Game Credits

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

You hear too much of this…There is a really interesting article that went up recently over at Kotaku. An anonymous former employee of a pretty well known studio talks about how he and a few other’s got shafted out of some game credits. I have an obvious bias here but I think what they bring up is important. Many people make the gaming industry their lives, especially in a crunch period. It puts a strain on their family and sometimes even their health.

Many of the comments on that article go on to talk about how in many industries people don’t get credit at then end of a final product. This is true, and I can see that there is an obvious point to be made: that you can’t ship a list of credits with an automobile etc. But the creative industry has long practiced giving credit to the individuals who labored, sometimes rather intensely, on a film, tv show, or game. Not that I’m always one for silly traditions, but the entertainment industry has been using this as leverage in some instances: promising a pseudo promotion of a fancier credit but wihtout the compensation. What’s worse is that some employees aren’t included intentionally as a form of punishment or just flat out laziness. Forcing someone off of a game credit listing because they left the company before the product shipped is just wrong. As is baiting someone into shipping a game with the promise of a “lead” credit when they are not paid as such, though I can see how many developers might be a bit more willing to overlook this instance. I’ve happily done things in the past that were far outside the scope of my job description. It’s the nature of the beast, sometimes Animation gets slow and you have to move some verts around. But, without fail, it’s something that is abused in game development. The “I did more work than was in my job description but was not compensated” discussion is one for another day though.

Others have also stated that it doesn’t really matter as your resume/CV really shows your credit anyways. That’s fine I guess, until you consider the astounding amount of fraud and theft that takes place, especially amongst artists in this industry. I think the only way you can prove which titles you’ve been on is through some kind of standardized crediting.

It’s easy to take the “who cares” attitude towards something like this. But if that’s the case then why not just take a few hours and get a proper credit list shipped? You’re going to ship credits anyways, and it’s not as if the printing presses charge by the line. So do your employees a service and give them the credit for which they’ve worked.