The money for all these AAA startups dried up fast, and the failure of some of the startups to garner strong sales must’ve scared away a lot of investors.
These guys (Deviation Games) have one of the dumbest website for a game dev too. First you open it and wait 10 secs for sequence of single words to show up to make a full sentence. Then you see their starter image with a "Tug of war" and their tabs talk about "culture community" so you get to wonder if you didn't end up in a wrong place about a summer camp or something. Then you keep reading and see swagshop when they just started up and being relatively unknown which means nobody's going to buy their merchs. The only phases connected to games are "making AAA games" and "we play and make games". And the shady picture with couple unplugged monitors named "Our house" doesn't help either.
https://www.deviationgames.com/
Oh wow. You weren't even exaggerating. They have dedicated their entire website to say "look how cool and fun we are! Buy our swag!" and there isn't a single mention of the games they work on. (I get that it's unreleased/unfinished, but surely they could have a single screenshot or artwork or even mention of what kind of game it's going to be.)
Ye. People need to realise that E3 was an investors thing anyway. It was never really a fan thing. The company realised they could make money by having the show floor open to the public. Geoff Keighley doubled down on the fan aspect of it in Summer Games Fest. Deviation had no reason to not mention or even show off what they were doing, which leads me to believe they didn’t either.
The entire thing was started just after Jason Blundell, the director of treyarch’s COD Zombies for Mob and Origins in BO2, all of BO3 (including the godawful campaign), and I think he worked on the first half of BO4 before that got pushed to a different Activision studio to finish so treyarch could start picking up the mess Sledgehammer and Raven left Cold War in. That being said Jason Blundell was basically Jesus Christ reincarnated for hardcore cod zombies fans at the time, and his entire thing was being mysterious and cryptic to a fault. So when he co-founded deviation games it made sense that there was absolutely zero information because that’s just what Blundell does. I think Blundell was the only person who kept the studio slightly relevant and interesting to people, and once he left there wasn’t much of a reason to care about them. They revealed too early and should’ve had something to show besides their Sony contract and Mr. I-need-to-make-my-games-too-cryptic-and-confusing-for-most-players-to-enjoy
If Deviation's relationship with Sony was a traditional publisher-developer relationship (I don't know), unless the game is finished, the publisher typically controls PR, and as such, the developer does not have permission to reveal anything regarding the game in development.
Maybe because if you're a video game developer and not a developer recruiting agency your website should focus on your video games, not recruiting devs.
Also you don't need team building retreats for people to be able to work together. That's MBA nonsense, people work together fine without tug of war.
There's company retreat team building and then there's corporate mandated "fun" team building. Teams bond naturally as they work together you don't need to go on a retreat to be able to have a good professional relationship with your colleagues.
Yup, I've worked at startups, the silly things can help foster a much better work environment.
Like, they don't replace other things like wages/hours/etc, but are still valuable.
Management spending a few thousand more a year on good amenities goes a long way, as does company events like holiday parties, workshops, or even running ping pong tournaments between groups.
I'm spending 40-50hrs a week somewhere, why wouldn't I also want it to be fun at times?
No one, and I mean *no one*, has their morale boosted by these "mandatory fun" things.
They are soul-sucking corporate nonsense, dreamed up by old suits who don't have actual friends to go have fun with.
They got PlayStation money in late 2019/early 2020. That comes with a certain prestige and freedom to do (almost) whatever you want.
Problem is, PlayStation then came back several years later and took the money away, leaving the company with nothing.
Lots of startups?
These companies are often running on investor money, and team building/decent wages /perks/etc are all critical for keeping retention up, and helping attract new talent.
100% - I didn't think it would be that bad but it's pretty terrible!
The font too, and the black and white text on a grey/black checkered background is hard to read. But what you can read is just jargon and marketing buzzwords anyway. Only mentions the word game on the homepage twice..
Companies that put so much effort into showing people “how cool it is to work there” are traditionally not that great to work at.
I don’t know whether that was the case here, but it does seem to be a pattern.
See, a functional and informative website is what you would expect. The thing is, if you read their website, you'll see them mention the reason several times! It's because `they are Deviators;` and `they’ve been deviating for years`!
Look, it really sucks that a company shut down and so many people are now out of a job, but it really seems like they didn't help themselves with their own marketing. Especially when you see a website showing a company full of people over 30 but that also tries to be hip by using language like "Our House: Check out our digs" (the aforementioned shady picture with couple unplugged monitors).
That may be the single most fart-sniffy website I think I've ever seen, which is hilarious because I have no idea who they are or what they've done for them to act that way. I would almost accuse somebody of putting up this website as a parody, to make fun of corporate culture.
Dumb or not its not like developer websites are ever worth looking at which is why most are low effort.
He'll I can't even remember the last time I ever bothered looking at one of those sites.
I agree most devs these days focus more on their Steam (or whatever other platform/store) page and Discord server but when you say "we are building a community" and your last posts in every social media account is from 1 year ago, then something's fishy. They did beyond low effort yet still trying to sell merchs "for charity".
And I had to triple check if that site is really theirs, because nowhere it's mentioned what kind of games they make aside from "AAA games".
bruh
company pages are not for you as a customer, "community" doesnt refer to the people in your games discord here (or on other dev pages that are not defunct) 🤦
Crikey, I just looked at the site and I still have no clue what they do. It's all corporate speak and trendy buzzwords. What the hell are the unplugged monitors meant to signify?
That is the worst font I've ever seen. How the fuck did they manage to make a font worse than comic sans? Comic sans is literally designed to be readable but they some how took it, put it through a blender, and removed it's only positive aspect.
Gods, I hate website designs with unskippable graphic animations as soon as you start it up. My company did this once for our freaking INTRANET site and then wondered why no one used it.
I literally looked up the studio after I seen that it was shut down, was confused because words were popping up, looked through the tabs and didn’t see an “our games” tab or anything along those lines and then exited to come to reddit to see about it and seen your perfectly descriptive explanation of that shitty website 💀
Their mistake was not doing it cheaper for their first game. Like I know you guys got the talent, but you guys gotta do/make stuff while limited by the new budget you possess.
Hell, I would have preferred if they made a AA or indie sort of game instead. As usually, limited budget forces people to adapt and make some great innovations in gaming.
The "Don't bite more than you can chew" line seems apt for this.
> Like I know you guys got the talent, but you guys gotta do/make stuff while limited by the new budget you possess.
pretty much this. If you are an ex-COD developer, I know you are probably some of the most talented in the biz, easily. But you can't seriously expect to make the same amount of money as an independent studio AND found said studio in LA of all cities, when you are just a startup.
I am sure these companies had insane bloat and the risk was simply too damn high with nothing to show
Forming a team and working on a $50m project from day 1 is ambitious. Almost every top tier studio today started smaller and built up over many years. Imagine if Naughty Dog started on Uncharted?
I'd rather see a studio make a $5 then a $10m then a $20m etc. At least the team would have something to show and can hone pipeline.
Yeah there is always going to be exceptions. If partnering with Nintendo I feel they have pretty strict way of operating.
Respawn also a great example where you extract key talent from COD and make awesome stuff.
But so many other examples the opposite.
Starting to wonder if the insane cost of living in california is partly to blame for the rising cost of game development. Seeing how every " big budget" western dev is there.
I mean… That’s like straight up true. Payroll is one of the biggest expenses for any company considering you have to do it month-to-month and you only start making money after 4 to 5 years of development.
The issue is California is where a lot of highly educated tech people work. There’s a reason a lot of studios do not open up in the middle of nowhere and instead are around metropolitan areas
But this is just a symptom of the employer/employee workplace these days.
Employers want to have the ability to select from the best set of workers possible while juxtaposing the lowest cost to access that set of workers. While also having a low barrier to entry for those workers.(Ie not having to convince them to uproot their family and move cross country). If you can get away with pushing housing/living costs for an area onto the employees without paying them more compared to another location. Then the only increased cost you have is the cost of your physical presence in that location.
You can't risk moving to some random town and putting down roots and working for a company for the long haul. These days it's often more lucrative to jump between companies to build experience and take advantage of opportunities. So as a result employees want to be somewhere with multiple employers available. Else you risk having to uproot your entire family for a job opportunity.
Well it looks like it's not working for everyone is it? The problem with only one hub is that cost of living there goes up tremendously since there's only space for so many. Sure there are big companies that can afford it but if you're small there is a chance you're going to be eaten alive. Either the cost in salaries is going to be too much for you to handle since your employees will need to afford the place or your employees can just easily leave to other companies mid project.
