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FMT99, do gaming w Making good, profitable games 'will no longer keep you safe': industry expresses fury and heartbreak over closure of Hi-Fi Rush and Prey studios

What will keep you safe is not selling your business to a mega corp.

Carighan,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

Not even that, but usually this comes with the actual big target on your back: Being publicly traded.

Now of course, you can be publicly traded without being a big corp, and you can be a big corp that is held privately. But usually these big corpos are the ones that are on the stock market, and yes, the moment that happens everything becomes secondary to your actual responsibility: To the shareholders. Line must go up! And an easy one is to fire more workers.

Rayspekt,

Or going public in general.

ClaireDeLuna,

Unless I’m not seeing something, game production is expensive. Most studios are 1-2 bad games away from closing their doors. Games are expensive as hell to produce and as much as it sucks the “going public” option is sometimes the only way to go.

It’s easy to forget but most small (1-3 people) team indie devs probably aren’t even working a salary. They split the earnings from the game and either live off of that or reinvest it into their company but the moment salaries need to get paid, or office space needs to be used (not really necessary for small teams) that’s when expenses get insanely high. I’m not a business person but I can understand why you’d want to “trim the fat” (I don’t support it at all but to play devil’s advocate, I can see the logic despite the flaws). Growth means structure, and structure means expense.

dependencyinjection,

If you’re 1-2 bad games away from going bust then perhaps make better games.

Isn’t the premise of capitalism, that if you fail then someone better will take over you. Let them fail.

Amir,
@Amir@lemmy.ml avatar

someone better

Someone who can milk their playerbase better. Lootboxes and other “surprise mechanics” (addictive gambling), battle passes, games as a service

dependencyinjection,

No. I mean someone with ethics and morals and just wants to sell something for a single price and be done.

There’s a reason Minecraft and Factorio get a lot of love. It’s because you pay once and you’re done. Yet they still make new things. Although Mojang is going that way.

MurrayL, (edited )

Except for all the small studios also struggling or going out of business because getting investment right now is really, really hard.

The megacorp closures and redundancies are far from the entire story, they’re just the headline grabbers.

SRo, do gaming w Making good, profitable games 'will no longer keep you safe': industry expresses fury and heartbreak over closure of Hi-Fi Rush and Prey studios

Arkane Austin is understandable; nobody bought Prey and Redfall was a disaster.

patchexempt,

it’s a shame because Prey was one of the best games of the decade.

Carighan,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

Prey retroactively devaluaed Dishonored for me - as amazing as those were at their time, Prey showed what really could be obtained from the formula, and perfected every aspect of it.

bananabenana,

Oh same here. Great way to put it. Prey is a masterpiece

darthsid, (edited )

Controversially - I loved Dishonoured and the sequel but couldn’t figure out Prey

SmoothOperator,

Same. Prey feels much more related to Bioshock than Dishonored to me. Never could get into Bioshock.

ClaireDeLuna,

It’s far more different than BioShock. BioShock is imo a linear shooter I never understood the “immersive sim” tag for BioShock. But Prey is non linear within a space station. You can break away from the main task whenever you want and investigate other things which all play into the main story. You can play Prey 10-20 times and have a different journey each time if you try. The Gloo Gun, Mimicry, etc are all things that allow you to play differently each time and find unique new paths. Talos 1 is chock full of details. The only similarity with BioShock is the reveal, the wrench, and some minor combat similarities. But it’s far more than that.

MurrayL,

I think BioShock just got grandfathered in through its System Shock lineage.

SmoothOperator,

It’s for sure not the same as BioShock, with traversal and exploration the biggest difference, but it has similar vibes, at least as far as I have played. And at least in comparison with Dishonored.

You’re (mostly) alone in a giant, isolated station where a terrible disaster has happened, and must inject yourself with magic goo to be able to handle it’s warped former inhabitants. There’s definitely more of a stealth vibe than in Bioshock, but the feeling was similar for me.

In contrast, Dishonored takes place all over a crowded city with regular interactions between NPC’s which you can manipulate from the shadows. Most enemies can be killed or KO’d very straightforwardly, and there’s just much more of a revenge power fantasy about it.

But I digress. I can understand the comparisons to Dishonored, they just aren’t that similar in my mind.

ClaireDeLuna,

Arkane games are always those games that require the “click” to enjoy.

I started every single Arkane title and stopped it for months before the world and what not pulled me back. That second time I finally get it and enjoy the hell out of the game more than before.

DoucheBagMcSwag,

Should have called it Neuroshock as it would have been a great tie with the other “shock” immersive sims

We were still reeling the loss of Prey 2 and the political duplicity that may or may not have happened with Bethesda and Human Head which resulted in the cancellation.

