World of Darkness Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 - VTMB sequel from The Chinese Room - coming early 2025

[Roguey]

The Chinese Room is a Sumo studio, which is part of Sumo Digital, a studio-for-fire support ecosystem owned by Tencent, which is the 19th largest company in the world. They entered a joint funding deal with Paradox. Not nearly as big of course but they have a market-cap of over a billion dollars. At any rate, neither of these companies should have trouble putting up the money to find the labor and get the talent needed to get a game like this working.

And yet neither of these operations are capable of putting out a mediocre-at-best first-person pugilist (where they foolishly pointed to successful and well-received games like Elden Ring, God of War and Middle-Earth as points of references for what they're going for) game as "smoothly" as a mismanaged and rushed PC game from 2004 that was developed on unfinished technology.

Though it would appear that Paradox is having even more trouble than usual:

https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/media/life-by-you-is-cancelled

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/prison-architect-2-delayed-release.1697795/

https://www.polygon.com/gaming/24194344/cities-skylines-2-console-version-delayed-paradox#:~:text=Cities: Skylines 2, the follow,2 has been postponed indefinitely.

As The President noted earlier, Paradox is reporting that they have a lot of cash, they just don't want to keep spending more and more on this game.

 

[Cricket McBangle]

Hadda make an account to get full access to the reviews -_-

Stay away!

Pros

Some of the games are pretty good

Cons

BE WARNED they go after former employees who say anything negative about the company, they got two people fired from future jobs that I know of, there's probably more

Advice to Management

One of the founders is legitimately out of her mind, she's a liability and should be kept far away from the business if she's not already

Dan Pinchbeck's wife is crazy eh, that's not too surprising.

Excellent company culture
Senior environment artist

Pros

- Excellent company culture
- Huge potential to grow and develop if you're proactive
- Real lust for developing narrative focussed games
- TCR parties, evening chill and event days
- Sumo company benefits (learning days, duvet days, SDC)

Cons

- Expensive in Brighton
- Production team and project management lacks experience and it shows in Bloodlines 2
- Seemingly random promotions
- Cultural shift after Dan Pinchbeck left
- Needs much stronger Art and Game Directors
- Unbelievable level of crunch on Bloodlines as core-team spread even thinner than buttery thin (i,e. whole departments can literally just be one or two people. Great for ownership and agency, terrible for work-life balance)

Advice to Management

Listen to the team when setting sprint goals. Fewer meetings. Ensure projects have the resources they need to thrive.

Paradox wants it cheap and it wants it now.

Need I ask what this "cultural shift" entails, did the amateur zoomers take over?

With Dan Pinchbeck, they probably were under the illusion that they could make pretentious garbage but on a higher budget. Even though Dan wanted to move away from walking sim games, he probably still had delusions that they were going to be able to make artsy-fartsy crowd-pleasing "thought-provoking" games until he saw what was coming. Now that he's gone, they're effectively Sumo Brighton and they will probably drop all pretenses of making such things considering no one gives a shit about Still Wakes The Deep.

 

[The President]

As The President noted earlier, Paradox is reporting that they have a lot of cash, they just don't want to keep spending more and more on this game.

One thing to keep in mind here as well is that it is possible Paradox has spent very little to nothing on TCR’s version of the game.

To my knowledge they never spent money to buy any stake in either Sumo or TCR like they did with HSL. I think the Paradox standard for WOD games is they get 30% of the proceeds(someone fact check me here), that might be the case here. The assets they sent them were already owned and cost accounted by paradox. If they did give TCR cash or leverage funds for them, it’s already on the 2024 balance sheet, which is quite a healthy one in reality for a game publisher.

 

[Roguey]

One thing to keep in mind here as well is that it is possible Paradox has spent very little to nothing on TCR’s version of the game.

To my knowledge they never spent money to buy any stake in either Sumo or TCR like they did with HSL. I think the Paradox standard for WOD games is they get 30% of the proceeds(someone fact check me here), that might be the case here. The assets they sent them were already owned and cost accounted by paradox. If they did give TCR cash or leverage funds for them, it’s already on the 2024 balance sheet, which is quite a healthy one in reality for a game publisher.

