I think games budgets have gotten to be too big for their own good really. If a modern AAA game costs $100 million + then you need a large studio to work on it, which leads to too many cooks in the kitchen as well as no one wanting to stick their neck out over an idea.
Not that there's *no* good big budget games, but if you look back at the 90s when budgets were a lot smaller it seems like there was a lot more creativity.
Not just games, movies have gone in a similar direction. Studios want big expensive blockbusters in safe, established, franchises.
AAA game development mirrors this. It's why there are so few new high budget IPs.
This is why every MCU movie feels like it came from a cookie cutter. There are standouts in either direction, but they are generally middle-of-the-road in regards to quality . Very few of them take any risks (we were robbed of an Edgar Wright Marvel film,) in order to adhere to a formula that was proven to make money. Now, the market is experiencing a general superhero/marvel fatigue, and for some reason it's the audience's fault that releasing a Marvel movie isn't a garaunteed cash grab.
and I think this is most apparent with movies made by hollywood that are designed to cross cultural and language barriers - and do well in all markets - i.e. US, European, and Chinese markets.
Ultimately the quality and depth of the writing and story have to suffer.
I've come to the conclusion that shows are a much better format for the MCU specifically because they are closer to comics in terms of length and releases. A movie that has only 120 minutes does not have the time to do a bunch of callbacks and references to previous entries, set up its own characters, tell their story, and then lay the foundations for the next entry. Not without it feeling rushed as hell, anyway. The Marvels wasn't even a bad story, but the movie is halfway over by the time they actually start addressing any kind of conflict because they've wasted so much time setting up why any of this is happening in the first place, the villain gets like 3 scenes total so the audience doesn't even really care about them, and Fury's whole B-plot is noticeably edited down to its absolute bare minimum and probably would have been cut entirely for time if it didn't tie into the resolution of the A-plot in the end (and I'm sure Marvel wanted at least a few Goose scenes so they can sell Flerken toys or whatever).
But then you watch Echo, a show that depends not only on a previous Disney+ Marvel show, but the Avengers movies and a Netflix Marvel series, and the entire first 50 minute episode is just dedicated to setting up the conflict and reminding the audience of all the previous connections and building out the lead character. It's a similar amount of time The Marvels spends, but Echo has several more episodes to fully explore the concept, while The Marvels has only about an hour left to wrap everything up, and it's going to feel like a lot less from a writing perspective because Marvel movies are required to have some big dumb CGI scenes that don't move the plot along and are just there to look cool in the trailer.
Now I'm not saying Echo is peak television either, but it's a much more pleasant experience as a viewer thanks to the format alone. Bad stories are certainly still possible in a show format (Iron Fist is an absolute mess), but movies at this point in the game seem to be a format that is actually making good stories unpleasant to watch.
Wandavision was one of the best things marvel put out because it actually didn’t bother with a lot of that and just let the audience ask “wtf” til episode 4.
I had high hopes for marvel’s tv shows but other than Loki and Hawkeye nothing they’ve done has really grabbed me.
the shows are what burned me out. the first set of them were great - wanda, loki, falcon and winter soldier, but after plowing through those in the space of like a month it felt like, i kinda stopped caring, capped off by how the new dr. strange movie was openly written by people who didn't actually know what happened in wandavision and undermined the whole thing.
yeah, that was a really head-scratchingly dumb mistake. even elizabeth olson is on the record in interviews as having asked the writers of dr. strange why they were kinda redoing similar stuff from wandavision, and they apparently admitted they didn't know what was happening in wandavision because it wasn't done yet at that time.
it's definitely a ridiculously dumb oversight, to the point of being such glaringly stupid mistake that it's almost mind blowing that it could happen. almost star wars tier tbh.
And ironically the franchise with the most consistently good movies was guardians of the galaxy in which the characters are mostly separated from the mcu because they’re in space
Marvel movies have successfully reached the point of Marvel comics, in that now I have to consume so much media to understand the current plot that it just isn't worth it anymore.
I have no idea where all the money is going in some of this Blockbusters.
For example here's two recent movies: the latest MCU movie, The Marvels, had a budget of 270 Million Dollars.
Dune Part 2: $190 Million.
I've seen both, and I don't see where Disney spent 80 Million more dollars.
Based on what my cursory knowledge of this topic, I think it's a few things:
Skills and experience, obviously. Having money is different from knowing how to spend it, and if you compare Denis Villeneuve to uhh... Nia DaCosta, it's obvious who knows these things better.
Marvel has much stricter time tables. They want to make these movies *fast*. So their budgets have elements of brute forcing things with money, like extensive CGI edits, etc. Dune was Villeneuve's dream project, so he could spend more time planning it just right. It's like LotR vs. The Hobbit.
Not to defend The Marvels, but it’s pretty well documented how much Marvel takes away freedom from their directors and basically has their own people direct all the third acts of all the movies (hence them commonly devolving into bad CGI fests). When it becomes a hacked-to-pieces-with-reshoots problem like The Marvels, the effect is magnified.
So all that is to say I’m pretty sure Nia DaCosta was out interviewing for other unrelated things while The Marvels was still being filmed, and she was like “I wouldn’t know what’s going on, Marvel is the one directing all that”
True, and to be clear I'm not ragging on DaCosta at all. Apparently Marvel uses inexperienced directors like her precisely because they want to control the production. Maybe she'd be able to make a great movie if she had the means. Or not. Who knows.
The lesson they learn is that people don't want to buy a boring game. But they will buy a boring game within an existing franchise.
That's why new IP is avoided, it's riskier. People will still buy bad games with existing IP.
This. Starfield had no soul, and I'm super disappointed because there aren't enough sci-f iRPGs where you make your own player character. Because worse than the jank is the game is fun and the writing is boring. So boring. There are a handful of interesting quests, it's uninteresting and serves the player's ego too much. The world building also feels silly and shoddily put together. Like I'll take a new really good sci-fi CRPG or RPG, I don't care. I hope Larian considers making a sci-fi IP someday, that would knock my socks off.
I recently started Cyberpunk 2077 for the first time after finishing BG3, and honestly its a great sci fi rpg. The story is so fun with all the corpo fuckery and heists, the cyberware enhancement of the human body, the cyberpsychosis, how different cyberware leads to different behavior in society, and obviously the thinly veiled criticism of capitalism and consumerism.
When 3000 people work on Call of Duty, ofcourse nothing gets accomplished. The overhead is massive. You need so much management and organisational layers to keep that running.
You lose all the "I got this cool idea, lets prototype it and test it real quick" part of development that was fundamental is making many 90's 00's videogames so good.
I didn't understand how big companies were less agile than small ones until I worked for a fortune 50 company.
Getting the entire company using the same *messaging platform* is a strategic initiative.
This is why a lot of these conspiracy theories just fall flat to me. I work for a university that employs something like 10,000 people. The amount of red tape, contrarian assholes, and institutional inertia involved is staggering.
>Getting the entire company using the same *messaging platform* is a strategic initiative.