Calling it “Prey” was fucking poison

PolandIsAStateOfMind, do gaming w Making good, profitable games 'will no longer keep you safe': industry expresses fury and heartbreak over closure of Hi-Fi Rush and Prey studios
@PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml avatar

Hell even the super successful Baldur 3 is apparently not successful enough to have further development.

WolfLink,

?

Larion Studios is still doing fine. They’ve decided to pursue their own IP rather than continue to work with a 3rd party’s.

PolandIsAStateOfMind,
@PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml avatar

Larion Studios is still doing fine.

Maybe, or maybe not.

They’ve decided

I don’t believe that, half of Baldur success was because it was Baldur and gained massive hype for that. Larian’s credit was delivering to that hype (mostly), but if you were following the development, literally the main fear from fanbase was precisely because it was Larian making that - Divinity 2 was very far from universal acclaim in the niche. And this here look extremely suspicous even if it was just about the next game, but no DLC, no expansions, not to mention that continuing the success is an 1st iron commandment in entire industry, nobody stops doing that unless there is no possibility.

There’s a lot going inside we don’t know because no company would just release such turbulences publicly.

WolfLink,

I think the company sees this as an opportunity to use the spotlight they now have to publicize their own IP. I suppose we can only wait and see what they do next.

AsherahTheEnd, do gaming w Making good, profitable games 'will no longer keep you safe': industry expresses fury and heartbreak over closure of Hi-Fi Rush and Prey studios

AAA gaming is doomed, it has been irreversibly tainted by capitalism and I don’t think it can recover. Indie games are where it’s at, typically higher quality and much cheaper. It’s shameful how terrible most AAA games are nowadays because they have to put in excuses for microtransactions. It’s depressing but I think we’re truly entering a golden age for indies and other smaller budget games.

Muffi,

I’ve been playing the Hades 2 beta recently, and I keep thinking about how incredible it is that this game is already better than any AAA title I’ve played in the last like 8 years. And it’s still in beta and made by just 23 people. Call of Duty, FIFA and the like will keep the big studios running for a while, but indie has definitely overtaken the industry and I’m all for it.

Shadowedcross, do gaming w Making good, profitable games 'will no longer keep you safe': industry expresses fury and heartbreak over closure of Hi-Fi Rush and Prey studios

Ah, you see, the issue is that it wasn’t profitable enough. You just gotta try harder, devs, it’s easy.

Zehzin, (edited )
@Zehzin@lemmy.world avatar

It’s crazy though, they plopped HFH on the store the day it was announced with no marketing push, it became a critical and audience darling and execs said it was a breakout hit.

What else do you need to stay alive in this industry? Insomniac made one of the best selling games of the year and got rewarded by getting 10% of its workforce cut.

Yttra,

I wonder if a number of those people playing it day 1 on gamepass affected their numbers, because there’s no way they didn’t account for GP downloads…

Maybe it didn’t bring enough new GP subscribers in addition to sales…?

Burghler, do gaming w Redfall's devs were reportedly building out its massively delayed Hero Pass content 'very recently'—before Microsoft closed Arkane Austin for good

ok

PunkiBas, do gaming w Making good, profitable games 'will no longer keep you safe': industry expresses fury and heartbreak over closure of Hi-Fi Rush and Prey studios

Such a waste of talent!

I just heard a podcast from ‘better offline’ titled ‘how managers are breaking the internet’ and he calls these kinds of things ‘the rot economy’, kind of like enshitification but it happens when some completely disconnected suit takes over projects from passionate developers and brings the whole thing to the ground with their ‘line must go up’ mentality.

I’d say it’s exactly whats happening here.

Rayspekt,

Ed Zitron is on a rampage against consultants and managers breaking the industry and I’m all here for it.

yamanii, (edited )
@yamanii@lemmy.world avatar

Definitely started following his posts after his google search piece, he is now hunting rabbits.

AdrianTheFrog, do gaming w Making good, profitable games 'will no longer keep you safe': industry expresses fury and heartbreak over closure of Hi-Fi Rush and Prey studios
@AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world avatar

This really reminds me of the latest wendover video. It seems like large companies see small studios as an investment and take any chance to cash out and fire everyone as soon as it’s hurting their short term profits.

CluckN, do gaming w Making good, profitable games 'will no longer keep you safe': industry expresses fury and heartbreak over closure of Hi-Fi Rush and Prey studios

They made Redfall, it doesn’t matter if their last game was Super Mario Galaxy. Releasing a single bad flop like that and all of a sudden you need to split the $127 profit with your 60 employees that just spent 5 years making a pile of micro-transactional shovelware.

