The AAA problem

[Basman]

Too many fake jobs in game development now. Imagine needing 2000+ people to make a mediocre uninspired remake of a 20+ YO game that took less than 200 people to develop. Office politics and justifying your payroll become more important than making actual art and it weigh down development. No clear decisions are ever made. No one is accountable for anything. That's how you get toxic positivity and lame writing in modern games (see Concord). The budget balloons and safe and samey design rules to hedge the bet. And even when they are successful they will still struggle to just break even.

It's like a workout. Over an hour and it's no longer a workout. Over 200 devs and it's no longer a dev team. It's a corporatocracy.

 

Edited Saturday at 12:31 PM by Basman

[Basman]

343, AKA "Halo Studios" is a great example of how corpos don't understand art. They fill out the mass of their dev team with contractors who are switched out once a year. It's corporate self-sabotage.

How can you make any great art when you are constantly switching out the people making it? No accumulation of skill and experience. No chance to learn from failure. No vision is being developed. No wonder they are so mediocre compared to the OG devs at Bungie.

[kavaris]

Like the textured critera means something different to the folks who are falling for this (this gen. of like, experiencing the larger picture of art), or are just hypnotized by whatever is like, "the bare minimum" experience, Like iuno how many ppl are being fooled, but clearly they are somehow... I mean... Like iuno wat ppl being born right now r even gonna think of, when they experience any of it, like its akin to looking at plastic lids or something, Like its only for those collecting pogs, or something, but it doesnt extend into the trillions of possible human developments? Like... Its in its own pog-like niche of utter confusion.

Edited 21 hours ago by kavaris

[LordFall]

Wow, that was a great video. Thanks for sharing; it made a lot of sense.

I just watched ep 1 of the Obi Wan show and there was a scene that bothered my logical brain so much. 8 year old Leila Skywalker getting kidnapped by mercenaries and it takes them 45 seconds of foot chase to get her. It instantly ruins the show and the competence of the mercenaries and I had a discussion with Gemini as to why tf nobody filming this was like isn't this a terrible scene why are we doing this? It said basically what the video said; the people in charge of filming, editing and directing the scene don't have the actual authority to change or write anything. The executives in charge don't really give a fuck it's actually great filmmaking, they want something that will not cost too much and be ROI positive in the short term and reshooting a 1 min scene at that level of production can cost like $500,000

I think AI will make a lot of this stuff much better and give the power back to smaller teams of creators and not make it so only massive corporations can produce media. I find most Hollywood movies so trash and they have bigger budgets than ever. Middle management is really a curse to humanity.

How that chick explained the lack of responsability that comes from having big teams and meetings makes so much sense. It's everyone that is actually kind of doing their job but the way the business is setup it sabotages the project. Very interesting how that system works. 

[Basman]

1 hour ago, LordFall said:

How that chick explained the lack of responsability that comes from having big teams and meetings makes so much sense. It's everyone that is actually kind of doing their job but the way the business is setup it sabotages the project. Very interesting how that system works. 

Basically people with no experience telling you how to do your job.

All of these lay offs happening aren't surprising honestly considering. Unfortunately it's often the boots on the ground that get axed instead of the parasites in middle management.

[LordFall]

13 minutes ago, Basman said:

Basically people with no experience telling you how to do your job.

All of these lay offs happening aren't surprising honestly considering. Unfortunately it's often the boots on the ground that get axed instead of the parasites in middle management.

I guess it's competing incentives? Why do these studios do this if it fucks up their IPs? I guess its a case of a slow motion car crash or like the titanic where it slowly but inevitably goes towards an iceberb and some people know it and watch in horror but their salaries are big so they don't care that much and some people are delusional and think they're great at their job while they are ruining cash cows.

Reminds me of the last season of game of thrones. It ruined 70% of the show's value and nobody talks about it anymore while it was the biggest thing ever while it was airing.