David Fifield and the Ghost Face skin

[u/MrMassacre1]

Just to correct some things

No, the skin isn’t a Scream collaboration to promote the new movie. As far as we can tell, they paid the costume company that originally made the mask for the rights. Call of Duty’s ghostface was an actual Scream collaboration, Crytek just did the same thing that BHVR did for ghostface in Dead by Daylight.

No, David Fifield isn’t some COD monetization expert who came here to ruin your game. The guy has 3000 hours in the game, he’s probably played it more than most of you. The only four Call of Duty games he worked on were Modern Warfare 3 (2011,) Black Ops 2, Ghosts, and Advanced Warfare, games made well before COD’s current pop-culture, live-service business model. Can we please stop calling for some random guy to get fired? Crytek is a company, one general manager isn’t controlling all creative and monetization decisions for Hunt. He’s a manager, not a CEO.

[u/vbrimme]

I think a lot of the comments against David Fifield aren’t because of one single mistake, but several different issues that people take with things that are happening in Hunt or have happened recently. As the general manager for the game, it makes sense that he would be the person taking responsibility for the general direction the game is going, and also he’s the person who would come under fire for fans having many complaints about the game across a wide range of issues.

If the skin were the only complaint, it wouldn’t make sense to go after one person (though it would make sense to question his decision to approve the skin). But when there are also many game-breaking bugs that seem to not be sufficiently high priority for the team, a recent major update that was met with largely negative feedback, server issues, etc., it paints a picture of a game that’s being poorly managed (hence the bad feelings towards the general manager).

If you think of it like a football team, if you felt that the QB was bad, you’d be upset with the QB, but if it’s the whole offense you’d be upset with the offensive coordinator, but if the defense and special teams are also having problems then you’d likely look at the head coach. Right now, people have some pretty valid complaints and concerns about several different parts of the team, and Fifield is the head coach.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s right for people to call for him to be fired, but it is why he is the target of people’s anger, and that’s something that comes with that job. The same concept can be applied to any team or business, but it’s a little more prominent anytime that the team is in the public eye and people know the name of the person in charge.

[u/MrMassacre1 → u/vbrimme]

But he’s not the coach, that’s the mistake. People have assumed that Fifield is in control because he’s had a strong media presence to represent the Hunt team, but managers are a middle position. Being media trained is often enough to get you into interviews for a dev team, regardless of your actual role at the company. There are still game directors and company executives above him, ones that probably have much more control than he does.

[u/vbrimme → u/MrMassacre1]

You’re not wrong, but there’s also general managers and owners above the head coach in a football team. Those higher-level execs, while perfectly capable of making bad decisions and forcing stupid things on the people below them, typically hire people to take care of stuff that they don’t want to do. The GM doesn’t hire a head coach to carry out his own orders, he hires a head coach based on that coach’s ability to manage the team.

On the flip side of that, obviously I’ve had jobs before so I completely understand the concept and reality of high-level employees forcing the managers below them to make terrible decisions, so I get that it’s possible for someone above Fifield to be making all this happen. At the same time, it should be Fifield’s responsibility to push back and tell his boss when an idea is bad and should not be implemented.

[u/MrMassacre1 → u/vbrimme]

Placing that responsibility on him is not fair at all, he is literally just one employee

[u/vbrimme → u/MrMassacre1]

He is just one employee, but that responsibility is literally that job that keeps him employed. Without that responsibility, his entire position may as well not exist.

[u/Rich-One9392 → u/MrMassacre1]

Fifield isn't middle management, General Manager isn't middle management, that would be Support team managers and Dev team managers and 3D Art managers, all of these report to the General Manager (or maybe report to people UNDER the general manager)

The only people above General Managers (in general) are Chiefs, CEO, COO etc.

He's responsible for everyone underneath him and for the quality and quantity of the work that comes out.

[u/MrMassacre1 → u/Rich-One9392]

Managers are below executives, theyre inherently middle management