I Spoke to another AAA Dev Leaker, it got Controversial
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 พ.ย. 2024
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I had the privilige of getting to speak to a Call of Duty developer and ask them 13 questions so long as I protected their identity. What I learned about video games, AAA games, and gamers was eye opening
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REPLY FROM THE DEV:
"Hey everyone,
This is the dev here! I took some time to read your comments, and I truly appreciate your energy and passion for the gaming community. I also respect the strong opinions many of you have about certain practices in the industry, like monetization or decisions around textures and features. (Also, please remember that I’m not the right person to provide a precise answer about the textures, as I didn’t work on them, which I’ve mentioned before. )
You might see this as an advertisement for Activision, but honestly, when you work for a company or at least a team you truly love, why wouldn’t you share your happiness with friends and family? I’m genuinely proud to be part of Call of Duty and Activision.
My goal in life is to genuinely help more people enter the gaming industry. It’s an amazing field!
It’s worth remembering that human nature often leans toward focusing on the negatives rather than the positives.
Also remember, most decisions about what gets accepted into the game are led by seniors and directors. I completely understand this, as it often involves a high-risk, high-reward. At this point in my career, I don’t have enough experience to take on that level of responsibility or even fully understand the challenges of managing over 5,000 employees and making critical decisions. It takes a tremendous amount of courage and energy.
I think we, as gamers, have become a bit tough on games these days.
I absolutely love my job and enjoy working at Activision. From my perspective and the team I work with, I haven’t encountered anything that’s gone wrong on my end, so I feel the need to share my experience. I understand the frustrations you’ve expressed, but I aim to remain professional both online and offline.
I’m incredibly grateful for this opportunity, and I genuinely hope that everyone striving to achieve their goals in game development, gets the career of their dreams.
Thank you"
"high risk high reward" like putting $30 packs in a already $70 game? I see what you're saying but if Activision actually cared for the gamers instead of blatantly coping other games and following in their footsteps the game would be much better off. Like SBMM, while a lot of new players are used to it there's tonnes of people that work and only play a few hours a day being put with chronic sweats cause the last game they played last night they went 10-0. I'm not a dev nor would I ever work for such a greedy company like Activision you have got to look from the eyes of the players. We know we're just a number on the board, there's other games made by single Devs that are more community driven than Activision. We know Activision silences it's dev team, it's obvious how two Devs have had to keep their IDs hidden just to talk out. It's a disgusting thing but you seem to love it so you do you.
I think we, as gamers, have every right to be a bit tough on games these days. If games are going to be implemented with as many ways to pull as much money from us as possible, and in the case of bo6, on top of a $70 price tag, we have every right to expect a great product.
Im not buying this.
This seems like a way to fave face and defend the company.
The answer about texture sizes is unintentionally so funny. They had to send you a text document because EVEN THE MESSAGE was too large
Player: "Why can't we reduce the texture size? We don't care about the graphics, we just wanna buy the game!"
Dev: "It would look bad!"
Player: "but... we just said...."
And then,
P : "Did upper executives ever hold back a riskier feature"
Dev : "Those with more experience in the industry give the greenlight"
Me: ..."But... what industry? corporate side? dev side? and we were asking about DENIALS not green lights..... and we weren't asking about the general, but if exceptions were made"
These answers felt surprisingly disingenuous from a dev that wanted to "leak". This feels like hiding issues he has been a part of. This was lawyer speak, or very, very poor communication. Since it's a dev, could honestly be either though. Not his job to communicate well.
Except he said his role let him in on a lot of inter company communication. Which makes me think he isn't a dev, but instead someone paid to communicate well in corporate speak, and who used his official email to "leak" to a youtuber. It's a stretch, but My mind sees a pattern, and I just think either an honest dev or a internal spokesperson could have answered like this. But their actual business decisions seem to imply a spokesperson to me.
yep, it felt tooo..... corporate i guess.... and he said 2015 graphics like it was a bad thing, but call of duty black ops 3 doesn't look that bad at all, and if games looked like that, it wouldn't even be an issue, so his point was dumb.... unless we are refering to the awful xbox 360 versh, that was just 90% blur and 3 polygon textures the game. BUT the studio didn't even try with it, and it clearly showed.
@@vyrv6719 I made a comment earlier that reflects this, I think Activision put him up to this
Why does this second Dev sound like an Activision plant
Hate to tell you bud, but you just straight outed the dev even with redacting the email - they'll be able to look at IT logs and find that message by date and time. Best edit that and hide all of the message details.
This
Just like the last dev, they cleared it before we hit publish. I assume the dev knows far more about what they are doing than we do
@@TDTProductions As someone who has worked in an IT department for a bit. The moment that email was sent the IT department had a log of it on their internal server. Literally all it would take to figure out who it was, even if you blocked everything out, would be to search for TDT and they'd have 1 of 1 matches to search through.
Unless your guy is in the IT department, he can't cover his tracks. And if he *is*, then they'd have to look at the administrative logs to see who was deleting messages and still narrow down who it could be.
I'm sorry, but this is clearly a sanctioned 'leak'.
