Obviously a response to Microsoft's acquisitions and kind of funny that this studio once by owned by MS and Acti-Blizz ends up with Sony. Sony says they'll remain a multiplatform studio, but we all know that won't last forever.

Reminder that industry consolidation is a direct and inevitable result of big tech encroachment into gaming. Capitalism bad for games.

  • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    the actual game design part is a lot of work, and it’s not something that you can solve by throwing resources at the problem - you can just hire more artists to pump out assets (admittedly, of dubious quality if there isn’t a coherent artistic vision), but sometimes, an aspect of the game’s balance is just going to stump you for weeks

    I agree there. But I don't think we are lacking good baseline models for game design. And for spaces where you really are just out on the edge - your MMOs back in the 90s or your Minecraft circa 2010s or your Pong or PacMan - the novelty can excuse a substantive amount of poor design. Just look at EverQuest.

    it’s not as if you can just download Unreal Engine and pump out a fully-formed FPS in a few months (or at least one with well thought out mechanics - you can do a shitty asset flip of course).

    You can download Half-Life and churn out Counterstrike in a few months.

    You can download Warcraft 3 and churn out DOTA in a few weeks.