If you wanna get a picture of how bad mismanagement in the videogame industry is, remember how George Broussard kept changing what Duke Nukem Forever was every time he saw something new and shiny, and kept throwing out years of work and changing engines repeatedly? It's that writ large - ThreadSky

caseyexplosion.bsky.social • 45 days ago

If you wanna get a picture of how bad mismanagement in the videogame industry is, remember how George Broussard kept changing what Duke Nukem Forever was every time he saw something new and shiny, and kept throwing out years of work and changing engines repeatedly?

It's that writ large

Reposted from Jason Schreier

Why do video games cost so much to make these days? A recent NYT article pinned bloated budgets on the graphical arms race, but that's only a small part of the equation. The real problem? Rampant mismanagement.

This week's column is a spicy one: www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

Comments

lunaraccoona.bsky.social•44 days ago

I've been saying this shit for years, if Ryan in his basement can turn out a 12$ steam game that makes more money than some AAA titles there's no way chasing the dragon of graphical fidelity singlehandedly ruined the gaming industry, CLEARLY it's not the selling point it's presumed to be

loranskunky.bsky.social•45 days ago

Seen a few “what happened to…?” videos talking about this and that is so much of the issue. Tons of work will get dumped or someone new will take over and throw out two years of work.

slazengerkincaid.bsky.social•45 days ago

Video game companies are so appallingly run it's embarrassing but those clowns never lose their jobs. It's the management's fault. It's always their fault.

outie.bsky.social•45 days ago

I worked in videogames for under a decade and I've personally watched this happen to at least three entire games/products and multiple smaller aspects within other games

outie.bsky.social•45 days ago

most of them kept flopping about like this until they were just cancelled before ever seeing the light of day

outie.bsky.social•45 days ago

dozens of people collectively spent literal hundreds of years of their lives on things that ended up in the bin

4squaremiles.bsky.social•45 days ago

our first person looter shooter is now a balatro clone

halftoneposs.bsky.social•45 days ago

That also explains why indie games have been more successful in recent years - less overhead to derail the project!

cynbelterreus.bsky.social•45 days ago

Because the people directly working on it have all the control

anocelittle.bsky.social•45 days ago

Good ole feature creep. Reminds me a little bit of when ProZD did a whole sketch about excessive gameplay mechanics.

cynbelterreus.bsky.social•45 days ago

Yeah basically those in charge, who don't actually do the work, but have all the control, cause all of the problems usually.

redskull87.bsky.social•45 days ago

Something tells me that the guy that just combine two word stogether to made up a entire concept that the development team is going to crunch every time of mythic quest is less and less parody every passing year

caseyexplosion.bsky.social•45 days ago

This is anecdotal, but every other person I know in the industry have some horror story about exactly this kinda thing

marshiepup.bsky.social•45 days ago

Just look at Star Citizen.

It's literally lighting money on FIRE CONSTANTLY. Scope keeps changing, and it's crawling forward. It'll never hit release.

benmhz.bsky.social•44 days ago

I want to lock Roberts and the devs in their fancy amphitheater and give them a Steve Balmer inspired peptalk.

cypherial.bsky.social•45 days ago

You mean Store Citizen, the early access game that's been in early access for like ten years and the only finished thing in the game is the storefront where if you spend enough money (literally thousands of dollars) you get access to a second, secret storefront so you can spend even more money?

commodorejeepeep.bsky.social•45 days ago

Which fits, as the chief dev had a rep for being that sort since before GUI was standard on MS operating systems.

thatonebuggal.bsky.social•45 days ago

Yeah, higher ups in video game dev studios just do this stuff and its absolutely insane. I feel bad for game devs, forced into crunch and dealing with mismanagment.

newfierowe.bsky.social•45 days ago

The people running everything have no background in making games.

milkischillin.bsky.social•45 days ago

On a more serious note, has nobody in the games industry heard of the concept of Scope Creep?

milkischillin.bsky.social•45 days ago

Dopefish, however, still lives.

peculiaredith.bsky.social•45 days ago

Don't forget astronomical marketing budgets that often rival the cost of actually making the game.

disastermillennial.bsky.social•45 days ago

i'm starting to think that the next video game crash isn't gonna be due to low quality games but mismanagement. it's almost like a ton of people got promoted that really shouldn't have been :)

nickpiers.bsky.social•45 days ago

Video games should follow an approach like James Gunn takes with film: nothing is finalized until a full script is done, edited, and gone over several times.

Obviously, it'd be a bit more complicated with video games, but something along the same lines.

cathasach.bsky.social•45 days ago

The funny part is that this is effectively just how all media production is run. Everything in this article sounds exactly like the movies too. I'm sure they could do a better job managing but more likely this article will spur worse conditions for workers.

cathasach.bsky.social•45 days ago

Paying creative people to sit around and do nothing for extended periods of time is an unmitigated good thing in my opinion.

brandishjaye.bsky.social•45 days ago

Yeah. There's like fifty good game ideas in Forever, but all together it's a mess.

jamesivan96.bsky.social•43 days ago

I'm gonna play devils advocate. videogame fans expect videogames to be like big budget movies with insane graphics & a motion picture like story. Videogame creators must be going crazy figuring out new and exciting ways to deliver this.

coffeenoodles.bsky.social•44 days ago

I always come back to what happened to Mick Gordon. It's more recent, it was really public, and it featured zero comeuppance for the suits that perpetrated it. At least with Broussard 3d realms basically collapsed 🤷

braddeltan.bsky.social•44 days ago

And yet, the dumpster fire that is CoD Warzone is making Activision BILLIONS in profits every year. 🙄

kirbyglover.bsky.social•45 days ago

Given me experiences in the engineering field, I'm not surprised

calierthewolf.bsky.social•45 days ago

Now I think of one bit in No More Heroes, they make fun of Duke Nukem Forever, bc one character was saying that her backstory was terrible and could be ALONE in the reason the game's age rating gets boosted up, and cause the game to be delayed, so to circumvent that, the game just fast-forwards it.

calierthewolf.bsky.social•45 days ago

BUT you can hear the whole thing if you slow that bit down

keichoro.bsky.social•45 days ago

As someone who manages while working on my own coding projects, scope creeping is very tempting because I sometimes think of new ideas while working, and I have to control myself to focus on getting more important parts of project done first before attempting anything new.

kawotter.bsky.social•45 days ago

See every modern AAA game requiring a vast open world map, and a crafting system, and online multiplayer, and the most cutting-edge graphics over art styles, and requiring over $1 billion in sales to be deemed a "success" by the suits (remember when a million sales was "big"?), etc. etc. etc.

tab13.bsky.social•45 days ago

Ego and corporate meddling are a pressure that will cause gaming to become another bubble, if it's not a bubble already the indies will probably be fine and Valve will just continue unless it gets eaten up by the anti-monopoly lawsuits that Tim keeps throwing at them.

Also what game is that image?

mcjazzhands.bsky.social•45 days ago

George blocked me for calling him out on crunch years ago and I wear that as a badge of honor. For real though, I get seeing something neat and going "ooh, I want that!" but from experience that's not totally congruent with game dev.

caseyexplosion.bsky.social•45 days ago

Yeah, I've caught blocks from a couple of notorious industry tyrants, which I can only assume that they had been namesearching and found me talking shit about them, it's hard not to think of that as a badge of honor, yeah

jrmcc.bsky.social•45 days ago

Mythic Quest!!!

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply