Movies have huge credit rolls that tell you everyone involved from the director down to the person who made the cups of tea. But why? I can understand why actors, who need exposure to maintain a career, would want this. But is it important for the person who drove the truck full of props around to be credited for their future prospects?

You don’t see a plaque when you walk into a building listing everyone who laid a brick as part of the construction. I assume there’s a historical reason why the entertainment industry, and only the entertainment industry does this.

Edit: To all those that took my geniune question about what historically lead to this, and turned it into accusations of me being some sort of thoughtless “asshole”, what is even the point of someone trying to contribute to these online communities if you are just going to be made to feel horrible?

  • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    15 hours ago

    It’s ironic that you mentioned game credits as an example… The video game industry (particularly in Japan) actually has a pretty sordid history with credits. Many Japanese game companies in the 80’s outright refused to credit the makers, fearing that their workers would be poached. There’s a very strong “you should be completely loyal to your company” culture in Japan, and companies didn’t want to give their employees any kinds of wiggle room to consider jumping ship.

    There was also a negative stigma associated with working in video games; it wasn’t a “good” job at the time, and the general consensus was that video games were just for nerdy kids. So there was some shame associated with being in the video game industry. As a result, many of the makers used pseudonyms when they were credited.

    But going into the 90’s and 00’s, that stigma began to evaporate as video games became more widely accepted, and began to hit the global markets. However, game makers then had an uphill battle to actually get the game companies to properly credit them. The practice of not crediting (or using pseudonyms) had become normalized, so game companies initially resisted proper credits.