I'm not in the industry, and I never plan to be in the industry (I'm 35 and an attorney), but I'm a life-long gamer and these videos have been exceedingly fascinating to get a behind the scenes look at the gaming industry and your games in particular. Thanks for the uploads.
I feel like it takes a certain type of person would spend their spare time learning about intricacies in a profession they have no intention to work in. These are people who love learning. I imagine that many of them have careers that require huge amounts of learning, such as being an attorney.
Engineer/40, I also like the videos, I played video games when I was a teenager, nowadays not so much, but Tim's content is really cool, I'm happy that he decided to start this channel, it's a blessing, teachings and experience that will help a lot of people I am sure.
Lawyer is just logic using human readable grammar. All you gotta do is make the leap to logic as code, and there you are. And you can argue your case for why this game should exist and what this feature is doing to support it. Helpful skills as a designer & engineer all too lacking in those who jumped purely to games. Pay however is a lot lower than lawyer. And especially as indies, we always need a lawyer.
I love how open Tim is and it has given me a lot of insight and understanding into games that I dont like or even hated and his stuff gave me an Aha moment where suddenly a switch was flipped. I also do a lot of modding for fallout games and the like so his content is also informative in that wat
Probably the worst behavior a Director can do is "here's a high-level idea for a feature, find out how it fits the game/what makes it fun". You'd be horrified by how often that happens.
So basically "my job is to give you direction and have vision for good product but I am a fraud and know shit about it so lets steal something what already works, you will be doing all the hard job behind analysis, design and I will just sit on my ass and tell you what to change if I feel like it"
Sounds like "Here is a sh*t, make it not look like a sh*t to the players". :) I'm curious whether in game companies when developers figure out it's a sh*t, they tell the Director that it's a sh*t, or don't tell him to avoid conflicts?
The weird part is that this is traditionally what good leaders do in non-creative industries. If you micromanage and have a very strict vision on something as a CEO for an oil, fintech, or sales company, you will fail since everyone will wait on your word. I can see why a lot of Directors who are hired laterally have this sort of behavior, because it is typically heavily rewarded and taught in business management schools. It's really interesting because I feel that more and more business people see games as a business instead of a creative endeavor. I can see why this would happen more often than in movies/TV/music because directors are treated more like a creative in those industries than games. The industry is young, so this probably will change.
I am a Mechanic (35+yrs), not a game dev. That said, I talk to and watch a lot of other Mechanics. From them I am able to learn about vehicles I have not worked on, and lots of times there are tips and tricks I can pick up and integrate in to my SOP. Sometimes there are common problems, and the solutions have already been found, saving time, and my customer's money. The way I see it is, every day is a school day! Have a great day, Sir! o7
Hi Tim! I'm an indie game developer in Mexico. Pitched 3 games in over 5-6 years to indie publishers but nothing really happened. Some publishers answered and gave nice comments, and to just "polish" some stuff, and we did, but it seemed that wasn't enough. We even reached the 3rd or 4rth phase of the process, but always got rejected on the Marketing review (3 times, different publishers). Rami helped me a lot! We had five or six 1-on-1 conversations where he'd review my material and give me advice to polish it further. Apparently, it still wasn't enough, and didn't go anywhere. Each new try, I focused on improving the things that failed, that being scope, art style, team composition, proyect highliting team's strengths, etc. We are on our 4rth (and probably final try) on a smaller game (physics-based roguelite) with a 7 person team. We got a nice vertical slice and are currently polishing sound and art. We are asking for 100K for a year of development (aiming for 30,000 sales at 19.99 USD). I know that's not a lot of money for a publisher, but its still a high risk for an unproven team in a thirld world country without huge game hits nor big game industry. Do you have any advice? Or could you give some insight on how that process worked for you? Thanks in advice, I admire you a lot and appreciate all the effort you put in your videos. Its so cool to see someone care so much and give some insight of this hard but beautiful industry. I just really really really want to be a part of it, but I can't seem to get it right :(
I get where you are coming from mate, and I really share your mindset and appreciate your kind words@@noah8162 But, I've been doing this for 11 years now, went to engineer programming uni, hustled, teached, did my first studio, failed misserably. Did my second studio, failed making 2 games, I'm 200K USD down and I'm 31 now. I've got responsabilities now :/ Doing games is hard already, doing them in a third world country, specifically Mexico, I gotta be honest with you, I just don't see it happening. I'll still try, but I don't want to affect all the people that's been following me in this journey. They deserve happiness and success, and I'm just not bringing that to the table :( No matter how much you are passionate for your dream, or your game, you can't eat passion, and burnout from not releasing games is so real. You start losing hope little by little and think "well, maybe I'm not meant for it, no matter how hard I try". And believe me, I've tried, and I'm still trying, as hard as I can. Thanks for the boost tho, it really gives me more fuel to keep going (:
The problem is not publishing the game bro, like, putting it out there is not hard. The hard thing is finishing it. The Steam Fee is nothing (100 USD) and we already did that with the 3 failed games. You need it in order to share steam keys to publishers. The real problem has always been finishing the game, finding a market, marketing it properly and all the work after you publish the game. A Self Published game, from an unproven team, in a third world country, that will sell you around 1K copies, by a team of 7, costs around 100K withouth any marketing, service and basically living in crunch with really sad quality of life. Just barely hanging, working it as a side job@@wesss9353 And, again, its almost guaranteed to fail. In the history of Mexico, there's been 1,000 games self published. Only 3 of them recovered the investment, and one of them is Kerbal Space Program lol. That's why there's no industry here :/ So yeah... sadly is not about just publishing a game, is building a studio, a team, and go through the formal process of publishing in order to not be amateur and make a living of it. At least to buy food and pay rent. Thanks for reaching out and trying to help. I really appreciate it man :' )
@@carbonmachinaI did a quick Google search for indy studio and GDC has an hour long video. See if you can check that out. Honestly I was playing fallout 4, while I was looking it up.
Tim, these videos are very inspiring and useful. I work as a full time corporate ERP developer and find it hard to moonlight as an amateur game dev. Just watching one of your videos (regardless of topic) helps me ground myself, reattain vision of my goals, and gain motivation for 1-2 hours of progress on a weeknight. You are very well spoken and insightful. I think it would do the game dev community (and maybe the software world in general) a big service if you wrote a memoirs/dev philosophy style book and also narrated it for a service like Audible. Love the videos!
Just found this channel. fan boying way too hard because I finished fallout recently. Feel I must interact to show my appreciation for such riveting entertainment which stands the test of time.
The curiosity and asking the “why” is the key to good management, change, engineering, etc. Accepting the end result and shrugging it off as “that’s the way it is” or hand waving improvements or change because it is a hassle is complacent ineptitude.
