OT Thursday - Sunk costs and the terrible video game

[Kendrick Kerwin Chua]

Having only recently played South Park: The Stick of Truth, I decided to
do some research on the sequel due out at the end of the year (a superhero
romp imaginatively titled 'Fractured But Whole') and I was a little
surprised to discover how much behind-the-scenes drama there was in the
making of the first game. This is old news to most of you, but I had no
idea Stick of Truth was one of the properties nearly lost to the THQ
bankruptcy, or that Ubisoft didn't properly negotiate or transfer the
licencing for all the sound effects or other ancillary assets that went
with the production of the game. In most games you can sense that there
are seams, or at least whole sections that have been cut down or cut out,
but I got no sense of that playing the first few hours of Stick of Truth.
For all that it's a compromise, it's also a complete vision and a complete
product.

I bring this up because the concept of sunk costs is on my mind. I just
left a job at an international bank after establishing a lot of good will
and relationships, and a few people I know were surprised that I was able
to walk away. My argument against was that I had much more to gain by
departing and starting something new, and that I had to be willing to take
a chance by going in a different direction. Also, I wasn't being very good
at that job, and none of the positive things about it were going to
translate into reasonable output from me in spite of all the other things
that could have been measured as any sort of success. Does this sort of
operational, institutional reflection exist in the world of video game
production?

If you look at other media, you get the sense that many, many projects are
scrapped or abandoned or cancelled and for good reason. Television pilots
aren't picked up because they're too small or too terrible, motion picture
scripts languish in the land of review and rewrites, and every would-be
author has half a novel kicking around the laptop somewhere. But the
mechanisms of those media are always in motion, which is why it only takes
three weeks to make an hour-long comedy or drama, or 14 months to make a
movie, or two years to make a book. Some video games have been going for
decades with no end in sight, largely because every last development house
seems to want to build their whole world from the ground up every time. By
contrast, television production never stops and even motion pictures can
pivot on a proverbial dime when the need arises. Sony television gives you
an army of production and support staff if they want your show, but Sony
Computer Entertainment doesn't offer much more than a borrowed dev console
and a firm pat on the bum.

I can't argue that the result was excellent with regards to what was
released to market as Stick of Truth. But I can't help thinking that in
any sane world, the game should have been quietly cancelled and all those
heroic efforts should have been redirected to something new, rather than
trying to justify the existing sunk costs. For every South Park that was a
careful and metered success, there's going to be ten games like Wet or
Aliens Colonial Marines or Mighty No. 9 that should never have been
released, but were anyway because it was going to be too late to turn back
even before any work got started at all. Being able to walk away from
those sunk costs may require more than sophisticated API environments or
virtualisation or streaming or whatever it is game devs are already trying
to do to cut their expenses.

Am I wrong about that? And if I'm not, how does a maturing game industry
fix those problems so that more and better games can make it all the way
out into the world?

-KKC, who has some tidying to do today.
--
-- "I have never once seen an airplane in front | kendrick
of me with a mattress tied to its roof." | @
Steve Casner, on automated flying versus | io-nyc
automated driving. | .com

[hurricanepilot]

I quite enjoyed Wet.

> Being able to walk away from
> those sunk costs may require more than sophisticated API environments or
> virtualisation or streaming or whatever it is game devs are already trying
> to do to cut their expenses.

My understanding of why this happens, which may wander off the point or
bit an re-iterate what you're stating, is that there's a very real
separation between the part of the industry that decides what to
greenlight and the part of the industry that actually makes it happen.

In a movie or tv scenario, there's also a much more complete picture
available at greenlight time, be it a pitch for a show or a script for a
screenplay. It can be read, assessed and a much better picture of the
end product can be gleaned from that initial input. By which I suppose
I'm saying that the things that can kill a movie or tv show are more
immediately obvious at the point they're generated - your pilot episode
is shit or the daily rushes (is that what they're called?) are showing
up something rotten. You can do your cost-benefit analysis on a moment
by moment basis and make your mind up then.

Even when it does happen and something shit makes it out, the way it
fails is generally critical rather than financial - season 2 of true
detective, for example, was watched by pretty much everyone that enjoyed
the first even though it was objectively terrible. People and critics
have very bad things to say about the show, but they all still watched
it and paid the HBO/Sky Now sub to do so.

