Any novel idea that gets a modicum of success is immediately and repeatedly flogged to death by copy-cats, both indie and corporate, for the next several years until the gaming public is sick of seeing it. See any recent successful gaming trend for an example.
Yep. I have a friend who works there, well I guess he use to. Get ready for a wave of shitty videogames all written and designed by AI in the coming years.
All rely heavily on fetch quests as the basis of their game loop, and all of them are flavored fetch quests. I played Generation Zero and got sick of it quick, and it quickly became apparent as I played Rage 2 that this is most of the experience.
Isn’t that more of a problem with game design in general though? I’d argue if you’re going with just that example then Rage 2 is the same as most MMOs. Go here, kill things, go back and deliver items, etc. Also, how are those two games similar to Just Cause or Mad Max?
Well, for Generation Zero, I felt like the closer I got to the endgame and FNIX Rising the more obvious it got that Avalanche really expected you to do middling discovery and fetch quests to prepare, and it becomes incredibly unbalanced system wise (especially in FNIX Rising, which is tacked on crap that had no playtesting for balance). I saw a similar pattern in Rage 2.
Generation Zero was a really, really, really bad first experience for me.
I actually liked New Vegas’ open world and its a miracle it turned out the way it did, and within the span of a year. Night City too, but CDPR had a long time to get it right and I even waited a year and a half post-release.
Not just the U.S.
Avalanche Studios has their headquarters in Sweden and they’re closing their studio in Canada (per this article). Additionally, Phoenix Labs (Dauntless & Fae Farm) is a Canadian game developer and they just let go of a significant number of developers and cancelled all future projects (about 3 weeks ago): pcgamer.com/…/dauntless-developer-phoenix-labs-la…
While Microsoft was the one shutting down multiple Game Developers last month, those studios are also based all over:
Tango Gameworks - Japan
Alpha Dog Games - Canada
Arkane Studios - (Headquarters in France, but shutting down their Studio in the U.S.)
Roundhouse Studios - U.S.
pcgamer.com
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