It is a miracle games come out at all...

tl;dr: making software on a team is a nightmare, and too many decisions are out of your hands, so maybe our expectations of games are too high?

not too long; did read:

Having recently gotten a job as a programmer (not in games) I have been heavily rethinking how we perceive teams that make video games. I work with 4 other coders, a couple of qa people, and a few auxiliary personnel that have various domain knowledge. And I can say that even collaborating on such a small team is fraught with bullshit. everyone has an opinion, everything has to be discussed, and people above you don't seem to understand things that, were u alone, would seem obvious.

I guess what I'm saying is that collaborating with others is hard at best and counterproductive at worst. having experienced this in my job, I feel that criticism of "this part of assassins creed seems bad, Ubisoft must be a bad game dev to have missed this", for example, seems much more ludicrous to me now that I've been on a team that has to deliver software.

Do game critics go too hard on teams that make games? I'm sure a lot of ppl will say that doesn't matter, that the product is all that matters, but I'm not convinced that our expectations are realistic. perhaps this is why the game industry seems to burn through talent/studios?

It shouldn't matter to game reviewers in the context of the review is the bottom line for me. However, I think you often see the GB guys say "games are hard". They are cool with a lot of developers and studios which have put out some bum games. They clearly like Dave Lang for example but then there's whole Batman PC mess and then also Wreckateer for example. They know enough developers to understand bad games can be made by good people and talented people. Another good example is the Platinum discussion on this weeks podcast. They acknowledge all their great work and wonder why they put out some bad games recently (realistically pretty much coming to the conclusion that it is to do with budget, time, and other operational reasons).

I think it's very easy to see how AC for example could be a mess, especially considering it's not only one studio but multiple studios and around the world working on a single game. Hard to fit it all together I'm sure.

As far as the last bit, critics being more understanding won't change the business realities that go on around games. I think the most that happens is how some publishers treat Metacritic scores but it's hard to fault any critic for that awful practice. Big games are really risky and unfortunately there's a lot of fluidity as far as these big publishers closing down studios, opening up other studios, moving employees around, etc. Just the reality of the business. In the end it's a very difficult product to make and it can often take a long time to do. The business people probably look at a lot of the labor as replaceable.

Unbreakable... They alive dammit. Its a miracle.

Sorry, its just, when ever I read its a miracle, that song pops into my head.

But yes, yes it is. I don't program games, but I have a background in programing. And I know what a garbage fire nightmare it can be to get something finished on time, or at all.

Yup, that shit is nuts. I took computer science for two years, and I have a programmer friend working at a very small company and I have heard similar stories from him. As for reviewers though, it unfortunately isn't relevant. What does expecting too much even mean? I don't think a game critic would say the quote you gave about Assassin's Creed. That's more like what a dumb internet troll would say. The giantbomb guys acknowledge that making games is hard all the time, but also that it doesn't matter for review purposes. It's all relative. If you want to blame someone, blame the inhuman techno wizard companies that somehow do the impossible and make enough great games that people can afford to be picky and have high standards. If you're spoiled and used to getting perfectly cooked burgers on a pretzel bun with swiss cheese and fresh tomatoes, what are you supposed to do when you wind up with a lukewarm McDonald's burger instead? Be happy about it?

@artisanbreads: Speaking of Dave Lang, he has actually mentioned multiple times on the podcast he co-hosts (GFB Radio) about how difficult game development is and how he's impressed whenever a team completes a game with it just fulfilling all its goals, let alone being good. He thinks that having a good team isn't even enough to make a good-to-great game: the budget, executive meddling, time, and some luck is also needed. That doesn't mean he isn't able to fairly criticise games including his own. He freely admits that when bad games are released, the development team know it's a bad game. They know what makes it bad and mostly why it occurred. There are always parts that they're happy with and proud of, and they always learn lessons from every project. He doesn't expect critics to go easy on them just because it's difficult to do though. If anything, he just wants games that do things well (even if they aren't revolutionary) to get more credit and praise. Making a promising average game is actually quite impressive from a developers point of view.

This doesn't even get into the bigger can-of-worms of how a game's high quality doesn't even guarantee it profitability. Some great games fail, and some bad-to-average games succeed. In some ways, this hurts more than the sharpness of critics.

Agreed on it being a miracle. I think expectations are too high in quality and price most of the time. I still don't get the hate for day one patches either. I'd rather a patch to fix something up than it being left a mess forever.

I couldn't tell you the number of times I've committed some code that either had some code missing, a bug or two that if I tested better would've been found or just had some debugging/testing code that shouldn't be in the final product. Its so easy to do.

