Blips: Not Watching

Source: Watch Dogs is a miracle even if it sucks
Author: Emanuel Maiberg
Site: Kill Screen

I'm not excited for Watch Dogs. In fact, I'm not really excited for any upcoming blockbuster action games; they all just feel kind of the same, like something I've already played. I get a similar feeling from superhero movies, which I'm well past the point of feigning interest in. The disinterest encroaches on two fronts: my nostalgia for comic book characters has worn through, and the calculated roll-out of something like the Marvel universe movies just feels like business decisions that happen to take the shape of a particular artform. So, you'd think a title like Watch Dogs would have a bit more promise, since it isn't drawing source material directly from an existing trademark, but when I look at it, I just see futuristic Assassin's Creed. And I mean, futuristic Assassin's Creed could be good (it's a proven formula), but it doesn't inspire excitement. Even moreso with its delayed development, Watch Dogs is a game that will simply exist someday –no need for anticipation.

But that's not how Ubisoft wants me to feel about Watch Dogs, which is a product that hundreds of people have worked on in some capacity and some of those individuals have been plugging away for upwards of 5 years. In a new article for Kill Screen, writer Emanuel Maiberg illustrates the palpable rift between the mountain of labor that goes into a game like Watch Dogs and the lack of face-value recognition that that labor receives. He doesn't want to protect these types of games from criticism, but rather recognize that there is a quantity of effort that in some way supersedes the final evaluation of whether a game is any good. No matter how good or bad Watch Dogs ends up being, it's still a tremendous feat of engineering, both on technical and personnel levels. That said, I'd still rather have the 50 smaller games that the budget and laborforce for Watch Dogs could otherwise be applied toward instead of seeing that work spent on a single, flashy yet middling title for half a decade. Not that I don't enjoy some spectacle for time to time.

Blips: What's the Story?

Source: Games by humans
Author: Brendan Keogh
Site: The Conversation

Source: Irrational Games, journalism, and airing dirty laundry
Author: Leigh Alexander
Site: Gamasutra

I'm presenting a double-shot of reading material upfront today, so I'll try to keep this brief. Unless you've been living in a cave, you've probably heard about the closure of Boston-based studio Irrational Games, developer of BioShock, BioShock Infinite, and a host of other games across the past 17 years. The announcement was framed by a letter by creative lead, Ken Levine, who's one of the few game developers to garner a Hollywood director auterism within mega-budget game development. In the announcement, Levine states that he'll be staying with parent company 2K Games along with a dozen hand-picked Irrational staff to form a new venture within the company. The rest of Irrational's now-former staff, are seemingly on the job hunt. This isn't the way these types of things usually go, which has prompted rampant speculation as to what's really at the heart of a studio closure in the wake of a critically acclaimed, high-selling game.

At the heart of the responses from Brendan Keogh and Leigh Alexander are considerations for the largely unseen labor forces that make AAA games possible. While it's not the job of the press to help find these folks new work (though showing a bit of goodwill seems only courteous), it does seem worth reporting on these issues as they effect industry labor trends. I'm not seeing a lot of reflection on what 2K's part in Irrational's closure was, but they're the ones with the power in this situation, more so than Levine. This kind of reporting is extremely difficult because the "grunts" aren't allowed to speak with the press in most instances, as any negative sentiment about the company has the possibility of costing those individuals their jobs, or in the case of a studio closure, they've likely signed away their grievances into silence. It often feels like the only way we ever hear about this stuff is from journalists who used to be in the industry themselves, and thus can draw from personal experience and the trust of contacts they were able to make during their industry tenure.

So, while I'm not interested in the story that foretells the downfall of Irrational Games a year out from when it actually happens from an anonymous inside source, there is value in labor practice transparency. For me, it's a question of timing and audience. "What good would it do?" Leigh Alexander asks. I'm less concerned with impartiality as I am with fairness. I'm not the sort of person who'd "do anything for a story," because the story itself is only half of the equation. What you do with a story is just as important, and sometimes that means publishing a very public expose, and sometimes that means withholding comment. Though, I'm of the mind that we need a lot more of the former at present.

Blips: Shipping Out

Source: Who Built That Video Game?
Author: Michael Thomsen
Site: The New Yorker

If you've sat around for the credits on any video game with a big budget or from a large studio, you've probably noticed how long they seem to go –much longer than they used to. While maybe some have slowed the scroll, more often it's because a greater number of people is required to make these kinds of games than it used to take. As Michael Thomsen's recent New Yorker piece speaks to, this has lead the majority of video game companies to outsource at least one aspect of their development process. This means that some element of most games (probably art assets) was produced outside of the country where the game company is based because it's cheaper to do so. Why keep 20 artists on staff in California when you can pay for 20 artists in Malaysia for a fraction of the price?

Thomsen also points out that these low paying outsourced jobs can be economic opportunities for the laborers that acquire them, but as far as general corporate practice goes for the commissioning corporations, it's a race to the bottom. The video game industry has a difficult enough time providing decent labor conditions for their in-house staff, let alone the responsibility for conditions of workplaces on other continents. I certainly don't expect an industry with a reputation for "crunch" labor and a high rate of worker burn out to approach a dicey practice like outsourcing with careful oversight. I'd love to see the game industry get its own house in order first, but I fear that outsourcing might actually be seen as a solution to those domestic issues instead of a simple matter of expansion.

Blips: Labor Intensive

Source: 'You Can Sleep Here All Night': Video Games and Labor
Author: Ian Williams
Site: Jacobin

I'm so pleased to share this wonderfully insightful piece by Ian Williams for Jacobin about labor practices in the video game industry. Well, the report isn't exactly exciting in a "good news" sort of way; it's a sobering reality check about an industry that flies under the radar when it comes to how it treats its workers. In summation it's a cycle of extended crunch time hours that inspires high burn-out and layoff rates, ensuring that there are entry-level openings for the most "passionate" of young developers, willing to subject themselves to menial, low-paying labor with equally low job security for a chance at the big time that has been promised them: the dream job of working in the video game industry. There are no unions and there is very little diversity in the workforce. Much of the data on the video game labor force is either obfuscated or not tracked seriously. I highly recommend reading through the entire piece for all the details and citations.

Indie development, which was only brought up briefly in Williams' piece, is often seen as an alternative to these corporate practices, but from what I've heard and seen from small development teams, this isn't a solution, just a different way of doing business with its own set of problems. For starters indie devs aren't known for getting a whole lot of sleep either. Small teams may work from home and subject themselves to the very same kinds of crunch time hours that big corporations do. A solo developer who self-publishes does not receive a salary, and is wholly dependent on the performance of their finished game at market to provide enough money to live off, not to mention fund their next project. According to Williams' research, the average indie worker income is only $23,000. It's the "starving artist" mentality all over again. I'm not saying indie development needs to be regulated, just that it's not free of the problems that plague the rest of the industry and makes for a poor (literally) alternative. The real solution is to actually fix the problems at the corporate level, not to point to another corner of the market that you hope will overtake the establishment and go on to not become the same structure that it once replaced.