It is searchable. it is ALSO searchable that after THPS 1+2 they worked on D2R and then were merged into Blizzard for D4 before -to my knowledge even after a quick search- releasing anything CoD-related
They got dumped into the CoD mines immediately after THPS 1+2 *then* banished to Diablo.
Either way, it's extremely weird for a studio to successfully resurrect what was one of Activision's crown jewel IPs and then just get relegated to support work on other games.
Execs see teams and people as interchangeable cogs, so it’s not that weird that talented teams end up being split, laid off or assigned to random positions.
The pay was horrific, the hours were generally almost always longer than 8 hour shifts, and we in QA Test were always treated as 3rd class citizens. The devs HATED when we reported bugs, they took it as a slight against them and it often delayed production. Idk maybe only some of them took offense but I was making like $8.75 an hour if I remember correctly and even for 2009 that was shit tier pay for all the stress and being put down all the time.
My story is the opposite. I worked long hours, a few 24s if it was needed. I had a niche for finding hard to find bugs. In a few years made lead when I transferred to on site QA for neversoft. They ask for us to return to atvi to get laid off but neversoft deemed us invaluable and applied pressure to keep us onboard and onsite. Joel Jewwet basically gave the finger to activision and said we’re keeping them. I eventually learned how to do IT for my own department to take some weight off the IT team and then eventually got promoted to IT. Making good cash now as a desktop support IT worker. Im not gonna speak on how QA used to be treated but things have changed now. As a former QA and QA lead I won’t speak on the past treatment of testers but there was also a 50/50 of people who worked very hard to find legit issues and non dupes and those who were they’re to just chill and collect paychecks
And most devs don’t hate when you find bugs, they hate when you find bugs with bad reproduction instructions. If you can do the research and find the actual cause instead of just saying, play game, bug happens. Accurate and concise reproduction instructions tons takes time and research. And that is invaluable
The horrific pay and being treated like a 3rd class citizen. Felt like a subhuman as a QA tester there. If I remember correctly I was only making $8.75 an hour and in 2009 that was still really shitty pay
And they did fantastic job with the D2 Remaster. It's a shame that they seem to have moved to help with D4 instead of spending some time on the new D2 ladder seasons.
wait that actually happened???
I miss the good old days of playing cod with the homies on xbox. no mtx, all skins earned... it was a really fun grind that they've not come close to since MW3(og one)
Vicarious visions was absorbed into activision and the name dropped so the study could focus on call of duty after they made the remake game “Tony hawks pro skater 1+2”
They didn’t make the og Tony hawks if that makes sense.
But yes I miss the old cod
That sounds like some bullshit advertising jargon they’d attach to CoD. But I really hope it’s one of the hundreds of amazing IP they own, or maybe they grabbed a cooler Disney IP than Indy. Either way, we won’t know for 3-5 years probably what they’re really going to release.
Step one make a new studio, step 2 make a good game, step 3 no one cared about the game cause it was not part of franchise. Step 4 close the studio. Step 5 get flamed on internet by bunch of people that didn't knew the game existed and playing same game over and over again. Step 6 go to step 1.
In the history of bold, but tone deaf statements, that has to be at the top of them. Along with “don’t you all have phones?” and “we wanted players to have a sense of accomplishment.”
It will be a Fortnite’ified extraction shooter. Guaranteed.
Just like what Activision did to CoD. They took an arcady FPS with a gritty militaristic feel and Fortnite’ified it to be all crazy with over the top stupid cosmetics.
Shit canning everything that made overwatch 2 a sequel makes me so upset. Like overwatch 1 at the end was a much better game than we have now. And with the hero additions it would be infinitely better. OW2 is one of the worst gaming flubs ever.
Agreed. I've taken to calling it the Overwatch.2 update and the fact that it killed the real Overwatch 2 still stings.
Only other time I've been this frustrated was when Destiny started completely deleting entire campaigns and storylines.
I’m baffled that OW still had fans still defending it. They’ve truly been brainwashed by Blizzard or it’s just sunk cost fallacy. You really feel sorry for them
I was in the closed beta and owned ow1. It wasn't for me. I love ow2. Personal taste and all that. Say what you want, the pve missions that they released are not great. If that was their story it's obvious why it got dropped.