8:10 Oh, but what a great tangent. ^.^ In sum: "Reexamine all you have been told, At school at church or in any book, Dismiss whatever insults your own soul, And your very flesh shall be a great poem, And have the richest fluency not only in its words, But in the silent lines of its lips and face, And between the lashes of your eyes, And in every motion and joint of your body." ~ Walt Whitman
The only times I had a superior, no matter the job I was doing, answering what I expected them to say in those cases, it was when I brought up a problem with already at least a complete project involving myself solving the problem. The answer I expected, and sometimes (not always) the one I got, was to ask how much time it would take me to do it, and/or when I thought it would be possible for me to cut out the time to do it. In my experience, it's pretty difficult to be working in an environment where you tell someone a problem and they just solve it on their own. Thanks for your videos!
Love this, really appreciate the topic for today, makes me a lot less worried about sounding pretentious I end up outlining a personal design philosophy for X genre in a pitch or proposal. I’ve often felt I need to fit my design language within boxes because as someone who’s only formally trained in programming I worry about being an “outsider artist” of sorts
I try to use these videos to gain general creative knowledge to use in my own music projects. And I think the part about developed vs adopted philosophy was really great information that I think a lot of people could gain from. Thanks Tim!
Its sad to see such a well spoken explanation about game directors, clearing up the many misconceptions people have toward them and look at the comments full of people missing the point or using it as an excuse to call other developers awful things.
These videos are great, you seem like a very heart warming guy who loves working on games and not following a set path, instead going with works best for the overall end product. I've been an artist for years and even in that field you're told to follow a set direction without questioning the reason behind it, which gets very tiring when this translates to other projects. It's never going to be one size fits all, i think every artist and designer should read some Aristotle philosophy to broaden their mind before even starting in these fields, and to be their own person (while respectfully of course following your leads.) Thanks for the videos!
Hey Tim. I'm currently working on a project with a team of 8. A lot of the initial effort was in part due to the existence of this channel so thank you for inspiring me to start working on games with more structure. I have a few questions about deadlines. Throughout the process of our first game, my role has shifted to being more of a producer as we onboarded people who were able to take over aspects of the game I was previously in charge of and make it better. (Like art, for example). What I'm currently having trouble with is creating deadlines at every step of the process for each of my teams (programming, art, design, and sound). I have followed the video you made about the stages of making a game, but I don't believe you mention deadlines in that video or in the few videos about being a good game director. Should the overall schedule be flexible? Should we start with a release date/ range of dates in mind? Should the task be created beforehand and assigned on a consistent schedule, or should the remaining task be assessed week by week and a deadline created throughout the process? I imagine some of the questions depend on if there is a larger company/ investor who is also overseeing the project, but that is not currently the position I'm in as a startup. Again, thanks for creating this channel. I'm sure I'm not the only person you'll have inspired to create games.
You have discovered one of the hardest parts of game development. Tasking and task estimation. This is the place that fingers start pointing, tempers flare, and crunch begins. My best advice is to break your game into distinct features and those features into tasks. Mutually estimate times for those tasks with the people who will be doing the implementation, and ask them to give your progress updates and not wait until the end of the task time to tell you whether they are done or not. If people need more time, you have options. Take the extra time if you can afford it. If you cannot, either drop the feature completely, or replace it with a simpler fallback feature that you know you can get done, or drop other features to make time for this one. There is no magic bullet. Hard work and clear communication will get your game done.
I really like the emphasis on the importance of developing a philosophy as opposed to adopting it. I think if I ever became a game director, I would try to look at a project from what I want as a player. Working on little hobbyist projects myself and I've found myself wondering on what features I want to have. Then I introspect more on it; 'Would it serve a purpose (gameplay, story, etc.)? 'Would it substantially add anything to it? 'Or is this just because its trendy to have X or Y feature(s)? 'Would I just be adding something as an afterthought without having any understanding of why it worked in other games to begin with?' Etc.
The "developing your own philosophy" part is my favorite part! I love that we have so many different ways of thinking, and so many kinds of games, and I'm glad to have the opportunity to make my own. Consequently, my least favorite people are people who don't think for themselves, and I've always had a certain level of apprehension when i think about getting into the industry and being stuck under a director or company that acts in that way. I often think if I had gotten into the industry early, I might've actually been driven out of it by now. I guess I'm happy taking the indie route, even if it means it'll be longer and harder.
I wholeheartedly recommend Double Fine's documentary about the development of Psychonauts 2. It's a good example of what happens when a game director clashes with the team, both in terms of design philosophy but also the general approach to game development.
Not a game dev. Dont understand anything in any really useful level of anything surrounding game development. But infind these videos weirdly interested .
Developed vs adopted beliefs is a really interesting distinction. I've been thinking that political beliefs for many people is very similar to religious beliefs, and this is probably why.
The idea of adopted philosophy reminds me of a joke about practical traditions passed down long after they are necessary. A woman is making ham for Thanksgiving while her husband is watching and asks "Why do you cut both ends off the ham? Isn't that a waste?" and she replies "That's how my mother did it!" When they next visit her mother's house, she remembers and asks why she cuts the ends off the ham off, she replies "That's how your grandmother did it!" And so determined to find an answer, she goes to her grandmother's house and asks why she cuts the ends off the ham. The Grandmother is surprised by the question and says "You still haven't bought a bigger pan?"
On the subject of the difference between a religion and a cult, in my opinion as another very secular person, the only thing that separates the two is federal tax exemption status.
Hey Tim, I've recently found your channel and I loved learning about Game design and about the creation of Fallout. I recently watched your Fallout Regrets video and at the beginnning you say "I'm assuming you don't mean me regretting leaving the IP" or something similar, and I was wondering if you would ever work with Bethesda on a Fallout game as a consultant if they asked you and why. And if yes, what do you think you could add to the Bethesda's fallout? I'd be interested to know what you think about Bethesda's Fallout if you've really looked at it much.
Hello, Tim! You mention that you didn't like that Bethesda remove skills from Fallout. But I played in Fallout New Vegas and have some questions about this system: 1. Some skills like a Lockpick work only in four thresholds: 25/50/75/100. If you spent your skill points into a Lockpick to raise it to 38 - you got nothing. Maybe it would be more fair, if a hard lock have not only 75 requirement, but various between 51-75? 2. So, if you want to pass some hard checks (and you want it) - you need to raise your skill up to 100. But it's annoying when you raise your skill up to 100 and found 2-3 skill books. Of course, you can keep your skills around 90 and temporarily raise it with magazines. But it kind of metagaming. 3. You love roleplaying and hard protect SPECIAL. But you can create character with 1 INT (it's full idiot, who even can't speak normally), but you can raise your Science skill up to 100 and give a high tech solutions of hard science troubles. Maybe it should be skill cap based on SPECIAL? If you have 1 Charisma - your Speech cap is 10, and you can't to convince the legat to back off. What do you think?
