Game Jobs Megathread: Wear clean underwear to avoid the smellz.

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endlosnull: Dec 29, 2006

ShinAli posted:

Are they going to be recording the sessions? Pretty excited about Galak-Z.

They have some archived videos of previous sessions but I can't say for sure it's all of them.

# ? Aug 19, 2014 21:10

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# ? Jun 4, 2024 02:40

theflyingorc: Jun 28, 2008; ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS; Young Orc

Akuma posted:

Is there reams of data to support the notion that good games with good demos have resulted in reduced sales? If the argument against demos is you're not able to trick people into buying a lovely game then I dunno, man.

Yes, yes, everyone who makes games you don't enjoy is conniving and evil, existing only to trick you into buying them.

Youtube is actually LESS likely to mislead you about a game's content than a demo is, so it hardly matters. Demos are expensive to produce, and lots of really good games don't look that great in small doses. Don't be weird.

# ? Aug 19, 2014 21:13

ZombieApostate: Mar 13, 2011; Sorry, I didn't read your post.

I'm too busy replying to what I wish you said

I remember there being a number of games over the years that had demos that misrepresented the full game pretty severely, so having a demo isn't necessarily better for the consumer than not having one. They are, after all, marketing tools created by the same people trying to sell you the game. Obviously, most indie devs probably don't have the profit driven mentality to mislead with a demo, but they also generally can't afford to spend the time making a demo anyways, so it's kind of a moot point.

I used to think not having demos was pretty lovely, and it was when Youtube and Twitch weren't a thing, but now you can watch someone play a section of the real game without its creators/marketing people restricting what you see to only the positives. The only downside is you might have to wait until after release day to see if the game is terrible or not.

So a demo costs extra money to make, doesn't help the consumer decide if they like the game and there's a better alternative to see how the game actually plays. I don't think demos make sense from a practical standpoint, anymore, even without any statistics to back it up.

# ? Aug 19, 2014 22:28

Akuma: Sep 11, 2001

theflyingorc posted:

Yes, yes, everyone who makes games you don't enjoy is conniving and evil, existing only to trick you into buying them.

Youtube is actually LESS likely to mislead you about a game's content than a demo is, so it hardly matters. Demos are expensive to produce, and lots of really good games don't look that great in small doses. Don't be weird.

Serious question asked in an admittedly facetious way. Generally it may be true that demos aren't worth it because the expended cost isn't really recouped or the time could be better spent or it's misrepresentative or whatever.

BUT, there have been some great demos over the years, what's the analysis look like there? How much of a positive effect did the MGS2 demo have? How many people bought Dead Rising because of it's bitchin' demo? How well did the mandatory trials on XBLA work out for the really good games - and not just generally across the board for all games, because a trial for a bad or mediocre game is obviously not going to do it any favours.

I'm not being "weird" for asking a question from a very handwavey response of "demos are dead because they were bad for everyone, data says so, trust me." Which Shalinor has every right to say because it's generally accepted wisdom by now and she's probably studied it at length, but maybe it would be interesting to go a little deeper with the stats and analysis.

Edit: for the record a YouTube video of one of my games gave a lot of people the totally wrong impression of not just the content but the technical execution because it was shoddily recorded. And it was really the only one out there, and by the time we got the demo out (quite a while after release) it was already too late to make any impact. It's a nuanced subject and I don't fully understand what your first paragraph is really saying.

Akuma fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Aug 19, 2014

# ? Aug 19, 2014 23:08

DancingPenguin: Nov 27, 2012; I ish kakadu.

Akuma posted:

BUT, there have been some great demos over the years, what's the analysis look like there? How much of a positive effect did the MGS2 demo have? How many people bought Dead Rising because of it's bitchin' demo?

Came by to drop some pseudoscience.
The Stanley Parable was the talk of pretty much everyone I knew that played games a week after their demo was released.
I have a hard time imagining that game not selling very well after such a strong demo. (I can of course be very wrong, way too tired to Google statistics.)

# ? Aug 19, 2014 23:21

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

DancingPenguin posted:

Came by to drop some pseudoscience.
The Stanley Parable was the talk of pretty much everyone I knew that played games a week after their demo was released.
I have a hard time imagining that game not selling very well after such a strong demo. (I can of course be very wrong, way too tired to Google statistics.)

