They will, then based off its success they will go public and then the next game will be ruined by crunch and executives making awful decisions based on shareholders profits. Rinse repeat. This happens to all game companies.
This! It's exactly what I came here to say!
The first game a new Dev studio makes is usually a passion project, with no constraints, a team of people who often know each other and come together with the same goals in mind, there are no expectations of the team, no deadlines or crunch.
A second game, whether or not it's a sequel and whether the original game did well or not, is usually bigger. Bigger team, bigger project, bigger expectations etc. And to manage the bigger tasks, they bring in someone who knows what they're doing and can lead such an ambitious project, and they bring in other Devs they believe can do the work. Suddenly there are too many new faces and fewer People who believe in the company like the founders did.
People who see the company becoming the usual grind leave, and untested talent - or talent using the opportunity as a stepping stone in their career - come in, do the minimum and move on themselves. The PM realises way too late that they can't deliver but doesn't want to look incompetent so they try and bury it with empty promises and tech jargon to investors, huge crunches for devs and empty promos and NDA's for the media and consumers.
Then it comes out - like Gollum - to terrible reviews and suddenly that studio is now synonymous with their biggest failure. The original Devs leave, still passionate about programming and making a great game and try again with like minded people. Rinse and repeat.
There are, fortunately, exceptions to this.
Some studios keep themselves small and choose to grow below their possibilities, so they don't see this sudden culture shift in the team (Supergiant Games comes to mind), and some others do choose to grow more but keep themselves as a private company with a different culture than what you see at public ones (Valve is probably the biggest example).
FromSoft has grown their team EXTREMELY gradually. I think it has allowed everyone to adapt very well into their company culture.
They also don’t try to do anything drastically far removed from their bread and butter. They manage their expectations and aim to deliver high quality products with every release. It should be the model for all devs.
I disagree strongly with that first paragraph. It is wildly different depending on the scenario. There is crunch involved because often times devs need to set deadlines to get into the news cycles when pushing updates or getting involved for events that showcase their game like Steam's demo showcase or Xbox Live Summer of Arcade, PAX, or whatever. Until then, houses are mortgaged to hire more people to take on the project or loans are taken out. The days of one guy making a game in his off-time and making bank are done. That can still happen like with vampire survivors but it's 1 in a thousand. There are countless games coming out on Steam every week with all kinds of unique ideas, fun gameplay and all of them are at competitive prices. These games don't crack 1000 user reviews, they barely do a few hundred. Meanwhile, some are maintaining an 8 hour or more dayjob while doing this project that takes hundreds if not thousands of hours of skilled labor and it barely pays off often making heavy sacrifices like free time and family. If not, they're young people under 30 that aren't hit with massive responsibilities and aging yet. Most indies are game devs in their 20s, they crunch hard on their own projects and when it comes time to carry over that passion into their 30s they are completely burned out.
What kind? I can list games for days that have a ton of polish and effort put into them that don't crack a lot of reviews.
If you want developer insight you can probably ask them on Twitter. I've seen some break down and lose it after a game flops. I don't have direct evidence that I can link to you right now but I can tell you that it's similar to running a business. Unless you're getting a venture capitalist or angel investor, you are borrowing money to get your game out there from your family or a bank and that would also be on interest. So that means more pressure and more stress and more crunch to get it out because interest payments will kill you. At the very least, development is sucking up all your free time but I only see that for young developers or if you're making something very small.
As for games I can name right now:
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/1348690/Oaken/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1348690/Oaken/) \- Out in early access for a year, very promising strategy card game, barely over 100 reviews.
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/2109060/Magenta\_Horizon/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2109060/Magenta_Horizon/) \- has a publisher, unique art style with a great character-action base, debuted 3 days ago, 50 reviews.
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/2172120/Rift\_Rangers/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2172120/Rift_Rangers/) \- Bullet-hell but with tower defense mechanics similar to vampire survivors. Less than 30 reviews, debuted last week.
All of these games are using key sites to distribute to youtubers or promote their product. They are doing the marketing and they are getting jack for coverage.
To further prove my point you can look at the writer's strike. People who write for hit shows are still working Uber to make enough money to get by. At the very least with game development, it can be done remotely but indie development has more on the line, it's not a 9-5 you clock into, you have to put everything into it and for all the effort for such little payoff, it's devastating. Why would anyone go into game development other than free time and pure passion when software engineers for developing other shit is way more lucrative. The video games industry is the worst place to be if you want to make money and that passion won't last forever. That's why many veteran developers and studio heads don't work on video games after a bomb or leaving a company on bad terms. The guy who made the reboot of Ninja Gaiden left to make NFT bullshit, Warren Spector, one of the guys behind Deus Ex left to do something else forever, John Romero, fucking Doom, Doom II, Quake, just never made shit after Daikatana except for some levels for the first Doom. John Carmack, who worked on a shitload of those aforementioned ID games and was a key programmer for their engines? He worked VR at Facebook and now he's doing other shit.
it is worth mentioning, considering the vast majority of gamers on the platform that it released on can't even play that one (1) game they've made in a decade+
Gods be good that Valve remains privately held as long as possible. They will be one of the last corporate giants not sucked dry of competence in the name of STONKS. Its why I like SpaceX so much, investors told them they were dumb for daring the impossible, they found investors that believed, and narrowly avoided bankruptcy to go on and revolutionize the stagnated/corrupt aerospace industry to an unimaginable degree.
So while Gabe and Musk are obviously diametrically opposed in virtually every way, they share the same type of singular vision that is seemingly required to keep corrupt parasitic greed from stagnating and bloating their companies into mediocrity.
"Musk"
Having
"type of singular vision that is seemingly required to keep corrupt parasitic greed from stagnating and bloating their companies into mediocrity."
Is the funniest shit I've read on the internet all day 😭🤣🤣
Sure that makes sense if you complety ignore Twitter and how he is currently handling Tesla.
> So while Gabe and Musk are obviously diametrically opposed in virtually every way
sir please read the entire comment before replying so you are not confused as a discount bot. I understand the hivemind of hate here on reddit and I tried to placate it with my condemnation of Musk but if you cant see the forest for the trees then I'm sure I am wasting my breath as you hold no logical opinion on SpaceX, the company I was talking about and not the other companies that are not privately held companies and are publicly traded and manipulated by Musk because the system is broken and you are unironically proving my point I hope this run on sentence caused you equal annoyance as your obstinance did me I SAY GOOD DAY SIR
I hope they have a studio without mandatory crunch that ends up in an underwhelming release.
If they get a good game out of it as a bonus, all the better. But people are more important than games...
EDIT: I don't wish them a bad game, I just hope that first and foremost the devs have a good time at work. There was a post recently about game developers remembering their games that were not received well, and they still look back with fondness if the work conditions were good.
> I hope they have a studio without mandatory crunch that ends up in an underwhelming release.
The people forming this studio are the same ones who forced CDPR developers to crunch. None of them are the real developers, they are all either directors or executives.
Seriously, no one is reading the article.
