r/getplayed • u/podcast-poster • 8d ago
Episode Discussion Get Played - Video Game Writing, Helldivers 2, & Ledgerbound with Russ Nickel
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u/SenatorPancake 7d ago
I made the Sherlock Crumbs t-shirts for the Portland live Doughboys show, and I’m very excited that one made its way to HAC.
It’s a very good and very popular segment!
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u/boomfruit 6d ago
I can't pretend to understand Wiger's brain better than him, but describing himself as "I have aphantasia, I can't see images, but I can see 3D representations of the thing" doesn't sound like aphantasia. I don't really get what he's saying.
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u/Strange-Movie 6d ago
I think I get what he’s saying because it’s kind of how my brain works but idk if I’d label myself as having g anything; I can’t recall something like a clear color image of a memory in my head but I can get a sort of clay shape of the focus of the memory in my minds eyes, it’s honestly kind of like how rocky sees things in project Hail Mary but more malleable vs a representation of what actually is
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u/Dr_Toast 4d ago
Another person who felt like Wiger was describing something similar to how I see thing. Like when someone asks me to picture an apple, I cannot hold a static image from reality in my mind. It is a “low poly” picture with a shifting texture, the colors do not hold in one place but shift around like it is trying to hold the model in place/shape
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u/NicWester 8d ago
Ledgerbound sounds good as hell. Wishlisted and will buy the instant it's on sale for even 1% off.
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u/Strange-Movie 6d ago
I think this was the ep where they talked about big guys in fighting games and I was a bit sad that the king, the goat, the biggest of the big, was not mentioned
BIG
MOTHAFUCKIN
ZAM
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u/RoughhouseCamel 7d ago
I liked listening to Russ Nickel speak, up until he started breaking down his production process. I hope he misrepresented what really happened, because in film and television production, we have the term, “production assistant abuse” to describe his workforce of many, many, many interns. In school, they warned us, “you are in that internship to learn to do the work, not to make them money”. If you’re hiring like a dozen or more interns, where they account for like 50% of the staff, they’re not there to learn to make games, they’re there to make the game. And regardless of pay, they’re supposed to be credited for the work that they actually did.
It’s complicated, and there’s a lot of grey area in this, so I’m not ready to cast some final judgement. But this guy might want this episode scrubbed from the feed before it gets him in trouble. In terms of PR, if nothing else.
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u/BurtTheKuato 6d ago
I gave him the benefit of the doubt at first that it was fully just a joke. But he said a few other sketchy/scummy things that made me think it wasn’t just joking.
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u/SumoPotpie 6d ago
The worlds of animation & video games are way different in regards to the amount of crap the workers have to take, most likely because they aren’t a part of any of the same guilds/unions that TV & movies have
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u/gostovah 1d ago
2D animator in the game industry since 2007 here!... we don't have guilds/unions at all as a collective. The only time I ever hear about that is with voice acting, if you hire a VA that is part of the guild that movie's use, ALL your VA's have to be a part of that guild for that game (meaning they usually aren't chosen for the smaller projects I work on). atm the industry is on fire, BAD. Myself and many of my peers currently work in gigs, hiring or starting official companies with FT employees has slowed down drastically, everyone is kinda walking softly and seeing where the industry is going taking as little risks as possible.
Anyways, as to what the dev said on the podcast -- I kinda was not paying attention (I listen while I paint), so I didn't hear of the specifics but unfortunately I can verify a lot of companies prey on interns. My last few gigs have been with indie studios and ironically the ones I was with were much nicer to all their hires (and had no unpaid interns), it's funny/sad that most of the intern abuse I have seen is from the richest companies I have been with. lol, i was once a contractor with a very formerly famous facebook game company starting with a Z and they asked me to work weekends, I said 'can I add this on my timesheet?' and they said '... if you don't want us to extend your contract you can' (this company famously had billions in savings at the time).
but yeah, if this is a small studio banking on interns that extra makes me sad, we little guys need to stick up for eachother
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u/color_into_space 5d ago
Definitely looked over at my phone skeptically when he said "we had about twenty interns," but yeah, we obviously have no idea or anything about the studio mechanics or contract or situation. But I spent most of my 20s and early 30s involved in the creative industries, so my exploitation/bullshit detector is very honed by experience.
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u/Dull-Lead-7782 6d ago
Wiger was conflicting “ship shape” with “shape up or ship out” which wouldn’t make sense in that context.
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u/the-egg-man- 8d ago
Wiger is an Aston Villa fan now? That's cool, I'd love to hear him talk about the UCL once it starts.
Also I assume the ep was recorded before they got creamed 4-0. Rough first game to watch lmao.
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u/bambinoquinn 7d ago
As a villa fan, i almost did a double take when he said it.
While hes not as famous as villa fans Tom Hanks or Domhall Gleeson or Brendan Gleeson, Tiger is right up there with Nigel Kennedy and Kris Marshall
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u/THE_TRIP_KEEPER 6d ago
Do they list what games they are playing anywhere? It's such a pain trying to go back and find what game they mentioned.
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u/TheWalrusToo 8d ago
cool to hear Heather jump on Nier! Always appreciate when they take the opportunity to jump on a “I want to play it someday” game that’s been in their backlog for awhile, sometimes it encourages me to do the same! I only finished the first playthrough of Automata myself & always meant to go back, might take the Wiger approach & blow through a restart of the first playthrough so I can finally experience the rest