Can we at least know who's CONFIRMED to STILL BE in the Narrative Department?

Darrosh Jewfist·Jan 6, 2015·4 votes·1,784 views

Is there even one? Is that tommygnox fellow still there leading or was he let off/quit or is he doing something else in Riot now?

13 Comments

Gentleman GastonJan 6, 20155 votes

Do you know all of the members in every other department? Can you name every artist? Or designer? Or programmer? I wouldn't expect you to. So, why is it so vitally important to know? I'm not intending to be accusatory, I am legitimately curious.

ShínyJan 6, 20153 votes

I do :D http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/2j7e14/list_of_riot_games_artists_with_links/

That's how it is with artists (storytellers and illustrators) people like to know who they are, they like to share and discuss different styles and which ones are their favorites. Its strange with the style they've gone with (Short stories) that they choose to remain a giant blob of anonymity.

Although the way the post is titled is somewhat hostile, i'd love to know the names of some of the writers and what stories they've penned.

LordHippomanJan 6, 20154 votes

{quoted}

I can :D http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/2j7e14/list_of_riot_games_artists_with_links/

That's how it is with artists (storytellers and illustrators) people like to know who they are, they like to share and discuss different styles and which ones are their favorites. Its strange with the style they've gone with (Short stories) that they choose to remain a giant blob of anonymity.

Although the way the post is titled is somewhat hostile, i'd love to know the names of some of the writers and what stories they've penned.

Poor Paul Kwon. He will be redrawing that splash for eternity.

Gentleman GastonJan 7, 20151 votes

I absolutely agree. Comparing styles and genre of various authors is really fun, and it'd be even more fun to actually get to interact with those authors on a more personal level to better understand their influences and interests when it comes to storytelling. I really hope that this community and Narrative eventually come to a place where that kind of interaction can happen peacefully. :)

DG AshabelJan 6, 20155 votes

While you're right in that nobody expects him to know who works in which department, he actually is supposed to be capable of easily finding that out. The International Game Developers Association considers it a developer's basic right to be credited for their work. While they cannot punish a company for doing otherwise, they will actively brand companies as being unethical and untrustworthy if that happens. The most famous example of that is Team Bondi, the company who developed L.A. Noire and almost immediately folded because nobody was willing to work with them.

It's why most AAA-list games have those enormous credit rolls that include every single person who was involved in the game, including babies born during development and that one dude who was found drunk in a bathroom once. No one wants to piss off the closest thing the industry has to a trade union, or repeat that one time when EA got smacked with three class actin lawsuits in one month.

Gentleman GastonJan 7, 20152 votes

Looking into this I found numerous examples that support your case.

http://navgtr.org/archives/2164/

While these do only claim to be guidelines, they do recommend that credits are found within the game itself. Now, unless I'm blind this doesn't seem to be the case with the LoL client. So, let's assume that Riot isn't acting within the IGDA guidelines. According to you they would be branded as such, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I can find no such branding available online, and in looking into the Team Bondi debacle it seems that allegations were not to do with crediting employees but ludicrous overtime. (http://www.gamepolitics.com/2011/06/28/igda-promises-investigation-team-bondi039s-alleged-employee-abuses#.VKx21Hu8HEY)

In fact, that same year (2011) Riot was invited to speak at a IGDA conference. (http://www.mcvuk.com/press-releases/read/sony-riot-games-shell-games-executives-to-share-insights-at-october-igda-leadership-forum-in-la/083501) Now while that was a few years ago nothing has really changed as far as more or less available crediting, which makes me question why the IGDA would invite a company lead to speak if that company was breaking their rules.

From this I can draw the conclusion that Riot's method of crediting it's employees is not enough to ruffle the IGDA's feathers. If it were Riot is a big enough company that it would be a big news topic.

All this being said, I am curious as to why Riot has chosen this method of obscuring credits, or at least leaving it up to the discretion of the employee on whether they would like to openly claim credit. Does anyone have any other MOBA games with available credits? Are they only the initial ones or accumulative? I wonder if this is merely an internet thing, where those with little presence on the internet simply don't have the desire to make themselves known on the internet.

NarasimhaJan 7, 20152 votes

No other MOBA has full credits, but thats because its a very hard thing to do.

With a finished product, its easy to say "This is what we made, this is who worked on it."

On any MMORPG or MOBA, the product itself is being updated and changed constantly. It would kind of rude/weird to say "This guy worked on stuff this cycle, but not THIS cycle, or that cycle either."

At best, we can hope for a lead or someone similar to step up. That, or isolated cases like the guy who was working on Fiddle, where its one guy working on it.

DG AshabelJan 7, 20153 votes

Most MMORPGs do have full credits though. Hell, World of Warcraft has six sets of them - one for every major update of the game.

The problem you're describing is generally solved by dividing everyone into fields they worked on, IE all illustrators will be worked as illustrators and all programmers will be listed as such as well. However, the developer in question is generally encouraged to provide the exact information somewhere else, such as their LinkedIn profile; the barebones listing on in-game credits is done mostly to keep the thing from continuing forever.

DG AshabelJan 7, 20153 votes

As far as Riot being invited to speak at a IGDA conference, keep in mind that they were ten times smaller back then. Such issues likely didn't pop up at the time simply because there were less people to credit.

As far as present day goes, I don't know why they still don't have credits readily available anywhere on their website or in the client. I know a lot of my friends in the industry do not want to work in Riot Games because they consider the company extremely disorganized and the speed/quality of their development to be very low. The reasons for that are many, though the narrative and art direction catches a particular lot of flak.

I have no idea if that perception extends to organizations like IGDA because League is actually very rarely discussed in the context of the game industry as a whole. They're seen more like an entertainment business that expanded out of a video game and are very rarely acknowledged as a game developer.

As for credits in other games, I happen to have a lot of famous MOBAs installed and decided to check them. Far as I can tell, Strife doesn't have a credits page for some reason. However, keep in mind that they very loudly insist on being seen as an early beta and refuse to even market the game until their proper release. Dawngate does have a credits page tucked away in its settings, but it's largely unfinished due to the game having been canceled in alpha. DOTA2 has an Acknowledgment page in its library that at the very least list every single voice actor and feature a thank you note to Blizzard, who apparently helped them with the game, and there is a fairly thorough Giant Bomb credits section. Also, Awesomenauts devs are very thorough about acknowledging who did which work on their game.

I cannot check Smite because I'm boycotting Hi-Rez due to their long history of abandoning games halfway through development.

LordHippomanJan 6, 20155 votes

On the forums at least, Jaredan has posted, CarnivalKnights, Runaan has been there for years so I doubt she's going anywhere, but Narrative is probably still a little cautious about revealing a lot of personal info. There was the whole thing with Opeli and right now doxxing is the fad du jour of internet vigilantism, and while I doubt anyone posting on this forum would stoop that low, there's always some crazies lurking in the woodworks.