@@TDTProductions
I’ll describe the timeline and consequences in steps:
1. TDT reach out to leaker for identity verification.
(a little sus but IT don’t manually examine every incoming email)
2. the leaker sent email using company account.
(this is where the leaker’s identity is exposed to the company but no one is actively looking, yet.)
3. TDT mention that the leaker verified their identity with the email “in a publicly accessible video on the internet”.
(this is where the company has all the information they need to hunt down the leaker. I say hunt but it’s more likey just looking up TDT’s email address followed by a log query to find out who sent the email.)
note:
every email is logged and stored on the email servers. Deleting it from your own inbox doesn’t impact the a company’s access to it. the leakers might not be aware of this themselves because the tech industry is so complex that no one knows every little details.
moral of the story:
you should not have said the method leakers used to validate their identity. Yes, it makes the video more credible but it also exposes the leaker’s identity indirectly.
what’s done is done. the only way to protect the leaker now is to take down the video immediately and pray the company never caught wind of this.
Clearly this dev was put up to it, he isn't going to get in trouble because the company undoubtedly already knew/were the ones giving him these PR answers lmao
I'm a small time dev that's previously worked AAA, and the guy you interviewed is either the most limp-dicked dev in the studio or actually working with comms.
Nobody worth their paycheck talks like that and expects anybody to buy what they're selling.
This developer feels very sterilized with their responses. It feels like they have management breathing down their neck as they type.
CoD doesn't even use SBMM. It uses EBMM, Engagement Based MatchMaking. It's literally designed to give you a hit of that good dopamine-rich, "I'M A GOD AND NOBODY CAN STOP ME!!!" gameplay just often enough that you will stick around and suffer through as many matches of "HE'S HACKING BRO!!! I WAS AROUND THE FUCKING CORNER!!!one!!!" as they can sucker you into enduring.
He even admits it with his answer.
thats just wrong
tell me, why would they WANT you to have those frustrating matches if they could ALWAYS give you good matches, the answer is simple, they wouldn't, those type of frustrating matches will always, without question, HARM engagement, but its impossible to have a perfect matchmaking system so you have to go for "good enough" which is what cod does, its not perfect, you will have frustrating matches, but if you have a better idea, go apply for a job at activision
@flamingscar5263 they do so because you as a good player will think your just bad and will try to put more time in to get better and when you do get that throw away match, they think you'll try to buy something from the shop, they are praying on your want and need to get better at something.
@flamingscar5263 the best way to have a good match making system is to go back to CBMM connection based match making. Why? Bad players will get rolled find a good player to team up with and learn how to play the game faster then alone, thus making the games about community then anything else.
@@flamingscar5263 No hes actually right. Alot of the big games thate are made of microtransactions (cod, lol, fifa etc.) to generate revenue are using a engagement based matchmaking system cause the first hours in a game are usually the hours were people decide if they spend money in this game. There are even patents about these matchmaking systems that try to predict the player behavior based on their behavior in the past and make sure they keep the engagement by giving them a freewin for their last game of the session so their mind is still positive about the game and they will come again and spend money again. There are also studies that state that a 100% winrate isnt the most statisfying for the human brain. The highest engagement was recorded at around 70-80% winrate so losing 1 out of 5 games when the losing game was the 3. or 4. game of these 5
@@flamingscar5263 It's actually really funny that you suggest getting continuous "good matches" will result in better engagement than maybe sometimes giving you a "good match" because, while that feels like a good enough answer, science as well as certain industries has proven the opposite.
Let me explain. To start off, if you want to google this instead of just take my word for it, look up "Skinner Box" and "Intermittent reinforcement psychology".
It's actually really simple, you get more dopamine from when something that might gives a reward does give a reward than if something is guaranteed to give a reward. If you pull the lever and it's always a jackpot, it's not as exciting as when you do finally manage to get that jackpot. Finally getting that Ultra Super Exclusive Rare YOU ROCK Supreme Mega SWAWS skin isn't as epic if you didn't have to open hundreds or thousands of loot boxes before it.
While yes, TOO MANY bad and frustrating matches will cause engagement to fall off a cliff, Activision has data from what, billions of hours of gameplay sessions at this point that by analyzing your gameplay patterns, the algorithm they have can guess pretty well when you're feeling frustrated enough to quit after one or two more matches. That's when they give you that "good match" where you're one of the players at the top of the skill bracket and you keep going because that last match was pretty great. Repeat that enough times and now you're looking for that next hit, that next spot of dopamine, that next time the slots line up, that next "good match". Now you're addicted.
__________
To put it another way CBMM is rolling the dice, you might get rolled, you might do the rolling, or you might barely eek out a win or suffer a tragic last second defeat. It's "truly" random, about as random as you could ask for. Depending on the circumstances one of those outcomes might never happen with CBMM. EBMM is not random, it's algorithmic, it's designed to give you as few of those matches you're looking for as possible to keep you playing as long as possible. Engagement for CoD is a metric of how long a player is interacting with the game. As engagement goes up, the probability of a microtransaction being purchased goes up. Longer play sessions therefore lead to increased revenue.
