People Make Games | |
---|---|
YouTube information | |
Channel | |
Years active | 2018—present |
Subscribers | 525 thousand [1] |
Total views | 35.9 million [1] |
Last updated: 3 September 2024 |
People Make Games (PMG) is a British investigative video game journalism YouTube channel. The channel focuses on the developers and people who make video games. People Make Games has reported on topics such as video game crunch, [2] [3] outsourcing, [4] and worker exploitation.
The group was created by the couple [5] Chris Bratt and Anni Sayers in 2018. They were previously both journalists working for Eurogamer . Sayers creates the graphics. Quintin Smith, a journalist from Rock Paper Shotgun , joined in 2020. [6] The channel is viewer-funded with Patreon; [7] in June 2022, the Patreon made US$17,409 per month. [6] Additional funding comes from Loading Bar, a chain of bars in London and Brighton. [8]
In a video published in August 2021, Smith accused Roblox's parent company, Roblox Corporation, of exploiting the platform's young game developers. [9] [10] Smith argues the revenue split is significantly less favourable toward developers than other video game marketplaces, [11] [12] [13] and players are incentivized to keep all ingame currency, which Smith likened to scrip, on Roblox through high minimum withdrawal amounts and unfavourable exchange rates. [14] [15] In a followup video released in December 2021 titled "Roblox Pressured Us to Delete Our Video. So We Dug Deeper.", he further accused the platform of having child safety issues [16] [17] [18] and criticized its "collectibles stock market" by likening it to gambling. [19]
In March 2022, the channel reported on three video game studios publishing under Annapurna Interactive — Mountains, Fullbright, and Funomena. In all three cases, employees reportedly reached out to Annapurna Interactive, addressing concerns regarding abuse and a toxic work environment being created by the studio founders. In hopes of getting Annapurna Interactive to mediate, employees stated that the publisher was siding mostly with the founders in question. According to one former studio employee, representatives of Annapurna Interactive had been quoted responding that "without strong personalities, games don't get made." Bratt described these incidents as part of a greater pattern of auteur culture that can be found across the independent film and video game industry. [20] [21] Following the video, Robin Hunicke, one of the heads of Funomena, issued a Twitter apology, before stating to staff alongside Funomena co-founder Martin Middleton that there would be layoffs at Funomena and that the studio would likely close due to the video and its impact on the studio's ability to secure outside funding. [22]
In their video titled "Making Sense of VRChat, the 'Metaverse' People Actually Like" released May 2022, PMG praised VRChat's ability to provide a social space for transgender and disabled people as well as furries, while criticising the approach of Meta Platforms to virtual reality, and its "sexless, Zuckerbergian, brand-friendly presentation". [23] [24]
In November 2022, PMG reported on skin gambling in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and argued that Valve generally avoided taking action on gambling websites using their game, thus "facilitating unregulated gambling by children". [25]
Year | Ceremony | Category | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
2022 | New York Game Awards | Best Games Journalism | Nominated | [26] |
2023 | Nominated | [27] | ||
MCV/Develop Awards | Media Brand of the Year | Won | [28] | |
The Game Awards | Content Creator of the Year | Nominated | [29] |
A video game developer is a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large business with employee responsibilities split between individual disciplines, such as programmers, designers, artists, etc. Most game development companies have video game publisher financial and usually marketing support. Self-funded developers are known as independent or indie developers and usually make indie games.
The metaverse is a loosely defined term referring to virtual worlds in which users represented by avatars interact, usually in 3D and focused on social and economic connection.
Santa Monica Studio is an American video game developer based in Los Angeles. A first-party studio for Sony Interactive Entertainment, it is best known for developing the God of War series. The studio was founded in 1999 by Allan Becker and was located in Santa Monica, California, until relocating to Playa Vista in 2014.
Behaviour Interactive Inc. is a Canadian video game developer and publisher based in Montreal. The studio is best known for the multiplayer horror game Dead by Daylight.
Roblox is an online game platform and game creation system developed by Roblox Corporation that allows users to program and play games created by themselves or other users. Created by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel in 2004 and released in 2006, the platform hosts user-created games of multiple genres coded in the programming language Lua. Early in Roblox's history, it was relatively small, both as a platform and as a company. Roblox began to grow rapidly in the second half of the 2010s, and this growth was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
NetherRealm Studios is an American video game developer based in Chicago and owned by Warner Bros. Games. Led by video game industry veteran and Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon, the studio is in charge of developing the Mortal Kombat and Injustice series of fighting games.
