Ask HN: Why aren't games marketed as the work of director X like movies are?
And if they were, what impact would this have on video game design?
Sid Meier's Pirates!, Civilization, Colonization, Railroad Tycoon etc. [1]
David Braben presents Frontier - Elite II
Also after Populous, games like Powermonger, Black & White etc were all known to be "by" Peter Molyneux.
Then there were also isometric shooters by some John Carmack
So in a sense, there's someone out there who loves Spore but won't buy The Sims, because they don't need any other games.
I think the casual players are the ones who hated it the most, while those who played the Sims hardcore got the most out of their money.
Sims 3 was ambitious in scope and kept adding more. It's unplayable if you actually own all the content. Maxis coded themselves into a performance hole and couldn't get out. It stuck to Sims 2's Expansion and Stuff packs formula, with lots of Store content that drove revenue.
Sims 4 is much prettier but also dialed back. This lends well to what EA did by going even _deeper_ into the "spray and pray small amounts of content with huge prices" approach. It's no longer Expansion and Stuff packs with decent amounts of content, it's now various types that all have small-mid amounts for high prices: - Expansion Packs - Game Packs (mini expansions around one core concept) - Stuff Packs - Kits (mini stuff packs around one set of objects)
Sid says it stuck after Pirates! was a success.
I also find it pretty amusing that the other big name on video game boxes – although not much involved with the games themselves – Tom Clancy, established this custom with a Sid Meier game, Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising.
There is actually only one other name I can think of that prominently appeared on the box, American McGee. Will Wright, Shigeru Miyamoto, Hideo Kojima, Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert, John Romero and John Carmack could have pulled it off, but AFAIK never did, although their popularity did boost many a game’s sales. Cliffy B also comes to mind as a game designer I can put a name and face to.
David Cage (Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, etc.)
Hidetaka Miyazaki (Dark Souls)
So you have Al lowe's Leisure Suit Larry, Roberta William's king quests, Jane Jensen's Gabriel Knight, The Cole's Quest for Glory and Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy's Space Quest among the more well known.
First off, I want to state that John is a wonderful human being and a great designer. He's a delight to talk with and the effort and outcomes he is responsible for is commendable.
In the early days of PC gaming lead designers were well known and often printed on the box of games; think Sid Meier, Chris Sawyer, Roberta Williams, Tim Schafer, hell even Derek Smart. It's my impression that this wasn't particularly true in consoles, or even on mac or amiga; save for some notable exceptions like Hideo Kojima and Shigeru Miyamoto.
But John Romero and Ion Storm are, I believe, the cause of the trend towards star designers being stopped dead in its tracks. John was hyped up as an absolute all-star designer, with the infamous "John Romero is going to make you his bitch" advertisement campaign for Daikatana; with the cost overruns, and the product's flop in the market, investors and publishers became exceedingly wary of tying their dollars and projects to the names of specific developers. They'd poured money into Ion Storm, and now Ion Storm's products were critically tainted by way of association with Romero. (A shame, because Anachronox is a rather nice game).
After that, it became difficult and a point of contract negotiation for contributing developers to _even have their names in the credits_. Publishers became so protective of their brands and their associations that they were deeply concerned about what developer names were tied to their products.
It’s a bit of a joke now how many times his name appears before you play the game but he’s earned it because he’s an excellent director which makes very distinctive narratives, styles and snappy but deep gameplay.
And he doesn't just bombard you with his own name. I remember playing Death Stranding, and every time a new character is introduced for the first time, in a cutscene, there is a movie-style text appearing with the character's name and their actor's name below, e.g. "Sam - Norman Reedus", in the same style as Kojima's own name. Except for him instead of character name + actor name, it is usually "Director - Kojima", then "Producer - Kojima", etc.
Realistically though, his games aren't as mainstream these days, and I doubt that a giant chunk of modern gamers (in the 15 to 22 range) have played any of his games. Which makes me think it definitely isn't due to those "10-second bombardments of his name" at the beginning of his games.
