#lightning mailbag

More questions with quick answers. Let’s go.

How difficult is it to make a color swap variant of a monster/character/etc? Is it just "change the RGB values of the textures, or is there more too it?

It depends on how detailed you want to go. If you only want to change the colors on a model, a shader can do that dynamically. The benefit of being able to make modifications to the other texture maps (normal, ambient occlusion, specular, etc.) is that you can make the same model look vastly different with enough work put in. It can be as simple as changing the RGB values of the texture, or as complicated as building an entirely new 3D look through texture manipulation.  

Now that The UK is mourning for 12 days, can it affect game development like causing a major delay on schedule?

It is unlikely. The mourning period doesn't stop businesses from operating. To my understanding, game dev studios in the UK will mourn the queen if they so desire, but I have heard of no studio closures.

How is C# pronounced.  Is is C <hashtag> or C <pound> or something else?

It's C Sharp, like the musical term.

Who decide what the name of the game will be?

It's usually the executive producer. They come up with a couple of ideas that go through the approval process (legal, marketing, executive approval, etc.) and then the winner gets to be the title of the game.

Who are the highest earning developers in the industry and how did they get there? I'm trying to look at people to model my career after.

The highest earning developers are usually the executive producers responsible for the biggest franchise games. That's games like Call of Duty, Pokemon, FIFA, etc.

Where do you get all your gifs? You seem to have a bottomless supply!

Google image search and a good variety of words and phrases to search for. Longtime readers have probably realized I have my own gif archive that I cycle through.

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I’ve built up a number of questions that I thought I could answer quickly in one post, so here we go.

You talked about Intrinsic x Extrinsic rewards. Can you talk about Intrinsic rewards from an accessibility standpoint? It seems to me that Extrinsic rewards are inherently more accessible, while Intrinsic rewards may elude some players completely. How do you deal with that?

You’re assuming that an intrinsic reward might require some amount of manual dexterity, but that isn’t necessarily the case. For example, there was an older game from 2011 called Magicka, where players played as wizards and would cast spells by composing them from eight different elements (e.g. fire, water, cold, life, lightning, shield, etc.). Various spells were the result of specific elemental recipes (e.g. life + shield + cast = healing mine). The intrinsic rewards in Magicka were learning which recipes mapped to which useful spells, either through experimentation, external research, or finding in-game recipes. Intrinsic doesn’t have to mean physical dexterity, it means the player learns something and now knows when that bit of knowledge applies. This can easily apply to a turn based game with zero execution involved.

What is the role of achievements with relation to extrinsic/intrinsic rewards? What do they provide that cannot be otherwise given?

Achievements themselves are extrinsic. The skills (sometimes) used to complete them are intrinsic. 

Food question! Despite how far animation has gotten in games, why do eating and drinking animations still look and feel awkward?

Humans are intimately familiar with food and eating, which makes the missing minute details tend to stand out to us. Eating animations would require a significant amount of fidelity not to look weird, which is often far more resources than we’re willing to spend. As an example of a game that did spend those resources, check out Final Fantasy 15′s food content.

What's the reasoning behind making games to a target audience who doesn't even play video games?

If I can persuade non-gamers to give my game a try, I won’t have a lot of competition to get compared to, so I won’t have to spend resources building table stakes features or one-upping a competitor in my marketing campaign.

I haven't seen too many western gacha games compared too the litany of them from japan and china. Given how much money so many of them make (in the west as well as in asia) can you think of any reasons why more of them haven't been made/ broken through to popular culture (excluding FIFA and Marvel Strike Force).

Collectible Card Games are the original western gacha.

For as long as gaming has been around, devs have mentioned being unable to execute concepts because of technical limitations (meaning the hardware they worked with wasn't able to execute a feature they want). Is that still an issue now?

Yes. Game development will grow to fit its limitations, like a goldfish will grow to a size relative to the environment it lives in.

A common solution I've seen proposed to reduce crunch is to switch from the commonly used salary system to hourly compensation. The theory being that because doing standard crunch hours would result in them spending way more with hourly pay than they would with salary, ergo meaning they work you guys less. Your thoughts on this solution?