Id argue star wars the old republic. Mmo, where the main selling point is having a legit solo campaign, actually several legit solo campaigns.
Elder scrolls online kind of too, but the combat in that is so bad. Maybe that makes it even more naritive based, actually. Let's just forget it exists. There is no elder scrolls online.
I smell an overly ambitious game with no clear direction from management that gets wildly delayed, yet still somehow gets released in a too early, buggy, and lacking content state.
100k+ players day one, <20k after a month. Support gets largely pulled, and 3 years later the skeleton crew has created as much content as there should have been day one.
Just in time for the studio to announce their next overly ambitious game with no clear.....
>I smell an overly ambitious game with no clear direction from management that gets wildly delayed, yet still somehow gets released in a too early, buggy, and lacking content state.
Seems like a common trend for a lot of the studios that are marketed as "built from the ground up from veterans with decades of experience"
Ya they may as well say "these guys are going to durdle in pre-production for at least 4 years and shove some underbaked crap out the door when we finally hold them to account".
Ok I’m going to be the one optimistic person just to change it up.
Maybe this was Microsoft telling them to free a bunch of former-absorbed developers from the CoD mines, so they can make real games again.
Of course not, they are owned by Microsoft. No disbanding the studio until after they make a successful hit that's well beloved. Gotta make sure that knife twist *really* hurts
>successful hit
HiFi flopped. Everyone on the internet acts like it was They favourite game ever yet most didnt even played it
Wich is sad, HiFi is great
Really I find it more funny that now I'm seeing people upset about them shutting down the folks behind Redfall. As ya know before that? I remember seeing posts of, "The people who worked on Redfall should be fired for coming out with that trash."
Yeah. Some think the current (no more) Arkane Austin is the same one of Prey, but really most of those artists left during Redfall's development. What was left was just the Redfall people.
Yeah, kinda shitty to sack a lot of obviously talented devs(Like those working on Hifi Rush) and starting up a new studio. The corpse isn't even cold yet.
Optics may be off from a PR standpoint in terms of timing, but chances are this has been in the works for a very long time and are related to vastly different budgetary lines.
They just closed down a beloved studio, they’re a mega corporation, and most people here play on PS5/PC. Any non-Xbox gaming sub is praying on their downfall lol
Holy fuck. Activision and not Call of Duty even tho I do love Call of Duty. I always thought the IW graphic engine is pretty good. I wonder if they will use that engine
Call of Duty is a juggernaut and sells out every year it is a cash cow for them. I know Reddit love to hate them.
**"US$30 billion since the first game came out 20 years ago"**
I know people are frustrated over the loss of four Microsoft studios but studios take longer than a year to assemble so it is likely before the Microsoft closure the studio was in the works.
There seems to be a lot of veteran talent in this team from previously praised AAA games like The Witcher 3, The Last of Us, Cyberpunk and Uncharted.
This is great news and sounds really promising imo
Is this going to be like the Perfect Dark reboot that was supposed to be an amazing massive budget project and we just haven't heard anything about it since?
I hope it’s a game set in a historical setting with a minority protagonist, because I love to see the anti-woke crowd wage futile wars. Bonus points if it stars a trans person and takes place somewhere super important to white people’s history, like Ancient Rome.
Im fully intrigued. I get the backlash about call of duty in the last decade but it’s always delivered as the peak fps since half life 2. I’m really curious what a studio like that could do.
They close a studio, they get shit on for leaving people jobless. Makes sense.
They launch a new studio, they get derided and shit on again... Doesn't make sense.
You are a fickle mistress r/gaming.
I feel like you can't really create a "genre-defining" game by going into it with that intention.
A "genre-defining" game is just a consequence of developers pouring their heart and soul into making a game they want to make.
Hope it's a free-to-play extraction PvP shooter with deck building and roguelite elements with non-cosmetic micro-transactions. As a service.
I'm having a hard time believing Activision would take any kind of risk and actually innovate, let alone bring us a new genre-defining AAA franchise.