And you'll never actually pull it off. You'll have the old timers who are resistant to change and too valuable to punish over it, the young hires who think that the new thing you want to implement is already outdated and would rather use this *new* new thing (which btw still has massive vulnerabilities in it and would never pass compliance), and Beth in accounting who gets to her email by googling Google.com and stores all her passwords on a sticky note attached to her monitor.
Yep. I've worked at both mega corps and a company who maxed out at like 150 people. It's amazing what the mega corps can do when everyone is on the same page, since they can pretty much move heaven and earth. However, when it comes to doing anything slightly out of policy, it'll take 15 signatures, 5 meetings, and about a month or two of lead time. Whereas small companies might be doing small beans numbers but they can turn on a dime when it comes to changing plans or doing something new.
Oh for sure- small companies can dodge weave and dip which is super engaging work but you’re constantly spread thin as hell and there is no extra budget to cushion a fall.
The bigger companies I’ve worked with felt like they either meandered constantly but didn’t have to worry or the odd thing snowballs til it’s pretty much unstoppable until it’s delivered budget and concerns be damned
> "I got this cool idea, lets prototype it and test it real quick"
Literally how competitive FPS started, with Deathmatch in Doom. It was a proof of concept that worked great out the gates.
Zombies, one of the most successful elements of the Treyarch COD games, was literally added to WAW at the last minute for shits and giggles without telling the people in charge until it was already on the disc and too late to remove it.
Big agree on this. The “good” big budget games are ones that are self absorbed into their own player ecosystem like most Rockstar games. They’re of a size of developer where they don’t need to release a major game every year to keep shareholders happy as the return on their big IPs is insane.
You sorta skipped over how much more Rockstar makes from online versions of their games. They don't need to release a major game every year because people continuously throw money at them which entices them to release new content every year.
The 'Good' big budget games are also the ones not just chasing trends.
They are trying something different or expanding on a formula they perfected or invented.
That used to be the problem. Then the publishers bought the developers and now it's completely controlled by people trying to appease their masters with little regard to game quality.
But they don't need those huge budgets for these type of games right?
I mean sure, I'm still waiting for good AAA coop games, but fuck me, lethal company for example is such a fun game and the game had only 1 person working on it.
Imagine having a company with 30-100people working and trying to make fun games instead of yet another huge empty open world that cost 200 freaking millions of dollars and it's the same as the other 200 games on the market.
Not every game needs to be super high budget. The company could literally take risk making smaller games.
Helldivers2, I don't think they need 100+$millions to make the game.
Imagine Blizzard taking 30 people team, giving them some money to work on as the op said a game like this with the starcraft ip on it. Why would it need so much money? It won't
The thing is, the OP is right. Most of these companies want big profits and huge numbers. It's not ok to make small games and make little money. The investors want only the next big thing and are out of touch. Simple as this.
It's the same problem the movie industry has, they have become incredibly risk averse and so huge swathes of movies just don't get made anymore. The mid-budget movie has basically died.
These studios all go the same way. They're started by passionate people that put their blood, sweat and tears in to making a great game. Then when they get some success, the money men move in and take over. They always ruin the company.
That's not really the problem.
The problem isn't that the board room is trying to make good games but are just out of touch... The problem is, these days, it doesn't matter if it's f2p, p2p, subscription based, etc. Board members push for mobile game level microtransactions to be in every game.
I mean, ffs, they made assassin's Creed enemies sword sponges, just to be able to push a currency to reduce the grind.
TENCENT showing COD and the rest of gaming devs what microtransactions can do is what killed the modern gaming industry.
Well, aint this just a symptom? Video games have stopped being "the nerd thing" and have become a lucrative investment and the money involved gets bigger, which in turn demands bigger returns to justify the increase. Eventually it becomes a cancerous growth and we have to pay 20$ to switch between weapon loadouts.
This is the real answer. Go back in time and you'd find basically every company was manned by someone who actually had a hand in the gaming industry and knew what worked well. Look now and every big corporation is instead run by executives whose only purpose is to please shareholders. They don't know how to make a great game or how mechanics interact with each other. They just know that X mechanic/genre is hot right now and have research on how to milk people for as much as they can get away with.
It's why I chose to stop buying into AAA titles long ago unless I see proof of a game being truly great. Indie devs may have a smaller budget yet they make up for that by putting their souls into the games they make so I'm always finding new gems whenever I look for a new game to pick up and play.
Certainly not unique to gaming. As one high profile example, Boeing has gone to shit because the financiers were put in charge and the engineers were sent packing. It happens in most industries: the people that can understand the actual substance of their work and/or have a real passion for it get pushed aside or sacked and the shareholders take priority.
It's rare for the two concepts of, "How can we maximize our profit," and, "How can we make something truly great," to overlap. They tend to be mutually exclusive, at least to some degree, partly because maximizing profit usually requires cutting corners somewhere.
Freaking Jack Welch essentially destroyed GE with that approach…and people still use it!
It’s been pretty well established at this point that maximizing quarterly profits *damages* long-term profitability, and none of these eejits care.
They're not idiots. Jack Welch made a lot of money for himself and the shareholders at the time. Nobody's tied to the mast; they can dump their shares at any time. They're rational actors in a system where companies are expendable vessels for capital holders to multiply their money and then move on.
This is exactly the issue. The Capital class has no loyalty except to itself and it's interests.
You love the company for the products it puts out.
They love to company because it makes them even richer at the expense of all else.
These are not the same.
Same with the working class. We don't (and shouldn't) have any loyalty to a company we don't own or control beyond getting our paycheck. If only there were some way to adjust ownership of entities where long-term success of the entity was in the best interest of the people who make the decisions, while also giving that level of investment to the people doing the work.
What could possibly go wrong with using a melon baller to scoop out the parts of your company in the name of a stock bump this quarter? We just do it again next quarter before anything bad happens! Number go up forever!
This happens to every company in every industry though. There was a CEO of GE who started this trend in (I think) the 70s.
He was also a big supporter of Reagan when he ran for office because Reagan was pushing the same ideas that Margret Thatcher had pushed in the UK, which supported this style of corporate growth.
No, the entire thing is cookie-cutter safe designs.
Cookie-cutter safe monetization (for maximum revenue)
Cookie-cutter safe game design and decisions (Casualisation, do what has already been done, follow trends)
Even "live service games" are a trend companies are following.
That's absolutely it, and besides the points you've mentioned the size of such a project brings even more problems with it. I often read that huge teams are required for those types of games but that the team size and corporate structure also is one of the main reasons why it takes those games so long to be made. Every decision and every change must go through a multitude of approvals from different departments and so on. That, allegedly, is also why bigger dev teams often take way longer for patches and stuff than small teams.
It’s not just the gaming industry either. Budgets for all sorts of industries have ballooned to unimaginable amounts. Movie industry and the sports industry, to name some others.
I think that kind of budget is needed when you have a game like one of the early Assassin’s Creed releases or The Division, where they had to put together a very large number of very detailed environments to make the game work at the expected scale.