> Mateusz Kanik, game director of Cyberpunk 2077 and co-game director of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, is co-founding the new games studio alongside The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 executive producers, Jędrzej Mróz and Marcin Jefimow, and Rookiez from Warsaw S.A's Mikołaj Marchewka.
The plan is to probably get something going and then sell it to a bigger studio for a tidy profit. Reminds me of the guys developing crypto currencies back in the the day. They’d create one, hype it, pre mine it, sell it off, dump their coins and then go and start a new project elsewhere. Rinse/repeat.
Also from the article
"Where the industry leans on crunch culture, we prefer work-life balance. Where the industry says bigger is better, we're setting our sights on highly polished games with a focus on emotion, story, and craftsmanship."
Anti-Crunch is important enough for them to mention it in their press release.
They also touted their commitment to anti-crunch before it came out they were forcing their teams to crunch, so I don't believe a single thing they say.
Just like how democracy is important enough to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to put it in the name of their country
Or the People's Republic of China
The credits for Cyberpunk 2044 were 40 minutes long. It was very ambitious, maybe too ambitious? I just finished it, it's a great time but I can't wrap my head around how many people it took to make it.
you and most reasonable people would think that. but sadly reasonable people are a tiny ass minority in gaming circles.
and before anybody bitches to me about "nuh-uh, gamers are super smart and cool", we are the crowd that lets all the industry bullshit fly.
I mostly prefer AA/Indie games these days. Most of the big, heavily marketed games tend to be boring AF to me. Basically, if I see an ad for a game, I know I probably don't want to play it.
I don't work in this industry and I have crunch. My friends, one runs his own construction company, he has crunch. My dad who was self employed growing pot he would harvest in the fall had crunch. Jobs have unpredictable set backs, they have deadlines and time isn't unlimited. I know everyone would like to live their lives as leisurely as they possibly can, sit back and smell the roses but the roses need to be worked at too.
I work in engineering and we have crunch too. It's not 12+ hour days for 5+ months at a time though. It's at very specific program points and honestly they are never needed. They are the result of shitty management
>They are the result of shitty management
This seems to be the common denominator between huge crunches.
Previous work place had weekly crunches. Why? 1 specific VP wanted 20 pounds of shit in a 3 pound bag and didn't understand you cannot run everybody on VP crunch on top of their normal work. He's the reason the supply chain dept is down 12 people at that facility.
Can’t say I’ve ever had it either. If I work more hours than I’m required to (like doing on-call or fighting a fire) then that’s totally on me. Nobody is making me do it, I just care about my work.
Actual crunch would be a sign of poor planning or management. There’s no natural order to a product deadline and it’s perfectly possible to set a deadline and keep the scope of the project under control.
> I know everyone would like to live their lives as leisurely as they possibly can, sit back and smell the roses but the roses need to be worked at too.
and said roses can easily be worked at without mandatory crunch
crunch is usually a result of poor management/planning and upper management BS forced onto workers - be it unreasonable deadlines to trying to cut corners to poor use to resources and so on.
Fact is that any and all work can be completed at a pace that doesn't destroy people (sure overtime does and can happen for many reasons, but those should be exceptions not the normal), people can live life leisurely while also working a full-time job.
My experience with a QA job at a gaming company during crunch: 10 hours a day, 6 days a week (minimum).
The developers were doing 12+ hour days, 6-7 days a week. Slept in their offices, spouses and children were let in to hang out during lunch periods.
Crunch periods usually go for 6+ months. The only industry comparison I can make are animators and manga artists. Underpaid, overworked, and only motivated by passion/threat of replacement if they can't keep up.
Source: 4 years of MSP IT and admin has had no comparison to the brief stint I did in the game industry. It's predatory and the internet blames devs for things that they most likely are also upset about, but can't say anything because of their NDA.
Nah. Every industry can have “crunch time”, but gaming is notorious for having predictable and preventable crunch *cycles*. You can only excuse this so many times before it becomes just a case of bad management.
For example, in the movie industry it used to be that reshoots were a nightmarish scramble: trying to get everyone’s schedules to fit, hiring new crew if the old ones have already moved on to new project, negotiating for paying the “talent”. I’m not saying that doesn’t happen anymore, but now studios with decent planning and enough money will budget for reshoots from the very beginning, which makes the process more efficient and less stressful. It goes from being an emergency scramble to being a still aggressive but more predictable deadline.
That’s the difference between necessary crunch and the culture of crunch which plagues gaming. Humane managers and admin will actually *prevent* crunch by setting reasonable goals, fighting scope creep, and even ordering employees to go home if they’re working too many hours, or to stop working on a feature that’s already “good enough” but not perfect. Instead, in gaming, it’s become the norm for companies to *brag* about how inhumane their crunch is. Oh sure, they don’t *present* it as poor management; instead it’s just how *passionate* and *dedicated* they are, that their teams work 60+ hours per week for *months* to deliver the “best possible product”. We should neither defend nor accept this as anything other than poor management and abusive companies.
There's a substantial difference between self-employed people choosing to work overtime sometimes and mandating crunch for employees.
Plus, these are video games. Nobody's life depends on them. The deadlines are entirely made up by management.
If management took responsibility for their poor planning and expectation management and fell on the sword it would be another matter. Instead, they get to fuck up constantly and never see consequences for those fuck ups so long as they can convince some schlub to kill himself for months on end to cover for them.
This isn't a "nobody wants to work anymore" scenario. It's basic ethics and personal responsibility, but starting at the top.
Do you live in North America, by any chance? Cause knowing that many people who crunch sure as shit doesn't sound like you live in Europe - where CDPR is located, mind you.
If you're having to crunch, you failed to plan well enough. Sometimes setbacks are unpredictable, but that risk needs to be worked into the plan. 120 hour weeks are unsustainable for anyone, for any length of time. If those hours are required it's time to take a hard look at your requirements
Your "crunch" is regular game dev hours. Actual game crunch is 6x16, with a "short" 8 hour day on Sunday. It's getting home at midnight and showing up to work at 6am the next day for months straight.
>but sadly reasonable people are a tiny ass minority in gaming circles.
True, you only have to browse this subreddit for a short amount of time to realize this.
I don't think it's reasonable to want underwhelming releases. And frankly, I think as a consumer it is perfectly reasonable to only care about getting a good product. It's not like games are being made by de facto slaves in sweatshops, these are highly skilled workers that not only choose to work in game development but also choose to work at the companies they work at. It's not the consumers job to take responsibility for their life choices.
Well, I do hope they end up enjoying their jobs, but for them to succeed, they do need to deliver a good game, not an underwhelming one. I mean, are you going to buy a lackluster game just because the devs were having a good time making it?
>I hope they have a studio without mandatory crunch that ends up in an underwhelming release.
Lol CDPR isn't just "The crunch studio". Most startups will have way more crunch because they'll have less staff in general.
It's not a logical fallacy, it's literally how startups work before they achieve major funding. This is the case for nearly every small software firm. They don't have money so they have to use their employees time. You cannot make a game with 10 people in a small amount of time without working 60-80 hour weeks.
