A thought that belatedly struck me about the writing-on-video-games discourse: a lot of this is down to the lack of visible personalities, I think. Writing about other cultural subjects focuses on people, whether they're actors, sportspeople, writers, musicians, etc. - ThreadSky

eddierobson.bsky.social • 15 days ago

A thought that belatedly struck me about the writing-on-video-games discourse: a lot of this is down to the lack of visible personalities, I think. Writing about other cultural subjects focuses on people, whether they're actors, sportspeople, writers, musicians, etc.

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gregcoyote.bsky.social•15 days ago

I wonder if partially this is because games are so collaborative, but then it's not exactly like movies aren't. But somehow we've convinced ourselves of the all powerful movie director calling all the shots (literally)

gregcoyote.bsky.social•15 days ago

Reflecting on this, I've been voraciously consuming Outer Wilds content on YT since finishing the game. The devs are engaging, thoughtful people who it's very fun to listen to. Yet have I managed to remember any of their names? I have not. Sorry Outer Wilds devs, you are great.

eddierobson.bsky.social•15 days ago

I mean yeah, I've written about devs whose work I think is singular and worth highlighting and then subsequently forgotten their names

amazingmikeyc.bsky.social•15 days ago

Maybe but even when it was really small teams it didn't really work.
Like I know the name Sid Meier but he's not a celebrity, he's not done a Hot Ones challenge for Civ 7.

amazingmikeyc.bsky.social•15 days ago

It can't just be cos they're boring. Lots of directors and writers are! I think it's an industry self-mythology thing, it's hard to make art about the creation of the video games maybe so nobody imagines them at work so isn't interested

amazingmikeyc.bsky.social•15 days ago

But then I'm weird. I'd be interested in a proper interview with, like, the project manager for like Microsoft Word and why they made specific creative and/or technical decisions. These are things we use every day that humans created!

marypcbuk.bsky.social•15 days ago

Although those are rarely individual decisions; it’s going to someone talking about how their team watched the focus group from behind the hidden mirror and a lot of A B testing. We love the individual narrative but software is a team sport

amazingmikeyc.bsky.social•15 days ago

Indeed, that's my point; I'm not hugely interested in who did what I'm interested in what was done and why.

eddierobson.bsky.social•15 days ago

Totally - I love reading interviews with people about their creative process, but it's clear that most people don't care about that at all and that's why actors have to promote their latest movie by discussing their messy divorce or whatever.

mrlukowski.bsky.social•15 days ago

obviously by no means one size fits all given they’re often blank slates but isn’t there at least the argument that the characters in games are roughly equivalent to this? I mean in terms of coverage most fields of art or sport see actors/players get more attention than creatives/coaching staff

eddierobson.bsky.social•15 days ago

This is absolutely true and I think it's exactly the problem games have. People are interested in real people, and I think they're more interested in actors and players because they see them and they feel more real to them. Whereas game characters are only interesting to gamers.

mrlukowski.bsky.social•15 days ago

the relative disconnect between voice actors and the games they’re in probably doesn’t help

eddierobson.bsky.social•15 days ago

This was prompted by reading an article about Dean Huijsen signing for Real Madrid, which discussed him growing up in Spain and choosing to play for them instead of Netherlands, where he was born... people like this stuff, it's a layer of reality alongside the "product" of the football itself.

edjefferson.com•15 days ago

That's a bit egg/chicken though isn't it - the TV writers who are visible are visible because they themselves get written about, but they wouldn't be if no-one was writing about TV?

eddierobson.bsky.social•15 days ago

It is, but as I said downthread, the games industry doesn't exactly go big on promoting its major creative people.

paulhaine.bsky.social•15 days ago

We've been trying to solve this for a while now

eddierobson.bsky.social•15 days ago

As a result, even people without interest in a field will know a few of the big names in it - they'll pick it up by osmosis. Whereas the games industry doesn't exactly go out of its way to publicise who makes its games. Even committed gamers tend to know companies rather than actual people.

eddierobson.bsky.social•15 days ago

Yes there are some well-known game developers, some of whom can even get their name above the title - you don't have to bombard me with counter-examples. But there are far fewer than in other fields. You could argue that's because people don't write about them...

minillajovovich.bsky.social•15 days ago

I sort of get why one wouldn't want to be a high profile "games personality" considering the proclivities of the gamer crowd

eddierobson.bsky.social•15 days ago

But it becomes a catch-22, because people are less likely to commission or read an article about someone they haven't heard of. Whereas a footballer's name is on their shirt, a musician's name is on their record, a novelist's name is on their book - and an article about them will catch your eye.

eddierobson.bsky.social•15 days ago

Yes, but I didn't say ALL people in other fields are prominent in discourse - just that these fields have SOME personalties for discourse to latch onto. Film and TV have actors, they're the ones who get interviewed and profiled. Whereas games have characters. https://bsky.app/profile/stuarthoughton.bsky.social/post/3lrd6z4snes2u

eddierobson.bsky.social•15 days ago

This is a very good point. https://bsky.app/profile/minillajovovich.bsky.social/post/3lrd6zmtqd22w

jaykayell.bsky.social•15 days ago

Also, a director of a game studio went on stage with a cap referencing MAGA over the weekend. A lot of powerful folks in the games industry are terrible people.

eddierobson.bsky.social•15 days ago

Yeah this is true. You could argue it's a good thing that games made by large teams aren't promoted as being the brainchild of one or two members of that team. But people do like to latch onto individual personalities, hence auteurism. https://bsky.app/profile/gregcoyote.bsky.social/post/3lrd7ijnkd22z

stuarthoughton.bsky.social•15 days ago

Yeah that's true. Interestingly there are now a handful of voice actors who you could say are legitimately famous (in a 'can headline a con' way - I'm not seeing Neil Newbon or Laura Bailey at the Met Gala, yet.)

suw.bsky.social•15 days ago

This is the problem with the whole "Who's the female Brian Cox?" discourse. The media won't really write about people without a profile, but you don't get a profile until someone writes about you. And as someone who once had a small profile, once they stop writing about you/your work, you're fucked.

stuarthoughton.bsky.social•15 days ago

Mind you, its not like writers in film or TV are exactly lauded. There are more exceptions than with games but still.

jonnyrev.bsky.social•15 days ago

I think it kind of almost happened that era where Peter Molyneux and John Romero were getting magazine covers, but unfortunately, because they were Peter Molyneux and John Romero, everyone got their hands burned and the zeitgeist never quite materialised

eddierobson.bsky.social•15 days ago

Yeah I agree. And fucking Notch, too. He was just starting to hit that kind of prominence, but this only revealed he was a bellend and he got shuffled to one side before he damaged the brand.

alexpartridge87.bsky.social•15 days ago

and some of the potentially really interesting people, like the guy who made Balatro almost entirely on his own, are anonymous!

eddierobson.bsky.social•15 days ago

Yeah. I know the name Eric Barone. I know he made Stardew Valley pretty much singlehanded. Don't know anything else about him.

underlogic.bsky.social•15 days ago

I remember the days of EA making a thing of putting names to their games, but I don't know how successful that was.. I still have no idea who any of these people were, but I might have been too young to know or care.

parhodes.bsky.social•15 days ago

Star programmers were quite the thing in the 80s, too - think it was some recent BBC Archive post that had a clip about Virgin trying to market games like music.

maruku25.bsky.social•15 days ago

Everything I know about games developers tells me they're all really into llamas 🦙.

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