That's pretty much the problem. There are a handful of good demos that you can rattle off. Every single one of them was a highly polished, custom-made chunk of content - effectively a whole other game, often literally a whole other game - designed and released for free to incentivize buying another game.

Good demos, the kind that sell games, are SUPER rare, and SUPER costly. Every other kind of demo damages your sales. The "Retro City Rampage" demo? The developer tried super hard to make it a good demo, but inadvertently made it a bad one by skewing too heavily toward memes and action setpieces in trying to show off all the cool stuff in the final game. So that was a demo that cost as much as a "good" demo, in every way built to be a "good" demo, but ended up a "bad" demo for reasons entirely out of his control except in retrospect. The argument against demos is thus a statistical one. The few cases where a demo is good are far, far outweighed by all the ways in which they can expectedly or unexpectedly be bad.

This is why you step back, and ask yourself "what is a demo trying to achieve?". Answer: "Allowing the consumer to make an informed purchasing decision." So you look for alternative, less costly, more consistently "good" solutions to that problem, and you find: YouTube videos. Which is why we no longer have demos, and instead just make super sure YouTube'ers have the game. Now you can tell the scammer publishers/games by the ones that withhold copies from YouTube'ers or otherwise attempt to silence bad videos or buy good videos. In the old days, they would have released a dishonest demo instead.

EDIT: God dammit why didn't I just post the Extra Credits video. I couldn't remember where I'd seen the really good argument. Here we go, just watch this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QM6LoaqEnY

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Aug 20, 2014

# ? Aug 20, 2014 00:17

Brackhar: Aug 26, 2006; I'll give you a definite maybe.

OneEightHundred posted:

It'd help to have some context to what Secrets of Raetikon got bumped off by, but even egregious cases like Air Control are something that would be hard to deal with. What criteria would you use to fail Air Control but pass (for the sake of argument, I'm aware that it isn't on Steam) the original Octodad?

Every option that I can think of has had detraction. If they go by popularity, then it'll turn into a war of marketing budgets and getting in first (which is the usual complaint about the featured games anyway). If they screen, then they'll reject games that aren't trendy enough. If they require polish, then they'll cull a lot titles that depend more on novel game mechanics.

Yeah, I don't think there's a perfect answer here, but my argument is that at this point simply doing something, even if it's flawed, is better than nothing. Here would be my proposal:

The game has to include the feature sets described in the promotional material to be a full release (Early access is obviously excluded from this). Although I wouldn't expect Valve to play through and confirm, if reports come in from users that false advertising was used the game will permanently be removed from Steam (This would cover Towns and The War Z).
Valve screens self-published games by whatever metric they previously used (This would have stopped Air Control).
If Valve rejects a self-published game with above, it can still enter Steam via Steam Greenlight (This would allow Octodad 1 to get on the store).

Now the key there is that Valve doesn't really want to do #2 any more, but I'd by fine with them being more lax than they were previously.

Brackhar fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Aug 20, 2014

# ? Aug 20, 2014 00:34

Sigma-X: Jun 17, 2005

Akuma posted:

Is there reams of data to support the notion that good games with good demos have resulted in reduced sales? If the argument against demos is you're not able to trick people into buying a lovely game then I dunno, man.

Back when THQ existed we discovered that the conversion rate for (metacritic 85%, winner of multiple "best sleeper hit," incredibly poorly marketed) Red Faction Guerrilla's demo was only like 5%. They had a bunch of other conversion rate data but the gist was that the conversion rate was abysmal and it was easy to infer that the people who converted were sales confirmed through other venues and that the demo was just a "sneak peek." We had a sweet demo too - one of the concerns raised was that it was actually too much game as it was a mission that was replayable in different ways and that showed off pretty much the full potential of RFG's GeoMod destruction. The Saints Row 1 demo had similar concerns as the conversion rate was pretty bad on that but it was a huge effort to produce and still allowed glitches that allowed people out of the demo area and into significantly more content.

Incentivizing early access through preorder with "betas" (which means demo, obviously - if you've made one you know it's effectively a full public release) is much better than just a downloadable demo, and if your game has a value proposition that doesn't easily come across in a short segment / is spent during a short segment, the demo is not going to benefit you much either.

