Games Industry: We have never made a public statement before. That's how badly you fucked up. - The Something Awful Forums

Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Games Industry: We have never made a public statement before. That's how badly you fucked up.

Kith: Sep 17, 2009; You never learn anything
by doing it right.

destiny missing sales targets by 45% comes from two factors:

Lightfall's campaign is pathetically, amateurishly bad
Root of Nightmares (Lightfall's raid) is so easy that it can be completed solo (literally impossible in every other raid, as they all require at least three insanely good players or six decent players)

it was bad enough that the story missions being awful put off a ton of casual players, but then: in a genre that's primarily ruled by how cool and interesting its endgame is, destiny 2 effectively didn't have one for six months. hell, the raid that released in september isn't even new, it's a rehash of a destiny 1 raid. the streamers have barely had anything to slap reaction faces onto, and anyone thinking to buy into the new content definitely took notice

e: going back and watching this GDC talk in 2022 about bungie's business philosophies is like reading the prophecies of cassandra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLbvMWEAoyY

e2: lol. lmao.

Kith fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Nov 1, 2023

# ? Nov 1, 2023 00:02

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 9, 2024 02:34

leper khan: Dec 28, 2010; Honest to god thinks Half Life 2 is a bad game. But at least he likes Monster Hunter.

Nelson Mandingo posted:

You better believe it.

I don't see anything about ARPU or ARPPU there

# ? Nov 1, 2023 00:07

Nelson Mandingo: Mar 27, 2005

I think that's a little pedantic. It's clear that Destiny has problems, and it's crystal clear from all the reporting going players are voting with their wallets.

So, yep. I'm lolin' that the extreme monetization they've been pushing out objectively isn't working as much of a long or short term solution to their financial problems. They wouldn't need to fire 100 people if it was.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 00:12

Stux: Nov 17, 2006

Kurieg posted:

IIRC their stated reason was because the game's install size on consoles was ballooning past what their hard drives could be expected to store.

but then they said they werent vaulting anymore dlcs going forward. they were just deleting the best content in the game so ppl had to buy the new stuff lol

# ? Nov 1, 2023 00:29

dopesilly: Aug 4, 2023

bungie is rear end

dopesilly fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Dec 7, 2023

# ? Nov 1, 2023 00:43

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

fez_machine posted:

They also needlessly alienated one of their best and most influential writing talents, Seth Dickinson who came up with the majority of what the player base is actually interested in, so much so that he left years ago and now the chickens are coming home to roost.

another failed goon project :argh:

:argh:

# ? Nov 1, 2023 00:50

Orv: May 4, 2011

dopesilly posted:

People surprised that Bungie turned to poo poo as soon as Activision acquired it, ran it into the ground, and put Sony in a good position to reap profits on a game they had nothing to do with.

I worked for Bungie briefly while it was under the Activision umbrella and I could tell how miserable people were knowing the next round of layoffs could happen any second.

Also in case anyone thinks Bungie still is a semblance of it's former self, it's not. They would hire contract employees with no benefits and endlessly promise them full-time roles yet never deliver. This is not only a trick in the Activision playbook but also in the Sony playbook. They both love to use and abuse contract employees. One person I worked with was a contract employee for SEVEN YEARS and kept trying to get them to hire them fulltime and yet they never did, despite their work being majorly important to the project. Due to the lack of other employers in the Bellevue region, they all feel like it's a dog-eat-dog company and if you don't drink the koolaid good luck getting a job elsewhere in the area.

I am not surprised one bit by them stealing equity shares from their laid off employees too, but it sure would piss me the gently caress off.

Given how remarkably greedy Bungie was in the period where it was under neither Activision nor Sony I think Bungie itself might have just been poo poo for a long time.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 00:53

dopesilly: Aug 4, 2023

When you have 800+ people working on 1 IP, it always makes my palms sweaty. It's not exclusive to Bungie, but they are a prime example of more people /= better games.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 00:59

Original_Z: Jun 14, 2005; Z so good

I never understood why Bungie went to Activision anyway. They left Microsoft because they wanted more creative freedom and then sold out to Activision, who even back then were known as not a great place to work and only cared about milking properties with the efficiency of a factory.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 02:13

Barudak: May 7, 2007

Original_Z posted:

I never understood why Bungie went to Activision anyway. They left Microsoft because they wanted more creative freedom and then sold out to Activision, who even back then were known as not a great place to work and only cared about milking properties with the efficiency of a factory.

