Sunday, January 20, 2008
Game Credits - And Rock Band
I got Rock Band back from EA this week, and today I watched the credits. Before the "traditional" movie-style credits scrolled, they have everyone involved in the game at Harmonix pictured, in groups of two. The most fascinating thing was that it was done in alphabetical order, based on their first names. This way, interns and testers got billed ahead of producers or senior programmers. Actually, I think they had an office manager or two pictured, so maybe it was just everyone at their studio.
At SingleTrac we looked at some grandstanding being done by the producers at Sony (which was their job, of course - providing a human contact with the media), and decided to turn it - briefly - into a joke. While waiting for the official list of credits to come in, we included some stand-in text. As an internal joke, we had one Sony producer's name in for every job we could think of. Then we had a note tagged on at the bottom, "Oh, and some guys from SingleTrac helped." I don't remember if the Sony guys saw that version or not. If so, hopefully they took it good-naturedly.
When we were given the final credits list, we were amazed at the Sony credits. We had dozens of names of people we'd never even heard of, and we had no clue what they'd actually done on this game. It seemed like anybody who'd ever sat in a meeting once about this game had to go in the credits. Based upon sheer name count, our joke about "Some guys from SingleTrac helped" seemed quite appropriate in retrospect.
The issues of who gets credit and for what is a pretty big deal. Some have proposed standardization - as they do in movies. As I understand it, they have extremely rigorous rules for whose name goes where, and gets billed above someone else. I personally think that's an overkill, and I'd like to see studios free to attempt a more egalitarian approach like Rock Band's.
Of course, they still had more formal, standard credits appearing after the photo segment. That was possibly mandated by EA, so maybe including both was their way of getting around those restrictions.
But then how many people actually watch the credits in games? I like to see how they broke up different jobs on the team, and there's always a chance I will recognize somebody's name. But I expect that I'm in an eensy weensy minority of people that actually bother reading this stuff.
Labels: Biz
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 4:51 PM (Permalink)
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I assembled the credits for one of the games I worked on. It does bring people out of the woodwork!
I wish games would ditch the movie-style credit crawl and go with something interactive. They are games, after all. A simple scrollable page, accessible from the main menu, would be fine with me. In my ideal game you are never stuck watching anything, ever.
The only examples of interactive credits I can think of are Redline, which had a series of credits screens you could flip through at your leisure, and Super Monkey Ball, which had a special credits game mode, where you tried to collect bananas while dodging falling letters from people's names.
I wish games would ditch the movie-style credit crawl and go with something interactive. They are games, after all. A simple scrollable page, accessible from the main menu, would be fine with me. In my ideal game you are never stuck watching anything, ever.
The only examples of interactive credits I can think of are Redline, which had a series of credits screens you could flip through at your leisure, and Super Monkey Ball, which had a special credits game mode, where you tried to collect bananas while dodging falling letters from people's names.
Doing anything special for the credits is worthwhile, that is, if you value people actually watching them. I remember two in particular:
Chrono Trigger had a super special secret ending where you could go around and "talk" to each of the people who worked on the game. It gave them more personality than just a name scroll up the screen for a couple of seconds.
Blaster Master, being before video games became big budget, had very few credits. What stuck with me was the rarity of real names in that list. Most of the names were similar to what you'll find on a typical forum these days.
It's good to remember that the people who makes these games are actually real people who have invested a significant chunk of their life into making the game you just finished. It's too easy to see games as some monolithic entity, enforced by the lifeless rapid scrolling of names, rather than a mosaic of individual and personal works.
Chrono Trigger had a super special secret ending where you could go around and "talk" to each of the people who worked on the game. It gave them more personality than just a name scroll up the screen for a couple of seconds.
Blaster Master, being before video games became big budget, had very few credits. What stuck with me was the rarity of real names in that list. Most of the names were similar to what you'll find on a typical forum these days.
It's good to remember that the people who makes these games are actually real people who have invested a significant chunk of their life into making the game you just finished. It's too easy to see games as some monolithic entity, enforced by the lifeless rapid scrolling of names, rather than a mosaic of individual and personal works.
I agree. I think the monolithic scrolling credits thing is stupid. My personal opinion is that it stems from an unhealthy obsession for the games industry to be more like its big brother, Hollywood.
James, I like your idea about interactive credits. Maybe I should start doing something like that. It'd be fun, at least.
The whole Chrono Trigger idea is kinda clever for an RPG - the ultimate reward for an uber-clever player is to... uh, talk to the development team? Maybe. :)
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James, I like your idea about interactive credits. Maybe I should start doing something like that. It'd be fun, at least.
The whole Chrono Trigger idea is kinda clever for an RPG - the ultimate reward for an uber-clever player is to... uh, talk to the development team? Maybe. :)
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