TL;DR - If you put an animal in a box with a lever that always dispenses food, it'll pull the lever when it's hungry. If you put that same animal in a box with a lever that *sometimes* dispenses food, it'll pull that lever all god damned day even after it has all the food it needs. Congratulations, you're the animal in the box and the lever is the matchmaking and the food are the "good matches".
Those answers straight up were filtered through HR ans god knows how many suits. 😂😂
Omg the unplanned meetings comment. F'n mood. As a dev (not game dev), this has happened to me so often in the past. Especially where there are awkward breaks between meetings so that you can't just get into the zone and get shit done.
I liked the question about how to get into Game Development, but since this person only listed the Artist and Programmer routes, I'd like to propose an add-on:
"How does someone get into the narrative side of game development?"
I've had multiple story ideas that could work for a video game medium, but I'm currently bound to the novel-side of storytelling.
Just to mention, I think when they spoke about tools saving 10-20 seconds I believe they were on about Dev Tools not things that would be player facing. The time saving they were on about probably referred to things like Compile improvements, fast shader rebuilds, better swarm review tools etc... Things that save time for the Devs day to day and task to task, so the 6 month investment is then worthwhile as over the course of a 4 year dev cycle the whole team (or company) can shave time off their tasks.
I was really good in RL. It’s one of the few games where the community stands together and publicly shame Smurfs and freestyler that just ruin the experience for everyone. I had to play worse players here and there and it was no fun for anyone. We could basically just beat them up and they couldn’t defend them selves. No tension, nothing.
I don’t get why ppl like to beat up worse players as if they have to compensate for something, it’s just boring, not interesting and in the end you miss out a lot on learning potential.
I feel like this whole thing read as a calculated response to downplay all the issues people have with games, not a genuine person reaching out but instead someone trying to "wrong" all of us "hateful gamers"
I will say it again: You are a CUSTOMER, not JUST a "gamer". You are, in fact, entitled to a proper product. That's why we pay for it.
This entire conversation with the “dev” was semantic. They never really answered a question or even if they did there seemed to be no real opinion at all. They didn’t even answer the last question and even brought up diversity bullshit when that wasn’t even the question. This whole video was a nothing burger of replies. I felt there should have been more thought put into making this video on the replies you were getting and maybe pressing them more or something because they played it so safe to the point that I could have taken a shit and that would have had more meaning than what they had to say. As much as it seems I’m just being disrespectful about it, I just think it’s good to be critical of the things being told here.
Games have looked exactly the same since 2015-2018 already. I do not see how they can say this. I think the game size is completely arbitrary.
Sbmm and eomm is something no one wants. The good old days of like Black Ops 2 where every lobby was a mixed bag, some games you'd stomp, some you'd get stomped others down to the wire, that unpredictable environment and experience WAS the replayability draw underneath it all. How hard is it to listen to the people literally giving them money to play the games. I'm as good as I am at games because of these varied lobby experience, I qas Timmy no thumbs when i started, I watched killcams and learned from watching how the top fraggers played and I became a top fragger. Connection should always be the top priority, and ranked should be where the sbmm experience should be, it's kinda the point. I'm sick and tired of my pubs matches unconsentially being ranked without a ranking to show for it. If I want to play ranked, I'll play ranked. The current system serves no purpose but to frustrate players, to the point that you can't play with friends of varied skill level anymore.
TL:DR - modern gen gamers are the participation medal generation, advocating for sbmm / eomm in unranked proves this. In summary git gud just like I did in 09'. My experience is stressful to my detriment actively being punished for being good. It needs to stop. If people are two boxing or resorting to VPNs to ensure a good connection or to goof off with mates and chill out (respectively) for pubs, it's clear we have a f**kin problem.
CoD doesn't even use SBMM. It uses EBMM, Engagement Based MatchMaking. It's literally designed to give you a hit of that good dopamine-rich, "I'M A GOD AND NOBODY CAN STOP ME!!!" gameplay just often enough that you will stick around and suffer through as many matches of "HE'S HACKING BRO!!! I WAS AROUND THE FUCKING CORNER!!!one!!!" as they can sucker you into enduring.
He even admits it with his answer.
They are banning AI tools internally because you can not trademark and or copyright AI work. And it's a black box
A question I would have, if you ever do this q&a with devs is:
Where and when in the stage of creating the game do the game devs (the position it is), realize the fact that the game is gonna be a fail on the release day due to some issues (examples could be the way Cyberpunk was released and received by the community, GTA Definitive Edition the Trilogy) and what could the company do to remediate a situation like this. And what impact does it have on the company, a bad release of a videogame, made by a completely different studio in a similar genre, if this company (the dev you talk with is employed to) has taken additional precautionary steps before releasing a game, because of the mishap from other companies
I wonder if they can split SBMM up into RBMM for Ranked modes, which is closer to the 360 era ranked MM, where you matched based on your current rank in the playlist, and then for social they use TBMM or "Time based Matchmaking" which instead matches you based on your profile level, which is exp based, goes up every match towards an eventual cap, never resets, progresses faster for higher skilled players, and in a game like COD also serves as unlock progression so you'll mainly also play people with the same loadout options as you.
