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.
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.)
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.
Or just do what I do. Sign up for game pass once in a blue moon when friend wants to play games. Cancel it after 1-2 months once friend eclipses into non gaming mode for a while. Dispute the charge on card and say MSFT didn’t cancel trial. Get money back every time. Rinse and repeat as needed.
Regardless of how you feel about Game Pass, shouldn’t Microsoft (and the game’s publisher and dev) get paid for a game rental service you fully used and benefited from?
With my morals, that’s not something I could do. Definitely doesn’t sit right with me.
Fair enough, megacorps certainly are amoral in their decisions, which generally leads to evil outcomes.
Have you considered what happens to indie game devs, which aren’t megacorps? They list games on Gamepass to increase exposure. Microsoft takes a cut of the monthly fee and the rest is dispersed to the publishers and then all the way down to the game devs getting a small slice of the monthly fee.
When OP issues a charge back, the game devs aren’t getting paid. Is that fair to indie game devs? They don’t get paid if Microsoft and the various publishers don’t get paid.
Granted, I’m not justifying subscriptions. I personally dislike Games-as-a-Service as I prefer to own my games. But using a paid service, and then charging back against the company? Especially when it’s smaller game devs on that platform, too, hoping to make it big one day.
I don’t think indie devs should eat your ass, or the original commenter’s ass. Frankly, they need money to eat and pay their bills just like us plebs.
iirc it’s a “fault” of the PS3 architecture which makes it practically impossible to emulate. We’ll have to see if the second part of the remastered MSG collection will eventually port it.
Well I don’t see why you couldn’t emulate it on a ps5. People are doing it on pc so I guess it’s more that Sony doesn’t care and don’t want to invest in it.
It’s one side where Microsoft is better than Sony, retrocompatinility.
I’m still playing a lot of ps4 and ps3 games, so I hope my ps3 is gonna stay fit for purpose in the long term 🤞
According to the European scientists, “Euclid peered deep into this nursery using its infrared camera, exposing hidden regions of star formation for the first time, mapping its complex filaments of gas and dust in unprecedented detail, and uncovering newly formed stars and planets. Euclid’s instruments can detect objects just a few times the mass of Jupiter, and its infrared ‘eyes’ reveal over 300,000 new objects in this field of view alone.”
Noticing a bit of misinformation here so let’s clear this up: take off your eye protection during totality. The corona is so faint you won’t see anything at all through eclipse glasses.
The whole game was broadcasted through satellite, the only copies would either be in Japanese satellaviews (If those had storage), or at Nintendo themselves (If they kept a copy), so it’s not surprising that a vhs was the only way
Nintendo had a stake in the company doing the broadcasts but is extremely unlikely to have retained copies of the levels.
The only way to have retained the levels is by having received them by satellaview and then disconnecting the device, for 25 years, and hoping the memory isn’t too volatile to recover.
It’s extremely fortunate that some people recorded levels on VHs and that those VHS weren’t damaged or lost.
I understand the statement is about in-game stuff, but I’m guessing a lot of game developers have been using GitHub Copilot and this kind of “AI tools” for months.
arstechnica.com
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