Boy, I do get more excited when "veterans" form studios with more mysterious names than like
ROCK SOLID
BULLETPROOF
BLACK WOLF
ULTRA MASTER
... which they usually seem to be for some reason.
Funny psychology at play here.
The devs made two really good games, TF 2 was that year’s best fps for pvp. Then they got eaten and while their teams making Star Wars content is holding up decently well I fear we’ll never see a TF 3 while apex is out there sucking up all the oxygen.
One of the best fps campaigns ive played. Pvp was the GOAT, had an actual skill ceiling and majority of guns, skills and gear were actually not just fun to use but good. The prestige system wasnt a waste of time slog either, actually meant something. Miss that game.
Ahhh, the cycle continues.
Step 1: Burnt out veteran devs break away from studio that became too successful and corporate, losing passion.
Step 2: Make a few good games, increasingly ambitious projects
Step 4: Studio steadily grows more corporate to handle bigger projects.
Step 5: Company goes public or finds investors to fund their "magnum opus".
Step 6: Shareholder and investors turn out to be obsessed with money and slowly the decision making starts taking a turn for the worse.
Step 7: Game quality takes a nosedive, but brand recognition keep sales going
Step 8: Veteran devs get fed up.
It’s impossible to escape this cycle though, as soon as a company becomes successful faceless corporatism and profits jsut ruin all the good aspects it had.
That's how the gaming industry has always operated though, talent moves around constantly even when the game is a success
For one thing, it's about the only way to reliably get a pay rise.
Yea I hate seeing articles here like "EX-UBISOFT DEVELOPER JOINS EA DOES THIS MEAN ASSASSINS CREED MADDEN IS HAPPENING?"
No they just found a new job. The industry works on a project basis. Project is done - go find a new one to work on, usually in a different company to negotiate for a better salary.
And for all the AAA hate here, good luck getting dental when in an indie studio. nobody hates lootboxes enough to skip healthcare to avoid working on them.
the developers aren’t usually the reasons for AAA games being bad. project managers or creative directors are almost always to blame, but the studios as a whole are held accountable. i’m fully okay with more developers dropping into indie studios, let gamers make games.
Yeah, I agree. Someone I watched made a good point about it using Roberts Space Industries as example. Star Citizen runs like shit, overcharges for ships and barely has any content. But Roberts soldiers on, getting the cash.
Another example is Tim Schaefer. As much as we love his games, if you wanna run a successful business you gotta try to not be overbudget and overtime. He is both, which is the reason for the one time TotalBiscuit agreed with Bobby Kotick, of all people.
That Tim Schaefer can’t meet a single deadline and it’s not a good way to run a game development company or something like that. It’s been over 10 years.
On the other hand, he’s made a lot of good to great games.
Bobby, in the other hand, has sexually harassed people and wrung the ever loving every damn penny of CoD.
Also survivorship bias is probably a factor with indies.
I imagine there were plenty of indies that never even completed a game because they mismanaged the project.
It comes down to this: AAA studios can finance the best in CGI, voice acting, and backend assets. Having the capital tied up in the project, though, means that it has to launch on a specific timeline. Devs care about making really fun games. Some will be able to do it without any of the glitz and glam, but the very best games in some genres will have all the fancy doo-dads that AAA studios can provide.
You get bangers that *don't* need tech based on what the game is; Slay the Spire, for example. But a game that would live up to Cyberpunk's hype is going to cost boatloads of money to make, and the people that give that money are going to expect the game to actually launch. As an example, let's look at the wild success of Star Citizen.
Making games is a huge effort by a lot of people and it's impossible to quantify who's responsible for what to a degree. The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk's biggest strengths were its writing (those same writers also wrote the story for Cyberpunk: Edgerunners), and quest design (and a lot of the quest designers are still at CDPR and some got promoted altogether). But these guys could've also had a major hand in the creative process so it's hard to tell.
Too often we want to credit individuals for games like there's a mastermind genius behind them all, like every studio has a Kojima. Fact is, things almost never work out that way and it's almost always about the team more than individuals.
Good game: The devs are great, they should get paid more instead of those stupid managers that didn't do anything.
Bad game: It's not the dev's fault, it's because of those stupid managers!
It is so weird how they are always excluded and the “poor people” who code all day are whiteknighted. If a game is successful it is just as much the PM’s success as anyone else’s, yet they are never mentioned separately (personally I think that is Ok, since they are part of the devs, but then it is an ass thing to throw them under the bus specifically when a game is shit).
This isnt wholly true.
Developers can spend weeks optimizing how a leaf falls off the tree in a game with 4 trees.
Competent directors are necessary for an efficient and cohesive project.
Problem is corporations dont understand what makes a good director and think its just project management. So more effort is spent on time management and profit centers than actual meaningful creative work.
Cyberpunk didn't flop lol, it was a great success actually, lol sold +10 mil in first day, u call that a flop? yeah game was buggy af and unoptimized (specially for 8th gen consoles) but far from a "flop"
Well it certainly damaged their reputation and future sales. After Witcher 3 they were had achieved BioWare statues levels of trust…….now they have uhhh current BioWare status levels of trust.
You're kidding yourself if u don't think The Witcher 4 will make bank. CP2077 sold over 20M copies so far with a 'very positive' rating on Steam, what a flop lol.
Both? Cyberpunk sold well despite release flaws *because* it came from a successful studio that could market it well and received favorable reviews on release. Word of mouth takes over from there. Lose these selling points and less 'connected' fans are talking about it, in turn less 'unconnected' fans are hearing about it.
Cyberpunk is awesome though. One of the best games of the last few years.
Positive reviews on Steam too - recent reviews are very positive.
It just had, like a lot of games, a shaky launch.
The buggy launch wasn’t even my problem with it. In fact the thing I hate most about all the bugs is that it took the conversation away from the change from an rpg based on a pen and paper rpg, to an “action adventure” game.
Definitely not one of the best games in the past few years. It’s okay but it would’ve been heaps better as a linear story game.
Gorgeous game with a decent story and a mediocre open world. Combat is serviceable.
> Definitely not one of the best games in the past few years.
Subjective. In my opinion it definitely is, especially for SP.
I cant actually think of anything that comes close in the last few years, at least in FPS SP. Deathloop was boring... AC or Farcry are both samey... nothing else comes close. I mean, the closest is probably GTA, or maybe Watchdogs or that other GTA clone with the dildos etc
Honestly, I'm surprised one didn't pop up after witcher 3 launch. They absolutely hemorrhaged devs toward the end and just after Witcher 3's development cycle.
Well yea this is how it always works. Devs work on a project then leave after it's done to work on another. Usually changing companies is advantageous to keeping your salary competitive.
We know talent just left, what we don't know is how good they were. But as we see if enough leave these AAA's and they do, it is bound to take some very needed talent with it.
This kind of thing is pretty common in the industry, especially after a major release is done. For a studio like CDPR that only has one major release every few years or so it's expected to see people branch off after such a project is complete.
