Should games reviews acknowledge poor studio conditions?

This kind of thing is absolutely the case but those two are the same thing. In many ways people will accept the options you give them and roll with them even if they are very perilous and putting all the risk on you as the worker. Especially entry level people get chewed up that way. That's why the whole system needs to change and it requires more work than an easy solution. It will require organization.

I think it's good when critics show awareness about the conditions in which a game is made but I also understand if they feel like a review isn't the best place to address that stuff.

Either way, the attitudes of Cory Barlog and Neil Druckmann are bizarre. If they really wanted to get Jason Schreier off their ass, they'd spend less time arguing with him on Twitter and more time making sure the lives of the people who make their games aren't completely consumed by work.

That's not how project management works, though, especially in gaming. You're balancing budget, time and resources. If you have a deadline and a budget it's gonna be more productive to ramp up more people than to work your smaller team to the bone daily. It simply is, you can measure it objectively.

The only event where you would get a benefit running crunch end to end for a videogame is gonna be if you are jumping into a thing on short notice (so no time to hire and train) and you absolutely have to end it on short notice (so no room for delays) and somehow you have money to spare, assuming you are paying overtime (which I'm assuming because I'm not an asshole).

... at which point I'd suggest you should not be attempting that project because you're clearly not equipped to complete it.

I'm not saying people don't do this. They do. This happens. Some people get it in their heads that it shows commitment or that they'll get away with it, or that despite all evidence this is actually productive or gives them an edge on the competition. Those people are bad at their jobs, though. And there is bad management in great creative studios, you can be sure of it. Again, those two things are not related in either direction.

Holy shit I thought you were being hyperbolic about the COD splash screen. There is no faster, lazier way to exasperate people with your cause than to add this alongside a SpeedTree splash screen. I'd wager that more people have learned to edit ini files on pc to take down splash screens than all other reasons combined.

@conmulligan: Jason seems to be a thorn in the palm of at lot of studio heads. He is one of the few real, proper journalist in video games and gives no fucks about access. But a few super online studio heads think that if they talk to Jason enough on twitter, something with change. I can’t tell if have a bad read on Jason or if they are just trying to hype up their own fans.

On the topic, game reviews should alway point out the conditions the game was made and link to articles detailing the conditions. Because we are on the internet and putting hyper links into text is easy.

@plan6: It's possible they really were offended by his coverage so much so that they can't even hide it. They sometimes let it boil over and respond to him on twitter, calling him things like "mean" for example. Another word one of them wrote in all caps was part of some phrase similar to "write the WHOLE story." Seems they think he was unfair, and it's caused at least some of them to show their disapproval.

@nathhaw: I do love it when people scream at journalist to write stories that favor them. “You left out of the part of the story that I feel justifies my actions and paints me in a good light.”

Journalists wrote stories about my clients and our firm a whole bunch of times during the decade I worked in law. At no point did we yell at the journalist about what to write, even if we felt the articles were unfair. Or even think it was a good idea, or that it wouldn’t make us look like petulant babies. Yet video games are a magical place where tweeting at the journalist about mean coverage is a great idea....

@drbroel said:

an artist at naughty tweeted this to some of the backlash already brewing over this

She has nothing to discuss with her therapist about her working conditions or what other people have gone through there, but some people reacting badly to it online is a crisis? People like her are part of the problem, I don't see why she expects anyone to come to her defence. Maybe stop being so self-absorbed that you think its ok to be proud of something that broke many of your fellow workers, or excluded others from even participating. She or at least the workers chiming in to agree with her are anti-union.

I can't really suss out what most people are arguing for, do people want a game made with less than ideal (crunch, etc) conditions to *detract from the actual review score of a game*?

If so, aren't you also implicitly saying a lack of such negative conditions should add to the score of a game made in ideal, blue sky conditions? Would this also be giving a pass to studios where there is a lack of journalistic effort to uncover such conditions at said "ideal studios" or, alternatively, reward a culture of silence at a studio where such things aren't uncovered? As time moves on, isn't it likely the relationship between games journalism and dev becomes one of an auditor and auditee, and shouldn't we wonder if this is a common skill amongst games press?

Just curious where this train is headed for, and if you'll like the destination or not.