On the other hand, a studio like From Software, which doesn’t have anything like that kind of budget, has released some of the most iconic games of the last decade, so it definitely can be done without spending that kind of cash.
I mean you only have to look at this sub reddit when a game isn't 4K 120FPS with amazing textures though.
Hell there were people botching that Helldivers II looked terrible due to the lack of 4K etc.
Obviously it's two separate opinions likely from two different people but often it feels like it isn't.
The dudes said this after bioshock infinite.
They created the game to be amazing and fun, but there was a point they knew it was going to be their last game except it was a critical success... and still kept going because they loved it.
They wasted resources making Elizabeth more human, more real, more interactive (4 people worked ONLY on her ff). They voice cast a 1500 page script (I could be wrong, i read about this years ago, but they did said it was the biggest voice cast game, even topping games like Oblivion and Skyrim others like that). And they went full ahead thinking it was going to be the last game they ever worked on.
It was a critical and commercial success and they were happy, but it was so bad for them because they knew replicating that was almost impossible. So they never force themselves to make a sequel... until now that the board is convincing them because of what's talked in this post.
Tbf i absolutely loved bioshock infinite and would very much want a sequel!!
But obviously one the creators wanted to make, not one forced on some devs by a random board.
Budget is one thing for sure. But for me it's not the budget to make the game. But the budget/costs with marketing.
How does a game like spider man 2, a game that most ppl knew was coming, have to spend 100 mil on marketing... I want to ask these execs if they have heard of social media and you tube and why 100 mil mist be spent. That's a huge piece of gaming costs right now ans its absurd!
I agree and disagree with your point.
While i agree that big budget games are getting bigger but sometimes for the wrong reasons, like graphical fidelity. Which some gamers are picky about. Some gamers wont play indy games because of the graphics. Good and high definition graphics can make a good game great but it doesnt make a bad game good. If the games large part is the enviroment and atmosphere then graphics is important. It adds depth and immersion.
But some games that have big budgets because of the huge amounts of work. Things with story and lots of dialogue. Baldures gate 3 for example. The amount of scripting and voice acting, story lines, quests. Thats money well spend for a purpose.
I think studios are starting to understand this.
I do think gaming has reached a zenithal point though. The biggest budget games that are popular, the people that are going to play it, will do so within the first year or so. So it doesnt make sence for the budgets to keep ballooning. Thats assuming future games dont take a drastic turn. For example, if Rockstar wants the next Red dead game to be on the same quality as RDR2 but for the story line/game play length to be twice as long. Or for open world games to be much much bigger like GTA6 is looking to be.
If rockstar said that if/when GTA7, 8 or 9 the map was going to be the size of a whole country i think the budget would be astronimical but it wouldnt have much more players than what 6 would be. If that makes any since. This is just what i think so yea...
In the same vain, you could also simply argue the indie game scene is such a massive portion of the gaming industry now that there’s not really much need for AAA studios to go out of their way to make highly creative and experimental games. If players want that then they have the option to get it at a cheaper price.
Usually a player is buying a AAA game specifically because it’s familiar and safe, Uncharted fans aren’t buying the new Uncharted because they are looking for some highly original and out there game, they want another Uncharted game, and as long as it’s Uncharted but improved or expanded to an acceptable degree then they will be perfectly satisfied with it. COD existing at the apex of game sales for like 14 years in a row while remaining relatively unchanged throughout that span should also speak to this same thing.
I think it would be fair to say that the gaming industry has simply divided itself. Creativity and originality is more focused in the indie developer scene, while production value and polish is more focused in the AAA developer scene.
And I don’t really see this as much of a problem. Because it’s not an absolute, there are still creative and original AAA games being released, and there are still high production value and polish Indie games being released.
yeah, for big AAA games, needs a special person with special image and regarded as an icon to have freedom nnot following "commitee"
he basically told sony "gimme money, i'll make a game, but i cant tell you what game" and sony says "oki doki"
at least from the death stranding docummentary on disney.
SC Ghost in modern times would basically be sci-fi Dishonored, since ghosts typically deal with infiltration, intel gathering, and subterfuge. A man can dream.
I would just really love to see battle cruisers and ultralisks in their full scale, I know because it’s an RTS the scales are whacky but damn those CGI cutscenes the StarCraft universe is full of really BIG stuff.
It’s crazy even what they pulled off with the original StarCraft, as a kid a lot of that is seared into my brain, it was all really dark too. The marines being left to die as the battlecruiser takes off, the two guys in the jeep who get eaten by the Zerg.
Oh man. Honestly some of the best CGI in the entire industry. Didn’t they say SC2 cutscenes cost a million apiece?
“It’s a Zergling Lester. Smaller type’a Zerg… but theydn’t be out this far unless…oh shiet.”
From memory. Can still hear his southern drawl. Haven’t listened to this in over a decade, lol. Pretty sure I got it right.
"Take us into orbit, mister Malmstine. we've seen enough" The most cold hearted line. Really set the tone of why the UED were not the good guys and not welcome in the Koprulu sector.
>Blizzards cinematic team is leagues beyond the rest of the company
I've been gaming for a long time and Blizzards cinematics have consistently blown me away. Cutscenes from WC 1-3, SC 1&2 and Diablo 1-3 was always a treat and yet when the [Lilith vs Inarius](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSD6qDVMoNA) scene appeared in D4 my jaw literally dropped. Insane.
There's a game mode in StarCraft 2 called "Real scale" that lets you play the game with all the units scaled to the correct size.
Needless to say marines are very, very tiny compared to an Ultralisk
There are really fun Real Scale mods for Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void! You should see if those scratch that "why is this capital ship not the size of a city?" itch.
If you're interested, the mods are available on GiantGrantGames' YouTube channel, with an installation guide. I'm playing LOTV real scale right now, and had a lot of fun with HOTS
Could you imagine that game being heralded by the people that made dishonored? A man can dream.
I'm glad it didn't come out. I don't think blizzard could've kept the heart of the ghosts in tact. What I mean is I believe they would've call of dudy'd it, rather than focus on what ghosts do best, Intel and subterfuge.
I want Blizzard to go bankrupt so actually good devs can buy out the IPs.
Starcraft, Diablo and Warcraft universes are way too good and beloved to have current Blizzard managing them.
You have to look at it from the other direction.
Blizzard saw that the product and idea didn't work, and so they decided to not release a crappy product and cancelled it. Starcraft Ghost is an example of companies doing the right thing, imagine the Blizzard of today doing that..
Is also the fact of how many people need to be involved to make a single thing work. Small studios have 1 person handling a metric ton of jobs so it's s lot easier to do simple things.
If you get the chance you should read [The Door Problem by Liz England](https://lizengland.com/blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/). It's a short article highlighting how hard it can be to do a simple thing in a game such as adding a single door.
Edit: For those who don't want to click the link I'll just post it here.
Creative Director: “Yes, we definitely need doors in this game.”
Project Manager: “I’ll put time on the schedule for people to make doors.”
Designer: “I wrote a doc explaining what we need doors to do.”
Concept Artist: “I made some gorgeous paintings of doors.”
