This is the right path, add vehicles (big ones like scarabs too and that heavy gunship from wars) and npcs, we should be good.
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Seems so.
I became convinced that a BR type mode is in the works when that last man standing mode came out with the death field. Like it couldn’t be more on the nose lol.
That mode was pretty cool by the way. Hopefully it comes back.
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Both Age 4 and HI had the biggest launches in their franchises. They are lacking a bit on the support which is why you are seeing the numbers dwelling, but that can be reversed if they manage to keep content and updates coming before it’s too late. But it doesn’t seem to be because there’s something wrong, both studios put out great games, but they had to work a significant part of the development under the pandemic and are still feeling the effects of that, while making sure no one on the studio is crunching and pressured because it’s even more important to keep that on track in the times we are leaving in.
Let’s also not pretend that it’s only xbox studios that are struggling. As we saw with all the games that launched along halo with an worse state, or Horizon 2 had bugs and performance issues not found on the first game, PD that finally was able to get back at having a game for the first years of a new console, but that came at the cost of the game being basically extra content from their previous game that was spun off as a new entry, or ND still not releasing the Factions MP a year after the launch of tlou2 release.
The important here is that studios are being given time, resources and freedom to do the best as they can, it’s a learning process for everyone involved, but we should be celebrating how they already have ramped up the amount of releases and quality, not being hung up on the shortcomings.
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I think the biggest issues with The Initiative was a culture thing. They gathered senior devs and leads from throughout the industry and put them into a studio. I think the mix of egos from developers and the idea of having a say in developing the game was a bad combination Plus with the industry desperately needing senior devs in all sorts of positions it leads it to even worse areas.
However, I still think Perfect Dark will turn out okay in the end. I’d rather them look at their game without rose colored glasses and think about it rather than destroy it and start from the ground up.
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I wonder if initiative would’ve worked better if they were working on more projects and have different leaders for different projects. I really do feel Covid messed them up their whole flow which has caused some of this
The Initiative should have started on a low stakes indie like project so the team could learn to work together. Making their first project AAA was also a mistake imo or even let them support The Coalition on their new IP.
COVID fucked every studio in the industry, doesn’t matter if people don’t want to accept that or say it’s just an excuse. I’d say any game released between 2020 till now were all affected by COVID in some way. Games being started let’s say this year right now, those would be less affected as everyone should have a decent workflow but even now studios will still have big headaches with certain things like mocap and such. Devs having slow home connections having to download builds which could take 2-10 hours, it’s not a cop out to say COVID screwed Game dev.
This doesn’t count studio problems even before COVID which just compounds it even more. Oh and it doesn’t help that you announce games early thinking they would be done in 2 years and bam a global bloody pandemic hits and now it looks bad your game has been announced so early have you don’t have nothing to show.
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Yeah, the TI situation seems to be bad about the studio itself, because their pitch was that they would have a small team so everyone would have a voice and participate, and that turned out to be not true.
But it doesn’t necessarily means PD was affected, if the learders had a strong vision for the game even without imput from others could be something great. And the game moved to full production, so it seems the design phase went well. And there’s no reports of the game rebooting, only the fear of ex-employees that after they left it might have happened.
Sounds like a big number of CD people are on Perfect Dark then. That’s good.
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It’s the pure definition of “Shit happens.” I don’t like it but that’s the reality.
A good Jez take ? Huh ?
I can’t be bothered by this Initiative stuff…I have all the faith and trust in Phil and Matt Booty so I think they’ll get it right.
Anyways there’s way too much cool stuff out now and on the horizon for me to be worried about a game that is 1-2 years away.
It’ll work itself out and no matter the outcome, it’ll be ok and we’ll have more than enough to keep us happy.
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I wonder how this place would have felt if we had info on Halo 2 when it was getting close to release…
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I think the game might be progressing decently since CD joined development.
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I honestly think it just came down to having too many cooks in the kitchen and it’s that simple.
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Yep, that’s possible, too many talents, too many people wanting different things, I could see it.
Yeah it would be pretty demoralising to keep getting ideas shot down because it doesn’t fit their vision and it seems like most of the team were all in senior roles so they knew they could just leave if they don’t like it. In all honesty I would rather people leave than stay and be miserable and not enjoy their workplace. Sucks it didn’t work out for those that left but it is better for the game, the people who want to stay and those who want to leave. It doesn’t seem like it was super sour so that’s good.
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