The big-budget video game industry tends to hide its workers. It doesn’t matter if they are developers, artists, testers or any other profession. The video games are from Ubisoft, Nintendo, PlayStation, Square Enix or Sega. The games belong to the publishers and it doesn’t matter who is behind them. This has led to numerous controversies due to serious absences in the credits, as recently happened with Metroid Dread or with The Callisto Protocol. Because, in the end, who makes the games?
It seems like a simple question, but finding the answer is often complicated. In a recent article, journalist Stephen Totilo talks about the specific case of Assassin’s Creed Jade, a new Ubisoft game for mobile devices. It was announced in September 2022, but it was not confirmed which specific studio was in charge of development.
In June 2023, Ubisoft announced that the game’s distributor would be Level Infinite, a subsidiary of the Chinese company Tencent. Even today it is unknown who is developing the game. Several journalists and insiders have asked Ubisoft about this issue, but the French company avoids it and assures that it will provide the information when the game is in the final phase of development.
When we think about video game development studios, it’s easy for big names like Naughty Dog, Id Software or Sony Santa Monica to come to mind. Studies with emblematic executives who give interviews and have a presence in the media. But the vast majority of companies dedicated to development are anonymous. They work as they do in any other sector, without excessive publicity and away from the media spotlight.
A good example is the Japanese studio ArtePiazza, which is responsible for developing the Super Mario RPG remake for Nintendo. It is a studio that works for hire: a publisher asks them to develop a game and they do it. Little more. Although they have a good resume: they developed Dragon Quest IV, Dragon Quest V and Dragon Quest VII. They don’t lack experience in the world of role-playing games.
This information is known because, in very small print, the name ArtePiazza appeared on a reservation page in Japan. When asked by journalists, Nintendo has always refused to confirm who was developing Super Mario RPG and their usual response was to say that they would see this information in the credits.
This phenomenon does not only occur in the electronic entertainment sector. All cultural industries keep the majority of workers in the shadows, although, paradoxically, they are sectors in which advertising and presence in the media is basic and constant. In the world of music, for example, we know Bizarrap because, more than a producer, he is a media star, but how many people can make a list of ten pop music producers?
The same thing happens in the cinema. We know the directors, the actors and the big production companies. But unless you’re a Letterboxd geek, people don’t usually pay attention to the rest of the crew or the specific companies that, for example, are in charge of the action scenes, makeup or special effects.
On many occasions we have talked about labor exploitation in the video game sector, what is known in the industry as crunch. Two of the most notorious cases are those of Naughty Dog and Rockstar Games, but these behaviors are almost a standard in the industry. On the other hand, we have also talked a lot about sexual harassment and discrimination, such as at Activision and Ubisoft. And, this year, we will surely continue talking about mass layoffs and artificial intelligence. So, perhaps, the first step to achieving better conditions in the industry would be to give names, faces and surnames to those who make those games that we like so much.