That gives us the best of all worlds IMO. In Ranked players will likely have a pretty easy time until they reach a rank where the other players are more or less on your level, then matches in that playlist with start to get sweaty. Then for unranked skill is taken out of the equasion, and instead your personal experience is factored, so the more you have played the game, the more your enemies will have also played. And while playtime =/= skill level, it does help keep newer players in the same bracket while they get used to the game.
Honestly yeah. I understand fully why SBMM exists. I ain't exactly a MLG level player and I don't have god like skills. I find it better when I am playing against my skill level or lower. When I get matched against people who clearly have more time playing that anything else in their week, it is frustrating and does make me wanna stop
Then you're going to have a tough time explaining how CoD felt better for everyone, at all skill-levels, a decade ago, and the passion for the game was infinitely higher.
SBMM solely has to exist in a ranked playlist, in public ones it makes no sense. You don't get better at anything by constantly rolling around in mud with fellow shitters, you get better by playing a mix of fellow shitters and better players (at different ranges) over time.
The only place SBMM is acceptable is Ranked, cause ya know, it's kinda the point 💁🏻♀️
CoD doesn't even use SBMM. It uses EBMM, Engagement Based MatchMaking. It's literally designed to give you a hit of that good dopamine-rich, "I'M A GOD AND NOBODY CAN STOP ME!!!" gameplay just often enough that you will stick around and suffer through as many matches of "HE'S HACKING BRO!!! I WAS AROUND THE FUCKING CORNER!!!one!!!" as they can sucker you into enduring.
He even admits it with his answer.
@@ThatFalloutGod because back then COD was new and the climate of gaming was very different
back then people didn't care about having a bad game, the novelty of COD was enough to keep them playing and the climate of gaming focused more on pulling off cool stuff like trickshots, then it focused on high skill play
but now? COD is 20 years old, that novelty is gone and never coming back, COD will never feel fresh, its the McDonalds of FPS games, and the climate in gaming today is A LOT more focused on things like Esports and streaming, 2 areas that promote sweaty gameplay
@ I don't disagree with anything here, it's just not the entirety of the problem with CoD in particular. A big part of the problems still lies with SBMM, and similar things in other games (like DDA with Madden and CFB).
If we had shit like SBMM removed, we'd still have the problem of everyone playing like sweaty losers, but at least we wouldn't be forced into shitty lobbies, or punished for being better than others, etc.
Instead of skill-based matchmaking why don't they base people based on playtime? Yeah that's not a perfect solution to it though I feel like it could help a lot of people
not everyone plays the same activity, for d2 most players are pve, so putting them against pvp mains wouldnt be fair
@vastactor there can be a separation in hours, like They can track crucible playtime separately
if the email is real having the time and date stamp could be enough for them to figure out who it is if they are so determined.
nice. please do more videos like these. the dev perspectives are always interesting.
The microtransaction answer is bullshit. They can absolutely fund game development with revenues from *selling the game*. They just choose not to, because making content for whales is very, very profitable. ATVI posts net profit margins of over 20%, where the oft pilloried health care industries would be incredibly lucky to reach 10% net margin.
sure they COULD fund the next game based on the current games sales, but it wouldn't leave a lot of room for profit, and you can't expect companies to operate near margin, because what happens if 1 COD game bombs like MW2022 did, then you start losing money for an entire year, which would lead to job cuts which would lower the quality further and spiral downwards
MTXs gives a nice safety blanket if a game fails, the whales will still keep you going and it can keep the boat floating while you cook up a really good game, like black ops 6, black ops 6 would not have happened if MTXs were not here, after the bombshell that was MW2022 activision, if it wasn't for MTXs would have had to rush BO6 out the door ASAP, and even with MTXs they had to rush MW2023 out the door, but MTXs gave enough of a blanket to fund at least MW2023, without them BO6 would have launched way to early and been really undercooked
@AaronMichaelLong I think k bot are true im.not against microtransactions when they are fair and fund future development like new maps guns and stuff like that but many game just charge to much for what they sell especially when full price games sell skins that are 1/3 if not half the games price for skins that's just no
I've noticed a trend with video game companies... When they make a lot of money, they tend to spend a lot of money, and that means they now need to keep making a lot of money so they have enough money for all this expensive up-keep they bought themselves. So the price only goes up and up, until their new product doesn't sell, and then they have to pay the price. And that price often comes in the form of lay-off...
The sales they were making before microtransactions were enough to make another game. But then when microtransactions became commonplace, they found themselves able to afford more than just another game, so they opened up multiple headquarters, started multiple franchises, hired more staff, etc, etc... And before they knew it, they were literally unable to go back to making games without microtransactions in them. They simply wouldn't make enough money to fund their now huge company.
"The game itself is pretty optimal already, and if they did reduce the texture sizes, the graphics would technically look worse and the amount of compression would make the game look like it's made in 2015."
Do... they think we give a shit about reduced graphics quality in favor of performance...? I'd rather play a game with lower graphics settings and be able to ACTUALLY PLAY THE GODDAMN GAME than have 10/10 graphics and never be able to play the game. The cost of tech/consoles is prohibitive to many players, and having an option to play with reduced settings, reduced game size, and increased performance, is critical. As the cost of tech produced in other countries increases over the next 4 years, it's going to be more difficult for American folks to purchase new tech to play newer AAA games. A lack of options for players to run a game outside of the "standard" graphics designed for PS5 and XBSS/X is crap for the consumer. It's cost prohibitive, and it's internet-cost prohibitive too.
