[casual_games] Crediting the Departed

[Kirby, Neil A (Neil)]

I work for a very well established Research and Development shop that
has given the world things like the transistor, Unix, and 911, just to
name three.  We take intellectual property *very* seriously.  On a
personal level, it's how we pay for our kids' college educations.  On a
corporate level we do our level best every day to be the unfair
advantage that the other guy doesn't have.

All of that IP walks out the door *every day*.  In the heads of people
like me.  Our more enlightened mangers know this.  One of them once
said, "It's my job to make sure that it all walks back in the door the
next morning."  

In the game industry, credits are one of the tools managers can use to
help insure that all of their talent keeps walking back in the door
every morning.  It doesn't cause head hunting, it prevents it.  It's
like letting your people go to GDC.  Any company that won't let you go
to GDC is telling you that they *know* that they can't compete and you
really could do better elsewhere.  Better companies are more along the
lines of, "You can go to GDC as long as you come back."  Enlightenment
doesn't cost, it pays.

Credits are so cheap that they round off to being free to give.  But
they have high value to the people who get their names in pixels.  Any
manager that ignores a low cost / high value tool is an incompetent fool
who has trouble computing basic margin.

---
Neil Kirby              +1.614.367.5524        Hope is not a strategy
Bell Laboratories     nak at alcatel-lucent.com   Prayer is not a process
6200 E. Broad St.                              Tuning is not a plan
Columbus, OH 43213      USA                    Chaos does not scale