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Tricky Ed posted:I don't know of anyone who isn't marketing who doesn't think this. For a game I worked on last year we had all these lovely concept pieces drawn up and very accessible to everyone including the publisher's marketing team. Anyway they came back with the "finished" game icon being a terribly photoshopped tree presumably from google images, with the aliased artefacting still in, over the game logo which had also been poorly cut out. These guys are all probably on a lot more money than we were too. Needless to say we redid the whole thing and sent it back to them, so they pretty much did nothing.
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Jun 5, 2015 08:27
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The past 3 studios I've been at I've seen some pretty awful stuff get pushed to the public without anybody catching it. Even with Battleborn, some of those still images make me cringe with how badly photoshopped/painted they are compared to our actual in-game stuff, or what our internal artists are capable of. The only thing I try to do is to be more vocal about it and offer my ability to try and fix whatever I have time to. But a lot of the time I don't have the free time to fix things so I cross my fingers and hope that the public doesn't really notice that much. I'm sure they do (and don't), but not as conciously specific as us artists would, it's probably more of a broad observation like "Battleborn characters don't look as good as Overwatch characters". And they'd be completely right, both because of marketing presentation and the fact that our engine is 10 years old and showing it's age haha. Plus Blizzard has top notch talent for both tech and art (one of my former character leads matter of fact) and about 8x the amount of employees as us. I still think our game looks more fun Regardless. I'm beyond excited that Battleborn, Overwatch, and Gigantic are coming out because I'm not really a fan of the whole top down MOBA genre. Those three all have kickass art, and each their own strengths that's for sure. I hope all three can achieve success and we can co-exist without rampant competition and comparisons (lololo) concerned mom posted:Oh this is you guys? Nice work! I've been gushing over the effects for months. You can thank this magnificent bastard for pretty much defining the style of our FX: http://www.gagneint.com/ Michel Gagne is one of those old school badass 2D animators that we're lucky enough to have help revive that style a bit for our game. The only technical issue is the massive texture memory usage that those spritesheets take up ahahah. ceebee fucked around with this message at 08:51 on Jun 5, 2015 |
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Jun 5, 2015 08:37
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Tricky Ed posted:I don't know of anyone who isn't marketing who doesn't think this. Why not both? To provide more context: When you're making marketing  content you're usually coming at it from a different perspective than developers. Developers have been face first in this poo poo for years by this point and that brings a whole stack of baggage along with it. Marketers might have been involved with it for a couple of months tops which brings less baggage but still something - they'll have favourite characters or iconic images that are different from developers choices. Their job is to move away from the perspective of 'I know what this is about' to 'I need to explain this to someone that thinks that this is probably going to be a DOTA clone or mobile game.' It looks like it's poo poo because it's not explaining the stuff that you care or know about because you care and know about poo poo that people outside the project don't care or know about.At the same time, it's entirely possible that the marketing person might just be a bit garbo. Marketing can be a little bit like selling snake oil sometimes. You find yourself going 'trust me, this content is going to electrify our target customer base, especially around the primary gifting period,' and then you find yourself thinking about synergistic social media and you begin to cry internally (and also externally if you can get 10 minutes alone in a bathroom stall.) Sometimes the person talking about primary gifting periods knows what the gently caress they're on about and you can ask them for some KPI figures and go from there. Othertimes they'll just say 'trust me' and leave it at that. Something to think about with youtube marketing launches. If, after an hour of the video being up, the top comment is 'whats the name of the song in the video' then maybe your game isn't being put across as strongly as it should be. Sion fucked around with this message at 09:12 on Jun 5, 2015 |
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Jun 5, 2015 08:53
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Which is why marketing should be more involved in development. One of the best parts about a small team is most of the time your marketing material comes from the production artists, so the quality, while maybe hindered by time/people available can usually be kept in shape. The problems arise when a team gets too big, jobs become specialized, and departments become detached from one another. This is why I'm constantly scouring our JIRA tasks from all departments (filtered by "Attachment Added" mostly lol) and trying to catch stuff that people may not realize is falling through the cracks. Unfortunately most studios don't put too much resource into internal marketing staff especially if they've got publisher overlords with their own marketing practices and funding. Ahhh well. I'm just going to wait for actual player impressions. The best marketing imo is word of mouth, fingers crossed it's the good kind. 
ceebee fucked around with this message at 09:39 on Jun 5, 2015 |
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Jun 5, 2015 09:34
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ceebee posted:
Yeah I'm finding that on the game I'm working on at the moment. We pretty much want our effects to be similar, 2d hand animated but in a 3d space. It's a tricky one!