Hey Tim. Hope you're good. There is something actually that bothered me when I was much younger playing Arcanum. You had the option to invest your character into magic or tech but trying to combine the two in a single character was often problematic (because of failed attempts to do certain actions etc). Maybe there was a way to do it that I never discovered back then but if not I'm curious: What was the decision making behind that? Balancing issues? I always felt like there was a missed opportunity there to have like even cooler characters with things never seen before in a game back then. I mostly played summoner just attack some townsfolk to get an early overpowered summon ability then breezed through a large part of the game. It might have been a locked chest or something but I did experiment quite a lot with different builds back then (although it was a really long time ago). It was a great game but I always wondered whether I missed something about that or it was intentional.
The central tenet of Arcanum was that magick and technology were opposed. They cannot be combined because the work with nature in different ways. Tech works with it, magick works against it.
@@CainOnGames I also wondered whether it was considered or not. Maybe it was a pain to implement? Or if the design pillars were very strict? etc. Would love to hear a detailed insight!
@@CainOnGames Well that makes sense. I was actually curious whether it actually was brought up by anyone or not. It's a shame there was never a sequel as I did love that game. I think I vaguely remember trying to abuse a luck mechanic or something like that back then trying to get around the hybrid character style of play. It's interesting because in other games around the time hybrid's weren't really intentional but there was way around it like in D2 where players would min-max their stats in order to optimise possible hybrid builds. Thanks Tim! Very interesting to know!
Awesome, I’ve got the ego part down pat, now I’ve just gotta find some ideas… In all seriousness, as an indie, I have fears about convincing others of my ideas. Maybe I need to sit down and write about them 🤔
I think the biggest first question is- why are you needing to convince others of your ideas? Remember, game design is a corporate structure. You don't need to convince your artists of you idea, you need to communicate your idea well enough to understand. Then they might have to convince you that what they created fits within your ideas. You're paying them, not converting them. The same is true for any other work, be it narative or system design or anything else, that you're "outsourcing" to another employee. All that being said- yes. Yes yes YES! Write your ideas down. Get them outside of your head so you can see what they look like. So you can start iterating on them and fleshing them out!
Tim, do you have any thoughts on when a designer and audience conflict? Take the ending of mass effect 3 for example, that had a really negative reception by audiences and they went on to release free DLC to redo the ending (or perhaps 're-explain' would be more actuate). At what point does a game designer go from sticking to their guns, to make concessions for audiences.
I would absolutely love to sit down with you over coffee and/or beer and just listen to you talk for hours and hours and hours. I can't believe this channel is free. This is amazing.
The guy who made the Fallout game set in California grew up in Washington D.C. while the guy who made the Fallout game set in Washington D.C. grew up in Pennsylvania.
What are your thoughts on the illusion of player agency? What I mean by illusion of player agency is all to often games give 4 or more dialog options that really funnel you into one of 2 outcomes. What kinds of limitations in game development lead to this? How do you ensure that dialog options have robust potential outcomes?
That comment about religion got me thinking, how do you create interesting religions for games? I guess the topic kind of ties to the factions video you made. Since players mostly interact with the factions that follow a certain god. But I love how Pillars of Eternity did their thing with their pantheon and how you can directly interact with the gods themselves.
Make it grounded. Analyze why real religions are the way they are, then tie those reasons into your concept but expressed differently. Then people can explore those ideas in a “safe” way, perhaps even on an unconscious level, without rejecting it immediately.
Ive got an odd/perharps not pleasant question. Outer Worlds. How did it happened? While playing the game, I rather enjoyed the mechanical part of it, the way stats works are cool, how the aimed shots gave enemy debuffs, that sort of stuff, the narrative part feels very off (maybe bland is the right word?). The character feels like caricatures more then anything (tho I really like the priest companion quest "I cant read fucking French"), but otherwise? It felt like there was no meat to its bones.
This makes a lot of sense. I wonder if my career is learning too much of asking why things are done and that's why I'm having trouble getting a job. Or I suck. One of the two, but yeah.
Hi Tim, its me, an NPC. Could you talk about when it's better to use an NPC or just have a hud option or let a player discover main plot features all by themselves?
Btw you said your family roots for the home team and the other family member liked another team. Sometimes people just like the sport and the state their from and their love for the game comes from a sort of passed down tradition. Others just like sports in general and are influenced by their friends to like a team with an origin that they arent from or they low key want to live in another state. I heard one girl choose a team based on the colors. Its not really more thoughtful to go outside of the box in that way and actually carrying on a tradition of supporting something because of your ties to that thing means you will likely not faulter in your dedication in the long run. At some point your brother-n-laws team may have completely new players and a new coach. What will be his excuse to like them then? So you see the hometown team may completely change but they still are a home team with ties to me and my family even its by circumstance. We may get frustrated when they lose or the coach is failing to guide the team right but we still have the edge when it comes to our dedication. My friend and I are in a simular situation and he canceled his cable and haven't kept up with his favorite basketball team and he favors football more. All and all tradition and the love for the game is stronger than a choice based on somewhat random variables from his current life path. We all make conscience decisions to first like certain sports and second find one to root forand that's usually based on who influenced us to watch them in the first place.
I remember when I was little and said to a Priest that I to want to be one, I really liked the old churches and the mythology of angels, but then I said do I have to believe in Christianity😅
The mention of being in the industry for 13 years before becoming a director (and assurance that it might not *necessarily* take that long for any particular person) makes me wonder -- is there a rule-of-thumb "average" number of years for that?
Based on job postings I've browsed out of curiosity over the years, the main thing I notice is the amount of games released and how successful they were is a better indicator than some arbitrary YOE number, as many people are just happy to find a position they like in their career and do the same thing over and over for years with no desire to become a director.
What if the developers don’t want to listen to the game director? What if the developers don’t recognize the game director’s position and decide they’re going to take direction from another more popular developer than the director? What should be done then?
I’ve never had that happen. I’d assume the devs would have their completed tasks rejected by the game director for not following direction, leading to missed schedules, bad internal reviews, and consequences such as being moved to a different project or being let go. But what an odd situation…someone literally said “I don’t recognize your position”?
@@CainOnGames This is happening with a friend of mine who is working on a mod. Everyone there including the game director is just volunteering. Idk the exact details but my understanding is that a lot of the devs want to kick out the project lead because he is “too woke”.
Wanted to share this with you if you hadn't heard or seen it yet. I make a point of watching a lot of casual interviews and such from people in the industry ('swhy I'm here), and this one really paints a picture of some of these bigger AAA companies and how bad things are getting up there. It's an interview with a former Blizzard dev as they go through his experiences and some of the other (most recent) refuse to spill out of that rotting husk of a company. th-cam.com/video/KGQSTDm5ois/w-d-xo.html I know you don't like covering this stuff, so I don't expect a rssponse, but I think it's a great interview.