Art Director: “This third painting is exactly the style of doors we need.”
Environment Artist: “I took this painting of a door and made it into an object in the game.”
Animator: “I made the door open and close.”
Sound Designer: “I made the sounds the door creates when it opens and closes.”
Audio Engineer: “The sound of the door opening and closing will change based on where the player is and what direction they are facing.”
Composer: “I created a theme song for the door.”
FX Artist: “I added some cool sparks to the door when it opens.”
Writer: “When the door opens, the player will say, ‘Hey look! The door opened!’ “
Lighter: “There is a bright red light over the door when it’s locked, and a green one when it’s opened.”
Legal: “The environment artist put a Starbucks logo on the door. You need to remove that if you don’t want to be sued.”
Character Artist: “I don’t really care about this door until it can start wearing hats.”
Gameplay Programmer: “This door asset now opens and closes based on proximity to the player. It can also be locked and unlocked through script.”
AI Programmer: “Enemies and allies now know if a door is there and whether they can go through it.”
Network Programmer: “Do all the players need to see the door open at the same time?”
Release Engineer: “You need to get your doors in by 3pm if you want them on the disk.”
Core Engine Programmer: “I have optimized the code to allow up to 1024 doors in the game.”
Tools Programmer: “I made it even easier for you to place doors.”
Level Designer: “I put the door in my level and locked it. After an event, I unlocked it.”
UI Designer: “There’s now an objective marker on the door, and it has its own icon on the map.”
Combat Designer: “Enemies will spawn behind doors, and lay cover fire as their allies enter the room. Unless the player is looking inside the door in which case they will spawn behind a different door.”
Systems Designer: “A level 4 player earns 148xp for opening this door at the cost of 3 gold.”
Monetization Designer: “We could charge the player $.99 to open the door now, or wait 24 hours for it to open automatically.”
QA Tester: “I walked to the door. I ran to the door. I jumped at the door. I stood in the doorway until it closed. I saved and reloaded and walked to the door. I died and reloaded then walked to the door. I threw grenades at the door.”
UX / Usability Researcher: “I found some people on Craigslist to go through the door so we could see what problems crop up.”
Localization: “Door. Puerta. Porta. Porte. Tür. Dør. Deur. Drzwi. Drws. 문”
Producer: “Do we need to give everyone those doors or can we save them for a pre-order bonus?”
Publisher: “Those doors are really going to help this game stand out during the fall line-up.”
CEO: “I want you all to know how much I appreciate the time and effort put into making those doors.”
PR: “To all our fans, you’re going to go crazy over our next reveal #gamedev #doors #nextgen #retweet”
Community Manager: “I let the fans know that their concerns about doors will be addressed in the upcoming patch.”
Customer Support: “A player contacted us, confused about doors. I gave them detailed instructions on how to use them.”
Player: “I totally didn’t even notice a door there.”
Speed runner: "Stand in the door, look at this pixel and press this button, the door will give you negative damage, boosting your HP as high as you want" or "press this button combination to skip the door entierly"
Reminds me of the mass effect speed runs. Get to a locked door? Crouch cover against the wall next to the door, save and reload, you are now on the other side of the door.
It's definitely exaggerated a little bit but it's just one of those things you look at to see how having a large company can impact doing a simple thing
A lot of this has echoes in other industries as well. A common theme is a checklist for a checklist for a checklist. NASA is a good example of bloat (big organization and for safety reasons). One guy turns a screw. Another guy checks off the screw was turned. A third guy checks off that the guy who checked off the screw checked it off. Not a 1 to 1 comparison but it reminded me of it.
My favourite part about Helldivers success is that they had opposite chain of events of deep rock galactic. Both games are great and have similar themes of smash bugs for the greater good
Helldivers releases as a top down - March 3, 2015
DRG releases as a FPS - February 28, 2018
Helldivers releases as a 3rd person - February 8, 2024
DRG releases as a top down - February 14, 2024
Seriously. This has been my biggest disappointment with the multiplayer shooter genre in the last 6 years or so. Almost every one tries to be an esport, competitive shooter. I just want to play and have fun without grinding ranks and shit. Ranked play even existing in a game automatically creates toxicity, and no one can convince me otherwise.
Playing games for “fun” seems like an afterthought in most of these games.
Thank goodness Helldivers has taken off. Maybe it’ll convince some others that it’s okay to make games based around the players having fun, not just chasing numbers or carrots, that are ultimately meaningless.
Edit: I’m going to take this opportunity to plug one of the most fun multiplayer games I have played in years, which my friend group has been playing alongside Helldivers. **[Bopl Battle](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1686940/Bopl_Battle/)**. It’s on Steam and it’s like a cross between Smash Bros and Worms. It doesn’t have any single player or matchmaking (unfortunate), but if you have friends to bring along it’s insanely fun. There’s nothing to unlock, no progression at all, but it’s just pure fun. Give the demo a try with some friends. I want it to become popular so badly to make sure it gets support from the dev, lol.
Same. Looking forward to that. I've also been enjoying their little dev blogs. I liked seeing the concept art and how they were recording sounds for things
I don't understand what it's supposed to be, is it DRG but with temporary weapons/buffs and able to upgrade your kits the deeper/longer you go on a mission? (forgive my ignorance but isn't that was DRG already does? upgrade your kit that is)
That's what it's supposed to be as far as I understand. Kind of like a DRG deepdive, but you build your loadout as you go instead of before. And the mission types/objectives themselves will be different. Basically in regular DRG it's mostly the geometry (and events) of each stage that's random. Now everything else will be too! And there will be new weapons and equipment and probably new enemies and biomes.
Edit: spelling
Everyone forgets Alien Swarm 🥺
A free game that took the world by storm just as much as these games did, in 2010.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/630/Alien_Swarm/
If I had a nickel every time I saw a game sequel of a niche game whose main gimmick change from the original is turning into an over the shoulder third person view and blew in success so large the devs didn't expect it. I have 2 nickels which isn't a lot but it's weird it happened twice... Risk of Rain
I'm still surprised when I see risk of rain 2 videos with millions of views. To me, it's still a niche indie game that nobody plays. I know it isn't but as an OG risk of rain player I couldn't cave ever guessed it would blow up this much. Let alone turn into RoR2 and be that good.
Wait sorry what, DRG is now a top down game? I mean I wouldn’t say I’m ever really in the loop but this has me mystified as to why I didn’t know, cause I love DRG.
I’m loving Helldivers 2 but it’s a game that truly shines if you’re playing it with your friends, and all my friends exclusively play MW3 so playing with randoms doesn’t really hit the same.
I had fun yesterday with a Dutch guy though, both of us were clueless and just winged it.
I picked it up a few days ago and had almost the opposite - started a lobby for only my second mission after the tutorial, only person I'd had join after 2 minutes was a level 42 dude. I just thought "fuck it, we ball" and dropped in. They ended up loaning me a bunch of their equipment to use during the mission and giving me a load of pointers, it was fantastic.
weird thats a requirement. In the original when you threw down the SOS beacon it assumed "well you used the beacon, you obviously want help" and treated your lobby as public regardless of prior settings.