What you can /see/ about a game, from it's pitch, through to tech demos
and trailers never really gives you the full picture. A game can seem
amazing until the day it releases and you find out that it wipes hard
drives or has terrible input lag or bad netcode or is an MMO, etc. The
people pushing the coins around aren't sitting in front of a monitor on
a daily basis making sure the controls are tight enough for continued
investment. They find out the same time we do.

Also, there's a much greater chance that you'll pitch something that
sounds great on paper, but after two years of work turns out to not
really be that good. With more parts coming together later on down the
line, it sometimes just ends up being simply too late to make the cuts.

The Central Park area in Alone in the Dark's remake on the last gen is
probably a good example of this. Sounded good, was used for hype, turned
out to be shit and pointless but with it being a major bullet point
throughout developent it had to stay.

> Am I wrong about that? And if I'm not, how does a maturing game industry
> fix those problems so that more and better games can make it all the way
> out into the world?

Maybe when the people that run the money are also invested in the
products? It's happening to an extent with publishers like Devolver,
Chucklefish and Paradox, where the people at the very top of the food
chain are proper, bona-fide gamers that understand the product and can
make more informed choices and provide the right support.

[Kendrick Kerwin Chua]

In article <nm80ct$l1u$1...@dont-email.me>, hurricanepilot <h@g.c> wrote:
>Kendrick Kerwin Chua wrote:
>

<On video games that were terrible and somehow didn't get cancelled>

>> I can't argue that the result was excellent with regards to what was
>> released to market as Stick of Truth. But I can't help thinking that in
>> any sane world, the game should have been quietly cancelled and all those
>> heroic efforts should have been redirected to something new, rather than
>> trying to justify the existing sunk costs. For every South Park that was a
>> careful and metered success, there's going to be ten games like Wet or
>> Aliens Colonial Marines or Mighty No. 9 that should never have been
>> released, but were anyway because it was going to be too late to turn back
>> even before any work got started at all.
>
>I quite enjoyed Wet.
>

I regret only that we didn't get a sequel called 'Dry' and perhaps a
spinoff mobile game somehow called 'Vac' to complement them both. :)

>> Being able to walk away from
>> those sunk costs may require more than sophisticated API environments or
>> virtualisation or streaming or whatever it is game devs are already trying
>> to do to cut their expenses.
>
>My understanding of why this happens, which may wander off the point or
>bit an re-iterate what you're stating, is that there's a very real
>separation between the part of the industry that decides what to
>greenlight and the part of the industry that actually makes it happen.
>

I'm going to interrupt you here and mention only that in both film and TV,
the people who approve the products are also very rarely consumers of
those products. It's like restauranteurs who don't care about food, or car
salesmen who can't drive.

>In a movie or tv scenario, there's also a much more complete picture
>available at greenlight time, be it a pitch for a show or a script for a
>screenplay. It can be read, assessed and a much better picture of the
>end product can be gleaned from that initial input. By which I suppose
>I'm saying that the things that can kill a movie or tv show are more
>immediately obvious at the point they're generated - your pilot episode
>is shit or the daily rushes (is that what they're called?) are showing
>up something rotten. You can do your cost-benefit analysis on a moment
>by moment basis and make your mind up then.
>

This I hadn't considered. In spite of Agile development being a thing, you
can't ever have a situation where at the end of every two-week sprint you
have an actual game that you can ship. You have many disparate pieces, but
until you connect them all together you can't really tell if there's any
server-side lag or client performance problems. And that's to say nothing
of whether or not the game actually turns out to be any damn fun. That
must make some people in the games business crazy, the idea that you can't
assess your progress in a predictable way. Although now that I think about
it, that's a problem common to all software and not just games.

There's a story about Steven Spielberg making Indiana Jones and the Last
Crusade that I particularly like, where he's filming the scenes that show
a villain getting his comeuppance as the tank he's driving goes over the
side of a high cliff. As they approached the end of their filming day a
horde of production staff started to come to him about coloour matching
and continuity and enhancing some of the practical effects. But Spielberg
insisted, after only a little thought, that they were done and no amount
of tweaking or additional work would make the scene any better. I'm not
sure if there's any equivalent instinctive sense about whether a certain
part of a video game is also 'done' or not.

