Arkane Austin’s legacy being Redfall is a real tragedy… They made the original Dishonored and the Prey reboot, both games that where such breathes of fresh air in the AAA space when they both released… instead people will only think of the one game that they were forced to make by executives who wanted to chase trends rather than let the studio known for immersive sims that give players an immense sense of freedom with amazing stories play to their strengths. Apparently they were getting ready to pitch a new single player immersive sim, maybe even a new Dishonored or Prey. And now we’ll never know and their final game is… Redfall… it’s such a bummer man…
I think Arkanes legacy is still Dishonored. Prey less so (it was less popular) but people still want to give arkane a chance. Even deathloop, it gets unnecessary levels of hate (just cause it got disproportionately high reviews) but it's a pretty solid game in my books. Hopefully Blade can bring back their stellar reputation. A real shame about Austin and Redfall, but the overall identity of Arkane still has a chance to live on
I think Alan Wake 2’s troubles have a lot to do with the fact that it’s exclusive to the Epic Games Store, and that there was no physical release on consoles. I get that without Epic, the game wouldn’t exist, but simultaneously, if they want more people to play the game, I think a Steam release would really help them. People have been conditioned into viewing the Epic Games Store as a platform for freebies whether that be free-to-play games, like Fortnite or Fall Guys, or for promotions where paid games are made free.
More on Epic: NFT shovel-ware Tim Sweeney's ham-fisted attempt (bribery) to make exclusivity a PC thing after he abandoned the PC market in ~2007 due to piracy. (Which Valve largely fixed) The launcher is just not good.
A very good point that I didn't consider when first making the video. Although unfortunately the reason for the lack of success isn't always taken into account by publishers, so while youre right that this has a big part to play, ultimately the game still didnt do too hot and thats all that matters. If Remedy's upcoming multi-player effort isn't a banger they may be looking at a tough situation.
@@AsadAnjum That’s true. Hopefully, Remedy can make it through because honestly, I can’t see a live service focused future. People don’t wanna, and cannot, play 50 live service games. Plus, we’ve already seen so many of them die. The successful ones will remain but that will be alongside other types of games, too, new and old
Totally agree with what you're saying. Triple-A needs to change, but I'm fine with that. It wasn't that long ago that the $200 million budget mega projects started to become normalized. There are smarter ways to make big games imo (better tools, smaller leaner teams until an idea is refined and the gameplay is locked in, then partner with a bigger team to create the high end art assets and refine/polish the shit out of everything). I'm concerned that these huge companies are just going to lean into AI and reduce staff to a massive degree, making games much less about creative expression and craftsmanship, and just sort of soulless. I can also relate to the cynicism you're feeling now that you've peaked behind the curtain. I went to school for game design around 2005, and at that time a lot of the destructive practices around crunch were becoming more broadly known. Also games were starting to be made by much larger teams and budgets were ballooning as consoles entered the HD generation. My teachers told stories of having to work back-to-back unpaid internships, only to have a game cancelled and the whole team let go. It was a very cynical time. I finished my program, but was so burned out and down on the industry (and gaming in general tbh) that I never applied for a single job in the field. (there were other contributing factors, most prominent being I was commuting 2 hours each way so I basically had to pull all-nighers on campus to get any work done). This was also before the modern flourishing of the indie scene, so there wasn't an obvious path for smaller more creative games at the time. I said all that to say this, don't let the cynicism get you down. I regret not pursuing a job in the games industry, and I'd hate to see you follow the same path. There are so many ways to make artistic passion projects viable, you really don't need to aspire to be employee #358 at mega-studio X (though working in the mainstream industry would probably be good experience for a while, if your passion can withstand it). You've got a really sharp mind when it comes to analyzing games and game mechanics. I think the games industry will be better off with you in it. The suits making decisions don't own the games industry. They have a lot of power, but they don't control everything, and it's never been more viable to do things without them.
