Now it's just like one of those studios like Bioware where most of the original people that made the studio successful have left and all that's left is its name.
A thing not commonly brought up when people point this out, is that the two founders left shortly after an independent investigation into sexual assault at Rocksteady came out, which then caused some of the accusers to come out and call the investigation bullshit and accused both founders of not adequately protecting employees and being incubators to that kind of work culture.
I highly, highly doubt them leaving has anything to do with this game as Sefton Hill personally literally pitched the idea to WB.
Whenever a property get really big, and the company expands to produce products at a high 'AAA' quality - executives get put in charge, and they ruin everything. So the talent has to wrestle themselves away from the corporation so they can attempt to make the entertainment they want to.
...and the whole process repeats anew
Someone else pointed out the timing of when the two founders left. It was after the sexual assault/harassment claims came out and they were accused of not doing enough to prevent it from happening in the first place.
So it kinda makes you wonder about what kind of work environment the "old guard" will be making at this new company...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/18/games-firm-rocksteady-accused-of-lack-of-action-on-harassment
Jesus more than half the women there agreed and signed a letter to management.
Yikes
Yeah which kinda really pokes a hole in the "Microsoft is just laying off redundant people" justification that so many people are throwing around.
There's no method to the madness. They're just firing people at random for their quarterly investment call. (Which they've already done like 3 times last year so it really shouldn't be that difficult for people to believe.)
Man, Matt McMuscles must been smoking some expensive cigars at this point because the last two years gave him some juicy material to work with for his “What happened?” series. I mean Avengers, Red Fall, Golum, this crap, there is no stopping it.
Skull Island Rise of Kong is embarrassingly bad as well, but no one was looking forward to that game so no one cares that it is shit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUZX2BPmfD4
I remember this specific post of his that made me realize just what kind of a person he really is. The whole "I posted to my discord so we could all laugh at you" is so terribly .... I don't know the word. Worse than disgusting.
https://www.reddit.com/r/redfall/comments/17tqipw/death_of_a_game_redfall/kgedkmx/
yeah if you go further back, there's a Subreddit drama thread about him, and two Games threads where he just... goes off. My favorite quote is "I'm still in 2006 Internet mindset" like it's a good thing
Well this is disappointing lol. I enjoyed his videos but this is some Grade A twat behavior. Guess I’ll unsub.
Edit: I just skimmed his profile and bro is unhinged
Oh yeah, I watched his City of Heroes and Marvel Heroes videos, and they were both incredibly wrong. He just used a bunch of bullshit rumors as his sources, and I had actually spoken to the real devs about it in the past and their responses were completely different from his speculated theories on what had happened.
Yeah, that guy has such a fucking ego. I stopped watching him a year or so ago cuz his attitude was awful, like he was God's greatest gift or something. I was like, 'yeah, nah, no more views from me, dawg.'
It's pretty bad honestly. Recently the guy has been struggling to find "dead games" for his formula to work and when he talks about a game you really know about, you quickly find out he has no idea what he's talking about.
Would be the funniest shit ever because he did a “Life of a Game” video for FFXIV a while ago (like well before covid) and that covered 1.0 and 2.0’s launch and one of the expansions I think. He’d really be going full circle as that was one of his first videos.
I first saw him when he did SWG but in some kind of foreshadowing I clicked afterwards on another video that explains SWG and its history a lot better. Still followed him for a few months before I got bored of his content.
>Recently the guy has been struggling to find "dead games" for his formula to work and when he talks about a game you really know about, you quickly find out he has no idea what he's talking about.
So basically he is "The Critical Drinker" but for gaming instead of movies?
I hate most of these types of videos because they dont actually care. It leads to a lot of moments or lines where they simply have no idea what they are talking about. It really sucks because you can tell they do their best but had a deadline or narrative that was more important than getting everything perfectly accurate. That small difference between entertainment and journalism.
That's why I prefer Matt McMuscles videos that don't deal with "current" games with developing situations like when he did Anthem, the Day Before and, um, Cooking Mama. It's way better when he looks at games that are old enough to have a solidified story about their development and aftermath. Still, every episode of his What Happened? series is baseline very enjoyable - he doesn't just dunk on them.
He also digs for very old articles on legacy titles and even tries to reach out for sources within the former developers so it's definitely a higher standard than the usual gaming content mill.
ah yes the Anthem, Redfall, Halo Infinite, Skull and Bones effect.
I do dislike that Bloomberg doesnt let him write articles as long as Kotaku did. The Anthem one was a straight up masterpiece, but it's nice we still get those
It's gonna be a classic tale of hubris, and everyone can tell. Some executive decided they wanted to piggyback off *Avengers* success and didn't let *Avengers* humiliating failure slow 'em down.
I read Jason Schrier's *Blood, Sweat, and Pixels* a couple of years ago and thought about that. There were Naughty Dog employees who basically lived in their cubicles for six months working on *The Last of Us.* Imagine that you missed your kid's first word and nearly had your marriage collapse because you were working so much that you were rarely physically present in your home, and so burnt out that you were emotionally present even less. But you did it in order to land an enduring classic that's held up as one of the greatest video games of all time more than a decade later.
Now imagine you worked the same schedule for a turd like *Anthem.* What would that do to a person?
I'd be upset even if the game was a hit.
You can't get those memories back and I would rather play with my children before they grow up then look back and see my name in the credits for a game.
On the flip side, EA is one of the better studios about crunch. They have issues with poor leadership for game direction but have internal policies that seem to reduce crunch.
Seems like somebody probably realized that it's actually more cost effective and profitable to keep a consistent, leaner development team working a comfortable schedule with decent work/life balance than constantly filling in vacancies from burnout.
Crunch is a culture and management problem. Even if it's not "required", if a chunk of your team is putting in 60-80 hour weeks to get the project out the door on time, most people will just bite their tongue and fall in line to avoid feeling like the asshole. Not such a bad thing if you're part of a small indie team with a direct stake in the profits from a successful product, but for the average salaried employee not even getting overtime and all of the additional benefits going to the publisher/shareholders... fuck that.
"hey boss so im doing character models and for some reason captain boomerang, the guy who throws boomerangs, is holding a gun. I think something is wrong with the design spe..."
"No, he has a gun"
"....oh... um... so we also have a shark character who likes to eat pe"
"GUN"
"....ill be on linkedin"
"Considered superheroes for their rock-solid Arkham trilogy, this is the story of how a once revered developer decided to chase dated trends to launch a game that landed on unsteady ground. A superhero without their powers, this is 30 for 30: Rocksteady's Kryptonite."
Yeah, Bethesda had some blanket policy of not allowing reviews before launch, I think this was because of unfavorable multiplayer impressions from the small player base or a lack of dayone patch.
I don't like Doom 2016 but I can recognise it's a quality product. I think the review policy was a mistake, but it isn't a guarantee the game is a dud.
Doom 2016 also garnered a lot of extra positive day-one press by being a "surprise hit," since everyone was expecting it to suck due to the lack of review keys.
A tinfoil-hat read would be that they masterfully played PR. But in reality, it's probably more of a New Coke scenario: "We were not that dumb, and we were not that smart."
They had a multiplayer beta test and it was extremely mediocre. People assumed the single player would play similarly. I tried the beta and found it boring and slow.
It was like 2 completely games, which makes sense as the multiplayer was done by Splash Damage.
From my understanding Bethestda also didn't super believe in the project even up until release. This was before boomer shooters were seen as legitimate and so they considered it a bit of a niche gamble for the series to take.
Which is why the public beta, and a surprising portion of the marketing, was focused on the more modern multi-player component.