Ha, as they said back in 2022

For externally developed games, we have reworked how we, going forward, invest in projects that are outside our core segments and how we collaborate with third-party developers. The investments will be monetarily smaller and managed by a dedicated team working outside the regular development organization. In parallel, we have reviewed the production process in order to be able to identify problems earlier and sharpen the focus of these collaborations. All in all, this means that we can act at a lower cost and with a lower risk while simultaneously enabling us to find new sources of revenue more efficiently.

 

[Cricket McBangle]

As The President noted earlier, Paradox is reporting that they have a lot of cash, they just don't want to keep spending more and more on this game.

One thing to keep in mind here as well is that it is possible Paradox has spent very little to nothing on TCR’s version of the game.

To my knowledge they never spent money to buy any stake in either Sumo or TCR like they did with HSL. I think the Paradox standard for WOD games is they get 30% of the proceeds(someone fact check me here), that might be the case here. The assets they sent them were already owned and cost accounted by paradox. If they did give TCR cash or leverage funds for them, it’s already on the 2024 balance sheet, which is quite a healthy one in reality for a game publisher.

I believe Sumo and Paradox agreed to do a 50/50 funding deal for this game. I'll have to go back and find the source on it but I'm almost confident that's what the deal is. It could be possible that Paradox providing the leftover game assets and such were part of their 50 percent.

 

[Skinwalker]

Is this shit getting cancelled or no?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Is this shit getting cancelled or no?

No, nigger. As far as paradox is concerned the sunk cost is so bad they're relocating to Atlantis.

 

[Fedora Master]

Funny how Paradox complains about a never finished game while shitting out never finished shitheaps themselves.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Funny how Paradox complains about a never finished game while shitting out never finished shitheaps themselves

I mean, they can't even push dlcs for it yet.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

The Chinese Room is a Sumo studio, which is part of Sumo Digital, a studio-for-fire support ecosystem owned by Tencent, which is the 19th largest company in the world. They entered a joint funding deal with Paradox. Not nearly as big of course but they have a market-cap of over a billion dollars. At any rate, neither of these companies should have trouble putting up the money to find the labor and get the talent needed to get a game like this working.

And yet neither of these operations are capable of putting out a mediocre-at-best first-person pugilist (where they foolishly pointed to successful and well-received games like Elden Ring, God of War and Middle-Earth as points of references for what they're going for) game as "smoothly" as a mismanaged and rushed PC game from 2004 that was developed on unfinished technology.

Though it would appear that Paradox is having even more trouble than usual:

https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/media/life-by-you-is-cancelled

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/prison-architect-2-delayed-release.1697795/

https://www.polygon.com/gaming/24194344/cities-skylines-2-console-version-delayed-paradox#:~:text=Cities: Skylines 2, the follow,2 has been postponed indefinitely.

As The President noted earlier, Paradox is reporting that they have a lot of cash, they just don't want to keep spending more and more on this game.

So he has already recovered from the first phase of wealth, when you spend money on stupid things without a second thought.

Can they finally fix the nukes in Hearts of Iron now? It's really stupid that I have to control the air for my rocket to fall on the city.

 

[Zariusz]

I wonder if Prelude part 2 will release before this trainwreck will finally be out.

 

[Wesp5]

We really hope so !

 

[S.torch]

At any rate, neither of these companies should have trouble putting up the money to find the labor and get the talent needed to get a game like this working.

They don't find people because they don't want to find them. The only thing these megacorpos do is quota-hire, hire their friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, their girlfriend's bestie, and their girlfriend's boyfriend.

The video game industry like many others is also seeing a decrease on young developers and increase on aging ones. Meaning less new blood willing to break their backs to win their spot. But much more old farts with diva attitude.

 

[Sarkile]

Phyre has been getting mocked a bit recently for its androgynous appearance and got the AI upgrade treatment.

 

[Baron Tahn]

Its nearly like filmmakers/game devs WANT to be made redundant and get replaced with AI when you think about it. In a few years entire films, tv shows and games could be created just from a good idea, without jumping through the bullshit agenda hoops. Never thought that would be something I wanted but here we are...

 

[S.torch]

In a few years entire films, tv shows and games could be created just from a good idea, without jumping through the bullshit agenda hoops.

You have it backwards. It's not that AI is better, is that things have gotten so bad that even AI -which is absolute slop- seems preferable.

 

[Baron Tahn]

Thats what I was implying yes. Im not much if a fan of the AI thing but compared to what we are getting...