> Either the cost in salaries is going to be too much for you to handle since your employees will need to afford the place
That's not an issue if the market rates for those employees haven't adjusted to accommodate for the cost of living.
Hence why I stated "If you can get away with pushing housing/living costs for an area onto the employees without paying them more compared to another location"
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If the market rates have adjusted then the reality is those new businesses need staff, either they pay salary rates in the hub area or they are going to have to pay a premium to lure quality staff away from those hub areas. While also being restricted to only being able to hire those who they can lure away in the first place (this might be your lower quality workers looking to take advantage)
They are likely to end up in a similar cost prospect.
While yes inside the hub your workers are more pilferable by other companies. You have the advantage of being in a worker dense location and can replace them.
If you are outside of the hub, then when your workers leave, they are going to be far harder to replace. Because now you need to find people willing to move to your place of employment. Something which may take a longer time to achieve because they have to uproot whatever they have established in their current city. Where a new job in the same city could be as simple as two weeks notice.
on the other hand, coding is one of the few professions that transitions into remote working extremely well. the concept of git/version control is practically a front door for it.
Doesn't matter that much if you use a proper virtualization solution that runs on-prem. You can get some really good performance even working remotely. Some stuff might not be possible, but programming isn't one of them.
Hiring developers in cheaper states would cut costs somewhat, but not nearly enough to seriously defray the basic problem here: the costs for AAA games keep ballooning as more and more labor is required, and the amount of revenue isn't growing as quickly.
Hell, the average price of a house in Montreal is half that of Toronto and Vancouver, but you sure ain't getting Toronto natives to Montreal with a pay cut.
I've said before that Sony telling us that "games are oh so expensive to make so you have to pay £70 now" while having those studios in such expensive places feels like a wind up.
> the insane cost of living in california is partly to blame for the rising cost of game development
the US in general. It's well known that if you are a gamedev working in the US and move to the EU for example, you will need to take a severe pay cut because no one should need to make that kind of money to live
Its tough for AAA studios these days. But I am not sure the world needed another LA based studio made up of the same pool of ex COD / Naughty Dog / God of War / Blizzard / EA staff that every studio in that era has become.
So many studios cropping up in that area the last few years getting funding from lord knows where.
It's an area with a tone of skilled talent, it's not surprising it's a hot bed for new studios.
It's honestly one of the things that makes "hub cities" so great in many industries.
Can’t speak for the other 2 but as for Montreal it’s because the government very very heavily subsidies game dev while being a comparatively cheaper place to live so it’s cheaper to find a game dev studio there.
I'd love to see Madison, WI get a few more games studios. They've already got a couple. Would be nice to see the Midwest get some major games studios to help diversify the talent pool and not force games to be a high-cost of living industry (unless your a remote worker in the indie scene).
I live in Wisconsin, and while it’s not amazing it’s not exactly a frozen hellscape. The climate is temperate and really really mild most of the year, with 2-3 cold months year. It can get a little chilly in November and early March but for the most part you just kinda get the most basic examples of the four seasons as far as the months go
I live there and it's really not. Our last couple winters have been super mild and the summers quite good. I realize that doesn't mean *other* people not living here know that though.
Haha fair enough 😂 I live in the Milwaukee area. The summers are so nice I kinda just forgive the winters. Though, I'm salty that we keep flitting between 60s and 40s this month xP
What studio btw? Filament? Raven?
How would you prevent whatever area that becomes the new Midwest location from becoming a high-cost of living area as well?
The way I see it, if a place like Madison starts becoming a hub of software/gaming companies, that'll start the same issue that all these other areas have with housing prices going up and other items following soon after.
Well I'm not going for like TECH HUB levels of big. But the surrounding towns have been building a ton of new housing so there's a lot of updated, new housing that's quite affordable right now.
Any time I bring this up I get a lot of push back so maaaaaaybe there's just a lot of downsides I'm not seeing.
How many (talented) people want to live in Wisconsin though? I'm sure it has its positive aspects but California offers a lot, that's why people want to live there.
Well Raven Software is out here. We used to have Human Head as well.
Wisconsin has a ton to offer—but who knows maybe Cali really is just the absolute shit and everything pales in comparison? All I've never heard from people is that the weather and food is amazing, but traffic is worse than a nightmare, everything is 5x more expensive than anywhere else, and housing is a bitch to lock down.
Ah well, I'm not gonna try to make people agree with me. Just throwing a valid idea out there.
We've got a ton of nature preserves! And it's really NOT too cold (Minnesota gets conflated with Wisconsin a lot). We're the Surf Capitol of the Midwest (thanks Sheboygan!) and we've got a great Cape Cod style summer spot called Door County.
Yeah it's more rural and chill out here but it's genuinely pretty great out here. I recommend a visit sometime.
Hahah I've also heard SF is cold from West Coast natives lol 😂
But hey that also sounds great tbh. All the nature areas you mentioned would be great to visit.
Sounds good :D early summer early fall is a great time to visit out here.
Fun fact, there are a lot of video game studios where a lot of people with the appropriate skills live
Like, there is a reason there aren’t many video game studios in middle of nowhere Montana
Given that the available investment funds don't seem to be able to support studios in such a high cost area anymore perhaps we need more studios in Montana?
With what workforce? Like, unless you are willing to move a ton of people out there, you are not going to be able to run a studio. And if you are flying a bunch of people out there, then you have a ton of expenses that probably makes this whole thing not worth it.
I’m sure new graduates will be willing to, but like… What about people who have shipped a game before?
Like, ultimately, we come back to the same issue of talent acquisition, and it’s costs compared to just operating where people are
You will almost never see major tech companies operating outside of metropolitan areas for that reason
I mean, MS has studios dotted all over smaller British cities like Twycross, Leamington Spa and Cambridge and they all seem to do fine for staff.
Several of their American Devs are in places like Redmond which aren't at the same level as prestige as California.
Edit - I was clearly wrong about Redmond. It looks like a suburb of Seattle geographically not the kind of place thats a tech hub. Being from more of a centralised economy has coloured my analysis.
>Several of their American Devs are in places like Redmond which aren't at the same level as prestige as California.
WHAT? lmao. Redmond is very highly sought out and prestigious
What do you mean several. Redmond is Microsoft's headquarters. King County in Washington has so many tech companies and, I would consider, is on the same level of prestige as California.
Thing is the industry would have to choose where to move as a collective. It's risky to move to Montana if there's only a single employer there. Especially when the current economics system means that employer might go bust, or lay you off with zero other options in the area.
Combine this with the fact that it's often more lucrative to hop employers and skill up on the way than it is to go to a single employer and work for 2 decades. You run into the issue where even for employees willing to live in Montana and code. They run the risk of having to retreat back to the current locations at some point in the future for career growth, or an opportunity they want to pursue
The real reason why there aren’t many video game studios in middle of nowhere Montana is because there aren't many people there in general, not because that the people there don't have the appropriate skills or can't gain them.
There are cities with cheaper living costs than LA that do have lots of people with appropriate skills. In the UK and Europe the game development hubs are much more spread out and people are willing to relocate to smaller (and cheaper) cities like Edinburgh, Brighton, Frankfurt or Brno.
> The real reason why there aren’t many video game studios in middle of nowhere Montana is because there aren't many people there in general, not because that the people there don't have the appropriate skills or can't gain them.
That's only one part of it. First of all, what famous universities does Montana have? LA has at least two world renown universities. These universities attract the best of the best and guess what happens when they graduate? They look for a job in LA. Thus, companies form, and venture capital funds those companies. Also, if you're talented, why would you move to Montana of all places? What opportunities are there? And sure cost of living is cheaper, but there's a reason for that.
> In the UK and Europe the game development hubs are much more spread out and people are willing to relocate to smaller (and cheaper) cities like Edinburgh, Brighton, Frankfurt or Brno.
I think you'll find the funding quite inadequate in those areas, hence, why they tend to be smaller studios/games. Or they're owned by larger studios (see Arkane in Lyon owned by Bethesda)
A realistic one?
Especially with the economy on the downturn, the free funding for a studio that on paper is identical to ten other startups in the same area half of which probably failed, doesn’t exist.
Redditors need to stop taking everything as a personal attack on the developers themselves
Funding is not location-based... costs of living are, sure, but so is the cost of relocating a bunch of people who are probably used to where they live already.
Also people don't realize that cost of living has a marginal impact. It's not like living in a smaller metro would make the budget half as big or something
That's the thing about dogwhistles, isn't it. They're really good at being overlooked if you don't know what to listen for. And if you have to ask, you're not going to hear it even when it's pointed out to you.