@curiosus said:

@drbroel said:

an artist at naughty tweeted this to some of the backlash already brewing over this

She has nothing to discuss with her therapist about her working conditions or what other people have gone through there, but some people reacting badly to it online is a crisis? People like her are part of the problem, I don't see why she expects anyone to come to her defence. Maybe stop being so self-absorbed that you think its ok to be proud of something that broke many of your fellow workers, or excluded others from even participating. She or at least the workers chiming in to agree with her are anti-union.

Seeing some comments here attacking her. I do not think it's appropriate to attack the employees of studios with crunch because they want their work to be appreciated. She certainly has a better understanding of what would be good for her and her fellow ("broken"?) employees than outsiders do. If there's no empathy for them, then what are we even trying to accomplish?

@grayfox666:

If people want to be shitty and irresponsible with their spending thats on them, they are going to hear about it constantly though, being a shitty consumer has wider consequences to society.

The more I think about it, the more I land on the "no" side of the column. The issue of crunch and working conditions is obviously an important one, but it's also important enough that it sort of feels like it should be the focus of its own article. Trying to do both at the same time tends to dilute both the review and the discussion of working conditions. Either the focus on crunch takes over and the piece becomes more about reviewing the company than the game, or the review of the game takes precedence and the working conditions stuff gets lost in a discussion of gameplay elements.

I'm not saying that it's theoretically impossible to do, mind you. But it's a pretty fine line to walk to make sure both parts get their due without one overwhelming the other. I can probably count on one hand the number of industry writers I think are good enough to blend a review with social commentary, and I wouldn't say I've found them successful 100% of the time when they've tried in the past. The vast majority of people writing the reviews simply don't have the writing chops to actually pull it off.

@curiosus:

Crunch is bad.

Insulting the victims of Crunch because they are proud of their work is bad, TOO.

Stop insulting low-level workers who are proud of the thing they made.

Defending anti-union sentiment and self-harming working practices is terrible and unjustifiable. Stop doing it you are encouraging harmful working practices.

Getting caught up in respecting people's opinions more than their health and well-being is never going to work out well.

Now that this tread has devolved into: "if you buy The Last Of US: Part 2, you are a shitty person"

I want to say. To anyone who has a conscience. Don't support Activision and Blizzard. Don't buy their games. Don't use their services.

Their implicit support of the brutal invasion of Hong Kong is fucking evil. More lives will be lost and destroyed from this than from an 85-hour workweek.

If you want to boycott both ND and Activision, fine. But if you are only going to boycott one, please don't support Activision/Blizzard.

@curiosus: I second this. People can be proud of their work. But if there were some questionable business practices lead to the production of that work, that is part of the discussion about the work.

It doesn’t help that the artist above doesn’t provide many details. If people are going after workers directly, that no good. Going after the heads of the studio or management, that is different.

Blizzard/Activision are a terrible company who engage in crunch, terrible consumer practices and suck up to China. Everything should be mentioned when their games are discussed. But thats a bit of a stretch to claim their awful handling of Hong Kong protests is doing more harm directly than having their own workers damage their health from overwork.

Its not just management or leadership at naughty dog perpetuating this toxic culture though. As Jason Schrier mentioned in his article, they go out of their way to hire people that don't question the culture, or will come to its defence. Thats how these companies survive and ruin lives in the process when someone can no longer cope. If someone speaks up to defend their own poor treatment and the poor treatment of people who spoke out after losing their job or quiting then they absolutely should be told its not ok. Being a worker or a willing victim doesn't put you beyond criticism. Management is counting on those voices to muddy the waters and provide cover for their bad practice.

That said there will always be gamergaters around looking to be vile whenever a controversy gives them an opening to distract people and cause mayhem.

Yeah? One is supporting judicial extradition to china where dissidents are disappeared for years, and if they are lucky, reappear years later with an apology and a peculiar gait. The other is something I deal with every day working in IT for 15 years, and has never once occurred to me to support.

But sure, you should probably keep assuming you know how to organize entire societies of people, dismissing any who feel differently than you as not knowing what's best for them.

@north6 said:

Its not a binary choice between what causes we fight. If you tolerate working conditions harmful to your health thats on you and your choice of employer, don't try to justify it as 'fine' or 'normal' though.

Feelings don't trump medical science, would you run a pandemic response on feelings instead of science? That doesn't seem to be working out so well.

