I played Just Cause 3 for a few hours and loved the destruction but wasn’t really into it. Played Renegade Ops on 360 but never beat it. Love Mad Max and completed it. The open world stuff is Ubi like but the car combat and melee combat was awesome. Plus the world itself and music was great too. Still hoping for a Mad Max 2 at some point.
Rage 2 car combat was a step back in my opinion compared to Mad Max which was freaking awesome. I agree in regards to creating out there vehicles and whatnot.
Yeah it’s well made but would it hold together well as a game’s sole focus, specifically a big game? maybe it works a smaller game, but an open-world, live service title… maybe that’s where the game is taking long, they could’ve realized they’re gonna need more than just the vehicle gameplay and have been adding more variety to it.
I’m not sure people remember the game series, Mercenaries, from game studio Pandemic, but I hope Contraband is something like that.
Dann that’s a blast from the past, yeah they were great 
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This contractor issue is a huge problem that creates problems to the Xbox studios and it’s games. Spencer needs to change this because we already saw it’s impact on halo and Forza.
I agree completely, these contractor turn overs need to be stopped. I hate to say this, yet maybe the government needs to step in, to regulate employers from doing this to employees.
This isn’t good for people’s health or the industry.
This is really a bad thing. It treats people as assets not as artists. From a management point of view, you spend time teaching the tools to people to fire them when they are operational.
No surprise that the games are launching in such a mess, every time.
It is also telling that this thing was put in place because MS has no problems keeping people on short term contracts for life. Bad solution for a bad problem.
Some of my quick thoughts on this (copied from the discord):
As to why companies use contractors and the like, it’s all because of stupid corporate accounting rules and regulations. Contractors come from a different segment on the reports and so looks different to those who watch the books. To the common person money spent is money spent, but to legal laws from the government and financial markets its entirely different, and thus impacts the corporate valuation. It’s the game publicly traded and privately-owned companies have to play because it’s the law.
The tax laws are to a point where it’s better for corporations to hire teams of tax lawyers to work with the accounting departments. They save more by hiring there (up to a certain size) than not having such expensive departments.
Simplify taxes and stock markets and then we wouldn’t have this game of contractors vs full time direct hires.
Apparently MS has this rule because they got sued over abusing contracting instead of hiring full time. Everyone uses contractors but in MS they don’t get to stay for more than 18 months iirc, so for AAA games, trouble. Xbox needs to either be exempt from this rule or they allocate more hiring funds, or else their US based AAA studios will just not function as properly as they should…
How timely, lol. Did someone compare Xbox studios expansion, I would bet Xbox’s US studios don’t expand anywhere close to UK/EU ones.
And not all US is made equal. A studio in Florida is far cheaper than one in Texas, which is cheaper than one in California.
Not about cheaper, the hiring rules apply in the US.
Playground split from 1 studio into 2 and had the goal of hitting 400 people as a result. Don’t think there is anything to take away from it.
I’m almost certain the layoffs didn’t impact the UK studios (dont ask me how I know 
).
I look forward to seeing more of Fable. I am careful with expectations, always, but hopefully we see it in June.
You know what were going to see in June?
Does this extend to limited integration Beth and Acti? Feels like a smart move to circumvent contacting laws
Just so you guys know, that isn’t just a Microsoft thing. A ton of companies have policies like that in place.