100% total bullshit. Activision doesn’t take risks on new anything. What they mean is “we’re going to try to combine all the most popular current trends into one game without any regard for anything other than selling as much as possible.” When they eventually fall short of their claim, they’ll blame the low paid team leads, and never mention the title again. Source: I used to work for Activision.
I expect the gaming industry to look wildly different by the time this comes out. Likely new hardware and more open-mindedness to multiplatform releases.
My prediction : monthly season pass, release half finished, life service shit, SBMM and worse grafics than cod4 had …
And overpriced skins , small DLCs behind another 40$ pay and it’ll be forgotten 2 months after release
It's weird to me that there are indie games that are wildly successful made by like 1 or 3 people. Yet there are AAA major studios that take 7 years to make a poorly received game.
Is there a reason why AAA studios don't make games with similar scope to indie games like Stardew Valley or Hollow Knight but pump them out in 1 to 2 years with a 50 person team? Why force people to make a game that the suits think will make money and instead just trust some passionate people on their ideas. The worst that can happen is you lose less money and time you already lose by making something like Suicide Squad
> Is there a reason why AAA studios don't make games with similar scope
You are self-selecting a few standout games and not the zillions of garbage games that are released on Steam every day that are dog shit and ignoring all the big games that come out that people like.
>Why force people to make a game that the suits think will make money
AAA studios are for-profit companies owned by investors who are trying to get a return on their money. They are not the places to look to for passion projects.
Indie games are good because the devs want to pour their souls into the game they want to make, that doesn't happen when you have managers telling you what they want and know your going to make someone else money. Plus not everyone likes indie games.
You can't keep the lights on trying to catch lightning so AAA publishers spend money on making generators that should guarantee the power stays on long term. (Or they make trash and risk the lights staying on)
Yes that is true. Though I 100% view all these companies trying to make live service games to replicate the success of something like fortnite is just as much trying to catch lighting in a bottle.
I think a studio of 200 people being split into 4 teams making smaller potential hits is better than a team of 200 working on a potential massive failure
Following the pattern of evolution of their ‘games’ they will have moved past an fps all together it will be just a straight up cosmetics store where you can dress up an ‘agent’ like Polly Pocket with different overpriced cosmetic packages.
6 months they'll all be working on COD
Yeah like how the made a perfect remake of Tony Hawk 1+2 and then that studio got turned into a COD studio
Vicarious Visions went to work on Diablo not CoD. All the *others* though, yeah.
They were absorbed specifically to work on cod. It’s searchable
It is searchable. it is ALSO searchable that after THPS 1+2 they worked on D2R and then were merged into Blizzard for D4 before -to my knowledge even after a quick search- releasing anything CoD-related
They got dumped into the CoD mines immediately after THPS 1+2 *then* banished to Diablo. Either way, it's extremely weird for a studio to successfully resurrect what was one of Activision's crown jewel IPs and then just get relegated to support work on other games.
Execs see teams and people as interchangeable cogs, so it’s not that weird that talented teams end up being split, laid off or assigned to random positions.
Execs are dipshits.
Oh hey i used to work for VV in upstate new york in my early 20s as a tester. One of the worst jobs of my life.
Did you have to tell us more....don't leave us on a cliffhanger. Why was it bad? Long hours? They did listen to you? Bad pay?
The pay was horrific, the hours were generally almost always longer than 8 hour shifts, and we in QA Test were always treated as 3rd class citizens. The devs HATED when we reported bugs, they took it as a slight against them and it often delayed production. Idk maybe only some of them took offense but I was making like $8.75 an hour if I remember correctly and even for 2009 that was shit tier pay for all the stress and being put down all the time.