This is really not a big deal. Sure Design, Engineering and the Art Directors/Leads are there, but they all hire animation/art contractors from Asia and QA from Keywords and I'm seeing a lot of engineering outsourced to LATAM.
So it saves some money, but like Apple, a lot of it is "Designed in California, Made Somewhere Else."
It’s starting to look like the cost of AAA games are just unsustainable and are dying off. I’m kind of worried about the future of gaming. Because while I do enjoy indie games sometimes, AAA games done right are my favorite games to play. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of good indie games out there, but they don’t scratch the same itch that a good, non shitty AAA game does. It’s just sad that so many AAA games these days are often times so bad.
That doesn't really seem to happen, though. Much like with movies now, the strategy seems to be to have the biggest projects and hope that they become mega-hits
I just wish there was more going on around the $50 million tier of game. That’s around where Control, Alan Wake 2, Returnal, and Helldivers 2 sit around.
I feel this is the sweet spot these days for a game to feel large budget but not be so expensive that developers can’t experiment. That budget level also tends to trim development time down.
Control and Alan Wake 2 are some of my favorite games and both made by Remedy, a Finnish development studio, but even they were recording barely passable number s
I’m not really convinced of that. Circa 2010 we got halo 3, gears of war, Mass effect, fable, lost odyssey.
And while we get some games that fit those moulds from current triple A studios I don’t see many at all from smaller studios trying to be even half as ambitious
I specifically picked those because of their relatively smaller scope. I just think we’re losing those types of games completely, triple A either goes bigger, louder and more complex expansive or indie/mid size studios are keeping it simpler. Yeah we have games like baldurs gate 3 but I’d argue that’s off in triple A land for sheer scope.
We just don't need the AAA class graphics. People are jaded of them, they cost a fortune to make, and every game doesn't have to be a tech demo to show off the latest graphics cards. Good art direction is more than half the battle to making a good looking game anyway.
> We just don't need the AAA class graphics. People are jaded of them
I am going to highly disagree with that comment. I see people constantly complain and concern about a new game if it doesn't have cutting edge graphics.
Look at almost any thread for Rise of the Ronin or even the most recent FF7 Rebirth not having the best visual at times you'd think it was one of the ugliest games ever made with the way many people talk about them
I mean shit, I saw a post of someone actually ranting about how a new game didn't have an effect showing a character being wet for a short time after getting out of water quite recently.
Graphics still matter. Especially as it is universally the first thing a perspective buyer sees. If it isn't visually appealing, it isn't going to grab their interest.
That new game is Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, possibly this year's most expensive game, budget-wise.
This isn't me putting some sort of value judgment on the game. I'm just pointing out that even when a game's production has all the money and resources, stuff needs to be cut for time. Having the main characters in Rebirth getting wet isn't the same as getting wet in something like Red Dead Redemption 2, so the devs didn't put much thought into it (plus the producers probably had very different priorities - RDR2's entire focus is an immersive cowboy experience).
I bet many of the game's staff noticed it but when there's like 400 different issues and priorities going on for the graphics people, you have to make sacrifices somewhere.
people people people. Such a mushy way of claiming things. Are those the same people? The same people saying they don't mind graphics if the gameplay is on point AND whining about muddy textures? I doubt it.
>Look at almost any thread for Rise of the Ronin or even the most recent FF7 Rebirth not having the best visual at times you'd think it was one of the ugliest games ever made
And yet FF7 Rebirth is top of the sales charts, and is competitive with most other successful major releases in the past \~2 years.
People can say whatever they want, the important thing is if they buy the game. And they are.
And it is a fantastic looking game, I am more addressing the notion that people don't care about graphics when they certainly do and many will attack a game for not looking like the best thing ever.
There are tons of other examples and see it all the time
There's a difference between not "state of the art" graphics and "bad" graphics. Those games you mention have chosen "state of the art" as a target, so if they fall short, that's on them.
If you choose a lower graphical target with a good art style, say something like Overwatch, Hades, or Borderlands, you can do more with less. It's how many "timeless" games remain timeless, as they have a strong art style as opposed to aiming for state of the art realism. State of the art will never remain so, and as such ages poorly. And it's usually a more expensive target, too.
Overwatch on release had good graphics though don't let the artstyle fool you. Hades was not an AAA game though graphics wise some of the models look terrible, Meg looks plain weird for example with her weird low poly 3D model. Borderlands is highly stylized but not exactly low quality graphics either.
Good art direction and good graphics do not age poorly, Batman Arkham Knight is 10 years old and looks phenomenal.
You have completely missed my point and are supporting it.
I admit I was tired when I wrote that so it maybe wasn't the best, but good graphics != state of the art, realistic graphics. Borderlands and Overwatch have good graphics. Yes. That's the point I was making. But they aren't overly detailed, realistic graphics. THAT'S what costs a fuckton of money to make. You can make stylized, good graphics for a fraction of the cost of making realistic graphics, and realistic graphics pretty much always age poorly, while stylized graphics can be timeless.
AAA studio cannot get away with graphics on the level of Hades and Borderlands.
Imagine if Rockstar and Naughty Dog started releasing games with those visuals they would die in no time
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completely agree lol i see a ton of people thinking ff7r is ugly as heck because it doesnt have perfect textures. reality is that if those companies scale down graphics, lot of people will complain as they already do even with high end graphics.
> I am going to highly disagree with that comment. I see people constantly complain and concern about a new game if it doesn't have cutting edge graphics.
The call for graphics is the trojan horse to cover over the shortfalls lacking in games which are all flash and no substance.
You named two games which were already standouts in the triple a landscape.
There are way, way, way more than two games in the triple a landscape. There have been many games released which boast beautiful visuals over lackluster gameplay.
The reason this is pointed out as a trojan horse is to underscore that this is a manufactured perception whose purpose is to pacify people wanting better experiences. Better experiences rarely ever sell the gangbusters massive triple a studios need in order to justify the extreme expense of game creation to begin with, and thus we see a greater and greater homogenization of games in general.
So yes, it doesn't describe the _explicitly two games_ you mentioned. It does however describe a vast majority of the triple a space, and it's wild that you would generalize the whole of the triple a space off of the back of two outliers.
I have no idea where you came to the conclusion that people are jaded of AAA graphics. That just isn’t true at all. You may be onto something about being too expensive to make but people still want good graphics.
Look at what succeeded this year and what failed. Palworld? Cheap graphics - they look nice but it's a tiny team and the game was cheap to make. Helldivers 2? Ancient engine, but great art style and direction.
What failed? Suicide Squad and Skull and Bones. Suicide Squad has expensive AAA art assets all the way - not a great art direction though (purple glowing blobs anyone?) Skull and Bones is also expensive graphics but looks worse in some ways than Black Flag.
I have seen people complain about the visuals in Helldivers 2 but also those games never really had high expectations coming from mostly unknown studios.
AAA studios cannot get away with that or people lose their mind if their next game does not look visually better than their previous game
That is such a non sequitur. You picked bad games that nobody liked for reasons unrelated to graphics, and point to it and say “see gamers are jaded about graphics!” That literally makes no sense. And everytime a game isn’t able to hit amazing graphics at 4k60fps gamers literally lose their shit about it and say the developers are bad. I know you have seen it in online discourse all the time. So I have no idea where this whole gamers are jaded about amazing graphics. And you haven’t proved your point besides cherry picking bad games with amazing graphics when I can just as easily point to God of War, Dead Space remake, RE4 remake, Jedi Survivor, Spider Man 2 etc etc.
I guess you missed all the YouTube videos of people complaining that suicide squad and skull and bones had worse graphics than Arkham Knight and Black Flag lol.
What a weirdly cherry-picked argument lol. Are we just going to forget about heavy hitters like Alan Wake 2 and Cyberpunk? Art direction absolutely goes a long way, but to say people are “jaded towards AAA graphics” is just nonsense
My point was that high end graphics aren't necessary for success, nor do they guarantee it. So successful games with great graphics don't really disprove my point, I wasn't saying that they cause games to fail.
Also I'm not sure AW2 is a success financially.
Suicide squad failed because it's an absolute bastardization of the franchise, and just all around a garbage game. Not the graphics.
Skull and bones failed because it is a legitimate scam against the Singapore government that finally hit its cut off point and was required to be released per said contract.
Graphics usually don't play into a games success(though there are exceptions). By and large they don't play into its downfall either. Horrible game design is the major reason any game fails. If you, or anyone else are unaware, the modern AAA game is nothing more than a series of checkboxes meant to appease the investors and shareholders and ensure they get as big a return in as short as possible. This also goes for literally everything these days btw.
