The point is it would be great if we did hold them to these standards, because it’s a way to force them to change.

I think we’re heading towards a AAA crash eventually. And I think Cyberpunk might be the catalyst to trigger it.

With that rationale, as long as the Naughty Dog employees got paid for their crunch work, then there’s no reason for this Article to exist.

Well, no one is saying to take away an Oscars or Emmys nominations from Directors that are known to be assholes or from productions that go over schedule or over budget.

You know if the voice actors had worked to expand unions for Game developers or assist them in getting their own union to double negotiate. Then maybe both sides would have have residuals, better pay, and working conditions.

And they are routinely abused and overworked. The old Hollywood unions (which took a lot of fighting to put in place) never got to cover that.

And all this crunching is for a fucking VIDEO GAME. It’d be one thing to crunch to release a life-saving medicine, or fix a software bug that was going to cause plane crashes, or something like that. No one’s gonna die if a game comes out 6 months late. 

the VFX Industry is also trying to be like film and except for their labor practices.

Part of that is due to the anti-union sentiment amongst many in the development community. I have pro-labour developer friends who’ve butted heads with the libertarian streak in the technology sector. What made film work is its guilds and unions ensuring fair practices. Despite growing game dev union movements I don’t…

Video game companies are following the practice of the old school indie no-budget films, where the producer/director pays the cast and crew little to nothing, works them to the bone in unsafe illegal working conditions, and then reaps all the profits and glory.

The cause is probably the same one as in the VG industry: lack of unionization. Most of the movie industry is unionized; that’s was the point of the OG poster.

Everyone works for a union in hollywood, so they have already negotiated what acceptable practices are... and directors don’t get to overrule the union.

Most Hollywood stuff is done by union labor. Almost all video game work is done by non-union labor. Might have something to do with that.

“Better pay the terrorists, or the hostages might get hurt too!”

It’s for Best Direction. It’s about how the game was managed.

Feels like “Best Direction” at the Game Awards is becoming the same as “Best Director” at the Oscars: it almost always just gets handed to whatever wins Best Picture/Game because people don’t put much thought into what a director actually does (or go with the logic “well the Director is in charge so best direction…

Why would rewarding poor constructed benchmarks reform anything? How is not winning an award--because you basically didn’t hit a benchmark--a penalty?

Also Animal Crossing where Nintendo delayed it because they don’t do crunch. They treat it like a 9 to 5 job as should be the standard.

Unfortunately, in the corporate world, forcing crunch on your employees is seen as good management ability because it maximizes profits and those executives are rewarded with bonuses and raises.

Good management ability should be rewarded. If anything, that would send symbolic signals that hopefully will shift the culture of game development. Hearing how Hades was developed made me want to play the game more, and that is something we should promote.