When I was contracting for a major publisher, I was paid hourly like the other contractors. I worked so many overtime and doubletime hours crunching on that project that I literally worked myself into the next tax bracket. My personal weekly record of 98.5 hours worked in a week was while I was being paid hourly - that's how I know it was exactly 98.5 hours. I don't think hourly pay would change much.

I was surprised to see the Ubisoft Avatar game being postponed and it looks like it'll miss the movie launch window tie in. What are your thoughts on this?

Historically, a movie tie-in missing the premiere of the movie it's tying into is a death sentence for its sales. I wish them a lot of luck, they're going to need it.

What's the most common style used in concept art?

“House Style”

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I’ve built up a number of questions with short answers, so I’ll answer them in a group today.

Your ask/answer about false advertising was actually pretty interesting because it made me think about other types of "content" promises. The big example I think (and STILL get angry) about is something like BioWare's promises to have LGBTQ romances in SWTOR at launch and never delivering (it took until the Makeb expansion before we had those, IIRC). Where does something like that fit?

You can look to Star Citizen’s refund process as the best example for this taken to the maximum extent. If enough people complain, they get refunds and a process is put into place.

What you would reply to the "I'll pay $10k for someone to add MP to BotW" tweet?

If you can find somebody to claim the prize, you're very fortunate indeed. $10,000 would pay for about one month of labor (including things like taxes, health care, benefits, etc.) from a single mid-level game dev here in the states, so getting a working and relatively bug-free multiplayer mode for $10,000 seems like a fantastic bargain by my estimates. If you wanted to add it to a AAA game like Breath of the Wild in an official capacity, the bill would easily be multiple millions of dollars to design, build, test, and validate it.

What does "we have mutually agreed to part ways" mean when it comes to a high profile departure from a game studio? Is it standard HR terminology or corporatespeak for example?

It doesn't really mean anything. "We have mutually agreed to part ways" means that one or both the employer and employee don't wish to continue working together. There's no indicator who wants who to go, nor is there any indication of wrongdoing.

You mentioned in a post on Smash Bros how licenses have to be renewed every number of years and how an expired license would cause the game to be pulled (which looks like it happened to Jump Force). So how can Fortnite have characters like Naruto brought in and not be concerned?

Letting players keep whatever they've acquired during the license is usually written into the contract. This is why players can keep playing games like Marvel vs Capcom even after the license expires. The loss of the license prohibits any further sales of the product that the licensed content is available in. This is why the games (or specific DLCs) get pulled from stores after the license expires. It won't stop players from playing the game if they already bought it, but it prevents new players from buying the content. With Fortnite, it is a similar situation - those players who have the Naruto skins will be able to continue using them but new players will be unable to obtain them once the license expires. 

Would you say that a vocal minority may have no effect in the Activision Blizzard lawsuits? People keep saying stuff in disapproval, but then play their games.

Honestly, there isn't much that outsiders can do about the situation other than voice their disapproval. The issues with ATVI are internal and are almost entirely between the workers, the upper management, the ATVI shareholders, and the government regulatory agencies.

Do you sometime feel ashamed for having a paycheck on game that was released broken & with false promises?

I don’t feel bad about collecting a paycheck for work I have done, even if the game gets cancelled and never sees the light of day. I know that I did the best I could with the time and resources I had. I have no qualms taking money for the work I did to pay my bills and take care of my family.

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The FANTa Project is being rebooted. [What is the FANTa project?]

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I believe I have been asked a series of questions for a homework assignment, but I feel like answering (most of) them. So today we have short answers to a lot of questions from the same asker in the usual Lightning Mailbag format.

What do you do on a daily basis?

I create content for a video game. This includes creating spells and abilities, items and equipment, monsters and enemies, companions, and so on. I spend a good amount of my time adjusting numbers like how much damage this fireball should do, how much health this bad guy should have, or how often the bad guy should attack.

Why did you choose to become a video game developer?

I’ve loved video games since I was a child. I always wanted to make my own games because it sounded like a lot of fun. It turns out that I was right - working on video games is a lot of fun. Being a video game developer lets me create things for millions of players to play with and enjoy.