>What you can /see/ about a game, from it's pitch, through to tech demos
>and trailers never really gives you the full picture. A game can seem
>amazing until the day it releases and you find out that it wipes hard
>drives or has terrible input lag or bad netcode or is an MMO, etc. The
>people pushing the coins around aren't sitting in front of a monitor on
>a daily basis making sure the controls are tight enough for continued
>investment. They find out the same time we do.
>
>Also, there's a much greater chance that you'll pitch something that
>sounds great on paper, but after two years of work turns out to not
>really be that good. With more parts coming together later on down the
>line, it sometimes just ends up being simply too late to make the cuts.
>

I hate that this is true. At the same time, I don't know what to do about
the fact that a game is so dependent on so many other moving parts. A
movie can be self-contained, and the people who made it can't really
control if your theatre is noisy or if the projector light is dim or if
the popcorn butter is rancid. But no film critic is going to attempt to
review a movie after only watching it on a smartphone screen. So it is too
that the presentation of a game is dependent on factors beyond its
control, and too inflexible to move beyond that.

>> Am I wrong about that? And if I'm not, how does a maturing game industry
>> fix those problems so that more and better games can make it all the way
>> out into the world?
>
>Maybe when the people that run the money are also invested in the
>products? It's happening to an extent with publishers like Devolver,
>Chucklefish and Paradox, where the people at the very top of the food
>chain are proper, bona-fide gamers that understand the product and can
>make more informed choices and provide the right support.

I can't argue in favour of the notion that it only comes down to 'give a
damn' because there are plenty of passionate real gamers who attempt to
make games and end up overpromising and not delivering. Molyneux comes to
mind right away, although I suspect he'd be very produtive with just a
little bit of a leash and a lot of direction. Or maybe it is that someone
like Molyneux doesn't actually understand the product and only dreams big.

-KKC, honing his UNIX filesystem search sills.

[Toby Newman]

I enjoyed Aliens Colonial Marines and am glad it got released. Same
with DNF. And I wish Firefly wasn't canned. I'm all for releasing what
you have.

--
-Toby
Add the word afiduluminag to the subject to circumvent my email filters.

[Toby Newman]

On 2016-07-14, Kendrick Kerwin Chua <kend...@nospam.io-nyc> wrote:
> In article <nm80ct$l1u$1...@dont-email.me>, hurricanepilot <h@g.c> wrote:
>>Kendrick Kerwin Chua wrote:
>>
>
><On video games that were terrible and somehow didn't get cancelled>
>
>>> I can't argue that the result was excellent with regards to what was
>>> released to market as Stick of Truth. But I can't help thinking that in
>>> any sane world, the game should have been quietly cancelled and all those
>>> heroic efforts should have been redirected to something new, rather than
>>> trying to justify the existing sunk costs. For every South Park that was a
>>> careful and metered success, there's going to be ten games like Wet or
>>> Aliens Colonial Marines or Mighty No. 9 that should never have been
>>> released, but were anyway because it was going to be too late to turn back
>>> even before any work got started at all.
>>
>>I quite enjoyed Wet.
>>
>
> I regret only that we didn't get a sequel called 'Dry' and perhaps a
> spinoff mobile game somehow called 'Vac' to complement them both. :)

Imagine if Wetris came first, and there was a spin-off called Drytris.

[Zomoniac]

On 14/07/2016 12:33, Kendrick Kerwin Chua wrote:

> I can't argue that the result was excellent with regards to what was
> released to market as Stick of Truth. But I can't help thinking that in
> any sane world, the game should have been quietly cancelled and all those
> heroic efforts should have been redirected to something new, rather than
> trying to justify the existing sunk costs. For every South Park that was a
> careful and metered success, there's going to be ten games like Wet or
> Aliens Colonial Marines or Mighty No. 9 that should never have been
> released, but were anyway because it was going to be too late to turn back
> even before any work got started at all. Being able to walk away from
> those sunk costs may require more than sophisticated API environments or
> virtualisation or streaming or whatever it is game devs are already trying
> to do to cut their expenses.

I suspect the vast majority of games in development are cancelled before
we ever hear about them. Not including the high profile ones like Fable
Legends, more like the 20 odd games that Ueda must have started then
abandoned over the past 10 years.


--

Zo

[Kendrick Kerwin Chua]

In article <slrnnof5li...@asktoby.eternal-september.org>,

Toby Newman <goo...@asktoby.com> wrote:
>
>I enjoyed Aliens Colonial Marines and am glad it got released. Same
>with DNF. And I wish Firefly wasn't canned. I'm all for releasing what
>you have.
>

Those specific examples aside, there must have been some game that you
played where your abiding impression afterwards was that it needed a bit
more time in the oven. I would argue that releasing what one has may not
always be enough, especially when the end goal is to recoup what was spent
(as opposed to just putting any old thing out there, which is what got
Sega into so much trouble back in the day).

