Its the MMO thing all over again. Everyone was trying to get inon that sub money WoW had - and no one could really do it. Everyone one of them spent a ton of money and fizzled. It took how many years and a massive reboot before FFXIV came along?? That is a lot of studio time and money dumped in the trash heap.

We’ve reached a point in the games industry where trends are moving faster than development cycles, and the results are calamitous.

Thanks for sharing! That’s an interesting read!

The section on “Layoffs negatively impact companies in real but hard-to-measure ways.” is probably the most interesting one and also least conclusive. I can see that a lot of things depend on the details of the execution, as well as the circumstances.

As an example, I…

Yeah the takeaway from this is NOT that single player games are in trouble. There were lots of other potential reasons (aside from quality) why this failed:

If you’ve ever played games with romance options, features characters in relationships, or presents characters in a sexualized way, congrats, you’ve played a game that addresses gender and sexuality.

Heck, with the Persona games there’s a huge uproar over ‘censorship’ when we are removed as a cultural punching bag.

Like, if I had a nickel for how many times Atlus inserted queer people into a comic relief scene just to make them seem predatory and then removed it later I would have 2 nickels but its still…

“there’s a percentage of the gaming population–like queer and trans players–which is already playing despite being essentially uninvited, and the industry sees us as “gravy”—a nice extra but not a group worth catering to directly.”

I agree with you! When the Titanic hit the iceberg, everyone on board was equally responsible. The guy shoveling coal in the boiler room was steering the ship, same as everyone else. Yep.

“STILL RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR WORK! Why is this so hard to understand?” Because what you are intending is most likely not clear to others reading your thoughts. I am responsible for delivering the product as the spec defines. I can point out issues but at the end of the day if the management wants dumb ideas your job is…

Well at least you’re aware that your opinion is moronic. Calling for them to lose their jobs like you did demonstrates just how juvenile your view of the world is. I hope someday you’ll grow up and understand that. 

That’s a gross oversimplification. The outcome of a game’s development can be affected by a multitude of factors outside of the developers’ control. For example, the publisher can decide to push up the release date, refuse to delay the game when it needs more time for polish, impose all sorts of arbitrary creative dema…

The sheer number of stories we have from people that went through hell dealing with bad project managers or “leaders” of teams that would pull one way then the other, changing goals and objectives and scopes...

Hey say it as many times as you want, it’s a stupid thing to say once, might as well double down.

What? What an absurd statement. Low level developers are by and large very passionate about the industry and the projects they work on. But these people aren’t the ones making the decisions, they have bosses they have to answer to and the bosses are only after the revenue, chasing the mythical infinite GAAS. Being a…

What a disappointment! I’d settle for The Division on the high seas, as long as I didn’t have to fight online people who practice WAY more than me. Perhaps I’ll still try it to see what is going on. Seriously - just a single player naval combat game would be nice.

It would be cool to have “public events” like in…

God what an awful attempt at engagement.  And I mean the guy asking the questions.  He read that like he was in a british cringe comedy show, but its real.

She knows what meme culture is, she’s just sick of the bullshit.

Out of context, the above interaction could be read as Johnson simply not understanding meme culture, which is totally fair.

Agreed, I think the author is really trying to make this something so much bigger than it actually is. oh and BTW who gives a fuck

Just watching the bit it’s such an awkward moment. I assume the interviewer figured she would take a more self deprecating tone “Oh yeah, haha, I can’t believe it either!” sort of thing. Not like it’s the first time anyone’s been asked about something going viral for the wrong reasons. But the two of them have no…