Ever did a video on secrets and easter eggs in games? I really do think its almost a requirement for games to have these things. Games that dont have them makes it feel somethings missing.
Uncle Tim, What's your thoughts on Star Citizen, I don't mean the game, but the crowd funding aspect of it, with stretch goals and early adopters. Would you consider making a crowd funded game? (Before you had semi retired.)
It's can be worrying when game directors become "rockstars", like Todd Howard. Too much power can go to your head. Of course I don't know anything about him personally but from watching Howard over the years he looks to be a very arrogant person in my opinion, of course it may not be all his fault; there's almost a cult of personality of fans around him which definitely strokes his ego. Seeing how Starfield turned out I think a lot of the problems rested on his shoulders.
I’m not sure if it’s arrogance in the traditional sense. From what other YT vids on Starfield have speculated, it may be more due to being unwilling to change their development style to better suit a completely new franchise that has a large scope and development demand, as well as lack of strong unifying vision/themes.
Both Tim and other people from Obsidian have debunked this myth about Todd Howard being a Rockstar or egotistical and said he was incredibly kind and helpful. Even former devs from Bethesda have said that Howard hates being the one to have to shoot down ideas and give the final say on things. I have no idea where you came up with this image of him.
Hey tim, since you know everything why dont you make a video game documentary. Heres what im thinking: design a new game. Every week, make a video documenting your progress, showing what's been made so far, and stuff like that. I think it will be interesting to see a video on the more practical side.
Patrician lied a lot during that video. I don't think someone upstanding like Tim would follow that dude - besides, Tim did already recommend a much more reasonable and honest game reviewer (Mortismal Gaming).
Ideas from the director are of course subjective, but a truly great one should have empirical data that can explain and answer everything at every stage. If they come to a point that cannot be answered for, that should be discussed. Maybe you can come to an explanation together with the input of other people.
Didn't talk about all time times I've seen players with good reasons something is going to be a problem. Then they get nothing but contempt even after it turns out exactly as predicted to paying customers that but extra effort in the game.
First off, two hours is too long for an argument with anyone in general... 90% of the argument is going to be lost in the bickering. Secondly, it's perfectly acceptable for the director to win subjective arguments as long as they accept the objective consequences for those choices. For example, if the game engine isn't originally built to do the thing they want to do then this is going to lead to extended workarounds to solve these problems and in turn cost more on the project. As long as the director hasn't got their head in the clouds and acknowledges this and doesn't pass the buck when objective consequences come around then there's nothing on the worker's side to worry about.
Lmao, he's only ever said good things about them, as have other former and current Obsidian employees. If anything, he's shitting on your made-up conspiracy bullshit.
I recall Zero punctuation, now Fully Ramblomatic praising the games where you can sense the director behind the game vs designed by committee, as you need some one with a corherent vision to put something out that moves. Even if it can get bloody weird at times. 😂
as a non-religious secular scandinavian, I really do not care if you adopted it from your heritage or not. It is perfectly fine to not have great answers to someone like me.
Game directors need to have an ego, it's how they make good games. We would never have gotten Doom or Unreal if we didn't have John Romero or Cliffy B going "i'm the best fucking game designer in the world, I make solid gold and people will kiss my fucking ass begging to play it" and you know what? They did. Doom and Unreal are 2 of the best FPS games of all time that still hold up today. Modern AAA games are trash because they don't have the egotistical game director nerd that also knows what he is doing because he plays video games all the time as his primary hobby.
bullshit. It's not about a "big" ego, it's all down to born talent. Ex: Starfield is a piece of shit despite Todd Howard's egomaniacal, know-it-all attitude.
@@wowsnav right, the guy who made Skyrim, Morrowind, is not influential in anyway, no ONE important... Don't act daft man, you know who he is and act ignorant to get a slam dunk.
"The director wins subjective arguments" is a really great and simple way to describe the role.
"you can't reason someone out of a position they were never reasoned into to begin with."
You can. That's how they get out of said positions.
I'm not in the industry, and I never plan to be in the industry (I'm 35 and an attorney), but I'm a life-long gamer and these videos have been exceedingly fascinating to get a behind the scenes look at the gaming industry and your games in particular. Thanks for the uploads.
I feel like it takes a certain type of person would spend their spare time learning about intricacies in a profession they have no intention to work in. These are people who love learning. I imagine that many of them have careers that require huge amounts of learning, such as being an attorney.
Engineer/40, I also like the videos, I played video games when I was a teenager, nowadays not so much, but Tim's content is really cool, I'm happy that he decided to start this channel, it's a blessing, teachings and experience that will help a lot of people I am sure.
Lawyer is just logic using human readable grammar. All you gotta do is make the leap to logic as code, and there you are. And you can argue your case for why this game should exist and what this feature is doing to support it. Helpful skills as a designer & engineer all too lacking in those who jumped purely to games.
Pay however is a lot lower than lawyer. And especially as indies, we always need a lawyer.
I love how open Tim is and it has given me a lot of insight and understanding into games that I dont like or even hated and his stuff gave me an Aha moment where suddenly a switch was flipped. I also do a lot of modding for fallout games and the like so his content is also informative in that wat
I second this
Hi Tim, it's us, everyone
You are so fucking fast I was gonna type it lol 😅
Ey, nice to see someone carrying this on :)
gee this isn't gonna get old quick
@@massiviveit got old after the first thread it happened in.
NPCs are gonna do NPC things.
Can confirm, I am part of the collective entity known as @confusedgentleman
We are legion for we are many.
Probably the worst behavior a Director can do is "here's a high-level idea for a feature, find out how it fits the game/what makes it fun". You'd be horrified by how often that happens.
So basically "my job is to give you direction and have vision for good product but I am a fraud and know shit about it so lets steal something what already works, you will be doing all the hard job behind analysis, design and I will just sit on my ass and tell you what to change if I feel like it"
Sounds right. Not even a "here's a high level design idea, how could we use that? "
Sounds like "Here is a sh*t, make it not look like a sh*t to the players". :) I'm curious whether in game companies when developers figure out it's a sh*t, they tell the Director that it's a sh*t, or don't tell him to avoid conflicts?
@@flamart9703sounds like fallout 76...
The weird part is that this is traditionally what good leaders do in non-creative industries. If you micromanage and have a very strict vision on something as a CEO for an oil, fintech, or sales company, you will fail since everyone will wait on your word. I can see why a lot of Directors who are hired laterally have this sort of behavior, because it is typically heavily rewarded and taught in business management schools.
