The problem with trying to be the next fortnite is that the people who would be interested in the next fortnite are already playing the current fortnite.

I didn't get into that game but I was into WoW. And while I was playing WoW, I had no interest in the clones; they didn't even make it to my radar. Even if another option was good, I had already invested a lot of time into characters and relationships in WoW. And then when I got tired of WoW, I just wasn't interested in jumping into another MMO.

Yea but capitalism demands that number go up and corporate suits are so far removed from the creative process they have no understanding of how it works.

I'm sure devs would love to have the freedom to make what they want and let it stand but unfortunately they are trapped inside service to a bunch of fucking dip shits who only see the world through spreadsheets.

"Good" is not something investors recognize.

Yeah it's the Simpsons bit where a TV exec in the boardroom says "we need a new idea, quick turn on your TVs and see what's good on the other channels we can copy."

Something I want to teach these people is that a lot of the big-name repetitious games we have now started as largely singleplayer efforts.

Early Halo/COD didn’t have much effort in multiplayer, just putting all the SP tools in. As that saw appreciation, they built more effort in. Even the famous CODZombies mode was originally not even in the budget, and came in specifically from overtime actions.

Fortnite started as a coop zombie defense game. It pivoted based on trends but had a decent basis.

One game I play, Dead by Daylight, premiered as a low-effort 1v4 party game that the devs expected to last a year at most. It’s now at year 7 with 44 characters across many franchises.

Part of the point is, it’s not punitive to grow and pivot into live service. Each of those projects started off small and low budget, and only grew once it was clear players were going to spend hundreds of hours in it. Hence it feels so dumb to invest that cash early, à la Concord, BGE2, pretty much anything decided in a boardroom before release.

I think the last one I played from them was a cooperative effort with Nintendo, the Mario + Rabbids games. I only played the first, but did enjoy it; thought it was a solid tactics game. I wanted to play the latest Prince of Persia, the 2D one, but didn't get around to it. Heard good things. But, that's about it for me. I never was a huge fan of their games. They seem to often target mediocrity, with series like Assassin's Creed and Far Cry having way too many entries, with too few bangers, and bargain prices to quickly follow.

I worked there for a while. Any time there'd be a viral trend of some sort (like battle royales, nfts), they'd wait about a year then stary a multi year project to jump on the trend. We always knew it was too late to start but we didn't have any say in it. I expect they're probably working on some sort of ai games now that will be ready after the ai bubble pops

Grow and Grow Up were cool.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was pretty good.

Because pizza is good and cake is good. Lets just imagine how fantastic it would be if they are mixed together.

Because money.

Not a clone of Fortnite, but a Fornite killer. Making a clone would be too easy, it needs to destroy it. Which is basically impossible. I don't know what the gameplay loop and objectives would be, but don't think it was same gameplay of Fortnite (therefore not a clone of it).

Seeing how things go, just going back to that point seems the option with more opportunities to succeed. Trying to shoehorn the middle parts will be a mess

I remember this too, and just recently figured it must have died. The seamless space transition looked incredible.

Yep. It's not your fault when your boss says do dumb shit. This is so common in the video game industry.

C-suite business-people only know how to follow numbers.

There isn't an original thought in their heads or a creative bone in their bodies.

They may as well have. If they ever do end up releasing something, it won't be anything like what they promised in the beginning.

Yeah, it's all about making lame extraction shooters now! Five years from now when they finish making the AAA extraction shooters they're working on now, that will be outdated.

Technically it's never been delayed, they never set dates

That's the neat part. It doesn't, which is why they apparently wasted three years on this hare-brained idea.

I do hope if they ever release, it actually is a sequel. A lot of the teasers were all saying it was a prequel from long before the story of 1, and that's never been what most fans were wanting anyhow. I want to know about Jade, not about everything before.... At least not yet.

Won't somebody PLEASE think of the shareholders

Beyond Good & Evil Forever

I don't think you understand the gist of that turn of phrase. The author is using it quite correctly.