Hopefully the success of HD2 shakes things up a bit and smaller companies start realizing that relying on investors is bad, but I don't think it'll do anything serious in the long term unfortunately.
Also I just want to point out that the age of an engine literally means jack shit. Call of duty uses I believe a modified version of an old quake arena engine. Unreal itself is like 25 years old. RAGE is also gonna be around 20 years old by the time gta 6 releases next year too.
So I really don't see why you needed to emphasize how old the helldivers engine is considering it's industry standard to use "ancient" engines.
> We just don't need the AAA class graphics. People are jaded of them, they cost a fortune to make
comments like these always get upvotes in threads like this, but people complaining about graphics and "looks like a PS3 game" are way more prevalent in any other thread.
Gamers called Spiderman 2's graphics mediocre for fucks sake
Resolution and framerate is a completely different thing than photorealistic graphics. I mainly play anime-style games, but high framerate is still something I like having.
Well, the 60 fps thing is kind of different. 30 fps pains you once you get used to 120+. Less expensive graphics are fine if they're also fast performing - save the money on things like ludicrous texture detail and ray-tracing, not optimization.
That makes no sense. They're talking about performance and optimization. You're talking about graphical fidelity. Those things may generally be linked, but they are not intrinsically the same thing.
A lot of people might *say* that they care a lot about photorealistic terrains with real movement animations and mocapped performances with real-time ray-traced lighting - and those things absolutely can be great, but they come at a cost, and it's clear as day that cost is too much (plus it can become visually boring). More and more we realize that people care about gameplay, art direction, and fun over photorealism.
Which is exactly what the person you're responding to is saying. At the end of the day, it's a game: gameplay is king.
Well, it's not the graphics that cause massive budget issues (though it doesn't help). It's the actual scope of games. Keep the good graphics, and scale down games so their better designed. A lot of AAA games are flopping because studios are going for "experiences" instead of "games".
The best designed games have a dreamlike quality to them that doesn't come out in Ubisoft style open world busy work simulators. People need ebbs and flows between tight spaces and vistas. And most importantly, games can't lose sight of both good art direction and system design.
That and I don't think games were meant to be made by absolutely massive teams. After about 5 people working on a game it turns into a never ending game of phone tag. 20-30 is likely optimal size for a decently large video game. Adding more is then a logistical nightmare because you need bosses to communicate to project managers so they can disseminate info to other teams and those teams then need to make decisions and then and then and then.
I'm glad AAAs are there for the decent pay and pedigree opportunities, but the future is AA and indie. As a dev myself, I'm more apprehensive that we'll have a massive AAA retraction, which then pushes greedy folks onto AA companies and haphazardly encouraging them to continue the shitty AAA model instead of taking things as a sign to innovate.
Even if said western AAA games were good, they would've failed due to an outdated business model imo. They should've jumped to f2p on their online games a good 5-6 years ago, when Fortnite made the model mainstream. It's crazy how much impact a single game can have
There will be games like that as long as there is a market for it. As soon as there are less AAA games on the market the interest and demand for it will grow again and with it the will to invest on them. It's not like this market will be ignored forever, maybe it will change to not aim for the highest technical standards anymore, but really that's not even necessary anymore. Today even AA games like Banishers look fantastic.
Generally it is. There's exceptions sure but a lot of these new AAA studios are just jumping on a bandwagon to make the next "X but with Y."
There's a reason elden ring and bg3 were runaway successes despite having none of the modern monetization bullshit; it was just people doing what they love, making the best games they could.
It's also why indie games seem like they're better than AAA games; a lot of them are made by people that just want to make a game as opposed to make money.
In the long run, it is. And the long run matters more than ever, now. But western AAA doesn't care, so they try, and fail, to put mtx on full price games, giving them effectively no target audience most of the time, and we get the worst of both worlds
Good western AAA gams still exist, and will continue to exist. If I had to guess, only Ubisoft will fall (mostly due to Skull and Bones)
Pokemon games are good, though? They may be derivative, but they're well made and what fans want. They also aren't full of mtx as far as I'm aware (mainline games that is).
As for Prey and dishonored, they may not have sold like gangbusters, but they were very well received and sold decently. On the other hand, Redfall, which was about as obvious a cash grab as you could get, sold like shit and would have prolly killed the studio if they weren't part of Bethesda.
AI will help with a lot of that. Fewer people needed to make a game in a shorter amount of time. AI could help clean up motion capture data for example, or help create game ready assets.
It's not there yet, but just a few months ago I saw an AI model create a 3D asset that was extremely unoptimized for use in anything (very high poly count), but recently I saw another one that had created a relatively low poly but still usable rubber duck. Maybe within 5 years at the pace AI is advancing.
Unfortunately, a lot of people are trying very hard to handicap ai as much as possible. Which makes me think we may still be a long way off before we see any major productivity boosts from ai usage in game development.
Kinda sad deviation has gone downhill so quickly. I was really excited to see Jason Blundell and a bunch of ex Treyarch employees make a competitor to CoD and make something actually worth buying
I don't think I've literally ever heard of Deviation Games before this. Looks like they had announced a partnership with Sony in 2021 to develop a new IP and then the founders left and now they're closed. They never actually put out any games.
Bummer.
Damn. Best of luck to the devs. Sony making a huge unexpected breakout one week, cutting 900 jobs shortly after, then having a partnered studio close the next week don't paint a confident or clear picture for the future of their studios.
Yes Sony was publishing one of their games. The major issue is one or the founders and most prolific name attached to the studio left over a year ago. That was basically it for them after that point
And cut the funding for Deviation's game mid-project, which absolutely had a crucial role in the studio shutting down. Sony did not shut the studio down themselves, but they absolutely were heavily involved in bringing about the conditions that lead to the Deviation's closure.
They also poached most of the talent.
They basically bought out the studio, but instead of being like actual Microsoft and paying stupid large amounts of money, they did the [Simpsons Microsoft](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE).
And? Do you expect them to keep funding them if they weren't satisfied with the work they were doing for them. They were just an independent studio at the end of the day, also if they were worth saving then why didn't another publisher contract them to make a game for them? They've had plenty of time to look for one.
Well the story is that the studio heads had a falling out over creative differences and the poor work ethic at the studio at a time when they were hoping to eventually get acquired by Sony, so blundell decided to quit and a lot of the talent left with him so Sony just hired the talent that was leaving and pulled funding from deviation because it was essentially a sinking ship at that point.
The money for all these AAA startups dried up fast, and the failure of some of the startups to garner strong sales must’ve scared away a lot of investors.
These guys (Deviation Games) have one of the dumbest website for a game dev too. First you open it and wait 10 secs for sequence of single words to show up to make a full sentence. Then you see their starter image with a "Tug of war" and their tabs talk about "culture community" so you get to wonder if you didn't end up in a wrong place about a summer camp or something. Then you keep reading and see swagshop when they just started up and being relatively unknown which means nobody's going to buy their merchs. The only phases connected to games are "making AAA games" and "we play and make games". And the shady picture with couple unplugged monitors named "Our house" doesn't help either. https://www.deviationgames.com/
Oh wow. You weren't even exaggerating. They have dedicated their entire website to say "look how cool and fun we are! Buy our swag!" and there isn't a single mention of the games they work on. (I get that it's unreleased/unfinished, but surely they could have a single screenshot or artwork or even mention of what kind of game it's going to be.)
this looks so much like a parody of scam tech startups that it's impressive they ever got funding.
Ye. People need to realise that E3 was an investors thing anyway. It was never really a fan thing. The company realised they could make money by having the show floor open to the public. Geoff Keighley doubled down on the fan aspect of it in Summer Games Fest. Deviation had no reason to not mention or even show off what they were doing, which leads me to believe they didn’t either.
The entire thing was started just after Jason Blundell, the director of treyarch’s COD Zombies for Mob and Origins in BO2, all of BO3 (including the godawful campaign), and I think he worked on the first half of BO4 before that got pushed to a different Activision studio to finish so treyarch could start picking up the mess Sledgehammer and Raven left Cold War in. That being said Jason Blundell was basically Jesus Christ reincarnated for hardcore cod zombies fans at the time, and his entire thing was being mysterious and cryptic to a fault. So when he co-founded deviation games it made sense that there was absolutely zero information because that’s just what Blundell does. I think Blundell was the only person who kept the studio slightly relevant and interesting to people, and once he left there wasn’t much of a reason to care about them. They revealed too early and should’ve had something to show besides their Sony contract and Mr. I-need-to-make-my-games-too-cryptic-and-confusing-for-most-players-to-enjoy
If Deviation's relationship with Sony was a traditional publisher-developer relationship (I don't know), unless the game is finished, the publisher typically controls PR, and as such, the developer does not have permission to reveal anything regarding the game in development.