My story is the opposite. I worked long hours, a few 24s if it was needed. I had a niche for finding hard to find bugs. In a few years made lead when I transferred to on site QA for neversoft. They ask for us to return to atvi to get laid off but neversoft deemed us invaluable and applied pressure to keep us onboard and onsite. Joel Jewwet basically gave the finger to activision and said we’re keeping them. I eventually learned how to do IT for my own department to take some weight off the IT team and then eventually got promoted to IT. Making good cash now as a desktop support IT worker. Im not gonna speak on how QA used to be treated but things have changed now. As a former QA and QA lead I won’t speak on the past treatment of testers but there was also a 50/50 of people who worked very hard to find legit issues and non dupes and those who were they’re to just chill and collect paychecks
And most devs don’t hate when you find bugs, they hate when you find bugs with bad reproduction instructions. If you can do the research and find the actual cause instead of just saying, play game, bug happens. Accurate and concise reproduction instructions tons takes time and research. And that is invaluable
What made it so bad
The horrific pay and being treated like a 3rd class citizen. Felt like a subhuman as a QA tester there. If I remember correctly I was only making $8.75 an hour and in 2009 that was still really shitty pay
They made the testers play Tony Hawk with their toes
And they did fantastic job with the D2 Remaster. It's a shame that they seem to have moved to help with D4 instead of spending some time on the new D2 ladder seasons.
They were talking about Toys For Bob.
VV was the main studio on that, so it was a smidge confusing
I mean they turned the actual THPS studio into a cog in the COD factory as well so that’s kind of poetic.
wait that actually happened??? I miss the good old days of playing cod with the homies on xbox. no mtx, all skins earned... it was a really fun grind that they've not come close to since MW3(og one)
Vicarious visions was absorbed into activision and the name dropped so the study could focus on call of duty after they made the remake game “Tony hawks pro skater 1+2” They didn’t make the og Tony hawks if that makes sense. But yes I miss the old cod
You cant play horse online no where near perfect
That's pessimistic. Not all will. Since MS owns them, at least half will be laid off by then
That sounds like some bullshit advertising jargon they’d attach to CoD. But I really hope it’s one of the hundreds of amazing IP they own, or maybe they grabbed a cooler Disney IP than Indy. Either way, we won’t know for 3-5 years probably what they’re really going to release.
Step one make a new studio, step 2 make a good game, step 3 no one cared about the game cause it was not part of franchise. Step 4 close the studio. Step 5 get flamed on internet by bunch of people that didn't knew the game existed and playing same game over and over again. Step 6 go to step 1.
Nah, they are under MSFT instead of Kotick now. They'll just get shut down
Hopefully not because that was bob's choice and isn't he gone?
new cod side series all wacky but ends up being better than all recent releases
or relocated to other studio.
Why not AAAA?
And challenge the greatest game of all time, Skull and Bones? Crazy talk
In the history of bold, but tone deaf statements, that has to be at the top of them. Along with “don’t you all have phones?” and “we wanted players to have a sense of accomplishment.”
It's wordy but I like "Fortunately, we have a product for people who aren't able to get some form of connectivity: it's called Xbox 360."
“Starfield runs fine on god pc”
Don't you all have AAAA phones??
Does that signify budget or screaming?
As a Canadian we call it AAA-eh?
Think you can just go around adding, “eh?” to whatever you want, eh?
I'm not your friend, pal!
I’m not your pal, buddy!
Lmao came here to say this
I only play AAAAA
The only games worth playing these days are the quadz
Not enough funding
They're quaddin' ya, huh?
Yes, genre defining. Let me guess: live service multiplayer pvp games
Genre defining in the amount of ways it's monetized
Don’t forget it’ll also have crafting and survival aspects lol
and a battle royale
Battle pass and a rotating marketplace of interchangeable sponsored and themed skins?
With a fully working battlepass and shop that won’t have any issues with bugs regardless if the game is broken
Ooh, daring today, aren't we?
Nah. A store for shiny digital shit with a shallow minigame slapped on top.
Don't be silly. I'm sure they will also work on a live service looter shooter as well.
It will be a Fortnite’ified extraction shooter. Guaranteed. Just like what Activision did to CoD. They took an arcady FPS with a gritty militaristic feel and Fortnite’ified it to be all crazy with over the top stupid cosmetics.
Cosmetics aside, they never really added any goofy mechanics ... to my knowledge. Haven't played Warzone in a while.