I'd really like to see anyone list some "good games with good demos" that includes more than 5 titles from the past 5 years that excludes betas.

Demos suck. A multiplayer beta is a bit easier to launch as the way multiplayer works (choosing and executing on specific data sets) is a lot easier to engineer into a reduced state than trying to chop your game up and have custom start/end points and potentially new/edited/re-cut content.

# ? Aug 20, 2014 01:06

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Sion posted:

Asking players to rate their experience with a game, asking developers to give out demos of games (remember those?) or maybe going nuts and having a ~star reviewer~ tag or something. Critical Appraisal of games on Steam is really what's needed in a lot of these cases and a way to work that critical appraisal into the shopping experience would also be great.

I think reviews are the ideal direction, but the problem is getting good reviewers. User reviews are biassed towards customers that have some sort of emotional investment in writing a review, which for reviews only open to customers mostly means people who have had bad experiences, and for reviews open to the public means people who haven't played it writing reviews for PR reasons.

What it'd need are people who aren't invested in the success or failure of it or trying to specifically choose a game they think they'll like reviewing, a role professional critics normally serve, but anyone with that task would have to wade through a lot of submissions, and it still runs into the problem of competing for their attention.

Sigma-X posted:

I'd really like to see anyone list some "good games with good demos" that includes more than 5 titles from the past 5 years that excludes betas.

It depends what you call a demo. I think it'd be more accurate to say is that demos evolved into more effective models. Free games with DLC episodes are effectively demos, loss leaders that do the same thing may as well be, and F2P is basically a highly-refined demo model, especially in multiplayer games where it gives paying customers more people to play with. Both of them integrate it better too, i.e. long experiences with the paid content constantly being teased and the content barriers being implicit in the design.

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Aug 20, 2014

# ? Aug 20, 2014 03:11

ceebee: Feb 12, 2004

Layoffs at Sucker Punch. Rumors say around 20%, but the layoffs themselves are confirmed.

# ? Aug 20, 2014 04:55

Brackhar: Aug 26, 2006; I'll give you a definite maybe.

ceebee posted:

Layoffs at Sucker Punch. Rumors say around 20%, but the layoffs themselves are confirmed.

That's sad. Second Son was a really good effort.

# ? Aug 20, 2014 05:38

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Brackhar posted:

That's sad. Second Son was a really good effort.

This is probably specifically because of that. They'd have wrapped on any post-release content by now, and there's no new project in its late phase to roll them onto, so - gotta dump production staff.

# ? Aug 20, 2014 05:54

GeauxSteve: Feb 26, 2004; Nubzilla

Aw that sucks. I know a bunch of people over there

# ? Aug 20, 2014 06:16

Sunning: Sep 14, 2011; Nintendo Guru

ceebee posted:

Layoffs at Sucker Punch. Rumors say around 20%, but the layoffs themselves are confirmed.

Someone who visited Sucker Punch and is friends with employees on Facebook said it was even higher and it included longtime employees:

quote:

Educated guess from my Facebook and Twitter:
Around 30% to 40% of the staff were laid off.
Majority of these are full time exempt employees (salary positions).
Some have been at Sucker Punch over 10 years.
All areas effected including design, programming, art, marketing, production, and test.

My heart goes out to all those effected.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=126234857&postcount=165

quote:

Pretty clear it is over 20, probably closer to 30.

Again, heart goes out to those hit. Totally sucks. Silver lining is that 343i and Amazon are hiring a lot, as well as Cryptic and Gameloft just opening offices in the last couple months.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=126241295&postcount=198

It might be a restructuring of the developer rather than the unfortunately common downsizing you have when a company ships a game but doesn't have a large enough project in the future to justify its team size at the time.

# ? Aug 20, 2014 14:07

Ularg: Mar 2, 2010; Just tell me I'm exotic.

Oh man, why in the world did Sucker Punch need layoffs? I thought Infamous: Second Son did pretty well? I hope they all get picked up. :smith:

# ? Aug 20, 2014 14:27

theflyingorc: Jun 28, 2008; ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS; Young Orc

I felt significant less aware of Second Son's existence than of any of the previous games in the franchise, perhaps there was a marketing gap?

