Thursday 19 March 2015

Games aren't made by one person...

So when I finished The Evil Within I sent a message to my friend saying "I just finish The Evil Within and it was fucking awful".  His response was "God, if Mikami can't make a good horror game what is the world coming to?"

I know what he means by that and obviously my friend and everyone with a working brain knows that but there is this habit in gaming to attribute a successful or shitty game entirely to one guy.  I don't know why this kind of irks me and it shouldn't because I know people aren't that stupid really but it's just something that I don't like.

Take the games from Grasshopper Manufacture, games like Killer7, No More Heroes and more recently Killer is Dead.  When people talk about these games they don't say "Oh, it's that game from Grasshopper" they say "oh it's that game made by Suda51".  Even if you look at the Steam page for Killer is Dead on Steam it says "Get ready for some seriously stylish action from renowned designer SUDA51" 

When it comes to games like this you only ever hear about how awesome Suda is and there isn't ever really any mention of anyone else at Grasshopper.  It's the same with Bayonetta where the ONLY name I ever hear when people talk about that game is Hideki Kamiya. It seems like all the other people who worked on that game, all those names in that credits list you didn't read are completely ignored and all the glory is given to one or two people.

Granted that I don't explore news sites for games too often because I have a lot of distaste for current games media so maybe if I did do some digging I could find an interview with some of the other members of the teams for these games.  That said, the only game that I can think of off the top of my head that isn't typically attributed to a single person is Silent Hill.  The people responsible for that game are always referred to as "Team Silent" and while there are still a lot more people responsible for those games at least they acknowledge that there was more than one mind for the production of that game.

Also before anyone gets on my case, I'm aware that there are some games that WERE made by a single person and that is rad.  Still, not a big deal but it just annoys me a little bit when a games quality is attributed to a single person.  I'm also aware that it would be unreasonable to expect games media to interview and have chats with every single member of a games development but it's just the way the phrase it.  If they said "Get ready for some seriously stylish action from the incredibly skilled staff at Grasshopper Manufacture led by SUDA51" it would be better.

Still, I'm just griping about bullshit, I'm sure all the programmers, artists and everything else reap the rewards regardless of their mentions and that's all that really matters.

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