This is one of the things about going to the movies that I and the wife
disagree on, that she's open to any experience in the theatre and I want
to show up with a reasonable confidence that I'm not about to throw away
twenty dollars and two hours of my life. To that end, she never reads
reviews or watches trailers and wants to experience every film like it's
brand new, whereas I obsessively pore over criticism and source material.
I hate wasting my time on something that was preventable and could have
been anticipated.

I sense I may have departed from the original topic a bit. :)

-KKC, debating over more cheap games shopping over lunch.

[Kendrick Kerwin Chua]

In article <duplod...@mid.individual.net>,

Zomoniac <the_pro...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>On 14/07/2016 12:33, Kendrick Kerwin Chua wrote:
>
>> I can't argue that the result was excellent with regards to what was
>> released to market as Stick of Truth. But I can't help thinking that in
>> any sane world, the game should have been quietly cancelled and all those
>> heroic efforts should have been redirected to something new, rather than
>> trying to justify the existing sunk costs.
>

>I suspect the vast majority of games in development are cancelled before
>we ever hear about them. Not including the high profile ones like Fable
>Legends, more like the 20 odd games that Ueda must have started then
>abandoned over the past 10 years.
>

Thank you for that, I forgot that I wanted to bring up this point too. The
South Park problems were well-documented and highly publicised, but I
wasn't aware of them because I wasn't paying attention. Probably there was
a point where I decided that it was a licenced game property and I wasn't
going to care, or be particularly surprised that there was pre-release
drama.

I observe that GameFAQs has started to mark titles as 'Cancelled' in grey
text, probably more to preserve their index of news stories and box covers
than out of any misguided need to maintain historical information. Putting
all this together just makes me even more sad, that the high-visibility
cancellations we know about are the ones that made it as far as the
marketing and hype stage before crashing and burning all the more
spectactularly. The invisible ones are probably exactly what I expected.

-KKC, whose spellchecker does not recognise 'spectactularly'.

[hurricanepilot]

Toby Newman wrote:

>>>I quite enjoyed Wet.
>>>
>>
>> I regret only that we didn't get a sequel called 'Dry' and perhaps a
>> spinoff mobile game somehow called 'Vac' to complement them both. :)
>
> Imagine if Wetris came first, and there was a spin-off called Drytris.

These are both potential outcomes of one of the quests in The Witcher 3.

[hurricanepilot]

Kendrick Kerwin Chua wrote:

>>My understanding of why this happens, which may wander off the point or
>>bit an re-iterate what you're stating, is that there's a very real
>>separation between the part of the industry that decides what to
>>greenlight and the part of the industry that actually makes it happen.
>>
>
> I'm going to interrupt you here and mention only that in both film and TV,
> the people who approve the products are also very rarely consumers of
> those products. It's like restauranteurs who don't care about food, or car
> salesmen who can't drive.

Agreed, but there's less of a disconnect between the studio -> producer
-> director -> crew, with each level interacting with those above
and/or below.

You don't (generally) need a location for a game development studio,
so there's no drive to make things geographically centralised. As much
as those people that approve the products aren't necessarily
consumers, they're likely to be in offices in the same geographical
location and the lines of communication are likely far better
established.

In the gaming industry, the suits and the soldiers can be on diffrerent
continents. And in this modern era of gaming where content creation
trumps technology in terms of efforts, it's often the case where the
soldiers are all over the globe.

What I find the most depressing about that situation is when a company
like Airtight Games goes under when they've done exactly as asked. In
that particular instance (Murdered: Soul Suspect) it seemed to me that
Square Enix and their in-house Director generated all of the risk, but
shouldered none of it.

>>In a movie or tv scenario, there's also a much more complete picture
>>available at greenlight time, be it a pitch for a show or a script for a
>>screenplay. It can be read, assessed and a much better picture of the
>>end product can be gleaned from that initial input. By which I suppose
>>I'm saying that the things that can kill a movie or tv show are more
>>immediately obvious at the point they're generated - your pilot episode
>>is shit or the daily rushes (is that what they're called?) are showing
>>up something rotten. You can do your cost-benefit analysis on a moment
>>by moment basis and make your mind up then.
>>
>
> This I hadn't considered. In spite of Agile development being a thing, you
> can't ever have a situation where at the end of every two-week sprint you
> have an actual game that you can ship. You have many disparate pieces, but
> until you connect them all together you can't really tell if there's any
> server-side lag or client performance problems. And that's to say nothing
> of whether or not the game actually turns out to be any damn fun. That
> must make some people in the games business crazy, the idea that you can't
> assess your progress in a predictable way. Although now that I think about
> it, that's a problem common to all software and not just games.