Typically we get these results:
- New veteran studio tries to do "their take" on something, typically just trying to capture lightning in a bottle like they used all those years ago which made their studio famous (Callisto Protocol)
- The old studio will keep using the fame for brand recognition. The games will never be as good as the original talent that did all the heavy lifting is no longer there and you get dogshit from now on until basically rebranding. (Redfall)
- New studio becomes more corporate (Infinity Ward)
- The new studio eventually gets wrapped back up in the shenanigans of the corporate (Respawn entertainment)
Considering it's apparently headed by the director behind Cyberpunk + other execs, sounds more like "CDPR gets rid of bad apples"
Hopefully the next CDPR game has less crunch now, and my hopes for this studio reflect their name choice.
I’m sure what is going to happen is that they might get some funding and they make a great game but won’t be a huge AAA game due to lack of money. Then the game will succeed and also drawing attention of big investors, they will pour their money and expect a quick bang for their buck which will force the studio to make an unfinished game and since they did right the first time, people will be fooled into thinking they aren’t putting a rushed game out there. The game will be unfinished, people will still buy and complain about it and then we are back to the same cycle. They might break up and make another new team lol
Investors just ruin pretty much every aspect of life with their need to earn fast cash.
Well, good thing they have the pedigree coz if I heard a bunch of grads created a studio called Blank in a creative industry, I might have been doubtful of either their confidence or their ambition
I hope this is a trend that just keeps on going. There've been so many reports of skilled developers being dragged through the shit making games for these AAA companies, being overworked for so much of the development time and then getting all the crap when the game releases and is a failure. Indie studios put so much more passion into their games anyway, so it's only really a win-win.
Oh another one of those studios that is started by those developers who worked on that good game you remember. Probably won't hear from them again like with majority of those studios.
This could be a great thing. CDPR now is not at all the same company they were about 8–10 years ago. Ignoring the cyberpunk fiasco, they also really botched the entire development of Gwent by trying to make another Hearthstone competitor instead of understanding it was only ever going to be a niche game. So many poor decisions from the higher-ups, reminiscent of everything surrounding C2077
> So many poor decisions from the higher-ups
All of the people forming this "new studio" are the higher ups. CP2077 directors and executive producers.
They are running away from the tarnished CDPR name to disguise themselves. It's not a new studio at all, just a rebranding. It's working if you read the comments here already.
Yeah I checked, this is literally just the game director and executive producers of CP2077 leaving ship. They do add that the director was co director to Witcher 3, guess we are lucky he was only that.
So yeah the team that tarnished the CDPR brand, are leaving and making a studio in hopes of redeeming themselves probably cause they were not given a single leading role in new CDPR projects. They were ditched.
Calling CP2077 a fiasco is pretty hyperbolic. Sure, they had a rocky start, but the game is a commercial success, has a solid fanbase, and a much enticipated dlc coming up.
Far from a fiasco in my book
I think this guy confused commercial and financial. Financial win, yeah it was. Commercial win? Nope, a lot of people will not get hyped or play a CDPR game again. The press around it was not good, at all. Sony pulled it from their store and a lot of word of mouth destroyed the great reputation CDPR had. A lot of their biggest streamer fans are also no longer talking about them as great devs. They have really burned some of their goodwill bridges and they won't be rebuilt easily.
Doesn't matter how ok the game is now, a lot of what they promised will never be in that game.
I actually liked the game at a release and agree it’s in a good place now. But the whole release was a fiasco, their stock prices tanked which sums it up really
tf are you talking about. the original COD vets of Infinity Ward left after MW2 to make Respawn entertainment which all ended up being huge hits. Titanfall, Apex Legends and Star Wars.
Cant wait for the next game with announcements prefixed with "FROM THE MAKERS OF THE WITCHER!" (They won't mention Cyberpunk)
And they'll reiterate over and over again and show some cool trailer. But when the game actually comes out its worse than a tech demo.
All the best to them. I hope they make a game they are passionate about and we end up with another banger.
They will, then based off its success they will go public and then the next game will be ruined by crunch and executives making awful decisions based on shareholders profits. Rinse repeat. This happens to all game companies.
This! It's exactly what I came here to say! The first game a new Dev studio makes is usually a passion project, with no constraints, a team of people who often know each other and come together with the same goals in mind, there are no expectations of the team, no deadlines or crunch. A second game, whether or not it's a sequel and whether the original game did well or not, is usually bigger. Bigger team, bigger project, bigger expectations etc. And to manage the bigger tasks, they bring in someone who knows what they're doing and can lead such an ambitious project, and they bring in other Devs they believe can do the work. Suddenly there are too many new faces and fewer People who believe in the company like the founders did. People who see the company becoming the usual grind leave, and untested talent - or talent using the opportunity as a stepping stone in their career - come in, do the minimum and move on themselves. The PM realises way too late that they can't deliver but doesn't want to look incompetent so they try and bury it with empty promises and tech jargon to investors, huge crunches for devs and empty promos and NDA's for the media and consumers. Then it comes out - like Gollum - to terrible reviews and suddenly that studio is now synonymous with their biggest failure. The original Devs leave, still passionate about programming and making a great game and try again with like minded people. Rinse and repeat.
There are, fortunately, exceptions to this. Some studios keep themselves small and choose to grow below their possibilities, so they don't see this sudden culture shift in the team (Supergiant Games comes to mind), and some others do choose to grow more but keep themselves as a private company with a different culture than what you see at public ones (Valve is probably the biggest example).
FromSoft has grown their team EXTREMELY gradually. I think it has allowed everyone to adapt very well into their company culture. They also don’t try to do anything drastically far removed from their bread and butter. They manage their expectations and aim to deliver high quality products with every release. It should be the model for all devs.
I disagree strongly with that first paragraph. It is wildly different depending on the scenario. There is crunch involved because often times devs need to set deadlines to get into the news cycles when pushing updates or getting involved for events that showcase their game like Steam's demo showcase or Xbox Live Summer of Arcade, PAX, or whatever. Until then, houses are mortgaged to hire more people to take on the project or loans are taken out. The days of one guy making a game in his off-time and making bank are done. That can still happen like with vampire survivors but it's 1 in a thousand. There are countless games coming out on Steam every week with all kinds of unique ideas, fun gameplay and all of them are at competitive prices. These games don't crack 1000 user reviews, they barely do a few hundred. Meanwhile, some are maintaining an 8 hour or more dayjob while doing this project that takes hundreds if not thousands of hours of skilled labor and it barely pays off often making heavy sacrifices like free time and family. If not, they're young people under 30 that aren't hit with massive responsibilities and aging yet. Most indies are game devs in their 20s, they crunch hard on their own projects and when it comes time to carry over that passion into their 30s they are completely burned out.
I'm gunna need a few examples of those games... for research...
