May check out how many people from original line-up left in the company after ten-fifteen years. May explain some thingsIf you look at the history of game developers, it is easy to notice that many tier 1 companies experienced what you could describe as a golden decade and after that turned into mediocre companies milking their past successes. Examples:
Because companies infrequently hire based on merit. They don't want the optics of being staffed entirely by White guys.May check out how many people from original line-up left in the company after ten-fifteen years. May explain some thingsIf you look at the history of game developers, it is easy to notice that many tier 1 companies experienced what you could describe as a golden decade and after that turned into mediocre companies milking their past successes. Examples:
Why are those replacements often less qualified? Successful companies should be able to hire good people.
That's easy: Because if those people were more qualified, they would have had the job in the first place. Thus, a replacement must necessarily be of inferior quality than the original, otherwise it would have been the original choice in the first place. It's just like why every new game you play will always be the worst game you've ever played: If this game were better than the previous games you played, why did you play those instead? Thus, the current game you're playing was chosen at lower priority than all of the previous options: It is a worse choice, that you are now pushed into after having exhausted your previous options.Why are those replacements often less qualified? Successful companies should be able to hire good people.
Generational knowledge transfer failure.If you look at the history of game developers, it is easy to notice that many tier 1 companies experienced what you could describe as a golden decade and after that turned into mediocre companies milking their past successes. Examples:
Blizzard - the first largely successful game was WarCraft 2 (1995). After that everything that Blizzard built turned into gold, until the success of WoW (2004) and its early expansions. Blizzard started to decline rapidly with the releases of WotLK and Catalysm. I do not think I need to comment on the current state of affairs.
id Software - Wolfesntein 3D (1992) put them on the radar and Doom (1993) elevated them to the status of masters of the FPS genre (no pun intended). Quake series was also great. The last successful release from id was Doom 3 (2004), which sold well, though it was not universally praised at that time (I personally enjoyed that game). Rage was a disappointment and next Doom was in development hell for almost a decade, resulting in the company being sold.
Raven Software - once subcontractors of id Software, releasing clones of their games, they gained recognition with Heretic released in 1995. This was followed by a series of successful games, with RtCW being a highlight. Quake 4 in 2005 was a disapoointment, which, combined with failure of Wolfenstein 2009 resulted in Activision relegating Raven to the status of a DLC shop.
BioWare - BG was a smash hit in 1998, followed by great-to-decent releases. The last good old-school BioWare game is arguably DAO released in 2009.
Why do you think it happens? Do devs burn out after a decade or do owners of successful companies want to cash out as soon as possible?
It's just like why every new game you play will always be the worst game you've ever played: If this game were better than the previous games you played, why did you play those instead? Thus, the current game you're playing was chosen at lower priority than all of the previous options: It is a worse choice, that you are now pushed into after having exhausted your previous options.
In that case, the real problem is that you have to take the promotion to make more money. It makes no logical sense, it would be like a record label promoting Britney Spears to management because her first record sold well, instead of just asking her to record a second album.Companies aren't sentient entities.
The people working at those companies are the ones responsible for good games. And oftentimes it happens that after 10 years, many of the people responsible for good mechanics, content, visuals etc will have left the company. Bioware today isn't the same Bioware that made BG2, KotoR, etc - I doubt there's even one original Bioware dev left at the company. It's only a brand name now. Of course Mass Effect Andromeda and Dragon Age 3 are nothing like their previous games, because they're made by different people.
Then there's the phenomenon of people getting promoted out of their specialty fields and holding a managing position for a project they don't feel passionate about, while the thing they're really good at - like quest design or something - is now being done by other people. Case in point: Sawyer getting to lead the development of PoE which he really didn't want to do, and Feargus even told him what kind of main quest he wanted in the game, restricting Sawyer's creative freedom despite being project lead. The end result is a messy mediocrity that doesn't even know what it wants to be. Avellone designed some really good stories and quests when he got to be lead on PST and KotoR2, but later on he also was promoted and did more management shit and only had time for writing one or two companions when it comes to actual content creation.