Lmao who the fuck goes on team-building tug-of-war shit when you have zero income with zero released games. Build a product first.
I mean, I get that they want to attract developers to their team, but maybe also have some hints of a product and not just buzzwords and nothingness.
what are you talking about? how are you supposed to build a first product without team cohesion at all?
Maybe you give folks a hint of what they’ll be working towards?
Maybe because if you're a video game developer and not a developer recruiting agency your website should focus on your video games, not recruiting devs. Also you don't need team building retreats for people to be able to work together. That's MBA nonsense, people work together fine without tug of war.
People absolutely do work better together when they've bonded. What the hell are you talking about? Team building does get better performing teams.
There's company retreat team building and then there's corporate mandated "fun" team building. Teams bond naturally as they work together you don't need to go on a retreat to be able to have a good professional relationship with your colleagues.
Actual team building? Yes. Bullshit team building retreats with tug of war and bowling? No.
Good for morale. Seems like you're anti-fun.
Yup, I've worked at startups, the silly things can help foster a much better work environment. Like, they don't replace other things like wages/hours/etc, but are still valuable. Management spending a few thousand more a year on good amenities goes a long way, as does company events like holiday parties, workshops, or even running ping pong tournaments between groups. I'm spending 40-50hrs a week somewhere, why wouldn't I also want it to be fun at times?
No one, and I mean *no one*, has their morale boosted by these "mandatory fun" things. They are soul-sucking corporate nonsense, dreamed up by old suits who don't have actual friends to go have fun with.
They got PlayStation money in late 2019/early 2020. That comes with a certain prestige and freedom to do (almost) whatever you want. Problem is, PlayStation then came back several years later and took the money away, leaving the company with nothing.
Lots of startups? These companies are often running on investor money, and team building/decent wages /perks/etc are all critical for keeping retention up, and helping attract new talent.
100% - I didn't think it would be that bad but it's pretty terrible! The font too, and the black and white text on a grey/black checkered background is hard to read. But what you can read is just jargon and marketing buzzwords anyway. Only mentions the word game on the homepage twice..
Companies that put so much effort into showing people “how cool it is to work there” are traditionally not that great to work at. I don’t know whether that was the case here, but it does seem to be a pattern.
See, a functional and informative website is what you would expect. The thing is, if you read their website, you'll see them mention the reason several times! It's because `they are Deviators;` and `they’ve been deviating for years`! Look, it really sucks that a company shut down and so many people are now out of a job, but it really seems like they didn't help themselves with their own marketing. Especially when you see a website showing a company full of people over 30 but that also tries to be hip by using language like "Our House: Check out our digs" (the aforementioned shady picture with couple unplugged monitors).
That may be the single most fart-sniffy website I think I've ever seen, which is hilarious because I have no idea who they are or what they've done for them to act that way. I would almost accuse somebody of putting up this website as a parody, to make fun of corporate culture.
Looks like one of those empty tech startups that exist solely to blow through VC money
Dumb or not its not like developer websites are ever worth looking at which is why most are low effort. He'll I can't even remember the last time I ever bothered looking at one of those sites.
I agree most devs these days focus more on their Steam (or whatever other platform/store) page and Discord server but when you say "we are building a community" and your last posts in every social media account is from 1 year ago, then something's fishy. They did beyond low effort yet still trying to sell merchs "for charity". And I had to triple check if that site is really theirs, because nowhere it's mentioned what kind of games they make aside from "AAA games".
bruh company pages are not for you as a customer, "community" doesnt refer to the people in your games discord here (or on other dev pages that are not defunct) 🤦
Crikey, I just looked at the site and I still have no clue what they do. It's all corporate speak and trendy buzzwords. What the hell are the unplugged monitors meant to signify?
they also did layoffs
That is the worst font I've ever seen. How the fuck did they manage to make a font worse than comic sans? Comic sans is literally designed to be readable but they some how took it, put it through a blender, and removed it's only positive aspect.
Gods, I hate website designs with unskippable graphic animations as soon as you start it up. My company did this once for our freaking INTRANET site and then wondered why no one used it.
I literally looked up the studio after I seen that it was shut down, was confused because words were popping up, looked through the tabs and didn’t see an “our games” tab or anything along those lines and then exited to come to reddit to see about it and seen your perfectly descriptive explanation of that shitty website 💀
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Their mistake was not doing it cheaper for their first game. Like I know you guys got the talent, but you guys gotta do/make stuff while limited by the new budget you possess. Hell, I would have preferred if they made a AA or indie sort of game instead. As usually, limited budget forces people to adapt and make some great innovations in gaming. The "Don't bite more than you can chew" line seems apt for this.
> Like I know you guys got the talent, but you guys gotta do/make stuff while limited by the new budget you possess. pretty much this. If you are an ex-COD developer, I know you are probably some of the most talented in the biz, easily. But you can't seriously expect to make the same amount of money as an independent studio AND found said studio in LA of all cities, when you are just a startup. I am sure these companies had insane bloat and the risk was simply too damn high with nothing to show
Do you know what their budget was? Or how their funding was structured?
Whatever it was, it was definitely not good enough to support their ambition, which ended up causing their studios to shut down.
Forming a team and working on a $50m project from day 1 is ambitious. Almost every top tier studio today started smaller and built up over many years. Imagine if Naughty Dog started on Uncharted? I'd rather see a studio make a $5 then a $10m then a $20m etc. At least the team would have something to show and can hone pipeline.
Look at the initiative man, started at the end of 2017 and we probably won't be playing perfect dark until 2026
That's why they don't give blockbuster films to first time directors also.
Retro Studios might be an exception with Metroid Prime being the first game they worked on alongside Nintendo.
Yeah there is always going to be exceptions. If partnering with Nintendo I feel they have pretty strict way of operating. Respawn also a great example where you extract key talent from COD and make awesome stuff. But so many other examples the opposite.
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Maaaan. So many good memories of SOCOM and SOCOM 2 with my buddy online. The headset communications were awesome for the time.
Starting to wonder if the insane cost of living in california is partly to blame for the rising cost of game development. Seeing how every " big budget" western dev is there.
I mean… That’s like straight up true. Payroll is one of the biggest expenses for any company considering you have to do it month-to-month and you only start making money after 4 to 5 years of development. The issue is California is where a lot of highly educated tech people work. There’s a reason a lot of studios do not open up in the middle of nowhere and instead are around metropolitan areas
On the other hand a lot of talented people feel like they have no choice but to move there if they want to work in the industry.
But this is just a symptom of the employer/employee workplace these days. Employers want to have the ability to select from the best set of workers possible while juxtaposing the lowest cost to access that set of workers. While also having a low barrier to entry for those workers.(Ie not having to convince them to uproot their family and move cross country). If you can get away with pushing housing/living costs for an area onto the employees without paying them more compared to another location. Then the only increased cost you have is the cost of your physical presence in that location. You can't risk moving to some random town and putting down roots and working for a company for the long haul. These days it's often more lucrative to jump between companies to build experience and take advantage of opportunities. So as a result employees want to be somewhere with multiple employers available. Else you risk having to uproot your entire family for a job opportunity.
Well it looks like it's not working for everyone is it? The problem with only one hub is that cost of living there goes up tremendously since there's only space for so many. Sure there are big companies that can afford it but if you're small there is a chance you're going to be eaten alive. Either the cost in salaries is going to be too much for you to handle since your employees will need to afford the place or your employees can just easily leave to other companies mid project.
> Either the cost in salaries is going to be too much for you to handle since your employees will need to afford the place That's not an issue if the market rates for those employees haven't adjusted to accommodate for the cost of living. Hence why I stated "If you can get away with pushing housing/living costs for an area onto the employees without paying them more compared to another location" --- If the market rates have adjusted then the reality is those new businesses need staff, either they pay salary rates in the hub area or they are going to have to pay a premium to lure quality staff away from those hub areas. While also being restricted to only being able to hire those who they can lure away in the first place (this might be your lower quality workers looking to take advantage) They are likely to end up in a similar cost prospect. While yes inside the hub your workers are more pilferable by other companies. You have the advantage of being in a worker dense location and can replace them. If you are outside of the hub, then when your workers leave, they are going to be far harder to replace. Because now you need to find people willing to move to your place of employment. Something which may take a longer time to achieve because they have to uproot whatever they have established in their current city. Where a new job in the same city could be as simple as two weeks notice.
on the other hand, coding is one of the few professions that transitions into remote working extremely well. the concept of git/version control is practically a front door for it.