Really appreciate your take on this, including the encouragement to keep pursuing a career in the space. I agree, I think I am still going to and I've been thinking about how to go about it without becoming an unfortunate byproduct of the endless cycle of big budget releases. I really wouldn't mind working on smaller indie or AA projects, I think in general I'd only enter AAA under very specific circumstances. But ultimately I do still have a drive for it despite the cynicism. I mainly wanted to express the feelings shown here because I know it's a common sentiment going around right now, and I wanted to both address it while also mentioning that it's not exactly a hopeless situation. There definitely needs to be a fight for better treatment of employees in the game space and it would be nice if the layoffs chilled out at some point cause they're absolutely INSANE right now, but there's always a light at the end of the tunnel
As someone who works in an artistic industry and enjoys games, this crunch is happening across all artistic mediums, and I’m seeing it from many different sides. Thanks for your video; it really resonated with me and reminds me that caring still matters. As for a fave indie game, GRIS :)
Animation and CGI are just as bad if not worse when it comes to poorly treated employees in creative fields. It really does suck and we need to push back and fight for better compensation and working conditions. But the one thing that won't ever change is the audiences ability to resonate with good art, which is a nice thing to remember when all the other bullshit is going on
Hi, my recommendation is Slice and Dice for PC or android. It's a phenomenal roguelike dice game where you manage different hero classes with abilities (attack/shield/heal/etc.) on the dice faces. Items are artifacts that change/upgrade each character's die. There's a focus on keywords that also spice up hero abilities. Thanks for reading, I hope you try the demo and have fun. It works great as a phone game! 🙂
I have hope in the sense that there will always be someone with a crazy idea and an overwhelming desire to make it happen that nothing can get in their way, rock on indie devs, rock on
alan wake 2 being epic exclusive killed it. i don't know about the console sales of the first game, but i know mid-tier & indie games tend to sell more copies on steam than anything - but epic pulling their bullshit and preventing it from being put on steam killed its marketing before it even had a chance to live.
Now we run up against the failures of capitalism, companies spending more time trying to increase shareholder value, thus spending time building hype and shaking things up rather than actually making good financial decisions
how is this capitalism's fault and not the fault of the people making the dumb decisions. literally everyone who watches these videos exposing corps for being shitty comments this stupid shit pointing the finger at capitalism. it's CORPORATISM. these comments are the same thing as people blaming guns for killing people instead of blaming the ones pulling the trigger.
@@JohnDoeWasntTaken think about WHY these dumb decisions were made, what incentivized them? These decisions are made to change up the company in order to excite investors and drive up stock value, profitability doesn't matter as much as shareholder value does. Thus these companies will make stupid decisions from a consumer and business standpoint, but due to the capitalist system of investments and ownership companies are incentivized to make poor long term decisions for short term growth. Sure things were better before Reagan when stock buybacks were illegal, good policy can mitigate a lot of this, but I ask you, what is the difference between capitalism and corporatism? Cause they are both so intrinsically linked that they'd be the same thing without regulation
the word you are looking for is consolidation. the more people play a live service game, the more traction it gets. and the more traction it has, the more traction it will gain just because of its popularity and thus the more money it will generate. this is why many old games are getting outright removed from the store fronts and smaller studios acquired and put to the grave. 10 bucks for a classic titles are nothing compared to the amount of money one could make if the the same gamer played the newest greed infested grind fest. also the worst is yet to come. the crew got removed from everyones account, and more games will follow suit if we dont take action. thats right. games we paid for will be removed in order to force us to play the newest garbage.
Definitely had to hit a bit of a breaking point to make this video. I just got tired of seeing all the articles coming out recently and felt like I had to vent a bit. Hopefully we see some positive changes soon
On one hand, as an adult with other hobbies, commitments, and finite mental energy, I feel as if I already have more than enough games in my life - or at least enough is out there that will satisfy me for years to come. That said, on the other hand it’s shitty how it’s going to become more of a challenge to find a new and decent AAA experience and not have it riddled with an in game microtransaction store, season/battle passes, in game bloat/padding, and unjustified price tag etc. I feel like I’ve actually learned a lot over the past few months with all this bad press, and I genuinely think that my time, mental energy and money would be much better spent on indie games and AAs as they’re better in basically every way on a creative/fun factor front. AAAs can wait - in fact the longer I hold off from buying them the better, as they usually end up with some roadmap BS, get patched and updated to high heaven, receive additional content and go on sale. But man, the thought of no more Dishonoured/Prey adjacent games is a full on bummer. Maybe we’ll see some spiritual successors, who can say.
Arkane Lyon is still alive so Dishonored (or even Prey, considering some members of that team might be around and Bethesda still had the rights) have a chance at coming back. A recent rumor did say that a Dishonored 3 pitch was shut down, but there's no hard evidence of that and Dishonored is still a big part of Arkane. I do agree with your AAA take though. I think I've started being more critical of what im buying, especially since prices went up and life outside games got more hectic for me. Funnily enough that kind of mentality actually supports live service games- if I can buy 1 thing and play it for months instead of buying a new 10 hr experience every few weeks that does sound appealing. That's why the shift happening nowadays feels inevitable to a degree, but I'm always willing to support good, well produced single player content whether it's indie or AAA
Alan wake 2 doesn't make back it's budget because of some studpi decisions like : DEI, no real marketing, not physical copy of the product making it invisible to the general public, an exclusive deal to put it on only ONE store on pc, knowing that this deal is only there to bring cash because guess what... most steam users don't want an epic game account (i know shocking)
