Guys, I Don’t Think People Understand How Games Are Made

Folks, we need some real game development education. I don’t mean we need to teach people what games are, or how to play them, or - heck - how to appreciate them like fine cinema you force on a date in college when you’re 19 and halfway through the movie you can tell they’re not loving it and for some reason that makes them the weirdos. Rather, it seems like a lot of fans have no idea how a video game is created outside of ‘someone has an idea’ and ‘later on, there is a game’ and then ‘they made a change and I hope they die’.

I don’t know what to tell you. It’s the year of our Lord 2024 and we seem to be having the same exact arguments about games that we’ve been having for thirty years. And, look, a lot of these conversations remain important: video game working conditions? Sure sounds like they still need some improving! That doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. But then, no studio lasts long enough anymore for us to have a good sample size. The modern wonder that is the video game industry: your favorite game developers today, gone tomorrow!

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Still, a lot of the eternal, never-ending arguments are completely meaningless. My deteriorating ass is approaching 40 and I grew up with the same stupid debates over which console was better. And people are still out there making videos with titles like, “SONY JUST DESTROYED MICROSOFT!!!!” Meanwhile, executives for the two companies are chatting. They talk, you dorks. They’re rivals, sure, but they’re business rivals, not gangs in The Warriors, you big galoots. But my feed is full of people screaming at each other because Pentiment - the best roleplaying game nobody played - is now on Switch.

And then there’s this whole thing about that consulting company whose name I’m going to leave out because it only pulls in the most finely aged weirdos. “Don’t let them win!” Buddy, easier said than done. It’s almost my birthday, so I’m trying to avoid a week of death threats from bitter teenagers and even more bitter people my own age. By all accounts, it sounds like said company did narrative advising on projects and had an employee who responded to critics online in a less than strategic way. On one hand, maybe not the most professional thing to do. On the other hand, being berated on all sides by dummies who think you called the woke police to force Sam Lake to make a character in Alan Wake 2 Black… It’s probably not the easiest to sustain mentally.

Those are just two situations. We’re in Layoff World. We’re in a live-service hellscape that will never see the light of God. The richest man in the world enjoys the same hobby as us, but makes it so embarrassing that you almost consider picking up something else like archery. But trust me, firing arrows isn’t easy. Not by a long shot. Ayooooo! But, seriously, it’s truly humiliating that he enjoys games. Painters probably weren’t thrilled to hear about John Wayne Gacy’s hobby, either. And before I get an email from a lawyer that’s paid $500 an hour, no, they are not the same.

But all of this points to a deep lack of understanding about how games are made. Sometimes this comes from a purer place of ignorance. I can’t really blame some 12 year old edgelord for freaking out when something is nerfed - sure, he’s an idiot, but he probably thinks that game development would only take four or five weeks if someone just put him in charge. Others simply don’t care or assume they’ve already got the strictest grasp possible or watched a YouTube video by a person with a British accent. I know some of you folks reading this are British, and lemme tell you: you are dominating the gaming video world by sheer numbers alone. At this point, I’m working under the assumption that literally every person in the United Kingdom has a YouTube channel about games.

The thing is, a lot of what people are mad about aren’t always decisions by the game staff. Just like a lot of things people are mad about in movies or television shows aren’t always decisions made by the creators. Sometimes they are! But a lot of the time things like obscene battle passes that cost plenty and give nothing are decisions made by the people who control the money. And when a game studio folds, it’s not their parent company that suffers job losses. The executives shoving confusing currencies and $20 costumes will still have a massive house and a giant Christmas bonus no matter what happens to those poor suckers who took their mandates.

Which is ironic, because it often feels like everyone but the executives are blamed. It must be the developer: one of their employees posted in support of BLM, so any characters who don’t look like Powder must have been forced into the game. It must be the consultant: the developer never said a character was gay in interviews but here we are and they’re - if you’re prone to fainting, please leave the room - holding hands with a person of the same gender! The consultant probably threatened to sue them unless they added in that diversity. That’s especially funny because the consultants are probably the one group whose notes developers can ignore at will.

And all this console fighting? It only helps these corporations. They want you to be so loyal that you’ll buy every product and accessory and peripheral as a ‘show of support’. You’re not a real fan until you buy the team jersey and that has nothing to do with the fact that those metaphorical jerseys are profitable and keep you locked into one ecosystem. Corporations have tricked fans into such a state of vehement loyalty that they get mad when new fans get a chance to experience games they love. Rather than saying, ‘yeah, wasn’t that great?!’, the feeling is, ‘how dare they take what was mine’.

People take it personally and they always place blame almost entirely on the developers and the teams that work with them. Again, yes, sometimes the developers are at fault. They’re humans too. Have you ever had a job? Sure you have. Have you ever had one guy on the job whose social media posts got him in trouble? Sure you have. But that doesn’t mean your entire workplace was a conspiracy against the consumer. Or some insidious project between five people in a shadowy semi-circle to make everyone woke, whatever that word means.

I don’t have a solution for this. I just wish people understood how games were made. How long it takes. How many workers are involved. How hard it is to make big last-minute changes. How stubborn creatives are. And how many people with different levels of power can make sweeping decisions outside of the developers’ direct control. Making a game is collaborative. People get notes. They take notes. They reject notes. Nobody is ruining their game on purpose. Nobody is rubbing their hands like it’s dinner time at the thought of being doxxed because a character’s boobs are smaller than the ball at EPCOT.

It’s true: a lot of games suffer from weird, bad choices. And a lot of that does fall on the creatives. But a lot of that also falls on the executives and the time table and the budget and the feedback from other people who don’t exist in your world as the main character of reality. And, on the flip side, there aren’t insidious outside companies coming in trying to ruin your favorite game either.

I promise you with all my heart that very, very few creatives at game companies are going out of their way to break their own games in order to hurt their most loyal fans. Everyone wants to make a game fans love. Everyone wants to make a game that gets reviewed well and sells even better. Why? Because it’s how they keep their jobs and feed their families. There ain’t no money in being ratio’d.

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