My comment was partially facetious, but according to numerous accounts he is hard to work with. Like a combination of being vague or uncertain about what he wants, but also a perfectionist, and he can be highly abrasive and sometimes controlling. It was noted in several places he didn’t really like to get too friendly with the staff because he found it difficult to be friends while also being their boss.
Several games he worked on, notably Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite, were quite grueling on staff for a variety of reasons. Following Bioshock’s release in 2007, the studio lost most of it’s staff, shrinking to ~20 people. Some forming a new studio at 2k, but a lot of others just leaving for greener pastures. Following this shrinking, they then staffed up to more than 100 people at peak to work on Bioshock Infinite, a process which took ~6 years to deliver the finished product, and require calling in help from sister studios at 2k.
In 2014, not long after delivering Bioshock Infinite, Irrational Games was shuttered. Partially this was “well the game sold well but we expected EVEN better sales”, but another part was Levine himself.
Not everybody disliked Ken specifically. But basically everybody agreed he was hard.
The studio was shut down, ~80 people were fired, and about ~10-15 staff members were kept in a sort of state of development hibernation. Eventually this resurfaced when Ken announced Ghost Story Games in 2017 with 2k.
lol shit like that is always going to happen, it’s only a matter of time. Microsoft can’t buy everyone and some companies even if they seem close could still say no to MS.
Given the market, most of the publishers might be looking to acquire anyway.
That does not disqualify them for an acq from xbox. And these chain acquisitions do happen.
There is a good chance that xbox might actually encourage this. For instance, if Sega is looking to buy Vanillaware and LizardCube, I would think that xbox might actually encourage them.
The first part is not what i am talking about. The budgets are not small even for smaller teams. The technique is purely out of a need to innovate in the AAA game development. That is where the NT/GW/TI techniques differ from Rockstar. They are the anti-est.
There is a debate that needs to be had on the design too.Or is Rockstar too self congratulatory to understand where they are headed in terms of prioritising world building over gameplay. There are a few videos on this topic. But I suppose that has been discussed in some of the other threads already.
I agree on the part where in terms of pure diversity of even styles of game development in the large - There are few parallels to Rockstar’s style of investing such a large effort on their world building. And acquiring Rockstar is worth it for that simplest of sentiments - having one more unique style of building a AAA+ gamedev shop, in addition to what they already have.
PS - Still feel that there are a lot of other publishers providing better value for.money.
I’m honestly just more concerned on how these franchises would move on after some of the big names have left.
We’ve already seen something on a far larger scale happen to Bioware, but I also don’t know enough of Rockstar’s head workforce to fully know where they’re sitting in terms of writing and general leadership.
And I think I’m objectively correct when I say Rockstars games do not play technically well compared to their competition. There have even been inside reports in the past about members of the team trying to improve on some of their aged systems, then being turned down. It’s probably one of the biggest reasons why I can’t get into their games (same with CDPR and Witcher’s combat).
Am I being overdramatic comparing it to Shenmue? Absolutely. Does GTAV play like a super pretty and expanded version of its PS2 versions? Also yes. It’s like it’s own form of jank some people are into.
Asobo’s head has made a comment in the past about wanting to stay independent, but it could be a case of them wanting to expand their overall value too by creating more original content.
And I didn’t grow up on Rockstar’s games, so I never had a chance to get those rose-tinted glasses imo. GTA has just always had a jank to it that really keeps me from enjoying it and (to an extent) it carries over to Red Dead as well for me.
They definitely excel in story telling, but damn can they really improve on some of their systems.
Obviously they’re an absolute cash cow and I’m not saying they don’t financially make sense for the long term, but if their workplace culture is still the same as in the article above I really don’t think it’s worth it unless Xbox/Microsoft plans on having major interventions with leadership to improve the culture.
I mean Microsoft bought Bethesda after Fallout 76 and the controversy over its disastrous Collector and Skyrim 10TH Anniversary is less worked than the GTA trillogy that didn’t stop them from Buying Bethesda. Microsoft is buying to improve according to Phil Spencer they want to progress together (Skyrim 10 TH was already planned before the official takeover so it is not a decision of Microsoft but in the future Bethesda will no longer do this kind of thing like false Collector or mediocre ports. the case of Take Two would be similar Microsoft could help them improve the case of Take Two is not in despair like Activision or there is a toxic culture that reigns and therefore we can directly ignore this kind of buyout Microsoft did not buy Gearbox because the Studio has a toxic culture, they are not going to buy Ubisoft because the publisher has a toxic culture (even if they try to improve that) … Take Two apart from the crunch stories at Rockstar that Phil Spencer could improve there is nothing about their toxic culture circulating Take Two has a good image compared to Activision or Ubisoft.
I would very much disagree on the toxic work culture perspective. The link I provided above comments on RDR2’s development and compared one of the heads as “Darth Vader when he arrives to the new Death Star before the Emperor”.
Not to mention the entire crapshoot LA Noire’s development was.
I’m not sure how much of their work culture has been workshopped since, but it doesn’t mean things are fixed either. It took the Blizzard situation way too long to finally blow up and that can definitely spread over to other companies too (if it gets that bad).
), it’s not the same thing.