 

[Hammer Of The Heretics]

Even if generative AI doesn't improve the quality of writing we'll get to watch a bunch of intellectually bankrupt 'creatives' suffer the humiliation of being replaced by machines. That alone will be worth it.

 

[scytheavatar]

The Chinese Room is a Sumo studio, which is part of Sumo Digital, a studio-for-fire support ecosystem owned by Tencent, which is the 19th largest company in the world. They entered a joint funding deal with Paradox. Not nearly as big of course but they have a market-cap of over a billion dollars. At any rate, neither of these companies should have trouble putting up the money to find the labor and get the talent needed to get a game like this working.

And yet neither of these operations are capable of putting out a mediocre-at-best first-person pugilist (where they foolishly pointed to successful and well-received games like Elden Ring, God of War and Middle-Earth as points of references for what they're going for) game as "smoothly" as a mismanaged and rushed PC game from 2004 that was developed on unfinished technology.

Though it would appear that Paradox is having even more trouble than usual:

https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/media/life-by-you-is-cancelled

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/prison-architect-2-delayed-release.1697795/

https://www.polygon.com/gaming/24194344/cities-skylines-2-console-version-delayed-paradox#:~:text=Cities: Skylines 2, the follow,2 has been postponed indefinitely.

Let's be realistic, imagine you can spend 200 million on making a Bloodlines 2 that ends up being amazing and a GOTY contender. How many copies would such a game sell? No matter what, Paradox would be lucky if Bloodlines 2 can sell as much as Alan Wake 2 did. The original Bloodlines was a flop that killed Troika so why would anyone pour money into making a Bloodlines 2? A Bloodlines 2 only makes sense if it is done at a reasonable budget.

 

[sosmoflux]

Nah that's horseshit. Edgy and good games sell bucketloads. Sex appeal is bait for normies. Average gaming age is like 38. People are dying for authentic and mature experiences.

Of course, this game won't be that, it'll be a safe and bland pastiche of millennial writing and neutered self censorship, but the aim was in the right direction.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Of course, this game won't be that, it'll be a safe and bland pastiche of millennial writing and neutered self censorship, but the aim was in the right direction.

Kinda contradictory statement innit.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Phyre has been getting mocked a bit recently for its androgynous appearance and got the AI upgrade treatment.

That's why I think that if all these blue-haired "artists" were thrown out and replaced with AI, everyone would benefit.

 

[The President]

I’m puzzled how gaming became the field of entertainment that decided to take up the mantle of making its protagonist ugly looking to make a political statement.

 

[MjKorz]

I’m puzzled how gaming became the field of entertainment that decided to take up the mantle of making its protagonist ugly looking to make a political statement.

Gaming is no different than any other form of media when it comes to popularization of desired narratives. The real question is: why would anyone skip gaming as a viable propaganda tool?

 

[Semiurge]

Phyre has been getting mocked a bit recently for its androgynous appearance and got the AI upgrade treatment.

Now that's a brujah female, despite the perhaps realistically short legs. Sort of like the fan made model replacement for Bloodlines that had a great (photosourced) latina face:

In addition - have you ever even seen a genderfluid biker female, in real life or otherwise? Unless I've been lied to, the biker-bitches always look thotted up and unafraid to show some semblance of femininity. A white trashoid's semblance, but still. Hell, even the street punks of yore still possessed some kind of... "raw" femininity. They didn't embrace this horrid twink-andro look, despite their tough image. Femininity was still edgy and suitable for punk if done in that rude, overtly sexual and trashy way. Now, it's completely verboten.

In a few years entire films, tv shows and games could be created just from a good idea, without jumping through the bullshit agenda hoops.

You have it backwards. It's not that AI is better, is that things have gotten so bad that even AI -which is absolute slop- seems preferable.

AI can't help it, it churns out products that are endowed with the qualities it thinks are popular, including these physical traits. So the AI makes it even more obvious that devs are ideologically bound and are deliberately making characters ugly/andro. The public sure as hell doesn't want that, and AI reflects this.

Phyre has been getting mocked a bit recently for its androgynous appearance and got the AI upgrade treatment.

That's why I think that if all these blue-haired "artists" were thrown out and replaced with AI, everyone would benefit.

Depends on who programs the AI. If its creativity is restricted with key words such as "inclusivity" and algorithms enforcing that, then nothing will change except that the new products will be even less creative than before.