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A Week After Revealing Its New Game, Hellblade Studio Ninja Theory Is Reportedly Under Threat of Closure by Microsoft (www.ign.com)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[–] 19 points 5 months ago* (6 children)

Remember back when it was basically just EA that was notorious for killing every studio it acquired, via ungodly incompetent management?

Now its just the industry model... do everything you can to have to most idiotic people managing everything.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago* (5 children)

    Honestly a big part of me thinks "good riddance, let these big corporations trying to enshittify the video game industry all die" but then I think about how no matter how cool indie game companies are, they can't fulfill the same role for entry level video game developers and artists or for video game developers and artists who want the consistency of a stupid large game development company so they can start a family...

    I find it really frustrating most video game fans are naive as hell about this shit and only seem to react with "Yeah, let them all collapse, fuck them!" like yeah I get the vibe but look at the impact it is going to have.

    I love indie games, I really really really really do I am such a weirdo finding weird video games makes me feel human and grounded, but I can also see how the boring, predictable consistency of large game studios play a different vital role in the video game industry even if I don't buy games from these companies myself.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    A very well reasoned take that I entirely agree with.

    I mean yeah, as a stereotypical semi-insane/delusional solo dev myself... can indie devs make awesome shit?

    Absolutely yes.

    Can they make something on the scale of production value / plain ole scope of a well paid AA or AAA team?

    Fuck no, not unless you count 'they took 10 actual years to do it all, basically by themselves', or, basically sold out somewhere before year 10 to get an actual team and resources, for way way waaay above a reasonable price.

    But yeah, its basically a tragedy, but a seemingly capitalist realist unavoidable tragedy, at least untill somebody sets up the equivalent of Mondragon as a game dev studio/publisher.

    To me, the absolute worst thing is that basically every AA team just does eventually get gobbled up and shit out by a megacorp.

    There are very few counterexamples to this, on like a decade timescale... they tend to be the ones that are firecely independent and dedicated to basically one game, that they just keep updating... everybody else that does a seemingly pointless sequel?

    Basically, they do that because they could not afford not to, they spent or otherwise lost too much money.

    And then even like Unity gets enshittified.

    Its a fucking mess, we've got MBA brained sharks making all the decisions, and basically, they're evil idiots who care about nothing other than line go up.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    Aren't they notoriously famous for laying off most of those massive dev teams after each release?

    Seems to me most won't get much stability in one of those companies. Also not much time for family when they also famously have to crunch 12+ hour days when release is closing in.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    There is a clear difference here between discussing the accepted business culture in large corporations which is toxic and hostile to a work life balance and the physical employment structures, in terms of opportunity and length of employment, that large companies can gurantee in a way smaller companies cannot.

    The reason people tolerate corporate bullshit is because of the fundamental advantages that come from being employed by a big large thing that isn't blown around in the wind as easily as a small operation.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    But if the current giants die, new giants will arise from the existing smaller studios, no? There will always be a need for the next FIFA, F1, COD, whatever type of game, and someone will step in to fill that need if EA and the rest die, I imagine.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    Yes but this is how "disaster capitalism" works, the entire industry gets burned down periodically and the result is that so much latent need for larger companies builds up that it becomes trivially easy to maintain a decisive leverage over the entire industry if you can consolidate and push out a critical threshold of competitors at the same size while running a larger company than anyone else. Well, in practice it is more likely for "cartel" structures to form where a handful of companies carve up the pie into a handful of big pieces and mostly agree to not fight over it past that.

    My point is that a set of conditions are maintained at the cost of actually functional large companies that treat their workers well so that when a large company does form again in the rubble and ashes of the industry crash investors can easily and reliably pile on to establish effective capture of the industry and extract maximum profit.

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