Hi-Fi rush comes out of nowhere to massive critical acclaim just to be shut down anyway because Starfield sucked ass. Why people ever do business with these shitass publishers I'll never understand
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Because the indie space is also a graveyard. Investors are increasingly wary of funding anything but a "guarantee" and plenty of studios have had to shutter because the funding they were promised was rescinded.
The major publishers are at least a paycheck that can keep a studio going for another year or two.
Because the indie space is also a graveyard. Investors are increasingly wary of funding anything but a “guarantee” and plenty of studios have had to shutter because the funding they were promised was rescinded.
Maybe gaming has become too bloated as a concept if no company can ever produce a product with their own money any more, instead always listening entirely to investor cash.
So... only independently wealthy people should make games?
Game dev takes time. The way you shrink that time is to do it full time instead of working on it in your spare time for a decade or so. Because of increased cost of living, the ability to just take a few months off and burn your savings is increasingly not viable.
That is where investors come in. Whether it is a kickstarter campaign (NEVER PRE-ORDER!! RAWR!!!!), a venture capitalist, or a major publisher. And all of those have consequences.
But, increasingly, it is only the major publishers who are even trying. And they are increasingly selective of who they try it with. NoClip have been making an indie game as a way to better understand the market and they have a SPECTACULAR video where Danny O'Dwyer talks about his experience pitching the game to publishers and what kinds of responses they get. And it is really telling that he gushes over how nice one publisher (I think it was Humble?) were in that they actually responded and said they couldn't move forward rather than just ghosting him.
the ability to just take a few months off and burn your savings is increasingly not viable.
Universal healthcare would help here.
Sure but that's only a piece of the puzzle. Housing, food, and general living costs are so insane now that any decent savings would be obliterated much more quickly. UBI would be a better solution here, but that's almost a pipedream at this point.
I think AI will help in this space and allow smaller teams to compete with larger companies. At least until those companies do the same thing.
Taking a look at big-cash high profile releases like Redfall and Starfield…is “guaranteed failure” what they’re going for? Because those indie games were pretty much the main reason I kept subscribing to game pass.
Remember that the people actually doing the work don't decide who to make deals with.
You close Tango the developers behind your only recent good game, but keep 343 open. Ok Phil.
Pentiment and Psychonauts were great too so RIP to those studios 🫠
Most of the upper eschalon of 343 have left or were kicked out over the last year, including some of the worst offenders who drove the creation of the crap we've had recently such as Kiki Wolf kill.
It seems like they're internally rebuilding 343 because they know how much of a powerhouse that IP can be if done right. I'm not optimistic about the next Halo, but cautiously hopeful now at least.
I doubt it is even thoughts over how powerful Halo is as an IP. I would be shocked if MS corporate hadn't realized that any 343 Halo is going to get shit on because "this isn't Bungie". And people hate 343 enough that firing them and pushing the leads out won't raise any red flags.
But yeah. Look at how much damage control MS did when they were releasing fucking Pentiment on switch (look, I love that game with all my heart but you know things are fucked when people remember it exists). There is zero chance 343 "closes" until the next full generation... probably that gen's refresh SKU consoles. Because it would instantly be interpreted as "xbox is dead".
But gutting Bethesda? We already see people in this very thread talking about how it is good because they didn't like a game one of the studios did.
It's possible people won't accept a new game just because of the name attached, but that's not what I'm seeing.
I still play Infinite pretty heavily and most of the people I chat with there are saying the same, thank the lord leadership changed, let's give it a year or two and see.
After that, who knows.
Arkane- I mean, yeah Redfall was a clunker but Dishonored, Deathloop, and Prey all did pretty well I thought... though I suppose the two Wolfenstein games they did were kinda trash so there is a bit of falloff between the "glory days" and now.
Tango- Hi-Fi Rush was a bop, and Ghostwire did well enough I thought. Not seeing a good reason here.
Alpha Dog - Mighty Doom? Okay thats a fair closure.
--
prioritizing high-impact titles and further investing in Bethesda’s portfolio of blockbuster games
Chasing blockbusters is gonna fuck them up but I suppose more room in the lower weight classes isn't bad for gamers since it lets indies and others who aren't the big boys shine, and lord knows thats been wild over the past year'ish.
Arcane austin was already killed by the development of redfall. Most of the talent responsible for making dishonered and prey the games they were left during development of redfall. If arcane austin went back to making immersive sims instead of closing, it would be a new team making it, with little help from the pedegree implied by arcane's legacy.
Keep in mind however that arcane was two studios, the main studio in lyon france, and the other in austin texas. Dishonered was developed jointly. Dishonored 2 was lyon, pray was austin, and deathloop was lyon.
The lyon studio still exists. They are continuing to make games. The only thing announced from arcane is the marvel's blade game. Not optimistic, but arcane may still be around a while yet.
but Dishonored, Deathloop, and Prey all did pretty well I thought
I thought Arkane Austin (the closed one) was only Prey of those. Which is a shame, because Prey was utterly fantastic.
It is. Lots of "gamers" can't be fucked learning the difference between Austin and arkane, it's like how there's people who think bioware Montreal is the same as Edmonton or rockstar north is the same as san Diego when north makes GTA and the other red dead. Generally gamers don't care what studio does what just the first part of its name. Arkane Lyon are developing blade and that's still in progress.
Seeing Tango go is actually hurtful. Hi-fi rush was a great IP and had the potential for a great sequel if given the chance.
(I feel they wrapped it up nicely but left it open enough for a sequel.)
I hope the employees can continue making great games elsewhere but it's sad we will never see them develop the IP further.
Damn, they shut down Tango? Shiji Mikami can't catch a break.