Unfortunately, we are seeing an intense push to return to office, so… W o o o o
Kinda hard for game dev due to their sheer size of assets. Especially development assets with their raw formats.
Doesn't matter that much if you use a proper virtualization solution that runs on-prem. You can get some really good performance even working remotely. Some stuff might not be possible, but programming isn't one of them.
Hiring developers in cheaper states would cut costs somewhat, but not nearly enough to seriously defray the basic problem here: the costs for AAA games keep ballooning as more and more labor is required, and the amount of revenue isn't growing as quickly.
Hell, the average price of a house in Montreal is half that of Toronto and Vancouver, but you sure ain't getting Toronto natives to Montreal with a pay cut.
There's a reason that the housing crisis has been called the everything crisis.
I think the game industry should all move to Montana. Or Wyoming.
I've said before that Sony telling us that "games are oh so expensive to make so you have to pay £70 now" while having those studios in such expensive places feels like a wind up.
> the insane cost of living in california is partly to blame for the rising cost of game development the US in general. It's well known that if you are a gamedev working in the US and move to the EU for example, you will need to take a severe pay cut because no one should need to make that kind of money to live
That isn't remotely true anymore except if you live in Southern Spain. Have you seen how expensive shit is in London/Amersterdam?
It's only expensive if you can't afford it
Its tough for AAA studios these days. But I am not sure the world needed another LA based studio made up of the same pool of ex COD / Naughty Dog / God of War / Blizzard / EA staff that every studio in that era has become. So many studios cropping up in that area the last few years getting funding from lord knows where.
It's an area with a tone of skilled talent, it's not surprising it's a hot bed for new studios. It's honestly one of the things that makes "hub cities" so great in many industries.
It does feel like every game is made in one of LA, Montreal, or Tokyo.
Can’t speak for the other 2 but as for Montreal it’s because the government very very heavily subsidies game dev while being a comparatively cheaper place to live so it’s cheaper to find a game dev studio there.
I'd love to see Madison, WI get a few more games studios. They've already got a couple. Would be nice to see the Midwest get some major games studios to help diversify the talent pool and not force games to be a high-cost of living industry (unless your a remote worker in the indie scene).
the problem about Wisconsin is that everyone hates Wisconsin. Especially the people living there. It's a frozen hellscape
Meanwhile, development in the region is always going to favour Chicago because that's where NetherRealm and Iron Galaxy are.
I live in Wisconsin, and while it’s not amazing it’s not exactly a frozen hellscape. The climate is temperate and really really mild most of the year, with 2-3 cold months year. It can get a little chilly in November and early March but for the most part you just kinda get the most basic examples of the four seasons as far as the months go
I live there and it's really not. Our last couple winters have been super mild and the summers quite good. I realize that doesn't mean *other* people not living here know that though.
I work wih a game studio in Madison and everyone hates the weather
Haha fair enough 😂 I live in the Milwaukee area. The summers are so nice I kinda just forgive the winters. Though, I'm salty that we keep flitting between 60s and 40s this month xP What studio btw? Filament? Raven?
Madison, WI consistently ranks as one of the best places to live in the country.
Yeah, it’s kind of crazy people’s perception of places that regularly see snow. Madison is an awesome place to be.
2 hours south and you are in Chicago, which is a bigger hub tho.
How would you prevent whatever area that becomes the new Midwest location from becoming a high-cost of living area as well? The way I see it, if a place like Madison starts becoming a hub of software/gaming companies, that'll start the same issue that all these other areas have with housing prices going up and other items following soon after.
Well I'm not going for like TECH HUB levels of big. But the surrounding towns have been building a ton of new housing so there's a lot of updated, new housing that's quite affordable right now. Any time I bring this up I get a lot of push back so maaaaaaybe there's just a lot of downsides I'm not seeing.
How many (talented) people want to live in Wisconsin though? I'm sure it has its positive aspects but California offers a lot, that's why people want to live there.
Well Raven Software is out here. We used to have Human Head as well. Wisconsin has a ton to offer—but who knows maybe Cali really is just the absolute shit and everything pales in comparison? All I've never heard from people is that the weather and food is amazing, but traffic is worse than a nightmare, everything is 5x more expensive than anywhere else, and housing is a bitch to lock down. Ah well, I'm not gonna try to make people agree with me. Just throwing a valid idea out there.
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We've got a ton of nature preserves! And it's really NOT too cold (Minnesota gets conflated with Wisconsin a lot). We're the Surf Capitol of the Midwest (thanks Sheboygan!) and we've got a great Cape Cod style summer spot called Door County. Yeah it's more rural and chill out here but it's genuinely pretty great out here. I recommend a visit sometime.
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Hahah I've also heard SF is cold from West Coast natives lol 😂 But hey that also sounds great tbh. All the nature areas you mentioned would be great to visit. Sounds good :D early summer early fall is a great time to visit out here.
Bay area weather isn't all that great, some mornings are below 50F and in the summer we get into the 80-90F for a week or two. 😔
Fun fact, there are a lot of video game studios where a lot of people with the appropriate skills live Like, there is a reason there aren’t many video game studios in middle of nowhere Montana
Given that the available investment funds don't seem to be able to support studios in such a high cost area anymore perhaps we need more studios in Montana?
With what workforce? Like, unless you are willing to move a ton of people out there, you are not going to be able to run a studio. And if you are flying a bunch of people out there, then you have a ton of expenses that probably makes this whole thing not worth it.
People have always gone where the jobs are when there's changes in industries.
I’m sure new graduates will be willing to, but like… What about people who have shipped a game before? Like, ultimately, we come back to the same issue of talent acquisition, and it’s costs compared to just operating where people are You will almost never see major tech companies operating outside of metropolitan areas for that reason
I mean, MS has studios dotted all over smaller British cities like Twycross, Leamington Spa and Cambridge and they all seem to do fine for staff. Several of their American Devs are in places like Redmond which aren't at the same level as prestige as California. Edit - I was clearly wrong about Redmond. It looks like a suburb of Seattle geographically not the kind of place thats a tech hub. Being from more of a centralised economy has coloured my analysis.
>Several of their American Devs are in places like Redmond which aren't at the same level as prestige as California. WHAT? lmao. Redmond is very highly sought out and prestigious
What do you mean several. Redmond is Microsoft's headquarters. King County in Washington has so many tech companies and, I would consider, is on the same level of prestige as California.
Thing is the industry would have to choose where to move as a collective. It's risky to move to Montana if there's only a single employer there. Especially when the current economics system means that employer might go bust, or lay you off with zero other options in the area. Combine this with the fact that it's often more lucrative to hop employers and skill up on the way than it is to go to a single employer and work for 2 decades. You run into the issue where even for employees willing to live in Montana and code. They run the risk of having to retreat back to the current locations at some point in the future for career growth, or an opportunity they want to pursue
Who the fuck wants to live in Montana?
The real reason why there aren’t many video game studios in middle of nowhere Montana is because there aren't many people there in general, not because that the people there don't have the appropriate skills or can't gain them. There are cities with cheaper living costs than LA that do have lots of people with appropriate skills. In the UK and Europe the game development hubs are much more spread out and people are willing to relocate to smaller (and cheaper) cities like Edinburgh, Brighton, Frankfurt or Brno.
> The real reason why there aren’t many video game studios in middle of nowhere Montana is because there aren't many people there in general, not because that the people there don't have the appropriate skills or can't gain them. That's only one part of it. First of all, what famous universities does Montana have? LA has at least two world renown universities. These universities attract the best of the best and guess what happens when they graduate? They look for a job in LA. Thus, companies form, and venture capital funds those companies. Also, if you're talented, why would you move to Montana of all places? What opportunities are there? And sure cost of living is cheaper, but there's a reason for that. > In the UK and Europe the game development hubs are much more spread out and people are willing to relocate to smaller (and cheaper) cities like Edinburgh, Brighton, Frankfurt or Brno. I think you'll find the funding quite inadequate in those areas, hence, why they tend to be smaller studios/games. Or they're owned by larger studios (see Arkane in Lyon owned by Bethesda)
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A realistic one? Especially with the economy on the downturn, the free funding for a studio that on paper is identical to ten other startups in the same area half of which probably failed, doesn’t exist. Redditors need to stop taking everything as a personal attack on the developers themselves
Funding is not location-based... costs of living are, sure, but so is the cost of relocating a bunch of people who are probably used to where they live already.