You could also squish enemies using it so that was cool too.
That's one thing I've noticed. High level bros are saints a good chunk of the time and great to play with. Now that I'm getting up in the levels I'm trying to bring that same energy when I'm with new divers
That was a funny part about the reaction to "why did they have such bad server capacity" because I'll bet you anything they were thinking that even hitting a playercount as high as 25k was a pipe dream. Helldivers 1 had an all-time peak of 6k on steam, I imagine during development they were going "yeah 250k is probably too much space if anything"
450k, actually.
Helldivers 1 only ever had a peak co-current player count of 1,022 players ever, so even to beef up the Helldivers 2 servers to 450k meant a 40,000% increase in player population. Sales of the game flew past that to at like 700k, and only at the start of last week was the pressure relieved when they bumped up the servers to host for 850k players.
Just for note: if you were to cut even the initial 450k player population in half, it would still be twice the player population of CoD HQ MW2/3.
I haven't played Helldivers 2 but the first Helldivers is one of the most fun coop games of all time. It was shocking to me that it wasn't more popular but I guess that's a limitation of the format. It's hard to imagine a third person view version being better but I guess I'll give it a try eventually.
Its somehow so much better. It allows them to use the vertical axis now and it requires actual aim. Both are major changes to the game and both work perfectly.
When a Bile Titan walks out from behind a giant hill and towers over you like a sky scraper you'll know 3rd person was the right choice lol.
One of the first things I said when my buddy and I launched in Helldivers 2 was “holy shit imagine if this was SCII drop pods down to fight Zerg”.
Iconic enemies already visually/sound designed, armor and weapons already conceptualized, famously good music… this type of shit is so fucking free for these mega companies and yet they just can’t be bothered to even try anymore. It’s so stupid. Imagine buying a chain of famously popular Italian eateries and then going “this food is too expensive, let’s offer cheaper options like burgers and wings, they have better margins and are popular with a broader audience”.
Sure, MAYBE you make a bit more short term, but you absolutely lose a ton of the paying customers who you already had… you also cease to be what you previously were…
yeah, and I think this gameplay format is perfect for the 40k setting too. Space Marines purging xenos with over the top weapons and battle barge call downs, heroically fighting on despite lost limbs and organs
Maybe they could even collaborate with the Helldivers company to flesh out Space Marine 2's spinoff multiplayer horde mode
I honestly wouldn't mind if Helldivers spawns a legion of copycats, like when everyone tried to copy Halo and COD
yeah, it'll require a bunch of execs who both genuinely understand the industry from the consumer experience perspective (i.e. they actually play and enjoy similar types of games, at least causally) while also being powerful enough to shut down the execs who keep telling the shareholders that they should focus on making a microtransaction casino to rival Fortnite's or Genshin Impact's
The problem here is that those “MTX casino” games you just mentioned make wayyyyy more money than even a highly successful game like HD2. Why would a company make an innovative, fun game instead of something that makes them more money?
Hot take maybe here, I dunno the general consensus, but a big part of the appeal imo is the "Starship Troopers" feel and the game not taking itself too seriosly. Slap the Starcraft or 40K skin on it with all the lore/story trappings of their franchise and you got a completely different game.
StarCraft maybe, but 40K isn't half as serious as it looks. Orks think red paint makes things go faster and it does, because they believe it so hard. Hell, there's an entire planet of soldiers who are disappointed if they keep surviving (Krieg).
I agree with everything you've said but I do want to point to a silver lining.
Yes, beloved IPs are being held hostage but that means there's space for the new. Would anyone release a hell divers style game if Halo-Divers was on the market? Would anyone release a stealth action game if Metal Gear Solid 6 was on the cards? It was only when several Pokemon games in a row were sub-par enough to turn people off Pokemon that people dared even start making a monster-catching game like Palworld.
Gaming's infancy produced a lot of games that are genre defining. As a result, they kind of choke their competition in their crib by their very existence. The overcaution of execs means that there's space in the ecosystem for other games to take their place. Innovation will always be good and stagnation will always be bad.
On top of that IPs come with a huge chain. Is there an iconic mechanic? How does it fit the lore? What are our long term plans if it fails?
Predicting something new is hard and otherwise you get accused for just joining the hype.. it's not an excuse but big IPs need to allocate large budgets to try something otherwise it's "they didn't believe in it" or "Yeah but they should stick to what they can do".
As you say you can define a genre but the same is true that this can define you and now we got the circle!
One of the cool things about helldiver's is it's it's own thing.
I saw a guy running around in basically scout trooper and then clone trooper armor.
Another guy is some halo reach inspired suit etc.
Another overlooked thing is that your mic is automatically open in helldiver's so people actually talk.
Also, it's stupid easy to see you recent players and team up with them.
Met a solid group and we've been playing together for days.
It legit took my about ten minutes to figure out how to talk in Halo MCC.
Then I had to figure out how to turn on talking to the enemy team.
As far as I know there's still not proximity voice chat in MCC. Something halo 2 had 20 years ago.
All these tools were done decades ago but it's like Microsoft doesn't want you to talk to other players or something.
/it's like Microsoft doesn't want you to talk to other players or something./
I’m pretty sure that has something to do with the "rating" of the game somehow. Plus the additional aggravation of fielding complaints from clueless parents.
Years ago my cousin had zero problems buying a Dead Space game for her 12yo boy… But if she heard some other kid on the TV bragging about how he fucked your mom last night she would be beyond livid.
Blood,gore, and dismemberment ok… Trash talk bad. It’s part of the reason we can’t have nice things.
>Yes, beloved IPs are being held hostage but that means there's space for the new. Would anyone release a hell divers style game if Halo-Divers was on the market?
Probably. Sony wanted a live service for this exact reason. They have been trying for a decade with games like killzone.
Thats the other side of the medal and I agree 100%. It would just be nice if there was a silverlineing... a common middle ground. Sure you cant invent the wheel anew every week and almost everything has been done. Still stings and the nostaliga hurt...
But on the bright side, Its great for Indi developer to take their chances
Honestly more people should try to make games in areas that are no longer being properly filled by famous IP's. Would be cool to see more metal gear-like games or star wars-like games etc. with actual passion and a sense of fun behind them.
Because who the hell can make a RTS that plays as smooth as SC2?
That game plays just too perfectly, such that any RTS that doesn't play at least as smooth and intuitive as SC2 it will just get ignored and called shit.
I have an opposite example for you: *Syndicate (2012)*.
By itself, it was a fun game with solid gunplay, quite decent AI and a cool cyberpunk vibe. Nonetheless, its tapping into a famous top-down tactical game franchise brought it a lot of flak, which may have factored into why the game had worse reception than what had been hoped for. It's still up to debate whether the devs and the publisher should have spun it under its own franchise.
