The unfortunate truth is there are likely a lot of very talented developers at most big studios who ultimately don't have a say on what goes into the game.
Many don't turn around and try making a start-up game though, most just burn out of the industry forever.
The way business is structured in the modern day completely strangles progress and innovation by ignoring and sometimes even punishing workers trying to improve. Companies should be run by workers not businessmen so that there's a focus on the product rather than profit
I worked at a company run by a SWEngineer.
He was code-smart for code, but really bad for business.
You need to get a real CEO who does management, but keep that person in firm check by mandating half the board be stacked by engineers. Even as advisory roles, like if your company makes widgets you should have some Serious Fucking widget people dominating the board for big decisions.
"You make one thing" is like "you had one job."
(And if you make two things so disparate, spin one off into a sub)
My argument is not "have someone better in charge" rather it's "we should have less hierarchy in the workplace"
Many don't turn around and try making a start-up game though, most just burn out of the industry forever.
I think a big reason for this is because they need to have some kinda airtight clandestine OPSEC if they want to work on anything themselves that they plan to show anybody.
It's been common practice for AAA's to say "Anything you make while you're employed here at all is ours." Sometimes even if you're not AT the studio when you do it.
They just simply assume entitlement to your creativity.
So, quit and make that indie darling, right? But then you need a financial "runway" set up, which sets a hard time limit on production and adds a ton of stress, and you'd better hope it sells well enough to make back the lost income.
The indie successes we've seen are nothing short of extraordinary, but also a textbook example of survivorship bias in action. For every success, there's a million projects that never got off the ground, much less sold successfully.
Facing all this...I celebrate the efforts that beat the odds, and love genuinely good games that simply didn't sell enough to keep the ball rolling.
But I don't fault anybody for just going into something more stable before burnout hits, and they would be destroyed from the inside out.
Ever notice how the best games out there are either indie games or made by ex-devs formerly from a big developer?
Capitalism does away with ingenuity and creativity. Look at the biggest developers, like Ubisoft or Activision or EA, and their most flagship product(s), and you'll see that none of them are inventive in any way, they're all just regurgitated forms of whatever sells.
No wonder ML text and image generators are so popular with large corporations.
Played through stray for the first time recently
The game was great, especially for how relatively small the team was, but honestly the reveal of the largest mystery in the game was very underwhelming.
It's still a good game though, I do recommend it.
Hey, your cat thinks you're underwhelming as well, but she's fine with that as long there's food and scritches.
scritches
🤎🤎🤎
Awww, and here I thought only my family uses that word.
The reveal that
? I thought it was incredible.Tap for spoiler
there's a dedicated meow button
Meanwhile Ubisoft itself continues to pump out digital slop
Anno games
AC Odyssey
Immortals Fenix Rising
Mario x Rabbids games
Prince of Persia TLC
Rocksmith is great for learning guitar
Real talk. Ubisoft in general have made some great games. Their current business model is to pump out repeats of things that worked, and so earn our scorn for them 'as of right now'.
Who played AC 1 and didn't want more. That we're now up to AC 76 doesn't diminish that they made something fun before they beat it to death.
Even their primary accomplishment of making every open-world game follow their formula of '1000 sidequests, item hunts and mini-puzzles' doesn't detract from the fact that those were really fun the first few times.
I wish the best to all the ex-Ubisoft developers. Go make cool shit without the $business oversight$. In an ideal world, the publisher should be there to cover the gaps when a new concept falls flat, not to force developers to keep doing the same profitable thing and otherwise stifle innovation.
Mario/Rabbids is the game nobody asked for or expected anything from, and it turned out great. Instead of just a knockoff silly minions game, it was an amazing XCOM-lite with fun environments and suprisingly-deep tactical gameplay.
Too bad they shut down the prince of persia team :(
Stray is such an amazing game. Real work of art. I love how we discover more and more of the story of this world.
I can't wait to play Expedition 33.
I desperately want to play through it but they seem to have made some weird technical decisions with the sound system and I don't get half the sounds on any of my devices.
Loved stray but with each chapter being so different it was 3 different games to me. Hopefully they make another.
I have theories about the game that are neither proven nor disproven by what is in the game.
I hope another is made simply to quell my curiosity on those theories and see whether I was right or not.
I can't wait for upper management to stop trying to make games.
never knew Stray was made by a ex-ubisoft employee
it isn't Ubisoft to thank, it's the "ex". suddenly not having to waste your life peddling more assassin's gray sludge can do wonders for your creativity.
It's a sarcastic thank, like thank you for firing them, or thank you for driving them away from AAA studios.
Ubisoft is the sexual abuse place right?
...or is that Activision Blizzard?
...or Rockstar Games?
Is there a funny GIF that says "why not all three of them?"?
Highly recommend Expedition 33. The game play is exactly what I've been looking for in a game, and the story and world are both amazing.
Stray was so mid... If it didn't have cute cats it would have been forgotten instantly.
I was most flabbergasted by the fact that you never hunt anything!! What a miss! How do you make a game where you play as a cat without any stealth stalking of prey??
Yeah, but it did have cute vibes and a lot of people love things just for cute vibes
If all the games didn't have the stuff that made them enjoyable then they'd be mid.
I remember when the first screenshots for it came out years ago as a cat game inspired by Kowloon Walled City and thought it would be this profound game where you play as a stray cat who weaves itself in and out of all the lives and stories of the people there...and then it turned out to be this really basic linear game. I was so disappointed.
I mean Ubisoft has probably tens of thousands of ex employees
And growing!
Don't forget about Outlast, Astroneer and Sifu!
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A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