Roblox Corporation is an American video game developer based in San Mateo, California. Founded in 2004 by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel, the company is the developer of Roblox, which was released in 2006. As of December 31, 2023, the company employs over 2,400 people.
Video gaming in the United States is one of the fastest-growing entertainment industries in the country. The American video game industry is the largest video game industry in the world. According to a 2020 study released by the Entertainment Software Association, the yearly economic output of the American video game industry in 2019 was $90.3 billion, supporting over 429,000 American jobs. With an average yearly salary of about $121,000, the latter figure includes over 143,000 individuals who are directly employed by the video game business. Additionally, activities connected to the video game business generate $12.6 billion in federal, state, and local taxes each year. World Economic Forum estimates that by 2025 the American gaming industry will reach $42.3 billion while worldwide gaming industry will possibly reach US$270 billion. The United States is one of the nations with the largest influence in the video game industry, with video games representing a significant part of its economy.
Coffee Stain Studios AB is a Swedish video game developer based in Skövde. Founded in 2010 by nine University of Skövde students, the company is best known for Goat Simulator, which was released in April 2014, and Satisfactory, released in September 2024. Their parent holding company also operates Coffee Stain Publishing, a publisher, and majority-owns developers Coffee Stain North and Lavapotion. In November 2018, the Coffee Stain group was acquired by THQ Nordic AB.
Wattam is a 2019 puzzle-platform game developed by Funomena and published by Annapurna Interactive. It was designed by Keita Takahashi, better known for creating the Katamari Damacy series, and was released for PlayStation 4 and Windows on December 17.
TT Games Limited is a British holding company and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Games. The company was established in 2005 through the merger of developer Traveller's Tales and publisher Giant Interactive. Its other branches include developer TT Fusion, animation studio TT Animation and mobile game studio TT Odyssey. The company is best known for its video games based on the Lego construction toy.
Amazon Games is an American video game company and division of the online retailing company Amazon that primarily focuses on publishing video games developed within the company's development divisions.
Annapurna Games, LLC is an American video game publisher and developer. The company is a division of Annapurna Pictures, and was founded in 2016, and has focused on publishing innovative and emotive indie games. Notable games published by the company include Donut County, Kentucky Route Zero, Outer Wilds, Sayonara Wild Hearts, Wattam, What Remains of Edith Finch, Telling Lies, Neon White and Stray.
Video games can include elements that use blockchain technologies, including cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), often as a form of monetization. These elements typically allow players to trade in-game items for cryptocurrency, or represent in-game items with NFTs. A subset of these games are also known as play-to-earn games because they include systems that allow players to earn cryptocurrency through gameplay. Blockchain games have existed since 2017, gaining wider attention from the video game industry in 2021. Several AAA publishers have expressed intent to include this technology in the future. Players, developers, and game companies have criticized the use of blockchain technology in video games for being exploitative, environmentally unsustainable, and unnecessary.
Florence is an interactive story and video game developed by the Australian studio Mountains and published by Annapurna Interactive. The game was released on February 14, 2018 for iOS, on March 14, 2018 for Android, and for macOS, Nintendo Switch, and Windows on February 13, 2020.
In the video game industry, crunch is compulsory overtime during the development of a game. Crunch is common in the industry and can lead to work weeks of 65–80 hours for extended periods of time, often uncompensated beyond the normal working hours. It is often used as a way to cut the costs of game development, a labor-intensive endeavour. However, it leads to negative health impacts for game developers and a decrease in the quality of their work, which drives developers out of the industry temporarily or permanently. Critics of crunch note how it has become normalized within the game-development industry, to deleterious effects for all involved. A lack of unionization on the part of game developers has often been suggested as the reason crunch exists. Organizations such as Game Workers Unite aim to fight against crunch by forcing studios to honour game developers' labor rights.
Gamefam Studios is an American video game company. It primarily utilizes Roblox as a video game development platform, while also using Fortnite Creative and Minecraft as engines to create maps and minigames. It has produced content for brands such as Sonic the Hedgehog, the National Football League, Hot Wheels, Doctor Strange, Kung Fu Panda, Samsung, and Puma and staged virtual concerts for musicians such as The Chainsmokers and Saweetie.
...we've been in a relationship for nearly seven years now.