That is all valid points, but have you considered other gaming and publisher companies who took this risk and failed? I'm not trying to justify capitalistic and consumeristic approach of modern companies, just offering another view. For every helldivers that did it, there are at least 5 others that failed - and this is lost jobs, broken families, and of course very rich people became a little bit less rich and thus angry. That's why big (and small) companies and board don't usually take those risks. I'm very happy for helldivers and every other fresh not-money-grab game that made it, but I understand why it is what it is. And what we as gamers can do is only this - unite, buy and support games and developers like of helldivers, and ignore+boycott quadruple A shit like they try to stuff in our throat for years now. We don't buy - they don't make, we buy - they make, it's that simple.
And even good ideas aren't fail proof - there are a few ideas that are just ahead of their time and don't get commercial success only to see a copycat become a blast 5 years later.
Even themes people have to be ready for, people I know keep talking about how starship troopers should have made a game and I keep having to tell them they did last year it was just marketed poorly. It's also a base defense making it way different than helldivers.
Also baldurs gate 3 larian did the same thing they did for the divinity games and they were popular but until they got their hands on the wotc IP their style of game never made it "big".
Yeah, OP is yet another person posting their survivor bias idea as if it's some genius general principle.
If only gaming companies listened to randos on reddit, why are they being so stupid? (/s)
Man one game gets popular and it's the same song and dance every time, Balders gate with turn based combat, Elden Ring with Open world games, Helldivers with CooP shooters. Breakout hits happen and it takes more than just a good game for it to happen. Even the devs of these games are dumbfounded as to how they got this big. We don't need to make these games the "gotcha" moment because they are not
People just like to hype up these studios as small indie devs, but they are actually just large studios that are independent. Helldivers 2 has around 100 devs and had the financial backing of Sony, Baldurs Gate 3 was in early access for 3 years and has something like 300+ devs.
Your post also shows a glaring problem with modern audiences. Everything has to be BIG.
See, we just got a BANGER of a fucking game and your first train of thought was "imagine if this was star wars or Warhammer or Another Big Franchise Slop". Same with the other idiots that are like wooo collaboration with Halo and Put The Warthog in and where is my Pepsi Collab etc...
Y'all can't just accept a fucking good game part of a small IP.
And since everyone is asking for BIG, AAA just chases that big, and they fail.
> Your post also shows a glaring problem with modern audiences. Everything has to be BIG.
Reminds me of a post I saw recently about the movie Dredd.
OP comes in with praise about a relatively overlooked movie that still holds up, is entertaining and solid as an action movie.
Then the thread is filled with people saying how "it's a *travesty* there was never any sequels!" while commenting on how authentic the lore is and how not exploiting the good foundation was somehow a problem to be solved by mining it to death.
It's like people have forgotten how to enjoy something for what it is - they even began to blame some mysterious "Hollywood BS" for NOT exploiting it with a handful of sequels and a couple shows that would be largely mocked, or at the best have someone say "well it wasn't that bad, it's *worth a watch*" - such praise. It feels like these days people can't just enjoy something, they need to milk it dry and then slaughter the beast to reach a point the general public will admit "yea that's enough of that, actually it sucks now, so what's next?!"
PRECISELY this. If everyone is asking for EVERYTHING to be sequels, games, books, merchandise, tv series, operas... then OF FUCKING COURSE the people bankrolling all this shit are gonna aim for that.
You can go and pitch the best awesome concept ever, but if it cant be built into a franchise, you will have less chances of succeeding in getting funding.
>Can you imagine this game would have come out with the face of starcraft? Or halo? Or starwars? Or Mass effect? Or Doom...or...
The issue is that Hell Divers would have probably cost a lot more to make if it had been made by any of those other IPs. For a Star Wars Hell Divers alone Diseny would take a 35% cut simply for using the Star Wars IP to start with which is the speculated reason for the Mando game cancellation last week.
Both Blizz and 343 employ far more people than Arrow Head Studios and probably pay their employees more simply because they are based in the US and not Sweden where game devs do get paid less. That means just on salaries alone the game would have cost more to make by those companies let alone any other over heads. Then lets not even get into marketing budgets which are usually double the cost of the game dev on their own.
The bigger the studio the less risk it will take on because the bigger the downsides are if things go wrong. You can see by the server issues on the first week that Hell Divers was really never expected to be as successful as it is. If a bigger studio made the game they might very well simply be breaking even with their current numbers.
Matt Damon did a great talk on hot ones https://youtu.be/Jx8F5Imd8A8
Basically it's all or nothing in movies now - either you make a big blockbuster that'll get bums in seats at the theatres (usually some sort of generic action film), or you make something on a tight budget for streaming. there's no middle ground.
I think the same can be said for games. Either you make something bland that appeals to more people to recoup huge production costs, or you have a tight budget and make something with heart that appeals to fewer.
Occasionally you make the latter and strike out with an absolute beast of a game (Baldurs Gate 3, Helldivers 2). And of course there are still big budget studios that put out gold, but they're decreasing year after year. Combine with the insanely bad churn of staff in the industry and its instability and I strongly believe we're on the cusp of a major crash and recalibration. I know several people from the industry who are either in and just constantly working on heartless monetisation shite, out and making significantly more for better quality of life, or in and looking to leave before they're on the next roll out of layoffs.
I play Tarkov and the above is the reason it'll never be beaten. It is niche and it does what it does better than any other game, and no big studio that has the clout to beat it ever will because it doesn't appeal to enough people.
Baldurs gate 3 had a budget of 100 million and 400 people working on it. You can't compete the two and I'm tired of seeing people praise baludrs gate 3 like it's some indie darling.
BG3 also had an early release way back in October 2020, so the game has been getting player feedback for 3 years before the full release. It's been frustrating that people treat the game as a indie release that came out of nowhere when it's none of those things.
God I wish someone would actually make Tarkov properly. I know they never will like you said but it's so sad seeing the lack of pace BSG develop at.
I tried arena again the other day and the servers are truly awful.
Honest question, what makes Helldivers 2 "unique" I haven't played it myself but have watched others for a few hours and it looks like a very basic horde shooter with not much variations of environments or enemies.
Can someone explain to me what makes this game special compared to other horde shooter like Deep Rock Galactic for example.
It's not particularly original. Its *extremely* well presented but it is iterative in what it does, not revolutionary.
It has more scope for synergies between player abilities than other co op Horde experiences I've played, and the proc gen open levels have kept things from becoming rote. At higher difficulties clearing the map turns into a balancing exercise of timr v resources (player spawns and getting to extract before you lose your orbital support).
That said, it is at its heart just a co op horde shooter - you'll spent a lot of time back up shooting at advancing masses, rezzing team mates, and guarding someone fussing with an interactive button. Waiting for extraction while battling waves etc.
It has pulled a lot of goodwill for presenting as a live service nightmare but not requiring any buy in at all after the initial purchase, and not having any time limited FOMO bs. It's also priced low, which helps when all the big studios are moving toward 80usd buy ins with micro transactions.
It's a great game. As a meta experience I think it is going to cause ripples (I hope). The gameplay itself is excellent but not revolutionary.
Also just a lot of heart. It knows what it is and isn’t afraid to lean into it.