Video games should be built for the maximum available audience, not just the maximum available console and GPU.
There's a very simple answer to the texture question: We didn't design our product for your potato internet.
But that same potato internet is all some people can afford
Hell, we’re quickly getting to a point where people can’t afford internet at all at the rate the economy is going
@@dragonriderabens9761 My advice to you, then, is save your money and advance your career instead of fretting about your ability to download video games.
As someone who's practiced both Godot and Unity, I feel like Godot is just as good if not better due to it's accessibility and being open source. I don't really know what he means by "not recommended for advancing programming skills," as both Godot and Unity have the option to use C#, with Godot having better compatibility with more languages. This is including it's own language, GD Script, which is basically just Python with some new paint to better fit the the Godot engine. (And again, Godot is compatible with multiple languages, so if you're worried about gd script not translating well to other fields or engines, you can just use a different language that does like C# or Python.) It could be because of Godot's node system (pre-built tools such as sprite and animation handlers, screen organization tools, buttons, scroll bars, etc ) but Unity has it's fair share of similar, if not the exact same, tools too. Maybe I'm just not far enough along, but Godot is pretty powerful and quite vast in it's ability to help you learn programing.
edit: Godot's accessible by being free to not only use, but export and publish games from too. Being available for multiple platforms, (windows, linux, and Mac) including mobile and in browser support (although it's not as powerful on those platforms) and can be downloaded both on steam and their website, with an official Discord and open forum pages if you have any questions or comments)
I'm calling bullshit on the SBMM answer, I'm not some top player, not low skill either, just your average Joe trying to play a game casually, and under SBMM I get DUNKED on ALL FUCKING DAY. I stopped playing cod because I couldn't get a single good match because of SBMM from a combination of how bad SBMM is at matchmaking, and the amount of ping I got from being sent to a server across the ocean due to SBMM being so strict. I'm in the US and set my games to the US region, yet I've been connected to servers in Scotland, Germany, China, Russia; never once was I sent to a US server.
CoD doesn't even use SBMM. It uses EBMM, Engagement Based MatchMaking. It's literally designed to give you a hit of that good dopamine-rich, "I'M A GOD AND NOBODY CAN STOP ME!!!" gameplay just often enough that you will stick around and suffer through as many matches of "HE'S HACKING BRO!!! I WAS AROUND THE FUCKING CORNER!!!one!!!" as they can sucker you into enduring.
He even admits it with his answer.
is there a second channel? I stumbled across a "TdTwo", it appears at first glance to be different, with no videos cross-uploaded between these two channels, but I thought I would just ask to make sure this isn't a content thief of some sort.
It’s our second channel yes
@@TDTProductions cool, thanks :D
them sending an e-mail from an official activision account is probably enough information for activision to find out the leak LMAO
Can't say I am surprised by the answer about SBMM. As a business game devs will generally speaking always aim for the most players possible with as little sacrifice of their vision as they can. For PvP games that will simply almost always be a situation where people can engage with others at their own level. The reality is that a fun, casual game mode means two very different things for the casual, the CC, and the Pro, as well as several other groups, and it is very hard to satisfy all those different viewpoints. So the best option is to try and satisfy as many of them as you can, and that will generally be the casual player base by a large margin.
This however leads me to another train of thought, why wasn't this as big of an issue back before online games took center stage? Idk about y'all, but in couch coop situations very rarely did anyone walk away bitter and frustrated. Why is that? It's because you and your friends were all at a level of understanding to adapt to the situation. Whether you were planning to tourney with each other or just play some casual smack around. This scenario simply cannot be found online in a standard game mode, as there will almost always be someone who is sweating and someone just chilling in most lobbies. This is why custom games with friends are different, is you control the people you play with, which isn't something you can do online. It's the same reason that TDT's custom lobbies in D2 always performed so well! Everyone was on the same page about what mood the lobby was in. Even if you try this in an online unfiltered lobby, there will always be someone who tries to sneak in and reap their personal fun at your expense.
This is a big part of why things like WC3 and Halo Forge custom games were MASSIVE success stories in gaming. It's allowed players to set unbendable rules that create casual environments for the player base to sit back and enjoy, and why I personally believe any game will find huge success in such endeavors.
Justified but since he sent you an email from an official Activision Channel if they really wanted to find this guy they could because the fact that they sent you an email
My take to this is that some of these are just common sense , but here's my top counters:
Pre: to the people saying he outed the dev, this was likely done through proper channels with information being redacted to stop the gaming community from harassing them, the community is a psychotic mess when timmy needs to go 2-16 to validate death threats
1: While it may be optimised as much as you can, there should still be the option so that it's on the player if their experience is affected.
2: This question depends entirely on you ask, it is a loaded question, so the community has a rallying call, while not knowing what is actually happening or the nuances.
