Warhammer Online Credits

If you didn’t hear last week, Mythic is only including current employees in the credits for Warhammer Online. This is a terrible idea; everyone who worked on the game should get the credit they deserve. Sure, some of their work may have been completely removed from the game, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t help make the game. Jen MacLean commented on it at Gamasutra.

It may sound like I’m being sarcastic about people whose work was completely removed. Entire cities and classes were removed, and there were certainly many other things in the game that were removed or changed completely. But, if the people no longer at Mythic hadn’t tried something one way, future developers may have never tried it a better way — they still contributed.

I understand not crediting someone who was with the company for less than about 3 months for a game project of this scope. That makes some sense to me, since they really didn’t contribute significantly to the overall project. But even people who were there for the first few years of the project and are no longer at Mythic won’t be getting credit. What the deuce?

Pardon my language, and stop reading if you can’t handle it, but this is bullshit. Mythic should, at the very least, include them in the credits on their website and somewhere in the game. I know it’s probably too late to include them in the manual given that the game is out next month. Even a section at the end of the game/website credits saying, “Thanks to those who have contributed to this project over the years,” with a list of only their names is something.

Anyway, this a load of crap, and Mark Jacobs (along with Mythic) is coming off as a giant a-hole in this whole matter. Give credit where credit is due. You’re pissing off the game development community and some of your biggest fans by being jerks, and we all know how important goodwill is to a company and its games.