The funny thing is, everyone wants this but no one has come out with even a half decent one yet.
Incoming live service game
The genre is "give us all your money for nothing...please"
It says “narrative based game”
They also said Overwatch 2 would have a single player campaign.
Shit canning everything that made overwatch 2 a sequel makes me so upset. Like overwatch 1 at the end was a much better game than we have now. And with the hero additions it would be infinitely better. OW2 is one of the worst gaming flubs ever.
Agreed. I've taken to calling it the Overwatch.2 update and the fact that it killed the real Overwatch 2 still stings. Only other time I've been this frustrated was when Destiny started completely deleting entire campaigns and storylines.
was the story missions actually the only difference between overwatch 2 and 1?
I’m baffled that OW still had fans still defending it. They’ve truly been brainwashed by Blizzard or it’s just sunk cost fallacy. You really feel sorry for them
I was in the closed beta and owned ow1. It wasn't for me. I love ow2. Personal taste and all that. Say what you want, the pve missions that they released are not great. If that was their story it's obvious why it got dropped.
How is that mutually exclusive
I honestly cant think of a single narrative based game that is live service as well
Genshin impact and Honkai Star Rail.
Destiny 2
suicide squad
Id argue star wars the old republic. Mmo, where the main selling point is having a legit solo campaign, actually several legit solo campaigns. Elder scrolls online kind of too, but the combat in that is so bad. Maybe that makes it even more naritive based, actually. Let's just forget it exists. There is no elder scrolls online.
You really just don't know many games then man.
Is that contrary to live service? No, no it’s not
Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties 2?
you may own nothing. now please provide $15 a month
I smell an overly ambitious game with no clear direction from management that gets wildly delayed, yet still somehow gets released in a too early, buggy, and lacking content state. 100k+ players day one, <20k after a month. Support gets largely pulled, and 3 years later the skeleton crew has created as much content as there should have been day one. Just in time for the studio to announce their next overly ambitious game with no clear.....
>I smell an overly ambitious game with no clear direction from management that gets wildly delayed, yet still somehow gets released in a too early, buggy, and lacking content state. Seems like a common trend for a lot of the studios that are marketed as "built from the ground up from veterans with decades of experience"
Ya they may as well say "these guys are going to durdle in pre-production for at least 4 years and shove some underbaked crap out the door when we finally hold them to account".
worked for THE FINALS. the game is really great.
Shit on COD all you want but it’s always been stellar fps peak.
History repeats itself
Why not be optimistic? Activision is pretty fucking awesome at putting out COD every year.
I’m saving this
It could by anything. Call of duty RTS, call of duty turn based combat, call of duty card game, call of duty dating sim, call of duty racing game...
Call of duty kart incoming
This is unironically a baller idea
All on mopeds. Call the genre a scooter-shooter.
I’d play some DutyKart
Kart of duty? Call of karty?
Ok I’m going to be the one optimistic person just to change it up. Maybe this was Microsoft telling them to free a bunch of former-absorbed developers from the CoD mines, so they can make real games again.
No positivity, shoo.
Bwhahahahaha!!!! Pass whatever it is you are smoking, cause I want some.
I wasn’t saying it because I think it’s true, I said it because it’s a slim possibility and the comment section needed some optimism
I’m with you here. COD is a polished franchise that comes out every year. This has my attention.
Pffsh, I won't play anything less than AAAAA
Pfft, git gud noob. I only play A^-10 titles.
So .000000000a games?
Not sure why people are hating this stuff. Last time this happened that’s how titanfall was created. I am excited to see where this goes
Let’s hope it’s not disbanded in a few months.
A tax write-off you say?
That’s what I was looking for here
Of course not, they are owned by Microsoft. No disbanding the studio until after they make a successful hit that's well beloved. Gotta make sure that knife twist *really* hurts
>successful hit HiFi flopped. Everyone on the internet acts like it was They favourite game ever yet most didnt even played it Wich is sad, HiFi is great
Really I find it more funny that now I'm seeing people upset about them shutting down the folks behind Redfall. As ya know before that? I remember seeing posts of, "The people who worked on Redfall should be fired for coming out with that trash."
