Comment on Over 450 Diablo developers at Blizzard have unionized

• Frozengyro@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Yea there’s still ongoing seasons for Diablo 3, Diablo immortal, Diablo 4 (seasons and another expansion), Diablo 2 resurrection. Probably other stuff I’m not aware of.

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  • MBech@feddit.dk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Diablo 2 ressurection seasons don’t actually get new content though. It’s just a wipe.

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    • Frozengyro@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Weird, seems kinda pointless.

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      • explodicle@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        IIRC seasons as we know them started with D2C with no new content. Endgame items had become commonplace, and it was hard for beginners to trade. Everybody missed what it was like when the game first started.

        Of course, some parts can never be repeated. I was following the story and got legit surprised by Duriel.

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      • MBech@feddit.dk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        The community isn’t happy about it either.

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• DupaCycki@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I’ve worked in the video game industry for a couple years and have been credited in several games. This number may actually be higher.

  It may sound crazy, but there’s a lot of people working on AAA games, usually most of them completely unrelated to game dev. Marketing, public relations, translators, 3D graphics artists, sound designers, orchestra performers, motion capture stuntmen, voice actors. Probably a few dozen managers, who have never even seen the game. Hell, some companies even credit IT staff in the game’s credits.

  That’s already a whole bunch of teams. It’s also important to mention that many third-party contractors will often be skipped from the credits. QA is very commonly outsourced (to poorer countries like Romania or Serbia) and rarely gets into the credits. You may only see 5-10 names, while in reality it was at least 100. This is true for several other fields, though mostly non-game-related, e.g., localization, promotial material, merchandise.

  I won’t disclose in what capacity, but in the past I have worked on several of Blizzard’s titles for a few months and I’m not credited anywhere. Just like at least a couple hundred other people. Not necessarily saying I should be - it was never mentioned or promised. Just highlighting that the real number of staff that worked on the game (or adjacent to the game) may be above 10k.

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• overload@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Crazy that AAA games take that many developers

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  • thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    As a bit of a thought exercise, I went through every mainline GTA game using that website to get an idea of each title’s respective headcount:

    • GTA : 86 people (DOS)
    • GTA2 : 170 professional roles (Windows)
    • GTA3 : 185 professional roles (PS2)
    • GTA:VC : 688 professional roles (PS2)
    • GTA:SA : 780 people (PS2)
    • GTA4 : 1,333 professional roles (PS3)
    • GTA5 : 3,686 professional roles (X360)

    So while the general headcount growth over time tends to track, as each generation of platform requires more and more people to churn out higher fidelity content, I can’t help but wonder what portion of that headcount is just there to churn out micro transaction and Games-as-a-Service garbage.

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    • DupaCycki@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      A good number of that is 3D artists. Try making a highly detailed 3D model in Blender. Now imagine a game like GTA V has thousands of those, but even more detailed. This is one of the major reasons why AAA are taking longer and longer to produce. At the same time, game systems and mechanics are simplified to cut costs.

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      • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Well the other thing is that design work doesn’t scale the way art does. You can’t throw 1000 game designers at a project and expect them to create a coherent game design.

        So you end up with one or a small team of game designers and they need to get the major parts of the design done early since everyone else follows from that. This leaves you with so little room for experimentation that you end up with a cookie cutter game design.

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  • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Most of those devs are probably freelancers or from hired studios doing esoteric work. It’s still crazy to see these numbers when most of the games I play are indie and have tiny credit listings. 450 people could make at least ten of the games I play.

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    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I’m still surprised when I see 50+ on some indie games.

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