General game developing news and updates.
Marci
* Base mana regen reduced from 0.5 to 0
* Dispose: Damage reduced from 70/140/210/280 to 70/130/190/250
* Rebound: Cast/jump range reduced from 850 to 800
* Unleash: Duration reduced from 18 to 16
* Unleash: Pulse damage reduced from 80/150/220 to 60/130/200
* Level 15 Talent reduced from +250 Rebound Cast/Jump Range to +200
* Level 20 Talent reduced from 1.75s Sidekick Spell Immunity to 1.5s
In an interview with Game Informer that went up over the weekend, Naughty Dog co-presidents Evan Wells and Neil Druckmann say the company is working to improve work-life balance with a new set of working groups.
In response to a question about crunch and unionization, Wells and Druckmann gave somewhat demurring answers that delved into the “passion” of Naughty Dog employees.
Druckmann however did give some specific examples of what the company is doing to improve work-life balance after a string of reports indicated that employees were working intense, unhealthy overtime to complete games like The Last of Us Part II.
“We have so many talented people that are good at solving problems, whether they’re creative or technical,” Druckmann explained. “We’re looking at quality of life for preventing burnout, to employ the brain power we have in our studio, and we started coming up with working groups to talk about the areas in the studio where we can improve.”
“We worked a particular way when we’re 40 people, now we have to evolve as we keep growing.”
This seems to be one of the first times that Naughty Dog’s leadership has publicly discussed complaints about extensive, sometimes chaotic work hours that have emerged in news reports and from former employees. Druckmann and Wells also said that the company has recently implemented more team leads and directors in order to manage work hours and try to balance the needs of employees against company’s production schedule.
After the interview went up, several game developers on Twitter seemed frustrated by Wells and Druckmann’s soft defense of crunch in the name of passionate employees.
“We’ve got to create an environment that allows that. If we had some sort of restriction where when the clock strikes 40 hours the servers shut down and you can’t work anymore, that would frustrate people to no end,” Wells argued. “There are people who really want to put in that extra polish on their own volition, and they would feel handcuffed.”
Druckmann also gave the example of a developer requesting an exemption from a “No Sundays” rule because they’d hoped to spend Fridays with their child.
Critics pointed out that even if some employees do their best to maintain a 40-hour workweek, their workloads can be influenced by coworkers putting in those extra hours to build new features or follow their passions.
Obsidian Entertainment game director Carrie Patel broke down some examples of this in a Twitter thread. If say, a quest designer pulled extra hours to implement a new quest in a game like The Outer Worlds, that creates work for the narrative team, the combat team, environment art, audio, and QA, who all need to accommodate that extra work into their schedules.
And the extra workload aside, Patel pointed out this practice starts to impact relationships between employees. Martyrs see the rest of the team as less committed and become more secretive about their work,” she wrote. “Others develop mistrust or resentment for the martyrs. Communication and collaboration break down.”
And then of course there’s the all-too-familiar experience of developers crunching to get the game out the door on time just to protect their jobs. For directors, “it’s easy to misread that as passion,” Patel said.
NetEase is reportedly in the final stages of hiring Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi away from Sega, according to a report in Bloomberg News.
The high-profile hire would be both a boon for NetEase, which is looking to build more and more financial presence outside of China, and an acknowledgement of how much Nagoshi and the Yakuza franchise have boosted Sega’s profile in the last few years.
In January, Nagoshi stepped down from the role of chief creative officer at Sega Sammy, moving into the role of creative director of the Yakuza series. He’s been one of the series’ key players since it debuted in 2005.
In the last few years, the Yakuza series has enjoyed an explosive growth in popularity outside of Japan, with series spinoff Judgment recently crossing over 1 million units sold. Though its branding might imply that the series is an open-world crime game similar to Grand Theft Auto, it’s won legions of fans for its memorable characters, eccentric minigames, and plots that go beyond the world of Japanese gangsters.
Bloomberg’s report ties Nagoshi’s hiring by NetEase as part of a move by Chinese video game conglomerates to expand their financial influence outside of their home country, which lately has been issuing more and more regulations on the video game industry.