It's really interesting because I feel that more and more business people see games as a business instead of a creative endeavor. I can see why this would happen more often than in movies/TV/music because directors are treated more like a creative in those industries than games.
The industry is young, so this probably will change.
I am a Mechanic (35+yrs), not a game dev. That said, I talk to and watch a lot of other Mechanics. From them I am able to learn about vehicles I have not worked on, and lots of times there are tips and tricks I can pick up and integrate in to my SOP. Sometimes there are common problems, and the solutions have already been found, saving time, and my customer's money. The way I see it is, every day is a school day!
Have a great day, Sir! o7
I really liked that insight about developed beliefs VS adopted beliefs. It's absolutely true, and applies to everything in life. Great video, Tim!
Strong case against "design by committee". Someone needs to have the vision and have the right to veto on all major decisions.
Yeah but you can give someone too much power or they can be too out of touch with the design team. It's honestly a balance.
Most design by committee is just a game director enforcing a weak vision.
This video is applicable to so many activities outside of game development.
Hi Tim! I'm an indie game developer in Mexico. Pitched 3 games in over 5-6 years to indie publishers but nothing really happened.
Some publishers answered and gave nice comments, and to just "polish" some stuff, and we did, but it seemed that wasn't enough.
We even reached the 3rd or 4rth phase of the process, but always got rejected on the Marketing review (3 times, different publishers).
Rami helped me a lot! We had five or six 1-on-1 conversations where he'd review my material and give me advice to polish it further.
Apparently, it still wasn't enough, and didn't go anywhere.
Each new try, I focused on improving the things that failed, that being scope, art style, team composition, proyect highliting team's strengths, etc.
We are on our 4rth (and probably final try) on a smaller game (physics-based roguelite) with a 7 person team.
We got a nice vertical slice and are currently polishing sound and art. We are asking for 100K for a year of development (aiming for 30,000 sales at 19.99 USD).
I know that's not a lot of money for a publisher, but its still a high risk for an unproven team in a thirld world country without huge game hits nor big game industry.
Do you have any advice? Or could you give some insight on how that process worked for you?
Thanks in advice, I admire you a lot and appreciate all the effort you put in your videos.
Its so cool to see someone care so much and give some insight of this hard but beautiful industry.
I just really really really want to be a part of it, but I can't seem to get it right :(
Don't give up, even if you keep failing for your whole life, It's more important that you tried following your dream
I get where you are coming from mate, and I really share your mindset and appreciate your kind words@@noah8162
But, I've been doing this for 11 years now, went to engineer programming uni, hustled, teached, did my first studio, failed misserably. Did my second studio, failed making 2 games, I'm 200K USD down and I'm 31 now. I've got responsabilities now :/
Doing games is hard already, doing them in a third world country, specifically Mexico, I gotta be honest with you, I just don't see it happening. I'll still try, but I don't want to affect all the people that's been following me in this journey. They deserve happiness and success, and I'm just not bringing that to the table :(
No matter how much you are passionate for your dream, or your game, you can't eat passion, and burnout from not releasing games is so real. You start losing hope little by little and think "well, maybe I'm not meant for it, no matter how hard I try". And believe me, I've tried, and I'm still trying, as hard as I can.
Thanks for the boost tho, it really gives me more fuel to keep going (:
Did you watch the video on beautiful corners?
There is also Steam self publishing for small fee
The problem is not publishing the game bro, like, putting it out there is not hard. The hard thing is finishing it.
The Steam Fee is nothing (100 USD) and we already did that with the 3 failed games. You need it in order to share steam keys to publishers.
The real problem has always been finishing the game, finding a market, marketing it properly and all the work after you publish the game.
A Self Published game, from an unproven team, in a third world country, that will sell you around 1K copies, by a team of 7, costs around 100K withouth any marketing, service and basically living in crunch with really sad quality of life. Just barely hanging, working it as a side job@@wesss9353
And, again, its almost guaranteed to fail. In the history of Mexico, there's been 1,000 games self published.
Only 3 of them recovered the investment, and one of them is Kerbal Space Program lol.
That's why there's no industry here :/
So yeah... sadly is not about just publishing a game, is building a studio, a team, and go through the formal process of publishing in order to not be amateur and make a living of it.
At least to buy food and pay rent.
Thanks for reaching out and trying to help. I really appreciate it man :' )
@@carbonmachinaI did a quick Google search for indy studio and GDC has an hour long video.
See if you can check that out.
Honestly I was playing fallout 4, while I was looking it up.
Tim, these videos are very inspiring and useful. I work as a full time corporate ERP developer and find it hard to moonlight as an amateur game dev. Just watching one of your videos (regardless of topic) helps me ground myself, reattain vision of my goals, and gain motivation for 1-2 hours of progress on a weeknight.
You are very well spoken and insightful. I think it would do the game dev community (and maybe the software world in general) a big service if you wrote a memoirs/dev philosophy style book and also narrated it for a service like Audible.
Love the videos!
Just found this channel. fan boying way too hard because I finished fallout recently. Feel I must interact to show my appreciation for such riveting entertainment which stands the test of time.
The curiosity and asking the “why” is the key to good management, change, engineering, etc. Accepting the end result and shrugging it off as “that’s the way it is” or hand waving improvements or change because it is a hassle is complacent ineptitude.
Thank you for this. Needed a reality check after a clash I had with my game director a couple days ago.
This video go’s out to you Todd Howard!
Oh, man, poor Todd, people hate on him all the time. I think he's just a bit misguided, is all.
8:10 Oh, but what a great tangent. ^.^ In sum:
"Reexamine all you have been told,
At school at church or in any book,
Dismiss whatever insults your own soul,
And your very flesh shall be a great poem,
And have the richest fluency not only in its words,
But in the silent lines of its lips and face,
And between the lashes of your eyes,
And in every motion and joint of your body." ~ Walt Whitman
Hi Tim! Thank you, from us, everyone.
The only times I had a superior, no matter the job I was doing, answering what I expected them to say in those cases,
it was when I brought up a problem with already at least a complete project involving myself solving the problem.
The answer I expected, and sometimes (not always) the one I got,
was to ask how much time it would take me to do it,
and/or when I thought it would be possible for me to cut out the time to do it.
In my experience, it's pretty difficult to be working in an environment
where you tell someone a problem and they just solve it on their own.
Thanks for your videos!
Really great insight, Tim! Thanks for the upload
Love this, really appreciate the topic for today, makes me a lot less worried about sounding pretentious I end up outlining a personal design philosophy for X genre in a pitch or proposal. I’ve often felt I need to fit my design language within boxes because as someone who’s only formally trained in programming I worry about being an “outsider artist” of sorts
I try to use these videos to gain general creative knowledge to use in my own music projects. And I think the part about developed vs adopted philosophy was really great information that I think a lot of people could gain from. Thanks Tim!
