Absolutely devastating. Prey, high fi rush, evil within. All amazing games. Hate this shit. Love that one of the wealthiest companies in the world bought these studios and are still closing them. Fuck this shit
Arkane Austin was hemorrhaging talent before and during Redfalls development. In the end, there wasn’t much left of the studio that had developed the Prey reboot. Hi Fi Rush and Evil Within are critical darlings, but the former only got its player base thanks to Game Pass and both didn’t sell enough to keep a studio of more than 130 people alive (for perspective, that’s about as many people as worked on Skyrim).
I get how sad it is to see these studios disappear and it’s of course devastating for individual employees (at least in the short term), but it isn’t all that surprising. Also keep in mind that the talent doesn’t evaporate into thin air. We as players should pay far more attention to game credits and individual developers than the studios these people are working for. Talented developers are very likely to reappear elsewhere and continue making great games.
I think the blame for the demise of these studios is at least equally shared between Zenimax, Microsoft and the studios themselves. Blaming it all on Microsoft is a bit simplistic.
Idk id argue it is surprising. Say what you want about the performance of these games financially, but these studios were bought by one of the wealthiest companies in the world. Sure maybe the games weren’t a huge hit, but like… So? You have money. One flop and they’re axed? Xbox said they want to be bigger in the Japanese market, yet they closed their only Japanese studio. A studio with a bunch of talent and training that is gone now. Xbox has a huge problem bringing studios up and getting good output. Their best exclusive (at the time) of 2023 is now without a developer. Why not eat that cost? Yes I get a lot of studios are closing right now but that shouldn’t be happening at a company like Microsoft. But line must always be going up I guess
I think this comes from the mindset that if someone isn’t generating immediate success. It’s time to fire them. We see this a lot in sports. Team off to a terrible start with a new coach? Fire the coach and start trading players.
It really highlights how organizations see people as disposable. If people don’t make line go brrr, out the door they go.
Bloomberg previously reported that the vampire shooter’s [Arkane’s Redfall] troubled development grew out of a push by top Bethesda leadership to make a live-service game, a decision that ultimately led to sky-high attrition and multiple delays.
All reward, no risk for the executives demanding that their best-in-class immersive sim developer create an empty live service shooter. Stupid decision led to predictable outcome and the workers feel the ax for it.
Managing your mind in this game is very satisfying. They include a long play mode that can be very enjoyable to zen out to. Plus the two different character classes having entirely different ways to move your resources and mine that are equally engaging, which is a balance I find most games struggle to achieve.
I only played a few hours of Dome Keeper but it was quite a bit of fun. There’s already a fair amount of variety possible in the runs but not so much that this isn’t appreciated.
Found it when i was getting into Godot and was looking for games that were made with it. It really is a cute game, super simple base mechanics but really nice design and progression.
I have put at least 30 hours in it, and found it fun to find different ways to do each run. I’m excited about the update because no matter how hard I try it gets pretty formulaic when doing a run when you have something solid in place that’ll get you to the endgame.
Playing Descent II online was one of the highlights of my childhood back in the early days of internet gaming. The community was excellent too, with a lot of custom maps created using the D2 Level Builder, which I got pretty good with myself haha.
3 was a well done transition into a new type of game engine. Good advancement of the story. Worth playing if you are a fan of the first 2. Felt like the developers cared for and stuck to the vision.
Awesome news, and I look Forward to what folks make of this.
Shout-out to “Overload”, the spiritual successor that is great fun. VR version is included in case you need to aggressively lose your lunch. Fantastic game.
Yeah, III was basically coined to differentiate one-man / low budget indies from high budget indies like Hades, which was made by 20+ people, and a much higher budget, when compared to “normal” indies.
“Since using letters seems to be the trend in the industry, we figured that adding a couple of i’s to indie was a fair way to describe this new format. Also, triple-i just sounds cool”
They’re a bit late on the trend though, according to Microsoft and Ubisoft it’s all about Quadruple A now.
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