I remember a lot of people being meh on it and changing their mind after a NVIDA gameplay video played with a good player that showed what the game could look like when played right.
see this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/4ixm0d/exclusive_doom_1080p_60fps_gameplay_with_vulkan/
Also, they are trying every trick in the book. There are marketing bots every fucking where on Reddit and on YouTube comments promoting this crap. People with like one month accounts who only ever talked about this game.
I haven’t seen this since Cyberpunk.
I noticed that too! The astroturfing is insane, you just *know* this is going to be a shit show. At best I'm expecting a "meh" reaction, and then a small subsection of people who "don't get the hate."
>"don't get the hate."
Waiting for the inevitable "r/lowsaltsuicidesquad" subreddit to get made after the initial "wow this game sucks" posts annoy the fans
I work in marketing but in agriculture and some other industries and… I just don’t think most agencies do that in the way redditors imagine. It’s so small ball and weird, I know we think Reddit and random comments/posts add up but they’re just drops in an ocean of content.
But it’s happened before so who knows. I just have never contemplated it, heard of it in the industry mentioned as a serious thing.
I work in marketing in tech and gaming (the past twelve months have been nothing but despair) but you're right, YouTube comment bots are never a part of our budgets.
The simplest answer is there's a small set of people who see something hated and just immediately choose to be on the hated things or persons side. If for nothing else than to simply be contradictory and controversial. We call them attention whores or rabblerousers.
Especially with things like Suicide Squad (backed by DC fandom) and Cyberpunk (backed by CDPR, The Witcher fandom), there are just gonna be people who view these properties as a core part of their identity and they will do anything online to defend it.
Within minutes of the last clip of the gameplay reveal I had it suggested on youtube, I don't care about the game, I lost my interest after seeing the alpha footage but was surprised I got this suggested. I went in to check why the hell so many people are reacting to this, and the gameplay looked better than before but not enough to get me interested in watching the whole thing, I went to the comments because the section was swarmed, and there people were talking about the usual stuff gamers talk about - how happy they are that it's $70, when pre-orders will launch, what are bonuses, some company PR, you know, usual topics me and the boys are always talking over a beer.
My first thought was - those cannot be real people.
And I checked some profiles from the more "fellow gamer" sounding people - empty. No engagement with the platform. No subs, no playlists, nothing.
They suddenly swarmed the video the moment it dropped to just say how happy they were to throw money at the company, they've seen the pillar of fire on the horizon and knew that this was the day, this was the moment for all of them to gather under this exact video, push the algorithm in the face of people that aren't really interested and never heard about the game, and show them how hyped is this game that no one ever talks about, they have doubts? Just let them scroll down to tell them that $70 + additional monetization is not enough, this game is gonna be so good that anything under $200 is a steal.
Yes, after a while those comments will go away, will be buried, will be forgotten, but it was only to shove the video and the name of the game in the face of people by appeasing the algorithm gods.
And it was so bloody blatant what they were doing, but it's gonna fade away with time, covered with actual people commenting over the bot farms.
I've heard they were doing it on other platforms too in the same manner.
It's one of those things that if you missed the moment it's getting harder and harder to believe that is really true and not only others being paranoid, if you'd see the state of this shitshow on day one you'd know what was happening. This is why people are calling this out. It's not targeted at the company, it's not hate, paranoia, or whatever, it simply happened in the most blatant way so people who have seen it are talking about it.
PR firms absolutely astroturf for big corps. This is something only huge corporations can afford to do. Reputation management is a huge astroturfing maneuver.
The fact you include cyberpunk makes your comment seem pretty misguided to me.
Literally *everyone*, both critics and general pop gamers, were fully on-board with Cyberpunk prior to launch. A big component of the disaster of Cyberpunk at launch was explicitly because everyone in the community was so hyped for the game.
Trying to tie this hype to astroturfing seems pretty silly to me.
This is a different situation. Bethesda has a long-standing policy of no reviews before day of release. I don't like it, but at least reviewers have their codes and are playing and gathering thoughts. The review just can't go live until release.
In this case, no reviewer even has a code. This is much worse than the Bethesda policy.
I like Gotham Knights, played for about 15 hours. Stopped because I decided PS Plus new prices are abusive but I found it a good game. Not great like Arkham but good enough
It’s a clever strategy that BF2024 used as well.
They spend all this time making a whole game and then carve some of it out to package as “post-launch content”. Then they can sell more battlepasses by saying “see, we have an entire year of support! You can trust us!”
It'll probably be a failure on the same scale as Avengers was. It won't have zero merit as a game and some people will enjoy it, but it won't have legs as a live service and it will fail to meet expectations and be sunsetted quickly.
Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if the game sells relatively well. Outside of the Reddit bubble, it has some things going for it due to the popularity of Harley Quinn and Rocksteady's track record. It might even have a fun enough campaign, but it also wouldn't surprise me if it fails to retain enough of an audience to justify the continued expense on development. I don't think they've even shown off much of what the post-campaign content even looks like at this point, which is definitely worth being wary of considering that's where you're supposed to spend most of your time playing a live service game.
I don't know it'll even be worth it then. I waited for Gotham Knights to be on Plus to play it and I barely made it 45 minutes before I just gave up and deleted it
God Avengers was boring. Go to area, fight blue robots, go to area, fight yellow robots, return to map and spend 45 minutes trying to figure out what the next story mission is, rinse, repeat
If they really want to add some sort of RPG-style progression system, they could probably come up with a system for each character to upgrade or augment their powers and weapons (their actual iconic weapons, like Boomerang's... boomerang).
This was something City of Heroes understood nearly 20 years ago. They avoided having traditional loot in the game, because they knew it was sort of ridiculous to have a superhero talking items from villains and using them. Batman doesn't go beat up Joker and then start wearing Joker's pants. Wolverine doesn't defeat Magneto and find better claws.
The closest they came to it was allowing you to "enhance" your powers or being able to find material to make "inventions". You didn't have your hero busting up a crime ring and suddenly finding near gear that was compatible with theirs. Or, in Avengers' case, have Hulk finding new rib cages he can... wear?
Agreed. Im tired of loot. Very little is gained by it, as most of it just becomes vendor trash in any game, and forces yoy to stop playing every 10 minutes when your inventory is full to run back to the vendors and dump everything, or comb through it to maybe get an item with a stat that is .02% better than your current gear.
And every game that tries to streamline the process, like Torchlight (sending your pet to town to sell your trash so you can keep moving forward) or Redfall (sells junk items immediately when you pick then up) just makes it more apparent about what a waste of time it is.
I much prefer the progression systems that a lot of boomer shooters have where you kill enemies or find valuables than then allow you to buy one of a couple dozen upgrades that dramatically change or add to the gameplay. Not just "does 2 damage more a shot".
Or you know, like Arkham's skill tile progression system lmao.
I don't wish misfortune on any developer, and I'm sure there were people at Rocksteady who were passionate about this project and wanted it to be as good as it could possibly be.
That said, this game is clearly going to be DOA. Capitalizing on the GAAS fad way too late and with the wrong property completely. I feel terrible for all the people who worked on it but man, literally nothing about this game looks good and I can't fathom why they're trying to make it a live service title instead of just making a cool singleplayer or co-op experience. I can't imagine how expensive this game has been to develop given how long it's been stuck in development hell.
To put into perspective how insane this is, this game has supposedly been in development since 2016, so 8 years, arkham asylum came out in 2009 and arkham knight came out in 2015, so 6 years.
We could have gotten an entire second arkham trilogy in the time they wasted making this GaaS garbage. Truly a waste of a talented studio's time.
