Many games justify you knowing the Art Director’s name as much as the lead designer’s or producer’s, but you basically never see that. A mere UI artist can make a fine game transcendent and never receive the credit. Since video games are both complex and creative, it’s basically impossible to say where the vision and/or the execution comes from. You can declare that the creative director or executive producer or sometimes the lead designer is responsible for however the game turns out, because if nothing else it was their duty to find and nurture the talent that makes the game great. But sometimes you should know the graphics programmer or the facial animator, but you likely won’t. It’s not a crime, but it’s kinda a shame.
Kojima is the biggest outlier at this point, and he makes sure to put his name on everything (the studio, the box cover). Same goes for Sid Meier, minus the studio name.
The rest of those developers have a primarily old-school following because they come from a nascent industry characterized as a small pond with not too many fish in it.
Nowadays games are mostly referred to as “Blizzard games”, “Bioware games”, “Ubisoft games”, “Rockstar games”, “Telltale games”.
As with the quote from Bartle, I was thinking more about lead developers. Although individual (non-lead) writers seem to carry more individual importance than those belonging to other fields, and there are typically fewer of them.
I try to take note of more people when it comes to my all-time favorite games.
Sid Meier’s name is more of a brand than an actual statement of his involvement at this point.
I know who Christopher Tin is because of his work on Civ IV. I cared enough about the music in the game to find out. I’ve not really done the reverse though, spent hours hunting down an individual to blame for something I especially disliked about a game, which is what started this entire conversation.
I know about Smeadley after years and years of him being verbal, and even then his involvement isn’t so much as an auto no so much as auto skepticism of any promises made… and I still don’t know where he lives or whether or not anyone thinks he is or is not qualified for xyz reason. I just know how some of the games he’s been involved with has been received.
I mean I think you want to gloss over what happened to this woman working at Bioware, and it’s not about recognition.
That information is usually available in the credits, for UI design and face animation enthusiasts. But I’d opine that the goal of the UI designer or facial animator should be to not be noticed, anymore than the aforementioned face airbrushing in a movie should be noticed.
If I’m focusing on facial animation or UI design then I’m not focusing on the game’s mechanics, which, I’d argue, is where the focus should properly be.
Nitpick! In that section the xenos were blind. (Aliens: Colonic Marina was a joke gift from a friend so we could all play it co-op. Honest! I can confirm that it was shit. The whole experience was summed up by a moment where we discovered a facehugger sat on a shelf just wagging its tail. Faces were not being hugged. It had one job.)
No but EA management may be responsible for this being released in less than ideal condition. As far as the name on the front cover I was thinking more American McGee than Sid Meier.
First of all why limit it to animations? There are plenty of AAA games in history that launched with egregious bugs. Bethesda games often launch with massive issues. AssCreed launched with no faces in cutscenes. Battlefield 4 was outright broken. I am not saying it is the way it should happen but we should not pretend that this is something new.
It is interesting that you want to exclude Bioware when referring to animations. I am assuming that is because you believe Bioware animations have always been sub par. Would that not point to a problem with the way the studio prioritizes that aspect of the project? Or an issue with the tech the studio uses? Or some other factor beyond than being the fault of any single person?
MEA smacks of a release that had to get out to meet financial reporting considerations. If you want to blame a particular person for that then you are going to have to look higher than a developer for someone to blame.
I think the common thing between Sid Meiers and Hideo Kojimas isn’t that they are good game designers: they are smart people who detect talents in others and know how to gather such people around them, and that’s a genius on its own. On that respect, the person building some bad animations in a game shouldn’t be the one to blame: it should be the one who appointed them to this position, and let them do a bad work (Edit: if even).
I make a distinction depending on team size, once a team reaches a certain size, most every AAA game, personal influence gets diluted down to a level that I have no idea who to assign blame / praise, I’ll just assign it to the collective.
Small teams, passion projects, stuff where someone got in front of the bull and proudly announced “I made this”, yeah, individual people will get credit / demerit.
It’s different in movies I think, smaller focus, there might be the population of a medium sized country working in the latest Marvel film, but the finished product is usually going to come out at 3 hours max, a single person can come to grips with that, oversee it, put their mark on it.
Just a thought experiment, but lets try and map some of the big name ‘everyone knows them’ developers to directors. This could be fun ;)
Stephen Spielberg → Shigero Miyamoto
Christopher Nolan → Sid Meier
Martin Scorcese → Warren Spector
Michael Bay → Cliff Blyzinski
J.J. Adams → Hideo Kojima (I also floated half a dozen people here)
Peter Jackson → John Carmack
M. Knight Shyamalan → Peter Molyneux
Tim Burton → Tim Schafer
Ridley Scott → Ken Levine (Bioshock: Alien as Bioshock Infinite: Prometheus)
Sofia Copola → Roberta Williams
James Cameron → Chris Roberts
Quentin Tarantino → John Romero (this is kind to Romero, but at a time…)
Can someone who is more film steeped than I give me a good comp for Tarn Adams? Super important, but underground, work? How about Gabe Newell or Will Wright?Is there any comp for Notch (brilliant debut that changed the entire medium, self immolates after?)
I tried keeping it to project leads/ developers that the average ‘serious’ gamer (i.e. us) would recognize. Same with directors. Basically would ~50% of the people who track awards shows recognize the name. Give it a try, it’s kinda fun!
Which is all to say that there are certainly some names that pull the same level of recognition in the industry. Just like many movies today even someone who tracks films closely would have a hard time naming the director (quick, who directed Guardians of the Galaxy), so too with games. There are a handful of directors/ designers who get enough clout that their name is at least familiar. Sure on an absolute level the directors are more known, but percentages it’s probably closer than you think*.
*for certain things. I wager you’d have a hard time naming the producer for any of the Assassin’s Creed games, while would probably have an easier time naming the director for, say, any of the Marvel films.
James Gunn. That’s easy. If you’re familiar with his work in Slither or Super, Guardians is a very James Gunn work.
Michael Rooker is one of his go-to actors.
And I would bet less than 10% of moviegoers know that off hand. Now we do, but we are far from average there. Perhaps something less noticeably stylistically tied to the director would have been better, and something more annual. How about the fifth Harry Potter movie?
The point wasn’t about a specific movie, but rather that certain studio film series on tight schedules tend to be harder to identify with a singular directorial vision. I may have just chosen a poor example.
David Yates, man. He’s the go-to guy for J.K. Rowling stuff.
Look, I get your point, but asking nerds if they know the director of nerd movies may not be the best path.
But these same nerds are also going to be able to name off the designers of various game series. I bet more than a few people here could name off the lead designers of Planescape Torment without thinking. But for 90% of the people who played it? Probably not.
Also I never would have been able to name off David Yates, and it’s my wife’s favorite series :D
You’ve got some top-tier Internet rage potential there :)
I’ll admit, that was more than a bit intentional. It was both an intended compliment and insult, depending on if you are looking at legacies or current output.
Okay, so who is the Werner Herzog of video games?
You tell me :D
Planescape Torment is an interesting example because many RPG fans know Chris Avellone, Feargus Urquhart, and Black Isle, but how many of those fans know the other people in the credits? Heck, who was the voice actor for Morte? Just about everyone that’s ever played the game comes away from the experience with a strong opinion on Morte, but to date I don’t know anyone that has taken an interest in the actor. (It was Rob Paulsen, by the way.)
I’ll never forget that Mitch ‘Skinner’ Pileggi voiced Dak’kon and Sheena Easton Annah.
Who’s the Orson Wells of videogames? I’ll get my coat.