I don’t remember the concern for most part of X360’s era. Just Xbox has been quite inconsistent in the last 10-13 years, it’s totally understandable, we all know that’ll disappear in 6 months if we’re given some gameplay and release dates for late 2022 and early 2023 games.
But this months are being meh, specially with this news and 343i’s not being able to accomplish their roadmap.
I totally understand this. My work is pretty hands off as well. as long as we make goals and stuff they leave us alone. if they do see an issue Management does step in. I feel that may be what they did with pulling in CD
Mate i’m one of the best fan of AOE but this Is the actual situation. It’s sad but It’s the truth.
Given the huge fan base of Playstation, any ‘negative’ news to xbox is always going to get traction. Look at how Sony’s attempt to dismiss a lawsuit of former playstation female employees experiencing harrassment had no traction anywhere recently, not even with gaming media, and yet a few people leaving a new xbox studio is all over the place.
Love it when people use “Trending on twitter” as a metric of concern. Literally anything can “trend” on twitter, even words/tags with less than 1000 tweets.
Gaming discourse ladies and gentlemen.
Yeah I’m wondering if it’s less of an issue on how things are actually being handled but more so how things may have been sold. You’d think a small team with highly, highly talented and experienced members would be more suited for a more collaborative process. If they were always going to go with a more typical top down approach, they probably should have just built it as a normal large studio. To be fair, there are issues and obstacles with that approach as well.
I still want to believe in the unique direction they intended with the initiative, so hopefully they can form a healthy culture and either hire back some talent or merge in ways with CD to efficiently handle the creative process.
Many of these fears and worries could be taken away if they were to show the game this June.
Question is, can they show it off in a decent enough state?
I don’t count Matty as an Xbox Youtuber. He continues to prove it and not warrant support or viewership with every take.
My take on all that is that MS is at least willing to give all the time the devs need to build their game and their culture. Darrel Gallager probably always had a way of doing certain stuff, and that wasn’t compatible with the way other people were doing things. Maybe too many top talents that each wanted to do their own thing. Crystal Dynamics coming in should be good since Darrel worked there.
I don’t think Microsoft should show the game to stop fearmongering.
Xbox has tones of games in the pipeline. People will get over PD when they show Starfield, Forza or whatever.
Gamer’s “fears and worries” online are the most irrelevant bullshit in gaming. Their complaints and their whining and their negativity doesn’t do anything. They complain and are nonstop negative about EA, Ubisoft, Activision, every year, hell the last month was spent shitting on Ubisoft games basically, and yet watch game sales for every year be dominated by those companies. Gamers™ are pathetic and their words are meaningless.
I think the whole idea behind the initiative got completely overrun by covid-19. A bunch of super creative supposed to be in one spot together was suddenly thrust into a work from home with people they’re just meeting and unable to have those creative spark conversations like in the office.
Another factor is living in Santa Monica is expensive so that could be an incentive in why developers would move somewhere else where it is cheaper to live or they get a better offer. (12 Most Expensive Places to Live in California in 2022 - List of Cities & Towns)
Tricky thing is I feel Santa Monica is a hub for game developers because many studios are located there.
I knew it.
For my own sanity I just couldn’t open it. I just knew I’d see the most batshit toxic takes imaginable
A small team of highly talented and senior/experienced people working together is also not always an assured way of success IMO - the potential for creative differences/conflicts is very likely in this situation and it seems like this may have happened at TI.
The fact that they have had some junior level employees recently means that they may be getting a grasp of how they want their studio work culture and creative process to be.
Also, I think that they have very little job openings (3) probably due to Crystal Dynamics’s involvement. They may want to avoid having overlaps in job positions for the time being.
This is just speculation on my part - so I could be absolutely wrong here.
But The Initiative is AAA - it is AAA studio that hires another AAA studio to make the game 
That is true since that is a hub most of PlayStation’s studios such as Sony Santa Monica, Naughty Dog, Insomniac, etc. But also because the Initiative is a new studio they may not offer the same benefits. For example with the Initiative you could have more of a leadership role there but you may not have as high of a salary or resources compared to large veteran studios like Naughty Dog.
