Guy really came into this conversation with massive “What did you just say about the Navy Seals” energy. You know, the type of energy that kinda gives away that they aren’t actually in the Navy Seals but they like to think or act like they are lol.
Thank you for providing sources and backing up your claims, I hope this issue can be spotlighted more and hopefully get resolved or under control before too many in the industry are forced out.
Okay, so I am in game development, and I talked to Porsche for a licensing agreement (among other car brands) because I wanted to have real life cars in a racing game. Most of the appeal of a racing game is being able to drive cars that laypeople could never afford. As an independant, it is not financially possible to obtain a license from any of them. Even the cheapest brand is multiple millions of dollars with odd stipulations, including but not limited to such requirements as: “you cant show our cars getting damaged,” “our cars have to be faster/better than X brand even when statistically this is not true,” and “you cannot allow the player to customize any part of the vehicle and it can only be displayed in the specific colors we tell you.” The only way you can get around such stipulations is if you can find a company like RUF that buys cars like Porsche, changes them very slightly, and then get the license from them instead since they will usually not have the same requirements. They do not pay you, no company pays you for brand licensing like that. Contact any brand and ask them for a licensing deal where they pay you and they are going to laugh at you. The way Kojima was probably able to get Monster to pay him was either he has a friend at the company/ a friend is a shareholder or he was somehow able to convince them that the deal was film product placement, which is a different kind of license and comes with different rules, but often means the brand does pay the prodution studio. I am going to assume he just has a friend that works at or owns stake in Monster.
If the problem was a woman lead, how come The Witcher 4 also didn’t get brigaded? Screamer also featured a woman as its main character in the trailer and that was not brigaded either. Even if what you are implying is true, the same thing happened to Concord, people brigading it for being “woke,” and we both know how that ended. This isn’t a stat you can just handwaive away because “some people are brigading it for being woke,” literally the same thing happened with Concord.
Also consider TLOU2 had mixed to negative reception among fans, especially by comparison to the first game. Players will be more skeptical in such a situation. They couldn’t have known when they bought the game how they would feel by the end, and people who felt negatively certainly will be less likely to buy the next game from the same studio, regardless of whether it is related to TLOU or not.
Im thinking more on licensing costs. Porsche is not a cheap license, especially when considering costs for the details of such a license. The other logos seemed to be Sony owned IP, so they didn’t cost anything, but just seeing Porsche makes me wonder how many other licenses they are paying for, thus ballooning development cost. They may have a license with Porsche for Gran Turismo, but that would not be applicable to other games, so they would have to renegotiate the license, which is always inviting the licensor to demand more the next time.
I don’t doubt it will sell more copies than Concord, but I do believe it will not sell enough to be profitable, and in this way be similar to Concord. The Youtube dislike ratio on the reveal trailer for Intergalactic (91k up, 225k down) is more or less the same as for Concord (8.5k up, 84.5k down) at overwhelmingly negative, and historically speaking this is not an insignificant statistic. Other games I might expect to have similar ratios for various reasons do not have overwhelmingly negative reception, such as the female lead game The Witcher 4 (5k up, 1k down on PlayStation channel - 251k up, 24.7k down on The Witcher channel), anime racing game Screamer (2k up, 75 down), and even The Last of Us Part 2 Remaster (7.2k up, 6.6k down) which I for sure expected to be negative.
I certainly agree with the trend you are seeing. I remember when this happened when ReCore was promoted as “from the developers of Metroid Prime.” ReCore wasn’t awful, but it was far from Metroid Prime. I also didn’t like Naughty Dogs previous titles, but I do think this will be a hard sell. Space themed games typically don’t sell as well as modern or medieval themed games (unfortunately, since I really love space!). I guess the audience for them is not as big, or rather it is big but divided into many niche categories that don’t really like mixing. Star Citizen, Starfield, and StarCraft don’t have a huge overlap of players despite being space themed games. That’s just how space stuff is. Star Wars and Star Trek don’t mix, and while some people are interested in both, most people pick one or the other and stay there forever. I mean look at Star Wars Outlaws, which seems to be in a similar vein to Intergalactic. Sold horribly, despite having the leg up on Intergalactic of being a Star Wars title.
I suppose we will see how it turns out. Personally, I don’t hope the game fails, but I do think Naughty Dog needs to make some big changes to get me and others interested in trying the game again.
I definitely remember the Concord developers bragging about having worked on games like Destiny. Regardless, I think you are underestimating how expensive Intergalactic is going to be, and I absolutely think that it will not be breaking even on sales, unless they significantly change the fundamental design of the game they have shown (and the leaked plot honestly, it is not very good if that is real).
Marathon and Fairgame$ are absolutely going next, but I don’t see them releasing before Intergalactic, despite being developed for much longer, probably. I think both are probably being delayed even more than they already are after seeing what happened to Concord.
Intergalactic from Naughty Dog lookin to be Concord 3.
Sometimes these companies think they be making the most bomb idea ever, when its being made for an audience or market that doesn’t exist or isnt big enough to cover the cost of development. In the case of Intergalactic, most people that like space games are older, and much of it appears to try to market to older people (the logos, the CRTs, the rip off Snake Plissken woman), but the gameplay is going to be way too fast for older folks that typically like the setting. Looks like it will be like trying to make a Civilization player play Bloodborne.
At least Ubisoft has a bit of an excuse, since Skull & Bones legally could not be scrapped because of it being funded in part by the government of Singapore. I wonder if this new content is from the government of Singapore trying to get some of their really bad investment back. They wanna make a Concordillion dollars off of the like 3 people playing the game lol.
Its quite plausible. Veilguards writers were bad at their jobs, and her writing for Emmerich only served to make the other writers look even worse. I could absolutely see this happening, I have seen it happen at less creative jobs over way lower stakes than this.
By being pushed out, I mean when other employees either don’t like you, disagree with your personal views, or whatever else would cause them to view you negatively, begin to treat you badly. They might give meaningless tasks or make your work seem trivial, or they might leave you out of group activities you otherwise wanted to join, especially if they know that. Basically creating a hostile working environment in a way that isn’t likely to get HR to agree with you when you report it, and more likely that HR will think you are crazy.
Essentially, due to the way other employees treat them or make them feel, they can feel pushed out of the company. Forced into taking the option to leave because a previously enjoyable job is now insufferable because of the other employees.
Its too bad basically the only good writer left at BioWare is leaving.
I have to wonder if she was/felt pushed out by the other employees there. Veilguard has laughably bad writing, and the fact that the DA creator, and multiple writers either left or were fired before Veilguard went into production/ during its production feels suspicious.
I don’t know, I usually play duo and 5-6 is overtuned, and nearly impossible. Especially on automatons, because it just spawns infinity low levels. But then diff 9-10 feel like diff 3-4 because even though they spawn the big enemies, for some reason it spawns less of the low levels.
The game feels like it has automatic scaling, but it always feels like it is set up wrong.