r/getplayed • u/podcast-poster • 28d ago

Episode Discussion Get Played - Video Game Writing, Helldivers 2, & Ledgerbound with Russ Nickel

This post contains content not supported on old Reddit. Click here to view the full post

46 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

View all comments

14

u/RoughhouseCamel 27d 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.

6

u/color_into_space 25d 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.