What college did you go to to learn to be a video game developer?

I went to a public university in California. 

Did you like the college you went to?

Yes, I did.

Where do you work?

It’s a secret.

Do you cooperate with other people?

Absolutely. I work with a team on our game. Most games are built by teams of specialists - programmers, designers, producers, artists, testers, and so on, all collaborating to work on one game for months or years. There are some team members I work with more closely than others, but we’re all one team.

Do you like being a video game developer?

Very much. I have worked in other fields, but I enjoy working on games the most.

What made you want to work with science, math, and STEM stuff?

I really wanted to make video games since I was a child. I knew that I would need to learn how computers worked if I was going to learn how to make games, so I followed the clearest path that would take me there - math and science in high school, followed by computer science and electrical engineering in university.

In school did you take any extra curricular programs to help you with becoming a video game developer?

I didn’t find any school sponsored extra-curricular activities for game development, so I spent my free time creating mods for games like Quake, Half-Life, Unreal, and so on by myself. If I were a student today, I go join game jam events if I could. Game jams are one or two day events where people come together and team up to make a game in a very short amount of time.

Do you think you get paid reasonably?

I get paid well enough to live fairly comfortably, though I could stand to get paid a little more. If you become a video game developer, you’re probably not going to become rich.

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The FANTa Project is being rebooted. [What is the FANTa project?]

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It’s another Lightning Mailbag da, meaning short answers for multiple questions. So let’s begin!

Since it's possible that Sony will want to milk a new market with God of war. I'm curious as to why they haven't done Bloodborne yet? It seams like every time a Sony game is given PC port the other question is "why not Bloodborne?" I've heard that apparently Sony is jealous about that it was successful while it wasn't made by them but that seams dumb.

I suspect that they will if God of War does well. They brought Horizon Zero Dawn to PC in August of 2020, God of War launches in January 2022, so other PS4 exclusives like Bloodborne, Last of Us, or Ghosts of Tsushima seem like fair game after that.

A follow-up on the Sony/God of War question: what about the people who would buy the console in order to play future exclusive games, but who now think "they will release it on Steam in 3 years anyway, might as well wait and not buy the console"?

There are so few of them that will actually follow through on this for the reasons stated that they are statistically insignificant.

You mentioned that mobile games need to spend more on marketing than on development. Do mobile developers in the trenches (gameplay/level designers, artists, programmers) mind the fact that the vast majority of the game’s budget is going into marketing instead of into the game itself?

Not to my knowledge. Those in the trenches don't usually get much insight into the marketing budget or the marketing itself unless we are involved with those initiatives or we're just particularly nosy and want to know. Most of us just focus on what we're working on directly - our schedules, our tasks, and our milestones.

Hey I have a game in my mind but a question hovered into my mind. The question is: Do I need to ask for a writer's approval for me who is following his story as the game plot?

You need permission if you use anything copyrighted. That means a specific story, characters, names, locations, plot details, etc. If you make up your own (similar) story, you don’t need the writer’s permission.

Several different FPS games of the past year or so have added grapples. Is there some technical reason this has become more feasible, or is it a stylistic trend?

It's stylistic. There was a grapple mod available for the original Quake (1996).

You mentioned there is not a common academic curriculum on level design and most designers are self taught. I’d the rise of game colleges changing this?

Not that I’ve seen yet, but hope springs eternal.

How prevalent is cheating in online games? It's very common for people to accuse others of cheating when they lose a fight/game, but I wondered how much of that is actually true. Would companies even share information like that, for fear of making their game look bad?

It depends on the game. Generally speaking, cheating is not very prevalent for very long because widespread cheating tends to make players quit. Most of the time, cheating (like piracy) is a question of ease. The easier it is to cheat, the more commonplace it becomes.

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The FANTa Project is being rebooted. [What is the FANTa project?]

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It is once again time for short answers to questions I’ve received. Let’s get to it.

I understand that censorship and localization vary to fit into the cultural context of a region, but one thing I want to ask is why don't game studios let players have the option to access both censored and uncensored versions of a game in the options menu or through a hidden code ? Wouldn't that satisfy both sides?

