World of Darkness Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 - VTMB sequel from The Chinese Room - coming Fall 2024

[BlackheartXIII]

Arone Le Bray, the Principal Narrative Designer of Bloodlines 2, has been laid off.

According to Sarah Longthorne (senior narrative designers of VTMB2) linkdin profile she is open to work, might laid off as well.

conformed.

 

[The President]

Why is it surprising this happened to them? The whole industry hired and invested too much in peak Covid and now the culling has been going on all year. They just had one game come out and now the reshuffling is happening.

 

[Vulpes]

Given that Bloodlines 2 is mere months away from release, I would guess this means that Sumo Group is expecting a pretty low return on investment. Even if the game ends up being unfinished by Q4, they'll still push it out so that they can blame the overabundance of RPGs coming out in late 2024 (KCD 2, Greedfall 2, Avowed, DAV, etc.) for the poor sales. At this point, it would be a surprise if the DLCs don't end up being scrapped.

 

[santino27]

Feels a lot like when layoffs hit the Lamplighter's League team before that game's release.

 

[Atlantico]

Devs continued inability to deliver a good RPG

 

[La vie sexuelle]

I wonder if Paradox made any money from the shitty games that were supposed to surround the release of Bloodlines 2 and will ultimately be their main legacy.

 

[Herumor]

Didn't TCR already have some major layoff before they were bought out? And this is another round of layoffs for people who were barely even there?

 

[Fedora Master]

Gee guys I'm sure it's nothing, the game is totally on track and it'll be... Phyre.

 

[Baron Tahn]

Well some of these might be finished up their work on bloodlines 2. They've got to be in to last stages and perhaps the company just went 'Oh, your done? No more narrative to construct? Fkn see ya LATER!' And just booted them out the door.

 

[Herumor]

'Oh, your done? No more narrative to construct? Fkn see ya LATER!' And just booted them out the door.

Who would even want to work for them if that was the case?

 

[Paul_cz]

Finished "Still Wakes the Deep" and came away fairly impressed. It is great for what it is (linear 5 hour horror walking sim). Fantastic sense of place, atmosphere, very good natural writing and voice acting. If the people who made this also work on Bloodlines 2 (which I do not know, might be different team?) I would be quite optimistic about Bloodlines 2's aspects like atmosphere and worldbuilding.

One thing that I found hilarious/ridiculous though, is this short linear game having people such as "inclusion and belonging officer" or "influencer relations executive" in the credits. No wonder this industry keeps closing studios and laying people off.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Finished "Still Wakes the Deep" and came away fairly impressed. It is great for what it is (linear 5 hour horror walking sim). Fantastic sense of place, atmosphere, very good natural writing and voice acting. If the people who made this also work on Bloodlines 2 (which I do not know, might be different team?) I would be quite optimistic about Bloodlines 2's aspects like atmosphere and worldbuilding.

Even if you're right about their latest walking simulator, having them join the Bloodlines 2 team won't change anything at this point. At least nothing significant. Maybe this game will surprise us with some nice but not very interactive locations, but that's all.

 

[Baron Tahn]

'Oh, your done? No more narrative to construct? Fkn see ya LATER!' And just booted them out the door.

Who would even want to work for them if that was the case?

People who want paychecks? That is actually how it works in the gig economy - you write/record your bit and then you're done. Same will be the case for V/O talent. Not as familiar with game dev but I figure it works the same way if they no longer need the services of those particular creatives, especially if they in the midst of layoffs.

 

[Herumor]

'Oh, your done? No more narrative to construct? Fkn see ya LATER!' And just booted them out the door.

Who would even want to work for them if that was the case?

People who want paychecks? That is actually how it works in the gig economy - you write/record your bit and then you're done. Same will be the case for V/O talent. Not as familiar with game dev but I figure it works the same way if they no longer need the services of those particular creatives, especially if they in the midst of layoffs.

That's temp/freelance work, where youy employment term duration is stipulated by the contract, something that Avellone does now. Being employed however and then laid off unexpectedly is something else entirely.

 

[Nano]

Media would be better if it was all done by people who aren't expecting steady employment.

 

[The President]

'Oh, your done? No more narrative to construct? Fkn see ya LATER!' And just booted them out the door.

Who would even want to work for them if that was the case?

This isn’t exactly uncommon in games. A lot of people are fighting for the permanent and safe positions. It’s an industry with a permanent cash flow problem. It’s why I can’t really blame Rockstar for milking GTA online. Gives them much needed capital.

 

[Wesp5]

They've got to be in to last stages and perhaps the company just went 'Oh, your done? No more narrative to construct? Fkn see ya LATER!' And just booted them out the door.

The same might have been a reason to fire Brian Mitsoda. He said the narrative was finished and he also was friend with the guy who messed the game itself up. Good bye.

 

[Raghar]

The problem is if you remove developers from studio, it takes over year for new to fit into the team and get skills. And PC software engineering is just about skills, all other is computer and everyone who isn't low income can assemble one if he has some skills. (Coincidentally I heard a lot of people with eng degree are not able to do even that.)

