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IGDA: Mythic 'Disrespectful' for Not Crediting Entire Warhammer Staff, Labels Policy Misleading
by Chris Faylor, Aug 25, 2008 10:51am PDTNot crediting the entirety of a game's development staff is "disrespectful of the effort of the game developers who worked on the game, and misleads both consumers and game industry peers," according to IGDA chairperson Jen MacLean.
The statement comes in response to word that Mythic will only credit current staff members for its upcoming PC MMO Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, a move that excludes ex-staffers, such as one that worked on the game for three years.
"Everyone who is currently at Mythic who's worked on Warhammer is going to be in the credits," studio VP Mark Jacobs said of the policy. " And that's good enough for me."
While Mythic's policy is the latest example of improper accreditation, the IGDA affirmed that incomplete credits "are not unusual." In a recent IGDA study, 35% of respondents claimed they "don't ever" or "only sometimes" receive a mention in a game's credits.
The current lack of an industry-wide crediting policy and the abundance of accreditation issues was the impetus behind the International Game Developer Association's formation of a crediting policy committee. However, the IDGA only recommends, but does not require, that its members adhere to those guidelines.
"Some people claim that providing complete credit information...encourages people to leave their job before a game is complete," MacLean explained in the latest IGDA newsletter. "These reasons are simple window dressing for policies that are arbitrary, unfair, and in some cases even vindictive, and they simply don't hold up."
Last week, Myhtic's Jacobs argued that "[all-inclusive credits do] a bit of a disservice as well to the people who are still part of the team, who are still working on the game...I'll worry more about the people who are with me right now, then those who decided that they didn't like the company or they wanted to take a better job."
MacLean also addressed the popular criticism that "credits aren't important because 'nobody reads them anyway.'"
"The number of people who read a game's credits is irrelevant," she added. "Even if only one person reads the credits of a game, integrity demands that all work be accurately and honestly represented."
Comments
Should you be credited on a game if you:
1) Worked on the game for less than a week.
2) Worked on the game but were fired for poor performance before the game was shipped.
3) Worked on the game but were fired during your probationary period.
4) Didn't actually create any content for the game but worked in Production.
5) Didn't actually create any content for the game but worked in QA
6) Didn't actually create any content for the game but worked in building facilities (power/ac/security issues)
7) Voluntarily left for another job before the production of the game finished.
8) Voluntarily left for another job before the production of the game finished, leaving behind broken or poor content and bad relationships with coworkers.
9) Started employment at a company after production ended but before gold master.
10) Started employment at a company a week before gold master.
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I've never heard of a prospective employer checking the game credits - they use references to find out what someone did on a project. So this is really just about personal pride.
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Should a person's name only appear once? i.e. if they wrote the story and directed a department
How do you list people by? i.e. by department or just one big group?
Should all forms of management get included, include PR people and other staff which didn't work on the development?
If you are going to list everyone who worked on it, do you have any sort of cut off? i.e. person left after only working 1 day, do you put him in? If not, what is the cut off? What if a person got fired for sloppy work? Or if a person got fired for a non-project related issue ( told the boss to F Off )?
Credits have always been a pain on every game I've ever worked on. People always get upset one way or another. Sometimes just doing a simple list of people like what Valve does just takes away all the pain.
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"Waaagh!"
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That is unbelievable.
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"Made by humans, made by Mythic" in the credits along wiht 3rd party guys and shut the world.