everybody

programmers,designers,story writers, developers, etc.

i think Fable even put the babies born while the game was being made.......not necessary

Personally, I'd establish some threshold.  I'm all for "additional thanks" to certain people but under headings like:

Engine developers and the like, I would probably have some threshold of how much they added to the project to get into one of the "primo" title.

In the industry, there's a big difference between being "Lead Engine Developer" and say "Additional programming".  If you're a lead on a game and leave a year before the game's done, I'd probably be inclined to move that person's credit to "additional programming" unless their contribution to the project was truly substantial.

I don't know who should or shouldn't (not being in the game industry myself, I can't really say) but one thing I thought was cool was on a certain game I and a couple others that moderated the game's forums were mentioned as a special thanks in the end game credits. I thought that was cool.

I think Firaxis have made a habit of even crediting beta testers (not in-house testers, I mean). That is probably taking it too far. But at least everyone in house workig on the project, and probably a mention of engine developers too, if they were involved in the project to any degree.

Oh yeah, and when browsing the credits, I sometimes wonder why more space is devoted to crediting the people from the publisher as opposed to people from the developer. I know the publisher plays a big role in getting the game out, but please. I really don't care who is licensing director for the publisher

Morten 

Personally I think mostly other developers look at credits. They're a kind of "I was there and I did it" to put on your CV. If that is true, I'd say it is important to have everyone who felt they were a part of the development in the credits, who were on the payroll within the company. Outsourced material has to be negotiated. But mostly I think credits that show some kind of role in the development are important. Some games just flash you a list of 50 names. What we want to know is who did what, who lead what team and so on. I know it's not as black and white as that, but it should give a rough nudge.

It should probably be a case of everyone at the company at the time of launch gets a mention under their appropriate title and everyone who worked on it (in-house testers, programmers, designers) who left before it launched gets put under a catch all title (Additional Programming/Testing/Designing).

It just sounds like bad practice to not credit someone who worked on the game just because they aren't at the company when it launched.

I think my view on externals may be just a tad biased. *coughs*

But on the "inside" of the developer/publisher teams, it seems if the "lead" title is causing issues, get rid of it? I mean, there shouldn't be that many leads. Sure, there's a project lead, marketing lead, the "main" guy responsible for the oversight of the entire game. But on the smaller level, what's the difference between "lead" engine developer and a regular engine developer? Or "lead" designer and regular designer, "lead" artist, etc?

Why not just mention the entire team on equal footing? All your designers, artists, engine developers, balancers, etc listed under one header. Keep the few "lead"s that actually have the job of overseeing various aspects of the entire project, but on the nitty gritty I don't think that's necessary.

I'd tend to say that if somebody is not present at release, and didn't contribute for a significant portion of the project's length, then they can go into an "Additional Contributors" section. But to remove anyone who has left or moved off the project completely (regardless of the magnitude of contributions) as some companies are doing, that's just insulting.

If someone caused trouble I wouldn't put them on the credits.
I kind of feel bad for contractors not getting on the credits though. I know a lot of freelancers that are contracted, they're just a single person, or small group, who work really hard like anyone else for a short period of time but they don't get any credit AT ALL.

And you have concept artists that can't show their signatures on their paintings, and sometimes never get permission to be able to put it up on their website even after a game is released, I find that really sad.

I think anyone who's worked on a game for more than 6 months and didn't get fired over something they did, or quit leaving things unorganized and such, should be on the credits. :/

I hope this was duly noted...this is a very nice touch to those "little" people of the world who in some small way contributed to tweaks and bug squashes.

If you have your staff and contractors log hours worked to the project, you could build some formulae to do the main credits based on role and time worked as a portion of the total project time. That would automatically handle things like someone working hard for a year, but leaving a year before the job finished. You could also throw in a variable to weight a contributor's work quality.

It can be a serious disruption to have an employee leave before project completion, but I feel they still deserve mention if they left on good terms.

Regarding titles, this is something we tried to avoid in the credits. In a smaller studio we all wear many hats - it would feel forced or even humerous to slap titles on everyone. 

You could slap humorous titles on for kicks and giggles

Chief Multi-Hat Donner

Well, in IC's case, Blair would likely end up "Lead Monkey's Uncle", for example. Nobody but the old testers would know what the hell that means, but hey