Were Arkane, Bioware, Rocksteady and Naughty Dog done in by live service strategies?

mindbleach, 3 months ago

The Cult of MBAs ruins everything. Gaming is just where it’s undeniable and unmistakable - because games are made of labor. There are no material inputs. There is no factory. Marketing is a factor for success, but it’s not sufficient. Quite simply, people make games. They’re collaborative art through engineering.

You can’t buy a band and tell them they play jazz now. It might happen. It just won’t work.

But for some goddamn reason, these money robots keep buying vibrant studios and sending them to the COD mines. First it’s “sequel, sequel, sequel,” until all joy has been crushed out of some once-novel franchise, then it’s dull purgatory cranking out someone else’s once-novel franchise. These bastards buy working groups of people like they’re licensing a hit new toy. Frisbee! Cutout frisbee! Metal frisbee! Triangle frisbee? Okay I guess frisbees are over, next.

This miserable business model is the only thing that saved Crystal Dynamics from fifteen straight years of Tomb Raider.

This fraud-with-more-steps wallet-siphon has the empty suits frothing with excitement, in ways unseen since WoW exploded. Remember when everything tried to be an MMO? And 90% of them bombed instantly? Like, so hard and fast, the publishers would’ve been better-off burning the money for warmth? These fuckers don’t. They don’t remember when everything suddenly had to be a battle royale, either. They don’t remember all the wallet-siphon games that bombed last year. They cannot imagine failures being relevant to their experience, because obviously they’re all gonna be the biggest fish in the pond.

Rational greed looks like mobile trash. Those fuckers crank out a trend-chasing whatever, on the cheap and in a hurry, and if it takes off, then they’ll spend real money. Usually by adding more waifus. The whole pay-to-waifu genre is… revealing. But this? This is embarrassing. This is billion-dollar incompetence. These specific people, theoretically raised from adolescence to manage large organizations, will throw out years of work and commit to cloning something they’re already too late to ever compete with.

That’s not even getting into how charging money inside a video game should be illegal.

msmc101, 3 months ago

the hell are you talking about with naughty dog? they just cancelled the multiplayer for part 2’s remaster is all

thudge_mcgerk, 3 months ago

Naughty Dog recently released the Last of Us Part II remaster with new modes, not exactly silence. The live-service multiplayer aspect was apparently cancelled because they couldn't devote the resources to it without neglecting their single-player output. They'll be fine.

Was Redfall ever meant to be a live-service game? I thought it was just a co-op shooter game that was a side project people were working on that they didn't expect to release, originally.

Not sure what live-service game Bioware were ever producing but time will tell with Rocksteady. I doubt WB will be too forgiving.

ampersandrew, 3 months ago

Was Redfall ever meant to be a live-service game?

Yes. Even though a lot of it never made it into the final product, it still scared off a lot of their talent over the course of development, and the game retained the always online component.

Not sure what live-service game Bioware were ever producing

How soon we forget. Anthem followed Mass Effect 3's multiplayer. There's also The Old Republic, but they staffed up a different location for that one.

vulgarcynic, 3 months ago

Holy shit, Anthem! I had completely blanked on that game despite spending a few hundred hours playing it during the pandemic with a friend who lived a continent away.

We figured we might never see each other again so that was how we hung out. Man, that game was so amazingly mid.

Blxter, 3 months ago

Hopefully rocksteady survives and does kill the studio

macisr, 3 months ago

Arkane lost a lot core members because of problems with the last game, so yes for them. Rocksteady lost their two founders because of Suicide Squad. They just dipped in the middle if production. Pretty clear that they didn’t like the direction WB was taking the game. Rocksteady was developing this for 7 years. They need this to work. So I kind of would say yea, they are probably done. Bioware, they are gone since a long time ago my friend, even before the last mass effect. Naughty Dog is fine i think, but that’s because sony noticed that everyone was failing at doing live service shit and had the sense to pull the plugs before it all went to shit.

Arkane might continue as in name, but just as a puppet. Once a videogame company loses its core members or founders, it’s the start of the end. Rocksteady is the same. They lost their founders and they are banking a lot in their game. Current BioWare doesn’t have a single drop of their original dna in it.

newthrowaway20, 3 months ago

sony noticed that everyone was failing at doing live service shit and had the sense to pull the plugs before it all went to shit.

Something tells me that if Naughty Dog didn’t give Sony an ultimatum, Sony would have still been on board for building a live service game.

SolOrion, 3 months ago

idk what you mean by ‘done in’?

Did some of their games flop due to publishers pushing games as a service garbage? For at least some of them I’d say that’s a solid chunk of at least one recent flop.

Last I heard- which was very recent- Naughty Dog’s next game won’t be TLOU 3. And they’re done- afaik- with Uncharted. So unless we’re getting Jak 4(look I can fucking hope ok) then it’ll probably be a new IP. Their multiplayer title got cancelled but it’s not like they’re ceased existing. Hell, it getting cancelled is certainly better for their image than releasing a terrible title.

I think Bioware’s issues probably have the least to do with live service garbage. They’ve been trending downward, imo, since Inquisition. Anthem was an absolute dumpster fire. That game was in such rough shape I don’t think it’s even fair to blame the live service parts.

idk how much of Suicide Squad’s shittiness can be blamed on the live service aspects either. Certainly some, but I don’t see how the plot being ass is a live service issue. It was just badly written.

Redfall was less of a live-service thing and more just that they fucked up and we got an absolute stinker of a game. From my understanding, that game had significant issues from the very beginning. I’m willing to give Arkane another shot, at least- I love basically every other game they’ve made so I’ll give them a chance and won’t pre-judge their future stuff based on Redfall. Hopefully Microsoft lets them go directly back into their niche.

So basically, I think my take is that usually shit games are just shit games, and even good devs deliver them once in awhile. The fact that they’re live service titles is maybe a part of the issue, but certainly not the whole issue.

Voroxpete, 3 months ago

In this case I think it’s more that live service titles are what large publishers currently like to demand from developers, so a company with a long track record of great single player games suddenly pivoting to live service multiplayer bullshit is usually a sign of direct publisher interference in an otherwise successful studio.

When these companies were left to their own devices, they made great games. But once the goose lays a few golden eggs, the owners get greedy (or new owners move in) and start trying to turn their products into an endless cash engine.

The passionate, creative people quit rather than be forced to build games someone else’s way, the soul of the company dies, and the product turns to shit (in many cases, the “soul” was “devs working ridiculous hours to produce a great game in spite of terrible leadership decisions”, so we shouldn’t lionise it too much, but the results are what they are).

HeyThisIsntTheYMCA, 3 months ago

Dude don’t get my hopes up about jak

echo64, 3 months ago

Tlou2 came out three and a bit years ago. Complaining about “nothing new” seems premature, don’t you think. Modern dev cycles are four plus years.

ampersandrew, 3 months ago

Yes. We know it for a fact for the first three. Good chance Naughty Dog survives just fine, but it was definitely a setback.