Everytime when I struggle at something in game dev work, i find relevant video on topic from Tim :)
Its sad to see such a well spoken explanation about game directors, clearing up the many misconceptions people have toward them and look at the comments full of people missing the point or using it as an excuse to call other developers awful things.
These videos are great, you seem like a very heart warming guy who loves working on games and not following a set path, instead going with works best for the overall end product. I've been an artist for years and even in that field you're told to follow a set direction without questioning the reason behind it, which gets very tiring when this translates to other projects. It's never going to be one size fits all, i think every artist and designer should read some Aristotle philosophy to broaden their mind before even starting in these fields, and to be their own person (while respectfully of course following your leads.) Thanks for the videos!
Thank you so much for this insight. I get actual life advice from you. 😊
Hey Tim.
I'm currently working on a project with a team of 8. A lot of the initial effort was in part due to the existence of this channel so thank you for inspiring me to start working on games with more structure.
I have a few questions about deadlines. Throughout the process of our first game, my role has shifted to being more of a producer as we onboarded people who were able to take over aspects of the game I was previously in charge of and make it better. (Like art, for example). What I'm currently having trouble with is creating deadlines at every step of the process for each of my teams (programming, art, design, and sound). I have followed the video you made about the stages of making a game, but I don't believe you mention deadlines in that video or in the few videos about being a good game director.
Should the overall schedule be flexible? Should we start with a release date/ range of dates in mind? Should the task be created beforehand and assigned on a consistent schedule, or should the remaining task be assessed week by week and a deadline created throughout the process? I imagine some of the questions depend on if there is a larger company/ investor who is also overseeing the project, but that is not currently the position I'm in as a startup.
Again, thanks for creating this channel. I'm sure I'm not the only person you'll have inspired to create games.
You have discovered one of the hardest parts of game development. Tasking and task estimation. This is the place that fingers start pointing, tempers flare, and crunch begins.
My best advice is to break your game into distinct features and those features into tasks. Mutually estimate times for those tasks with the people who will be doing the implementation, and ask them to give your progress updates and not wait until the end of the task time to tell you whether they are done or not.
If people need more time, you have options. Take the extra time if you can afford it. If you cannot, either drop the feature completely, or replace it with a simpler fallback feature that you know you can get done, or drop other features to make time for this one.
There is no magic bullet. Hard work and clear communication will get your game done.
@CainOnGames Thank you so much Tim! I truly appreciate the effort you put into your channel and comments!
I really like the emphasis on the importance of developing a philosophy as opposed to adopting it. I think if I ever became a game director, I would try to look at a project from what I want as a player.
Working on little hobbyist projects myself and I've found myself wondering on what features I want to have. Then I introspect more on it;
'Would it serve a purpose (gameplay, story, etc.)?
'Would it substantially add anything to it?
'Or is this just because its trendy to have X or Y feature(s)?
'Would I just be adding something as an afterthought without having any understanding of why it worked in other games to begin with?'
Etc.
The "developing your own philosophy" part is my favorite part! I love that we have so many different ways of thinking, and so many kinds of games, and I'm glad to have the opportunity to make my own.
Consequently, my least favorite people are people who don't think for themselves, and I've always had a certain level of apprehension when i think about getting into the industry and being stuck under a director or company that acts in that way. I often think if I had gotten into the industry early, I might've actually been driven out of it by now. I guess I'm happy taking the indie route, even if it means it'll be longer and harder.
I wholeheartedly recommend Double Fine's documentary about the development of Psychonauts 2. It's a good example of what happens when a game director clashes with the team, both in terms of design philosophy but also the general approach to game development.
That orange kitty in your php is so cute!
Man, Tim I could listen to you speak for hours.
Not a game dev.
Dont understand anything in any really useful level of anything surrounding game development.
But infind these videos weirdly interested .
Hi Tim, have you or your team ever experienced burnout while working on a project? and if you did, how did you deal with the burnout?
loved the rant in the middle ahaha
Hello from Russia Tim, you are wonderful. Keep releasing videos. We love you here very much.
Developed vs adopted beliefs is a really interesting distinction.
I've been thinking that political beliefs for many people is very similar to religious beliefs, and this is probably why.
The idea of adopted philosophy reminds me of a joke about practical traditions passed down long after they are necessary.
A woman is making ham for Thanksgiving while her husband is watching and asks "Why do you cut both ends off the ham? Isn't that a waste?" and she replies "That's how my mother did it!" When they next visit her mother's house, she remembers and asks why she cuts the ends off the ham off, she replies "That's how your grandmother did it!" And so determined to find an answer, she goes to her grandmother's house and asks why she cuts the ends off the ham. The Grandmother is surprised by the question and says "You still haven't bought a bigger pan?"
On the subject of the difference between a religion and a cult, in my opinion as another very secular person, the only thing that separates the two is federal tax exemption status.
Hey Tim, I've recently found your channel and I loved learning about Game design and about the creation of Fallout. I recently watched your Fallout Regrets video and at the beginnning you say "I'm assuming you don't mean me regretting leaving the IP" or something similar, and I was wondering if you would ever work with Bethesda on a Fallout game as a consultant if they asked you and why. And if yes, what do you think you could add to the Bethesda's fallout? I'd be interested to know what you think about Bethesda's Fallout if you've really looked at it much.
Hello, Tim! You mention that you didn't like that Bethesda remove skills from Fallout. But I played in Fallout New Vegas and have some questions about this system:
1. Some skills like a Lockpick work only in four thresholds: 25/50/75/100. If you spent your skill points into a Lockpick to raise it to 38 - you got nothing. Maybe it would be more fair, if a hard lock have not only 75 requirement, but various between 51-75?
2. So, if you want to pass some hard checks (and you want it) - you need to raise your skill up to 100. But it's annoying when you raise your skill up to 100 and found 2-3 skill books. Of course, you can keep your skills around 90 and temporarily raise it with magazines. But it kind of metagaming.
3. You love roleplaying and hard protect SPECIAL. But you can create character with 1 INT (it's full idiot, who even can't speak normally), but you can raise your Science skill up to 100 and give a high tech solutions of hard science troubles. Maybe it should be skill cap based on SPECIAL? If you have 1 Charisma - your Speech cap is 10, and you can't to convince the legat to back off.
What do you think?
Very good topic Tim!