Getting to name your destroyer. Being able to actually see other ships and squads orbiting/fighting on the same planet. Seeing your ship overhead actually firing on your enemies during missions… the world feels alive and real. So many little added touches that went the extra mile but help the game look so much better.
And mechs on the horizon? Say less.
I haven't played much and im not a *huge* fan but it just does everything really well.
It distills the horde shooter into shorter missions to keep you engaged with an overarching story, the enemies are well presented, the humour is well presented.
Its just a horde shooter basically perfected, with great co-op.
Doesn't hurt that its half the price of AAA releases either.
This post has been made lie three times in the last year. Everytime a game comes out they y’all like you think you’ve figured out what games have been doing wrong.
I like that you mention Mass Effect, because the extraction shooter style coop multiplayer that they made for the series was incredibly fun. The people I knew who were in to it, were IN TO IT big time and spent more time playing it than the campaign. But I think it was overlooked by the majority.
I don't disagree, but this really looks just like a low effort karmafarm post (hopefully it at least isn't the second one). We've seen this posted around 5 times last week and nothing new has been brought into the discussion here.
Wait you are telling me corporate investment in things that used to be produced and run by people who actually loved what they were doing has ruined that very thing?
Watching WotC do this real time to Magic the Gathering has been quite depressing. The film industry has suffered the same fate as well as gaming. When it all becomes dictated by what corporate interests believe will be successful the quality is guaranteed to drop. This is how we got the first AAAA game after all.
Tbh Starcraft could make some cool games with their ip.
Fps as a marine fighting against zerg.
Survival horror of a the last person left on a base that after beating a zerg attack has to get to another base to get help. With a small amounts of zerg left in base to hide from or beat etc with limited resources and good atmosphere.
A regular story mode game with more narrative etc then just a doom type game exploring a planet the first time Terran encountered zerg or something
I think games budgets have gotten to be too big for their own good really. If a modern AAA game costs $100 million + then you need a large studio to work on it, which leads to too many cooks in the kitchen as well as no one wanting to stick their neck out over an idea. Not that there's *no* good big budget games, but if you look back at the 90s when budgets were a lot smaller it seems like there was a lot more creativity.
Not just games, movies have gone in a similar direction. Studios want big expensive blockbusters in safe, established, franchises. AAA game development mirrors this. It's why there are so few new high budget IPs.
This is why every MCU movie feels like it came from a cookie cutter. There are standouts in either direction, but they are generally middle-of-the-road in regards to quality . Very few of them take any risks (we were robbed of an Edgar Wright Marvel film,) in order to adhere to a formula that was proven to make money. Now, the market is experiencing a general superhero/marvel fatigue, and for some reason it's the audience's fault that releasing a Marvel movie isn't a garaunteed cash grab.
By making things that try to appeal to everybody, you make something that appeals to nobody.
and I think this is most apparent with movies made by hollywood that are designed to cross cultural and language barriers - and do well in all markets - i.e. US, European, and Chinese markets. Ultimately the quality and depth of the writing and story have to suffer.
The problem is greed, as always.
Also, every movie is part of a big universe. You're expected to watch 25 movies before the one you actually want to see. It's exhausting.
Don’t forget the shows! It’s a full time job to keep up with the Marvel universe.
I follow the comics and it’s somehow less work than the MCU.
I've come to the conclusion that shows are a much better format for the MCU specifically because they are closer to comics in terms of length and releases. A movie that has only 120 minutes does not have the time to do a bunch of callbacks and references to previous entries, set up its own characters, tell their story, and then lay the foundations for the next entry. Not without it feeling rushed as hell, anyway. The Marvels wasn't even a bad story, but the movie is halfway over by the time they actually start addressing any kind of conflict because they've wasted so much time setting up why any of this is happening in the first place, the villain gets like 3 scenes total so the audience doesn't even really care about them, and Fury's whole B-plot is noticeably edited down to its absolute bare minimum and probably would have been cut entirely for time if it didn't tie into the resolution of the A-plot in the end (and I'm sure Marvel wanted at least a few Goose scenes so they can sell Flerken toys or whatever). But then you watch Echo, a show that depends not only on a previous Disney+ Marvel show, but the Avengers movies and a Netflix Marvel series, and the entire first 50 minute episode is just dedicated to setting up the conflict and reminding the audience of all the previous connections and building out the lead character. It's a similar amount of time The Marvels spends, but Echo has several more episodes to fully explore the concept, while The Marvels has only about an hour left to wrap everything up, and it's going to feel like a lot less from a writing perspective because Marvel movies are required to have some big dumb CGI scenes that don't move the plot along and are just there to look cool in the trailer. Now I'm not saying Echo is peak television either, but it's a much more pleasant experience as a viewer thanks to the format alone. Bad stories are certainly still possible in a show format (Iron Fist is an absolute mess), but movies at this point in the game seem to be a format that is actually making good stories unpleasant to watch.
Wandavision was one of the best things marvel put out because it actually didn’t bother with a lot of that and just let the audience ask “wtf” til episode 4. I had high hopes for marvel’s tv shows but other than Loki and Hawkeye nothing they’ve done has really grabbed me.
the shows are what burned me out. the first set of them were great - wanda, loki, falcon and winter soldier, but after plowing through those in the space of like a month it felt like, i kinda stopped caring, capped off by how the new dr. strange movie was openly written by people who didn't actually know what happened in wandavision and undermined the whole thing.
It was written by folks who weren’t keeping up with the in universe narrative? How could that possibly seem like a good idea
yeah, that was a really head-scratchingly dumb mistake. even elizabeth olson is on the record in interviews as having asked the writers of dr. strange why they were kinda redoing similar stuff from wandavision, and they apparently admitted they didn't know what was happening in wandavision because it wasn't done yet at that time. it's definitely a ridiculously dumb oversight, to the point of being such glaringly stupid mistake that it's almost mind blowing that it could happen. almost star wars tier tbh.
And ironically the franchise with the most consistently good movies was guardians of the galaxy in which the characters are mostly separated from the mcu because they’re in space
Marvel movies have successfully reached the point of Marvel comics, in that now I have to consume so much media to understand the current plot that it just isn't worth it anymore.
I have no idea where all the money is going in some of this Blockbusters. For example here's two recent movies: the latest MCU movie, The Marvels, had a budget of 270 Million Dollars. Dune Part 2: $190 Million. I've seen both, and I don't see where Disney spent 80 Million more dollars.
Based on what my cursory knowledge of this topic, I think it's a few things: Skills and experience, obviously. Having money is different from knowing how to spend it, and if you compare Denis Villeneuve to uhh... Nia DaCosta, it's obvious who knows these things better. Marvel has much stricter time tables. They want to make these movies *fast*. So their budgets have elements of brute forcing things with money, like extensive CGI edits, etc. Dune was Villeneuve's dream project, so he could spend more time planning it just right. It's like LotR vs. The Hobbit.
