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Greg Costikyan slams Epic for 'exploitative' work hours
Game designer Greg Costikyan has come out swinging against Epic president Michael Capps for supporting what the author and Manifesto Games co-founder describes "exploitation of talent." Capps, who lately has made a habit out of putting his foot in his mouth, reportedly told those attending a leadership meeting by the International Game Developers Association that just putting in a 40-hour work week was utterly senseless. Instead, the exec claimed that devs should accept that toiling for 60 or more hours each week was just part of the "corporate culture."Costikyan points out that such a stance would be plausible coming from an industry exec, were Capps not also a board member of the IGDA, "an organization," Costikyan writes, "the ostensible purpose of which is to support game developers. Not, you know, to support management dickheads."There is more to the story as well, including nebulous comments by IGDA chair Jen MacLean that only add fuel to the fire. Costikyan notes the kerfluffle has cost the IGDA some members, though he urges current and future members to join in and "vote to replace anyone on the current board who will not take a clear stand in favor of reasonable working conditions." Fight. The. Power.
Developing tensions
According to Greg Costikyan, 95 percent of MMOs fail. Rough guesstimates put the number of MMO games in development this year at about 100 or so. Some of these will fail shortly after launch. Some of them will fail in beta. Others will fail in development or even earlier at the internal technology demo stage. Some of them have already silently bit the dust, without so much as a launch announcement. Online gaming and virtual worlds are a big pie right now, and everyone wants a hefty serving of that pie. If you're going to try to get yourself a slice, you want as much control over the process as you can get - and that's a whole lot harder than it sounds.
Send Manifesto your games that cause pain
Last night we gave you some tips from the "Console/PC Distribution Gatekeepers" panel about publishing your indie game. One of the main things we told you execs like Microsoft's Ross Erickson kept coming back to was the fun factor. But what we didn't mention is Manifesto president Greg Costikyan's quick rebuttal, "We want games that aren't fun to play!" Apparently, if you're working on a game that causes your players emotional pain, even inspires disgust (Costikyan's own suggestion), Manifesto is the distributor for you. Costikyan called it emotional innovation, and there's something to be said about defying expectations for the gaming experience, but we can't help but wonder what it says about you if your game makes us want to vomit. Wait, it's the innovative use of bodily fluids as a gameplay element. Go forth, pitch it to Manifesto!
