Capcom Heineman vs Sawyer in... Game dev is like movie-making in the 20s

[Zed]

Rebecca Heineman, the designer of BT3 and now developing a sort-of sequel to Dragon Wars, wrote this:
http://www.nodontdie.com/rebecca-heineman/

Then Obsidian designer Josh Sawyer retweeted these messages
https://twitter.com/mworch/status/706623475964706816
https://twitter.com/mworch/status/706624323558113280
https://twitter.com/mworch/status/706624769915879425

(Trump tweet included for greatness)

Who is right, who is wrong?
Is game development like movie making in the 20s? Would Heineman know?
Discuss!!

 

[Mr. Pink]

Sounds like someone getting grumpy dumpy over a metaphor.

this is low quality drama

 

[Lyric Suite]

Games as movies in the 1920s would have been the late 70s early 80s. Gaymes now are just like movies now: fucking shit.

 

[Kontra]

Well i guess its a tie.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Person A sets up a comparison between now and a historic era for a particular situation.

Person B rejects said comparison on the notion that the situation is without comparison, in every sense of the term.

Person B is full of shit and should not speak publicly again without supervision.

 

[DeepOcean]

Heineman shows alot of knowledge on her interview, Sawyer shows alot of butthurt.

He loses by default.

 

[Kontra]

True, hes wrong. But the girl is also wrong. Video games before were like LyricSuit said 70s or 80s, not 20s... Its not like theyre too young, theyre just dead. So its a tie, theyre both wrong.

 

[DeepOcean]

She mentions the race to the bottom that is happening now. I think she used de 20's metaphor to support a particular point she was trying to make "production still sucks on videogames and producers are still many times arrogant clueless amateurs ." but people tend to jump the gun and think the whole text was about the 20's movie industry comparison, what isn't.

 

[JarlFrank]

Everyone is wrong and we first have to define what is an RPG before we can continue the discussion.

 

[Kontra]

She mentions the race to the bottom that is happening now. I think she used de 20's metaphor to support a particular point she was trying to make "production still sucks on videogames and producers are still many times arrogant clueless amateurs ." but people tend to jump the gun and think the whole text was about the 20's movie industry comparison, what isn't.

Well okay... I dont know what "production" means really. Games were better before so doenst that mean - better production? Or is it like production values? Like many black metal bands have shit production (they go in the woods and tape the music there and whatnot) but it doenst mean they cant make some good songs. In that sense you can say, games have great production today, but somehow they suck... Maybe im talking out of my ass. Truthfully i dont even know who those two devs are, i just like these versus topics... There should be moar of them. Im gonna go now.

 

[Duraframe300]

Retweets count now as making an argument?



Are you people insanly starved for threads or just that horny for Sawyer?

Edit: Roguey got nothing on you people.

 

[DeepOcean]

She mentions the race to the bottom that is happening now. I think she used de 20's metaphor to support a particular point she was trying to make "production still sucks on videogames and producers are still many times arrogant clueless amateurs ." but people tend to jump the gun and think the whole text was about the 20's movie industry comparison, what isn't.

Well okay... I dont know what "production" means really. Games were better before so doenst that mean - better production? Or is it like production values? Like many black metal bands have shit production (they go in the woods and tape the music there and whatnot) but it doenst mean they cant make some good songs. In that sense you can say, games have great production today, but somehow they suck... Maybe im talking out of my ass. Truthfully i dont even know who those two devs are, i just like these versus topics... There should be moar of them. Im gonna go now.

She mentions on the text what she means by shitty production. Stop being lazy and read it.

 

[DeepOcean]

Retweets count now as making an argument?



Are you people insanly starved for threads or just that horny for Sawyer?

Edit: Roguey got nothing on you people.

Infinitron is fighting hard to be the first one and take the place of Roguey on Sawyer's fanclub.

 

[J1M]

The sooner the game industry stops looking up to the movie industry and wishing it was the movie industry, the sooner we will start seeing better games.

 

[Mustawd]

Her overall message that games need better planning and budgeting is her main point. But her analogy breaks down a bit because the pre-production phase of a movie seems tons longer to me than video games. For example, you need a script first...which gets highly edited and rewritten.

But she has a point that games could probably be planned better. Not sure why this is a controversial thing to say. Maybe Sawyer just got miffed because he felt she was simplifying what happens when shit goes wrong (i.,e. you didn't plan well enough). I mean based on some of her stories (aka Doom 3DO) that kind of shoot-from-the-hip type of production has happened and will continue to happen in games.

 

[Jarpie]

When it comes to the quality of the stories, storytelling and the ambition I'd rather compare the games of the late 80s-late 90s to the films of the 1920s. A lot of people thinks that the silent films were just simple films with shitty stories and scripts but that couldn't be further from the truth.

IMO especially the PC-games were steadily progressing up till about late 90s, but in the early 2000s instead of creating the tradition of making good games which also have good appeal for the consumers, they jumped straight to the fucking shit shlock. Nowdays the game developers mostly doesn't have that continuing tradition and skillsets which the film makers were able to pass on till about early-mid 2000s.

 

[Severian Silk]

The sooner the game industry stops looking up to the movie industry and wishing it was the movie industry, the sooner we will start seeing better games.

Exactly. AAA developers have a serious case of the "Me Too!"s.

 

[Immortal]

Retweets count now as making an argument?

Are you saying Saywer retweeted those posts because he disagrees with them..?

 

[Mustawd]

Sounds like a Trump justification, "I just retweet them. A lot of people tweet stuff. I don't read every tweet on here"

 

[PlanHex]

Whole argument reminded me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWEjxkkB8Xs#t=6m6s

 

[Morkar Left]

I was always wondering why it's possible to plan a movie from start to finish before actually making it while games only seem to start/get money based on vague sales pitches (equally to publishers or backers).
I mean someone with experience in games production should be able to do it.

 

[Jarpie]

The sooner the game industry stops looking up to the movie industry and wishing it was the movie industry, the sooner we will start seeing better games.

Exactly. AAA developers have a serious case of the "Me Too!"s.

They have huge inferiority complex toward the other mediums, especially the films, which I think comes from that (afaik) a lot of the people in game development fell into it because they're too talentless hacks to cut it in the film business. Especially the script writers for games, just look at Bioware, the only writers they could hire were the rejects from the other mediums.

 

[J1M]

The sooner the game industry stops looking up to the movie industry and wishing it was the movie industry, the sooner we will start seeing better games.

Exactly. AAA developers have a serious case of the "Me Too!"s.

They have huge inferiority complex toward the other mediums, especially the films, which I think comes from that (afaik) a lot of the people in game development fell into it because they're too talentless hacks to cut it in the film business. Especially the script writers for games, just look at Bioware, the only writers they could hire were the rejects from the other mediums.

Which is even more ironic/sad given how many people strive to work in the game industry and don't get in.

 

[Murk]

why would you highlight the text if you were just going to crop it anyway

 

[Kontra]

She mentions on the text what she means by shitty production. Stop being lazy and read it.

Well i didnt see the link so i thought that was the whole thing. Anyway, finally i read it but i cant say im feeling any smarter. So production is basically management and games are badly managed... something along those lines. But whats that got to do with whether theyre any good. You can have shit games that are well managed/produced so i dont get the point. But the best part was when she says near the end

"And sadly, while there are a lot of games created in Unity that are awesome, the problem is there are too many awesome games."

Well point me to all these awesome games man... Take me home to paradise city. But the truth is theres no awesome games anymore... Cause id knew about them otherwise.

Second. If that really were true then why would it be a problem. I mean wouldnt that be great? It wouldnt be a problem for me thats for sure.