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Sean

Idle Thumbs 147: The Titan Falls

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Spent about an hour this afternoon playing Calculords.  This is pretty good stuff.  Needs a steam release!

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Is SpaceChem a puzzle game?

 

Yes. Was that something that was mentioned as something she'd played? I'm just not aware of any free to play games that are genuine puzzle games as opposed to match 3s or hidden object games or whatever. If they exist then nevermind.

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So I looked up the developer of Calculords and the the interesting result...

It's 'SeanBaby' of internet video game humor fame.  http://www.calculords.com/about/index.html

 

Hi, I'm Internet delight Seanbaby.

After twenty years of writing jokes, I somehow decided to design an impossibly deep collectible card game. I wanted a game with all the strategy of deck building and all the tactics of tower defense, but with a challenging and fun resource system. I so nailed it.

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The original IT guy also posted a defense of the post on their forums, which didn't necessarily hlep.  The worst part of it was that if you're someone who occasionally wants to take a weekend off and not be on call, tough shit, you can't. 

 

The on call expectations for a lot of IT folks are completely and patently ridiculous.  Doctors, cops and fire fighters have better on call plans than IT people. 

 

My interpretation of that whole thing was, "We need someone who loves this company so much that s/he will devote his/her life to it, because those are the expectations we have of ourselves". Many folks reacted particularly harshly to this because it's Penny Arcade, true, but at least they were being honest. I believe that the real reason for the backlash is that these expectations are par for the course at most startups, particularly here in the Bay Area. I don't blame these startups for it being this way, but neither do I want to be a part of that, which is why I generally discourage folks who call me about startup positions.

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My interpretation of that whole thing was, "We need someone who loves this company so much that s/he will devote his/her life to it, because those are the expectations we have of ourselves". Many folks reacted particularly harshly to this because it's Penny Arcade, true, but at least they were being honest. I believe that the real reason for the backlash is that these expectations are par for the course at most startups, particularly here in the Bay Area. I don't blame these startups for it being this way, but neither do I want to be a part of that, which is why I generally discourage folks who call me about startup positions.

They straight up say "Hey don't expect frivolous things, like a salary". That's not a cheeky poking-at-self internet thing. Plus it puts them in a position where 2 years down the road someone's still at Introductory IT Wage and wants to petition for a raise and they can suggest with a straight face that not getting money was right in the job description and also they're an internet family. Yes, you should take a technical position at a small company with the expectation that you are going to have a lot on your plate, but it was (or should have been) a legitimate PR and HR nightmare. There might be some privilege in obtaining a job somewhere chic but there's no privilege in being overworked, underpaid, and then told you want it to be that way.

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This clip seems relevant to the Silicon Valley startup discussion. Wozniak reckoned Pirates was true to Jobs' persona at least...

 

About PA salary, the outgoing IT tech's forum post said

  • I live quite comfortably on this salary
  • it’s less than I could make elsewhere
  • it’s not out of the bounds of reasonable expectation
  • I took a moderate pay cut [joining from the AmazonFresh customer service portal team]

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Is anyone else experiencing this bug in Calculords? Occasionally, at the end of my opponent's turn, my calculator will fail to produce a new set of numbers. The animations and music continue to run, but I can't play unless I forfeit the match. It's very irritating.

 

And do any of you have any advice re: deck building? I made a hyper-offensive deck as an experiment, and creamed Sergeant Blok with it, but that didn't give me much of a feeling of proficiency, because he's the most predictable enemy anyway. I find I can beat him in a couple of turns just by mainlining a single lane.

 

I know everyone's in the mood to talk it up, and planning your turn is good fun, but it's really not that complicated. Cards operate according to simple rules, and I rarely find myself employing any kind of strategy. 

 

http://www.dailydot.com/gaming/penny-arcade-job-posting-twitter-trend/

 

I assume it's this because I had the same reaction when I saw it initially.

 

EDIT: Direct link to the actual job description: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/9887522?trk=job_nov&_mSplash=1

 

Do the Penny Arcade guys have any redeemable features? I watch the whole of the Strip Search reality TV show they did. Some of those artists were wonderful, and exceptionally hard workers. It sucked to see them struggle for a job working with those two.

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They straight up say "Hey don't expect frivolous things, like a salary".

Actually, no, that is not a thing that they said.

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Well, there is this part:

 

"- Annual Salary: Negotiable, but you should know up front we’re not a terribly money-motivated group. We’re more likely to spend less money on salary and invest that on making your day-to-day life at work better."

 

They also admitted to being intentionally understaffed and say there is a terrible work/life balance there. Fuck. That.

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When all this stuff broke I didn't notice that you don't get sick leave and annual leave because it's a full time position, of course you get mandated sick leave and 4 weeks annual leave. And all the other stuff, well they are basically saying upfront what every other small IT-focused business does and pretends they don't do. Small firms give you more hands-on control in exchange for shittier pay. You will be expected to do a lot, and you can be on call because you're all they've got. I don't know how much Penny Arcade makes but I can't imagine the funny T-shirt business is significantly more profitable for them than Topatoco is for webcomics people. You probably couldn't run a 40 person company on T-shirt revenues, so they'd have to run lean. And while they'd make some money from PAX, Reed would take a massive slice of that income.

 

Penny Arcade as an enterprise is incredibly ambitious, which is why before there was a lot of awareness of social issues in gaming, Penny Arcade was a big, big influencer. They always seemed much, much larger than they actually were.

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"- Annual Salary: Negotiable, but you should know up front we’re not a terribly money-motivated group. We’re more likely to spend less money on salary and invest that on making your day-to-day life at work better."