I feel like we need a "Ego And Game Directors" Part 2
Some solid wisdom in this video
Hey Tim. Hope you're good. There is something actually that bothered me when I was much younger playing Arcanum. You had the option to invest your character into magic or tech but trying to combine the two in a single character was often problematic (because of failed attempts to do certain actions etc). Maybe there was a way to do it that I never discovered back then but if not I'm curious: What was the decision making behind that? Balancing issues? I always felt like there was a missed opportunity there to have like even cooler characters with things never seen before in a game back then. I mostly played summoner just attack some townsfolk to get an early overpowered summon ability then breezed through a large part of the game. It might have been a locked chest or something but I did experiment quite a lot with different builds back then (although it was a really long time ago). It was a great game but I always wondered whether I missed something about that or it was intentional.
The central tenet of Arcanum was that magick and technology were opposed. They cannot be combined because the work with nature in different ways. Tech works with it, magick works against it.
@@CainOnGames I pretty much got that at the time but I always felt like hybrid classes could have been really cool.
@@RewdanSpritesOne of the designers wanted to do that in the sequel. Personally, I thought that would have been antithetical to the lore.
@@CainOnGames I also wondered whether it was considered or not. Maybe it was a pain to implement? Or if the design pillars were very strict? etc. Would love to hear a detailed insight!
@@CainOnGames Well that makes sense. I was actually curious whether it actually was brought up by anyone or not. It's a shame there was never a sequel as I did love that game. I think I vaguely remember trying to abuse a luck mechanic or something like that back then trying to get around the hybrid character style of play. It's interesting because in other games around the time hybrid's weren't really intentional but there was way around it like in D2 where players would min-max their stats in order to optimise possible hybrid builds. Thanks Tim! Very interesting to know!
Hi Tim, do you get tired of being awesome, or do you eventually get used to it?
When i saw the title, "Ego and Game Directors"
I immediately thought "Oh, a video about Breakfast and Games!"
Thanks for the video!
I was very excited when this came into my sidebar and I thought it said "Eggs and Game Directors".
Awesome, I’ve got the ego part down pat, now I’ve just gotta find some ideas…
In all seriousness, as an indie, I have fears about convincing others of my ideas. Maybe I need to sit down and write about them 🤔
I think the biggest first question is- why are you needing to convince others of your ideas?
Remember, game design is a corporate structure. You don't need to convince your artists of you idea, you need to communicate your idea well enough to understand.
Then they might have to convince you that what they created fits within your ideas. You're paying them, not converting them.
The same is true for any other work, be it narative or system design or anything else, that you're "outsourcing" to another employee.
All that being said- yes. Yes yes YES! Write your ideas down. Get them outside of your head so you can see what they look like. So you can start iterating on them and fleshing them out!
Tim, do you have any thoughts on when a designer and audience conflict? Take the ending of mass effect 3 for example, that had a really negative reception by audiences and they went on to release free DLC to redo the ending (or perhaps 're-explain' would be more actuate). At what point does a game designer go from sticking to their guns, to make concessions for audiences.
I would absolutely love to sit down with you over coffee and/or beer and just listen to you talk for hours and hours and hours. I can't believe this channel is free. This is amazing.
The guy who made the Fallout game set in California grew up in Washington D.C. while the guy who made the Fallout game set in Washington D.C. grew up in Pennsylvania.
What are your thoughts on the illusion of player agency? What I mean by illusion of player agency is all to often games give 4 or more dialog options that really funnel you into one of 2 outcomes. What kinds of limitations in game development lead to this? How do you ensure that dialog options have robust potential outcomes?
That comment about religion got me thinking, how do you create interesting religions for games? I guess the topic kind of ties to the factions video you made. Since players mostly interact with the factions that follow a certain god. But I love how Pillars of Eternity did their thing with their pantheon and how you can directly interact with the gods themselves.
Make it grounded. Analyze why real religions are the way they are, then tie those reasons into your concept but expressed differently. Then people can explore those ideas in a “safe” way, perhaps even on an unconscious level, without rejecting it immediately.
Oh man don't get me started about them three E's
Glad to hear it in the morning! Are you thinking of making a video essay defining the genres such as RPGs? Action?
I would love to hear Uncle Tim's lecture to the university students
Ive got an odd/perharps not pleasant question. Outer Worlds. How did it happened? While playing the game, I rather enjoyed the mechanical part of it, the way stats works are cool, how the aimed shots gave enemy debuffs, that sort of stuff, the narrative part feels very off (maybe bland is the right word?). The character feels like caricatures more then anything (tho I really like the priest companion quest "I cant read fucking French"), but otherwise? It felt like there was no meat to its bones.
This makes a lot of sense.
I wonder if my career is learning too much of asking why things are done and that's why I'm having trouble getting a job. Or I suck. One of the two, but yeah.
Hi Tim, its me, an NPC. Could you talk about when it's better to use an NPC or just have a hud option or let a player discover main plot features all by themselves?
Btw you said your family roots for the home team and the other family member liked another team. Sometimes people just like the sport and the state their from and their love for the game comes from a sort of passed down tradition. Others just like sports in general and are influenced by their friends to like a team with an origin that they arent from or they low key want to live in another state. I heard one girl choose a team based on the colors. Its not really more thoughtful to go outside of the box in that way and actually carrying on a tradition of supporting something because of your ties to that thing means you will likely not faulter in your dedication in the long run. At some point your brother-n-laws team may have completely new players and a new coach. What will be his excuse to like them then? So you see the hometown team may completely change but they still are a home team with ties to me and my family even its by circumstance. We may get frustrated when they lose or the coach is failing to guide the team right but we still have the edge when it comes to our dedication. My friend and I are in a simular situation and he canceled his cable and haven't kept up with his favorite basketball team and he favors football more. All and all tradition and the love for the game is stronger than a choice based on somewhat random variables from his current life path. We all make conscience decisions to first like certain sports and second find one to root forand that's usually based on who influenced us to watch them in the first place.
star field go brr
I remember when I was little and said to a Priest that I to want to be one, I really liked the old churches and the mythology of angels, but then I said do I have to believe in Christianity😅
You are a gem Tim, I just wanted You to know that :)
I wonder if Kojima ever identifies goals in his design documents
The mention of being in the industry for 13 years before becoming a director (and assurance that it might not *necessarily* take that long for any particular person) makes me wonder -- is there a rule-of-thumb "average" number of years for that?
Based on job postings I've browsed out of curiosity over the years, the main thing I notice is the amount of games released and how successful they were is a better indicator than some arbitrary YOE number, as many people are just happy to find a position they like in their career and do the same thing over and over for years with no desire to become a director.
What if the developers don’t want to listen to the game director? What if the developers don’t recognize the game director’s position and decide they’re going to take direction from another more popular developer than the director? What should be done then?
I’ve never had that happen. I’d assume the devs would have their completed tasks rejected by the game director for not following direction, leading to missed schedules, bad internal reviews, and consequences such as being moved to a different project or being let go.
But what an odd situation…someone literally said “I don’t recognize your position”?
In any other job they'd get fired, right?
