Furthermore, the gaming industry is much less regulated compared to its counterparts in the live entertainment industry, largely due to being a newer and less understood medium, meaning that unethical and sometimes semi-legal business practices are allowed to occur without accountability.
But thanks to bold investigative journalists, we as players occasionally get a glimpse behind the curtain, to be surprised by some of the shocking and exciting secrets that are often kept hidden in the world of video games.
Some of these secrets are at least entertaining and harmless, rather than condemning an industry that clearly needs urgent regulation and unionization…
10. Developers who leave the project mid-production may not get their name in the end credits
Developing complex AAA games usually requires a collaborative effort from around 600 people, and in huge projects like those produced by Rockstar Games, this number can easily exceed 1000 people.
And while this explains the lengthy credits lists in most AAA games, there is often an unspoken culture regarding using credits against dissatisfied employees.
If you worked on a small part of the game, or worse, left the project mid-development to work at another studio, you may be sidelined in the “special thanks” section or have your name removed from the credits altogether.
Unlike the film industry, there are no legally binding guidelines in the largely unregulated video game industry, allowing companies like Rockstar to remove hundreds of people who worked on Red Dead Redemption 2 from the credits.
Even worse, Rockstar admitted that this practice was implemented to motivate their employees to “reach the finish line”. Unfortunately, since developers rely on credits for future jobs, claiming to have worked on a major AAA game without their name listed could make them appear dishonest, making this practice a detrimental tool for pressuring developers that publishers should be held accountable for.
9. Voice actors do not receive ownership rights to their work
In recent years, there have been major campaigns by voice actors in video games to improve working conditions, especially in the form of residual profits from successful commercial games they contribute their voices to.
While ownership rights are well-structured in film and television industries, this is not true for video games. For example, Michael Hollick, who voiced Niko Bellic the protagonist of Grand Theft Auto IV, received only $100,000 for 15 months of voicing the character, despite the game grossing $500 million in its first week alone.
Similar stories eventually led to a strike by voice actors against about 12 developers and publishers in 2016, and after nearly a year, an agreement was reached giving voice actors a progressive scale of additional payments for voice recording sessions.
Unfortunately, there is still disagreement over residual profits, meaning even voice actors playing highly iconic and marketable characters do not receive a share of the profits they helped achieve.
8. Performance-enhancing drugs are widespread in esports
While performance-enhancing drugs have always been a major issue in traditional sports, it wasn’t until recent years that it was revealed esports also suffer from widespread use of suspicious substances.
Specifically, drugs like Ritalin, Adderall, and Vyvanse, which can enhance focus, improve response times, and ward off fatigue, are widely used in gaming competitions, with few esports tournaments explicitly banning or testing for these substances.
With the grand prize for the game Dota 2 last year surpassing $30 million, it’s no wonder players resort to extra means to improve their chances of getting a portion of the prize.
Recent reports indicate that the abuse of performance-enhancing drugs is prevalent in famous competitive games, and given the ease with which young people can access them and their addictive potential, it is clear that there is an urgent need to regulate this industry and protect players.
7. Employee bonuses may depend on Metacritic ratings
The importance of reviews in the gaming industry cannot be denied: with the high prices of AAA games compared to cinema films, consumers tend to carefully review ratings before making a purchase.
Many players rely on the site Metacritic – which serves as the Rotten Tomatoes for the gaming world – to review aggregated ratings of a game before making a purchasing decision.
This unified figure not only impacts how people spend their money, but can ignite emotional debates among fans, and as a result, publishers take this very seriously.
To the extent that some publishers offer incentives to developers if they meet certain criteria in review ratings. A famous example is that the developers of Fallout: New Vegas at Obsidian Entertainment were deprived of a $1 million bonus split among the team because they failed to reach an 85 rating on Metacritic by just one point.
This issue becomes more complicated when considering that reviews are not always indicative of a game’s commercial success. In the case of New Vegas, the game generated huge revenues of $300 million within a few weeks of its release.
The importance of a Metacritic rating extends to companies and individual employees who need to mention their average ratings in presentations for new projects, allowing powerful publishers to use low ratings against them.
It is not surprising that these incentive-based agreements are rarely announced, but have been ongoing behind the scenes for years and are unlikely to stop soon.
6. Marketing budgets may be much larger than production budgets
You may be familiar with the fact that massive Hollywood films like Avengers and Justice League have huge promotional budgets, with studios spending almost the same amount on marketing as the production cost of the film itself.
But in the world of video games, the ratio between production costs and marketing varies significantly, with the production budget of the game often just a small part of what publishers spend on promotion.
Take for example one of the most expensive video games to date, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. While it was produced at a cost of $50 million which is relatively modest for a AAA game, Activision spent a massive $200 million on manufacturing and marketing the game worldwide.
Given that it grossed over a billion dollars within a few months of its release, these funds were a successful investment. And it’s not just the big games that spend more on advertising than production, for example, the game Heavy Rain from Quantic Dream Studio was produced at a cost of around $20 million, while the marketing costs were more than double this amount.
This model does not apply to all games, especially smaller independent games developed by small teams, but the financial disparity between producing art and selling it is frankly shocking.