Reporters Takashi Mochizuki and Zheping Huang also write that Japanese studios and developers are more receptive to Chinese investment in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on funding. Sega Sammy, Nagoshi’s current workplace, recently restructured itself with salary cuts and voluntary employee retirements to adapt to the financial impact of the pandemic.
The Chinese government has restricted gaming hours for players under the age of 18 to one hour per day from Friday to Sunday, and only between the hours of 8 PM and 9 PM. It has also ordered game companies to ban children from accessing games during the rest of the week, outside of holidays.
According to Reuters, the National Press and Publication Administration told Chinese State Media outlet Xinhua that “protecting the physical and mental health of minors is related to the people’s vital interests, and relates to the cultivation of the younger generation in the era of national rejuvenation.”
This announcement follows weeks of build-up by Chinese regulators to reign in youth access to online games, and builds on years of regulation in that space. Just recently, for example, Tencent announced it was implementing facial recognition technology to prevent minors from circumventing previous limits (they’d been using fake credentials to create adult accounts).
Even before this latest government restriction, China already had limits on how much and often children could play games. Until now, minors were able to access video games any day of the week for a maximum of 1.5 hours.
Elsewhere, Chinese State Media outlet Economic Information Daily decried video games as “spiritual opium” and calling for more regulation of the video game business.
These regulatory moves have already had ripple effects on the broader world of game development. Analysts recently blamed Krafton’s poor South Korean stock market debut on these new regulations due to the company’s close relationship with Chinese conglomerate Tencent Holdings. Tencent publishes multiple versions of PUBG: Battlegrounds, including a special version made for China.
This move seems to mark the culmination of a shift in the Chinese Government’s strategy for implementing video game regulations. In prior years, regulations were implemented allegedly to present the spread of Myopia (nearsightedness).
The last few weeks however have marked a specific change toward labeling video games and online gaming as addicting. This shift may already be impacting the business plans for large conglomerates like Tencent and Netease, who are already extensively investing in studios outside of China.
China is not the only country concerned with how much time minors are spending playing video games—but it is the only one doubling down on state-led restrictions. Last week South Korea announced an end to its limits on video game play for minors, choosing instead to reinforce an opt-in limitation program that can be managed by parents or legal guardians.
McCree, the Overwatch cowboy hero named after a former Blizzard employee, will soon have his name changed. His namesake, level designer Jesse McCree, was recently fired from Blizzard Entertainment.
McCree (the designer, not the character) was terminated alongside Diablo 4 director Luis Barriga and World of Warcraft designer Jonathan LeCraft on August 11. Of the three employees, his name had begun to carry negative weight in the public after he was spotted in photos of a text chain discussing the now-infamous Cosby Suite.
In case that uncomfortable proper noun caught you by surprise, the Cosby Suite was a nickname for a hotel room at Blizzcon frequented by high-level employees. It’s been named in the State of California’s lawsuit against Activision Blizzard as being a hotel suite where former World of Warcraft lead designer Alex Afrasiabi allegedly harassed women.
Incidentally, Afrasiabi also saw his surname leant to a non-playable character for World of Warcraft. The team behind that game has also said it is working to remove “inappropriate content” from the game.
Sourness around the character McCree’s name began to circulate even before the level designer’s termination. Broadcasters commentating on professional Overwatch league matches would refuse to say his name, simply referring to him as “the Cowboy.”
In the Overwatch team’s announcement, the game’s developers said that implementing the change will take some time, and has caused a delay to an upcoming in-game event the character was set to take part in. The team also said it would be rewriting policies about naming characters based on real-life people.
“Going forward, in-game characters will no longer be named after real employees and we will be more thoughtful and discerning about adding real world references in future Overwatch content,” the team wrote.
“This will help reinforce that we’re building a fictional universe that is unmistakably different from the real world and better illustrates that the creation of Overwatch is truly a team effort.”
Renaming McCree won’t just be about changing in-game and website copy. Both the voice actor behind McCree (Matthew Mercer), and most of Overwatch’s other characters have recorded lines of dialogue referring to the hero by name.