3: Gaming is far more popular now than it was "In the good old days" so this increases the pool size, not only that but the younger generation want to win at all times, no matter what, gaming has long stopped being about casual fun and become more akin to sports with competitiveness, the only casual games are single player games now. Every game has a loser and people will go to any length to not lose, read as, it's not about fun but winning no matter the mode.
4: I like this, the only time I would accept AI use is to get a design choice visual, everything else is better done and has better references done by humans.
5: MTXs, scourge of the gaming community, many people see this greed but there's so much behind the scenes costs such as overheads, liscences, wages, billsand game dev has no real security, those MTXs not only help fund the next game but they offer devs that security to create their best work.
6: Question could have been worded better, would have been better to ask if any bugs had sparked the idea for a feature.
7: not much to add, as a former software dev student, if you wanted to update something remove any that could affect the update.
8: this is what makes me believe this is done through proper channels, this is a minefield of a question that I would have dismissed it.
9: As previously said, former soft dev student before being diagnosed with extreme depression and PTSD that I can't work, many people see "Experience " as working in a company, for dev it's more asking how long you've coded for, your portfolio will show the quality, the time will show the commitment.
10: Another question laced in poison, while I would avoid this, here and now, I hate that the gaming community assumes they know how the process goes cause they are almost always wrong.
Your take on SBMM is close minded. Singleplayer games aren’t the only games for casuals and if it is then we’ve lost sight of what games are about. The reason people have a problem with SBMM is because no one wants a dying simulator nor do they want to feel every match is for all the prize money. This SBMM now is heavily manipulative in ping and possible damage as well which makes skill disingenuous. SBMM has been forced everywhere because of data and not listening to consumers, no one asked for it everywhere yet it showed up everywhere.
@MrJerrytheSlime I'm not an advocate or a dissident to SBMM. The point I was trying to make is that it's only a part of the problem. If SBMM were to go away, in my honest opinion, the number of cases of "Sweat lobbies" might go down a bit but ultimately they will still be the majority of the experience and my comment on single player games was one to say "This the only way to guarentee an experience you want" otherwise you're rolling the dice.
SBMM is some of the most annoying stuff ever, I get punished for having honed skills from speedrunning doom for years, and most PvP games become a sweatfest after the SBMM picks up on me, it made me completely stop playing PvP, especially CoD quickly becomes more stressful then a speedrun because I get matched with ppl who leave their basement like once a quarter
I got a question. Why on console do you have to get the Call of Duty game separately from any other COD. For example, you need to purchase Call of Duty and COD MW2 2022 separately from each other. If you search MW2 2022 on the playstation store, it brings up Call of Duty and not MW2. I’m not sure if this is a marketing decision or whatever but I would just like some insight. I had another question but its a bit of a personal gripe with security and people who handle banning on COD.
The time stamp on the email might be used to find out who it was.
Hey uhm i didnt watch the video yet, but you mentioned that this guy sent his E-Mail through his account. The activision IT team can track this. I would suggest removing that statement for this guys security.
bro absolutely fragged the fuck out
I play the call of duty
I could see a little dodging hard answers but still a lot of great info
Pretty interesting video with lots of insight. It does feel like he's giving the safe corporate answers, although that could just be the professional language used. I would like to see if they think money as well as other resources are being distributed correctly between projects as well as different teams (like marketing, development, artists, management, etc.) I also thing there is some bias here, with them actively choosing to work at Activision, my guess is they don't feel to much spite towards the company or its practices as a whole. It's hard to tell when someone has it good if these are actually good practices, or if they just roll with it because it doesn't negatively effect them to much.
The problem is that SBMM simply *DOES NOT WORK*. It's a multiplayer game, you can't measure ELO for an individual participant in a match with multiple players, and also, ELO requires a high sample size to produce meaningful results. In the meantime, the results are confounded by many players gaming the system, throwing matches to smurf, or getting carried to pad their rank. And in the end, all it really accomplishes is to make lobby latency worse and queue times longer.
SBMM algorithims are designed using empircal in-game metrics that the devs have decided are sufficient to determine skill. There is a problem with this: A lot of what makes players good in FPS games is based on non-empircal things, like map sense and game sense. A player that gets 3 kills but 10 deaths while defending a flank going towards an objective is typically considered a less-skilled player than John Dipshit that goes on a 20-bomb while approximately 400 miles from the objective, as a very loose example. The value of those kills and deaths is not properly weighted, and few of the algorithims consider objective proximity, if they consider objectives at all. SBMM algorithims need not only constant tuning, but also huge overhauls with each content drop, and arguably each meta shift.
@@JeanneDGames Exactly.
Tdt this was cool as fuck. Legend for doing it.
