if it's true that the games are made in china under harsh conditions with low pay, how do you think the programmers got to be so smarty in the first place? do you think that Chinese people are born with the knowledge to program? it's not easy, I've done a little of it, and I took a class to learn how, Gameloft games are top notch and would take some really intelligent, creative people to pull off, not random people pulled in from the streets. You wanna bet that the people behind there games, Chinese or otherwise, are getting there moneys worth! And not to be racist, but Asians tend to have a great knack for programming, they seem to be very intelligent people!
Actually its the perfect attitude imo. So please lets leave it there. We each have our own opinions. I do care about how my stuff is being made but if chinese workers can do it just as good or even better and for less pay then I would go with the chinese workers. Simple logic.
Considering : - Gameloft is firstly based in France, - There are tons of talented graphists, coders, and gamedesigners in France, - Delocalization has been a pretty common practice for french industries, - Gameloft has a 3 times faster game releasing pace than equal or bigger companies during the times of equal hardware platforms (PS one, Dreamcast, etc) - But we've seen they are completely unable to produce original content, which means that they have fully industrialized production processes. - This last statement is reinforced by the fact that chinese names are only production ones (graphics, sounds, animation). Marketing and design ones are french (or american). All of this leads to believe that they are delocalizing to China to cut regular costs by a half, yes. To sacrifice regular gamedev costs, including gamedesign, for productivity. In my humble opinion, and if this suspicion comes true, I would find this very dirty. Why : These chinese workers are paid on a monthly basis, completely independantly from selling stocks. On the other hand, producers and managers (the ones with those not-chinese names) do have scaling revenues. I'll let you do the math, considering that chinese employees are not as much paid as european ones (which is why you see so much industries delocalizing their factories). I call this making profit of a weakness. It's only for 2 games, ok. But let's make the future tell us if this management behaviour is spreading. So you see, it's not just "having a good game in your hand" .. (at least when you care about ethics) This is just my personal opinion about a gaming industry debate, of course.
Doesn't matter if Gameloft is based in Paris,France. Amd all those other things. The chinese people need the jobs probably more then the people in France. If the chinese work gets a job I'm sure they are more then glad considering the fact that chinese can't get jobs all the time even if the job pays $5.00. Bottom line is that it doesn't matter if chinese programmed this game or not, it's a well put together game.
This is the positive taking, yes. I would have the same if Gameloft was not a clone spawner :/ They don't bring anything to videogame evolution, at the moment. Just building technical demos.
Stop Just think about that: If 5 chineese guys would be able to programm some game like MC, why would they let GameLoft to underpay them instead of releasing the games under their own company?? It's the internet! They can release the game in every Appstore country from China.
Hello, I'm not talking about chinese people being underpaid, I'm talking about Gameloft choosing the lowest production cost to make the most possible profit. Please refer to my above post to see why I don't support this. p.s : Yes, I'm a carebear.
Just cause they're (assuming so) are developing in China, doesn't mean it is cheap labor. Cheap labor is hiring someone who can't do many other jobs to do hard labor for you. I'm sure these programmers get paid a good share, because of their talents. While it may be cheaper than the US, that doesn't mean all labor in China is cheap
Absolutely But in this particular case, more profit wins over originality and designing effort. The gamer in me thinks it's ok, but the gamedev one doesn't approve it at all.
Well, what do the consumers want? High Quality games that are copies of others (Blades of Fury and Soul Calibur for example) or low quality original games? For me I want high Quality games. I don't know about the other consumer but I'm sure most of them would say the same.
I understand that, but there are tons of good original games running the appstore And there could be even more if Gameloft just spent 2 hours of each week searching for new ideas. Well, I should stop bashing Gameloft, these are my only opinions, and if people are happy with how it is, let's pass by.
A Carebear? Or an indie dev with an axe to grind! A know a lot of indie devs who are at least gracious about this! It's funny 80% of your post are potshots, why don't you make your upcoming all original fighting game competitive instead of venting your energy in your dirty tactics!
The Chinese race is stereotyped once again. Just because the list of programmers are all Chinese names doesn't mean they're working cheap labor. Your racism is easily seen through your post, OP.
I don't see how it's "dirty", per se. If A has cheaper labor than B, go to A. It's simple as that. I don't think they're "exploiting" the cheaper salary either (like forcing them), since they prolly move the "labour" (of programming) there because local market is just that price. It's our own fault if our labor cost so much. Why do they cost so much? Because other services and products cost so much, so they need higher salary to compensate for all the services and goods they need. Why are the services and goods so expensive? Our corporations just keep coming up with products and then want to cash in on it by a very high percentage compared to the original cost. So if something cost $5 dollars to make, they want to sell it for $10, $15, $20 (just think about your restaurant food, hard-to-get items that might cost the life of people that "produce" it, like sea food, not included). So really who's "sin" is it? (used very loosely, more meaning fault) It's only natural then to relocate your source of labour, which...starts the cycle again. Ethics is a very flimsy thing in the business world; there's a thin line between it's existence and non-existence. Not that I don't think it would be nice, but it's practically non-existent in our world (it's an ideal). My other thoughts have pretty much been voiced by other forumites. Lowest production cost doesn't mean bad quality, in this case. I know that's not what you mean, but I just wanted to point it out because a lot of people think bad quality when they hear/see "low production value".
Seriously, please separate my dev from my personal opinions I'm a dev yes, but I'm first an hungry gamer. I would have exactly the same opinions with EA one or two years ago. It's not because I'm an Xbox owner that I can't talk about PS3 .. These are interesting points. But if Gameloft wasn't acting like a big businessman that don't care about making even a small effort in creation, if they weren't just building their business model upon already hard worked ones, I wouldn't care about their production cost choices. It is exactly the same deal as in music : some majors don't care about creativity, they just spit singles all over, filling our brains with rehashed formulas. And when a guy comes at them telling "hey, it's not original enough, I have an idea to make it different !", they just tell him "No, I don't want to be creative, I want it to sell." We all know it's not healthy for music. Then it's the same for videogames. That was an interesting overall share of opinions, thank you, but I'll let the other similar opinions to mine in these forums talk about this precise case Cheers
Or how about high quality games that aren't such blatant ripoffs? Shock, horror I know but such products do exist for the other platforms and are plentiful in number. In the case that there are "inspired" games at least in those cases the devs actually created their own world / art direction / mechanics to diffrientitate it enough from the source material. All in all, considering the mindset and relative ease of ripping off concepts and patents in china, the possibility of gamelofts wares deriving from there would not come as such as surprise.
LOL, funny topic As long as I get a good game I'm happy. You can't beat the price of a game. Most of these programmers I bet are from the U.S. and if they are not what does it matter?
Well, thanks for saying so. That's sort of refreshing, on forums I see what you mean now. If I understood correctly, your gripe was about the lack of the slightest hint of originality or effort in game play and story. The only "saving grace" our music industry has is that we can't outsource to artists from other countries. Our nation just wouldn't stand for it (the product would be too different). But, in the video gaming industry they did and were able to manage outsourcing script/story-writing to second/third/fourth-rated companies in other countries.