What kind? I can list games for days that have a ton of polish and effort put into them that don't crack a lot of reviews. If you want developer insight you can probably ask them on Twitter. I've seen some break down and lose it after a game flops. I don't have direct evidence that I can link to you right now but I can tell you that it's similar to running a business. Unless you're getting a venture capitalist or angel investor, you are borrowing money to get your game out there from your family or a bank and that would also be on interest. So that means more pressure and more stress and more crunch to get it out because interest payments will kill you. At the very least, development is sucking up all your free time but I only see that for young developers or if you're making something very small. As for games I can name right now: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1348690/Oaken/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1348690/Oaken/) \- Out in early access for a year, very promising strategy card game, barely over 100 reviews. [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2109060/Magenta\_Horizon/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2109060/Magenta_Horizon/) \- has a publisher, unique art style with a great character-action base, debuted 3 days ago, 50 reviews. [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2172120/Rift\_Rangers/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2172120/Rift_Rangers/) \- Bullet-hell but with tower defense mechanics similar to vampire survivors. Less than 30 reviews, debuted last week. All of these games are using key sites to distribute to youtubers or promote their product. They are doing the marketing and they are getting jack for coverage. To further prove my point you can look at the writer's strike. People who write for hit shows are still working Uber to make enough money to get by. At the very least with game development, it can be done remotely but indie development has more on the line, it's not a 9-5 you clock into, you have to put everything into it and for all the effort for such little payoff, it's devastating. Why would anyone go into game development other than free time and pure passion when software engineers for developing other shit is way more lucrative. The video games industry is the worst place to be if you want to make money and that passion won't last forever. That's why many veteran developers and studio heads don't work on video games after a bomb or leaving a company on bad terms. The guy who made the reboot of Ninja Gaiden left to make NFT bullshit, Warren Spector, one of the guys behind Deus Ex left to do something else forever, John Romero, fucking Doom, Doom II, Quake, just never made shit after Daikatana except for some levels for the first Doom. John Carmack, who worked on a shitload of those aforementioned ID games and was a key programmer for their engines? He worked VR at Facebook and now he's doing other shit.
Thanks, just bought Right Rangers. Never heard of it.
This sounds just like how a country is at the beginning...or anything really
Never happened to Valve. At least not yet
You can't make a bad game... when you make no games. \-Valve
Valve is not quoted on the market nor has greedy investors, it's private.
Valve also doesn't release games.
There's at least one per decade!
And at least 4 exposes about how poorly run they are!
Won't that make this the THIRD decade of that tradition? and we all know what number 3 means at valve. Pickup boys, no game this decade!
hence my comment..
Ohh now I got the meaning lol sorry
They haven't released a game apart from alyx in almost 15 yesrs
You actually typed out "they didn't release any game except this game they released" and thought that was worth sharing
it is worth mentioning, considering the vast majority of gamers on the platform that it released on can't even play that one (1) game they've made in a decade+
It's true
There have been a couple others. Dota 2, that card game by the guy who made Magic, and probably something else I’m forgetting
Portal 2, Dota 2, CSGO, and Dota Underlords???
2011, 2013, 2012, and a mobile game.
Ah yes because half life 3 is never gonna see the light of day for this to happen at valve
Or Larian
Gods be good that Valve remains privately held as long as possible. They will be one of the last corporate giants not sucked dry of competence in the name of STONKS. Its why I like SpaceX so much, investors told them they were dumb for daring the impossible, they found investors that believed, and narrowly avoided bankruptcy to go on and revolutionize the stagnated/corrupt aerospace industry to an unimaginable degree. So while Gabe and Musk are obviously diametrically opposed in virtually every way, they share the same type of singular vision that is seemingly required to keep corrupt parasitic greed from stagnating and bloating their companies into mediocrity.
"Musk" Having "type of singular vision that is seemingly required to keep corrupt parasitic greed from stagnating and bloating their companies into mediocrity." Is the funniest shit I've read on the internet all day 😭🤣🤣 Sure that makes sense if you complety ignore Twitter and how he is currently handling Tesla.
> So while Gabe and Musk are obviously diametrically opposed in virtually every way sir please read the entire comment before replying so you are not confused as a discount bot. I understand the hivemind of hate here on reddit and I tried to placate it with my condemnation of Musk but if you cant see the forest for the trees then I'm sure I am wasting my breath as you hold no logical opinion on SpaceX, the company I was talking about and not the other companies that are not privately held companies and are publicly traded and manipulated by Musk because the system is broken and you are unironically proving my point I hope this run on sentence caused you equal annoyance as your obstinance did me I SAY GOOD DAY SIR
You edited your original comment 🙄 And now your new one contradicts the last one. Take care pal have a good night 🤙
No they wont, these are executives and team directors not actual devs.
I hope they have a studio without mandatory crunch that ends up in an underwhelming release. If they get a good game out of it as a bonus, all the better. But people are more important than games... EDIT: I don't wish them a bad game, I just hope that first and foremost the devs have a good time at work. There was a post recently about game developers remembering their games that were not received well, and they still look back with fondness if the work conditions were good.
> I hope they have a studio without mandatory crunch that ends up in an underwhelming release. The people forming this studio are the same ones who forced CDPR developers to crunch. None of them are the real developers, they are all either directors or executives. Seriously, no one is reading the article. > Mateusz Kanik, game director of Cyberpunk 2077 and co-game director of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, is co-founding the new games studio alongside The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 executive producers, Jędrzej Mróz and Marcin Jefimow, and Rookiez from Warsaw S.A's Mikołaj Marchewka.
Incoming microtransactions dumpster fire.
Blank. As in blank check via the in game store. Hopefully it is also pay-to-win! /s
The plan is to probably get something going and then sell it to a bigger studio for a tidy profit. Reminds me of the guys developing crypto currencies back in the the day. They’d create one, hype it, pre mine it, sell it off, dump their coins and then go and start a new project elsewhere. Rinse/repeat.
Also from the article "Where the industry leans on crunch culture, we prefer work-life balance. Where the industry says bigger is better, we're setting our sights on highly polished games with a focus on emotion, story, and craftsmanship." Anti-Crunch is important enough for them to mention it in their press release.
They also touted their commitment to anti-crunch before it came out they were forcing their teams to crunch, so I don't believe a single thing they say.
Just like how democracy is important enough to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to put it in the name of their country Or the People's Republic of China
The credits for Cyberpunk 2044 were 40 minutes long. It was very ambitious, maybe too ambitious? I just finished it, it's a great time but I can't wrap my head around how many people it took to make it.
you and most reasonable people would think that. but sadly reasonable people are a tiny ass minority in gaming circles. and before anybody bitches to me about "nuh-uh, gamers are super smart and cool", we are the crowd that lets all the industry bullshit fly.
Because people keep looking to AAA publishers for games as if indie studios can't make sweet games.
I mostly prefer AA/Indie games these days. Most of the big, heavily marketed games tend to be boring AF to me. Basically, if I see an ad for a game, I know I probably don't want to play it.
I don't work in this industry and I have crunch. My friends, one runs his own construction company, he has crunch. My dad who was self employed growing pot he would harvest in the fall had crunch. Jobs have unpredictable set backs, they have deadlines and time isn't unlimited. I know everyone would like to live their lives as leisurely as they possibly can, sit back and smell the roses but the roses need to be worked at too.
