https://x.com/Grummz/status/1801445278861639709
https://x.com/Grummz/status/1801445456918233450
https://x.com/Grummz/status/1801445512719307162
https://nitter.poast.org/Grummz/status/1801445278861639709
Leak: Activision Blizzard is too far gone and infested with DEI. They recently circulated a 3 year plan for even more woke in games:
"DE&I (DEI) are woven into the fabric of all our efforts, serving as the cornerstone of our planning process."
Presents a 3 year Roadmap 2024-2026 "The Inclusion Strategy Map."
"Every element of the game development cycle and pipeline touches DE&I (DEI) in some way."
AI voice chat moderation to enforce DEI compliance with players.
The Inclusive Game Design Council staffed with external experts (you can guess) and academia to "empower" teams to be inclusive.
"Embed exposure to DE&I "programming" from Day 1 for all new employees.
Building safe spaces inside the company for every group under the sun.
Plans to diversify representation in characters and stories.
Integrate the inclusive creative process into all games, with focus groups lead by Marketing and DEI teams.
Uses DEI goal setting to foster accountability. (this is probably related to the DEI score on review that I mentioned before).
Hosts an internal live video series "Press Pause" that trains employees on Diversity Storytelling and Culture of Support.
Hosts Cultural Events continuously internally.
Quotes debunked research that "diverse teams outperform"
Thinks celebrating hip-hop in Call of Duty creates inclusiveness.
Backs and attends numerous DEI panels.
Is conducting research into removing the "bias" from their AI efforts (i.e. uncomfortable truths).
Thinks having taco vendors and coffee carts counts as "diversifying supplier chain."
Tracks an "inclusion score" for every employee.
Uses advanced tech tools in hiring to look for inclusive language and diverse people and implement "inclusive hiring processes." (i.e. quotas).
Creates manager incentives and "succession plans that mitigate bias".
Ensure marketing is culturally sensitive.
Inclusive Game Design: Introducing more characters like Catbat, first non-binary character voiced by gender-fluid actor who "uses all pronouns" in Crash Team Rumble.
There is a lot here. It's a juggernaut. Hi-rez photos attached in this post and the next 2 replies.
Gives them excuse to blame Gamers for being racist, homophobic, etc.
Reality is, most gamers were laughing at them for a 300 gig game size, shitty skins, and major predatory practices they call balance.
We're several years past the point of hardware being able to run graphics so detailed that it could stop improving and there would be little to complain about. The wiggle-room is there.
But developpers optimisation of how their games run keeps getting worse and worse. They want hardware to pick-up the slack for increasingly inneficient coding.
Like if a high definition video could take 200MB, but theirs now take 5GB, but fear not, you can pick the potato quality option which is 400MB.
This is all coding, across the board. 90% of coders rely on published libraries and example code from other sources, and simply bash it together to make it work. Carmack-style coding nerds are essentially dead and gone.
What's funny is that Bodycam was made by two guys under 25 (one is only 17) and it looks better than any AAA game released in the last decade using few filters, Unreal Blueprints and some asset store packs.
EDIT: Vid for reference: https://youtu.be/SzHfZYClTwo?t=634
Do AAA studios even hire actual programmers, or do they just assume that a bunch of CGI artists and animators can handle the coding as an afterthought?
Since they usually use Unreal or Unity the douchebags at the top probably figure that the coding's already been taken care of and Google can do the rest. I imagine it's a lot like the relationship between engineers and architects, where architects know just enough about engineering to be Dunning-Krugers about it and ignore everything the engineers tell them about all that boring technical shit. So architects will design a building that looks all sleek and shiny at first but because they ignored the engineers it ends up becoming a nightmare to maintain and ends up abandoned because of shit like the AC and ventilation system always breaking down or water pressure being shit or some other boring detail that architects don't think about.
Artfags having a contemptuous attitude towards tech autists is a running theme in many industries, and game development has gone from being mostly done by programmers with a few artfags involved, to being mostly done by artfags with a few programmers involved. And I'm guessing that any actual programmers involved in AAA development at this point are just told to "make things happen" while anything they try to warn the rest of the team about gets ignored, then when the nerd is vindicated it's far too late in the development process to start over so they end up slapping a bunch of patches on top of patches.
It's been my experience that engineers often think they're the architect and design with insanity. I had a project for a low key event, and the engineer wanted them to spend millions of dollars for a stage and effects.
What I realized is that quite often the engineer types only know one thing really well, and see that as the answer. They want to show off that one skill, and do not care what is actually needed. The guys who designed Orlando truly believe the entire city should be sky scrapers, so then they don't have to fix the road infrastructure design. In fact, they want more of the insanity. I put my life on the line every day because someone thought he was cool when designing the i4 to 408 interconnection. When the complaint is made, the engineers say that's the only way to do it, even though there are other options.
Another problem is engineers can be just as lazy. A building only needs one AC to fit regulation? It's a long building, and the architect has even put places for extra AC units. Nope, only one is installed.
Engineers can be artistic script kiddies too. Even when not, they can be a one answer only guy, and not be able to see beyond that one answer.
Engineers definitely have their own issues, and there are certainly architects who are pragmatic and engineers who are myopic. But managers tend to side with the artfags over the tech autists, because managers are themselves usually much closer to being artfags.
I think it's hard to get good programmers that write reliable code to work in the industry, so I don't know what they get. Probably people who just go-go-go. It's somewhat reasonable for a video game, where the cost of a failure (crash in video game terms) is so low. They do hire programmers. They work them really hard, and they don't pay them that much. But it's a cool job for some young men. So you get what you get.
If you imagine the whole software industry as a bigger system, you don't want your best programmers -- at least not the same kind of best that work on your spacecraft -- working on games. Where people work is mediated by the market, but the market is pretty good at squeezing out efficiency, so I think people end up more or less where they belong. In aggregate not individually.
Just look at people who have made indy games, and you can see some pretty crazy strategies for going from "I know how to script" to "game."
So the same reason why all the competent translators work in law and business where mistakes can't be tolerated while shitty translators just call themselves "localisers" to cope for their inability to properly translate.
I suppose if HDs get too big they can always make the game bigger.