The 2015 comment
Wither 3
Blood Borne
Metal Gear Soldid V
and just to add im putting in 2014 as well
Alien Isolation
Dragon Age Inquisition
Destiny (minus the world resources .pngs)
These games still look fantastic to this day so who cares if it looks like 2015, 2015 looked amazing
SBMM comment
wonder if anyone looked into sort of a time based matchmaking, were you're matched based on how many hours spent on average per week, stand alone this would be a horrible idea good players can warm up pretty quickly but as something that could supplement how skill is determined it should reduce the frustrations a little bit
MTX comment
dang when activision properly distributes money from mtx better than microsoft ever did you know somethings wrong with the company, I've also been saying this for a while know, even in the early 2000s the only games to recieve frequent updates were membership games like Runescape or WoW because they had a consistent stream of funds, this isn't new at all it's just been expanded to games that didn't receive constant major updates and even then thats exactly what map packs were, I'd much rather cosmetics be overpriced than actual content like maps and modes be over priced, gamers seriously forgot the $20 for 4 maps CoD was notorious with especially with advanced warfare I think that and blops 3 had the most dlc map packs and a lot of them were remakes
Jobs comment
College for coding but experience and a highlight reel of your work for art, makes sense but I want to add it's best for programmers and designers to at least dip their toes in the others job (easily can be done for free if you know what to look up online) to get a better understanding of what's required of the other, honestly this is the case for a lot of jobs that have different requirements but need to work together the amount of bullshit that ends up stalling over miscommunication or false assumptions are just obnoxious
"games would look like 2015" nobody cares, playing an ugly game is better than playing at 2 FPS
Tdt comfy chair reveal 😮
This is their story ((insert law and order dum dum))
Games in 2015 look just as good as games now some even look better lmao. That's the dumbest thing I ever heard. Why did we go from 50gb at most to 300gb games in a span of 10 years? We didn't advance in computer science that much lmao. Games used to run amazing now they all run like youre walking through a swamp.
Good stuff man!
I imagine you run the video by the person at least to some extent before posting it, that way you don't risk revealing something by accident.
Also I'm loving these videos, being in school for Game Dev right now it feels like it's giving me something that could be very useful for my future.
I've also shared it in a Discord server I'm in with classmates, hoping it'll also help them.
Indeed
Here’s an idea, base matchmaking on amount of time played, the more total hours you have you will be matched people with similar amount of hours as you.
Awesome video
2:39 I'd actually be okay with it looking like it was made in 2015. 90 GB is just too demanding for me. Wanted to download fallout 4 recently after having uninstalled it LONG ago. Steam was asked an upfront of 95.7 GB. I would have to on, no other option, upgrade me SSD drives: all of them, to fit fallout 4 into them, as I've saved a lot of invaluable data over the years.
As much as some folks might be suspicious about this interview, I can vouch for at least question 1 being true. People really underestimate how much goes into making those big AAA games run as well as they do, especially for titles that have a more realistic and complex focus and that run on proprietary tech, both content and work-wise. As much completely justifiable criticism people give places like Activision, Bungie, EA, Rockstar, etc., I just wish they understood the behind-the-scenes stuff and a basic overview of what actually comprises their games. If you want a somewhat-shallow dive into the why, I put a whole explanation below for the curious.
Ok, still here? Thank you for taking the time to read all this, I spent way too much time writing this, but I figured for people who care enough they deserve to get a better understanding why things are they way they are.
Disclaimer: For credentials, I studied computer graphics and game development in school, graduating with a bachelor's of science a few years back and was in industry for a little bit before losing my job earlier this year (not at Activision, for clarification, though I've met plenty of folks also in the industry including places like Activision who all do the same thing). Everything I'm about to mention is common industry practice, with variations on implementation from place to place. I, of course, cannot speak for Treyarch or any of the other support studios under Activision's wing on their specific choices and implementations of what I discussed below, this is just in general. This is also a VERY long explanation that barely even scratches the surface and is a tiny bit technical, so if you don't wanna read, I don't blame you. I'm also limited in just what I specifically know, since I'm just one person, so take my explanation with a grain or two of salt. If anyone knows a bit more than I do and feels like I missed or misrepresented something, please reply so I can make proper adjustments. I'll use BO6 as an example in as many places as I can as a comparison point.
A lot of the file size is being taken up by just comically large amounts of textures, a lot of which have crazy levels of detail. In order to make sure that detail is there, each of those texture files have to be massive (relative to the size of texture files in previous generations of games). For the uninitiated, 3D models are formed of multiple polygons that are typically set up in their files as including specific locations of where each polygon's "corner" (we call it a vertex in-industry) is, "normals" for each vertex to handle stuff like lighting/reflections, texture coordinates to map a texture onto the model (like putting a piece of paper over a rock), all of which are duplicate handle with an "index" for each one of these elements being substituted in when needed for optimization purposes. The more detail you want, the more polygons, normals, and texture coordinates you're going to need, and (of course) the more powerful of a GPU you're gonna need to process it faster. This is where that whole "polygon count" thing comes from in games, where games that go for the more realistic look have higher polygon counts due to the level of detail they're trying to package being of ridiculous amounts. Now imagine that game needing to have hundreds of thousands of these models and textures (some of them animated taking up MORE space) for each possible item in every possible scenario dreamed up by the devs that might need them. And this is just for static objects that don't have custom animations, of which animation is its own separate can of worms. Yeah, its a lot, and even us devs hate it sometimes. Makes it genuinely hard to work with occasionally.