It seems like some succesful independent studios are using agile
approaches in ways that seem to work, but I agree, it's difficult to
think of a scenario where a sprint duration of a couple of weeks makes
any sense until you're nearly done. Though it's often a
misrepresentation of agile when it's suggested that the output of a
sprint /has/ to be tangible.

>>> Am I wrong about that? And if I'm not, how does a maturing game industry
>>> fix those problems so that more and better games can make it all the way
>>> out into the world?
>>
>>Maybe when the people that run the money are also invested in the
>>products? It's happening to an extent with publishers like Devolver,
>>Chucklefish and Paradox, where the people at the very top of the food
>>chain are proper, bona-fide gamers that understand the product and can
>>make more informed choices and provide the right support.
>
> I can't argue in favour of the notion that it only comes down to 'give a
> damn' because there are plenty of passionate real gamers who attempt to
> make games and end up overpromising and not delivering. Molyneux comes to
> mind right away, although I suspect he'd be very produtive with just a
> little bit of a leash and a lot of direction. Or maybe it is that someone
> like Molyneux doesn't actually understand the product and only dreams big.

Thinking back to your original point, it's more than simply 'giving
a damn'. It's that, plus maintaining enough distance to not become
attached. Molyneux did too much of the former.

It's also really really important not to put something on a bullet list
of features until you've prototyped it properly...

[Kendrick Kerwin Chua]

In article <nm8b7c$srt$1...@dont-email.me>, hurricanepilot <h@g.c> wrote:
>Kendrick Kerwin Chua wrote:
>

<On the disconnect between video game labour and management>

>> I'm going to interrupt you here and mention only that in both film and TV,
>> the people who approve the products are also very rarely consumers of
>> those products. It's like restauranteurs who don't care about food, or car
>> salesmen who can't drive.
>
>Agreed, but there's less of a disconnect between the studio -> producer
>-> director -> crew, with each level interacting with those above
>and/or below.
>

<snip>>

>
>In the gaming industry, the suits and the soldiers can be on diffrerent
>continents. And in this modern era of gaming where content creation
>trumps technology in terms of efforts, it's often the case where the
>soldiers are all over the globe.
>
>What I find the most depressing about that situation is when a company
>like Airtight Games goes under when they've done exactly as asked. In
>that particular instance (Murdered: Soul Suspect) it seemed to me that
>Square Enix and their in-house Director generated all of the risk, but
>shouldered none of it.
>

Your discussion of geography prompts me to remember the work I did at the
bank, where I took handover from an office in the UK and then handed over
to Australia at the end of my day. Not only was our level of risk not
proportionate, but our priorities were (literally) all over the map as
well. Stuff that was a crisis during banking hours in the UK might have
been a full-on regulatory catastrophe in the US and then not a big deal in
Oz, or any combination you would care to put together. I'm tempted to
observe that a video game might need an auteur, or at least one global
project manager (ugh) that keeps everybody pointed in the same direction
and reading off the same page.

>>>In a movie or tv scenario, there's also a much more complete picture
>>>available at greenlight time, be it a pitch for a show or a script for a
>>>screenplay. It can be read, assessed and a much better picture of the
>>>end product can be gleaned from that initial input.
>>

>> This I hadn't considered. In spite of Agile development being a thing, you
>> can't ever have a situation where at the end of every two-week sprint you
>> have an actual game that you can ship. You have many disparate pieces, but
>> until you connect them all together you can't really tell if there's any
>> server-side lag or client performance problems.
>

>It seems like some succesful independent studios are using agile
>approaches in ways that seem to work, but I agree, it's difficult to
>think of a scenario where a sprint duration of a couple of weeks makes
>any sense until you're nearly done. Though it's often a
>misrepresentation of agile when it's suggested that the output of a
>sprint /has/ to be tangible.
>

Part of the problem with Agile is that everybody defines it differently
and nobody is using it quite the same way. But the whole point is to be
able to set goals and mark progress in a way that nobody can dispute and
that all the right players have input into. Again, here comes that auteur
mind to be the 'product owner' in the Scrum parlance, where one guy has
the vision and is directing everybody in service of it.