You really need to play MGS1-4 to appreciate the story and gameplay, and to get a real sense of Kojima's brilliance. They're top notch all around, but definitely up there as one of the best stories ever told.
Correction: Survive is the worst if you even want to consider it a MGS game
Kojima's team was making an initial prototype, didn't like how it came out, and then handed it over to Platinum Games. PG completely reworked the entire thing, and imo it came out great.
For the record, Platinum Games are known for amazing works like Bayonetta series, Nier: Automata, and plenty others. The founders of that studio were also heavy-hitters before forming the studio, with Hideki Kamiya being the director of Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry (the original, not the reboot), Vietiful Joe, and Okami.
P.S. Survive is by far the worst game and isn't even comparable to anything else. It was made after Kojima quit though, so it is difficult to even consider it a legitimate MGS game.
Earlier games would just have cheeky references to himself here and there. Most obvious one I remember was Psycho Mantis' fight in MGS1 opening with him appearing to change your television input to one called "HIDEO" (instead of "VIDEO").
It's meant to be like a tv series, just like how Game of Thrones or The Wire flashes the directors name before an episode.
Just how MGS 3 was meant to be a James Bond style movie so starts with a female vocalist singing a overly passionate ballad. They're stylistic elements from cinema, and in that case TV he's bringing to gaming to set a tone.
His justification being that he wanted them in the game but didn't want to take time away from their own works.
He fought his way to where he is in the late 80s, early 90s from nothing [1]
The idea that you shouldn't be proud or shout about your achievements is a technique loser adults push on children to stunt their potential.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directors_Guild_of_America
Movie credits for normal Hollywood productions are all contractually specified in terms of listing order, inclusion, and technical aspects.
Non-Hollywood type productions can tend to follow the norm simply because it is the norm and probably because it is sort of what audiences expect and because the collaborative nature of movies means that bucking the system is likely to make people not want to work with/for you...who wants to argue with someone over whether to include the key-grip or if the screen writer should come before or after the supporting actors?
E.g. I know who Alfonso Cuarón is, but thankfully forgot who's the director on the extreme bore-fest of the first two Potter films and the other guy on the featureless last half-dozen films.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Empire_Strikes_Back#Credit...
In the 90s there was, famously Daikatana's "John Romero is going to make you his bitch" ad. American McGee's Alice is another.
Currently, it seems like Japanese creators are the most known and in the West it seems more like studios are known. And in announcements they will use the creators and companies to get buzz.
However, that isn't really marketing. In film, for example, Nope was advertised as a Jordan Peele film. Most games aren't advertised that way. Games advertising seems to focus more on the new: new graphics, new play mechanics. This might be because film doesn't have the same visible advances year after year that games have. The visible differences between a 1980 and a 2020 game are much more obvious than a 1980 and 2020 film.
When it comes to smaller, more indie games, there are people like Johnathan Blow whose games get advertised as being "from the maker of..."
This is not at all my field so I can’t deliver an impromptu lecture on it; the back of my head is saying it largely changed in the US in the seventies, with a lot of influence from French New Wave films, which were very much seen to be strongly shaped by the director, rather than simply managed. I might be wrong here!
Hollywood was clued in on this in the 70s with the ‘New Hollywood’, and people like Coppola, Spielberg, Scorcese, etc. Notably though, ‘New Hollywood’ still was way more mainstream than French New Wave, IMO.
Directors enjoyed top-billing prior to the articles and films by the Cahiers du Cinéma critics. While they made a huge contribution to the form of cinema, how many people really saw Breathless or read Hitchcock/Truffaut?
New Hollywood was mostly egged on by whip-smart critics with a wide circulation like Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael, who further elevated the director as artist in the public mind. The studios followed suit and thought they could make a buck with these prestige films, until there were too many self-indulgent flops.
My point stands that there were 'name' directors that excited the public long before the auteur theory.