@curiosus: Agreed that it isn't a binary choice. Strongly disagree with your comments about working conditions and my health, as I almost certainly wouldn't have ever gotten a chance to work my way up due to how ungodly difficult it is to dislodge garbage union workers at their job. You see this every day play out on a public stage with police unions, which I believe just about everyone is in favor of disbanding.

Agreed that feelings don't trump medical science.

Anyway, not going to get anywhere arguing for or against unions. I thought you were trying to say American companies response to HK is somehow less than, which doesn't seem to be the case. Later, my mistake.

I think we may be overestimating the number of consumers who are actually aware that there is such a thing as in-depth reporting on things like working conditions in the video game industry, because we're all here on a relatively niche website, even in the scope of video game websites. As such, we're by default some of the most aware gaming consumers. Realistically, most consumers who want to know if a game they're considering is good will google "[game name] review" and read one or two of them to help make a purchasing decision, or maybe go to Metacritic, or maybe even just read some user reviews on the retailer of their choice, if it's post-release. Most are likely not then seeking out lengthy exposes on the working conditions of the developer that has made their new game of choice.

If the only change that will make a difference to the publishers/developers is by an impact to their bottom line, but the average consumer isn't aware of reasons why there is some ethical gray area when buying the product, then no difference will ever be made. As such, I think that if there are known ethical issues related to the development of a game, a reviewer should mention those in some capacity, possibly linking to more in-depth reporting on the specific subject if that has been published.

Its the job of unions to protect their workers, maybe try joining one instead of competing with them? Its certainly the main draw back of the union system that they protect their worst members, but ultimately thats better than allowing management free reign. A stronger social system that offers retraining for people who need to be moved would help, I don't like seeing unions protecting coal jobs either but unless government steps in to help them transition to new jobs the union has little choice but to defend their members.

Police unions are special case because they protect workers who have a monopoly on state protected violence. They are a bad point of reference for any discussion about unions.

And unions might end up prolonging the job of a bad worker, but they also protect the good workers from management who just wants to get rid of them because they make to much. I had a manager and director who were both gunning for me at my last firm and the only thing that kept me employed was the two attorneys who always went to bat for me. So from that view, unions sound super rad.

Aren't these issues sort of out of the scope of an individual's reviews? In theory, a review is supposed to cover one's own experience with a product and what they got out of playing it. There's nothing in the actual product that is likely to tell you what its development was like, so any such critique is likely to be based solely on research done by someone other than the reviewer and will be entirely dependent on some sort of expose coming out before the deadline. What if the review has already gone up before reporting materializes, do you retract the original review and say "I guess this isn't a 10/10 after all." Additionally, most of these articles are filled with nuance with some workers more happy than others. I doubt there's a workplace in the world that doesn't have someone who's disgruntled and dissatisfied, so what is the standard for which working conditions deserve scorn and which ones don't?

@mellotronrules: I think you nailed down what i believe, thanks. I feel like my brain passed a big hairy clog.

I don't think it is a stretch at all. Crunch is shitty. The invasion of Honk Kong is EVIL. Don't conflate the two.

To answer your question no. People look at scores and don't read the whole reviews, people also don't care where their food comes from they just want the food.

Yes, of course! It's part of how the game was made.

I think that's just management trying to spin crunch into something that people do out of the goodness of their heart. Nobody likes crunch. Trust me, I've been working in VFX for almost 10 years and there's no portion of the workforce which is happy to surrender their evenings and weekends.

I don't think that's been the general message of the discussion at all, and I think using the word "devolved" implies that the quality of the discussion has gone down, which I also think is false. People are raising relevant concerns and there's been a wide range of responses; Some people believe that reviews and purchases should be objectively made on the final product, some people (including myself) will buy the product but believe there should be acknowledgement of the conditions which led to its release, and some people are willing to "vote with their dollars" and don't want to support that kind of business model, or at the very least don't want to support the way these developers have responded to it.

@drbroel said:

@curiosus said:

@drbroel said:

an artist at naughty tweeted this to some of the backlash already brewing over this

She has nothing to discuss with her therapist about her working conditions or what other people have gone through there, but some people reacting badly to it online is a crisis? People like her are part of the problem, I don't see why she expects anyone to come to her defence. Maybe stop being so self-absorbed that you think its ok to be proud of something that broke many of your fellow workers, or excluded others from even participating. She or at least the workers chiming in to agree with her are anti-union.

