Most video game credits follow a simple formula: name, job title, next person. Necrosoft Games decided that wasn’t good enough for Demonschool. The indie studio added paragraph-long descriptions under each team member’s credit explaining exactly what they did on the project. Design director Brandon Sheffield shared examples on social media, highlighting how this approach gives developers proper recognition beyond just listing their names in a scroll most players skip.
Why Traditional Credits Fall Short
The traditional credit format tells you someone worked on a game, but not what they actually did. You see a name next to “Level Designer” or “Environment Artist” and that’s it. For someone reviewing portfolios or trying to understand the development process, that information is almost useless. Did that level designer create the tutorial? The final boss arena? Both? You have no idea.
This becomes especially problematic in an industry plagued by layoffs and project cancellations. Developers need to show potential employers specific examples of their work, not just a job title. Sheffield pointed out that proper crediting is vital for career advancement. When hundreds of people apply for a single position, being able to say “I designed the combo system that rewards tactical positioning” carries more weight than “Combat Designer.”
What Demonschool’s Approach Looks Like
Sheffield shared an example from the game’s credits featuring 3D Art Lead Brent Porter. Below Porter’s name and title sits a full paragraph detailing his responsibilities. It explains what assets he created, what systems he developed, and how his work integrated with the rest of the game. This format transforms credits from a formality into actual documentation of who built what.
The descriptions aren’t limited to full-time staff either. Necrosoft credits everyone who touched the game in any capacity, including localization teams, design consultants, and contractors who worked on specific features. Many studios skip crediting people with smaller roles, but Sheffield argues that if someone’s work is in the final product, they deserve recognition. There’s no good reason to be stingy about it.
Making Credits Worth Reading
Sheffield makes an interesting point about engagement. For most players, reading an enormous list of names is not interesting. You might stop if you’re hunting for whoever designed a specific system you loved, but otherwise there’s little reason to stick around. Credits with detailed descriptions change that dynamic. They offer insight into the development process and help players understand how teams collaborate to build games.
This approach also removes arbitrary length restrictions. Sheffield notes that credits are essentially “free space” in a game. There’s no technical limit on how long they can be, and players will watch them or not regardless of runtime. Some will skip immediately. Others will read every word. The length matters less than whether the content is interesting enough to hold attention.
The Practical Benefits
Beyond helping individual developers, these detailed credits serve as historical documentation. Years from now, when someone wants to understand how Demonschool was made, they’ll have a complete record of who contributed what. This is valuable for preservation efforts, academic research, and future developers studying how teams tackled specific design challenges.
The format also benefits players who want to follow specific creators. If you loved Demonschool’s combat system and want to see what else the designer worked on, you now have that information. Traditional credits make it nearly impossible to track individual contributions across projects. Detailed descriptions solve that problem.
Why More Studios Don’t Do This
The obvious challenge is scale. For a relatively small team like Necrosoft, writing paragraph descriptions for each person is manageable. For AAA productions with thousands of contributors, it becomes a massive undertaking. Someone needs to write all those descriptions, verify accuracy, and format everything properly. That’s additional work on top of shipping the actual game.
There’s also the reality that most players skip credits entirely. Studios might question whether investing resources into detailed credits makes sense when the majority of the audience won’t see them. But Sheffield’s counter-argument is solid: the people who do care about credits, whether they’re industry professionals, academics, or deeply engaged fans, will get significantly more value from the detailed format. And for developers seeking their next job, having concrete examples of their contributions documented in the game itself is invaluable.
A Model for the Industry
Necrosoft’s approach won’t work for every studio, but it establishes a template that others could adapt. Even AAA games could implement partial versions of this system. Key roles like leads, directors, and heads of departments could get detailed descriptions while more numerous positions stick with standard crediting. The important principle is recognizing that credits serve a purpose beyond legal obligation.
In an industry where job security is increasingly rare and portfolios are everything, proper crediting isn’t just nice to have. It’s a tool that helps people build careers. When a studio takes the time to document what each person actually did, they’re investing in their team’s future opportunities. That’s worth celebrating, even if most players still hit the skip button.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long are Demonschool’s credits compared to typical games?
Sheffield acknowledged the credits are long for a relatively small team, but emphasized that length doesn’t matter since credits are free space. There’s no technical limit, and players who want to read them will do so regardless of runtime.
Do the detailed credits appear only at the end or somewhere else too?
The available information focuses on the end credits sequence. Whether Necrosoft implemented additional credit displays elsewhere in the game hasn’t been specified.
Can players skip Demonschool’s credits?
This specific detail hasn’t been confirmed, though most modern games allow credit skipping. The point is to make them worth reading for those who choose to watch, not to force engagement.
Could this crediting approach become an industry standard?
It’s unlikely to become universal due to the work required for large teams, but it could influence how studios approach crediting. Even partial adoption would benefit developers seeking to document their specific contributions.
Does this crediting format help with legal or contractual obligations?
While detailed credits provide better documentation, they still serve the same contractual purposes as traditional credits. The added descriptions primarily benefit individual developers and curious players rather than addressing legal requirements.
How does Necrosoft’s approach compare to film credits?
Film credits typically list names and roles without detailed descriptions, similar to traditional game credits. However, specialized film databases like IMDb provide detailed filmographies that serve a similar documentation purpose to what Necrosoft built directly into their game.
Will other Necrosoft games use this crediting format?
While the studio hasn’t made official statements about future projects, Sheffield’s emphasis on proper crediting suggests they’ll continue this approach for games where it’s feasible.
Conclusion
Necrosoft Games used Demonschool’s credits to make a statement about how the industry should recognize individual contributions. By adding paragraph-long descriptions below each team member’s name, they transformed credits from a perfunctory scroll into meaningful documentation of who built what. This benefits developers building their portfolios, players curious about the development process, and preservationists documenting how games get made. While the format requires extra work that might not scale to massive productions, it establishes a principle worth considering: credits should tell the story of creation, not just list names. In an industry where people change jobs frequently and need concrete examples of their work, that documentation matters. Whether other studios adopt this approach remains to be seen, but Necrosoft proved it’s possible to do credits right without making them worse for players who actually want to read them.