yourfavouriteuncle wrote:Hellblade this month innit? I imagine those guys are likely looking about pretty nervously now.
Paul the sparky wrote:I did see that the head bloke had already left Tango, and a lot of the good devs had left the Arkane studio behind Redfall before the Bethesda acquisition. Dunno if all that is true but if it is then it makes a bit more sense I suppose
Minnesänger wrote:Paul the sparky wrote:I did see that the head bloke had already left Tango, and a lot of the good devs had left the Arkane studio behind Redfall before the Bethesda acquisition. Dunno if all that is true but if it is then it makes a bit more sense I suppose
Mikami left Tango, yeah, and has since set up a new studio (Kamuy).
As for the "good" devs at Arkane...there was a lot of talent there (and still is), but many of the core peeps behind Prey, Arx Fatalis, Dishonoured, Dark Messiah etc went to a new Studio called Wolfeye, who made Weird West (an interesting, if very flawed, game). They're now teasing a spiritual successor to Prey.
The key guy that left was, arguably, Raphael Colantonio - who was Creative Director on Prey and Dark Messiah, and one of the leads of Dishonored. He's now President at Wolfeye.
Principal level designer on Weird West...former Arkane. Visual Director? Former Arkane. Many of the programmers? Former Arkane. It's not all ex-Arkane, but there were deffo a bunch of people that moved over after Prey: Mooncrash once Ralph left.
Paul the sparky wrote:yourfavouriteuncle wrote:Hellblade this month innit? I imagine those guys are likely looking about pretty nervously now.
Aren't the dev team behind that well established within the structure now? As opposed to the newer buys anyway.
I didn't play the first one and I'm not looking forward to this one either. Be interesting to see what happens, I honestly couldn't guess. It could flop and they stay on or it be a critical success and the axe falls
Paul the sparky wrote:Was the exodus before they got wind of the acquisition or a result of it? I can see the people with creative ambitions wanting to stay away for big corps to work on stuff like Weird West which otherwise wouldn't see the light of day
Paul the sparky wrote:Go on then. Bet you a tenner to charity they're not
Tameem quietly left/was pushed a while back. Question now is if they're better without him or not.afgavinstan wrote:Hellblade devs will be shut this time next year, bookmark this post.
djchump wrote:Aye, very grim. More and more devs finding out what happens when you're a line-item on a large corps budget sheet.
LivDiv wrote:djchump wrote:Aye, very grim. More and more devs finding out what happens when you're a line-item on a large corps budget sheet.
I think this is a big part of the problem.
A decent bit of profit for an indie or smaller publishing group becomes a blip on a spreadsheet of the mega corps.
JonB wrote:Presumably this largely comes down to Game Pass not hitting its growth targets. Buy all these studios up with the idea that you'll have X million subs by the time they release a game, and when you don't, chop them off again.
Syph79 wrote:If the majority of games on the platform are not made by the platform holder, then the majority of the money is not going to the platform holder, it's going out the door in licensing fees.
poprock wrote:None of the dev costs are going out the door either though. Just that licensing fee. I’m guessing that licensing content is much lower risk, but obviously also lower reward if it’s a hit. It makes sense to have a mix of both, as demonstrated by most of the big TV streaming services.If the majority of games on the platform are not made by the platform holder, then the majority of the money is not going to the platform holder, it's going out the door in licensing fees.
So: how did we get here? This cannot be ascribed merely to capitalism, to the growth-at-all-costs rot economy on which the majority of recent game-industry layoffs have rightly been blamed. These studios are tiny relative to an organisation of Microsoft’s bulk. They do not even qualify as a rounding error at a company that, in the first three months of this year, made almost $30m an hour in revenue. This cannot even be counted as virtue signalling to the Wall Street set, because it is simply not meaningful enough. You’ve got to lay off in the five figures to turn heads these days; only cruelty on the grandest of scales is enough to move the needle, and of course Microsoft, and the Xbox division, have already done that this year.
With Hi-Fi Rush, the team at Tango Gameworks did everything right. They made a very good game, in a genre and an aesthetic that people do not readily associate with Xbox. It reviewed wonderfully, was received warmly by players, was a fixture in games-media end-of-year lists, won a GDC Award and took home a Bafta. It was one of a vanishingly small number of games to have given Game Pass what it needs to succeed. Its makers should be lionised; instead they have been Lionheaded. For Microsoft to admit it does not see a future role in the Xbox operation for a studio like Tango, and a game like Hi-Fi Rush, is ominous indeed, and staggeringly depressing for those of us who are in this thing for the games, rather than the money.
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!