It’s an all too common story in the video game industry: A developer spends months or years working on a game, the game comes out, and despite all the sleepless nights and stressful days, their name doesn’t even make the credits. Sometimes it’s the result of petty political squabbles; other times, companies are trying to quietly incentivize workers to stick around until a project’s completion, even though they might be dissatisfied with pay, crunch, or other conditions. Consider Demonschool, the newly released Persona-inspired tactics RPG from Necrosoft, a course correction.

Despite a relatively small core dev team, Demonschool lists all 145 people who contributed to it in any capacity over the course of its multi-year development cycle. Not only that, its credits explain, in an uncommon amount of detail, what each developer’s respective work on the project entailed. For example, the credits describe Brent Porter, the game’s 3D art lead, as having done “most of the 3D modeling and rigging as well as creating most backgrounds. Also developed the lighting scheme and the visual style used in tiling and texture work. Created a number of the 2D battle and NPC sprites and visual effects, as well as preproduction concept art, including determining the final proportions of battle characters.”

Demonschool director Brandon Sheffield told Aftermath that he’s been chewing on how to solve the crediting issue since the completion of Necrosoft’s last game, Hyper Gunsport.    

“We worked [on Hyper Gunsport] with a localization company that refused to give the names of the people that actually did the work; they just wanted to have their company name in there,” Sheffield said. “They say they do that because ‘It's the standard’ and ‘to avoid poaching’ or whatever, but I hate that and think it's total BS. … I've also seen a lot of folks complain about how they weren't credited on a game because they'd left the studio before the game they worked on was finished. And indeed, our lead 3D artist left two years ago. But he's still the first artist credited because he set the style and visual tone for a lot of the game. Not working on the game to the very end doesn't negate the work he did.”

"Our lead 3D artist left two years ago. But he's still the first artist credited because he set the style and visual tone for a lot of the game."

The more Sheffield thought about how to meet the needs of so many different types of contributors – and discussed the matter on social media – the more a comprehensive, detail-oriented approach to crediting started to make sense.

“That had all been percolating in the back of my mind as we got close to finishing, and then it just sort of hit me as it came time for me to write the credits,” he said. “I discussed this approach with the team and everyone was fine with it, so we just went for it. We always want to credit everyone that touched the game, so even though the core team was 7 or 8 people at any given time, we credited around 145 people in Demonschool. Who cares if it's a lot of people? Who cares if it's long? They all did something and they deserve credit. And you basically can tell who the core team was by reading the descriptions. None of us are precious about that anyway.”

This resulted in some developers getting credited on an individual basis for the first time in their careers: “We made sure to ask every partner we worked with to give us every name of everybody who touched the game,” said Sheffield. “In the case of Bit Egg out of Thailand, they told me this was going to be the first actual credit for some of their staff.”

Sheffield hopes that providing greater detail than a simple title helps both players and prospective employers understand exactly what goes into a game’s development.

"We wanted to do this for a few reasons: One is that you don't usually know what a title means by itself,” he said. “Take ‘Artist.’ OK, what kind of art? What part of the game was that art in? It's useful for players to know that if they're interested in game development. But also say one of these people wants to get hired somewhere and is using Demonschool on their resume. Now everything they did is in the credits clear as day. ‘I created several of the enemy sprites and animations’ is more descriptive and useful than ‘I did some pixel art.’ And now what you've done is supported directly by the credits."

“Take ‘Artist.’ OK, what kind of art? What part of the game was that art in? It's useful for players to know that if they're interested in game development."

Sheffield is unsure if Necrosoft is the first studio to approach credits this way. He hopes someone else has at least done something similar. Regardless, he doesn’t think there’s anything stopping other studios from following in Demonschool’s footsteps – even if they wind up needing to credit substantially more people. 

“I know in a Ubisoft game, something like this would be unwieldy, but maybe [if you did it] just for the core team of 300 or so?” Sheffield said. “If we can do this for 145 people to varying degrees of detail, a team with 100x the resources can do it for their core team of 300.”

So far, said Sheffield, the response to Demonschool’s credits has been exceedingly positive.

“I've mostly gotten responses from game developers saying they like how the credits are done, but I've seen a few things from players too – like ‘So that's what a game director does’ or generally just feeling like they're getting a look behind the scenes when they read this stuff,” said Sheffield. “A few people have asked questions in our Discord or Bluesky like ‘Who did all the art of the demon fish [in the fishing minigame]?’And other players can just answer them right away: ‘Oh, it's in the credits, that was Gustav Samuelson.’ I just think that's neat.” 

Recommended

Everyone Who Worked On A Video Game Needs To Be In The Credits - Aftermath

I am once again asking you to respect people’s time and work

AftermathLuke Plunkett

AURORA, Colo. — As the backlash to Metroid Prime 4: Beyond supporting character Myles MacKenzie exploded online, longtime Metroid fan Joan Keaton couldn’t help but vent to her girlfriend and fellow gamer Louise Dane.