No it wouldn’t. Censorship - the real censorship - is when the government legally mandates “you cannot say or show this”. Some regions, like China and Russia, have real legal censorship where we are not legally allowed to show or say certain things. If we allow players to bypass those laws, our games will be banned and so will our companies.

Is there anyway that you can warn others against a group of developers calked Big Bang Group who have a game called Big Bang Pongs on google play who promise you paypal money for watching ads but never pay? The have the game on early development so comments are private so you cannot warn other players against this scam of a game.

You should report them to Google. There’s a “flag as inappropriate” option in the Google play store.

What is the Nintendo Seal of Quality, and how does it work?

It means the associated product has gone through Nintendo’s [certification process]. One of the results of passing cert is limited permission to use certain Nintendo logos and trademarks for promoting your game, like the Nintendo Seal of Quality.

In the professional video game field, what does "quality control" mean? Is it making sure it's a game that people will like and enjoy? Or is it something else entirely?

Quality Control is a synonym for Quality Assurance. In the game industry, that generally means the testers who catch and report the many bugs in the games they work on in order for the rest of us to fix them.

Which languages are the most pain to localise to? I imagine Arabic and Chinese/Japanese would be high up in that list.

Any localization will have its own cultural context that changes the reception of certain content like jokes or social importance. I haven’t worked extensively on a loc team, so I can’t really speak to that. My work on loc has been primarily technical - getting text to fit on screen, getting region-specific textures to display, getting cinematic timing to work with the different spoken languages, etc.

In my experience, German tends to be the most aggravating from a technical perspective because the German language has compound words that end up being very very long. These words are created by mashing several smaller words together. The single word length makes trying to fit lines of text on screen rather difficult.

Monetization question. With these discussions surrounding mtx, one solution I see frequently is a spending cap. If it were to be implemented, how would they decide what an appropriate spending cap is?

If people could agree on what the spending cap should be, they’d probably be more popular. If it were up to me, in the west I’d probably default it to $200 USD per month with settings per-account to allow players to adjust their preferences and a UI popup notice with a link to the settings once they hit it.

When and how does modding hit legal ground?

If you make and distribute changes to a copyrighted work without permission to do so, you've probably hit legal ground. If you attract the wrath of a publisher’s legal department, chances are good (depending on which publisher) that you may receive a cease and desist letter.

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The FANTa Project is being rebooted. [What is the FANTa project?]

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2021 is starting out looking like 2020 playing New Game Plus, so I wanted to tackle some quick questions and answers for my own mental health.

In the past few years there has been prominent triple-A games with major bugs at launch. Is big games releasing with bugs something that's becoming more frequent?

I challenge you to find a year that didn’t have prominent AAA games with major bugs at launch. It really isn’t more frequent, it just seems that way. We usually get around 20-25% of all AAA launches being buggy in a given release year. That number jumps a bit whenever a new console generation is released for obvious reasons and then trends downward as the console tech becomes better understood.

Does "complete edition" inherently mean "no more new post-launch content production" by definition in the AAA industry? Because I've seen few AAA games from several Japanese devs, one from Ubisoft, and even one by Gearbox make a "complete edition" of some way, shape, or form get more post-launch content after such. Does it mean the term in itself isn't inherent to what I said, or are the said games that continue adding content just exceptions?

“Complete edition” usually just means “everything released up until this point in time” and does not have any real bearing on what future content updates are planned.

I recently found out that a fangame for LEGO Bionicle actually made contact with The LEGO Group and got approval for their project as long as they follow a couple of guidelines. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this - could this set a positive precedent, or is it just a one-off case of an unusually lenient IP holder?

Some IP owners are fairly generous while others are not. I don’t believe this will set much of a precedence since permission being granted is almost always decided on a case-by-case basis. You might be willing to loan your creation to people you barely know, but that doesn’t mean that I should feel obligated to do the same with my creations. The important thing to note here is that permission is requested and the owner’s decision is respected.

Regarding the redundant assets thing, is there really a reason to do it in PC? Yet pc install sizes are by no means small these days?

The reason to do it on PC is the same as the reason to do it on console - we want to improve performance. Until we can guarantee SSDs on each device, yes - it will continue. 