QuadratureSurfer,
@QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.world avatar

Most of their Devs quit because they didn’t want to work on it: pcgamer.com/report-most-of-arkane-austins-prey-ve…

blazera, do gaming w Making good, profitable games 'will no longer keep you safe': industry expresses fury and heartbreak over closure of Hi-Fi Rush and Prey studios
@blazera@lemmy.world avatar

publishers are a scam

WalnutLum, do gaming w Making good, profitable games 'will no longer keep you safe': industry expresses fury and heartbreak over closure of Hi-Fi Rush and Prey studios

Tango closed cause it was the one of the only studios under Zenimax that wasn’t currently making a game with “executive producer: Todd Howard” squirted all over it

onlinepersona, do gaming w Making good, profitable games 'will no longer keep you safe': industry expresses fury and heartbreak over closure of Hi-Fi Rush and Prey studios

Before I read this, let me guess: publicly traded or ultimately owned by an entity that is publicly traded?

Anti Commercial-AI license

JaN0h4ck,

Microsoft

onlinepersona,

You’re right. So, the problem is working for a publicly traded company, IMO.

Devs have to either unionize, join private gaming companies, indie gaming companies, or band together and make their own.

Anti Commercial-AI license

GuStJaR, do gaming w Escape From Tarkov dev finally caves, says people who paid $150 for the game will get access to its new mode 'in waves'

“sorry that fans and the game community in general are experiencing these feelings” not sorry for what I did, but sorry you feel I did something.

haui_lemmy,

The narcissist prayer

warm, do gaming w Sony backs down on demand that Helldivers 2 players log into a PSN account

The game should be offline co-op anyway (and P2P). So many co-op games just made 'always online' for the sake of MTX.

Carighan,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

Well this one comes with rootkit DRM and season passes, so it’s no wonder it wants to be as online as possible.

Wooki,

Cool story.

The anticheat came after the prolific hackers started

all-knight-party,
@all-knight-party@kbin.run avatar

I mean, this game has a meta war that determines all available planets, mission types and rolls out content based on community involvement. It would be nice to have an offline mode, too, but this game is not completely decoupled from being online, unlike Hitman or something.

warm,

I present to you: Helldivers 1.

Its just an arbitrary mechanic added to justify an always online requirement. Helldivers had an offline option. There's still a game there without the need for "community involvement", the missions etc could be completely random or seeded for people who dont want to connect to a server.

Its always sad to see potential great games ruined by greed.

all-knight-party,
@all-knight-party@kbin.run avatar

Did the first one really have offline? I played the shit out of it, but I was always connected. Sure, they should implement something similar here, too, but it is genuine work they need to put in to get it there, I'm sure they had to invest that for the first game especially since it was on the Vita.

It isn't arbitrary, though, go on any of the communities that care about the meta war and you'll see people really do keep up with it and enjoy it, they work with each other to focus on the major orders and do a bit of roleplaying at the same time.

I know that you're very anti always online, and I understand and agree that it should be optional, but to say that nothing comes out of it would also be disingenuous.

warm,

You are right, it does provide something. I just personally don't value it over a more typical online co-op setup. I just wish options weren't scary and implemented more.

all-knight-party,
@all-knight-party@kbin.run avatar

Me too. I know it's a bit of work to set up an alternate mode and method to get to different planets and missions, and I'm sure ships are run really tightly on what gets worked on or not due to paying for whole teams to work, but I do wish they did what they could to future proof it.

A lot of always online games are awesome, have artistic merit, and can be looked back upon later as gaming history, and if they don't preserve these "art pieces" then a huge chunk of gaming history will likely disappear into the ether in 10 or 20 years. It seems a little silly to me that we can go back and play Mario 64, or even Helldivers 1 and see what that was like, but Helldivers 2 will become an inaccessible splash screen, it's a waste of all of the time and work, and even the money that went into making this happen in the first place.

Evotech,

I don’t think it would have the same staying power without the community involvement.

warm,

That says more about the core gameplay than the community feature.

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Would be a waste of time. Very few people would play offline co-op.

Wooki,

Obviously you’ve never played the game with that L take.

WoolyNelson, do gaming w Sony backs down on demand that Helldivers 2 players log into a PSN account

For Super-Earth!

xavier666,

Automaton propaganda is nothing against RAW DEMOCRACY!

TheAnonymouseJoker,

Democracy supports the genocide of Palestine.

xavier666,

You’re talking about the wrong Earth.

TheAnonymouseJoker,

Are you living on some other earth? I am living in the one where China, Russia, India, USA, Israel and Palestine exist.

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