“The whole point of Metroid is poking around in strange interconnected worlds on your own, focusing on the mystery and figuring things out, by yourself, alone, with nothing but an ambient soundtrack in your ears,” Keaton reportedly told Dane. “This Myles guy could kill the entire vibe with his ‘nerdy’ yammering. Do these people know their audience at all?”

Dane says she asked herself something similar the moment Keaton interrupted an episode of Pluribus to bring this up.

“I get that this stuff can feel like a big deal. I threw an actual party when Bob came to my island,” explained Dane via video call, showing off her Animal Crossing: New Horizons Edition Nintendo Switch console. “But like I told Jo, if a little harmless chatter during what you thought was time to yourself is enough to destroy a decades-old gaming franchise, I can assure you that said franchise is weaker than our eight-month relationship.”

Meanwhile, the voice actor behind Myles MacKenzie wasn’t sure how harmless the chatter will remain.

“I just went into a booth and did my best, and now I’m suddenly the poster boy for grating humor like Ryan Reynolds isn’t still out there,” said the voice actor, who has chosen to remain anonymous until Prime 4’s credits are officially released. “I’ve seen all the memes, and I’ve seen how you space nerds can get about your favorite IPs. Is Samus going to be there to offer protection when people try to stone me in real life?”

Sources at Retro Studios say the controversy has caused Prime 4 producer Kensuke Tanabe to consider starting development over from scratch once more—this time reducing the team to one person, in the hope that the studio never loses sight of Metroid’s spirit of isolation again.

The post Girlfriend of ‘Metroid’ Purist Unsympathetic to Complaints About Nerd Who Won’t Shut Up appeared first on Palette Swap.

A few weeks back I got a copy of Anno 117, and was really looking forward to playing it. I've been on a city-building and management streak lately, and was excited at the prospect of spending some time with a Roman one that also featured the Anno series' quaint obsession with city-building narrative campaigns.

So I started it up, dabbled in the sandbox mode for a bit, found out I was probably better off playing the campaign instead (it’s got a gentler, longer tutorial) and settled in for what I thought was going to be a month or two of good times. The game looked great on my new PC, and in terms of city-building it seemed like one of the better ones I've played recently. Its production queues require some tricky planning to get right, and the 4X/RTS stuff layered over the top--like controlling army units, exploring uncharted islands and having diplomatic relations with neighbouring islands--was all pretty interesting.

Over the weekend, I hit a loading screen (pictured above) I hadn't noticed before and something immediately felt off. The game's other loading screens had also been weird, but I'd assumed that was because they appeared simply unfinished, raw sketches of an idea for an eventual, more-polished loading screen, in much the way many of Civ VII's were at launch. But this one in particular wasn't that; it was clearly AI-generated. People's arms were gone, hands were strange, outfits warped in unnatural ways, the entire composition was wacky. I'm not the only one to have picked up on this, either; after jumping online to see if anyone else had noticed, I found that so many had noticed and posted about it that Ubisoft had issued a public statement defending it:

This image was a placeholder asset that unintentionally slipped through our review process...With Anno 117: Pax Romana being our most ambitious Anno yet, we’ve assembled the largest team of artists ever for the franchise and to help meet the project's unique scope, they use AI tools for iterations, prototyping, and exploration. Every element players will experience in the final game reflects the team’s craft, artistry, and creative vision.

After reading this I immediately stopped playing, and won't be back. This is 2D art, for a series dating back to the 90s and which has made it through seven previous games using 100% human-made art just fine, and you're telling us that somehow AI is needed now? Are we honestly supposed to take Ubisoft at its word that this dogshit image was the only one? And that it just magically slipped through multiple layers of supervision before appearing in a shipped product?

In addition to the above statement Ubisoft have shown an updated version of the art, which will be added to Anno 117's next update, but the public-facing damage has already been done. As I've said with The Alters previously, once players can see one instance of AI being used, how do we know it hasn't been used throughout?

I’m Getting Real Tired Of Not Being Able To Trust That A Video Game Doesn’t Have AI Crap In It - Aftermath

It sucks that players are having to scour every asset and line of dialogue

AftermathLuke Plunkett

And just like I said with The Alters, I'll say again here: the presence of this stuff inside a game (and in such an obvious case) sends a very clear message to your fans and customers that you do not give a shit. You don't care that this technology is threatening art jobs (and beyond), that it's dehumanising the medium, that it's creating slop that makes your own product look like garbage to the degree that it's causing people playing what had seemed an otherwise good video game to jump online and re-enact the Jose Mourinho headphones meme.