>> I can't argue in favour of the notion that it only comes down to 'give a
>> damn' because there are plenty of passionate real gamers who attempt to
>> make games and end up overpromising and not delivering. Molyneux comes to
>> mind right away, although I suspect he'd be very produtive with just a
>> little bit of a leash and a lot of direction. Or maybe it is that someone
>> like Molyneux doesn't actually understand the product and only dreams big.
>
>Thinking back to your original point, it's more than simply 'giving
>a damn'. It's that, plus maintaining enough distance to not become
>attached. Molyneux did too much of the former.
>
>It's also really really important not to put something on a bullet list
>of features until you've prototyped it properly...
>

Here we are at the 'walking away' concept again then. Putting aside the
concept of pride (or indeed, arrogance) what kind of valour or maturity
does it take for someone in the games industry to look at what they're
doing and decide not to do it any more? In terms of delivering a single
game I mean, not in the sense of leaving the software development world to
become a longshoreman or something.

Your Square Enix example is a pretty good illustration of that. A game
publisher should (ideally) be willing to invest X amount of money into a
game fully knowing that they might get nothing at all for their risky
expenditure. Of course, that's bad business, unless you consider that
developing the skills and the institutional processes has worth in itself.
Maybe this is why the game studios keep having to reinvent the wheel,
because when they show up there is no wheel and there are no roads, and if
they fail then nothing they built stays behind. That's even more
depressing to think about.

-KKC, who didn't mean to get this deep and should pull out a little.

[Toby Newman]

I know that Witcher gets stick for the objectification of women with
the cards and dating sub-games. Is one of the women you encounter called
Drytris?

[hurricanepilot]

Toby Newman wrote:

> On 2016-07-14, hurricanepilot <h@g.c> wrote:
>> Toby Newman wrote:
>>
>>>>>I quite enjoyed Wet.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I regret only that we didn't get a sequel called 'Dry' and perhaps a
>>>> spinoff mobile game somehow called 'Vac' to complement them both. :)
>>>
>>> Imagine if Wetris came first, and there was a spin-off called Drytris.
>>
>> These are both potential outcomes of one of the quests in The Witcher 3.
>
> I know that Witcher gets stick for the objectification of women with
> the cards and dating sub-games. Is one of the women you encounter called
> Drytris?

No, just Tris... :)

[Toby Newman]

On 2016-07-14, Kendrick Kerwin Chua <kend...@nospam.io-nyc> wrote:

> In article <slrnnof5li...@asktoby.eternal-september.org>,
> Toby Newman <goo...@asktoby.com> wrote:
>>
>>I enjoyed Aliens Colonial Marines and am glad it got released. Same
>>with DNF. And I wish Firefly wasn't canned. I'm all for releasing what
>>you have.
>>
>
> Those specific examples aside, there must have been some game that you
> played where your abiding impression afterwards was that it needed a bit
> more time in the oven. I would argue that releasing what one has may not
> always be enough, especially when the end goal is to recoup what was spent
> (as opposed to just putting any old thing out there, which is what got
> Sega into so much trouble back in the day).

I would always rather play a game that petered out into low poly sewer
levels than not play it at all and be baited by the preview
screenshots. I'd get to confirm that it wasn't very good, instead of
endlessly imagining how good it could have been.

> This is one of the things about going to the movies that I and the wife
> disagree on, that she's open to any experience in the theatre and I want
> to show up with a reasonable confidence that I'm not about to throw away
> twenty dollars and two hours of my life. To that end, she never reads
> reviews or watches trailers and wants to experience every film like it's
> brand new, whereas I obsessively pore over criticism and source material.
> I hate wasting my time on something that was preventable and could have
> been anticipated.

I'm like your wife. In that sense at least. A film is a suspension of
disbelief. Too much info going in and I see it as a product instead of
a rectangular portal to another world.

[Kendrick Kerwin Chua]

In article <slrnnohb9p...@asktoby.eternal-september.org>,

Toby Newman <goo...@asktoby.com> wrote:
>On 2016-07-14, Kendrick Kerwin Chua <kend...@nospam.io-nyc> wrote:
>>>
>
>> This is one of the things about going to the movies that I and the wife
>> disagree on, that she's open to any experience in the theatre and I want
>> to show up with a reasonable confidence that I'm not about to throw away
>> twenty dollars and two hours of my life. To that end, she never reads
>> reviews or watches trailers and wants to experience every film like it's
>> brand new, whereas I obsessively pore over criticism and source material.
>> I hate wasting my time on something that was preventable and could have
>> been anticipated.
>
>I'm like your wife.