How do you feel about game engines being used for movies and TV shows?

Seems like a cool application of the technology to me.

A followup to your last post. You mentioned that the certification requirements of today are not the certification requirements of a year from now. How often do consoles companies change their certification processes? Do they update them to be harder to achieve over time (say, a launch title can be released with 10 crash bugs but a game released two years later can only have 2 crash bugs)? What are common updates to certification requirements?

Cert requirements can get updated over time, but a previously certified game remains certified until the binary files change. This is why GOTY/Complete editions of a game often come with codes for DLC and updates, but still require you to patch them yourself - because the game’s certification was from the initial launch. As long as a game was certified at some point and no changes to the files have been made, it remains certified.

In trademark websites, I've seen some companies who file "Trademarks" of names for some of their planned/upcoming games based on another company's IP, while some companies who also make games based on the same IPs by other owners don't have any sort of trademark filed in place. How and when does filing trademark game title names work for developing games based on such IPs?

We generally file trademarks when we commit to the game’s official name. This happens a lot later in production than you might think; many games don’t have their official names until fairly late in Production.

So you made your big game pitch to a large publisher, they are so impressed they open up their check book and ask How much money and time do you want? What is your answer? 

Enough to cover the internal estimates I came up with in developing my pitch, plus another 30% for padding and insurance.

Creating a 2d RPG like game using a bare bone engine. I was wondering if I should make the houses apart of the background tiles set - that can't be walked on; or should I make them un-passable sprites? 

If you make them sprites, you can reuse them more easily in different maps. Also, consider the usefulness of allowing players to walk behind parts of the houses. Many old games hid treasures and bonuses in places like that.

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The FANTa Project is being rebooted. [What is the FANTa project?]

Got a burning question you want answered?

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Short answers to a grab bag of questions, let’s go.

I recently found out that a fangame for LEGO Bionicle actually made contact with The LEGO Group and got approval for their project as long as they follow a couple of guidelines. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this - could this set a positive precedent, or is it just a one-off case of an unusually lenient IP holder?

Some IP owners are fairly generous while others are not. I don’t believe this will set much of a precedence since permission being granted is almost always decided on a case-by-case basis. You might be willing to loan your creation to people you barely know, but that doesn’t mean that I should feel obligated to do so. The important thing to note here is that permission is requested and the owner’s decision is respected.

Can fan feedbacks help fix a game if it is flawed?

Sure. Fan feedback is never going to be the only thing to fix a flawed game, but it can certainly help.

How effective are online petitions, like the most of you can find on the "Change" website, on making a developer or any associated company do something that is game related, no matter how many people sign them from the few hundreds to millions of thousands?

I’ve never seen any developer or publisher look seriously to an online petition as a point of feedback. Descriptive feedback about what players like/dislike and why is much more valuable to us than a bunch of anonymous names on a petition that can easily be spoofed or botted.

Do you believe that one day the industry goes on a massive strike?

I don’t believe so. While it is theoretically possible, I believe there are too many confounding factors and logistical hurdles to coordinate a massive international strike of that scale. 

Being a AAA developer, does that mean your name is actually in the credits? Does everybody on the team get credit?

Usually yes, but there is some debate in the industry about what to do when a dev who worked on the game leaves the team/company before the game is finished. Some studios remove those names from the credits, others put them under “Additional <Programming/Design/etc.>” or in the Special Thanks section.

do you get free merchandise from the game you develop? stuff like posters, figurines, shirts, etc.

The publisher or studio doesn’t always have merch made, but yes - we get merch freebies every so often.

Do programmers who only know visual scripting and not traditional text code tend to have a harder time getting hired by studios?

Yes. C++ is the industry standard programming language. Some studios (Unity shops mostly) will hire primarily for C# programmers, but C++ is the go-to programming language that most hiring managers in AAA games will expect. All of the candidate programming tests I've ever taken and/or evaluated have all been based on traditional text coding syntax. Visual scripting alone is not (currently) a viable skillset for a programming job. Things may change in the future, but probably not any time soon.

Cheers.

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The FANTa Project is being rebooted. [What is the FANTa project?]

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