So you reach a point where the people responsible for high quality content no longer create any content, either because they left for greener pastures or because they were promoted into a position where creating content is no longer their responsibility. And then suddenly, the games that company makes become drastically different... because they're no longer made by the same people.
Has Bethesda changed much in 15-20 years? I don't really think so. They also have a surprisingly small core development team compared to "AAA" dev companies.
Starts with passion and ends in corporate hell after getting popular. CDProject is a recent good example I think.
That is simple to answer, before the first Xbox, most of the people who played games were hobbyists, they were nerds which primary entertainment was gaming as a whole and were willing to play all kinds of shit. After the first Xbox, a ton of people entered on the market but most of those were teenagers after a certain kind of popular experience like the Counter Strike crazyness and Halo crazyness, those people in their majority only play Halo, only play Call of Duty, only play Fifa, only play insert popular here.Why do you think it happens? Do devs burn out after a decade or do owners of successful companies want to cash out as soon as possible?
So, the money that gone into experimental projects just dried up as the big publishers saw that servicing the audience of those huge titles made much more money that financing experimental titles. Live service was just an extension of this logic that made exploiting this casual audience even more lucrative. The AAA space is completely dominated by mass market hits and that wont change. The only reason why AAA companies are still releasing single player games is because Sony and Microsoft need exclusives and notice how those single player games all target the same tried and tested popamole mechanics of other hit games? Yes, because even they are trying to appeal to the audience of those hit games.
Good games require a certain creative enviroment, just go watch the No Clip documentary on Looking Glass, that sort of thing require a minimum of financial stability to be sustained, that is why Raven, Troika and Looking Glass died because the people in charge realized that they would be exposed to financial instability for decades with really high risks or have to sell out to keep going.
On the other spectrum, companies like Blizzard, despite having big hits before WoW, they wouldnt escape the change, it is more or less by the time of WoW that things were changing and the big money on gaming were starting to push for farming the hits instead of experimenting and WoW was a massive hit, the Blizzard that existed afterwards was no longer the one that existed before as it became a hit farming shop.
That seems clear to me, what I wonder is what will happen on the indie space? Will the hobbyists that play indie games grow enough in numbers so making more expensive games targeting them become viable? I see some genres like City Building, management, platformers exploding but all those genres have low barriers of entry and what about the genres with high bar of entry like cRPGs and FPS? While there are positive developments on the cRPG and FPS genre, I still dont see the financial support to pull off a non popamole Thief, System Shock, Deus Ex and etc. The market is big enough to sustain a Paradox or Devolver Digital but those publishers still struggle alot when they try to move to more expensive projects, Paradox had been avoiding making cRPGs for quite a while for example.
Makes sense to me - after 10 years most of the people/culture that made a studio great in the first place will probably have moved on and if they've been successful they've likely been sold to one of the bigger companies and in the process of being sucked dry of IP and consumer goodwill.
Saying that Microsoft seems to have the right idea with their acquisitions at the moment in that they're apparently open to experimentation and trying out new ideas given they want Gamepass to have something for everyone.
