2024 VIDEO GAMES CATCH ALL THREAD

[Technico Support]

6 hours ago, Craig H said:

My friend is a design manager at Insomniac and was the design manager on Spider-Man 2 and is having a real hard time seeing a lot of very talented people that worked on his team that made that game now be gone. No, hey, your last day is 30 or 60 days from now or anything like that. Just, all of you, the door is to your right, leave your badge on your way out. I wanted to ask him what their path forward is at this point, but I figure I'll wait a little bit.

I worked for a smaller studio for a few years (you wouldn't know them, they did a lot of subcontracting where the big company gets to slap their name on the finished product -- but I do have two credits on MobyGames, which is hilarious) and this is just how the industry works.  We had three rounds of layoffs when I was there, always coinciding with the end of development.  It's a joke of an industry where all jobs are really just temp jobs.  Hire like crazy for the ramp-up, then layoff all but a core group when you're finished the project.  I always got the impression that the workers lived by fooling themselves into thinking they were going to be the ones allowed to stay and that the other guy would be the one let go.  But yeah, I, too, saw good people, who'd given so much of their lives, shown the door with zero notice. 

[Andrew POE!]

It sadly just shows that game development (and video games in general) is not sustainable as an industry. Almost every company is poorly managed, poorly run companies. Except for maybe Nintendo at times. Although Nintendo has the bright idea of taking fan hobbyists to court over emulators and never allowing their back catalog to be playable if they have their way.

[odessasteps]

Ij just noticed that Inkulnati is the whole game now and not just a trail anymore. 

[Raziel]

2 hours ago, Andrew POE! said:

It sadly just shows that game development (and video games in general) is not sustainable as an industry. Almost every company is poorly managed, poorly run companies. Except for maybe Nintendo at times. Although Nintendo has the bright idea of taking fan hobbyists to court over emulators and never allowing their back catalog to be playable if they have their way.

It's funny that 45 years later, we're gonna get another crash, fueled by mostly the same reasons the first one happened (Inept, aloof, and delusional Executives squeezing every drop of blood from the stone, unrealistic dev cycles causing programmer burnout and poor games, and a market oversaturation and multiple variants of the same theme that hit once and everyone wants to recreate but missed what sold the first one).  Only thing that this one won't have is the overabundance of physical media causing massive losses, but I guess that's being replaced with Dev costs increasing by orders of magnitude while MSRP's only barely shifted.

[Andrew POE!]

32 minutes ago, Raziel said:

It's funny that 45 years later, we're gonna get another crash, fueled by mostly the same reasons the first one happened (Inept, aloof, and delusional Executives squeezing every drop of blood from the stone, unrealistic dev cycles causing programmer burnout and poor games, and a market oversaturation and multiple variants of the same theme that hit once and everyone wants to recreate but missed what sold the first one).  Only thing that this one won't have is the overabundance of physical media causing massive losses, but I guess that's being replaced with Dev costs increasing by orders of magnitude while MSRP's only barely shifted.

Yeah, if you look at the release calendar for the rest of this year, we have too many games coming out at once. It's borderline impossible to play them all. Due to the volume of games, some people (including me) are having to play catchup with releases from years ago (stretching back to PS3/Xbox 360/Wii generation and for some further than that to PS2/Xbox/GameCube generation). As a hobbyist, you end up not buying anything or becoming selective on what's bought. Another crash might be the only thing that can slow down the releases.

Edited February 28 by Andrew POE!

[RIPPA]

Speaking of which - to get in on the "fun"

EA announced they are laying of 5% of their workforce which equates to roughly 670 employees

[Death From Above]

I've spent most of my time in Helldivers 2 fighting the bugs, went over to the automatons for a bit and you really do have to play pretty differently against the two enemy types. I tend to run shotgun/attack drone backpack on the bugs, but against the robots my play is the Ballistic Shield and the one handed SMG you get on tier 3 of the requisitions. Beyond that, I've dumped my first couple ship upgrades into turrets since those are pretty much always good anywhere.

[dogwelder]

2 hours ago, RIPPA said:

Speaking of which - to get in on the "fun"

EA announced they are laying of 5% of their workforce which equates to roughly 670 employees

 

[odessasteps]

I just saw Disney Dreamlight Valley is on Game Pass (now?) not just when that happened.

[RIPPA]

2 hours ago, odessasteps said:

I just saw Disney Dreamlight Valley is on Game Pass (now?) not just when that happened.

It has been there since release

[odessasteps]

Ah. Maybe I noticed just bc it was at top of my game pass Home Screen.