Yeah the studio put out nothing but nice games. Sure, Ghostwire in particular wasn't stellar, but it was also enjoyable and pretty well done. Evil Within was dorky, but in just the right way. Hi-Fi was phenomenal, and that alone should have seen them physically behead every single higher manager at Bethesda before they tough anyone at Tango.
But alas, apparently if it ain't Fallout: Ghostwire or Fallout: Hi-Fi, then it doesn't matter. Manager bonuses ain't going to pay themselves (hrm... come to think of it, they do?), line has to go up!
I'm honestly ready to not support Xbox anymore after this. They've been non-stop fumbling the ball with game releases this generation. Hi-Fi Rush was the first game that came out that I felt was phenomenal and such a breathe of fresh air, and they just straight killed the studio anyways. Killing studios that make good games is not how you foster a gaming platform people want to be part of.
I never played Hi-Fi rush, Redfall, Mighty Doom, or The Evil Within. That said it looks like Tango hit their sales and quality strides. Alpha Dog and their Mighty Doom shit-ware deserves the dust bin and closure.
As cold and callous as this all sounds, I read about the Redfall development and it was leadership start to finish on that disaster. The employees, even at Alpha Dog, don't deserve this treatment. Dinga Bakaba from Arkane Lyon stated it perfectly
Don't throw us into gold fever gambits, don't use us as strawmen for miscalculations/blind spots, don't make our work environments darwinist jungles. You say we make you proud when we make a good game. Make us proud when times are tough. We know you can, we seen it before.
Fuck me, this part hurts the most, and I highly recommend anyone who didn't read the article at least look at what was said here. Everyone knows damn well that the corporation has the ability to flourish in keeping all the talented workers who got fucked by shitty leadership, instead the leadership will fail upward and keep ruining projects. Companies have so many chances to really disrupt and show the world a better way and they continually take shallow short sighted routes to cheap monetary victory, discarding humanity along the way. Fuck companies.
Attention laid off workers from the gaming industry:
I'm one hundred percent ready for working, complete games, that don't require subscriptions, and can't be bricked remotely. Make them, and I will buy.
I will buy your products. I will buy them instead of the product being churned out by the companies that cut you.
Cool but most indie devs don't have the capital to fund the development. They want to make those games, but they have to partner with publishers so they can afford to buy stuff like food and rent while developing before they make any sales.
I am going to pretend you didn't mean it this way but that REALLY comes across as telling people who lost their jobs that they deserve it because they didn't meet your requirements (that weren't even true back in the day of DOS and BBSes...)
Please.. fuck right off with that. The devs at Arkane Austin or Tango aren't making the decision to add a battlepass or to release a game before it is "done". They are doing what management requires of them. The same management that then fires them to make sure that the overall branch of the company turns a profit.
You are kicking people when they are down.
I agree with your statement. However, what I believe the original comment was saying is that if the developers who have lost their jobs were to get together and make a game as they describe, then they would buy it. The malice was directed at Microsoft and so on.
At least, that's how I read it...
That (your read) is precisely how I meant it.
Which is still a complete load of demonstrable bullshit.
Getting funding for a team is increasingly difficult. Plenty of studios have talked about the horrors of 2023-2024 and how nobody wants to fund even a small team. And this would not be "take it across the finish line" but a solid 3-6 years before even a chance at a return on investment because these devs wouldn't even have IPs or past releases to leverage.
But also? Listen to folk like Xalavier Nelson Jr who talk about this. They are fighting the good fight to push back against financiers and publishers to make games "the right way" with monetization models that are what people ask for. And they still get shit on endlessly and ignored.
In a lot of ways, it reminds me of "abandonware" back in the day. For those who are too young, for the longest time it was nigh impossible to buy a game that was even five or six years old because it would not be on store shelves. GoG (back when they were Good Old Games) was specifically designed to update and sell these games. And without invasive DRM to boot.
And suddenly all the abandonware torrent sites just started uploading gog installers. And now we almost never hear the term "abandonware" because... people were always full of shit and just wanted to make an excuse to justify their own actions.
It is, in fact, not BS to be mad at a megacorp for cutting valuable and functioning assets, and the fact you do not understand that is hilariously pathetic.
If you're aware of people and games that do fit, then whining about it and talking about how they get crapped on instead of how cool their sfuff is doesn't help, either!
You seem to be more willing to paint things negatively than help improve, so why should we listen?
Who the fuck isn't mad at the megacorp?
My issue is the people who use this as an excuse to blame the devs who are just doing their jobs while trying to live their dreams.
Again. There are studios out there who are doing exactly what everyone insists they want AND are doing so in ways that make getting funding difficult. And they get shit on because of a "hot take" on twitter or because their game isn't as pretty as Call of Duty.
When large groups of people get laid off because of corporate bullshit? The answer is not to say "Hey, you should fucking do better next time". It is "Fuck corporations" or "fuck capitalism".
The Indie scene releases a dozen of these every day. The problem is there's actually too much and most of these fail to ever find an audience.
Wow, what hollow platitude
Laid off workers don't have the ability to choose these options though. You're talking about management/marketing decisions.
We all know this was completely necessary at any level, but why the hifi guys? Aren't they the best bets you could hope to invest in? They make good games that sell decently with less investment than AAA massive failures need.
capitalism ruins absolutely everything
Honestly all these tech layoffs could really come bite back publishers and the big tech in the near future.
Theres a lot new talent for competitors to snatch and fraction of these developers might even form up new studios to make the next big thing.
I guess redfall ain't getting those characters people already paid for.
Just a reminder that buying this game no longer supports the devs
Sail the seas friends
I wonder how many promises Microsoft made to the FCC and other regulators about how their mergers and acquisitions wouldn't result in layoffs?
I see no mention of Emil Pagliarulo's head rolling. Still worried about Elder Scrolls 6
Fuck you, Microshit.
allowing the deal to happen was a big mistake.