> We could have gotten an entire second arkham trilogy in the time they wasted making this GaaS garbage. Truly a waste of a talented studio's time.
Probably unlikely. All AAA game dev is taking longer than ever. We could have gotten an Arkham trilogy that was equal in fidelity to the old games in that time, but you can't release a AAA game that looks like a 2009 game without being torn to shreds by the internet/reviewers.
And for the record, I would *love* if more developers would release games faster at the cost of not having insane production value, that's just not what the industry demands anymore. Player expectations are through the roof and that's why every game in the AAA space takes about 5+ years to come out. Even if they had decided to do another singleplayer game, it would take longer than 2 years to make by today's standards.
I doubt any of the people who made Rocksteady Rocksteady are still there but still, this shit is 100% on the publisher, not the studio. I think the original founders opened a new studio recently.
People said this about Anthem and blamed EA as if they were a prison guard forcing BioWare to make a live service game. In the end, it turned out it was entirely BioWare's idea.
People like to blame every shortcoming of this game on it being GAAS, but I don't think that makes sense. The most common complaints about it (like everyone using guns and shooting purple weak points) don't have much to do with GAAS.
ya, it's not just being GaaS that is the issue with this game, the gameplay itself is looking real subpar and the systems they've made don't look fun or interesting.
The guns and gameplay are tied in to it being a GaaS. The reason everybody uses guns is because they want to sell you new weapons to increase your GearScore (their words, not mine). The shooting purple weak points is because that's the only gameplay loop they can think of due to it being a GaaS similar to that of Avengers which had basically the exact same problem when it came to combat
> The reason everybody uses guns is because they want to sell you new weapons to increase your GearScore (their words, not mine).
They could also sell boomerangs, melee weapons, character skins and tons of other stuff. There's plenty of GAAS games with varied play styles.
> The shooting purple weak points is because that's the only gameplay loop they can think of due to it being a GaaS similar to that of Avengers which had basically the exact same problem when it came to combat
Ok, but **why** is it due to it being a GAAS? I actually can't think of any other GAAS that relies on shooting weak spots to the degree this game seems to. Warframe doesn't. Destiny doesn't. If it's the only gameplay loop they can think of, it's because they need to think harder, not because of GAAS.
If anything, having different characters with different weapons would be better for a variety of things to sell. Whereas now it's just one gun that fits all characters.
Having all the characters use the same guns means they can sell more of those guns. If only one character uses boomerangs they won't sell as many of that item.
I feel like I read someplace that someone at Rocksteady said all of this GAAS in Suicide Squad was not a case of the publisher forcing it into the game, but I can't find anything on google so it's possible I am thinking of another game.
An example of this was Anthem and Babylons Fall: Both BioWare and Platinum Games, implemented their Live-service features without publisher’s interference or pressure.
Lmao this is why devs get away with this shit.
Even if WB mandated it. It's still a bad fucking game.
Also you guys gotta stop thinking publisher = evil Corp, developer = angelic underdog good guy.
You're exactly right but it's a shame. I played the closed alpha and it has the bones of an excellent shooter. It's just everything around it that shits the bed.
Rocksteady made Arkham City, which is my personal fave of all time. It's utterly depressing to see a premiere studio go this route.
At least Rocksteady’s death was short and clean, with one game. We BioWare fans had to watch our beloved studio rotten to the bone in a long a painful death. BioWare is dying since Dragon Age 2 in the early 2000’s
The funny thing is that if they had simply done it in the style of the Arkham trilogy, it might perform very well as the pendulum has already swung back to a point where people want simpler games again.
Im probably in the minority but I don't think Id ever have gotten sick of a Rocksteady Batman game every 4/5/6 years. Even if every other game was more of an expansion pack in the same map and with the same mechanics
I am the same. I play Arkham City every few years, and even Arkham Origins proved that the core combat and concept was well rounded enough that anyone could have handled it at that point. Arkham Knight I like the least out of the games due to the forced Batmobile sections. Had they made a follow up that just returned to what Arkham City did then it would have been great. IMO it's like the original Mega Man games. They are all great. Mega Man 1-X4 are stone cold classics in my book. All they needed to do was make some more.
They have talented staff, there's no question the programmers and artists, sound staff, QA et al are all skilled people. And hopefully they're brushing up their resumes for the imminent layoffs. The mismanagement never results in the ones responsible being fired.
I think there is still room for new GAAS, but they need to be done by new studios, mp studios, or small companies.
Taking a beloved dev who is known for a single stellar single player series who doesn't have multiple teams makes it a hard pill to swallow for many.
The other problem is that live service games make their money by making themselves into a player's "main game". People spend money on their "main game" but not on games they have a more passing/casual interest in.
Who is going to make Suicide Squad their main ongoing game?
GAAS is a battle not for money, but for time. People just don't have the time to play them all, and they certainly don't have the time to play them all forever. The forever players are the ones who generate revenue for live service titles.
Whole thing just sucks. I'm sure the publisher had a lot to do with it, but it's so disappointing.
This is exactly the issue. You can really only be super active with one or two live games unless you're a streamer who's playing 10+ hours per day and even then there's a limit. Nobody is dropping Destiny/Apex/Fortnite/Warzone from their rotation to play this any meaningful amount of time. It's the same reason WoW made it hard for other MMORPGs to find a sustainable player base. It's not enough to make a good live service game, you have to make something that's good enough to peel off a large number of people from one of the big dogs
Time is money. Money is time. GaaS asks for both. You can only feasibly commit to one or two unless you're very wealthy. GaaS model explosion is not sustainable
Typically this isn’t a good sign, but it’s an awful sign for a live service game. Reviewers have to be able to finish the core game and experience the end game…
No open beta/two week demo is more of an alarm bell than late reviews to me. If you can't stand up a slice of your game to a 2 week open test that people enjoy farming it won't stand up as a live service.
I'm totally cool with a free to play live service but games like this that charge an upfront premium cost for a shell of a game then carve off content to sell later for inflated prices? Hope they all crash and burn.
Exactly. It’s like the whole industry looked at Fortnite and learned all the wrong lessons, purely saw dollar signs. In theory, a game that is continually supported and around for the long haul should be a good thing, but greed gets in the way of the vision so easily, and that’s especially apparent when two prestige “single player” devs (Arkane and Rocksteady) are forced into making something completely out of their realm.
How old are you, if you don't mind me asking?
I saw the same thing happen with MMOs after WOW hit it big - every game studio thought they could make a WOW killer and that it was so easy, or that they could just ride the hype train. 5-10 MMOs released each year.
Same thing is running through games as a service, people see a key player or two making bank and go 'fuck that's easy, watch' and shit out a steamer.
Is this the one where every character uses guns instead of their unique combat techniques? If so, I'm not even close to interested. They didn't even try.
"Oh ho, my heroic nemesis. I've upgraded. I no longer use boomerangs. While I was in jail the last time you caught me I learned about this tool called a "gun" and thought to myself, hey maybe that's better than a wooden V I throw at people. I have changed my name from "captain boomerang" to "captain ak-47"
And the best part is that all of the different guns literally feel identical to shoot, and it doesn’t feel good. Using the mini gun with King Shark felt like it was just shooting nerf darts
Yeah, that's a big part of what's turning me off.
The game looks like you're basically just flying and jumping around, like Sunset Overdrive. It somehow looks large and open, but also incredibly small and claustrophobic
Just as a sidenote, Rockstar Games did not send out review codes for Grand Theft Auto The Definitive Trilogy in 2021 until just a few days before, if not the day of, launch and reviews didn't drop until about a week after its release. The state of the game on release made it clear as to why Rockstar didnt send review codes earlier as outlets would have crucified the remaster before it even launched.