[Robert S]

20 hours ago, Technico Support said:

I worked for a smaller studio for a few years (you wouldn't know them, they did a lot of subcontracting where the big company gets to slap their name on the finished product -- but I do have two credits on MobyGames, which is hilarious) and this is just how the industry works.  We had three rounds of layoffs when I was there, always coinciding with the end of development.  It's a joke of an industry where all jobs are really just temp jobs.  Hire like crazy for the ramp-up, then layoff all but a core group when you're finished the project.  I always got the impression that the workers lived by fooling themselves into thinking they were going to be the ones allowed to stay and that the other guy would be the one let go.  But yeah, I, too, saw good people, who'd given so much of their lives, shown the door with zero notice. 

I guess that's the story of software development turned up to 11. You start up with a team of what you think is a sensible size, after a couple of delays realize that there is no way that you can keep your target (date and/or content-wise) and add loads of people to that project, completely ignoring Brook's law ("Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later."). Once the project is done (one way or the other), you are left with a huge team without much to do, because of course you don't start to think about the next project while the current one is still running (and the current project is always the only thing that is really important) or even better slowly move resources out of one project and move it into the other so that you have a smooth transition when the first project hits market. Looking at my company, hardware development probably is not that much different either.

[RIPPA]

Figure this is the first in a few developers that are gonna get sold off now

[Casey]

Gearbox is likely to be another one.

EDIT: The announcement is expected in March, and they aren’t going independent again. The three options that Randy Pitchford told employees about was stay with Embracer, finance a buyout to go indie again, or sell to someone else. 

Edited February 29 by Casey

[Robert C]

7 hours ago, Robert S said:

I guess that's the story of software development turned up to 11. You start up with a team of what you think is a sensible size, after a couple of delays realize that there is no way that you can keep your target (date and/or content-wise) and add loads of people to that project, completely ignoring Brook's law ("Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later."). Once the project is done (one way or the other), you are left with a huge team without much to do, because of course you don't start to think about the next project while the current one is still running (and the current project is always the only thing that is really important) or even better slowly move resources out of one project and move it into the other so that you have a smooth transition when the first project hits market. Looking at my company, hardware development probably is not that much different either.

Ive never seen or heard of anybody laying off most of a hardware design team post project completion.  I’ve seen it after a project cancellation, but only once.  And I’ve been through an insane number of cancellations.  Normally our next project is lined up long before the current one finishes.  
 

Probably a bunch of reasons for that.  Hardware designers are a pain in the ass to find and hire.  So many specialties that don’t carry over to one another easily.  Also, the work that occurs after something gets released frequently is as much as the pre silicon work.  
 

What does happen frequently is shifting whole teams to work on a project that’s got behind, then moving to some other emergency once they’re done with the first.  Been there plenty of times.  It sucks, but it beats getting laid off.  

[Casey]

Toys For Bob are now an independent studio.

[SirSmUgly]

Hollywood abandoning the mid-range market where you budget a movie for 10M and make 40M at the box + whatever you get for DVD/BR/streaming rights is pretty much analogous to what video games did right now. 

Every major publisher except for Nintendo abandoned the AA market and primed their customers to expect only AAA masterpieces every time a release came out, and this is the result: Nintendo continues to roll along selling AA games at a full-price MSRP that almost never drops and that never does permanently drop, and the rest of the industry is slashing workforce so they can make the shareholders happy at the next quarterly report. 

[Robert S]

49 minutes ago, Robert C said:

Ive never seen or heard of anybody laying off most of a hardware design team post project completion.  I’ve seen it after a project cancellation, but only once.  And I’ve been through an insane number of cancellations.  Normally our next project is lined up long before the current one finishes.  
 

Probably a bunch of reasons for that.  Hardware designers are a pain in the ass to find and hire.  So many specialties that don’t carry over to one another easily.  Also, the work that occurs after something gets released frequently is as much as the pre silicon work.  
 

What does happen frequently is shifting whole teams to work on a project that’s got behind, then moving to some other emergency once they’re done with the first.  Been there plenty of times.  It sucks, but it beats getting laid off.  

Okay, I probably should have prefaced it that I was not comparing that on a layoff level. In central Europe, Austria more specifically, doing mass layoffs just to optimize profits for stockholders is not that easy legally anyway. I was thinking about a current hardware project, for which over the last decade the size of the hardware team was maybe doubled. This project is slowly coming to an end (after taking about three times as initially planned and costing about five times as much) and management is getting nervous because they have loads of specialists that they won't need for a decade or so reg. new development. But you are definitely right: there is a lot of work to be done to keep the product on the market (fixing issues with early series, replacing parts that become unavailable etc.).

