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Deleted member 11852
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Pretty much every place I've worked at for the last 30 years, your day one introduction to the boss includes them advising you that if you leak something (whether intentional or not), you'll be dismissed. And in many of my jobs, prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
NDAs are commercial contracts, companies have to litigate using contract law to enforce them. From what I've heard from friends who work in different fields (but not gaming) most NDAs are absolute nonsense and not enforceable because they carry consequences contrary to statutory employment law in most civilised countries. No matter what you sign, you cannot surrender statutory rights in any area of law. That's the point of it being statutory law.
NDA seems to be more a written reminder that we told you this is important that you dont share it with everybody, just those who needs to know.
Enforceability is interesting, especially in the business world, it's hard to prove something either way, I would assume we just end up with big lawyer bills and then agree on something. That is between businesses, but between a business and an individual it might be different, but mainly because the business can afford the lawyers I suspect.
I feel its more a moral and ethics thing, behave and use your brain before saying something. I just came out of a meeting with a customer that asked me to speculate on the near-term direction of the industry. He and I knew, that he tried to get me to talk about what his competitors are doing, since we are working with them too. Which I had to decline, based on the fact that I am not able to speculate about near-term about something I know.
But long-term I can talk marketing BS for hours....
Enforceability is interesting, especially in the business world, it's hard to prove something either way, I would assume we just end up with big lawyer bills and then agree on something. That is between businesses, but between a business and an individual it might be different, but mainly because the business can afford the lawyers I suspect.
I feel its more a moral and ethics thing, behave and use your brain before saying something. I just came out of a meeting with a customer that asked me to speculate on the near-term direction of the industry. He and I knew, that he tried to get me to talk about what his competitors are doing, since we are working with them too. Which I had to decline, based on the fact that I am not able to speculate about near-term about something I know.
But long-term I can talk marketing BS for hours....
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Deleted member 13524
Guest
Careful with filling in the blanks. He didn't threaten to fire any developer.
He threatened to fire the marketing execs who were present when Jeff was showing the an early demo of a game (probably Days Gone? Maybe Uncharted Golden Abyss?), if they leaked it.
You can watch what Jeff says here, at ~54m38s.
He then proceeds to say despite people thinking he's just a suit, he's been at Sony for a long time so he's more game-savvy than people think.
Context is a great thing.
I don't know what to think on this one. Cancelling the easy sequel, IF for leading them to do something new instead is actually commendable. But from the perspective of building up a studio that just made the transition from small psp studio into a AAA one, having them build a sequel on top of a proven successful title could have lead to an incredible second, more refined, game, great commercial success, and some breathing room for bend to settle as a matured AAA studio.
But the devil is in the details. God knows what they pitched for a sequel, how good their actual prospects were, what will they do instead, etc...
i'm still reserving judgement. But if the more gloomy reading people are making of current sony is true, god that is short sighted. They are basically doing their best to turn themselves into late-360 early-ONE MS, which any gaming executive should know how well it worked.
But the devil is in the details. God knows what they pitched for a sequel, how good their actual prospects were, what will they do instead, etc...
i'm still reserving judgement. But if the more gloomy reading people are making of current sony is true, god that is short sighted. They are basically doing their best to turn themselves into late-360 early-ONE MS, which any gaming executive should know how well it worked.
NDA seems to be more a written reminder that we told you this is important that you dont share it with everybody, just those who needs to know.
Enforceability is interesting, especially in the business world, it's hard to prove something either way, I would assume we just end up with big lawyer bills and then agree on something. That is between businesses, but between a business and an individual it might be different, but mainly because the business can afford the lawyers I suspect.
I feel its more a moral and ethics thing, behave and use your brain before saying something. I just came out of a meeting with a customer that asked me to speculate on the near-term direction of the industry. He and I knew, that he tried to get me to talk about what his competitors are doing, since we are working with them too. Which I had to decline, based on the fact that I am not able to speculate about near-term about something I know.
But long-term I can talk marketing BS for hours....
NDAs are like patents. You use them with the knowledge that their existence will often coerce other parties to respect them. But until you litigate you won’t really know if they are enforceable unless you have precedent.
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Deleted member 11852
Guest
Some NDAs I've read or heard about from friends are clearly unenforceable to anybody with knowledge fo employment law but I imagine a lot of NDAs are not checked by competent lawyers for applicability to he regions in which they are used. But if the intention of the NDA is to scare people from revealing information, that may be enough when factored into the costs of hiring a lawyer to defend yourself. Of course, in egregious cases of bad contract law most courts will award costs and even heavy damages but you still need a lawyer up front in many countries.
After playing more of "days gone". I wonder if it was a dark joke by the dev... That the title refers to the time that was gone, poof, due to the broken save system since launch ROFL.
What a waste of time and ssd space
What a waste of time and ssd space
No other games allows you to save, complete with a new time stamp, and then didn't allow you to load from that point, AFAIK.
So if you have cleared an area, or had ransacked an area, then save, as you want to continue tomorrow.
You can save. But tomorrow when you load the game, it will start from the beginning again.
Would be kinda scary if he didnt.
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Deleted member 13524
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I'm only 1h20m in, but there's some level-headed criticism there. Namely on the fact that Sony puts too much weight on Metacritic as a measurement for success. Also that Sony's PR is way too strict about letting creators / devs giving out interviews, and they both criticize their current lack of interaction.
OTOH, he doesn't agree that Sony is getting more conservative on the titles and betting too much on AAA super successes. He gives the example of Death Stranding that was a game that wouldn't cater to a wide audience, yet it was a very expensive game to make nonetheless. David Jaffe and John Garvin seem to disagree on that.
It's a great video though. Two videogame directors going back and forth about making games is being really great to watch.
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Deleted member 13524
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One very interesting thing John Garvin said:
- The Vita was almost entirely "built by game developers", as he was part of the team who requested the handheld's features. Everything that was seen as a gimmick at launch, like the capacitive back panel and MEMS sensors, were put there by a team of developers.
- The Vita was almost entirely "built by game developers", as he was part of the team who requested the handheld's features. Everything that was seen as a gimmick at launch, like the capacitive back panel and MEMS sensors, were put there by a team of developers.
Is that the guy who said that we shouldn't be surprised when we don't get sequels when we don't buy the games at launch? Which is probably the most insulting thing a game dev can say, after launching a game that wasn't exactly perfect at launch, in a sea of so-called AAA games which launch completely fucking broken?
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Deleted member 13524
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I'm still hearing the conversation in a podcast-like manner, but that part was a bit misinterpreted.
He didn't say "at launch", he said "at full price". And he wasn't talking about Days Gone specifically, but of all games. He said the best way to support developers and help guaranteeing a sequel is to buy the game at full price (which is usually within the first 6 months I think). This was in contrast to people who say "I'll wait until it's at a discount / on Gamepass / on Plus / etc.".
It's a purely logical statement. Publishers make the bulk of their per-game earnings during the first ~3 months after release. If many people decide to wait over a year for a -75% discount, then at that point there's little chance for the publisher to greenlight a sequel.
I don't know how Days Gone behaved at launch since I only played it on the PS5 with the Plus Collection so I don't know how the game behaved at release. However, the truth is the game was hit pretty hard by day-one reviews that didn't focus on bugs, but moreso on stuff like the ride me like you ride your motorbike inside joke that wasn't caught as such by the critics who clearly didn't advance into the game to see where the inside joke came from.
But Gamepass is good for the industry?
I don't know, my head spins from all the talk - clearly buying full price at launch (window) is the best way to support developers but it is expensive - especially risky on a new IP.
