Giving credit for work in your games?

[Evanstaul]

Hi, just wondering about giving credit to people who contribute to your game. I have many artists, some do a lot some do very little, is it automatically expected that I give them credit in the game? Or it's considered a bonus for them, and they are not expecting it at all?

Thanks!

[JoKa]

Long ago, Atari lost some able game designers because they didn't give credits to the developers. They founded Activision and pumped out one hit after another :)

People love to see their names in the credits, I strongly recommend to put them in. A long credits listing may also impress the customer, giving him the feeling that he bought a game that required quite some work (which is usually the case, but maybe not recognized). Why not let them know? ;)

[Fry Crayola]

In the end, there's going to be that lovely "Designed and Coded by" followed by your name in snazzy pixels. Or something like that.

Giving credit to others where its due isn't going to harm anything, and is a just reward for those that help - even if their efforts were tiny in the grand scheme of things.

[Tom Gilleland]

We always give credit to everyone who worked on the product. Not only is it the right thing to do, I don't see any downsides to it. For the people who do a lot, we give the the "Lead" title. (Lead Programmer, Lead Artist).

Tom

[ErikH2000]

To keep everyone happy, you have to put them in the credits, even if they only did 15 minutes of work. It matters a lot to some people, and the same people often won't bring it up because they don't want to be perceived as petty.

-Erik

[Evanstaul]

I read somewhere that game companies don't usually show credits in the game. I can guess its for reasons like if other people know who they are they can try to hire them away. Most console games I played don't show credits till you win the game and no where else. Also many of the online games like in Popcap don't show credits in the game itself, its probably only at the developer's website.

But of course I agree its always good to give everyone credit.

[papillon]

at least some popcap games roll credits - but not until you manage to unlock and beat the last levels. :)

[ErikH2000]

I've seen credit screens dropped out just because everyone was in rush to meet a deadline. Towards the end of a hairy project, there's usually a list of prioritized tasks and "credits screen" can easily get pushed to the bottom, because it isn't important to the player/publisher.

-Erik

[dflash]

From the perspective of a contractor who is the position to get credited, unless it was established ahead of time (like no credits will be listed unilaterally), it would be difficult to not take it as some kind of commentary on my work, even though this may not be the case.

[Hiro_Antagonist]

Yeah, I don't understand why you *wouldn't* credit someone. It's free to you, valuable to them, and shows respect and professionalism on your part.

Are there some sort of drawbacks we're missing?

-Hiro_Antagonist

[svero]

I've actually adopted a new system where instead of giving credit I assign blame for stuff I don't care for in the game. Like... in readme.txt

If you don't like level 3 Josh Smith is responsible for THAT disaster.

- S

[ErikH2000]

Are there some sort of drawbacks we're missing?
It takes some time and recordkeeping to do it right. There are sometimes little political dilemmas to worry about, i.e. if I list Bubba's name first in the list of artists it will imply he did more work than Jojo, which might piss him off. It's a boring but sensitive task like writing a resume. That effort might sound overstated, but if you use a lot of people on your project it certainly can be a pain.

-Erik

[Fry Crayola]

It takes some time and recordkeeping to do it right. There are sometimes little political dilemmas to worry about, i.e. if I list Bubba's name first in the list of artists it will imply he did more work than Jojo, which might piss him off. It's a boring but sensitive task like writing a resume. That effort might sound overstated, but if you use a lot of people on your project it certainly can be a pain.

-Erik

Alphabetical order is a wonder here. Of course, an indie game is generally going to be a small team and you may only have one area that had two people working on it...

[ErikH2000]

Alphabetical order is a wonder here. Of course, an indie game is generally going to be a small team and you may only have one area that had two people working on it...
It's not a crime to go strictly alphabetical, but in my opinion, it looks a little cheap. Like you are throwing your hands up in the air and saying it doesn't matter who did how much.

Heh. Maybe I am the only indie guy that has like 30 people on each project doing 15 minutes of work. Credits are something of a minefield for me. Probably more so than with other indies, because of the open source roots of my games and volunteers involved who are more oriented towards seeing their name in lights.

DROD credits (http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewsitepage.php?id=72708)

-Erik

[Jim Buck]

I think there is a whole section of the IGDA site dedicated to credit "etiquette".

[ErikH2000]

Hmm. That sounded interesting, so I went and looked around. All I could find was:

http://www.igda.org/committees/credits.php

...which is more of a threat that some committee will be dropping some universal standards on us in the future. Maybe there is a paper hidden someplace that I didn't see. Well, I guess I can be patient. When the exhaustive explanation of how credits should be written arrives, then I will wallow in anal-retentive joy.

-Erik

[Ricardo C]

My favorite credits header of all time is from "Shadows of the Empire" on the N64: "Did not actively try to destroy the project" :D

[Dominique Biesmans]

at least some popcap games roll credits - but not until you manage to unlock and beat the last levels. :)

usually (always?) they have a 'credits' button in their options dialog.

[Jim Buck]

Hmmm, I had thougt the IGDA released their whitepaper, but I guess not according to that link. I remember the GDC sessions from 2004 and 2005 and thought they would have more about it by now. :)

[Sparky]

Heh. Maybe I am the only indie guy that has like 30 people on each project doing 15 minutes of work.
Only two people working on the game here, but we have asked people to submit their screams to be used as sound effects, and we've gotten dozens of them (the more the merrier). So I'm dedicating a page in the manual to list all the people who screamed for us. :)