Yep, it's been a trend all year. My studio got canned back at the end of January. Publisher called us into a studio-wide meeting scheduled during lunch with 1 hour of notice, only to say "The game you spent 6 years on is canceled and all 150 of you are fired. The media will know in 30 minutes, don't say anything until then if you want to keep a severance package." (I have since landed on my feet elsewhere.)
These studios are owned by big publishers and generally work for years at a loss. With the costs to borrow increasing, we're seeing cuts on long-term investments that might not make their money back (like movies and games).
Volition was owned by Embracer, which is now struggling with funding. So anything that isn't a sure bet is effectively canned - and in turn you see these studios shut down left and right, plus big layoffs from studios that are still open.
There’s your problem. Hiring an entire team for 6+ years and then cancelling the project. That’s hundreds of thousands, if not millions, down the drain.
The current AA / AAA gamedev industry isn’t sustainable
Baldur's Gate took 6 years to make. Starfield has been in development since 2015 - that's 8 years. As gamers demand more, games have grown in scope. The ones that stayed behind have gotten punished.
If a AAA game doesn't have at least 8 hours of story and realistic graphics in the modern era, it gets panned by reviewers. People's expectations have been raised - and are continuing to be raised - and in turn, that inflates how long it takes to make a game. People will say "Why should I spend $60 on this game when I can spend $60 on this game that gives me more stuff?" (See: Immortals of Aveum, which itself has been in development for 4-5 years.)
The games that don't take that long are the stale yearly franchises - the FIFAs and CODs of the world. Even COD alternates between studios, with each installment taking 1-3 years. Some franchises (like Pokemon) have multiple teams within a studio that operate independently of one another; Arceus was made by the Let's Go team, while Scarlet/Violet was made by the Sword/Shield team.
If studios stop betting on long-term projects, you're going to wind up with stale yearly iterations - or half-baked games rushed out the door to meet a deadline. If it's true that you say AAA (and even AA!) dev isn't sustainable, then that's effectively calling for stale franchises pushing out cheap content for quick cash grabs (see also: Hollywood movies over the last decade).
It's also not just games this is happening to. Disney recently canned a 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea show that was ready to go. There's the Scooby-Doo stuff that Max recently pulled before release as well. That stuff isn't my industry; I don't know how long it takes to make those things... but I know it costs about as much to make as a AAA game does.
There's probably a reckoning to be had for both industries, but I don't think the correction should be that drastic - and I think it will be bad for people who consume that content.
With TV/movies that are made for streaming this seems to be some classic Hollywood accounting. They are taking the write-offs in the cancelled content, while keeping subscribers strung along with the promise of new projects. The question is how long until consumers stop buying it.
I wish studios like Bethesda would adopt a more stylistic art style and games that were smaller in scope. I don’t need to explore 10 000 planets with realistic graphics. I just want a tight RPG with good world building.
I think this is the crux of the issue. There’s been a trend for AAA to push for bigger and more ambitious games, which leads to long, expensive development cycles. But pretty much everyone who is passionate about gaming can point to a game that stuck with them not because it was huge and ambitious, but because it did one thing really well. Games don’t have to be huge to be amazing.
Sad, because I was a fan of them and bought all their games from Saint's Row 1 all the way to Gat out of Hell (although not in chronological order) and got Agents of Mayhem for free somewhere, but think they've made some bad moves lately.
I think it all started going downhill from Agents of Mayhem, and them screwing up with the reboot of Saint's Row was probably the nail in the coffin. I wish they'd just made Saint's Row 5 instead, with wacky time travel shenanigans and a more polished set of superpowers.
At the point where they decided to "reboot" to something old school and grittier (TOO old school, imo) they really didn't get what their fanbase wanted, and what new players who'd only heard of and experienced Saint's Row 4 would get excited about.
They could've probably taken Saint's Row up to 6 entries if they'd just iterated on the formula from 4 and possibly Gat out of Hell (I wouldn't know, I got distracted and didn't play it after I bought it, ironically). Similar to how United Front Games (the developer of Sleeping Dogs) could've probably stayed in business if they'd just made Sleeping Dogs 2 instead of that horrible "free to play" multiplayer asset flip of some of the least interesting elements of Sleeping Dogs 1.
I’ve never really understood the hate for Agents of Mayhem. It really captures “playable action movie” perfectly. I’d say my biggest complaint is that it is very poorly balanced such that most characters are unusable at the highest difficulties.
That’s what happened to Sleeping Dogs? Lame. I loved that game!
I agree with Saints Row. I didn’t think new younger audiences would take to a restart of the formula, or that old fans would want to start from scratch so to speak. Meanwhile ramping up from 4 would sate the old fans by somehow getting even more bonkers, and younger gamers would have this insane shit show of a sandbox even if they aren’t familiar with the brand (and would probably boost sales of the old ones too.)