If it were to get more prevalent, it might open the door for more original or unique AAA games. Giving a single person full control of the vision of a game almost certainly makes for more idiosyncratic games than the design-by-commitee approach many AAA games take today. Think more God of War (2018)s or Death Strandings and fewer Far Cry 7s.
But in my opinion auteurism is unfair to the rest of the team. AAA games are a joint effort, a director may have a singular vision but there are thousands of decisions made by the rest of the team (not to mention the labor it takes to execute that vision) that all coalesce into the final product.
Perhaps today it's just meaningless to name one or two people who ‘design’ the game, when most of it is concepts borrowed from the common pool of the industry, and the content proper is made by twenty designers.
Indie games are where the individuals are now. Jonathan Blow, Zachtronics, Zach and Tarn Adams, Toby Fox, Emily Short, Jason Rohrer—these kind of guys. People still not just buy, but fund games by Ron Gilbert because it's his games.
Likewise, I think the role of a director is diluted in animation: it's hard to imagine one guy pestering main animators until they come up with a desired look—surely it's much more of a team effort. In the end, I think a cinema director chooses a room and a camera, and then shouts at the actors until they do as he envisions—it's glorified theater, after all. Whereas in games and animation much more of the result depends on the artists and programmers at each point: they have to prepare every single bit in advance for the player to experience, and the PM can't just tell the characters to act less stiffly in the next take.
IMO about the same thing happens in software development in general: UX and UI designers are in large part responsible for how the product should feel to the user, but they almost never control the process—with just a couple exceptions that I know. And we usually don't hear about these designers, unless it's a statement of fashion.
I also think that the massive failure of Daikatana helped people see that attaching your reputation to a game might not be the best idea.
Also not all games are movies. Their iteration times seem far longer. And games/game designs can be worked on for so long it's natural you'd want to switch to something else.
Lastly, it is hard to quantify the contributions of one guy compared to the entire studio without access to sales. If one pushes his personal brand he'd have to step over a whole bunch of very qualified egos too. If it succeeds you'd end up with payscales that are out of whack similar to Hollywood, and it's not a pretty situation since part of your workforce can transition out of games.
But what he’s most known for is more or less single handedly carrying Squaresoft through their formative years. He was responsible for Rad Racer, Final Fantasy I-III, and Secret of Mana. Nasir was such a legend that Squaresoft flew him to Japan from the US to work on their games. At one point when his work visa expired, they flew the entire Squaresoft dev team back to Sacramento and completed FFIII in Nasir’s apartment.
Including quite a few he had no involvement with.
I always thought the studio just bought his name to use for branding after the first game was made after his book Rainbow Six.
To the various game director's credit, I'd also like to think it's a bit of humility baked into the game development community. I'm sure a game director can take a walk through their office, glance at any of the screens, from creative to technical, and think "oh yeah, these are the people making this thing happen". Game studios without a doubt have some of the most talented people in the world working for them. Making games is hard!
Amusingly enough American McGee’s name sounded like a studio to me when I bought the game; only later did I realize it was a guy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy%27s_Rainbow_Six_(vi...
Interested in your take on this since my perspective is exactly the opposite.
For me narrative games were part of the mainstream triad (arcade vs simulator vs narrative) in the 90s/early 00s until the open-world-sandbox sidequest-filled games took over the SP narrative-ish niche. Even before the 90s RPGs and IF (back then known as "text adventures") were all the rage in the non-console-gaming world (which was large, at least here in Europe).
There's a reason Kojima is such a celebrity in the genre, and that's MGS1 (from 1998) which would probably go unnoticed nowadays.
Now that I mention 1998 that was a huge year for narrative-driven games: Half-Life, Grim Fandango, Zelda: OOT, MGS1, Final Fantasy 7, Resident Evil 2... What a year!
I'm no longer that into in SP games. Does your post imply the pendulum is changing directions? Can you recommend some titles?
The narrative games you mention are all great, but I think gaming at that time was still pretty niche and limited to middle/upper-class and geeks, just like home computers were. In my memory, vastly more people played arcade-style games and multiplayer games than RPGs.