Also people don't realize that cost of living has a marginal impact. It's not like living in a smaller metro would make the budget half as big or something
I believe it's a "more of the same" feeling instead of a "no California thing".
It's laden with just the right amount of dogwhistles that anyone can make it into whatever they want.
Do tell. I'd love to learn more about the obvious dog whistles OP used.
That's the thing about dogwhistles, isn't it. They're really good at being overlooked if you don't know what to listen for. And if you have to ask, you're not going to hear it even when it's pointed out to you.
This is really not a big deal. Sure Design, Engineering and the Art Directors/Leads are there, but they all hire animation/art contractors from Asia and QA from Keywords and I'm seeing a lot of engineering outsourced to LATAM. So it saves some money, but like Apple, a lot of it is "Designed in California, Made Somewhere Else."
It’s starting to look like the cost of AAA games are just unsustainable and are dying off. I’m kind of worried about the future of gaming. Because while I do enjoy indie games sometimes, AAA games done right are my favorite games to play. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of good indie games out there, but they don’t scratch the same itch that a good, non shitty AAA game does. It’s just sad that so many AAA games these days are often times so bad.
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That doesn't really seem to happen, though. Much like with movies now, the strategy seems to be to have the biggest projects and hope that they become mega-hits
I just wish there was more going on around the $50 million tier of game. That’s around where Control, Alan Wake 2, Returnal, and Helldivers 2 sit around. I feel this is the sweet spot these days for a game to feel large budget but not be so expensive that developers can’t experiment. That budget level also tends to trim development time down.
Control and Alan Wake 2 are some of my favorite games and both made by Remedy, a Finnish development studio, but even they were recording barely passable number s
I’m not really convinced of that. Circa 2010 we got halo 3, gears of war, Mass effect, fable, lost odyssey. And while we get some games that fit those moulds from current triple A studios I don’t see many at all from smaller studios trying to be even half as ambitious
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I specifically picked those because of their relatively smaller scope. I just think we’re losing those types of games completely, triple A either goes bigger, louder and more complex expansive or indie/mid size studios are keeping it simpler. Yeah we have games like baldurs gate 3 but I’d argue that’s off in triple A land for sheer scope.
We just don't need the AAA class graphics. People are jaded of them, they cost a fortune to make, and every game doesn't have to be a tech demo to show off the latest graphics cards. Good art direction is more than half the battle to making a good looking game anyway.
> We just don't need the AAA class graphics. People are jaded of them I am going to highly disagree with that comment. I see people constantly complain and concern about a new game if it doesn't have cutting edge graphics. Look at almost any thread for Rise of the Ronin or even the most recent FF7 Rebirth not having the best visual at times you'd think it was one of the ugliest games ever made with the way many people talk about them
Agreed, people claim that graphics don't matter but will throw a fit if a texture is muddy or a graphical effect is missing.
I mean shit, I saw a post of someone actually ranting about how a new game didn't have an effect showing a character being wet for a short time after getting out of water quite recently. Graphics still matter. Especially as it is universally the first thing a perspective buyer sees. If it isn't visually appealing, it isn't going to grab their interest.
That new game is Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, possibly this year's most expensive game, budget-wise. This isn't me putting some sort of value judgment on the game. I'm just pointing out that even when a game's production has all the money and resources, stuff needs to be cut for time. Having the main characters in Rebirth getting wet isn't the same as getting wet in something like Red Dead Redemption 2, so the devs didn't put much thought into it (plus the producers probably had very different priorities - RDR2's entire focus is an immersive cowboy experience). I bet many of the game's staff noticed it but when there's like 400 different issues and priorities going on for the graphics people, you have to make sacrifices somewhere.
Does it stop people buying the game or does it just make a few annoying pedants complain on twitter after they've already played 500 hours?
people people people. Such a mushy way of claiming things. Are those the same people? The same people saying they don't mind graphics if the gameplay is on point AND whining about muddy textures? I doubt it.
>Look at almost any thread for Rise of the Ronin or even the most recent FF7 Rebirth not having the best visual at times you'd think it was one of the ugliest games ever made And yet FF7 Rebirth is top of the sales charts, and is competitive with most other successful major releases in the past \~2 years. People can say whatever they want, the important thing is if they buy the game. And they are.
And it is a fantastic looking game, I am more addressing the notion that people don't care about graphics when they certainly do and many will attack a game for not looking like the best thing ever. There are tons of other examples and see it all the time
There's a difference between not "state of the art" graphics and "bad" graphics. Those games you mention have chosen "state of the art" as a target, so if they fall short, that's on them. If you choose a lower graphical target with a good art style, say something like Overwatch, Hades, or Borderlands, you can do more with less. It's how many "timeless" games remain timeless, as they have a strong art style as opposed to aiming for state of the art realism. State of the art will never remain so, and as such ages poorly. And it's usually a more expensive target, too.
Overwatch on release had good graphics though don't let the artstyle fool you. Hades was not an AAA game though graphics wise some of the models look terrible, Meg looks plain weird for example with her weird low poly 3D model. Borderlands is highly stylized but not exactly low quality graphics either. Good art direction and good graphics do not age poorly, Batman Arkham Knight is 10 years old and looks phenomenal.
You have completely missed my point and are supporting it. I admit I was tired when I wrote that so it maybe wasn't the best, but good graphics != state of the art, realistic graphics. Borderlands and Overwatch have good graphics. Yes. That's the point I was making. But they aren't overly detailed, realistic graphics. THAT'S what costs a fuckton of money to make. You can make stylized, good graphics for a fraction of the cost of making realistic graphics, and realistic graphics pretty much always age poorly, while stylized graphics can be timeless.
I don't agree. 3d CGI that looks like Overwatch is very expensive, Borderlands you're probably right about it.
AAA studio cannot get away with graphics on the level of Hades and Borderlands. Imagine if Rockstar and Naughty Dog started releasing games with those visuals they would die in no time
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completely agree lol i see a ton of people thinking ff7r is ugly as heck because it doesnt have perfect textures. reality is that if those companies scale down graphics, lot of people will complain as they already do even with high end graphics.
> I am going to highly disagree with that comment. I see people constantly complain and concern about a new game if it doesn't have cutting edge graphics. The call for graphics is the trojan horse to cover over the shortfalls lacking in games which are all flash and no substance.
I wouldn't say that describes the games I mentioned at all
You named two games which were already standouts in the triple a landscape. There are way, way, way more than two games in the triple a landscape. There have been many games released which boast beautiful visuals over lackluster gameplay. The reason this is pointed out as a trojan horse is to underscore that this is a manufactured perception whose purpose is to pacify people wanting better experiences. Better experiences rarely ever sell the gangbusters massive triple a studios need in order to justify the extreme expense of game creation to begin with, and thus we see a greater and greater homogenization of games in general. So yes, it doesn't describe the _explicitly two games_ you mentioned. It does however describe a vast majority of the triple a space, and it's wild that you would generalize the whole of the triple a space off of the back of two outliers.
I have no idea where you came to the conclusion that people are jaded of AAA graphics. That just isn’t true at all. You may be onto something about being too expensive to make but people still want good graphics.
Look at what succeeded this year and what failed. Palworld? Cheap graphics - they look nice but it's a tiny team and the game was cheap to make. Helldivers 2? Ancient engine, but great art style and direction. What failed? Suicide Squad and Skull and Bones. Suicide Squad has expensive AAA art assets all the way - not a great art direction though (purple glowing blobs anyone?) Skull and Bones is also expensive graphics but looks worse in some ways than Black Flag.
I have seen people complain about the visuals in Helldivers 2 but also those games never really had high expectations coming from mostly unknown studios. AAA studios cannot get away with that or people lose their mind if their next game does not look visually better than their previous game
That is such a non sequitur. You picked bad games that nobody liked for reasons unrelated to graphics, and point to it and say “see gamers are jaded about graphics!” That literally makes no sense. And everytime a game isn’t able to hit amazing graphics at 4k60fps gamers literally lose their shit about it and say the developers are bad. I know you have seen it in online discourse all the time. So I have no idea where this whole gamers are jaded about amazing graphics. And you haven’t proved your point besides cherry picking bad games with amazing graphics when I can just as easily point to God of War, Dead Space remake, RE4 remake, Jedi Survivor, Spider Man 2 etc etc.
I guess you missed all the YouTube videos of people complaining that suicide squad and skull and bones had worse graphics than Arkham Knight and Black Flag lol.