Disappointing, but not surprising given how poorly received the last Saints Row game was and how Embracer made it clear they were going to be closing studios once their Saudi deal fell through. Hopefully, some of the studio can land on their feet, but still, thirty years in the industry just to get shut down like that.
So, I love Daggerfall. Daggerfall is one of my favorite games, I still haven't finished the main story mostly because I keep getting distracted doing side quests and personal goals. Daggerfall is also ridiculously big, I believe it's one of the largest games ever. It's also got some very bland towns outside of the major cities. I'm ok with that, because it kinda makes sense that this random town I wandered into is 6 houses and a tavern. That works for a medieval fantasy game, especially because Daggerfall is so damn charming with everything it does. Thing is, Daggerfall is pretty far removed from today's Bethesda. And if Bethesda promised what Daggerfall is, today. I wouldn't believe them. I see Star Field as a sci fi Daggerfall, but I just don't believe they'll nail it in the way necessary for that largely empty space to be charming like Daggerfall is. I say this mostly because of how bland I felt their recent games characteristics are. I'd be happy to be proven wrong tho, and maybe I'll try it out some time in the future.
I doubt any of the guys that worked on Decent or the Freespace games are part of Volition at this point.
But damn are those games good.
If any game deserves a remake/remaster, it’s Freespace. Doesn’t need much, just bring it up to par with Freespace 2 mechanics wise and polish the graphics a bit.
Some of the original developers made a modern version with Overload.
There is also Miner Wars 2081, a criminal underrated Descent-like game from the makers of Space Engineers, has great story campaign, destructible environments and a lot of other really nice touches. Failed however on the mulitplayer aspects that were promised in the EarlyAccess thus lots of negative reviews.
Freespace 2 with a force feedback joystick. When you got a bit too close to a capital ship’s beam weapon and the whole joystick started to shake. One of my most immersive experiences in a game.
A shame, but the writing has been on the wall for a long time. Volition was never quite the same after the THQ bankruptcy, and that was still several years before Embracer took over.
Embracer group is terrible. It came with big promises of reviving dormant franchises but it's just closing studios with not a single game announcement to show for it.
They way it reads is that they were actually playing and circumventing bans, possibly selling accounts too maybe. They were streaming their exploits on Twitch too.
I’m curious what uses you have in mind–anything that’s an online competitive (i.e., you compete against other players–doesn’t need to be esports sweaty) game I don’t think there’s a strong case for allowing injected code, since that’s an avenue for gaining an unfair advantage and thereby worsening other players’ enjoyment, and anything offline I can’t see it being worth a company’s time and money to prosecute.
I think the problem is that the ruling now establishes that overlays and injected code are a copyright violation. Therefor any overlay or injected code is now illegal unless you have permission from the authors if the game.
This. Nintendo is one of the least ethical videogame companies out there. Even when they come up with something new and innovative, it’s so locked down you’re better off waiting to play someone else’s copycat of it.
[Very sarcasm] It's nice that copyright just means a copyright holder gets to do literally anything they want as long as a relevant work is involved. Wouldn't want anyone to get away with any kind of local modification, tinkering, tweaking an old piece of software to work in a modern environment, some forms of modding... All obviously reprehensible violations of a wank gesture, eyeroll Copyright Holder's right to control distribution of their work!
IP law is so fucking vile, and yet proves it can continually get even worse :|
Edit to preempt, just in case: Also, no I don't need another bullshit lecture on how "IP law isn't a real thing, it refers to separate segments of law blah-blah-blah" but somehow can't be used as a term because some wankstain feels like being condescending.
Like… I don’t disagree with the sentiment here when it comes to most things that have to do with copyright and modifications; but if you’re using the modifications to get an unfair advantage in a multiplayer game, you’re a piece of shit and deserve punishment.
For something like cheating and streaming your exploits on Twitch, it makes sense for a suit like this. Bungie’s reputation would suffer even more due to his audience being much more likely to seek out cheating tools, to associate the game with cheating, and to spread both those pieces of information themselves.
In a case where the damages are real and not contrived, copyright feels a bit more legit.
$500k feels extreme, though, even in this case. Is this based off real sales, stock prices, or back of the napkin math? Maybe mark it down to his scale of income. So they have $100 million in annual ebitda (and excluding any funny business like stock buybacks) and he makes $50k before taxes but after living expenses. That $500k is worth 1/600th of their annual income and so should be 1/600th of his: $250. Multiply that by as much as 10 due to the severity of his actions (or divide by as much as 10) and you’ve got $2500 in damages. Much more reasonable.
Bit rough going the opposite way, but fair’s fair.
arstechnica.com
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