Problem with individuals, they are hard to deal.
Individuals don't make sustained value; individuals could change mind and go downshifting.
In good team mean performance of member could be much lower than for individual, but unlike individual who impossible to replace, team could easy replace every member and continue delivery.
A corporation making that investment wants to own all of the brand IP it creates for that money. It isn’t looking to share that value with creators altruistically which would just give the creators more bargaining power next iteration.
Similar logic in movies. Studios want to own franchises like Marvel where the value is more in the studio owned brand IP than any specific actors or directors.
Notable counter example is Hideo Kojima (check out MGS5 or Death Stranding)
https://www.ranker.com/list/first-video-game-easter-egg-atar...
The industry grew out of that.
Furthermore, Hollywood is all about having your name in lights. Code isn't and it attracts people that do not expect to have their name in big letters.
It's culture.
No, it wasn't John Romero's fault. Nor was it any single person or company; but it would be more accurate to say that Atari and Electronic Arts are responsible.
Atari didn't like to give credit to creators. Atari eventually blew itself up, but a lot of people remembered how wronged they felt by the company withholding credit.
Some of these people created, or were early hires, at Electronic Arts. Although EA was venture-funded, it was very idealistic in its early days. The "Arts" in the name was proposed initially as "Artists", but the company felt that naming itself in that way would suggest that the people running the company were the artists, thus stealing credits from the developers. So instead, they called the company "Arts" and promoted their developers as "artists". EA also experimented with a lot of artistic choices, like promoting developers in press tours, trying to innovate in their packaging, credit screens, etc.
Tl;dr: all of this stuff basically failed to impress the public and couldn't be correlated to any improvement in sales. People apparently just didn't care. The one success EA eventually had with name branding was Madden football... but John Madden was an aging football coach who barely knew where the "On" button was. Later Electronic Arts CEOs thus trashcanned the idea of promoting developers, although I believe the founder, Trip Hawkins, also spoke quite publicly about the idea as a failure. EA became the festering mudpit of middle management we all know it as today. That all happened by the late 1980s.
Id Software, the place that gave John Romero his rockstar image, came after all of that, founded in 1991. Ion Storm was founded in 1996. At the same time that Romero's reputation was tracing a parabolic arc, people like Sid Meier were showing that you actually could use a developers name successfully. Romero didn't scare away anyone from doing so. Rather, it was the experience of corporations trying to do the same that scared away other corporations, and Ion Storm's failure (having been funded by Eidos, I believe) was just one more bit of evidence on a pre-existing pile.
Is that evidence right? It seems to generally be true, in my opinion. Yes, you get the occasional extremely successful auteur like Meier or Kojima. But those aren't predictable or repeatable, and you also get people like Romero, or Will Wright, or Peter Molyneux, who hit a peak then completely bomb with insane or just flat out wrong decision making.
One of the other comments suggested that one more reason is the lack of a union for movie producers. I have my own pet theory, which is rather different:
Making games is much, much harder than making movies. Success is less repeatable, and we have far more people who hit a peak in one project then utterly fail in the next. I think a good piece of evidence for this is in who the successful auteurs are in gaming: they're people who make the same kinds of experiences over and over. Sid Meier not only built his brand on sequels of Civilization; he's also a bit of a management genius who found the right bright young minds to lead design on his sequels. Hideo Kojima, in the Metal Gear series, basically wrote an extremely long story punctuated by gameplay. Will Wright was actually successful for a long time with fairly similar simulation games, and only met his end as a popular designer when he bit off way more than he could chew with Spore. The more a producer or designer tries to innovate on subsequent projects, the more likely they are to fail -- and gaming is a far more innovation-driven industry than film.
The only outlier I can even think of, someone who makes vastly different games and succeeds almost all the time, is Shigeru Miyamoto. He's got the whole support structure of Nintendo behind him, which is really proof that maybe the original EA model could have worked; but Nintendo is, thus far, a unique existence that nobody else has replicated, and even haven't figured out how to churn out name-brand creators.