# ? Aug 20, 2014 14:31

Chernabog: Apr 16, 2007

I saw lots of ads for SS, on buses and billboards.

# ? Aug 20, 2014 15:09

Mega Shark: Oct 4, 2004

Chernabog posted:

I saw lots of ads for SS, on buses and billboards.

Good thing nobody reads your little Time magazine.

# ? Aug 20, 2014 17:35

Gearman: Dec 6, 2011

Sigma-X posted:

Back when THQ existed we discovered that the conversion rate for (metacritic 85%, winner of multiple "best sleeper hit," incredibly poorly marketed) Red Faction Guerrilla's demo was only like 5%. They had a bunch of other conversion rate data but the gist was that the conversion rate was abysmal and it was easy to infer that the people who converted were sales confirmed through other venues and that the demo was just a "sneak peek." We had a sweet demo too - one of the concerns raised was that it was actually too much game as it was a mission that was replayable in different ways and that showed off pretty much the full potential of RFG's GeoMod destruction.

Funny you say that, as I loved the hell out of the Red Faction Guerilla demo. Ran right out and bought the game as soon as I could. It was the last demo I've played that I've really enjoyed (betas for games not included), and one of the few that actually got me to go out and buy the game.

# ? Aug 20, 2014 22:40

xgalaxy: Jan 27, 2004; i write code

Star Wars Commander, a game I helped out on, will be hitting the App Store in 15 minutes. Check it out :p

It's out:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/star-wars-commander/id847985808?mt=8

xgalaxy fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Aug 21, 2014

# ? Aug 21, 2014 04:48

theflyingorc: Jun 28, 2008; ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS; Young Orc

Finally having a good week personally for industry job hunting. Two separate interviews where I've done well on the Engineering test - thanks to whoever linked Jorge Rodriguez's 3D math youtube channel a while back - it's been instrumental in having the confidence, and the ability, to have some good interviews.

# ? Aug 21, 2014 05:00

Brackhar: Aug 26, 2006; I'll give you a definite maybe.

theflyingorc posted:

Finally having a good week personally for industry job hunting. Two separate interviews where I've done well on the Engineering test - thanks to whoever linked Jorge Rodriguez's 3D math youtube channel a while back - it's been instrumental in having the confidence, and the ability, to have some good interviews.

I'm pretty sure at this point I'd openly challenge my interviewer if they asked me a 3D math question instead of answering it. I really think that stuff is ridiculous to ask in an interview.

# ? Aug 21, 2014 05:36

Mega Shark: Oct 4, 2004

Brackhar posted:

I'm pretty sure at this point I'd openly challenge my interviewer if they asked me a 3D math question instead of answering it. I really think that stuff is ridiculous to ask in an interview.

You would laughed out of a lot of places.

# ? Aug 21, 2014 06:12

A Catastrophe: Jun 26, 2014

Shalinor posted:

EDIT: God dammit why didn't I just post the Extra Credits video. I couldn't remember where I'd seen the really good argument. Here we go, just watch this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QM6LoaqEnY

I remember watching this a while ago and I wondered then how this related to kickstarters, because it seems like a demo might be a good investment there.

# ? Aug 21, 2014 07:25

theflyingorc: Jun 28, 2008; ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS; Young Orc

A Catastrophe posted:

I remember watching this a while ago and I wondered then how this related to kickstarters, because it seems like a demo might be a good investment there.

No way. Kickstarter is ALL ABOUT getting people to give you money for the impossible game idea in their head, demo would crater your sales.

Also, if you have the ability to make a worthwhile demo, you have enough money to skip Kickstarter. A good demo requires a mostly -completed game.

# ? Aug 21, 2014 14:10

leper khan: Dec 28, 2010; Honest to god thinks Half Life 2 is a bad game. But at least he likes Monster Hunter.

Mega Shark posted:

You would laughed out of a lot of places.

If I was feeling snarky about it in an interview, I'd phrase my disdain as an open problem in a sub field of mathematics related to the question they asked. If nothing else, doing so would show me if they actually care about the topic or if they're just looking for a reasonable parrot.

I'm pretty bad at interviews though.