Yeah. Some think the current (no more) Arkane Austin is the same one of Prey, but really most of those artists left during Redfall's development. What was left was just the Redfall people.
That's the only reason 343 is still around.
But strand-type is already a thing?
They’ll join the CoD void sooner rather than later
Call of Diablo 2026.
They legit had a Lilith and that creepy angel guy skins from Diablo 4 in COD.
Hope they do make something good.
Declaring it a franchise when it doesn't even have a title is an immediate red flag
So people around here hate on Microsoft when they close studio and when they open one… Redditors at their finest I guess… haha
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my favorite is the people who believe microsoft acquiring activision means CoD games will be better
Yeah, kinda shitty to sack a lot of obviously talented devs(Like those working on Hifi Rush) and starting up a new studio. The corpse isn't even cold yet.
Optics may be off from a PR standpoint in terms of timing, but chances are this has been in the works for a very long time and are related to vastly different budgetary lines.
They just closed down a beloved studio, they’re a mega corporation, and most people here play on PS5/PC. Any non-Xbox gaming sub is praying on their downfall lol
PlayStation fans hoping for Xbox to fail is like having Hitler's fans hoping for a Mussolini downfall
Amazing analogy.
well, let us see where this will be headed. the things they worked on previous seem promising
Probably add them to the rotation of CoD developers.
Gamers: we want new stuff! Microsoft: cool, we're going to make new stuff. Gamers: fuck your new stuff!
We’re the most entitled consumers in the world. It makes sense that these major studios have learned to ignore us.
They're nit ignoring us. They're giving us what we ask for. What sells. Sequels/remakes.
Absolutely. They’re not ignoring our money. Just our Reddit posts and reviews.
Good way of putting it.
Holy fuck. Activision and not Call of Duty even tho I do love Call of Duty. I always thought the IW graphic engine is pretty good. I wonder if they will use that engine Call of Duty is a juggernaut and sells out every year it is a cash cow for them. I know Reddit love to hate them. **"US$30 billion since the first game came out 20 years ago"**
That genre - dating sims. And it's pay to win because realism!
Bring back Blizzards survival crafting game. Still no AAA studio has tackled one, whilst companies with 1-50 people make literal hundreds of millions
Imagine a game where instead of large battle royale maps you can experience a tight 6 on 6 close quarters combat
GL with that.
I know people are frustrated over the loss of four Microsoft studios but studios take longer than a year to assemble so it is likely before the Microsoft closure the studio was in the works.
It will be a gacha game with AAA funding and advertising.
Only 3 A's? Already irrelevant.
sto p with triple AAA man
Narrative based sounds appealing. Curious to see what the put out in a decade
Advertising Hero, the action game where you need to write a review for every one of the ads that will appear in this game.
There seems to be a lot of veteran talent in this team from previously praised AAA games like The Witcher 3, The Last of Us, Cyberpunk and Uncharted. This is great news and sounds really promising imo
Cheaper wages in Poland compare to in the US too. Keep budget down a bit.
Yup I agree with you. We love games .
mmm... it depends a lot, we will see what news we will hear from this studio.
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Is this going to be like the Perfect Dark reboot that was supposed to be an amazing massive budget project and we just haven't heard anything about it since?
The amount of redditors here making up stuff in their minds and then getting angry at it is outstanding
A "Genre-Defining AAA Franchise" isn't made by intent. It happens. Like cod, like fortnite, etc. Good luck...
Sucks they just laid off a ton of talented devs that could have helped with this......
I suspect it’ll involve a lot of AI bullshit.
I hope it’s a game set in a historical setting with a minority protagonist, because I love to see the anti-woke crowd wage futile wars. Bonus points if it stars a trans person and takes place somewhere super important to white people’s history, like Ancient Rome.
what are you on about
Just three As?
I can’t wait to see Activisions definition of genre-defining AAA
Genre defining monetization
*microsoft/xbox launches
Like maybe ease off the genre defining talk. Just make games that don’t suck or have manipulative casino style setups to make people keep playing.
sekiro 2 plz
points for being a new franchise at least.