Money, large piles of money.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 02:16

xgalaxy: Jan 27, 2004; i write code

Bungie is like that whore on the corner that gets passed from pimp to pimp.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ? Nov 1, 2023 03:10

wash bucket: Feb 21, 2006

xgalaxy posted:

Bungie is like that whore on the corner that gets passed from pimp to pimp.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 03:21

Feels Villeneuve: Oct 7, 2007; Setter is Better.

xgalaxy posted:

Bungie is like that whore on the corner that gets passed from pimp to pimp.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 03:23

The 7th Guest: Dec 17, 2003

xgalaxy posted:

Bungie is like that whore on the corner that gets passed from pimp to pimp.

this thread started as a discussion on violence and harassment against women

# ? Nov 1, 2023 03:36

Kith: Sep 17, 2009; You never learn anything
by doing it right.

xgalaxy posted:

Bungie is like that whore on the corner that gets passed from pimp to pimp.

perish

# ? Nov 1, 2023 03:41

The Kins: Oct 2, 2004

Resdfru posted:

Why did they vault stuff? So they don't have to keep balancing it when they change other stuff? Or some other reason

I believe the stated reasons were that the existence of half the game was blowing out game-compile times and making it too hard to QA and maintain the other half. Or something along those lines of making their problem everyone else's.

Resdfru posted:

Is there no way to let users selectively install content for a game on a console?

Not as like a universal thing, but many games implement this themselves. For example, COD Modern Warfare 2 (2022) (sigh) is technically four separate installs - Campaign, Multiplayer, Co-Op and Warzone.

Anora posted:

it is funny to compare it to the other F2P co-op games that are huge, Genshin and Warframe, since both keep ballooning their content without cutting much, and still manage to keep the game size low enough to fit on basic consoles and not hog the whole Hard drive.

Genshin is on Unity, and Warframe is on Unreal. Say what you will about those engines (and there's been a lot to say about them recently, holy poo poo), they're probably nicer to work with on a content development level than the homebrew unholy nightmare Bungie's been maintaining since the OG Xbox days. There were stories during Destiny 1 of it taking so long to compile/bake/whatever levels that the only option was to leave it running overnight and hope there wasn't an error awaiting you in the morning.

Chev posted:

I also remember that one Sea of Thieves update that cut install size by half without removing any content. Always wondered what they had to compromise.

Probably not so much a compromise as a clean-up, removing duplicate assets and other such debris generated throughout development. Hitman 3 was much lower filesize than Hitman 1 and 2 despite having the content of both built-in because they went in and cleaned up all the duplicate assets from the DLC/episodic nature of the first game etc.

The indie game Turbo Overkill pulled the same magic trick relatively recently, going from like 15gb to 6.65gb (one off, alas)

I remember a lot of games in the PS360 era had a lot of duplicate assets to speed up loading times on systems with slow disk reading speeds (especially the PS3's blu-ray drive), I wonder if modern engines still do that sort of thing in the SSD era?

# ? Nov 1, 2023 04:34

Psychorider: May 15, 2009

The Kins posted:

Genshin is on Unity, and Warframe is on Unreal. Say what you will about those engines (and there's been a lot to say about them recently, holy poo poo), they're probably nicer to work with on a content development level than the homebrew unholy nightmare Bungie's been maintaining since the OG Xbox days. There were stories during Destiny 1 of it taking so long to compile/bake/whatever levels that the only option was to leave it running overnight and hope there wasn't an error awaiting you in the morning.

Warframe uses their own proprietary engine called Evolution which is probably partly where the wizardry comes from.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 04:40

Metis of the Chat Thread: Aug 1, 2014

The 7th Guest posted:

this thread started as a discussion on violence and harassment against women

kill me

# ? Nov 1, 2023 04:46

Studio: Jan 15, 2008

The Kins posted:

There were stories during Destiny 1 of it taking so long to compile/bake/whatever levels that the only option was to leave it running overnight and hope there wasn't an error awaiting you in the morning.

Hah, I've worked at places like that, and the answer was to usually have such a slow and gate-filled deploy process that you had to get past 2 or 3 environments without a broken build before it got close to anything resembling a QA branch. This was also a game older than D2, so they had a lot of stable practices built in as the build times got slow

Studio fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Nov 1, 2023

# ? Nov 1, 2023 04:49

MadHat: Mar 31, 2011

Psychorider posted:

Warframe uses their own proprietary engine called Evolution which is probably partly where the wizardry comes from.

Also updating it over the years, every once in awhile they would show off some shiny new tech the engine could now do. Like for example a new fog system next update.

I wonder if Destiny has had any tech advances since 1?

# ? Nov 1, 2023 04:56

BisbyWorl: Jan 12, 2019; Knowledge is pain plus observation.

Runa posted:

Destiny 2 is one of those rare few game services where the major draw is the story.