You do have beautiful eyes.

>In that sense at least.

Oh right. I momentarily forgot that you are Immersion Man, who has the
power to make things very wet.

>A film is a suspension of
>disbelief. Too much info going in and I see it as a product instead of
>a rectangular portal to another world.
>

Without going deep into some sort of Internet-flavoured Charlie Rose
interview, I have to admit that I'm very resistant to losing myself in any
fiction the way that you enjoy it. I've seen many, many examples of fans
who are so far gone into their enthusiasm that they see the rest of the
world as some sort of economic scaffolding that holds up their preferred
reality, and that's always scared the hell out of me. These are the people
who send death threats to people rumoured to become new Top Gear
presenters, or who think that the end of the world is nigh because
Ghostbusters got rebooted. That I prefer to know the boundaries of the
fourth wall also helps me keep a healthy distance from all this media wot
I love.

Incidentally, my wife also has incredible difficulty remembering the names
of actors, in spite of having been a SAG/AFTRA/Equity card holder herself
at some point in her life. She'll turn to me whilst watching TV and ask,
'Is that person familiar?' and I'll immediately say 'Yes, that's Greg
Kinnear, and this movie is Sabrina, and the other channels are playing
Mystery Men and Auto Focus and Heaven is Real because he's got something
coming out on home video next week.' She then gets very cross with me for
being able to identify movies I've never seen before. :)

-KKC, who is really good at 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon'.

[Tony]

On 2016-07-14, Kendrick Kerwin Chua <kend...@nospam.io-nyc> wrote:

> Here we are at the 'walking away' concept again then. Putting aside the
> concept of pride (or indeed, arrogance) what kind of valour or maturity
> does it take for someone in the games industry to look at what they're
> doing and decide not to do it any more? In terms of delivering a single
> game I mean, not in the sense of leaving the software development world to
> become a longshoreman or something.

Surely it's because it's not a black and white choice between fail and
succeed. It's all a measure of success. If you sell Y units, you
reclaim X% of your costs. If you don't release, you recover 0% of your
costs.

So people are mugged into 'just doing a bit more' to try and increase
the ratio of that X% against the production costs.

--
Tony Evans
'A learning experience is one of those things that say, "You know that
thing you just did? Don't do that."' Douglas Adams.
Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eightbittony/
Blog: http://perceptionistruth.com/

[Kendrick Kerwin Chua]

In article <nmi3ns$h1o$1...@darkstorm.eternal-september.org>,

Tony <to...@darkstorm.co.uk> wrote:
>On 2016-07-14, Kendrick Kerwin Chua <kend...@nospam.io-nyc> wrote:
>
>> Here we are at the 'walking away' concept again then. Putting aside the
>> concept of pride (or indeed, arrogance) what kind of valour or maturity
>> does it take for someone in the games industry to look at what they're
>> doing and decide not to do it any more? In terms of delivering a single
>> game I mean, not in the sense of leaving the software development world to
>> become a longshoreman or something.
>
>Surely it's because it's not a black and white choice between fail and
>succeed. It's all a measure of success. If you sell Y units, you
>reclaim X% of your costs. If you don't release, you recover 0% of your
>costs.
>
>So people are mugged into 'just doing a bit more' to try and increase
>the ratio of that X% against the production costs.
>

You're right of course, but I suppose where I'm lost in the weeds is over
the things that aren't being measured by the money. What would have been
worse for Gearbox's reputation, that they released Colonial Marines to
derisive reviews (and a significant number of actual retail returns) or if
they hadn't released it at all and just made everybody wonder? I suppose
it helps that most gamers are fickle and don't actually care, which means
that any game company can simply abuse their people and their good will
whenever they want. There's limits to that of course, as Konami has been
discovering.

In your scenario, obviously the X value shouldn't just be 100 percent, it
should rightfully be much more. And worse, there are a number of
individuals in the process who get paid the same no matter what, for both
good and bad reasons. For every ten designers and testers who get a base
salary and no share of the profits, there someone higher up whose base pay
is being determined by the (lack of) sales, and then someone higher still
who gets seven digits no matter how well or poorly the game does. There's
all kinds of injustice all around.

-KKC, who should go and start the PWB now.