Thus removing people who should be core of the team is basically cutting branch under its own company. And it's not like they stay available for too long before they get paid by flopping burgers and losing their programming skills. (Depends on number of layoffs in that quarter. They might be hired by competitors next week.)


I think a lot of game development problems are probably at least indirectly caused by too long development times. The development kinda falls apart in 3rd year, and after 5 year of development company can't take risks. And other third is caused by too large development teams. In old times, game company made one strategy, one RPG, and then they were doing sequel to strategy or different RPG. And they had games going, and theirs fans were not overfed by one type of game delivered again and again.

Nowadays we have hordes of studios, most of them making crap. And fans have only finite money. Thus game studio can't expect a quality game to earn them money for two or three more projects, and because industry matured, artist and programmer salaries went up as well.

 

[Tyranicon]

From everything I hear, the video games industry sounds like a nightmare hellscape that should best be avoided.

Especially now when there's a huge downturn industry-wide. Very few jobs are safe, leadership is all corporate suits, and pay + career prospects are as low as they've ever been. Add to this that it's hypercompetitive and completely colonized by thoughtpolice and I don't get why anyone would go into it.

It was better 5 years ago and it was shit then too.

 

[Roguey]

They've got to be in to last stages and perhaps the company just went 'Oh, your done? No more narrative to construct? Fkn see ya LATER!' And just booted them out the door.

The same might have been a reason to fire Brian Mitsoda. He said the narrative was finished and he also was friend with the guy who messed the game itself up. Good bye.

Josh Sawyer said this is something that never happens normally.

These layoffs are triage. Sumo Digital had to lay people off, so they cut the jobs that would contribute the least amount of harm.

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

Yeah, I'm assuming their walking sim didn't set the sales charts on fire. All time peak below 1k, pretty low ownership estimations, and those usually skew towards overestimation. Wonder what the budget for that one was.

 

[Tao]

Someone else told me not too long ago

They really just can't help themselves, can they?

I've already explained it in another thread, but no, they literally can't. If any dev wanted to make something that isn't woke shit he'd get fired. The Chinese Room is a label bought by the Sumo Group, and Sumo Digital, their video game subsidiary. Sumo isn't just a publisher, they own this studio, and Sumo has their own corpo commissariat equivalent of Sweet Baby Inc to enforce the nigger-faggot-tranny regimen in their business and to press smaller dev studios on money in exchange for their "services". Not only that but Sumo is tied up with a bunch of NGOs whose explicit purpose is to fag up video games, like Women in Games and Ukie.

This is the corporation responsible for Bloodlines 2 and this walking sim. So no, they could not under any circumstance under the present power relations help themselves. This comic is from the website of Sumo's DEI enforcement branch.

You'll notice the aversion towards the strong man of history and of game development, no great helmsmen to be seen or great visions. It's probably company wide policy, for all the studios Sumo owns, that they must be designed by committee. The idea of a free market is as asinine as the idea of a currency free society, corpo mandated homosexuality in collaboration with the state is the new normal.

"auteur">kommittees at the end of the road, i guess.

 

[Semiurge]

Someone else told me not too long ago

They really just can't help themselves, can they?

I've already explained it in another thread, but no, they literally can't. If any dev wanted to make something that isn't woke shit he'd get fired. The Chinese Room is a label bought by the Sumo Group, and Sumo Digital, their video game subsidiary. Sumo isn't just a publisher, they own this studio, and Sumo has their own corpo commissariat equivalent of Sweet Baby Inc to enforce the nigger-faggot-tranny regimen in their business and to press smaller dev studios on money in exchange for their "services". Not only that but Sumo is tied up with a bunch of NGOs whose explicit purpose is to fag up video games, like Women in Games and Ukie.

This is the corporation responsible for Bloodlines 2 and this walking sim. So no, they could not under any circumstance under the present power relations help themselves. This comic is from the website of Sumo's DEI enforcement branch.

You'll notice the aversion towards the strong man of history and of game development, no great helmsmen to be seen or great visions. It's probably company wide policy, for all the studios Sumo owns, that they must be designed by committee. The idea of a free market is as asinine as the idea of a currency free society, corpo mandated homosexuality in collaboration with the state is the new normal.

"auteur">kommittees at the end of the road, i guess.

Someone somewhere is rubbing his hands together because of the succesful crippling of western businesses through inclusivity and henhouse decision making.

 

[Wesp5]

"Still wakes the deep" has a male protagonist and I would guess 95% of all NPCs are male too, because it plays on an oil rig...

 

[scytheavatar]

From everything I hear, the video games industry sounds like a nightmare hellscape that should best be avoided.

Especially now when there's a huge downturn industry-wide. Very few jobs are safe, leadership is all corporate suits, and pay + career prospects are as low as they've ever been. Add to this that it's hypercompetitive and completely colonized by thoughtpolice and I don't get why anyone would go into it.

It was better 5 years ago and it was shit then too.

You are speaking as if other places in tech are better right now, even though layoffs happen in Microsoft/Facebook/Amazon/etc every time.