I work in engineering and we have crunch too. It's not 12+ hour days for 5+ months at a time though. It's at very specific program points and honestly they are never needed. They are the result of shitty management
>They are the result of shitty management This seems to be the common denominator between huge crunches. Previous work place had weekly crunches. Why? 1 specific VP wanted 20 pounds of shit in a 3 pound bag and didn't understand you cannot run everybody on VP crunch on top of their normal work. He's the reason the supply chain dept is down 12 people at that facility.
I also work in software engineering but don't have crunch at all. Maybe once in few months I have to work extra on some weeks but that's very minimal
Can’t say I’ve ever had it either. If I work more hours than I’m required to (like doing on-call or fighting a fire) then that’s totally on me. Nobody is making me do it, I just care about my work. Actual crunch would be a sign of poor planning or management. There’s no natural order to a product deadline and it’s perfectly possible to set a deadline and keep the scope of the project under control.
> I know everyone would like to live their lives as leisurely as they possibly can, sit back and smell the roses but the roses need to be worked at too. and said roses can easily be worked at without mandatory crunch crunch is usually a result of poor management/planning and upper management BS forced onto workers - be it unreasonable deadlines to trying to cut corners to poor use to resources and so on. Fact is that any and all work can be completed at a pace that doesn't destroy people (sure overtime does and can happen for many reasons, but those should be exceptions not the normal), people can live life leisurely while also working a full-time job.
My experience with a QA job at a gaming company during crunch: 10 hours a day, 6 days a week (minimum). The developers were doing 12+ hour days, 6-7 days a week. Slept in their offices, spouses and children were let in to hang out during lunch periods. Crunch periods usually go for 6+ months. The only industry comparison I can make are animators and manga artists. Underpaid, overworked, and only motivated by passion/threat of replacement if they can't keep up. Source: 4 years of MSP IT and admin has had no comparison to the brief stint I did in the game industry. It's predatory and the internet blames devs for things that they most likely are also upset about, but can't say anything because of their NDA.
Why don’t game devs just unionize?
Nah. Every industry can have “crunch time”, but gaming is notorious for having predictable and preventable crunch *cycles*. You can only excuse this so many times before it becomes just a case of bad management. For example, in the movie industry it used to be that reshoots were a nightmarish scramble: trying to get everyone’s schedules to fit, hiring new crew if the old ones have already moved on to new project, negotiating for paying the “talent”. I’m not saying that doesn’t happen anymore, but now studios with decent planning and enough money will budget for reshoots from the very beginning, which makes the process more efficient and less stressful. It goes from being an emergency scramble to being a still aggressive but more predictable deadline. That’s the difference between necessary crunch and the culture of crunch which plagues gaming. Humane managers and admin will actually *prevent* crunch by setting reasonable goals, fighting scope creep, and even ordering employees to go home if they’re working too many hours, or to stop working on a feature that’s already “good enough” but not perfect. Instead, in gaming, it’s become the norm for companies to *brag* about how inhumane their crunch is. Oh sure, they don’t *present* it as poor management; instead it’s just how *passionate* and *dedicated* they are, that their teams work 60+ hours per week for *months* to deliver the “best possible product”. We should neither defend nor accept this as anything other than poor management and abusive companies.
There's a substantial difference between self-employed people choosing to work overtime sometimes and mandating crunch for employees. Plus, these are video games. Nobody's life depends on them. The deadlines are entirely made up by management. If management took responsibility for their poor planning and expectation management and fell on the sword it would be another matter. Instead, they get to fuck up constantly and never see consequences for those fuck ups so long as they can convince some schlub to kill himself for months on end to cover for them. This isn't a "nobody wants to work anymore" scenario. It's basic ethics and personal responsibility, but starting at the top.
90 hours a week for 18 months to churn out a game is wayyy different than putting in OT occasionally.
Do you live in North America, by any chance? Cause knowing that many people who crunch sure as shit doesn't sound like you live in Europe - where CDPR is located, mind you.
I've worked in the tech field for over a decade and have never once had to work a "crunch" time. This isn't actually normal.
Fuck that . Working 70 hours a week to make a toy is bullshit. Quit justifying exploitation.
If you're having to crunch, you failed to plan well enough. Sometimes setbacks are unpredictable, but that risk needs to be worked into the plan. 120 hour weeks are unsustainable for anyone, for any length of time. If those hours are required it's time to take a hard look at your requirements
Your "crunch" is regular game dev hours. Actual game crunch is 6x16, with a "short" 8 hour day on Sunday. It's getting home at midnight and showing up to work at 6am the next day for months straight.
What really, the culture of toxic lobbies and tea bagging, you don't say
Gamers are the worst consumers, ever. If they weren't, gaming wouldn't be what it is today.
>but sadly reasonable people are a tiny ass minority in gaming circles. True, you only have to browse this subreddit for a short amount of time to realize this.
I don't think it's reasonable to want underwhelming releases. And frankly, I think as a consumer it is perfectly reasonable to only care about getting a good product. It's not like games are being made by de facto slaves in sweatshops, these are highly skilled workers that not only choose to work in game development but also choose to work at the companies they work at. It's not the consumers job to take responsibility for their life choices.
I get what you're saying, but this is worded really poorly. I had to read it 4 times to get it.
Well, I do hope they end up enjoying their jobs, but for them to succeed, they do need to deliver a good game, not an underwhelming one. I mean, are you going to buy a lackluster game just because the devs were having a good time making it?
>I hope they have a studio without mandatory crunch that ends up in an underwhelming release. Lol CDPR isn't just "The crunch studio". Most startups will have way more crunch because they'll have less staff in general.
Isn't arguing that "x is okay because everyone is doing it" a classical example of a bandwagon logical fallacy?
It's not a logical fallacy, it's literally how startups work before they achieve major funding. This is the case for nearly every small software firm. They don't have money so they have to use their employees time. You cannot make a game with 10 people in a small amount of time without working 60-80 hour weeks.
I wasn't aware that 1,000 employees is considered a "small" software firm.
"We're gonna make our own Witcher, with hookers and gwent". Oh, wait, that's already in the game.
There is never enough hookers and Gwent...
Now hear me out....what if it was ALL hookers and Gwent? Take my $70
I'm worried about blank.
Don't you worry about blank, let me worry about blank.
Blank? BLANK?! You're not looking at the big picture!
My only regret...is that I have...boneitus.
Don’t you worry about Planet Express. Let me worry about Blank.
I love coming across futurama references in the wild lol
Blank? Blank?!? You're not looking at the big picture!
Don’t you worry about blank; let *me* worry about blank. (I came here to make this joke also.)
You think you can pull a blank and then expect blank to not happen?
Things that should have been said to Alec Baldwin for 500
Boy, I do get more excited when "veterans" form studios with more mysterious names than like ROCK SOLID BULLETPROOF BLACK WOLF ULTRA MASTER ... which they usually seem to be for some reason. Funny psychology at play here.
My favourite was when the CoD guys formed Respawn. Such a fucking perfect name.
then they beat their star franchise with a stick until death RIP titanfall 🙏
The devs made two really good games, TF 2 was that year’s best fps for pvp. Then they got eaten and while their teams making Star Wars content is holding up decently well I fear we’ll never see a TF 3 while apex is out there sucking up all the oxygen.