That’s before you consider the number of promotional cinematics and print comics Blizzard Entertainment has released over the last few years. Those likely cannot be changed.
Fans of Overwatch have pointed out that Blizzard’s narrative team may have already have an in-universe motivation for changing McCree’s name. The character Sombra has a voice line questioning McCree’s real name. Having McCree’s “true identity” be revealed (or for him to adopt a new codename) would allow the tarnished moniker to be transitioned out of the game.
It’s worth noting that Blizzard is not the only game company that’s named in-game characters after its employees. If you take a spin through the Titanfall 2 single-player campaign for instance, you’ll find a number of non-playable characters named after the game’s developers. It’s worth wondering if other companies will consider updating their naming policies after this news.
Gamescom’s annual award ceremony concluded with a slew of wins for Elden Ring, making Bandai Namco the top-performing publisher in the awards spread.
From Software’s highly anticipated upcoming game took home the awards for Best Action Adventure Game, Best RPG, Best PlayStation Game, and Best of Gamescom. Bandai Namco secured the top spot at the awards by picking up the Best Simulation Awards for Park Beyond, and also a publisher-focused award for Best Lineup.
Ubisoft and Microsoft each picked up three awards for the games they’re publishing. Ubisoft received recognition for Far Cry 6, Riders Republic, and Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, while Microsoft took home prizes for Halo Infinite and Age of Empires 4.
Here’s a full list of all the awards handed out at the end of Gamescom:
Voting is still underway for Best Streamer and Most Anticipated Game, which take votes from the public.
Fallout 76 project lead Jeff Gardiner has left Bethesda Game Studios after 16 years.
Gardiner, who announced their departure on Twitter, joined Bethesda in October 2005 and went on to work on some of the company’s most popular titles including The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
Most recently, they spent over three years working as the project lead on Fallout 76. There’s no indication as to where Gardiner is heading next, with the veteran developer explaining they’ll be “taking some time to reflect” before making any plans.
“My time at Bethesda Game Studios has come to an end,” wrote Gardiner on social media. “It has been an amazing ride, from producing the designers on Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim, to lead producer of Fallout 4, and finally project lead of Fallout 76. I will miss my co-workers and want to thank the amazing fans. Stay tuned.”
Emika Games, a.k.a. Alexander Reshetnikov, is contemplating leaving development “for an indefinite time” after claiming that a number of Steam users abused the storefront’s two-hour refund system to return their latest release, Summer of ’58.
Outlining the situation on Twitter, the indie developer suggested Summer of ’58 was being refunded by “a huge number” of players on Steam despite garnering positive reviews purely because it doesn’t clock in at over two hours.
As it stands, Summer of ’58 has achieved a “very positive” rating on Steam since launching on July 21, 2021, with 88 percent of the title’s 279 reviews praising the game.
Despite that warm reception, Emika said they haven’t earned enough money to push ahead with their next project, From Day To Day, because of the high number of refunds.
“The fact is that my game Summer of ’58 does not reach 2 hours of playing time by Steam standards. [Becasue of this, I’ve received] a huge number of returns on the game, even with positive reviews, and [haven’t earned enough] to create a new game,” said Emika.
“Thank you very much for supporting me. I am very glad that you like my games, but since I have [no means] to do something new, I will have to do something else.”
The Steam Refund Policy currently allows users to request a refund for nearly any purchase if the title has been played for less than two hours, and Emika believes some Summer of ’58 players have abused the system to claim their money back despite completing and enjoying the title.
“You can request a refund for nearly any purchase on Steam — for any reason. Maybe your PC doesn’t meet the hardware requirements; maybe you bought a game by mistake; maybe you played the title for an hour and just didn’t like it,” reads the Steam Refund Policy at the time of writing.
Valve does note that anybody abusing the system will be prohibited from claiming refunds in the future, and reiterates that “refunds are designed to remove the risk from purchasing titles on Steam — not as a way to get free games.”
Since posting their initial statement, Emika has been inundated with messages of support on social media. As a result, the developer indicated they might reconsider their hiatus, but again called out those refunding Summer of ’58 without reason.