Seeing some comments here attacking her. I do not think it's appropriate to attack the employees of studios with crunch because they want their work to be appreciated. She certainly has a better understanding of what would be good for her and her fellow ("broken"?) employees than outsiders do. If there's no empathy for them, then what are we even trying to accomplish?

I don't think anyone here is attacking her at all. I think people are rightly frustrated that the artist in question seems more concerned that her work isn't going to receive the critical attention that it would get if the game was being reviewed in a vacuum, than the fact that many of her co-workers and peers are suffering from a culture of crunch, bullying, and over-work.

If you're going to represent Naughty Dog and take a stance on their policies on social media then you invite these criticisms. I know Beavs is a great artist, I've seen some of her work, but she's perpetuating a negative industry standard and I think it's appropriate she should be called out on that. Nobody here is "attacking" her on a personal level, saying her work is bad or calling her names (which I believe is what she's alluding to in her tweet).

Everybody is different. For me, it's not a question of being happy about crunch or not. It's about waking up in the middle of the night with the answer to some shit that has been plaguing you, and logging in remotely to fix that shit. It's about building something for a junior tech while they watch over your shoulder, or being that junior tech and volunteering to stay late to learn from someone. It's working late with a small group of people who are passionate about something and take some *serious* gratification from seeing it come together, knowing how much their contribution mattered.

It's about realizing you have a limited amount of time to learn on this earth and at a certain point, you sacrifice your future for your present, or you sacrifice your present for your future. Whether your boss tells you that you have to work or not is irrelevant. If you have a lot of people who think this way, then yeah, I guess you have a "culture of crunch."

I think that's a apologist way of justifying an unhealthy amount of overwork. As the article states, the company will never tellartists to work late, they do it out of fear, and competitiveness, and pressure, and bullying, and in some cases out of genuine enthusiasm and joy in the work sure, but as you yourself say "everyone is different" and I think the people who wake up in the middle of the night super jazzed that they've solved a solution to a work problem are in the minority. I think it's unreasonable of those studio managers, or anyone else, to assume otherwise.

EDIT: I'd also add that many people working crunch don't get paid overtime, and in an ideal world their employers would have a higher regard for the health of their employees and send them home on time. But I know those are pipe dreams.

Personally, no. I don't care about the conditions of their job that they chose and choose to stay in.
I just want to know how the game is when reading or watching a game review.
If I'm interested in the company's practices ill look out for that seperate article or video.

It's not that uncommon for reviews of other types of media to acknowledge behind the scenes so I don't see why video games should be the exception.

@sweep said:

Yes.

It's interesting that you're coming at this problem with the default view of there having to be a score at the end.

Ideally (for me, anyway) all reviews would be unscored, requiring people to at least read them instead of immediately scrolling down to a meaningless number or star rating. People would have to put in a bit of work to understand a writer's position.

Of course, this is impossible, because obviously there will never not be unscored reviews (Metacritic, a fine CBS property, has seen to that). But some outlets do try, such as Eurogamer, Polygon, Kotaku, Ars Technica, Verge, etc.

Sure, if the reviewer still is capable of judging the game without prejudice I dont see why not. But a review of a game is not the review of these peoples working conditions. Its a review of the product they brought out.

Most of the best works of art in history have been made with suffering, and they are considered amazing works of art precisely because the artist went so much further above and beyond what others would do...but that always comes at a cost. If it wouldnt everyone would be doing it and it would be special.

If you wanna lose your life to work on such an insane piece of art as the last of us thats your choice, if you dont, go work on indy games or something of a smaller more reasonable scale.

And I have known people who are most comfortable working like 12-18 hours a day or else they go crazy. Are those people not allowed to come together and work how they like on something awesome? and then if people come work with them, who dont feel the same about working so much they suddenly arent allowed to work like that anymore? "BUT BUT BUT THE ONES WHO DONT WORK MUCH FEEL PRESURED THEN BY THE ATTITUDE OF THE OTHERS!" yeah, of course someone whos only willing to work for 8 hours a day feels like theyre contributing less in a team of people who work way more and dont find that an issue...cuz they probably are contributing less....potentialy also leading to frustration in the ones who wanna work a lot .Thats not hard to understand right? Its not like some evil corporate plan to maximise profit. It seems shitty to me to both parties.