[Toby Newman]

On 2016-07-15, Kendrick Kerwin Chua <kend...@nospam.io-nyc> wrote:
> In article <slrnnohb9p...@asktoby.eternal-september.org>,
> Toby Newman <goo...@asktoby.com> wrote:
>>On 2016-07-14, Kendrick Kerwin Chua <kend...@nospam.io-nyc> wrote:
>>>>
>>
>>> This is one of the things about going to the movies that I and the wife
>>> disagree on, that she's open to any experience in the theatre and I want
>>> to show up with a reasonable confidence that I'm not about to throw away
>>> twenty dollars and two hours of my life. To that end, she never reads
>>> reviews or watches trailers and wants to experience every film like it's
>>> brand new, whereas I obsessively pore over criticism and source material.
>>> I hate wasting my time on something that was preventable and could have
>>> been anticipated.
>>
>>I'm like your wife.
>
> You do have beautiful eyes.
>

> Incidentally, my wife also has incredible difficulty remembering the names
> of actors, in spite of having been a SAG/AFTRA/Equity card holder herself
> at some point in her life. She'll turn to me whilst watching TV and ask,
> 'Is that person familiar?' and I'll immediately say 'Yes, that's Greg
> Kinnear, and this movie is Sabrina, and the other channels are playing
> Mystery Men and Auto Focus and Heaven is Real because he's got something
> coming out on home video next week.' She then gets very cross with me for
> being able to identify movies I've never seen before. :)

In this way, also, I am very like your wife. Perhaps it would be best
for all if we ceased this line of questioning! I tend to get to the
end of films and TV shows and still not know anyone's name. I've
watched all but the last Walking Dead but only know one name. Mind
you, this is the names of *characters* not actors.

[Kendrick Kerwin Chua]

In article <slrnnopeke...@asktoby.eternal-september.org>,

Toby Newman <goo...@asktoby.com> wrote:
>On 2016-07-15, Kendrick Kerwin Chua <kend...@nospam.io-nyc> wrote:
>>

<On immersion in media>

>>
>> Incidentally, my wife also has incredible difficulty remembering the names
>> of actors, in spite of having been a SAG/AFTRA/Equity card holder herself
>> at some point in her life. She'll turn to me whilst watching TV and ask,
>> 'Is that person familiar?' and I'll immediately say 'Yes, that's Greg
>> Kinnear, and this movie is Sabrina, and the other channels are playing
>> Mystery Men and Auto Focus and Heaven is Real because he's got something
>> coming out on home video next week.' She then gets very cross with me for
>> being able to identify movies I've never seen before. :)
>
>In this way, also, I am very like your wife. Perhaps it would be best
>for all if we ceased this line of questioning! I tend to get to the
>end of films and TV shows and still not know anyone's name. I've
>watched all but the last Walking Dead but only know one name. Mind
>you, this is the names of *characters* not actors.
>

Character naming is a tough task. You have to pick something that's
extraordinarily distinct, but not so strange or comedic as to be
completely implausible. Then you have to make sure it's linguistically
correct and has a construction and spelling that doesn't infringe on an
existing trademark or copyright across five continents where the laws and
the precedents are wildly inconsistent. And then you have to deal with the
whimsy of the writer, who then decides at the last minute that due to
casting the character should have the surname 'McGarry' instead of
'Jacobi' and then all your scripts for the next seven weeks need updates.

I think it's important to know the actors and their work, because what you
lose in immersion you gain in entry to other media. I first encountered
Frank Langella in, believe it or not, his role in Star Trek as a corrupt
and ambitious politician. It was such a powerful, bravura performance that
echoed across the whole of the series, even though it was just a guest
spot in the second season opener of Deep Space Nine. I don't think I would
have sought out his other, better-known work if I hadn't encountered him
there, or if I hadn't known who he was.

To know that it is a performance, and to be aware of the performer, is to
be aware of other work from that same performer of equal quality and
grandeur. If you like Riley Reid in one film then you're going to want to
see her in other films based on the notion that her body of work is
comparable across the range of all her performances. Maybe that's not the
best example to close on.

-KKC

[Tony]

And somewhere in there, there's a human being that thinks, "If we don't
release this, I can't pay Bob or Mary their salary next week, and
they're out looking for work. If we do release it, maybe we take a hit
in the short term, but I can pay wages and only have to fire half the
staff, instead of all of them."

Reading your other posts, you have a fairly analytical, logical approach
to this. Most business decisions are based on emotions, and any logic
is just used to justify an already made decision in post.

IME.