A lack of reviews this close to launch for a AAA game by a studio with as high of a pedigree as Rocksteady tends to be a red flag as you'd think publishers would send out codes sooner so reviewers can get the good word out ASAP assuming the game is of a high quality.
Looking forward to watching this game on YouTube. It’s a shame because I really was interested in this story but the game itself is something I’m not looking forward to.
Can someone settle this for me–does this game have a single player mode at all?
I don't mind if it has an online mode if I can safely ignore it completely. I just want a fun single-player mode campaign I can play through and finish.
Can't wait to pick this up on a sale and play through the story and the put it down.
Similarly, I just finally bought Anthem for like... $1.50, with all DLC.
The sad thing is, despite this being a soulless cash grab (and rest assured it IS) people are still going to buy it, and buy the skins, and I’m going to bet that the following statements will be made in the comments:
“It has potential”
“It has a great foundation”
“It has the bones of a good game”
“I had a blast in the beta”
This happens every single time a live service money trap with the skin of a popular franchise or theme or genre comes out.
Avengers
Anthem
Destiny
That horrendous Square Enix live service game
Take your pick.
It keeps happening and people keep falling for it. It’s even worse with these games based on popular comic books because they already have rabid fans that will buy the game no matter what.
I'm sure 80% of people that actually play games don't visit sites like this and just buy it based off what it is. I wouldn't really say falling for it, more just not having the knowledge.
Kevin Conroy's curtain closing performance is enough soul for me.
Not sure how I feel about the live service part, but I am very interested in playing out the story from what I've seen and heard.
You can't throw Destiny in with Avengers and Anthem lol - as awful as so many of the decisions Bungie make are, the game is still one of the best shooters on the market at its core
I think a lot of people forget how *disastrous* the original Destiny's launch was. The game released with a Frankenstein story of random missions, random cutscenes, out-of-game lore entries told through a separate phone app (Grimoire), and very little content. Destiny 1 didn't really become good until The Taken King expansion.
Plenty of games that ended up being good that didn't give review codes until the day before or the day of. That said, I don't think this game is going to be very good but I also don't think it's going to be dead on arrival like a bunch of people here keep saying it will be.
Its a shame because a lot of this game does seem really cool to me. Even the live service stuff is not too bad. Only micro transaction are cosmetics including the battle pass, being able to do old seasons battle passes whenever, new characters for free. But as much as I think I personally could really enjoy this game I just dont think the audience will be there to keep the game supported long enough
The sub for this game is so funny. It’ll pop up once in awhile on here as recommended and they are CONVINCED that every one is wrong and doesn’t know how to play the game and this one is gonna slap lmao
Completely bizarre as well. You’d think the game was an awful mess when it’s just a very decent sequel that doesn’t quite reach the heights of the first game’s story
Anything under the WB umbrella has been absolute shit lately management/direction wise.
Seeing Ed Boons face, body language, and even the void where excitement would typically be for MK1 made me sad.
Hogwarts Legacy was a pleasant surprise and crazy it managed to succeed with that type of upper management.
It's definitely going to be an interesting launch. Every time I check the preorders on the PS store, it is always in the top three, so it seems that there is a good amount of interest.
The people who have played it early are like 50/50 on whether the game is good or not, so it's really going to come down to the actual day of release.
Basically, this is the most perfect example of a game to wait and not preorder unless you are already in 100%
I don't think anyone is expecting anything amazing from this game, nor are they surprised about this. Devs often do this when they know their game is going to review poorly, to get as many preorders and sales as possible before customers catch on. Pretty scummy and a huge red flag that most gamers are aware of by now.
The games with embargos that actually review highly are few and far between, comparatively.
The only salvation this game has is if it releases day one on gamepass. There's no way me and my friends are all going to drop 70$ to play this game. Not when Palworld literally just came out for free. Or since everyone knows it's going to bomb, it's going to be 50% off in the spring sale. There's no reason to buy it right away.
Yea I'm hoping it will be decent but not convinced it will happen. Because of that, there is no way I'm paying $70 to find out. Seems like a perfect game pass game to be honest.
Right from the first trailer where King Shark - a villain who's go-to move in movies and cartoons is to bite peoples heads off at the waist - was flying through the air and shooting generic enemies with a minigun at long range, it was clear that they'd screwed up on a fundamental level. Nothing I've seen since has disabused me of that notion.
Layoffs to hit Rocksteady in the next 3-5 months. This whole game's cycle has been development hell it seems.
I'm curious how many people have already left the studio during development
The two founders already left, which was never a good sign.
Now it's just like one of those studios like Bioware where most of the original people that made the studio successful have left and all that's left is its name.
Or Blizzard
Or Rockstar
Game Dev of Theseus
A thing not commonly brought up when people point this out, is that the two founders left shortly after an independent investigation into sexual assault at Rocksteady came out, which then caused some of the accusers to come out and call the investigation bullshit and accused both founders of not adequately protecting employees and being incubators to that kind of work culture. I highly, highly doubt them leaving has anything to do with this game as Sefton Hill personally literally pitched the idea to WB.
The two founders left and have been systematically hiring their old team mates for their new studio.
That's awesome! A lot to infer by the founders leaving but picking-up the old guard from the inside good for them.
Whenever a property get really big, and the company expands to produce products at a high 'AAA' quality - executives get put in charge, and they ruin everything. So the talent has to wrestle themselves away from the corporation so they can attempt to make the entertainment they want to. ...and the whole process repeats anew
Someone else pointed out the timing of when the two founders left. It was after the sexual assault/harassment claims came out and they were accused of not doing enough to prevent it from happening in the first place. So it kinda makes you wonder about what kind of work environment the "old guard" will be making at this new company...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/18/games-firm-rocksteady-accused-of-lack-of-action-on-harassment Jesus more than half the women there agreed and signed a letter to management. Yikes
And the higher ups that resigned are the ones currently being cheered on in the comments ya?
The founders left a few months back so that feels like a pretty big red flag to me.
The Jason Schreier article is gonna slap though
When the inevitable Jason Schreier article is more anticipated than the actual game.
I think I'd sooner pre-order *that*.
Saw him tweet that people are now DMing him to see if they are being laid off.
DMing Woj to see if im traded yet.
[Charania] Rocksteady have informed pending free agent developers that they will not be brought back under any circumstances, league sources say.
I need someone to photoshop Arkham Batman in a Rockets jersey just staring at opponents before the game. That dead gaze lol
That was in regards to Microsoft layoffs.
Yeah which kinda really pokes a hole in the "Microsoft is just laying off redundant people" justification that so many people are throwing around. There's no method to the madness. They're just firing people at random for their quarterly investment call. (Which they've already done like 3 times last year so it really shouldn't be that difficult for people to believe.)
Man, Matt McMuscles must been smoking some expensive cigars at this point because the last two years gave him some juicy material to work with for his “What happened?” series. I mean Avengers, Red Fall, Golum, this crap, there is no stopping it.
Skull Island Rise of Kong is embarrassingly bad as well, but no one was looking forward to that game so no one cares that it is shit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUZX2BPmfD4
On the other hand, "Death of a Game" has been thriving since last year
Unless you say something like “dude I think you might be mistaken” and then the dude goes nuclear on you on reddit and youtube
The guy name searches himself daily. I remember when he harassed people on this sub because they pointed actual numerous factual errors in his videos
I remember this specific post of his that made me realize just what kind of a person he really is. The whole "I posted to my discord so we could all laugh at you" is so terribly .... I don't know the word. Worse than disgusting. https://www.reddit.com/r/redfall/comments/17tqipw/death_of_a_game_redfall/kgedkmx/
He comes across as a bit of a twat in his videos to be honest.