“I want to create games without artificially prolonged [completion] times so that [players don’t] get bored by the end, so they come out for less than 2 hours. I think you’ve noticed that my games look like short stories, similar to the fact that you can watch a movie, not a TV series,” they tweeted.
“I am not offended by those people who returned the game because they did not like it or because of technical problems, but if a person went through to the end and returned the game, but can be compared to the fact that they ate all the pizza, but did not like it, and just returned the box and their money.”
Game Developer has reached out to Emika for more details on the situation.
App Store developers will soon be able nudge customers over email to make them aware of alternative payment options and perhaps avoid platform fees.
The change is being ushered in as Apple attempts to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by a group of U.S. developers in 2019 who took issue with the App Store’s “profit-killing” commissions and fees.
In a bid to resolve the suit while “providing more flexibility and resources for small developers,” Apple has clarified it will now allow devs to “use communications, such as email, to share information about payment methods outside of their iOS app.” Although a notable step, this doesn’t mean developers will be able to integrate alternative payment options into apps themselves.
“As always, developers will not pay Apple a commission on any purchases taking place outside of their app or the App Store. Users must consent to the communication and have the right to opt out,” continued the company in a press release.
Apple will also be expanding the number of price points available to developers for subscriptions, in-app purchases, and paid apps from fewer than 100 to over 500, and has committed to establishing a fund to assist U.S. developers who consistently earn under $1 million per annum across their entire portfolio.
“Eligible developers must have earned $1 million or less through the U.S. storefront for all of their apps in every calendar year in which the developers had an account between June 4, 2015, and April 26, 2021 — encompassing 99 percent of developers in the U.S.,” said Apple, before promising to share more details in the future.
Beyond that, Apple has pledged to maintain the current structure of its App Store Small Business Program for the next three years. App Store Search will also be preserved in its current form — meaning it will continue to be based on objective characteristics like downloads, star ratings, text relevance, and user behavior signals — for the same length of time.
The changes will come into effect following court approval, and have been announced as Apple continues to trade blows with Epic over its decision to bring third-party payments to Fortnite on iOS (resulting in Apple pulling the title from sale) in a bid to defy the “App Store monopoly.”
Epic Games and Time Studios (which is affiliated with Time Magazine) have partnered to debut an interactive Fortnite Creative exhibit about the 1963 March on Washington, titled “March Through Time: DC ’63.”
This march is where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have A Dream” speech, a recording of which is at the center of the interactive Fortnite exhibit. March Through Time is debuting two days before the 58th anniversary of the march.
The interactive experience, created by Fortnite Creative users ChaseJackman, GQuanoe, XWDFr, and YU7A, features a recreation of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C, as well as an interactive museum that includes more video content on the history of the Civil Rights Movement.
Reactions to the Fortnite exhibit from developers and critics have been mixed. Players entering the exhibit are able to use the various skins and emotes purchased for Fortnite’s other game modes, so that means images of Halo’s Master Chief, the Xenomorph from Alien, Rick and Morty’s Rick Sanchez, and other licensed characters doing goofy dances while the “I Have A Dream” speech plays have already made their way across social media.
It’s tacky, but some developers have admitted if even a few young players use this as a jumping-off point to learn more about Dr. King’s work, the exhibit is achieving its goals.
Others have pointed out that this is still a serious moment in American history, and with Dr. King’s efforts to battle racism and economic inequality still being relevant today, the cartoon characters bouncing around the video may come off as disrespectful.
It’s also unclear how much Dr. King’s family was involved in the decision to create this experience. Epic Games says that the Estate of Marthin Luther King Jr. was involved in the process, however King’s daughter Bernice King, who runs The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center, says she and the Center were not involved in the creation of March Through Time.
It is notable to see Epic Games take an interest in using its platform and presence to commemorate important events like the 1963 March on Washington. And while it’s put in the work of touching base with stakeholders like Dr. King’s Estate, it’s unclear if this effort will be a meaningful moment to connect players with Civil Rights history—or if it’ll just be compartmentalized as another kind of brand meant to buoy the dream of the Fortnite “metaverse.”