 

Ever since it broke, I've enjoyed the odd disconnect of that line. "We aren't terribly money-motivated, so we'll be paying you less of our money." It's like my mom not buying me cookies because she was on a diet.

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Well, there is this part:

 

"- Annual Salary: Negotiable, but you should know up front we’re not a terribly money-motivated group. We’re more likely to spend less money on salary and invest that on making your day-to-day life at work better."

 

They also admitted to being intentionally understaffed and say there is a terrible work/life balance there. Fuck. That.

 

This is what I was referring to earlier: That's the sort of environment that you will see at any startup / game development studio, and it's far from ideal, but at least they're being up-front about it. I don't begrudge folks their frustration with the job posting, but for many people, I think the frustration isn't so much with this specific posting as it is with this sort of thing being the status quo for small businesses that need a full-time tech staff.

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I'd argue that the startup comparison isn't valid. At startups, the salary may not be able to match larger companies, but the tradeoff is a much larger potential upside. Employees at startups are dished out shares of stock with the hopes that one day they'll either go public or get bought out and make the people that got in on the ground floor rich (with the additional bonus Merus mentioned about getting to be in more control of your work). Now game development studios are another story. Legions of people willing to work for nothing for their dream job when comparable jobs in other industries pay more. So if people are unhappy and leave, who cares because there's plenty willing to take their place. And this may come off as cynical, but everyone is money-motivated and if you need your employees to work long hours for you and you really care about them, you should do your best to pay them well and not spout some bs about it not being important. I'm pretty sure I'm ranting here, so I'm just going to go to bed now :)

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I'm not money motivated. So long as I have enough to be comfortable, which right now is about A$50,000 per year, I don't really want much more. I'd far prefer to be doing interesting work, solving hard problems and working with people I enjoy on $50,000 than earning $100,000 and not getting any of those things.

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I've never really been a Penny Arcade fan but as far as the broader games-industry goes; I've gotten the impression that Double Fine is a worker-friendly business by watching Amnesia Fortnight, hearing Jake and Chris talk about the atmosphere, and following a few of their employees on Twitter. This has a noticable increase of my enjoyment of their products. I'd love to see whether or not a studio is a worker-cooperative on the back of the box. Hearing about employees being treated like crap won't keep me from buying a game, but it certainly affects how good I feel about enjoying it.

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I've never really been a Penny Arcade fan but as far as the broader games-industry goes; I've gotten the impression that Double Fine is a worker-friendly business by watching Amnesia Fortnight, hearing Jake and Chris talk about the atmosphere, and following a few of their employees on Twitter. This has a noticable increase of my enjoyment of their products. I'd love to see whether or not a studio is a worker-cooperative on the back of the box. Hearing about employees being treated like crap won't keep me from buying a game, but it certainly affects how good I feel about enjoying it.

 

I don't really know how to phrase this without it sounding like an ethical confrontation, but why won't it keep you from buying a game?

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I enjoy ethical confrontations.
I'm not sure why it doesn't keep me from buying a game, but I'm pretty sure that it hasn't in the past. I bought L.A. Noire because I wanted to play a big-budget mystery game.

 

Inversely, I think I may get more enjoyment out of Titanfall because I'm viewing it as a triumph of worker's rights (not sure if true), but I won't buy the game because of that. I'm going to buy Titanfall because I keep thinking about how much I want to play more of it.

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In the light of discussion about the relative lack of officially disseminated info about Everything That Lies Within Titanfall, has there been much chat about whether Reddit's Titanfall leaks are controlled leaks or genuine spillages?

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In the light of discussion about the relative lack of officially disseminated info about Everything That Lies Within Titanfall, has there been much chat about whether Reddit's Titanfall leaks are controlled leaks or genuine spillages?

 

Unless they would actually get MORE eyes on it from doing a leak, which seems extremely unlikely to me, I don't know what the point of leaking would be. Seems like you'd get tons more reach and awareness by just doing a big story with IGN or Kotaku. The super hardcore audience that picks things apart on Reddit and GAF doesn't seem like the most important audience mere weeks before launch. At this point in the marketing cycle you want to be going as broad as possible.

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Never thought I would write these words but: I really enjoyed the Miley Cyrus talk.

 

To an extent, all game design is simply experience design and as such shares quite a bit with the design of theme parks, music concerts, or even golf courses. I know a couple people who have worked on designing museum exhibits and many of the same considerations exist. Instead of communicating gameplay details you're communicating other domain knowledge, but many of the concepts and the methods of viewer engagement are the same.

 

Of course, a live event like that has a lot of logistics, too, which is really just another design constraint.

 

That would be a good idea for an interview / podcast series: game design that isn't game design.

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Unless they would actually get MORE eyes on it from doing a leak, which seems extremely unlikely to me, I don't know what the point of leaking would be. Seems like you'd get tons more reach and awareness by just doing a big story with IGN or Kotaku. The super hardcore audience that picks things apart on Reddit and GAF doesn't seem like the most important audience mere weeks before launch. At this point in the marketing cycle you want to be going as broad as possible.

 

I can agree that GAF might not be high priority at this point in a conventional cycle but surely getting a bit of free front page Reddit buzz would still be helpful?

 

In contrast to the trailers pumped out over the last few days, the sort of info coming out via indirect means does answer the sort of questions that enthusiasts have -- maps, modes, monsters. Keeps them onside, encourages them to commit to a day one perch, and equips them to evangelize to friends that might only have heard about Titanfall from the TV commercials.

 

Although I concede that sort of thing might not even be important anymore.

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