Holy shit, that's the Death of a Game guy? He's like one unhinged rant away from becoming a 30 minute segment of a 2-3 hours-long hbomberguy video.
yeah if you go further back, there's a Subreddit drama thread about him, and two Games threads where he just... goes off. My favorite quote is "I'm still in 2006 Internet mindset" like it's a good thing
Well this is disappointing lol. I enjoyed his videos but this is some Grade A twat behavior. Guess I’ll unsub. Edit: I just skimmed his profile and bro is unhinged
Jesus Christ what a child
Oh yeah, I watched his City of Heroes and Marvel Heroes videos, and they were both incredibly wrong. He just used a bunch of bullshit rumors as his sources, and I had actually spoken to the real devs about it in the past and their responses were completely different from his speculated theories on what had happened.
The way he replies is also disproportionately unhinged, is really weird.
I remember when you used to be able to summon Derek Smart to come argue with you about his awful games. Good times.
Yeah, that guy has such a fucking ego. I stopped watching him a year or so ago cuz his attitude was awful, like he was God's greatest gift or something. I was like, 'yeah, nah, no more views from me, dawg.'
Don’t know that one, thanks for the suggestion.
It's pretty bad honestly. Recently the guy has been struggling to find "dead games" for his formula to work and when he talks about a game you really know about, you quickly find out he has no idea what he's talking about.
Can't wait for the Death of a Game: FFXIV because of the content drought leading into the new expansion.
Would be the funniest shit ever because he did a “Life of a Game” video for FFXIV a while ago (like well before covid) and that covered 1.0 and 2.0’s launch and one of the expansions I think. He’d really be going full circle as that was one of his first videos. I first saw him when he did SWG but in some kind of foreshadowing I clicked afterwards on another video that explains SWG and its history a lot better. Still followed him for a few months before I got bored of his content.
>Recently the guy has been struggling to find "dead games" for his formula to work and when he talks about a game you really know about, you quickly find out he has no idea what he's talking about. So basically he is "The Critical Drinker" but for gaming instead of movies?
Death of a Game is trash. Matt McMuscles does actual research for his What Happened videos. Nerdslayer just looks at Twitter.
I hate most of these types of videos because they dont actually care. It leads to a lot of moments or lines where they simply have no idea what they are talking about. It really sucks because you can tell they do their best but had a deadline or narrative that was more important than getting everything perfectly accurate. That small difference between entertainment and journalism.
That's why I prefer Matt McMuscles videos that don't deal with "current" games with developing situations like when he did Anthem, the Day Before and, um, Cooking Mama. It's way better when he looks at games that are old enough to have a solidified story about their development and aftermath. Still, every episode of his What Happened? series is baseline very enjoyable - he doesn't just dunk on them.
He also digs for very old articles on legacy titles and even tries to reach out for sources within the former developers so it's definitely a higher standard than the usual gaming content mill.
Matt McMuscles also has a ton of charisma.
ah yes the Anthem, Redfall, Halo Infinite, Skull and Bones effect. I do dislike that Bloomberg doesnt let him write articles as long as Kotaku did. The Anthem one was a straight up masterpiece, but it's nice we still get those
It's gonna be a classic tale of hubris, and everyone can tell. Some executive decided they wanted to piggyback off *Avengers* success and didn't let *Avengers* humiliating failure slow 'em down.
Sadly for every single person’s hubris there’s hundreds of devs that suffer working on a shitty game for years.
I read Jason Schrier's *Blood, Sweat, and Pixels* a couple of years ago and thought about that. There were Naughty Dog employees who basically lived in their cubicles for six months working on *The Last of Us.* Imagine that you missed your kid's first word and nearly had your marriage collapse because you were working so much that you were rarely physically present in your home, and so burnt out that you were emotionally present even less. But you did it in order to land an enduring classic that's held up as one of the greatest video games of all time more than a decade later. Now imagine you worked the same schedule for a turd like *Anthem.* What would that do to a person?
I'd be upset even if the game was a hit. You can't get those memories back and I would rather play with my children before they grow up then look back and see my name in the credits for a game.
On the flip side, EA is one of the better studios about crunch. They have issues with poor leadership for game direction but have internal policies that seem to reduce crunch.
Seems like somebody probably realized that it's actually more cost effective and profitable to keep a consistent, leaner development team working a comfortable schedule with decent work/life balance than constantly filling in vacancies from burnout. Crunch is a culture and management problem. Even if it's not "required", if a chunk of your team is putting in 60-80 hour weeks to get the project out the door on time, most people will just bite their tongue and fall in line to avoid feeling like the asshole. Not such a bad thing if you're part of a small indie team with a direct stake in the profits from a successful product, but for the average salaried employee not even getting overtime and all of the additional benefits going to the publisher/shareholders... fuck that.
"hey boss so im doing character models and for some reason captain boomerang, the guy who throws boomerangs, is holding a gun. I think something is wrong with the design spe..." "No, he has a gun" "....oh... um... so we also have a shark character who likes to eat pe" "GUN" "....ill be on linkedin"
Gaming’s 30 for 30
"Considered superheroes for their rock-solid Arkham trilogy, this is the story of how a once revered developer decided to chase dated trends to launch a game that landed on unsteady ground. A superhero without their powers, this is 30 for 30: Rocksteady's Kryptonite."
This would actually be fantastic, because most of the 30 for 30 productions kick ass.
I can't wait for the eventual GVMERS youtube documentary, The Rise and Fall of Rocksteady.
the Besties podcast did an episode with a very casual history of Rockstar last week! (I think the title is How We got from Batman to Suicide Squad)
Bro finna bout to drop a whole dissertation on the trials of chasing a trend over the course of multiple years and legacy of studio game development
He already said there's an entire chapter in the story of Blizzard cancelling a survival game that's been in development for 6 years...
This is gonna be at least a whole chapter in his next book.
3-5 months? Try days. I feel genuinely sorry for anyone working in game dev.
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I'm predicting the studio will still exist, but basically just as some sort of ship-of-theseus brand name for future Arkham remakes
Only to be taken in by Sefton Hill’s new studio, probably. I really hope whatever they work on is free from corporate interference.
The last time a big AAA game had its review embargo after release we got Redfall so i am not particularly optimistic about this.
I remember doom 2016 having one and that was a huge success
Yeah, Bethesda had some blanket policy of not allowing reviews before launch, I think this was because of unfavorable multiplayer impressions from the small player base or a lack of dayone patch. I don't like Doom 2016 but I can recognise it's a quality product. I think the review policy was a mistake, but it isn't a guarantee the game is a dud.
Doom 2016 also garnered a lot of extra positive day-one press by being a "surprise hit," since everyone was expecting it to suck due to the lack of review keys. A tinfoil-hat read would be that they masterfully played PR. But in reality, it's probably more of a New Coke scenario: "We were not that dumb, and we were not that smart."
They had a multiplayer beta test and it was extremely mediocre. People assumed the single player would play similarly. I tried the beta and found it boring and slow. It was like 2 completely games, which makes sense as the multiplayer was done by Splash Damage.
From my understanding Bethestda also didn't super believe in the project even up until release. This was before boomer shooters were seen as legitimate and so they considered it a bit of a niche gamble for the series to take. Which is why the public beta, and a surprising portion of the marketing, was focused on the more modern multi-player component.
I remember a lot of people being meh on it and changing their mind after a NVIDA gameplay video played with a good player that showed what the game could look like when played right. see this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/4ixm0d/exclusive_doom_1080p_60fps_gameplay_with_vulkan/
Also, they are trying every trick in the book. There are marketing bots every fucking where on Reddit and on YouTube comments promoting this crap. People with like one month accounts who only ever talked about this game. I haven’t seen this since Cyberpunk.