So...probably that. 😅
@@CainOnGames This is happening with a friend of mine who is working on a mod. Everyone there including the game director is just volunteering. Idk the exact details but my understanding is that a lot of the devs want to kick out the project lead because he is “too woke”.
Hi Tim! It's me, everyone.
Good effort :)
Can you tell us what interested you in comparative religion?
Wanted to share this with you if you hadn't heard or seen it yet. I make a point of watching a lot of casual interviews and such from people in the industry ('swhy I'm here), and this one really paints a picture of some of these bigger AAA companies and how bad things are getting up there.
It's an interview with a former Blizzard dev as they go through his experiences and some of the other (most recent) refuse to spill out of that rotting husk of a company.
th-cam.com/video/KGQSTDm5ois/w-d-xo.html
I know you don't like covering this stuff, so I don't expect a rssponse, but I think it's a great interview.
Ever did a video on secrets and easter eggs in games? I really do think its almost a requirement for games to have these things. Games that dont have them makes it feel somethings missing.
"at some point the game director should recognize these are no longer subjective..."
"Should" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence
Uncle Tim,
What's your thoughts on Star Citizen, I don't mean the game, but the crowd funding aspect of it, with stretch goals and early adopters.
Would you consider making a crowd funded game?
(Before you had semi retired.)
He already has. Pillars of Eternity was a kickstarter game. th-cam.com/video/su5wE2C5UWM/w-d-xo.html
Good day Timothy. I remember playing some strange Text based Fallout game given me on some demo disk back in 2000s , do you know how that came about?
Hi Tim, what are the positives and negatives of having many people play your games?
It's can be worrying when game directors become "rockstars", like Todd Howard. Too much power can go to your head. Of course I don't know anything about him personally but from watching Howard over the years he looks to be a very arrogant person in my opinion, of course it may not be all his fault; there's almost a cult of personality of fans around him which definitely strokes his ego. Seeing how Starfield turned out I think a lot of the problems rested on his shoulders.
I’m not sure if it’s arrogance in the traditional sense. From what other YT vids on Starfield have speculated, it may be more due to being unwilling to change their development style to better suit a completely new franchise that has a large scope and development demand, as well as lack of strong unifying vision/themes.
Both Tim and other people from Obsidian have debunked this myth about Todd Howard being a Rockstar or egotistical and said he was incredibly kind and helpful. Even former devs from Bethesda have said that Howard hates being the one to have to shoot down ideas and give the final say on things. I have no idea where you came up with this image of him.
@@Toxic_Korgi Fair enough then. Maybe it's just me.
Hi Tim, it's me (another) Tim!
Not Tim 2 but Tim too 😄
Hey tim, since you know everything why dont you make a video game documentary. Heres what im thinking: design a new game. Every week, make a video documenting your progress, showing what's been made so far, and stuff like that. I think it will be interesting to see a video on the more practical side.
I know its a touchy subject, but please explain the difference between cults and religions. This is super interesting!
I’m making a video where I try to define an RPG, so I’m not afraid of touchy subjects. But cults vs. religions…that’s outside my wheelhouse
ReadyToHarvest has a good video about cults.
Tax breaks
Cult no tax break
Religion tax break
@@wesss9353 very nuanced argument here
In a cult, there's a guy at the top that knows it's a scam.
In a religion, that guy is dead.
Damn, Tim just finished watching the PatricianTV vid on Starfield.(or maybe I just did…)
Patrician lied a lot during that video. I don't think someone upstanding like Tim would follow that dude - besides, Tim did already recommend a much more reasonable and honest game reviewer (Mortismal Gaming).
@@PedroGomes-cx7ku Howso? I was already gonna sleep on Starfield so it’s a total fluke that I bothered watching any coverage.
Hi Everyone Its me Tim
>ask question
with moderation, questioning every single little thing is not what you should do
Ideas from the director are of course subjective, but a truly great one should have empirical data that can explain and answer everything at every stage. If they come to a point that cannot be answered for, that should be discussed. Maybe you can come to an explanation together with the input of other people.
Didn't talk about all time times I've seen players with good reasons something is going to be a problem. Then they get nothing but contempt even after it turns out exactly as predicted to paying customers that but extra effort in the game.
I search for ways to kill teammates when there is no friendly fire...
I'm a horrible person
5:18 I swear I heard "thats what Howard told us to do it!"
First off, two hours is too long for an argument with anyone in general... 90% of the argument is going to be lost in the bickering.
Secondly, it's perfectly acceptable for the director to win subjective arguments as long as they accept the objective consequences for those choices. For example, if the game engine isn't originally built to do the thing they want to do then this is going to lead to extended workarounds to solve these problems and in turn cost more on the project. As long as the director hasn't got their head in the clouds and acknowledges this and doesn't pass the buck when objective consequences come around then there's nothing on the worker's side to worry about.
Alternate title of the video: "Why Todd Howard needs to be replaced along with his buddy Emil Pagliarulo"
Lmao, he's only ever said good things about them, as have other former and current Obsidian employees. If anything, he's shitting on your made-up conspiracy bullshit.
I recall Zero punctuation, now Fully Ramblomatic praising the games where you can sense the director behind the game vs designed by committee, as you need some one with a corherent vision to put something out that moves.
Even if it can get bloody weird at times. 😂
Shots fired EMIL
Emil from Halo : Reach?
Just internet nerds mad at a Bethesda employee again.@@wesss9353
as a non-religious secular scandinavian, I really do not care if you adopted it from your heritage or not. It is perfectly fine to not have great answers to someone like me.
*HACH* *COUGH* *COUGH* *WRETCH* Todd Howard *cough cough * whew I’m sorry y’all idk what it was that came over me
Just pointing out, you keep saying "he" would be more inclusive to say they. Or him and / or her
Adding Thanks for another great, thoughtful, and well explained video.
Game directors need to have an ego, it's how they make good games. We would never have gotten Doom or Unreal if we didn't have John Romero or Cliffy B going "i'm the best fucking game designer in the world, I make solid gold and people will kiss my fucking ass begging to play it" and you know what? They did. Doom and Unreal are 2 of the best FPS games of all time that still hold up today. Modern AAA games are trash because they don't have the egotistical game director nerd that also knows what he is doing because he plays video games all the time as his primary hobby.
bullshit. It's not about a "big" ego, it's all down to born talent. Ex: Starfield is a piece of shit despite Todd Howard's egomaniacal, know-it-all attitude.
@@PlzUnbanme I don't even know who that is, so they must not be very important
@@wowsnav right, the guy who made Skyrim, Morrowind, is not influential in anyway, no ONE important... Don't act daft man, you know who he is and act ignorant to get a slam dunk.
When i hear EGO and Game directors i instantly think of Todd Howard.