For the game to even function as well as it does, a lot of optimizations have to be done at every stage of production in order to make sure the game runs as smoothly as possible. Some of that includes how the data for each frame is packaged and sent to the GPU, having the engine be able to handle a certain amount of entities/objects in the scene at a time, loading/deloading objects so they aren't taking up too much computation time so your game can run properly (Warzone, Campaign, and some parts of Zombies need this especially), and a whole lot more. ALL OF THAT to make sure the game is able to handle the comical amounts of high-res textures on your screen to make the game look as pretty as possible in every frame. And think about how many different areas of the game have unique textures. Its not just the guns/skins from the base game and the store; maps, equipment, scorestreaks, the damn lobby screen with your operators walking in a straight line, animated calling cards, and more. The UI stuff actually takes a lot less space in-general, since it tends to just be much more simple stuff like text, images, and buttons, all of which are 2D and as such drastically cut down on the size of the files (where applicable, its not always 1:1). Keep in mind, not all of the file size is being taken up by textures, models, and UI elements. There's obviously also a need for the engine itself, as well as data for animations level scripting, voice lines, gameplay mechanics, etc., but if I had to wager a guess, I'd say at least 1/3-1/2 of modern Western AAA games' elements are taken up by visuals alone (including but not limited to models, animations, and textures).
As an aside, compression tends to reduce the quality of the models/textures, and while I'm no expert on file compression, I can say that in this particular instance compressing the files will simply reduce the level of detail and make the games look worse. It can be done, its just not advised when making something with a very high bar for visual quality, which is why its likely not done as much in games like BO6. Additionally, there are graphics tools that games nowadays use to make stuff look prettier, perform better, or be able to handle specific scenarios. A few of them (though not all within the same category or used for the same purpose) include texture streaming (COD also has their own "on-demand" networked version of this), mipmapping, and anti-aliasing. If you're curious on the graphical optimization parts and have at least somewhat of a coding background or interest, I highly recommend looking them up, especially the latter two.
For folks who might ask "well, what about other games like Xenoblade or God of War?": Different titles are optimized for different consoles and have different parameters for their development, and as I mentioned at the top regarding different implementations. The Xbox and PS versions of BO6 might differ from the PC version, and even those consoles have hardware differences between the PS4/XB1 and the PS5/XBSX that need to be accounted for. This can have various results such as the game playing a bit better on a certain device or having slightly different overall file sizes. This isn't just a COD thing, games like Grand Theft Auto have to deal with this too. It's not just a "we hate PC players/we love money" reason, optimizing for something like PC with thousands of different hardware combinations that places like Rockstar need to account for is a lot of work. Some engines have build tools like UE5 to help put the game on specific platforms, yes, but this is different from making those versions of the game perform well. A potential example of this would actually be Batman: Arkham Knight from 2015. Stellar game on PS4 and Xbox One, but on PC it was a broken unplayable mess until a few years later (its mostly good now, I can vouch for that as well). Everything on the previous paragraphs apply to games like God of War as well, the difference there is just that those games are all optimized for their needs and the 1 or 2 play experiences they offer compared to the multiple that games like COD have to handle. For example, GoW is a purely single-player game where everything suits that one vision, while COD has Campaign, Multiplayer, Zombies, AND Warzone, all of which have a solid chunk of unique assets tailored to their individual modes. THIS is why previous games - especially pre-2010s - relied so much on re-using assets anywhere they could; it cut down on the file size and dev time by a huge margin.
Keep in mind everything I said is under ideal circumstances. There are absolutely instances of developers doing a piss-poor job at optimizing their game (I know I have at multiple instances, I'm not immune). Pokemon Scarlet and Violet vs Xenoblade 3 is an excellent example. Same hardware specs, different developers and practices with entirely different outcomes. If anything, going back to COD its actually within Activision's best interest to optimize every last bit of the game so they can have more space for skins and for them to function properly within the game without tanking your frame rate. Who wants to buy stuff from a broken, buggy mess of a game? That said, you are absolutely within your right to criticize certain companies for packing their games with excessive cosmetics that take up a lot of that file size in a way that's mandated for you to play the game, COD very much included (I know I certainly hate it). You are also free to criticize companies for specific choices in development that result in the large file sizes, like COD's obsession with realism that requires every single element to be as visually realistic as possible and increases the size of each texture file. All I'm saying is that these decisions aren't always just "lazy devs", they're very calculated decisions that are trying to balance the artistic vision of the developers, the mandates of the publisher, and the quality demands of the player base. Make of that what you will. If you want another game that doesn't take up as much hard drive space, there are plenty of them out there and I highly encourage folks to check them out.
i don't get it, are they still running in circles about the download size on purpose, or do they genuinely not understand the question
LET. ME. NOT. DOWNLOAD. 4K TEXTURES.
"There is no such need on pc"
YES THERE IS, believe it or not but even if you can buy more storage for pc, people won't be doing that just to fit warzone on it, for crying out loud
Exactly how im feeling. There is ALWAYS room for improvement, and the improvement we would love is to not spend $100 or more on storage and to spend hours, or God forbid days, on downloading the files needed to play.
Why is it so hard to understand, "Can we opt out of 4k textures?"
There are games out there with over ten years worth of content that hasn’t gone over 50 gigs yet
And hi
first :D
Second