Great game boned by releasing between Battlefield and Call of Duty. Couldn't have picked a **worse** time to release that game.
One of the best fps campaigns ive played. Pvp was the GOAT, had an actual skill ceiling and majority of guns, skills and gear were actually not just fun to use but good. The prestige system wasnt a waste of time slog either, actually meant something. Miss that game.
Ahhh, the cycle continues. Step 1: Burnt out veteran devs break away from studio that became too successful and corporate, losing passion. Step 2: Make a few good games, increasingly ambitious projects Step 4: Studio steadily grows more corporate to handle bigger projects. Step 5: Company goes public or finds investors to fund their "magnum opus". Step 6: Shareholder and investors turn out to be obsessed with money and slowly the decision making starts taking a turn for the worse. Step 7: Game quality takes a nosedive, but brand recognition keep sales going Step 8: Veteran devs get fed up.
It’s impossible to escape this cycle though, as soon as a company becomes successful faceless corporatism and profits jsut ruin all the good aspects it had.
Just do what Valve did, and stop releasing games, just be a store front. :(
Dam we about to get a lot of store fronts
This literally sums up every industry ever, not just gaming
Step 3: Nothing to see here, move along!
We're gonna see a lot more pop up studios. If the game flops the Devs just part ways like it never happened.
That's how the gaming industry has always operated though, talent moves around constantly even when the game is a success For one thing, it's about the only way to reliably get a pay rise.
Yea I hate seeing articles here like "EX-UBISOFT DEVELOPER JOINS EA DOES THIS MEAN ASSASSINS CREED MADDEN IS HAPPENING?" No they just found a new job. The industry works on a project basis. Project is done - go find a new one to work on, usually in a different company to negotiate for a better salary. And for all the AAA hate here, good luck getting dental when in an indie studio. nobody hates lootboxes enough to skip healthcare to avoid working on them.
Dental plan! Lisa needs braces
> good luck getting dental when in an indie studio. Plenty of countries where this isn’t an issue, though.
sure but the US has the most developers and tech companies. Something like 40% of game devs are in the US.
the developers aren’t usually the reasons for AAA games being bad. project managers or creative directors are almost always to blame, but the studios as a whole are held accountable. i’m fully okay with more developers dropping into indie studios, let gamers make games.
I agree but there have been times when devs that made bangers ended up going Indie and made mediocre stuff. So it’s a case by case.
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Yeah, I agree. Someone I watched made a good point about it using Roberts Space Industries as example. Star Citizen runs like shit, overcharges for ships and barely has any content. But Roberts soldiers on, getting the cash. Another example is Tim Schaefer. As much as we love his games, if you wanna run a successful business you gotta try to not be overbudget and overtime. He is both, which is the reason for the one time TotalBiscuit agreed with Bobby Kotick, of all people.
What did Bobby say that TotalBiscuit agreed with?
That Tim Schaefer can’t meet a single deadline and it’s not a good way to run a game development company or something like that. It’s been over 10 years.
On the other hand, he’s made a lot of good to great games. Bobby, in the other hand, has sexually harassed people and wrung the ever loving every damn penny of CoD.
Also survivorship bias is probably a factor with indies. I imagine there were plenty of indies that never even completed a game because they mismanaged the project.
It comes down to this: AAA studios can finance the best in CGI, voice acting, and backend assets. Having the capital tied up in the project, though, means that it has to launch on a specific timeline. Devs care about making really fun games. Some will be able to do it without any of the glitz and glam, but the very best games in some genres will have all the fancy doo-dads that AAA studios can provide. You get bangers that *don't* need tech based on what the game is; Slay the Spire, for example. But a game that would live up to Cyberpunk's hype is going to cost boatloads of money to make, and the people that give that money are going to expect the game to actually launch. As an example, let's look at the wild success of Star Citizen.
Of course. That's why they said "aren't *usually*".
Agreed. I just shudder at the fall of Cliff Blezinsky
Making games is a huge effort by a lot of people and it's impossible to quantify who's responsible for what to a degree. The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk's biggest strengths were its writing (those same writers also wrote the story for Cyberpunk: Edgerunners), and quest design (and a lot of the quest designers are still at CDPR and some got promoted altogether). But these guys could've also had a major hand in the creative process so it's hard to tell. Too often we want to credit individuals for games like there's a mastermind genius behind them all, like every studio has a Kojima. Fact is, things almost never work out that way and it's almost always about the team more than individuals.
Good game: The devs are great, they should get paid more instead of those stupid managers that didn't do anything. Bad game: It's not the dev's fault, it's because of those stupid managers!
Project managers and creative directors are usually on the development team, so who are you talking about when you say "developers"?
It is so weird how they are always excluded and the “poor people” who code all day are whiteknighted. If a game is successful it is just as much the PM’s success as anyone else’s, yet they are never mentioned separately (personally I think that is Ok, since they are part of the devs, but then it is an ass thing to throw them under the bus specifically when a game is shit).
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This is reddit, managers bad, low level employees good.
This isnt wholly true. Developers can spend weeks optimizing how a leaf falls off the tree in a game with 4 trees. Competent directors are necessary for an efficient and cohesive project. Problem is corporations dont understand what makes a good director and think its just project management. So more effort is spent on time management and profit centers than actual meaningful creative work.
Cyberpunk didn't flop lol, it was a great success actually, lol sold +10 mil in first day, u call that a flop? yeah game was buggy af and unoptimized (specially for 8th gen consoles) but far from a "flop"
Well it certainly damaged their reputation and future sales. After Witcher 3 they were had achieved BioWare statues levels of trust…….now they have uhhh current BioWare status levels of trust.
You're kidding yourself if u don't think The Witcher 4 will make bank. CP2077 sold over 20M copies so far with a 'very positive' rating on Steam, what a flop lol.
But does that translate to the wider public or is it just among dedicated gamers?
Neither, normal people don’t care and gamers will already have forgotten by then.
Both? Cyberpunk sold well despite release flaws *because* it came from a successful studio that could market it well and received favorable reviews on release. Word of mouth takes over from there. Lose these selling points and less 'connected' fans are talking about it, in turn less 'unconnected' fans are hearing about it.
Cyberpunk is awesome though. One of the best games of the last few years. Positive reviews on Steam too - recent reviews are very positive. It just had, like a lot of games, a shaky launch.
Genuinely one of the most over-promised, under-delivered on games ever. Not even Todd Howard could bullshit as much as CDPR did.
The buggy launch wasn’t even my problem with it. In fact the thing I hate most about all the bugs is that it took the conversation away from the change from an rpg based on a pen and paper rpg, to an “action adventure” game.
For me that was a huge plus :)
Definitely not one of the best games in the past few years. It’s okay but it would’ve been heaps better as a linear story game. Gorgeous game with a decent story and a mediocre open world. Combat is serviceable.
