No, I don’t care about the optics of Microsoft’s brand. What I do care about is the working conditions of one of my favorite game development studios being reduced to shit because of the negligence of several management teams and publishers. That’s the discussion I want to have, and what I will continue to have instead of pretending to make a fuss about Xbox’s optics.
I just found out that my absolute favorite western developer was gutted, front to back, and the end-product is a mediocre multiplayer game. I’m sick and tired of having my critique of how this was handled as ‘trolling’ because I don’t want to play ball with whining about optics. That shouldn’t be ANYONE’s takeaway from this because there’s nothing to learn from it. There’s no greater lesson to discuss about how volatile the conditions of game development are.
Because ZeniMax has done this before. ZeniMax did this with Human Head. With Behaviour. With Splash Damage. With InXile. They keep fucking doing the same routine of allowing their greater management to dictate what needs to be made at the cost of risking funding AND underpaying their teams at top of this. Zenimax’s negligence is what spawns shit like Brink, Hunted, WET, and leading developers like Human Head to take fucking jobs like The Quiet Man if they don’t comply to their draconian behavior. This isn’t new news! They’ve been doing this since the start of the 360 generation!
I don’t know what the fuck I need to do to make you assured that I’m not trolling – like my gamertag right there man. I love my Xbox. It’s so fucking frustrating that I have to have people like you on my neck because I don’t want to play ball.
On May 1st, I stated that I had no doubt this was a Zenimax ‘must please shareholders’ move. I was told by some that ‘this was what Arkane wanted to make’. When I suggested that this was PR spin I was told that I was creating fanfiction. Seems like I wasn’t too far off.
Also, Microsoft took over Zenimax in 2021. If Microsoft’s first order of business after taking the reigns was to cancel an Arkane project, the gaming community would have lost their minds. The only thing Microsoft could do here was give Arkane more time and salvage what they could.
If Redfall was cancelled, we would have listen for years about the “wonderful Arkane’s vampire game” that was not done. A bit like the fantasy of some people about Scalebound.
Yeah I call BS here as well and the source(s) Jason got this information from is probably reaching here. Remember: Just because a source says something does not mean it is automatically 100% true.
Those sort of things don’t happen publicly, and because of this Bethesda is likely going to have a less hands off approach and likely more heavily integrated into Microsoft. Asking for people to lose their jobs over something like this is not it, if Harvey Smith had been crunching his team(that didn’t come up) or protecting sexual harassers that would be anothere thing entirely.
I don’t expect it to happen or disclosed publicly. That’s as much as I can do as a consumer is hope the appropriate changes are made to benefit the team at Arkane Austin.
Management quality comes in varying degrees beyond those two (obviously bad) elements in the work place – I say this as someone that’s done QA before both in and out of the industry. It’s something that has to be discussed with a level of nuance and a mutual understanding that some end results the management teams want doesn’t really work out in the end. I completely get that. If what you and doncabesa interpreted as me saying I want people fired, then that wasn’t my intention and I apologize.
But after a certain point in time of seeing the same damn patterns of Zenimax management apply to yet another project, it’s just exhausting to see at this point for me.
If we’re to believe the article you’d think that ‘no one wants to work on this’ would be a sign that it wouldn’t come together. Developer morale plays a part in the development process!
That’s understandable as all types of management issues crop up, Microsoft being hands off was a sign of trust in Zenimax to clean up their act. They didn’t so now they will have to be more hands on with how management reports to them or even make a new position to be the Booty of Zenimax.
Someone that directly works for Microsoft and it’s there to help provide the teams with what they need and solve problems as they are reported, because if no one says something is wrong it’s too much to expect for it to be fixed.
Words out there that ABK will become family around July despite the battle against CMA. If they really go with this, hope you’re ready for crashes on Game Pass section. Them Diablo players are going to raid it.
That’s fair. We already have examples of how MS handles projects post acquisition like Pentiment so I’m sure that’s going to be fine. Just the notion of Austin losing the team that made Prey because of this – again, if the artcile is true – is an extremely depressing thing to see yet again out of Zenimax.
Which sucks! Like really sucks, and hope Microsoft has someone already in mind to do the job of managing Zenimax who can be hands on about meeting each teams need(and this could be something like new equipment to investigating and eventually firing someone), but hands off enough for each team to have their creative control.