This is funny to me, because I tried D2 back when it first went F2P and it just plopped me into a mission where I had no idea who I was fighting while people I haven't met were yammering on the radio.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 05:08

The Kins: Oct 2, 2004

MadHat posted:

Also updating it over the years, every once in awhile they would show off some shiny new tech the engine could now do. Like for example a new fog system next update.

I wonder if Destiny has had any tech advances since 1?

Apparently they made some big changes under the hood for Beyond Light.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 05:09

HopperUK: Apr 29, 2007; Why would an ambulance be leaving the hospital?

xgalaxy posted:

Bungie is like that whore on the corner that gets passed from pimp to pimp.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

incredible

# ? Nov 1, 2023 05:10

Jack Trades: Nov 30, 2010

BisbyWorl posted:

This is funny to me, because I tried D2 back when it first went F2P and it just plopped me into a mission where I had no idea who I was fighting while people I haven't met were yammering on the radio.

Same but I was also completely baffled at all the abilities having 60 to 90 second cooldowns.

You could use one mediocre ability every other encounter.

That seemed so loving stupid to me.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 05:45

Nuebot: Feb 18, 2013; The developer of Brigador is a secret chud, don't give him money

Orv posted:

Destiny 2 (and kind of 1 to a smaller extent) is basically a story of Bungie going "Well we know what players want" and it turns out no, no they don't even a little bit and then it takes them minimum six months to do even the smallest change to the thing they introduced. Repeat that for seven years and eventually even the most haggard, sunk cost content addict is gonna come up for air and wonder what the gently caress is going on.

And as noted, the story is something a lot of Destiny players care about and the quality of the story telling vacillates wildly not just from expansion to expansion but sometimes week to week. It's kind of exhausting after a while.

I remember how when they were first working on Destiny 2, they said it was going to take them so long because they were working on a brand new engine that would let them easily load up and change assets faster than ever, so the game would be worth every hour of every delay to get it ready.

And then when it finally came out, they accidentally let it slip that it took them 24 hours to load anything up to make any kind of changes. I don't know if that's changed at all, but lmao.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 06:05

njsykora: Jan 23, 2012; Robots confuse squirrels.

MadHat posted:

Also updating it over the years, every once in awhile they would show off some shiny new tech the engine could now do. Like for example a new fog system next update.

I wonder if Destiny has had any tech advances since 1?

Warframe's engine looks as good as it does because Steve Sinclair is such a gigantic graphics nerd that he's talked about reading Nvidia research papers for fun. I do not mean this as any kind of bad thing.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 06:19

BOAT SHOWBOAT: Oct 11, 2007; who do you carry the torch for, my young man?

Is there any company that is just straight up making linear (not wide linear) action adventure, shooter etc games any more? Naughty Dog comes close, but their last three games have all experimented with the wide linear structure more, and it's over three years since TLOU2 now. Gears 5 had open world sections, the new Alan Wake and RE4R remake are more open spaces, etc, Halo Infinite had open world sections

Is there anyone (not in the indie/platformer space etc) who is making games that are straight up just a series of levels?

# ? Nov 1, 2023 06:20

SgtSteel91: Oct 21, 2010

BOAT SHOWBOAT posted:

Is there any company that is just straight up making linear (not wide linear) action adventure, shooter etc games any more? Naughty Dog comes close, but their last three games have all experimented with the wide linear structure more, and it's over three years since TLOU2 now. Gears 5 had open world sections, the new Alan Wake and RE4R remake are more open spaces, etc, Halo Infinite had open world sections

Is there anyone (not in the indie/platformer space etc) who is making games that are straight up just a series of levels?

Hi-Fi Rush from earlier this year

# ? Nov 1, 2023 06:21

Shooting Blanks: Jun 6, 2007; Real bullets mess up how cool this thing looks.

-Blade

BOAT SHOWBOAT posted:

Is there any company that is just straight up making linear (not wide linear) action adventure, shooter etc games any more? Naughty Dog comes close, but their last three games have all experimented with the wide linear structure more, and it's over three years since TLOU2 now. Gears 5 had open world sections, the new Alan Wake and RE4R remake are more open spaces, etc, Halo Infinite had open world sections

Is there anyone (not in the indie/platformer space etc) who is making games that are straight up just a series of levels?

Arkane got away from linear games with Redfall, and to a lesser extent, Deathloop - but the Dishonored series might fit the bill. Considering how hard Redfall failed, I wouldn't be surprised if they're returning to their roots.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 06:25

susan b buffering: Nov 14, 2016

BOAT SHOWBOAT posted:

Is there any company that is just straight up making linear (not wide linear) action adventure, shooter etc games any more? Naughty Dog comes close, but their last three games have all experimented with the wide linear structure more, and it's over three years since TLOU2 now. Gears 5 had open world sections, the new Alan Wake and RE4R remake are more open spaces, etc, Halo Infinite had open world sections

Is there anyone (not in the indie/platformer space etc) who is making games that are straight up just a series of levels?

