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The Game Industry Is About The Games
Over at Gamespot Bob Colayco fires back at David Jaffe, who you may recall referred to game journalists as vultures, saying that Jaffe's ideas about what journalism should be are just as uninteresting as the most sycophantic game plug. From the article: "Am I the only one who picks up rags like Entertainment Weekly, skips the fluff in front, and goes straight to the reviews sections? Maybe that attitude is really dehumanizing. But I don't think it's any coincidence that other entertainment industries started going to crap when people started caring more about our manufactured pop stars and their gossip than they did about the product. This is why we have reality shows with the likes of Jessica Simpson."
A single person can't make a movie either, and yet directors still pull in top dollar and a fair amount of fame and respect. The problem is that we are ingrained to the cog mentality and we refuse to take credit for our individual contributions. Good designers/developers/artists make good games.
/rant.off
We allow ourselves to believe that anyone in our position will produce the same product when the exact opposite is true. Because game development is a creative effort, the individual contributions are unique to the person who creates them. If I were to leave my current project and another designer took my place, it would be a different game than the one that would be created with my input.
We have no system of self-promotion in the game industry and until that changes, individual talent and individual contributions will continue to go unrecognized. However, this change must start in how we view ourselves.