Im folgenden Video siehst du, wie du consolewars als Web-App auf dem Startbildschirm deines Smartphones installieren kannst.
Hinweis: Diese Funktion erfordert derzeit den Zugriff auf consolewars über den integrierten Safari-Browser. Dies ist eine Einschränkung von Apple.
“One senior guy would say, ‘Just get more bodies.’ That’s what the contractors were called: bodies. And then when we’re done with them, we can just dispose of them. They can be replaced with fresh people who don’t have the toxic nature of being disgruntled.”
Bei Apex Legends war halt schnell die Luft raus, daher verständlich, dass die Spielerzahl massiv abflaut (wie ich es vorhergesagt habe) und das Spiel bei Twitch nun fast dauerhaft hinter PUBG liegt, was ja laut Expertenmeinungen hier ständig tot ist.How Fortnite’s success led to months of intense crunch at Epic Games
https://www.polygon.com/2019/4/23/18507750/fortnite-work-crunch-epic-games
GaaS ist quasi unendlich langer crunch und studios, die da nicht mitmachen, verlieren schnell wieder ihren rückenwind, weil gamer dann unzufrieden sind, weils nicht gut genug unterstützt wird. siehe aktuell apex legends bei ea, wo sowas wie crunch nicht unterstützt wird und nun wieder enorm an popularität verloren hat.
One Friday afternoon a few weeks ago, the developers at Treyarch held a happy hour event to welcome the summer interns. There was pizza, beer, and jubilation for everyone at the studio behind Call of Duty: Black Ops 4—except the quality assurance testers, who had to leave shortly after they got there.
“QA was told we were only allowed down at the party for a max of 20 minutes, and we ‘really shouldn’t drink anything’ because we still had to work,” said one tester. “It sucks, but honestly we’re pretty used to getting these sort of ‘rules’ when they do any parties here.”
It was a small affront, but it felt indicative of a bigger problem: At Treyarch, many contract employees, especially the testers, say they feel like second-class citizens. Testers work on the second floor of the office, while most of the other developers are on the first. Some testers say they’re told not to speak to developers in other departments, and one told me they’ll only do so surreptitiously, out of fear of getting fired. When they get to work, testers have to park their cars in a different parking lot than other employees, one that’s further away from the office. When lunch is catered, testers are told that the food downstairs is for the development team, not for them. Sometimes, they’re allowed to scrounge for leftovers an hour later, once the non-testing staff have gotten to eat.
Put another way: When I asked a non-tester at Treyarch about the party, they responded, “Surprised they were invited at all.”
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, released last October, is the latest entry in Activision’s massively popular first-person shooter series. It made more than $500 million in its first three days on sale, helping ensure that Activision’s 2018 financial results were what chief executive Bobby Kotick called “the best in our history.” It was also a turbulent production, marked by a drastic reboot, the last-minute addition of a battle royale mode, and what one developer described as “perpetual crunch” that perhaps hit the QA team hardest. Many of Treyarch’s employees are not full-time staff but contractors, which means that, among other things, they don’t qualify for the bonuses that full-timers might get from all those Black Ops 4 sales.
According to Glassdoor aggregates and testimonials from employees to Kotaku, Treyarch’s QA testers are paid a base wage of around $13 an hour. For the past year or so, some say they’ve been working around 70 hours a week. So it was a gut punch to at least a few of them when, in January of this year, news broke that the video game publisher Activision had given a cash and stock bonus worth up to $15 million to its new chief financial officer, Dennis Durkin. They didn’t even qualify for a $15 bonus.
“That broke a lot of people,” said a tester who left shortly afterwards. “We’re getting paid these very minimal amounts working these ridiculous hours, yet these people are getting paid absurd amounts of money. It’s just a culture of not being cared about.”
This account of Treyarch’s studio culture, and of the development of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, is based on interviews with 11 current and former staff members, all of whom spoke anonymously in order to protect their careers. They described a company in which contractors, and particularly testers, feel like they’re perceived and treated as inferior. Throughout Black Ops 4’s rocky development, testers said they worked under unfair conditions—a theme that’s common in the video game industry, but one that remains worth scrutinizing. Those who spoke to us for this story said they did so because they hope that public pressure will lead the studio to change.
People who worked full-time for Nicalis say that flakiness is just one of the problems they’ve faced there. In interviews with Kotaku, seven former Nicalis employees painted a picture of Rodriguez as a boss who wielded his power over staff in exploitative ways. “The level of control he has over his employees is definitely a problem,” said one former staffer. “It was, ‘Anything I tell you to do, you have to do this, because I’m the boss.’” Sometimes that meant employees wasting days or weeks of work because Rodriguez wouldn’t respond to their questions; other times it meant more personal grievances. For example, two former Nicalis employees said they’d be rebuked for taking dinner breaks during crunch hours or taking time off to go to the doctor or take care of sick relatives.
Irgendwie scheint es mir so, also würde die Spieleindustrie, aber natürlich insbesondere die üblichen Verdächtigen von eben 2K Games, EA, Activision, Bethesda, Konami usw. usf. geradezu auf einen Crashkurs gegen die Interessen der Spieler gehen
Wohin dies führt sieht man ja aktuell am Markt für die Mobile-Games. Eben weil solche Praktiken der gierigen Publisher nicht beizeiten Einhalt geboten wurde, ist dieser Spielemarkt eine einzige Jauchegrube mit allen möglich und unmöglichen Methoden, um den Spielspaß mit voller Absicht zu beschneiden, um die Käufer zu den angebotenen Mikrotransaktionen und teuren Boostern etc. zu "überredet", damit das Spielen kein nervtötender Grindzyklus ist. Dies ist also genau das Gegenteil, was man traditionell unter guter Spieleentwicklung versteht, nur um aus den Käufern so viel Geld wie möglich, auf Kosten des Spielspaßes, herauszupressen. IMO ist es schon so weit, dass man den Handyspielemarkt eigentlich als verloren und tot ansehen kann. Die entsprechenden Reaktionen, wenn mal wieder ein wichtiger Titel nur für Mobile angeboten wird, ist bezeichnend.Gibt genug dankbare Abnehmer siehe die Umsatzzahlen der Publisher. Bin persönlich kein Fan davon aber wenn keiner kaufen würde dann würden sie davon Abstand nehmen.
Den Entwickler kennt vermutlich keine Sau, aber der Text war durchaus interessant zu lesen.