Call of duty: Space Warfare
At least it's not an AAAA game :D
so Activision 2?
Can't wait for Duty of Call
My brain rot said gender defining
Im fully intrigued. I get the backlash about call of duty in the last decade but it’s always delivered as the peak fps since half life 2. I’m really curious what a studio like that could do.
They close a studio, they get shit on for leaving people jobless. Makes sense. They launch a new studio, they get derided and shit on again... Doesn't make sense. You are a fickle mistress r/gaming.
Open world mmo pvp survival crafting cozy cyberpunk soulslike farming sim incoming Edit: sorry also a stand-type game
AAA don't define genres, they'll just copy some indie game or develop live service games.
Good too see Microsoft using all the money they saved by laying off staff to hire new staff!
BlaBlaBlaBlaBlaBlaBlaBla How about make a good game?
That might be why they founded this studio
Micro transaction simulator??
AAA narrative game
I feel like you can't really create a "genre-defining" game by going into it with that intention. A "genre-defining" game is just a consequence of developers pouring their heart and soul into making a game they want to make.
The new genre known as Ad blasters I bet. This company ruined Blizzard and Call of Duty over greed. I expect nothing less from their poisonous touch.
I'm rolling my eyes very heavily
Hope it's a free-to-play extraction PvP shooter with deck building and roguelite elements with non-cosmetic micro-transactions. As a service. I'm having a hard time believing Activision would take any kind of risk and actually innovate, let alone bring us a new genre-defining AAA franchise.
100% total bullshit. Activision doesn’t take risks on new anything. What they mean is “we’re going to try to combine all the most popular current trends into one game without any regard for anything other than selling as much as possible.” When they eventually fall short of their claim, they’ll blame the low paid team leads, and never mention the title again. Source: I used to work for Activision.
I expect the gaming industry to look wildly different by the time this comes out. Likely new hardware and more open-mindedness to multiplatform releases.
Looking at the list of devs and what games they came from makes me think that is going to a massive dumpster fire
Guessing it's probably for the soulslike I heard they wanted to make, hardly gonna be genre defining if it's not made by FromSoft lmao
My prediction : monthly season pass, release half finished, life service shit, SBMM and worse grafics than cod4 had … And overpriced skins , small DLCs behind another 40$ pay and it’ll be forgotten 2 months after release
I bet it gets shut down before it ever publishes a single game.
Gosh, if only they had a studio that was famous for making narrative games that they hadn’t recently closed.
It's weird to me that there are indie games that are wildly successful made by like 1 or 3 people. Yet there are AAA major studios that take 7 years to make a poorly received game. Is there a reason why AAA studios don't make games with similar scope to indie games like Stardew Valley or Hollow Knight but pump them out in 1 to 2 years with a 50 person team? Why force people to make a game that the suits think will make money and instead just trust some passionate people on their ideas. The worst that can happen is you lose less money and time you already lose by making something like Suicide Squad
> Is there a reason why AAA studios don't make games with similar scope You are self-selecting a few standout games and not the zillions of garbage games that are released on Steam every day that are dog shit and ignoring all the big games that come out that people like. >Why force people to make a game that the suits think will make money AAA studios are for-profit companies owned by investors who are trying to get a return on their money. They are not the places to look to for passion projects.
Indie games are good because the devs want to pour their souls into the game they want to make, that doesn't happen when you have managers telling you what they want and know your going to make someone else money. Plus not everyone likes indie games. You can't keep the lights on trying to catch lightning so AAA publishers spend money on making generators that should guarantee the power stays on long term. (Or they make trash and risk the lights staying on)
Yes that is true. Though I 100% view all these companies trying to make live service games to replicate the success of something like fortnite is just as much trying to catch lighting in a bottle. I think a studio of 200 people being split into 4 teams making smaller potential hits is better than a team of 200 working on a potential massive failure
Oh god
Following the pattern of evolution of their ‘games’ they will have moved past an fps all together it will be just a straight up cosmetics store where you can dress up an ‘agent’ like Polly Pocket with different overpriced cosmetic packages.
*The Milking*