SI just isn’t, or at least hasn’t been, set up to do this kind of step-change development. It’s been streamlined essentially since the split from the Championship Manager series to operate on an iterate-on-what-we-have basis with overlapping one-, two-, and three-year dev cycles geared toward developing annual refreshes of essentially the same game.
Everything from the dev cycle through AA, marketing, publishing, and even licensing is based on that fundamental structure. But that’s a model with an expiry date, and the kind of complete refresh they are currently attempting has been sorely needed for years already.
But they should have just announced a hiatus year at the start to get this done. They were never going to be able to do this within their regular annual cycle.
Let’s start with the word “blame”: Veilguard isn’t bad on the whole. It’s possibly good, even. I think a lot of the problem with how it’s been received is that it’s not “Bioware good”, which can be a disappontment even for a good game, especially after coming down from Baldur’s fucking Gate 3, a once in a generation game.
So maybe if we said “credit” instead, and I think we can say yeah she sort of can take credit for the game. They offered her game director and she took it, and she put her name to it. I know it’s a shit position to be in, but if you look at Whedon and the Justice League, he passed the “credit” onto Snyder. Busche could have done the same if she chose, but she chose to put her name to it.
Getting a game which is going off the rails back onto the rails is really tough. Kudos to her.
There are definitely some large chunks. But there have been no signs of any of those outlets caring enough to try to vote as a bloc.
There are definitely a lot of flaws in how the jury is selected and many (most?) of the judges past and present have pointed that out. Stuff like how they are fundamentally not qualified to judge fighting games as fighting games or the mess that is the “simulation and strategy” category or whatever they call “PC games” where people are somehow comparing MS Flight Sim to Farm Simulator to Satisfactory.
But for stuff like the major awards? It is a pretty diverse crowd and there is no indication that any group cares enough to rig the vote beyond group discords where people pester other games media folk because they want to play Helldivers again and their usual crew are busy.
I’ll also add on that, for its many many flaws, the keighleys is pretty good about being aware of this kind of thing based on a few outlets that talked about how they were judges in the past and then suddenly never mentioned it again after an acquisition or the loss of a core editor.
I’ll also add on that, for its many many flaws, the keighleys is pretty good about being aware of this kind of thing based on a few outlets that talked about how they were judges in the past and then suddenly never mentioned it again after an acquisition or the loss of a core editor.
Is that /s?
Because that last sentence really gives me pause for thought…
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