Imagine all the best painters are as good as they are because they spent unreasonable amounts of time painting, losing their lives to it. And i wanna be a painter like them too but dont wannagive up my life to it, does that mean the others should work less hard for me to be able to keep up? No, that would be considered crazy right?

Also I will bring up this story again: Even when I went to the introduction of the local game education here(the same one rami and janwillem from vlambeer went to) they started out by saying: "dont come here if you expect to go home to eat after work, thats not what your gonna do if you work in the game industry, youll barely have time for anything else in your life and here at school we expect the same from you".

I 100% disagree with you that a writer is entitled to their reader's time, forcing them to crawl inside their head and suss out esoteric logic. Ain't nobody got time for that shit. A review score from a writer I trust will entice me to read their review, but this thread isn't about that.

I should have been more clear, apologies. I don't really have a strong opinion on whether a review covers the narrative of working conditions that were uncovered during the run up to a game's release. I'd probably err against it because the writer probably doesn't have the chops to sneak it into a paragraph or two, and it deserves more as these are always very complex issues with a wide range of viewpoints. That said - depending on how well reported the story is already, at a certain point, *not* mentioning it is suspect, elephant in the room and all that. I get that. Maybe a link to another article.

What is a much more interesting conversation to me is around those outlets who do offer a score, it sounded to me like some folks in this thread were arguing for a sort of punitive reduction in their score. That's a fascinating conversation, and I would be interested in how those people feel it could be implemented.

It shouldn't be a part of the review as far as the game is concerned but i think it should absolutely be mentioned, it's not something that can be understood for every studio, but if evidence emerges and affects how a reviewer views a game it should be mentioned.
I just went and looked at Brad's MGS5 review and sure enough at the end he vaguely mentions difficulties and links to more comprehensive articles, that's an ok way to do it but i wouldn't mind a touch more text just to get the basics of the situation across for anyone who cares about more than just the game itself.
One last thing, a studio lead shouldn't be concerned with how "mean" a journalist sounds, if there's a chance he's right and you're doing something that i would consider criminal. I respect Cory Barlog, for now, but his replies lead me to think he's either blissfully unaware or downplaying the truth, it's a serious issue that requires a more serious response.

In a better world, yes. People should care about working conditions and choose to buy products based on that information. It would create a better environment for workers and happier people. As it stands now, a lot of people do not care. It's sad, and I wish they did, but they don't.

it's true that a lot of people don't care- but i think it's ALSO true that a lot of people do care, but there's only so much the consumer can do to influence the employer-employee relationship at Naughty Dog, let alone the whole industry.

you can encourage, financially incentivize through purchasing decisions, raise awareness (things we all should absolutely do)- but at the very end of the day, organization has to come from within. so long as studios are able to maintain a culture of 'yeah this is terrible, but long term it's worth it' i have a hard time seeing workers get momentum.

and to be clear- the disproportionate power structures and abuse we see in the games industry are deeply embedded in the workforce writ large- so what might appear as others being dismissive towards crunch might be masked defeat from their own personal lives.

Yes, if you think the conditions have impacted the product that was delivered. Let's be honest, though, if I'm reviewing something and know about working conditions, it'll be because it's already been reported on. The cat's out of the bag.

You seem to be saying that because some people can and want to work 12 plus hours a day, everyone else should have to keep up with them?

...why can't those workaholics spend 8 hours working a job like us normal people and then go home and do some more work on their own thing? As in, their own project? If a person must spend 12-18 hours working on the same project lest they go crazy, then they need some help. Working over 8 hours a day, every day, sometimes every weekend, is harmful for most people's mental health. Forcing everyone to work significant overtime because a handful of people prefer to be overworked is certainly not ethical.

On a much larger topic, the video game industry is huge and there are lots of people who paid tons of money and have spent loads of time trying to get into this particular industry. These people want to make a living doing this, but they also want to live. Some manage to get jobs in related sectors (programming for a business or local government or something), but it's damn near impossible to find another job when you're working ridiculous amounts of overtime and can't get a day off. Great art has been made by artists who work their fingers to the bone, but that doesn't have to be the case. You can make great art and also live a life like the rest of us. It is, at the end of the day, a job like any other.