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Jun 5, 2015 09:44
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If you make sure all the particle effects are always facing the camera as well as fading where they intersect with solid objects it looks pretty good
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Jun 5, 2015 09:48
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ceebee posted:Which is why marketing should be more involved in development. One of the best parts about a small team is most of the time your marketing material comes from the production artists, so the quality, while maybe hindered by time/people available can usually be kept in shape. The problems arise when a team gets too big, jobs become specialized, and departments become detached from one another. This is why I'm constantly scouring our JIRA tasks from all departments (filtered by "Attachment Added" mostly lol) and trying to catch stuff that people may not realize is falling through the cracks. While I think that it's good to have marketing involved with development, there's often a problem when working with artists (especially at a senior level) where they kind of miss the point of the exercise. It goes from being about engaging people in your game to making sure that the game looks as good as it can/matches their artistic vision down to the ground. There are times when working with artists is exactly what's needed and there are times when getting something done in a non-geological timescale is what's needed. The adage of 'people won't care if it's late if it's great' may not hold true in this hyper-saturated, /r/games content churn world. If you miss your moment then you miss your moment... for disclosure - I've not really done enough research into the actual analytics of this but I'm mostly just speaking from personal experience/frustration. Could be interesting to do a paper on development/publishing marketing strategies... hrm. Sion fucked around with this message at 10:03 on Jun 5, 2015 |
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Jun 5, 2015 09:57
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ceebee posted:If you make sure all the particle effects are always facing the camera as well as fading where they intersect with solid objects it looks pretty good Yeah we've been looking in to that a lot! Also we tried purely hand-drawn sprites of say an entire dust effect but are starting to think maybe we need that as the 'core' of the effect, but then have smaller actual particles of hand drawn blobs around it to make it look more 3d. We're at the early stages. You don't even want to know the amount of times I've watched the Battleborn trailer haha. Don't worry though they're very very different games and styles.
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Jun 5, 2015 10:00
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Yeah you can definitely split up the elements. I know we'll sometimes stack the sprites on top of another to get different effects so you can have multiple small ones spawn in front of a larger broader one. And no worries good art is good art. If we all shared the techniques/methods for art, games will just continue to improve and people can do their own take on stuff.I do particularly like how Gigantic handles some of their volumetric stylized FX where it seems like they use actual meshes and squash/stretch them very quickly. The problem with spritesheets is if they're not large enough you'll tend to spot pixellation, or in a game engine case it can get compressed and look kinda uggo. It's definitely a balancing act. If I wasn't a character artist, FX would probably be my second pick. I did quite a bit of Cascade (UE3 particle editor) work in school and found it pretty fun. Although I'd also love to dabble in actual game design as well.
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Jun 5, 2015 10:36
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https://youtu.be/t7ugaqmSKLE Here's the announce trailer our marketing people made for my project. The game is a platformer: a mix of fixed-camera isometric levels and 2.5D sidescrolling levels. We spent months making art specifically to look good at certain angles and not at any other angles. Guess what they did with the camera angles?! We're also the new king of bullshots. Our fans get together on forums and make up features that will surely be in the game because they're trying to make sense of the totally 100% posed and fake screenshots. "There MUST be 8 player multiplayer!" they say since a screenshot shows a ton of player avatars. No, there isn't. The marketing team has lied to you. mutata fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Jun 5, 2015 |
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Jun 5, 2015 14:41
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Love my marketing team, but it's certainly in the minority. I can probably name on one hand the number of game companies with really good marketing departments.
Gearman fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Jun 5, 2015 |
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Jun 5, 2015 16:03
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I love doing the marketing for our stuff. There sometimes is a bit of headbutting regarding which features really are the best to hypebuild and which are best left as patchnotes, but in the end knowing our fan base well enough means we generally nail it. Add to that what we're doing with turning our main community voices into influencers on our side is probably one of my fav parts of the job. Mind you, advantages of a small team and all.