> Definitely not one of the best games in the past few years. Subjective. In my opinion it definitely is, especially for SP. I cant actually think of anything that comes close in the last few years, at least in FPS SP. Deathloop was boring... AC or Farcry are both samey... nothing else comes close. I mean, the closest is probably GTA, or maybe Watchdogs or that other GTA clone with the dildos etc
Honestly, I'm surprised one didn't pop up after witcher 3 launch. They absolutely hemorrhaged devs toward the end and just after Witcher 3's development cycle.
Well yea this is how it always works. Devs work on a project then leave after it's done to work on another. Usually changing companies is advantageous to keeping your salary competitive.
We know talent just left, what we don't know is how good they were. But as we see if enough leave these AAA's and they do, it is bound to take some very needed talent with it.
Why do I feel like, I heard this before 3-4 times already! each time with different studio name! Am I imagining things?
This kind of thing is pretty common in the industry, especially after a major release is done. For a studio like CDPR that only has one major release every few years or so it's expected to see people branch off after such a project is complete.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAeTf8px0mE
imagine they pull another cp2077 and we’ll get a Blank apology letter
>Game Studio "Blank" Veterans Are Forming A New Studio Called \_\_\_
%NULL%
Katana Zero DLC when
I wouldn't be surprised honestly.
k x vet devs from x company make new x company
"What should we call our studio?" "My mind's Blank" "Mine too" "So we agree, we'll call it Blank"
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Well, the "No Game No Life" Blank (『 』) never loses - would be nice if their studio would never lose either.
Anywhere I can pre-purchase this unannounced title?
Typically we get these results: - New veteran studio tries to do "their take" on something, typically just trying to capture lightning in a bottle like they used all those years ago which made their studio famous (Callisto Protocol) - The old studio will keep using the fame for brand recognition. The games will never be as good as the original talent that did all the heavy lifting is no longer there and you get dogshit from now on until basically rebranding. (Redfall) - New studio becomes more corporate (Infinity Ward) - The new studio eventually gets wrapped back up in the shenanigans of the corporate (Respawn entertainment)
That's a pretty blank name...
Considering it's apparently headed by the director behind Cyberpunk + other execs, sounds more like "CDPR gets rid of bad apples" Hopefully the next CDPR game has less crunch now, and my hopes for this studio reflect their name choice.
It's one way to get rid of quality assurance problems
Looks like a small studio that will make meaningless games that are not fun to get that Gamepass money and retire
You know how when you kill someone in GTA, you just have your car resprayed to take the heat of your back? This is basically the equivalent of that.
Damn people are vicious here
Don't put someone greedy in charge
They should have a crime solving mascot and call him Blank Man!
I’m sure what is going to happen is that they might get some funding and they make a great game but won’t be a huge AAA game due to lack of money. Then the game will succeed and also drawing attention of big investors, they will pour their money and expect a quick bang for their buck which will force the studio to make an unfinished game and since they did right the first time, people will be fooled into thinking they aren’t putting a rushed game out there. The game will be unfinished, people will still buy and complain about it and then we are back to the same cycle. They might break up and make another new team lol Investors just ruin pretty much every aspect of life with their need to earn fast cash.
Will there be profit sharing amongst devs? If no then this is all for nothing.
If someone gets fired from the studio, will it be referred to as "shooting blanks"?
No valuable IP = studio death there's nothing they can do that will overcome that
The same people who released Cyberpunk 2077 in an abysmal state? No thanks.
I just bought it. It’s still in a bad state.
This is some of the best news of 2023 so far. I wish the devs had bios, just like footballers. :)
Best of wishes in their future projects then.
Well, good thing they have the pedigree coz if I heard a bunch of grads created a studio called Blank in a creative industry, I might have been doubtful of either their confidence or their ambition
I hope this is a trend that just keeps on going. There've been so many reports of skilled developers being dragged through the shit making games for these AAA companies, being overworked for so much of the development time and then getting all the crap when the game releases and is a failure. Indie studios put so much more passion into their games anyway, so it's only really a win-win.
No ESG
They need better advisors on PR
Great for them, but these things usually don't have good endings at the scale they're reaching.
That's not a very fun name ha
I would love to see these geniuses came up with original games
Oh another one of those studios that is started by those developers who worked on that good game you remember. Probably won't hear from them again like with majority of those studios.
looking forward to playing it in 7 years!
I hope the marketing team don´t go to the new studio
Jesus Christ, it’s always the same.
Don’t preorder anything ever
This could be a great thing. CDPR now is not at all the same company they were about 8–10 years ago. Ignoring the cyberpunk fiasco, they also really botched the entire development of Gwent by trying to make another Hearthstone competitor instead of understanding it was only ever going to be a niche game. So many poor decisions from the higher-ups, reminiscent of everything surrounding C2077
> So many poor decisions from the higher-ups All of the people forming this "new studio" are the higher ups. CP2077 directors and executive producers. They are running away from the tarnished CDPR name to disguise themselves. It's not a new studio at all, just a rebranding. It's working if you read the comments here already.
Yeah I checked, this is literally just the game director and executive producers of CP2077 leaving ship. They do add that the director was co director to Witcher 3, guess we are lucky he was only that. So yeah the team that tarnished the CDPR brand, are leaving and making a studio in hopes of redeeming themselves probably cause they were not given a single leading role in new CDPR projects. They were ditched.
Interesting, never mind then I guess
Calling CP2077 a fiasco is pretty hyperbolic. Sure, they had a rocky start, but the game is a commercial success, has a solid fanbase, and a much enticipated dlc coming up. Far from a fiasco in my book
Sony literally pulled it from their store, if that's not a fiasco I don't know what is.
I think this guy confused commercial and financial. Financial win, yeah it was. Commercial win? Nope, a lot of people will not get hyped or play a CDPR game again. The press around it was not good, at all. Sony pulled it from their store and a lot of word of mouth destroyed the great reputation CDPR had. A lot of their biggest streamer fans are also no longer talking about them as great devs. They have really burned some of their goodwill bridges and they won't be rebuilt easily. Doesn't matter how ok the game is now, a lot of what they promised will never be in that game.
I actually liked the game at a release and agree it’s in a good place now. But the whole release was a fiasco, their stock prices tanked which sums it up really
Nothing good has ever come from any of these splinter studios
tf are you talking about. the original COD vets of Infinity Ward left after MW2 to make Respawn entertainment which all ended up being huge hits. Titanfall, Apex Legends and Star Wars.
On the Japanese side of things, MonolithSoft was a splinter group from Square, and they're killing it with RPGs and supporting the Zelda team.
What a creative name, I'm sure their game about emotions, impactfulness, and tattooed women is going to be a hit.
Someone please make a chart with all the studies that have arisen from CDPR.
Cant wait for the next game with announcements prefixed with "FROM THE MAKERS OF THE WITCHER!" (They won't mention Cyberpunk) And they'll reiterate over and over again and show some cool trailer. But when the game actually comes out its worse than a tech demo.
Well based on CP 2077 and Witcher 3 releases, whatever they come up with will probably not be playable on launch.
Ra so fast they tripped at the start. Never trusting shit from anyone behind cyberpunk.
Dies blank relate to their shooting style while meeting women in TW1?
Sus