# ? Aug 21, 2014 15:28

Slurps Mad Rips: Jan 25, 2009; Bwaltow!

leper khan posted:

If I was feeling snarky about it in an interview, I'd phrase my disdain as an open problem in a sub field of mathematics related to the question they asked. If nothing else, doing so would show me if they actually care about the topic or if they're just looking for a reasonable parrot.

I'm pretty bad at interviews though.

When are you not feeling snarky? :v:

# ? Aug 21, 2014 15:39

leper khan: Dec 28, 2010; Honest to god thinks Half Life 2 is a bad game. But at least he likes Monster Hunter.

SAHChandler posted:

When are you not feeling snarky?

I am good at what I am good at. :smugbert:

# ? Aug 21, 2014 15:53

Leif.: Mar 27, 2005; Son of the Defender
Formerly Diplomaticus/SWATJester

Dear god the indie game developers megagroup on facebook is a festering cesspit of bad.

# ? Aug 21, 2014 16:24

devilmouse: Mar 26, 2004; It's just like real life.

I've got a copy of Unity, an idea for a game, and an opinion that needs to be shared. WATCH OUT!

# ? Aug 21, 2014 16:27

theflyingorc: Jun 28, 2008; ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS; Young Orc

Leif. posted:

Dear god the indie game developers megagroup on facebook is a festering cesspit of bad.

I mean, it's at the intersection of delusion and a complete lack of actual professionalism, what do you expect?

# ? Aug 21, 2014 16:29

xzzy: Mar 5, 2009

devilmouse posted:

I've got a copy of Unity, an idea for a game, and an opinion that needs to be shared. WATCH OUT!

Pick any two and you're good to go!

# ? Aug 21, 2014 16:31

Leif.: Mar 27, 2005; Son of the Defender
Formerly Diplomaticus/SWATJester

I don't know what I was expecting, I thought maybe I could pick up some clients there. I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER. I SHOULD HAVE SEEN IT.

# ? Aug 21, 2014 16:38

theflyingorc: Jun 28, 2008; ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS; Young Orc

Leif. posted:

I don't know what I was expecting, I thought maybe I could pick up some clients there. I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER. I SHOULD HAVE SEEN IT.

They seem right up your alley, Mr. LEAVES COLORADO ON A CALIFORNIA NDA.

# ? Aug 21, 2014 16:49

Monster w21 Faces: May 11, 2006; "What the fuck is that?"
"What the fuck is this?!"

What's the difference between an indie dev and a hobbyist?

# ? Aug 21, 2014 16:50

Leif.: Mar 27, 2005; Son of the Defender
Formerly Diplomaticus/SWATJester

theflyingorc posted:

They seem right up your alley, Mr. LEAVES COLORADO ON A CALIFORNIA NDA.

They both start with C, they both are full of pot-smoking hippies, it's basically the same thing.

# ? Aug 21, 2014 16:55

devilmouse: Mar 26, 2004; It's just like real life.

Monster w21 Faces posted:

What's the difference between an indie dev and a hobbyist?

This question could blow up into a firestorm if asked on Twitter!

# ? Aug 21, 2014 17:00

le capitan: Dec 29, 2006; When the boat goes down, I'll be driving

Leif. posted:

I don't know what I was expecting, I thought maybe I could pick up some clients there. I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER. I SHOULD HAVE SEEN IT.

Yeah i was looking for work in the indie scene and best case scenario it is pet projects with no money... and then there's much worse...

# ? Aug 21, 2014 17:12

Sigma-X: Jun 17, 2005

Monster w21 Faces posted:

What's the difference between an indie dev and a hobbyist?

The hobbyist has realistic goals and a sense of self-awareness about their ability.

Assuming Leif is talking about the indie game dev group on FB and minded by Mikael V, it's a
Hilarious pile of people with opinions that far exceed their ability. I quite enjoy yhe group but only for the entertainment factor.

# ? Aug 21, 2014 17:15

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# ? Jun 4, 2024 02:40

concerned mom: Apr 22, 2003; by Lowtax; Grimey Drawer

Monster w21 Faces posted:

What's the difference between an indie dev and a hobbyist?

Indie dev means literally anything you like. Hobbyist means you don't do it for a living. Except when you do.

# ? Aug 21, 2014 17:35

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