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Jun 5, 2015 20:46
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ceebee posted:Which is why marketing should be more involved in development. Or development should be more involved in marketing.  I basically spent the last 2 weeks working mostly on cramming things together to make our world generation more palatable to a kickstarter presentation video... While our world generation programmer worked on actually making world generation more palatable to actual gameplay.  My part is basically 30 seconds out of the kickstarter video, while the better world gen will be on every fan's stream for the weeks to come. The joys of being a rendering programmer.I ain't even mad, the end result turned out great. Our video editors pulled all the stops working on it, both pushing us to pump out better renderings and adjusting audio timings for these new renderings when it was already past 22:00. I like how the video ties in nicely with our own game world after all, as opposed to being a plain "plz give us money" pitch. The final cut has just that good balance of playing up the game lore without handholding the audience through it. It seems to be working out alright, too, we've had a good initial surge for the beginning of the campaign. Here's hoping it keeps on going well past our extremely pessimistic, conservative funding goal. I just noticed how Uncle Jack mispronounces our 
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Jun 6, 2015 05:17
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Jan posted:Or development should be more involved in marketing. This looks great looking forward to playing it!
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Jun 6, 2015 23:40
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Jan posted:Or development should be more involved in marketing. It's a good video! I'm excited to try your game. I do admit having some hesitation about the idea of generated worlds though; I've yet to find a FPS that's executed well on that concept. It's a super thorny design problem.
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Jun 7, 2015 05:23
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A Kotaku writer called my project "unimaginative" which, regardless of the veracity of the claim, is hilarious because it literally takes place inside of a little girl's imagination.
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Jun 8, 2015 19:23
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mutata posted:A Kotaku writer called my project "unimaginative" which, regardless of the veracity of the claim, is hilarious because it literally takes place inside of a little girl's imagination.
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Jun 8, 2015 20:36
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mutata posted:A Kotaku writer called my project "unimaginative" which, regardless of the veracity of the claim, is hilarious because it literally takes place inside of a little girl's imagination. Well, you have to think about how active the imagination of a Kotaku writer is! I mean, they exist in a world of pure imagination where they think that they're relevant and haven't been supplanted by YouTube personalities.
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Jun 8, 2015 20:55
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Speaking of - I've grown sick of the mainstream game news sites over the past year or so and since Joystiq closed down, I don't really have a go-to anymore. RPS is close but it's PC-only. Kotaku and Polygon are utter trash these days and IGN's always been garbage. Even EuroGamer's growing soft! Who do I turn to now for my general game news/reviews/etc that aren't coated in gloppy agendas?
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Jun 8, 2015 20:58
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devilmouse posted:Speaking of - I've grown sick of the mainstream game news sites over the past year or so and since Joystiq closed down, I don't really have a go-to anymore. RPS is close but it's PC-only. Kotaku and Polygon are utter trash these days and IGN's always been garbage. Even EuroGamer's growing soft! Who do I turn to now for my general game news/reviews/etc that aren't coated in gloppy agendas? Do you have an 8-year-old niece or nephew? Those work pretty well.
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Jun 8, 2015 21:01
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mutata posted:Do you have an 8-year-old niece or nephew? Those work pretty well. I can only handle so much minecraft chat!
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Jun 8, 2015 21:01
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Fan of Giant Bomb like any other goon. They helped me want to get into video games.
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Jun 8, 2015 21:03
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This forum is the best I know of. If a game's thread stays on the first couple pages it's probably worth a look. Unless it stays on the front page because it's so bad people can't stop raging about it, but that's useful info too.
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Jun 8, 2015 21:05
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Sion posted:Well, you have to think about how active the imagination of a Kotaku writer is! I mean, they exist in a world of pure imagination where they think that they're relevant and haven't been supplanted by YouTube personalities. YouTube personalities are one top reason why I feel old at 37.
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Jun 8, 2015 22:40
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Giant Bomb and RPS are the only two worth visiting.
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Jun 8, 2015 22:59
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devilmouse posted:Speaking of - I've grown sick of the mainstream game news sites over the past year or so and since Joystiq closed down, I don't really have a go-to anymore. RPS is close but it's PC-only. Kotaku and Polygon are utter trash these days and IGN's always been garbage. Even EuroGamer's growing soft! Who do I turn to now for my general game news/reviews/etc that aren't coated in gloppy agendas? I find r/games on reddit to be a great source of news, myself.