All of that for a piece of loading screen art! Something that older games in the series, like 2019's Anno 1800, were especially noted for. Gah!

DENVER — Popular YouTuber and streamer Cryst0ball’s newest Marvel movie review is not looking positive as he appears to be facepalming in the thumbnail.

“Look. There’s no way he has that expression and likes it. Maybe if he had his eyes popping out cartoonishly as his jaw unhinged, it would be more open to interpretation, but this is a dead giveaway his reaction is not one of approval,” longtime fan Abby Moretti stated. “I can’t judge on a thumbnail alone, but I will know once I have time in my schedule to put the video on in the background while I play Pokémon.”

Other YouTuber reviewers weighed in on it.

“Yup, that’s the classic face of disappointment right there. I personally chose to give the Home Alone face for my thumbnail but we each have our own feelings,” movie YouTuber Crit1calWatcher explained. “Alongside my own analysis of it and why it failed, I will also be uploading a reaction video to Cryst0ball’s review to let people know what I agreed and disagreed with. He is also welcome to come on my Twitch channel where we can debate our differences.”

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan was pleased with Cryst0ball’s thumbnail.

“Yess… good… feed my beast…” Neal claimed in a breath that sounded like wind passing through a hollow tree. “The clicks demand your face in the thumbnail… the clicks demand you express a reaction so cartoonish that it would make 90s Jim Carrey tell you to take it down a notch… insert an ambiguous title that says something like ‘THEY REALLY DID THAT’… the clicks demand you create a controversy to be discussed by other YouTubers…. Only then we will let you reach more people…. feed…”

Cryst0ball’s video on the latest Marvel film is two hours and forty-two minutes, making it just a bit longer than the film itself. At press time, viewers reported that watching it without YouTube Premium includes ads for a “technically legal” gambling site every twelve minutes.

The post Not Good: Thumbnail Of YouTuber’s Movie Review Has Them Facepalming appeared first on Palette Swap.

To celebrate the launch of our new website, we're currently running a sale on Reader-tier memberships for new subscribers: sign up and you'll get a whole month of Aftermath, a blog about video games and so much more, for just $1.

A single American dollar! I'm not even going to bother doing the usual comparisons with stuff like a cup of coffee, because it's a buck. That buck will let you kick the tyres on what it's like being a subscriber to a reader-supported, worker-owned website. You'll get access to every blog (no more registration or paywalls), as well as the ability to join the community by commenting under posts. You can also catch up on all the stories we've written over our first two years, from exhaustive features to opinion pieces to freelance posts to news and so much more.

After the first month your subscription will renew at the normal rate for the Reader tier, which is $7. If you like it, stick around! And if you like it a lot, you can even upgrade to our Member tier, which in addition to everything you've already got also includes an invitation to our community Discord, merch discounts and a private, full-text RSS feed.

Click here to redeem the offer, and if you do, thank you so much for your support. This site and everything we do simply isn't possible without the help of readers like you!

Click below to redeem the offer and get your first month of Aftermath for just $1

REDEEM OFFER

HOLLYWOOD — Illumination Studios premiered the first-ever trailer for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie in a Nintendo Direct this morning, which included an unexpected segment where Mario turned to the camera and called the late Charlie Kirk a hero and an American patriot.

“That line was at the request of Chris [Pratt], who returns as the voice of Mario,” explained producer Christopher Meledandri. “Trust us—we really didn’t want to touch this whole thing with a ten-foot pole, but, well, he insisted. After explaining that he wouldn’t return to the role unless we included this scene, he said ‘good luck finding someone else who can do a pitch-perfect Luigi voice.’”

The scene in question, which featured an American flag flown behind Mario with his right hand placed over his heart, raised a lot of eyebrows following its release.

“I wish I could say I was surprised, but… I’m not,” read a post on Bluesky. “Pratt really hasn’t been shy about expressing his political opinions. And look, I’m usually able to ignore it when I get to watch my favorite characters going on fun adventures up on the big screen, but when it’s this overt… I think I’ll just stick to the Sonic movies from now on. Shadow shows a great example of responsible gun ownership.”

Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Mario and co-producer of the film, was reportedly not taking the response all too well.

“La-la-la-la I do not know what you are talking about,” said Miyamoto with his fingers jammed in his ears. “I really can’t handle this kind of heat. Can’t you guys be upset about game key cards, or our games being overpriced? Maybe we could make the Switch 2 no longer backwards compatible with Switch 1 games? Could you guys please be angry about something else? We have so many other options!”

At press time, an extended trailer was released in which Jack Black’s Bowser turned to the screen and said it wasn’t okay to joke about presidents being shot at, either.

The post Mario Pays Abrupt Tribute to the Late Charlie Kirk in Mario Galaxy Movie Trailer appeared first on Palette Swap.