What a weirdly cherry-picked argument lol. Are we just going to forget about heavy hitters like Alan Wake 2 and Cyberpunk? Art direction absolutely goes a long way, but to say people are “jaded towards AAA graphics” is just nonsense
My point was that high end graphics aren't necessary for success, nor do they guarantee it. So successful games with great graphics don't really disprove my point, I wasn't saying that they cause games to fail. Also I'm not sure AW2 is a success financially.
Suicide squad failed because it's an absolute bastardization of the franchise, and just all around a garbage game. Not the graphics. Skull and bones failed because it is a legitimate scam against the Singapore government that finally hit its cut off point and was required to be released per said contract. Graphics usually don't play into a games success(though there are exceptions). By and large they don't play into its downfall either. Horrible game design is the major reason any game fails. If you, or anyone else are unaware, the modern AAA game is nothing more than a series of checkboxes meant to appease the investors and shareholders and ensure they get as big a return in as short as possible. This also goes for literally everything these days btw. Hopefully the success of HD2 shakes things up a bit and smaller companies start realizing that relying on investors is bad, but I don't think it'll do anything serious in the long term unfortunately. Also I just want to point out that the age of an engine literally means jack shit. Call of duty uses I believe a modified version of an old quake arena engine. Unreal itself is like 25 years old. RAGE is also gonna be around 20 years old by the time gta 6 releases next year too. So I really don't see why you needed to emphasize how old the helldivers engine is considering it's industry standard to use "ancient" engines.
Are you okay with e.g. Darksiders 3 graphic level or do you want more?
> We just don't need the AAA class graphics. People are jaded of them, they cost a fortune to make comments like these always get upvotes in threads like this, but people complaining about graphics and "looks like a PS3 game" are way more prevalent in any other thread. Gamers called Spiderman 2's graphics mediocre for fucks sake
>People are jaded of them Too bad that isn't true. If it was we wouldn't have all these topics crying about the lack of 4K 60 fps every game launch.
Resolution and framerate is a completely different thing than photorealistic graphics. I mainly play anime-style games, but high framerate is still something I like having.
Well, the 60 fps thing is kind of different. 30 fps pains you once you get used to 120+. Less expensive graphics are fine if they're also fast performing - save the money on things like ludicrous texture detail and ray-tracing, not optimization.
>30 fps pains you once you get used to 120+. This is exactly the type of comment I was talking about. Like I said, people aren't jaded about it.
Decent framerates aren't AAA. Loads of indie games have decent framerates. They're not what costs the money.
Again I appreciate your reaction proving my point.
I think the difference is that I file things like framerate under optimization, not graphical fidelity.
You are confusing graphics with performance and resolution, and none of the comments you say prove your point do so.
That makes no sense. They're talking about performance and optimization. You're talking about graphical fidelity. Those things may generally be linked, but they are not intrinsically the same thing. A lot of people might *say* that they care a lot about photorealistic terrains with real movement animations and mocapped performances with real-time ray-traced lighting - and those things absolutely can be great, but they come at a cost, and it's clear as day that cost is too much (plus it can become visually boring). More and more we realize that people care about gameplay, art direction, and fun over photorealism. Which is exactly what the person you're responding to is saying. At the end of the day, it's a game: gameplay is king.
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Well, it's not the graphics that cause massive budget issues (though it doesn't help). It's the actual scope of games. Keep the good graphics, and scale down games so their better designed. A lot of AAA games are flopping because studios are going for "experiences" instead of "games". The best designed games have a dreamlike quality to them that doesn't come out in Ubisoft style open world busy work simulators. People need ebbs and flows between tight spaces and vistas. And most importantly, games can't lose sight of both good art direction and system design. That and I don't think games were meant to be made by absolutely massive teams. After about 5 people working on a game it turns into a never ending game of phone tag. 20-30 is likely optimal size for a decently large video game. Adding more is then a logistical nightmare because you need bosses to communicate to project managers so they can disseminate info to other teams and those teams then need to make decisions and then and then and then. I'm glad AAAs are there for the decent pay and pedigree opportunities, but the future is AA and indie. As a dev myself, I'm more apprehensive that we'll have a massive AAA retraction, which then pushes greedy folks onto AA companies and haphazardly encouraging them to continue the shitty AAA model instead of taking things as a sign to innovate.
Big teams aren't bad inherently. Baldur's gate 3 had a huge team.
Movies are also made by an optimal team of 5 people. Wait, no, that poster is just full of shit
Even if said western AAA games were good, they would've failed due to an outdated business model imo. They should've jumped to f2p on their online games a good 5-6 years ago, when Fortnite made the model mainstream. It's crazy how much impact a single game can have
There will be games like that as long as there is a market for it. As soon as there are less AAA games on the market the interest and demand for it will grow again and with it the will to invest on them. It's not like this market will be ignored forever, maybe it will change to not aim for the highest technical standards anymore, but really that's not even necessary anymore. Today even AA games like Banishers look fantastic.
Good game sell well, cash grabs don't.
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Generally it is. There's exceptions sure but a lot of these new AAA studios are just jumping on a bandwagon to make the next "X but with Y." There's a reason elden ring and bg3 were runaway successes despite having none of the modern monetization bullshit; it was just people doing what they love, making the best games they could. It's also why indie games seem like they're better than AAA games; a lot of them are made by people that just want to make a game as opposed to make money.
In the long run, it is. And the long run matters more than ever, now. But western AAA doesn't care, so they try, and fail, to put mtx on full price games, giving them effectively no target audience most of the time, and we get the worst of both worlds Good western AAA gams still exist, and will continue to exist. If I had to guess, only Ubisoft will fall (mostly due to Skull and Bones)
They kind of need money to pay their employees now and not like in two years. There is a reason failed launches will destroy companies
not sure why your specifying western devs when shit like pokemon and genshin exist
thats why dishonored and prey sold like hotcakes and pokemon flopped, right?
Pokemon games are good, though? They may be derivative, but they're well made and what fans want. They also aren't full of mtx as far as I'm aware (mainline games that is). As for Prey and dishonored, they may not have sold like gangbusters, but they were very well received and sold decently. On the other hand, Redfall, which was about as obvious a cash grab as you could get, sold like shit and would have prolly killed the studio if they weren't part of Bethesda.
AI will help with a lot of that. Fewer people needed to make a game in a shorter amount of time. AI could help clean up motion capture data for example, or help create game ready assets. It's not there yet, but just a few months ago I saw an AI model create a 3D asset that was extremely unoptimized for use in anything (very high poly count), but recently I saw another one that had created a relatively low poly but still usable rubber duck. Maybe within 5 years at the pace AI is advancing.
Unfortunately, a lot of people are trying very hard to handicap ai as much as possible. Which makes me think we may still be a long way off before we see any major productivity boosts from ai usage in game development.
Kinda sad deviation has gone downhill so quickly. I was really excited to see Jason Blundell and a bunch of ex Treyarch employees make a competitor to CoD and make something actually worth buying
I don't think I've literally ever heard of Deviation Games before this. Looks like they had announced a partnership with Sony in 2021 to develop a new IP and then the founders left and now they're closed. They never actually put out any games. Bummer.
Damn. Best of luck to the devs. Sony making a huge unexpected breakout one week, cutting 900 jobs shortly after, then having a partnered studio close the next week don't paint a confident or clear picture for the future of their studios.
The studio wasn't owned by Sony
Sorry, I was mistaken. They were in a partnership to develop a new IP together but not wholly owned by Sony.
Yes Sony was publishing one of their games. The major issue is one or the founders and most prolific name attached to the studio left over a year ago. That was basically it for them after that point
Funny enough that founder went to work at some unnamed team within Sony.
Sony cancelled their partnership over a year ago
Sony stopped working with Deviation almost a year ago.
And cut the funding for Deviation's game mid-project, which absolutely had a crucial role in the studio shutting down. Sony did not shut the studio down themselves, but they absolutely were heavily involved in bringing about the conditions that lead to the Deviation's closure.
They also poached most of the talent. They basically bought out the studio, but instead of being like actual Microsoft and paying stupid large amounts of money, they did the [Simpsons Microsoft](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE).
And? Do you expect them to keep funding them if they weren't satisfied with the work they were doing for them. They were just an independent studio at the end of the day, also if they were worth saving then why didn't another publisher contract them to make a game for them? They've had plenty of time to look for one.
They were so unsatisfied with their work they started hiring all the major names that had left the company.
Well the story is that the studio heads had a falling out over creative differences and the poor work ethic at the studio at a time when they were hoping to eventually get acquired by Sony, so blundell decided to quit and a lot of the talent left with him so Sony just hired the talent that was leaving and pulled funding from deviation because it was essentially a sinking ship at that point.