The article read like your typical cranky summary of a creative team chafing under corporate direction. These things are unfortunate but do happen. Absent the context of a console war, you might even call it boring.
Also, for as weirdly secretive as the industry is at times, are these types of articles at all common for other industries? I guess we get some behind the scenes on the set stories for TV shows, but it’s not like we get these kind of stories about IBM dev teams or what not. Maybe the closest thing it reminds me of is sports journalism about unhappy locker rooms.
Bend’s developers feared they might be absorbed into Naughty Dog
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Yes, the rank and file developers must have been so frightened about the possibility of ending up working at what might be the most prestigious game studio currently existing. That’d mean ignoring the proud history of Sony’s Bend studio, whose last releases were a CCG for Vita in 2012, and Days Gone in 2019. These are not people who want to work on the Last of Us! Their passion is to create a Last of Us clone that gets mediocre review.
It’s 2 gens old. They’re probably thinking giving it the Demon’s Souls treatment is a guaranteed win.
Bingo. The media were super shitty to the game. They liked to claim zombie games were over and people are tired of open world games, only to turn around and spooge over the RE2 remake and talk about how they played AC: Odyssey for 400 hours.
He does frame it as an “obsession” at Sony with blockbuster hits. Which might also be described as focusing their resources on their most successful teams and franchises…
Hey, to be fair, that was an original Uncharted action game, not the CCG, and Bend Studios has a long history going back to being the creators of Syphon Filter on PS1.
From these developer’s side sure, but then he follows up with:
To Sony, the move made sense. Naughty Dog is “one of the key studios” for Sony’s ability to sell PlayStations, said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Matthew Kanterman. “Sony’s competitive advantage has always been exclusive content over Microsoft and more new games as well as remakes of classic titles from such a storied team can help sustain demand for PS5.”
I don’t know, I read the thing and thought Sony’s moves make sense. And these developer’s perspective makes sense too in why they are disappointed. So I didn’t see the bias I guess.
There’s also this bit which I want to dig into, because it’s misleading or disingenuous
Hits including 2018’s God of War and 2020’s The Last of Us Part II are exclusive to PlayStation consoles, helping Sony sell some 114 million of the PS4. Rival Microsoft Corp. has taken the opposite approach, relying on a wide array of studios to feed its Netflix-like subscription service, Xbox Game Pass, which allows users to pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to a variety of games.
Right, so where to begin here. Microsoft wasn’t funding these studios game development, and most of these games are also on Playstation. The way Jason phrases it it makes it sound like Microsoft is supporting all this development, when what they really are doing is cutting distribution deals after the fact. The entire phrasing of Microsoft and studios is just weird and seems setup to push Microsoft as the good guy, when a more accurate statement would be “Microsoft has instead chosen to offer a subscription service of licensed content similar to the early days of Netflix before they produced many of their own series.” It’s also debatable how long term that will be with all their acquisitions, once their own content production line really gets rolling will they continue to strike deals with all these 3rd parties?
And I just want to reiterate, Microsoft hasn’t put out a single new game since the series X launched, and I don’t think has anything due out until September now.
Yes, Naughty Dog is super successful. But the corporate culture there is probably quite different from Bend. The crunch/deathmarch as ND strikes me are a pretty shitty work environment. Maybe the people at Bend don’t want that.
I dunno about the whole article but this is just a terrible paragraph. How you manage to pack in 4(5?) logical inconsistencies in a such a small space is impressive in its own way I suppose.
Emphasizing big hits can also be counterproductive because sometimes games that start small can turn into massive successes. In 2020, Sony didn’t put much marketing muscle behind the quirky video game creation system Dreams, by the PlayStation-owned Media Molecule in the U.K. As a result, PlayStation may have missed out on its own version of Roblox, a similar video game tool. Parent company Roblox Corp. went public earlier this year and is now valued at $45 billion.
I’m not sure I would use the word ‘feared’ but in general game developers do not appreciate the concept of being merged with/taken over by someone else, at least in terms of any type of creativity or job enjoyment. It doesn’t matter how great or successful the other company is. They might be accepting if it will result in obvious financial benefits, but the general assumption will be that their job environment is going to get worse.
Right, and Sony did fund that game. Where were these articles when Microsoft was shutting down Project Spark?
While everyone loves the little guy, and to find the next big thing, the real money is in expansion of the massive audience you already have.
People miss the forest for the trees this way. Taking a $50m seller and building a sequel that makes 10 or 15 percent more in sales is less important (by far) than taking a $200 million seller and getting that same increase. In real dollars (and I’m just making up the figures here), you make a hell of a lot more with the $200 million turning into $220 million than $50 into $55.
That’s the kind of calculus that drives Sony and any of the companies on top. Yes, they can often find money for smaller riskier projects that could become the next big thing, but selling even more of the big hits is just way more lucrative most of the time.
Days Gone (which I haven’t played) seems like a fine game but it wasn’t terribly well-received at the time. It also had some performance issues at launch iirc. These folks may be butthurt about it, but it clearly didn’t meet the standard Sony had for it internally.
Also, as @forgeforsaken points out, Microsoft isn’t even releasing Series X games. That’s fucking ridiculous.
Yes, they did fund the game - but I also think the notion that they did not throw their full marketing muscle behind it isn’t wrong. Yeah, I remember it being featured at some of Sony’s events - but I also remember that people were a bit confused to what exactly Dreams is. And I’m pretty sure, when it was actually released, it came out with much marketing fanfare. Most PS4 owners I know were kind surprised to learn that it’s available. And I’m still a bit baffled how few people I know who own it despite stuff like this usually being candy for curious game devs.
Not saying Dream would have been huuuuuuuuuge had Sony marketed it more, butI think they could have marketed it more.
This is actually legit great.
An essay on doors in video games (deep link from a post above) that’s very funny.
Sounds like Giant Bomb is basically over. Brad, Alex, and Vinny all leaving this week. Basically just leaves Jeff as the only core member sticking around.
Wow. They’ve been going for basically 12-13 years.
Vinny, Alex, and Brad all turning in their notice at the same time? Can’t help but feel they’re going somewhere together?
I used to love those guys, never missed a podcast. I pretty much drifted away after Ryan died though. Kind of surprised they’ve managed to keep it going all this time.
Like in the Basecamp thread, a 6 month bonus to find another job is very hard to turn down, even if you like the current job.
That’s not what the tweet is referring to. It’s referring to what sometimes goes into deals when one company buys another called a “key employee clause.” That basically says these specific people are key employees and if they stay for some amount of time (6 months, 1 year, 2 years, etc.) they will get a bonus.