Toast On Jam: A Little Transparency Goes A Long Way In The Games Industry

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I’m standing in the shower, exposed. There are two doors protecting me from the outside world, from the judging gaze of people, and I can take comfort in that knowledge. As humans we inherently encase ourselves within a semi-opaque box. A box from which we can choose what is visible and what is not. This is natural and it’s only selectively that we allow others to peek inside, beyond the layers and filters. Even then, there is another completely impenetrable box.

The issue with such behaviour is that while perfectly acceptable, there is a limit to how much one can conceal before the box becomes counter-productive and draws judging gazes rather than deflecting them. A pathological liar does himself no favours and merely draws more attention to himself while also setting himself on a course which will ultimately result in elements of the box having to be revealed anyway.

A black box merely draws more curiosity whereas a semi-opaque box allows just enough to be seen and this is the root of so many problems within the games industry. Each element of it operates as a black box within another black box within another black box.

While a black box mission structure is fantastic in a game, the same can’t be said of developers and publishers who withhold information from the public, expecting them to sniff it out. Eventually things go wrong and they’re forced into disclosing said information as a means of damage control.

The abject lack of transparency not only leaves the industry open to speculation but also prevents us, as gamers, from being informed. We’re kept in the dark on so much and are drip-fed from a highly filtered stream of information. When something happens, when something goes wrong there isn’t much explanation given or if there is it’s boilerplate at best.

This isn’t exactly a problem unique to the games industry but with global push for more transparency amid scandals such as those of FIFA and the South African government perhaps it’s time the games industry opened up a little more too.

In recent years we’ve seen a number of incidents where information was withheld and later had to be extracted like blood from a stone in order to make sense of what actually happened.

Most recently Batman: Arkham knight went very, very sideways on PC and it was baffling given how incredibly fluent it is on consoles. Never mind the fact that this is Warner Bros’ flagship title of the year and a game that Nvidia itself used copiously in marketing. It was only after the game failed to be fixed in a timely manner that the truth was revealed. WB had cut corners by outsourcing development of the PC version to a tiny team of 13 people and a minuscule QA team of 10. Up till that point there had been no mention of the game being worked on by anyone other than Rocksteady.

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We fear the unknown. Pity the reveal of Arkham Knight’s character wasn’t a bigger secret.

Similarly, and on a far smaller scale, was Deus Ex: Human Revolution. As fantastic as the game is, the boss encounters are at complete odds with the philosophy of allowing players to approach situations however they want to. Only after players complained was it revealed that those sections were inexplicably outsourced.

There have been times when the withholding of information has been utterly baffling, as in the case of Titanfall. Gamers only found out who was working on the Xbox 360 port of the game a couple of weeks before its release. There was absolutely no reason to hide this information from the public, especially since Bluepoint Games did a fantastic job of it. Microsoft and EA chose to do so anyway.

The most infamous example is perhaps that of Aliens: Colonial Marines. Misappropriated funds, outsourcing upon outsourcing, grossly misleading marketing and we still don’t have a clear picture of what happened during the game’s six year gestation to leave it stillborn. It was only recently disclosed that Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford poured 10 million of his own dollars into the game’s development. What that was used for is beyond us. Even in a recent interview with Eurogamer, Pitchford still skirted providing any substantial explanation of what went wrong, merely deflecting and persistently saying that people don’t understand because they don’t have the full picture.

It’s become far too common a practice for publishers and developers to feign ignorance with regards to the state of a game at release.

The last one I’ll cite is Destiny. There was a reported $500 million budget allocated for Destiny but nobody knows how that was allocated, over what period it is meant to extend and for all we know $10 million was spent on keeping Bungie’s popcorn machine stocked.

This is all information that should not be beyond the reach of the public, there is nothing compelling developers and publishers to withhold such information but the fact that they choose to raises unnecessary questions that could easily be avoided and mitigated.

If a film has underperformed I can quite easily find out what its budget was, how much was allocated to marketing, possibly even how much the actors made. There is plenty of transparency there.

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Ubisoft. In its most vulnerable and transparent state.

At the very least, review embargoes should never extend to a game’s day of release. A review serves not only to critique a game but also to inform potential buyers and that benefit is somewhat hampered if media cannot publish reviews prior to a game’s release. The counter-argument is that we can advocate that customers do not purchase on day one or at least wait for reviews to drop but these cautions come up against the drowning, booming voice of marketing companies telling people to BUY NOW! PRE-ORDER TODAY! GET THE UBERMEGAICONIC EDITION WHILE STOCKS LAST!

As a result companies do themselves a disservice by proliferating an inherent mistrust.

We don’t trust them, they don’t trust us to buy their games of our own volition and often enough they don’t even seem to trust in the quality of their own games. It’s a ludicrously bizarre ouroboros that we have going here.

People have a right to as much or as little transparency as they want but there’s a reason the typical profile for serial killers starts with “single, lives alone, keeps to himself.” Hide too much of yourself and you’re doing more harm than good.

If publishers would just open up then relations between those on either side of the games we all love could be dramatically better. A little transparency goes a long, long way.

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