assumed you were going to go out and have an amazing fun time at the office every single day.
If you're not happy, leave and find some place new.
FlutterPuffs
Member
Boy, you really don't want to know the pressure crunch time is.
andythinkpad
Member
I don't think BioWare put any resource in facial animation at all. The cut scenes are fill with dead eyed mannequins. You don't need specific gif, just go to any youtube playthrough and you can see the wax museum.
Veritigo_X
Member
There's no "instead of crunching," they just renamed it because of the negative connotation it has in the software development industry. I don't know if you've ever worked in software, but 12 hour days are common during this time. Thankfully my employer respected us and gave us ample break time as well, but that doesn't sound like the case with Bioware.
Yeah this is kinda how I see it. People talking bout a half hour lunch as if its a catastrophe, hell my lunch is half an hour and its not even catered! How do I cope GAF?
FlutterPuffs
Member
I'm 32. I've been in production crunch (audio work, marketing)
It's not pretty. Working from 9 to 12 all week for 4, 5 months and only going home to do laundry. Watching relationships break down. Having mine break down. Wondering if it's ever worth it.
Yes, many have it rough but demeaning people for talking against it is ridiculous. You might as well sit in a rocking chair while at it and talk about how back in the day, people had to build their own house.
Hey guys - I can't say one way or another how much of this is true, but if you look hard enough on Glassdoor you can find reviews like this for ANY company, in gaming or elsewhere. There are Glassdoor reviews of my company, for example, that don't reflect my experiences at all. Please don't treat this as anything but what it is: a single disgruntled person's account.
That's not to say there isn't a bigger story here, of course...
That's not to say there isn't a bigger story here, of course...
FlutterPuffs
Member
Yeah i know. Have you heard anything regarding the production?
Diablohead
Member
Yeah I was trying to address the change in lighting. Everything just ends up looking flat:
Left side is what sold me on andromeda hype years ago, right side looks like sonic boom in comparison.
This is true to some extent, but your also held in much higher regard than a green employee which would absolutely make a difference in your treatment.
Agreed though, I wouldn't go making a story of this yet.
This this and one more time this. I read this topic and i think most of people writing here are students or younger. I am working already for 15 years in 3 different places and all this is pretty common almost everywhere. If you think this is bad then you are for a rough ride when you will start to look for work. One option remains, you can start your own business and be the one on opposite side of all this.
I work in IT and we have a lot of overtime working. Sometimes i even have to stay almost all night at work because something needs to be done till next working day because if some systems won't be up till that time it will affect a lot of people.
Get your logic out of here.
Seriously. If people are being abused at a workplace then one of the least useful things anyone can do is to give some "grow up you fucking babies" armchair bullshit. It serves absolutely zero purpose besides looking like an asshole.
Is work hard? Yeah, of course. Is it harder for some than for others? Absolutely.
Is it okay to speak out about possible abuse if it looks like abuse? It definitely is, and you shouldn't try to squash that stuff with condescending bullshit.
Veritigo_X
Member
Worker's rights are completely fucked in this country, as your posts lists examples of. "Leave and find some place new" isn't a solution to fixing this problem and only further ignores it. People should be complaining about long hours with little to no breaks because that isn't right. Handwaving that away because others have it worse isn't right either. If you have it worse than this former Bioware employee you should be complaining even louder.
joecanada
Member
I totally agree but I work in a unionized job... half hour paid lunch is still normal. Still doesn't make it perfect .... not 12 hour shifts though.
on the flip side though I hate long unpaid lunches just makes work day longer.
FlutterPuffs
Member
Yeah.
Take it this way.
After a while the people I worked with mostly branched off and created a whole new production company, and i worked with them for the past few years.
After crunch time, there will be people who quit. Do we chastise them for it?
No, we just acknowledge the work is not for everyone and try to have both sides parting in good terms.
John Kowalski
Banned
It's meant for all cases because target renders are just that, targets. No project goes smoothly or achieves all it sets out to be without something being changed midway, and that something might mean the project becoming better than it was predicted to be, or worse. And those kinds of things are beyond the predictive reach of even the best project manager in the whole world.
VincentMatts
Member
Yeah that post was a real joke. Thats a terrible atmosphere to work in. Ive also worked in a montreal gaming studio and thats exactly how it was. Its the reason i left the video games industry permanently which is also my passion. You get garbage salaries, little to no benefits, your constantly working overtime and then when the project ends, 1/3rd of the studio gets let go. Its a damn joke industry and its why you see this caliber of games coming out of that city. If people arent happy going into work, youre not going to get the best out of your employees. But no one cares, so i left.
Alter_Fridge
Member
Since when does a major project in someone's life (College, Work, The Biggest Loser etc..) not inherently include a crunch period?
Isn't that just life?
Isn't that just life?
They were still hated back then.
A lot of EA stuff is only looked back on fondly in retrospect.
Was about to post that. If anything, this thread makes me glad I don't work in the US.reading some stuff in here it sounds like a clash between european worker rights and US worker rights..how anyone can find this acceptable is beyond me.
I was thinking exactly the same while reading some comments lol seriously...
half hour lunch here, 7-3:30 days, sometimes I have to pull 12 hr days and not have time but to eat as I work. That's life.
No idea how much (or little) this affected development but that working environment sure sounds horrible. Classic old school US fear driven environment. Terrible. And if these allegations are true it surely had to have had some impact on the game itself.
Shameful employment practices.
Shameful employment practices.
IMO crunch happens a lot in some industries, but it's a symptom of poor planning or unrealistic expectations, and shouldn't be considered normal. In software at least, it happens because no project ever goes perfectly according to plan, so a week or two of crunch for the departments that usually get pressed the hardest by deadlines (usually dev and QA) is fairly common. But it's never welcome, and planners should be working on ways to minimize it next time around. Some departments are also much more removed from deadlines, and those typically don't experience crunch. I work in documentation and I rarely work overtime at all.
The problem is when people try to turn crunch time into the new norm. Software places might get a few weeks of everyone working crunch hours, but there are a lot of stories of game dev studios trying to make crunch a normal thing, with crunch hours starting very early in development and/or lasting months or years, which is INSANE. In this case, the guy's post said that Bioware was trying to rename crunch to something else, which is probably another attempt at normalizing something that is supposed to be a short symptom of poor planning and not something that any employee signs up to do all the time.
In software (not game dev),I once knew a guy in QA who had to cancel his Christmas vacation plans (I think he had a trip planned and everything) to work crazy hours because of some ridiculously unrealistic deadlines given way in advance by the higher-ups. So that sucked. Even worse was when those deadlines were then pushed back because things just weren't ready, so with the slightly more relaxed schedule, the guy is free to at least stop crunching for the time being, right?
Nope. Some higher-up actually suggested that the guy work crunch time through Christmas anyway, for no reason other than to "maintain momentum." What the fuck is that bullshit?
Some higher-ups at that company had a tendency to plan overly aggressive deadlines and/or dump stupid amounts of work out of their ass on employees right before vacation times. One guy had a pattern of literally sending random ass emails on Fridays from their fucking cottage that instantly made people have to drop/throw out everything they were working on, cancel vacation plans that had been planned for months in advance, and work ridiculous hours over holidays.
That's not a normal part of life. That's people being shitty.
the only time when you get fucked is when you accept a salary position in the US. Work hourly and things change. They sure as hell don't want to pay you OT, get the fuck home. Salary? Tough shit, work until your hands bleed.