I hope you find the opposite can also be true: Working in a team can be beneficial, and a focused team can achieve much more (both quantitatively and qualitatively) than an individual. I know this to be true in situations I've encountered in work.

If you've only recently got a programming job, then perhaps you still need to find out about the best way to be part of a programming team. Some people may not understand some things (as you say), while other might not understand some other things that teamwork requires - like consensus, standard working practices and reporting for example.

Interesting that you referred to the other staff as 'auxiliary'. In my experience when programming actually collaborate, the best products are achieved. Again in my experience, engineers have a tendency to silo themselves off, and are often unaware of the larger picture.

No, to your question. It doesn't matter how much effort someone put into something or how hard it was to make. This is entertainment and if we're not entertained (the product isn't good enough) then it's not good enough. Critics should be as harsh as they need to be to tell the people what they need to hear. If I buy a game and I find out a critic went easy on it and didn't mention a bunch of flaws, then I will go to another critic who does tell me exactly what's up.

Yes, it sucks that devs pour their lives into something for years and it turns out crap, but if it's crap it's crap and I don't want to play it.

Ehh, sure, it takes talent and leadership, but I wouldn't call it a miracle. No more miraculous than a good orchestra or movie crew performing a symphony or making a movie.

Critics have every right, indeed obligation to be critical. It's kind of in the name and kind of the point of criticism. Start giving poor games a pass because "games are hard", and no one learns anything.

Not to downplay anyone's talent, but games are also easier than ever to make now. Look at some of the great games coming out of single-person studios. Axiom Verge is one of my favorite games of the past ten years.

I do not work in the games industry or anything remotely related to it but I do work in an industry that is known for bureaucracy. It is amazing how even an apparently simple thing can take FOREVER to get sorted because either people don't do their jobs, do their jobs but over complicate everything or have a system in place where everyone feels that they get to have a say.

There is a particular decision that has wide spread support of everyone that I know in the work place. Of the approximately 50 people I work with I know of two who aren't 100% on board with this new idea and even they don't hate it, they just think that it needs to be thought through a bit more. But even with such support this initiative was discussed all last year and nothing was done, it has now been partially introduced as a trial this year and they are reviewing its effectiveness at the end of the year to see how everyone felt that it worked. If everyone is on board at the end of the year then it will become workplace policy next year. My god it should not be this hard.

I cannot imagine how hard it must be to direct a dev team to get a game done. Especially something like Assassin's Creed where you have hundreds of people working on the game.

On that what do you think about this scenario. Take for example a game and this game is awesome, great single player, great multiplayer but it dips in frame rate at some point and the bandwagon starts saying its shit, what then? Is the product shit? I'm not questioning your logic but wanting to hear more as a dev. :)

@rebel_scum: Any critic that says a game is shit without providing arguments is a bad critic. If a game is great but the frame rate dips, then the critic should tell me the game is great but the frame rate dips. Then I can decide: well, I don't mind frame rate dips in this type of game, or fuck frame rate in this type of game is incredibly important to me.

Then I decide if it's shit or not. To give an example, I bought XCOM 2 and think that game is fantastic. It had performance issues. It's an unfortunate example to give though, because GB crew vastly overstated the severity and frequency of those issues but it's part of the reason I don't listen to them for purchasing advice any more. In a game like Revengeance however, that shit would destroy the experience.

...your avatar is a picture of Luchadeer I drew 5+ years ago. That is really odd.

Anyway, you're making it sound more personal than it usually is. Accusations of lazy or stupid developers are usually ignorant and a step too far but good critics do not make it personal. Talented people work on bad things all the time. As a creator it's really difficult to distance yourself from your work but it's important not to take it as a personal attack when it's not.

Do game reviewers go to hard on teams? No, at least the respectable ones don't as i'm not too sure about the slew of youtubers. I don't think any reviewer worth a damn says anything like "Lazy Devlopers didn't do this or that" it's usually forum posters that are too hard on developers. That said, you have to review the product without bias, teams work on everything and everything is hard.

I wrote many papers when I was in graduate school. But my professors graded my finished product, not the process I went through staying up late at night so I could meet deadlines. Game critics have to do the same thing because they have a responsibility to report on the final product. If the game is unplayable, that's a concern that has to be reported. I think what you're looking for is sympathy from the gaming community regarding how difficult it is to make software. Well, you have that from me because I'm completely clueless about coding and graphics and all of the technical expertise that is part of this industry. It's up to me as to how I react to news that a game that I was anticipating to play doesn't work as well as I hoped. I remember feeling relief when I learned that Dragon Age: Inquisition played well on the Xbox 360. If it didn't play well, I would have felt bummed on launch day.