The programmers and the developers there were extremely excited about [Elite]. The people we unkindly later referred to as the suits talked about it and said, ‘Oh yes, it’s a very interesting technical demo and it shows that you are very competent, but why would anyone want to play a game like that? How long is it going to take to play it?’ We said, ‘Oh, quite a long time.’ They said, ‘What? Half an hour?’ We said, ‘No, no, no, weeks, and you won’t really finish it,’ which they didn’t like either. We said, ‘You just get better. You will be able to do more things, you will be able to go further and explore and ultimately you will get bored with it.’ They said, ‘But that’s not very good. You can’t do that. What happens if you die?’ I said, ‘You die.’ They didn’t like that either! They said, ‘Why can’t you have three lives?’ I said, ‘Well it really doesn’t fit in with the logic of the game, but we are allowing you to save your place, so that’s essentially the equivalent of lives.’ ‘Oh, so how many times can you do that?’ I said, ‘Well, as many times as you like.’ ‘But you don’t get a free life when you get 10,000?’ I said, ‘Well, we haven’t got a score.’ They said, ‘You need a score.’ I said, ‘That’s what our money is. Whatever you do earns money. If you shoot a pirate, you get a bounty. If you trade goods …’ And they said, ‘That’s all very complicated. No one will want to do that.’ And, actually, to be fair, we were a bit worried, thinking we might be in this sort of ivory tower. Are people going to want to work out how much money they need to buy 16 tonnes of food or whatever?
I disagree that a company must change over time due to new people and people leaving. Company culture changes drastically from too many people leaving(obviously some people are much more important than others with regards to this) and too many new hires.
Has Bethesda changed much in 15-20 years? I don't really think so. They also have a surprisingly small core development team compared to "AAA" dev companies.
Has Obsidian changed dramatically in the 9 year span between New Vegas and Outer Worlds? Absolutely.
id Software - Wolfesntein 3D (1992) put them on the radar and Doom (1993) elevated them to the status of masters of the FPS genre (no pun intended). Quake series was also great. The last successful release from id was Doom 3 (2004), which sold well, though it was not universally praised at that time (I personally enjoyed that game). Rage was a disappointment and next Doom was in development hell for almost a decade, resulting in the company being sold.
id Software - Wolfesntein 3D (1992) put them on the radar and Doom (1993) elevated them to the status of masters of the FPS genre (no pun intended). Quake series was also great. The last successful release from id was Doom 3 (2004), which sold well, though it was not universally praised at that time (I personally enjoyed that game). Rage was a disappointment and next Doom was in development hell for almost a decade, resulting in the company being sold.
You're wrong here. Unless you think id being a subsidiary now means we shouldn't count their newer games for some reason. Both Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal were hugely successful. In fact, Eternal is the biggest seller they've ever had.
id Software - Wolfesntein 3D (1992) put them on the radar and Doom (1993) elevated them to the status of masters of the FPS genre (no pun intended). Quake series was also great. The last successful release from id was Doom 3 (2004), which sold well, though it was not universally praised at that time (I personally enjoyed that game). Rage was a disappointment and next Doom was in development hell for almost a decade, resulting in the company being sold.
You're wrong here. Unless you think id being a subsidiary now means we shouldn't count their newer games for some reason. Both Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal were hugely successful. In fact, Eternal is the biggest seller they've ever had.
It does not change the fact Doom 2016 was restarted multiple times and released way over budget and way over schedule. In 12 years after Doom 3 id only managed to release 2 games: Rage and nuDoom. He knows how long it would take if they were not required by Bethesda.
I was thinking this after watching Vogal's gay promo for Queen's Wish 2. Gone is his desire to make great games, instead we have a sales pitch about a Fallout 4 wannabee clone which he's making to purely make bank.
That's easy: Because if those people were more qualified, they would have had the job in the first place. Thus, a replacement must necessarily be of inferior quality than the original, otherwise it would have been the original choice in the first place. It's just like why every new game you play will always be the worst game you've ever played: If this game were better than the previous games you played, why did you play those instead? Thus, the current game you're playing was chosen at lower priority than all of the previous options: It is a worse choice, that you are now pushed into after having exhausted your previous options.Why are those replacements often less qualified? Successful companies should be able to hire good people.
I was thinking this after watching Vogal's gay promo for Queen's Wish 2. Gone is his desire to make great games, instead we have a sales pitch about a Fallout 4 wannabee clone which he's making to purely make bank.
How is Queen's Wish 2 like Fallout 4? Just curious. I haven't watched the promo myself.
Also, when did Vogel ever make great games?