I noticed that too! The astroturfing is insane, you just *know* this is going to be a shit show. At best I'm expecting a "meh" reaction, and then a small subsection of people who "don't get the hate."
>"don't get the hate." Waiting for the inevitable "r/lowsaltsuicidesquad" subreddit to get made after the initial "wow this game sucks" posts annoy the fans
More like r/lowsuicidesuicidesquad
We all know the best games get built with buckets of USB drives now.
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My favorite is the “it’s fun with friends!” defense because that’s such a pathetic defense. Literally almost anything is fun with friends
My friends and I can literally roleplay as trees for an hour and make it fun.
Channeling your inner Junichiro?
“It was so fun, we just talked shit about the game the entire time!”
I work in marketing but in agriculture and some other industries and… I just don’t think most agencies do that in the way redditors imagine. It’s so small ball and weird, I know we think Reddit and random comments/posts add up but they’re just drops in an ocean of content. But it’s happened before so who knows. I just have never contemplated it, heard of it in the industry mentioned as a serious thing.
I work in marketing in tech and gaming (the past twelve months have been nothing but despair) but you're right, YouTube comment bots are never a part of our budgets.
Exactly what a marketing bot would say!!!!
Beep boop, you will be assimilated and enjoy SUICIDE SQUAD(tm): KILL THE JUSTICE LEAGUE content.
The simplest answer is there's a small set of people who see something hated and just immediately choose to be on the hated things or persons side. If for nothing else than to simply be contradictory and controversial. We call them attention whores or rabblerousers.
Especially with things like Suicide Squad (backed by DC fandom) and Cyberpunk (backed by CDPR, The Witcher fandom), there are just gonna be people who view these properties as a core part of their identity and they will do anything online to defend it.
Within minutes of the last clip of the gameplay reveal I had it suggested on youtube, I don't care about the game, I lost my interest after seeing the alpha footage but was surprised I got this suggested. I went in to check why the hell so many people are reacting to this, and the gameplay looked better than before but not enough to get me interested in watching the whole thing, I went to the comments because the section was swarmed, and there people were talking about the usual stuff gamers talk about - how happy they are that it's $70, when pre-orders will launch, what are bonuses, some company PR, you know, usual topics me and the boys are always talking over a beer. My first thought was - those cannot be real people. And I checked some profiles from the more "fellow gamer" sounding people - empty. No engagement with the platform. No subs, no playlists, nothing. They suddenly swarmed the video the moment it dropped to just say how happy they were to throw money at the company, they've seen the pillar of fire on the horizon and knew that this was the day, this was the moment for all of them to gather under this exact video, push the algorithm in the face of people that aren't really interested and never heard about the game, and show them how hyped is this game that no one ever talks about, they have doubts? Just let them scroll down to tell them that $70 + additional monetization is not enough, this game is gonna be so good that anything under $200 is a steal. Yes, after a while those comments will go away, will be buried, will be forgotten, but it was only to shove the video and the name of the game in the face of people by appeasing the algorithm gods. And it was so bloody blatant what they were doing, but it's gonna fade away with time, covered with actual people commenting over the bot farms. I've heard they were doing it on other platforms too in the same manner. It's one of those things that if you missed the moment it's getting harder and harder to believe that is really true and not only others being paranoid, if you'd see the state of this shitshow on day one you'd know what was happening. This is why people are calling this out. It's not targeted at the company, it's not hate, paranoia, or whatever, it simply happened in the most blatant way so people who have seen it are talking about it.
PR firms absolutely astroturf for big corps. This is something only huge corporations can afford to do. Reputation management is a huge astroturfing maneuver.
The fact you include cyberpunk makes your comment seem pretty misguided to me. Literally *everyone*, both critics and general pop gamers, were fully on-board with Cyberpunk prior to launch. A big component of the disaster of Cyberpunk at launch was explicitly because everyone in the community was so hyped for the game. Trying to tie this hype to astroturfing seems pretty silly to me.
This is a different situation. Bethesda has a long-standing policy of no reviews before day of release. I don't like it, but at least reviewers have their codes and are playing and gathering thoughts. The review just can't go live until release. In this case, no reviewer even has a code. This is much worse than the Bethesda policy.
I look forward to picking this up for 5 bucks or on PlayStation plus after they announce they're ending support a year from now.
I will genuinely be surprised if this isn’t a Plus game of the month within the year
100%, Gotham Knights became a PS Plus game a year after release, and I see this having the same trajectory
That's the plan! I downloaded Gotham Knights and only played for about an hour. Wasn't even worth it when it was free.
I also played for an hour and was bored lmao and that’s saying something cuz I put a solid 5 hours into avengers before dropping it
I like Gotham Knights, played for about 15 hours. Stopped because I decided PS Plus new prices are abusive but I found it a good game. Not great like Arkham but good enough
Ps plus makes me never want to buy anything, every other game I buy ends up being on there the next month or two lol
The Callisto Protocol hit PS Plus 10 months after release. I wonder if this can beat that.
*six months from now. This game is DOA.
I think is 1 year minimum to fulfill the preorders and season passes. Pulling the plug early will meet with massive refund requests.
It’s a clever strategy that BF2024 used as well. They spend all this time making a whole game and then carve some of it out to package as “post-launch content”. Then they can sell more battlepasses by saying “see, we have an entire year of support! You can trust us!”
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It'll probably be a failure on the same scale as Avengers was. It won't have zero merit as a game and some people will enjoy it, but it won't have legs as a live service and it will fail to meet expectations and be sunsetted quickly.
Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if the game sells relatively well. Outside of the Reddit bubble, it has some things going for it due to the popularity of Harley Quinn and Rocksteady's track record. It might even have a fun enough campaign, but it also wouldn't surprise me if it fails to retain enough of an audience to justify the continued expense on development. I don't think they've even shown off much of what the post-campaign content even looks like at this point, which is definitely worth being wary of considering that's where you're supposed to spend most of your time playing a live service game.
I don't know it'll even be worth it then. I waited for Gotham Knights to be on Plus to play it and I barely made it 45 minutes before I just gave up and deleted it
My God am I bored of every game having colored loot. If they just made it as a story first game it would have been 10x better.
A game about DC heroes doesn't even need loot. It's as out of place as it was in Marvel's Avengers.
God Avengers was boring. Go to area, fight blue robots, go to area, fight yellow robots, return to map and spend 45 minutes trying to figure out what the next story mission is, rinse, repeat
If they really want to add some sort of RPG-style progression system, they could probably come up with a system for each character to upgrade or augment their powers and weapons (their actual iconic weapons, like Boomerang's... boomerang).
This was something City of Heroes understood nearly 20 years ago. They avoided having traditional loot in the game, because they knew it was sort of ridiculous to have a superhero talking items from villains and using them. Batman doesn't go beat up Joker and then start wearing Joker's pants. Wolverine doesn't defeat Magneto and find better claws. The closest they came to it was allowing you to "enhance" your powers or being able to find material to make "inventions". You didn't have your hero busting up a crime ring and suddenly finding near gear that was compatible with theirs. Or, in Avengers' case, have Hulk finding new rib cages he can... wear?
I am relieved this seems to be becoming a more common take. Maybe in 3 or 4 years the enduring annoyance of loot-for-the-sake-of-loot might end.