[Zimbra]

Lmao, the Dark Forces remaster is out and they want thirty American dollars for it.  Out of their damn minds.

Also the most highly-anticipated sequel of the year has dropped.  That's right: Regency Solitaire 2 is out now, motherfuckers.

[Death From Above]

Man, imagine if the Freelancer mode in Hitman was actually good

[dragonzombie]

On 2/28/2024 at 6:23 AM, Setsuna said:

Not sure if anyone played Mario Maker 1 on WiiU or 3DS but they announced awhile back that the servers were shutting down April 8th This led to a team ( originally pretty small but the discord has blown up to 8.5k members lately) trying to beat every level that was uncleared in the game. It's been an awesome journey to watch and we're down to roughly 430 levels left with a little more than a moth to beat them all. 

Here's a video that blew up pretty big from one of the members when the mm1 grind just restarted. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GydctP3DfW0

Edit : Him saying there are still easy levels is no longer true. Everything left now is really difficult and only for experienced mm players. 

I only make easy to medium levels in Mario Maker. Sometimes weird layout levels.  I have beat very hard levels, but I do not like playing them.

[Villanova Grad]

On 2/28/2024 at 3:41 PM, Raziel said:

It's funny that 45 years later, we're gonna get another crash, fueled by mostly the same reasons the first one happened (Inept, aloof, and delusional Executives squeezing every drop of blood from the stone, unrealistic dev cycles causing programmer burnout and poor games, and a market oversaturation and multiple variants of the same theme that hit once and everyone wants to recreate but missed what sold the first one).  Only thing that this one won't have is the overabundance of physical media causing massive losses, but I guess that's being replaced with Dev costs increasing by orders of magnitude while MSRP's only barely shifted.

Unreallstc dev cycles?  How so?  The most unrealistic thing I see is management giving in when project leaders tell them they need another year or two and 50 million to finish a game already over deadline,  15 years ago, we got three Uncharted games in a single gen.  Also got three Dead Spaw titles, the Gears of War trilogy + a spinoff, three Bungie Halo titles plus a couple spinoffs by other studios, at least four Ratchet and Clank games plus a couple spinoffs (can’t remember if All 4 One was developed by Insomniac or not.  I could go on.

There’s a lot of blame to go around here, but a lot of it rests with studios who can’t hit deadlines, stay within budget, etc.  Sony’s president says a lot of the blame rests with studios not hitting deadlines or staying within budget.  That’s not the whole story, but I doubt it’s total bs.  In 10+ years, development cycle length has more than doubled for big games.  Lol, it’s been over five years since indie darling Hollow Knight: Silksong was announced.  So seven years or so since development began?  That’s more nuts than anything Sony has done.

Lotta blame rests with studio heads too. Microsoft and Sony have basically abandoned the AA market over the past ten years.  Yeah, that didn’t work out too well.  And I’ll blame gamers all days long for the sake of the industry.  Dudes want cutting edge games and no reused assets but cry over the first price increase in 40 years?  Lol, I’m sure that couldn’t turn out badly. And you’ll never convince me training your audience to rent instead of buy is good for the industry.  

Lotta blame to go around,  I think the better publishers - Sony - will adapt.  The companies that don’t will become Sears or Blockbuster.

But, yeah, it’s all evil managements types and eviler corporations. Though, honestly, I’d be surprised if this site ever took a centrist position in that regard.

 

Edited March 2 by Villanova Grad

[AxB]

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

On 2/29/2024 at 1:45 PM, SirSmUgly said:

Hollywood abandoning the mid-range market where you budget a movie for 10M and make 40M at the box + whatever you get for DVD/BR/streaming rights is pretty much analogous to what video games did right now. 

Every major publisher except for Nintendo abandoned the AA market and primed their customers to expect only AAA masterpieces every time a release came out, and this is the result: Nintendo continues to roll along selling AA games at a full-price MSRP that almost never drops and that never does permanently drop, and the rest of the industry is slashing workforce so they can make the shareholders happy at the next quarterly report. 

Hasn't Nintendo also historically never done a mass layoff? I remember Satoru Iwata taking a massive pay cut after the Wii U took a bath in the market (can't remember if it was a third or a half) and said it was better for him to cut his own pay than release workers and damage morale, because that won't make good games.

The whole AA/AAA game thing confuses me too. I've seen those definitions change so much that it's not worth differentiating anymore. If a game looks fun, I'll try it, if it doesn't, I won't. That's my scale.

[Ramo2653]

On 2/28/2024 at 8:43 PM, RIPPA said:

It has been there since release

My GF has been playing that Disney Dreamlight on her phone non stop since it got released. At least she has some perspective when I dig into a game now.