Titanfall 3 :pray:

:pray:

# ? Nov 1, 2023 06:26

claw game handjob: Mar 27, 2007; pinch pinch scrape pinch
ow ow fuck it's caught
i'm bleeding
JESUS TURN IT OFF
WHY ARE YOU STILL SMILING

Shooting Blanks posted:

Arkane got away from linear games with Redfall, and to a lesser extent, Deathloop - but the Dishonored series might fit the bill. Considering how hard Redfall failed, I wouldn't be surprised if they're returning to their roots.

I want to say some of the Microsoft court documents? mentioned a Dishonored 3 in production, so it's a known secret.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 06:27

Vooze: Oct 29, 2011

BOAT SHOWBOAT posted:

Is there any company that is just straight up making linear (not wide linear) action adventure, shooter etc games any more? Naughty Dog comes close, but their last three games have all experimented with the wide linear structure more, and it's over three years since TLOU2 now. Gears 5 had open world sections, the new Alan Wake and RE4R remake are more open spaces, etc, Halo Infinite had open world sections

Is there anyone (not in the indie/platformer space etc) who is making games that are straight up just a series of levels?

Capcom still does this.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 06:43

Shooting Blanks: Jun 6, 2007; Real bullets mess up how cool this thing looks.

-Blade

claw game handjob posted:

I want to say some of the Microsoft court documents? mentioned a Dishonored 3 in production, so it's a known secret.

I saw something about this but couldn't remember any specifics. Previously Arkane had announced that Dishonored had been shelved for the foreseeable future - as a franchise - but after the outright failure of Redfall, and relative failure of Deathloop, it's not surprising that they'd return to those roots.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 07:28

Studio: Jan 15, 2008

Shooting Blanks posted:

I saw something about this but couldn't remember any specifics. Previously Arkane had announced that Dishonored had been shelved for the foreseeable future - as a franchise - but after the outright failure of Redfall, and relative failure of Deathloop, it's not surprising that they'd return to those roots.

Note that Austin and Lyon are extremely separate studios at this point. There's been a large push for Live Service in the past few years of Bethesda Games. Fallout 76, Redfall, Rage 2, Doom E, Youngblood, and I think even Ghostwire (not sure) had a Live Services component. Zenimax studios are generally pretty lean, and most of these games (imo) suffered pretty heavily from having to integrate a whole live treadmill that the game really didn't need. Like, did Rage 2 need timed events? I could see "back to basics" approach, because trying to make every game a Live Services game from Zenimax has been unsuccessful when forced in.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 08:03

kliras: Mar 27, 2021

i quit destiny 1 since the first expansion cut you off from doing basic stuff like skirmishes, dailies, and weeklies, game has always been a mess one way or another that way, but sounds like they got even greedier

# ? Nov 1, 2023 10:42

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

I think Deathloop sold pretty well despite not being especially well-liked by goons. If Arkane needed to make a quick cash-in sequel to recoup the losses on Redfall the surer bet would be Deathloop 2, not DH3.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 10:46

AceOfFlames: Oct 9, 2012

Personally I think Deathloop is fine as long as you picture it as an immersive sim with a particularly weird structure instead of Hitman.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 10:49

Jack Trades: Nov 30, 2010

AceOfFlames posted:

Personally I think Deathloop is fine as long as you picture it as an immersive sim with a particularly weird structure instead of Hitman.

Deathloop is fine as long as you picture it as an immersive sim that's completely linear and with none of the qualities of an immersive sim present.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 10:52

DaveKap: Feb 5, 2006; Pickle: Inspected.

Deathloop is loving amazing until you realize there's only 1 way to beat the game. Then it sucks. Thankfully you only figure that out after you've finished 90% of it so it's generally pretty great.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 11:15

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 9, 2024 02:34

Samovar: Jun 4, 2011; When I want to relax, I read an essay by Engels. When I want something more serious, I read Corto Maltese.

Shooting Blanks posted:

Arkane got away from linear games with Redfall, and to a lesser extent, Deathloop - but the Dishonored series might fit the bill. Considering how hard Redfall failed, I wouldn't be surprised if they're returning to their roots.

That would be nice. I may be in the minority, but I really liked the whole setting/gameplay of the series.

# ? Nov 1, 2023 11:18

1
2
3
4
5

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Games Industry: We have never made a public statement before. That's how badly you fucked up.

Powered by: vBulletin Version 2.2.9 (SABB-v2.24.06)
Copyright ©2000, 2001, Jelsoft Enterprises Limited.
Copyright ©2024, Jeffrey of YOSPOS