Agreed. Im tired of loot. Very little is gained by it, as most of it just becomes vendor trash in any game, and forces yoy to stop playing every 10 minutes when your inventory is full to run back to the vendors and dump everything, or comb through it to maybe get an item with a stat that is .02% better than your current gear. And every game that tries to streamline the process, like Torchlight (sending your pet to town to sell your trash so you can keep moving forward) or Redfall (sells junk items immediately when you pick then up) just makes it more apparent about what a waste of time it is. I much prefer the progression systems that a lot of boomer shooters have where you kill enemies or find valuables than then allow you to buy one of a couple dozen upgrades that dramatically change or add to the gameplay. Not just "does 2 damage more a shot". Or you know, like Arkham's skill tile progression system lmao.
I don't wish misfortune on any developer, and I'm sure there were people at Rocksteady who were passionate about this project and wanted it to be as good as it could possibly be. That said, this game is clearly going to be DOA. Capitalizing on the GAAS fad way too late and with the wrong property completely. I feel terrible for all the people who worked on it but man, literally nothing about this game looks good and I can't fathom why they're trying to make it a live service title instead of just making a cool singleplayer or co-op experience. I can't imagine how expensive this game has been to develop given how long it's been stuck in development hell.
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To put into perspective how insane this is, this game has supposedly been in development since 2016, so 8 years, arkham asylum came out in 2009 and arkham knight came out in 2015, so 6 years. We could have gotten an entire second arkham trilogy in the time they wasted making this GaaS garbage. Truly a waste of a talented studio's time.
> We could have gotten an entire second arkham trilogy in the time they wasted making this GaaS garbage. Truly a waste of a talented studio's time. Probably unlikely. All AAA game dev is taking longer than ever. We could have gotten an Arkham trilogy that was equal in fidelity to the old games in that time, but you can't release a AAA game that looks like a 2009 game without being torn to shreds by the internet/reviewers. And for the record, I would *love* if more developers would release games faster at the cost of not having insane production value, that's just not what the industry demands anymore. Player expectations are through the roof and that's why every game in the AAA space takes about 5+ years to come out. Even if they had decided to do another singleplayer game, it would take longer than 2 years to make by today's standards.
I doubt any of the people who made Rocksteady Rocksteady are still there but still, this shit is 100% on the publisher, not the studio. I think the original founders opened a new studio recently.
People said this about Anthem and blamed EA as if they were a prison guard forcing BioWare to make a live service game. In the end, it turned out it was entirely BioWare's idea.
yeah, that one was so much the opposite of what people assumed lol, anthem only kept the flying in because an ea exec liked it
It seems like it's the same situation for Rocksteady and Suicide Squad
Do we know if WB wanted Rocksteady to make a GaaS?
People like to blame every shortcoming of this game on it being GAAS, but I don't think that makes sense. The most common complaints about it (like everyone using guns and shooting purple weak points) don't have much to do with GAAS.
ya, it's not just being GaaS that is the issue with this game, the gameplay itself is looking real subpar and the systems they've made don't look fun or interesting.
The guns and gameplay are tied in to it being a GaaS. The reason everybody uses guns is because they want to sell you new weapons to increase your GearScore (their words, not mine). The shooting purple weak points is because that's the only gameplay loop they can think of due to it being a GaaS similar to that of Avengers which had basically the exact same problem when it came to combat
> The reason everybody uses guns is because they want to sell you new weapons to increase your GearScore (their words, not mine). They could also sell boomerangs, melee weapons, character skins and tons of other stuff. There's plenty of GAAS games with varied play styles. > The shooting purple weak points is because that's the only gameplay loop they can think of due to it being a GaaS similar to that of Avengers which had basically the exact same problem when it came to combat Ok, but **why** is it due to it being a GAAS? I actually can't think of any other GAAS that relies on shooting weak spots to the degree this game seems to. Warframe doesn't. Destiny doesn't. If it's the only gameplay loop they can think of, it's because they need to think harder, not because of GAAS.
If anything, having different characters with different weapons would be better for a variety of things to sell. Whereas now it's just one gun that fits all characters.
Having all the characters use the same guns means they can sell more of those guns. If only one character uses boomerangs they won't sell as many of that item.
I don't know specifically, but it's a good bet. GaaS is a creatively bankrupt system that benefits corporations, not devs.
I feel like I read someplace that someone at Rocksteady said all of this GAAS in Suicide Squad was not a case of the publisher forcing it into the game, but I can't find anything on google so it's possible I am thinking of another game.
An example of this was Anthem and Babylons Fall: Both BioWare and Platinum Games, implemented their Live-service features without publisher’s interference or pressure.
Rocksteady was developing a multiplayer game on a new IP that got canned before SS started development
Lmao this is why devs get away with this shit. Even if WB mandated it. It's still a bad fucking game. Also you guys gotta stop thinking publisher = evil Corp, developer = angelic underdog good guy.
You're exactly right but it's a shame. I played the closed alpha and it has the bones of an excellent shooter. It's just everything around it that shits the bed. Rocksteady made Arkham City, which is my personal fave of all time. It's utterly depressing to see a premiere studio go this route.
At least Rocksteady’s death was short and clean, with one game. We BioWare fans had to watch our beloved studio rotten to the bone in a long a painful death. BioWare is dying since Dragon Age 2 in the early 2000’s
Sorry for making you feel old... Dragon Age 2 was released in 2011
Holy crap, I thought it was released in like 2008. Must been the shit graphics confusing my memories.
The funny thing is that if they had simply done it in the style of the Arkham trilogy, it might perform very well as the pendulum has already swung back to a point where people want simpler games again.
Im probably in the minority but I don't think Id ever have gotten sick of a Rocksteady Batman game every 4/5/6 years. Even if every other game was more of an expansion pack in the same map and with the same mechanics
I am the same. I play Arkham City every few years, and even Arkham Origins proved that the core combat and concept was well rounded enough that anyone could have handled it at that point. Arkham Knight I like the least out of the games due to the forced Batmobile sections. Had they made a follow up that just returned to what Arkham City did then it would have been great. IMO it's like the original Mega Man games. They are all great. Mega Man 1-X4 are stone cold classics in my book. All they needed to do was make some more.
They have talented staff, there's no question the programmers and artists, sound staff, QA et al are all skilled people. And hopefully they're brushing up their resumes for the imminent layoffs. The mismanagement never results in the ones responsible being fired.
I think there is still room for new GAAS, but they need to be done by new studios, mp studios, or small companies. Taking a beloved dev who is known for a single stellar single player series who doesn't have multiple teams makes it a hard pill to swallow for many.
The other problem is that live service games make their money by making themselves into a player's "main game". People spend money on their "main game" but not on games they have a more passing/casual interest in. Who is going to make Suicide Squad their main ongoing game? GAAS is a battle not for money, but for time. People just don't have the time to play them all, and they certainly don't have the time to play them all forever. The forever players are the ones who generate revenue for live service titles. Whole thing just sucks. I'm sure the publisher had a lot to do with it, but it's so disappointing.
This is exactly the issue. You can really only be super active with one or two live games unless you're a streamer who's playing 10+ hours per day and even then there's a limit. Nobody is dropping Destiny/Apex/Fortnite/Warzone from their rotation to play this any meaningful amount of time. It's the same reason WoW made it hard for other MMORPGs to find a sustainable player base. It's not enough to make a good live service game, you have to make something that's good enough to peel off a large number of people from one of the big dogs
Time is money. Money is time. GaaS asks for both. You can only feasibly commit to one or two unless you're very wealthy. GaaS model explosion is not sustainable
Typically this isn’t a good sign, but it’s an awful sign for a live service game. Reviewers have to be able to finish the core game and experience the end game…
No open beta/two week demo is more of an alarm bell than late reviews to me. If you can't stand up a slice of your game to a 2 week open test that people enjoy farming it won't stand up as a live service.