@justin258:"You seem to be saying that because some people can and want to work 12 plus hours a day, everyone else should have to keep up with them?"

No no absolutely not. I wish I had time to properly respond but I gotta go to work in a bit and im afraid ill forget to react to your comment if I dont do it now...uhm how to say it...I dont think anyone is forced to do anything. Dont wanna work extreme hours, dont go work for a place that asks that of you, if all the places aks that of you you might have picked the wrong kinda job and should look for another job. If enough people feel the same way things will change because the employer needs employes to stay in bussiness and if they dont you would propably be better off doing something else. Its like I said, nobody HAS to work for a big studio who does insane games and insane hours, you can go indy or make smaller games with smaller studios etc or even something completely different... I understand that individual circumstances make all that harder than it sounds right but I cant help that it sounds easier than it is :') I get that it isnt, thats not what im trying to say.

And I dunno about america and other places in the world, its different everywhere, but here in the netherlands theres a fair amount of people without work which would imply its hard to find a job too...but that just isnt true at all, I could literally apply today to become a full time mailman, garbage man, gardener, internet cable guy, and probably more. And while not getting the best of salaries and it being physically exhausting work it would be enough to get by and still have free time. But the thing is, it seems, that people are unwilling to do jobs that are NEEDED to instead go do something they like to do and/or studied for and then complain theres no work. Thats bullshit. Sucks if you studied for something that doesnt have jobs anymore, I completely understand but that doesnt mean theres no work.(although that may be worse here in the netherlands cuz if you dont work here for a while you just get minimum wage from the government.....I dont work full time atm and would actually earn more if I completely stopped working and would ask the government for money xD)

And for the people im talking about 12 hours does involve doing different things haha :P but those can still all be connected to one project.

And yeah sure art is possible with less than MAXIMUM effort, but its almost inevitable that the scope of it will suffer then right? Doest that HAVE to matter? no not either. But I wanted to make the point that something of the scope of tripple a games usualy comes at the cost of MAXIMUM effort so if you put it in less the scope would be less too. Again not something I nescesarily mind,I do agree art comes in many scopes from say, someone arraging objects nicely on a table to rembrandts nachtwacht haha, but they are different things.

lastly: "Forcing everyone to work significant overtime because a handful of people prefer to be overworked is certainly not ethical". Absolutely agree, thats not what im saying at all. :)

One on hand it feels like it doesn’t matter. In terms of assessing “Is X game good or not”, the conditions don’t necessarily matter. However, the context behind how something was made changes how you feel about something. If a project had stressful circumstances or created a situation where those people left the studio in hopes of something better (or left games entirely), that colors my perspective.

This is outside of games, but the biggest thing I’m struggling with is my thoughts on Terrace House. The short version is a guest on the show committed suicide mid-season. The whole premise of that show—the low stakes conflicts, everybody being laid back, people falling in love, etc.—all flies out the door when something that horrible happens. It also changes my perspective with how the commentators react to previous guests on the show, how the housemates react to seeing themselves on the show, and how people like me talk about the show. When something happens to a show like Terrace House, that’s the end of it. I’m not sure if I will ever rewatch that show. Even if I do, will I enjoy it knowing what eventually happens? Even if it was a different season that never features that person? Should they ever make a new season?

In terms of games, I’m not sure if I will ever revisit Night In The Woods knowing more about what happened with that game’s development and what happened to Alec Holowka. Again, this is another serious and depressing example, but those are the situations I think about.

It seems like when this type of thing comes up, people wrestle with the toll things like crunch has on a studio or dealing with somebody like Notch. Crunch is a serious issue in this industry and Notch is still a douchebag. But I don’t know if anything like that has affected how I view a game.

It’s more complicated to shower praise on a Naughty Dog game when you hear about what it’s like working there, but The Last of Us is still one of my favorite games, and I still really want to play The Last of Us Part II. These type of things mainly makes me sad that the studio is working with those conditions and I wish they would address those issues.

Should that affect criticism and how people review games? Maybe? Maybe not? I don’t know? What if X game is the best game somebody played, but the working conditions were awful and the director is an asshat? Does that average out to a 3 / 5 star review? Do we need a traditional video game review and another piece of criticism wrestling with how you should react to this game regardless of the “Is game X good?” aspect? Am I just rambling at this point because I don’t know how to answer this question at 2 in the morning?