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Jun 9, 2015 07:38
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Vote Sweeper 2000 posted:I was wondering if any product nerds had any ideas on this sort of thing? If you can afford a second currency that is the "starter" currency and it gets ante'd first and 10% converted to money that might work. It's a lot of complexity, but you can also use it for straight up acquisition too.
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Jun 9, 2015 09:18
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Brackhar posted:I find r/games on reddit to be a great source of news, myself. Agreed. Plus the discussion is surprisingly civil.
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Jun 9, 2015 15:03
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Sion posted:Well, you have to think about how active the imagination of a Kotaku writer is! I mean, they exist in a world of pure imagination where they think that they're relevant and haven't been supplanted by YouTube personalities. Now... re-read that, and imagine a world where your bonus (or your studio bonus) was directly tied to exceeding a specific meta-critic rating. Now take a drink. (I haven't lived there in a long time)
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Jun 9, 2015 18:30
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I enjoy being in the kids and families space for a variety of reasons but one of them is that while gaming press matters to us (we fought pretty hard to get a Gameinformer cover for a reason, we're a game studio after all), they aren't attached to our bottom line as much as some studios. The majority of our sales are moms and dads who keep a fraction of an eye on gaming stuff and when they do read an article, it's in Forbes or the local newspaper or mommy blogs or whatever.
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Jun 9, 2015 18:40
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mutata posted:I enjoy being in the kids and families space for a variety of reasons but one of them is that while gaming press matters to us (we fought pretty hard to get a Gameinformer cover for a reason, we're a game studio after all), they aren't attached to our bottom line as much as some studios. The majority of our sales are moms and dads who keep a fraction of an eye on gaming stuff and when they do read an article, it's in Forbes or the local newspaper or mommy blogs or whatever. This sounds like a much more healthy way to have a career. Getting out of AAA was the best thing I ever did.
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Jun 9, 2015 19:45
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Well, it is Disney so that comes with its own problems, but yeah. Having little to no expectations on the side of "hardcore gamers" is nice. Especially when we get stories of gamers actually getting into our games or even better, having fun playing with their kids.
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Jun 9, 2015 20:09
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Pixelboy posted:Now... re-read that, and imagine a world where your bonus (or your studio bonus) was directly tied to exceeding a specific meta-critic rating. How serious is the whole Metacritic success these days? Is it still that big a deal or is it starting to ease?
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Jun 9, 2015 20:17
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mutata posted:Well, it is Disney so that comes with its own problems, but yeah. I've never known anyone to work with a Disney studio and not have it end in tears.
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Jun 9, 2015 20:17
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Pixelboy posted:I've never known anyone to work with a Disney studio and not have it end in tears. Says the guy who was just bemoaning review score bonuses. v  vI've been here for a few years total now. It's a good place. Some have been here for a decade+. We're only owned by Disney, though. We're not in Glendale and operate day to day on our own, so I'm sure that helps. mutata fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Jun 9, 2015 |
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Jun 9, 2015 21:03
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I'm having salary discussions before an almost-certainly-coming offer tomorrow, woooo. Been out of the industry since July 2013, hope they come back with a real big boy offer.
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Jun 9, 2015 21:08
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Pixelboy posted:This sounds like a much more healthy way to have a career. (Please don't go into a family games-focused studio without pants, THAT part only works for telecommuters / indies / etc - but it is a good life goal to strive for anyways)
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Jun 9, 2015 22:02
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theflyingorc posted:I'm having salary discussions before an almost-certainly-coming offer tomorrow, woooo. Good luck - I just went through this (though I was getting out of the games industry after the Zynga layoffs, not in) and it was very stressful, because I was being very careful about sharing the lower game salary information with the recruiter. However, I think everyone was happy with the final number.
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Jun 9, 2015 22:19
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I think games and vfx might be one of the few industries that people 'retire' from into other careers at age 30 or 40. It is concerning how people sort of disappear whn they hit a certain age at some places.
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Jun 9, 2015 22:37
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Buckwheat Sings posted:I think games and vfx might be one of the few industries that people 'retire' from into other careers at age 30 or 40. There's been marginal improvements, but there's numerous things about the industry that aren't super conducive to raising a family.
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Jun 9, 2015 22:44
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