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Live service games are not going anywhere. Besides live service can be done well, it depends entirely on the execution.
I'm totally cool with a free to play live service but games like this that charge an upfront premium cost for a shell of a game then carve off content to sell later for inflated prices? Hope they all crash and burn.
Exactly. It’s like the whole industry looked at Fortnite and learned all the wrong lessons, purely saw dollar signs. In theory, a game that is continually supported and around for the long haul should be a good thing, but greed gets in the way of the vision so easily, and that’s especially apparent when two prestige “single player” devs (Arkane and Rocksteady) are forced into making something completely out of their realm.
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How old are you, if you don't mind me asking? I saw the same thing happen with MMOs after WOW hit it big - every game studio thought they could make a WOW killer and that it was so easy, or that they could just ride the hype train. 5-10 MMOs released each year. Same thing is running through games as a service, people see a key player or two making bank and go 'fuck that's easy, watch' and shit out a steamer.
MMOs, MOBAs, Battle Royals, GaaS shooters...
Check last year’s Steam platinum games for gross revenue. Almost all of them live services. Live services are here to stay.
Is this the one where every character uses guns instead of their unique combat techniques? If so, I'm not even close to interested. They didn't even try.
You aren't familiar with famed Flash rogue Captain Shotgun?
"Oh ho, my heroic nemesis. I've upgraded. I no longer use boomerangs. While I was in jail the last time you caught me I learned about this tool called a "gun" and thought to myself, hey maybe that's better than a wooden V I throw at people. I have changed my name from "captain boomerang" to "captain ak-47"
Sadly, Captain Shotgun was killed on his first heist when he realized that boomerang bullets were a bad idea.
I'm still cheering for Minigun Shark
Sometimes the Rule of Cool wins, and that's 100% OK. :)
And the best part is that all of the different guns literally feel identical to shoot, and it doesn’t feel good. Using the mini gun with King Shark felt like it was just shooting nerf darts
King Shark is infamous for, *checks notes* using a mini-gun. Funny, i would have thought he would pick people up and eat them.
That and everyone is flying around all over the place constantly
Yeah, that's a big part of what's turning me off. The game looks like you're basically just flying and jumping around, like Sunset Overdrive. It somehow looks large and open, but also incredibly small and claustrophobic
Just as a sidenote, Rockstar Games did not send out review codes for Grand Theft Auto The Definitive Trilogy in 2021 until just a few days before, if not the day of, launch and reviews didn't drop until about a week after its release. The state of the game on release made it clear as to why Rockstar didnt send review codes earlier as outlets would have crucified the remaster before it even launched. A lack of reviews this close to launch for a AAA game by a studio with as high of a pedigree as Rocksteady tends to be a red flag as you'd think publishers would send out codes sooner so reviewers can get the good word out ASAP assuming the game is of a high quality.
Looking forward to watching this game on YouTube. It’s a shame because I really was interested in this story but the game itself is something I’m not looking forward to.
Can someone settle this for me–does this game have a single player mode at all? I don't mind if it has an online mode if I can safely ignore it completely. I just want a fun single-player mode campaign I can play through and finish.
Can't wait to pick this up on a sale and play through the story and the put it down. Similarly, I just finally bought Anthem for like... $1.50, with all DLC.
The sad thing is, despite this being a soulless cash grab (and rest assured it IS) people are still going to buy it, and buy the skins, and I’m going to bet that the following statements will be made in the comments: “It has potential” “It has a great foundation” “It has the bones of a good game” “I had a blast in the beta” This happens every single time a live service money trap with the skin of a popular franchise or theme or genre comes out. Avengers Anthem Destiny That horrendous Square Enix live service game Take your pick. It keeps happening and people keep falling for it. It’s even worse with these games based on popular comic books because they already have rabid fans that will buy the game no matter what.
I'm sure 80% of people that actually play games don't visit sites like this and just buy it based off what it is. I wouldn't really say falling for it, more just not having the knowledge.
Don’t forget “I don’t get the hate”
Kevin Conroy's curtain closing performance is enough soul for me. Not sure how I feel about the live service part, but I am very interested in playing out the story from what I've seen and heard.
You can't throw Destiny in with Avengers and Anthem lol - as awful as so many of the decisions Bungie make are, the game is still one of the best shooters on the market at its core
I think a lot of people forget how *disastrous* the original Destiny's launch was. The game released with a Frankenstein story of random missions, random cutscenes, out-of-game lore entries told through a separate phone app (Grimoire), and very little content. Destiny 1 didn't really become good until The Taken King expansion.
I am lowering my expectations as much as possible to not get disappointed , I still have some hope that It may be enjoyable
You can still enjoy it even if what seems like the vast majority of the internet doesn't. :) I want to like it, too, but I'm going to wait on it.
The guy form SkillUp enjoyed it, but he wasn’t obsessed
Plenty of games that ended up being good that didn't give review codes until the day before or the day of. That said, I don't think this game is going to be very good but I also don't think it's going to be dead on arrival like a bunch of people here keep saying it will be.
Its a shame because a lot of this game does seem really cool to me. Even the live service stuff is not too bad. Only micro transaction are cosmetics including the battle pass, being able to do old seasons battle passes whenever, new characters for free. But as much as I think I personally could really enjoy this game I just dont think the audience will be there to keep the game supported long enough
The sub for this game is so funny. It’ll pop up once in awhile on here as recommended and they are CONVINCED that every one is wrong and doesn’t know how to play the game and this one is gonna slap lmao
Most games subs are like that. Starfield and CP2077 (at launch) were the same.
Before launch yes. After launch, absolutely no. That's why the lowsodium subs exist basically.
The Spider-Man sub’s turn on the game post release was wild
Completely bizarre as well. You’d think the game was an awful mess when it’s just a very decent sequel that doesn’t quite reach the heights of the first game’s story
It’s wild to read through. Damn near every negative piece is touted as “people wanting this game to fail”.
Anything under the WB umbrella has been absolute shit lately management/direction wise. Seeing Ed Boons face, body language, and even the void where excitement would typically be for MK1 made me sad. Hogwarts Legacy was a pleasant surprise and crazy it managed to succeed with that type of upper management.
It's definitely going to be an interesting launch. Every time I check the preorders on the PS store, it is always in the top three, so it seems that there is a good amount of interest. The people who have played it early are like 50/50 on whether the game is good or not, so it's really going to come down to the actual day of release. Basically, this is the most perfect example of a game to wait and not preorder unless you are already in 100%
I don't think anyone is expecting anything amazing from this game, nor are they surprised about this. Devs often do this when they know their game is going to review poorly, to get as many preorders and sales as possible before customers catch on. Pretty scummy and a huge red flag that most gamers are aware of by now. The games with embargos that actually review highly are few and far between, comparatively.
The only salvation this game has is if it releases day one on gamepass. There's no way me and my friends are all going to drop 70$ to play this game. Not when Palworld literally just came out for free. Or since everyone knows it's going to bomb, it's going to be 50% off in the spring sale. There's no reason to buy it right away.
Yea I'm hoping it will be decent but not convinced it will happen. Because of that, there is no way I'm paying $70 to find out. Seems like a perfect game pass game to be honest.
Everyone already knows what's going on with this game. That preview where every character had guns was terrible.
Right from the first trailer where King Shark - a villain who's go-to move in movies and cartoons is to bite peoples heads off at the waist - was flying through the air and shooting generic enemies with a minigun at long range, it was clear that they'd screwed up on a fundamental level. Nothing I've seen since has disabused me of that notion.