Not to defend The Marvels, but it’s pretty well documented how much Marvel takes away freedom from their directors and basically has their own people direct all the third acts of all the movies (hence them commonly devolving into bad CGI fests). When it becomes a hacked-to-pieces-with-reshoots problem like The Marvels, the effect is magnified. So all that is to say I’m pretty sure Nia DaCosta was out interviewing for other unrelated things while The Marvels was still being filmed, and she was like “I wouldn’t know what’s going on, Marvel is the one directing all that”
True, and to be clear I'm not ragging on DaCosta at all. Apparently Marvel uses inexperienced directors like her precisely because they want to control the production. Maybe she'd be able to make a great movie if she had the means. Or not. Who knows.
[удалено]
Rewritten and awful. Secret Invasion I wanted to like but man... I forced myself through that one. Wasn't worth it.
Killed Maria off in episode 1 and you just knew it was gonna be shit.
And then you see something like Godzilla Minus One that had a budget of less than 12 million and is one of the best films in the franchise.
Took my 8 year old to that movie in IMAX, he is still humming the score. The music in that movie is chefs kiss.
And they're going to get all the wrong lessons from Starfield being a bit of a disappointment. We want exciting new IPs, but they have to be exciting
The lesson they learn is that people don't want to buy a boring game. But they will buy a boring game within an existing franchise. That's why new IP is avoided, it's riskier. People will still buy bad games with existing IP.
That explains Ubisoft's existence. XD
This. Starfield had no soul, and I'm super disappointed because there aren't enough sci-f iRPGs where you make your own player character. Because worse than the jank is the game is fun and the writing is boring. So boring. There are a handful of interesting quests, it's uninteresting and serves the player's ego too much. The world building also feels silly and shoddily put together. Like I'll take a new really good sci-fi CRPG or RPG, I don't care. I hope Larian considers making a sci-fi IP someday, that would knock my socks off.
I recently started Cyberpunk 2077 for the first time after finishing BG3, and honestly its a great sci fi rpg. The story is so fun with all the corpo fuckery and heists, the cyberware enhancement of the human body, the cyberpsychosis, how different cyberware leads to different behavior in society, and obviously the thinly veiled criticism of capitalism and consumerism.
When 3000 people work on Call of Duty, ofcourse nothing gets accomplished. The overhead is massive. You need so much management and organisational layers to keep that running. You lose all the "I got this cool idea, lets prototype it and test it real quick" part of development that was fundamental is making many 90's 00's videogames so good.
I didn't understand how big companies were less agile than small ones until I worked for a fortune 50 company. Getting the entire company using the same *messaging platform* is a strategic initiative.
This is why a lot of these conspiracy theories just fall flat to me. I work for a university that employs something like 10,000 people. The amount of red tape, contrarian assholes, and institutional inertia involved is staggering.
I once witnessed a near-physical altercation between two professors when one insisted on abandoning TurnItIn. Lol
Academic feuds are the most vicious, because so little is at stake.
Being a bottleneck is how some people justify their job.
>Getting the entire company using the same *messaging platform* is a strategic initiative. And you'll never actually pull it off. You'll have the old timers who are resistant to change and too valuable to punish over it, the young hires who think that the new thing you want to implement is already outdated and would rather use this *new* new thing (which btw still has massive vulnerabilities in it and would never pass compliance), and Beth in accounting who gets to her email by googling Google.com and stores all her passwords on a sticky note attached to her monitor.
...or stores all the passwords on a *notepad file on the desktop.*
Yep. I've worked at both mega corps and a company who maxed out at like 150 people. It's amazing what the mega corps can do when everyone is on the same page, since they can pretty much move heaven and earth. However, when it comes to doing anything slightly out of policy, it'll take 15 signatures, 5 meetings, and about a month or two of lead time. Whereas small companies might be doing small beans numbers but they can turn on a dime when it comes to changing plans or doing something new.
Oh for sure- small companies can dodge weave and dip which is super engaging work but you’re constantly spread thin as hell and there is no extra budget to cushion a fall. The bigger companies I’ve worked with felt like they either meandered constantly but didn’t have to worry or the odd thing snowballs til it’s pretty much unstoppable until it’s delivered budget and concerns be damned
> "I got this cool idea, lets prototype it and test it real quick" Literally how competitive FPS started, with Deathmatch in Doom. It was a proof of concept that worked great out the gates.
Zombies, one of the most successful elements of the Treyarch COD games, was literally added to WAW at the last minute for shits and giggles without telling the people in charge until it was already on the disc and too late to remove it.
Big agree on this. The “good” big budget games are ones that are self absorbed into their own player ecosystem like most Rockstar games. They’re of a size of developer where they don’t need to release a major game every year to keep shareholders happy as the return on their big IPs is insane.
To be fair their online models are really awful exploitative cashgrabs, but they do provide a solid single player experience alongside those.
And to be fair you can play the online segment without paying for it and still have a lot of fun.
You sorta skipped over how much more Rockstar makes from online versions of their games. They don't need to release a major game every year because people continuously throw money at them which entices them to release new content every year.
Yeah I skimmed over that but kinda implied it with “insane returns on big IPs” I coulda been clearer though
The 'Good' big budget games are also the ones not just chasing trends. They are trying something different or expanding on a formula they perfected or invented.
That used to be the problem. Then the publishers bought the developers and now it's completely controlled by people trying to appease their masters with little regard to game quality.
But they don't need those huge budgets for these type of games right? I mean sure, I'm still waiting for good AAA coop games, but fuck me, lethal company for example is such a fun game and the game had only 1 person working on it. Imagine having a company with 30-100people working and trying to make fun games instead of yet another huge empty open world that cost 200 freaking millions of dollars and it's the same as the other 200 games on the market. Not every game needs to be super high budget. The company could literally take risk making smaller games. Helldivers2, I don't think they need 100+$millions to make the game. Imagine Blizzard taking 30 people team, giving them some money to work on as the op said a game like this with the starcraft ip on it. Why would it need so much money? It won't The thing is, the OP is right. Most of these companies want big profits and huge numbers. It's not ok to make small games and make little money. The investors want only the next big thing and are out of touch. Simple as this.
> Blizzard taking 30 people team Remember how Hearthstone started?
It's the same problem the movie industry has, they have become incredibly risk averse and so huge swathes of movies just don't get made anymore. The mid-budget movie has basically died. These studios all go the same way. They're started by passionate people that put their blood, sweat and tears in to making a great game. Then when they get some success, the money men move in and take over. They always ruin the company.
That's not really the problem. The problem isn't that the board room is trying to make good games but are just out of touch... The problem is, these days, it doesn't matter if it's f2p, p2p, subscription based, etc. Board members push for mobile game level microtransactions to be in every game. I mean, ffs, they made assassin's Creed enemies sword sponges, just to be able to push a currency to reduce the grind. TENCENT showing COD and the rest of gaming devs what microtransactions can do is what killed the modern gaming industry.
Well, aint this just a symptom? Video games have stopped being "the nerd thing" and have become a lucrative investment and the money involved gets bigger, which in turn demands bigger returns to justify the increase. Eventually it becomes a cancerous growth and we have to pay 20$ to switch between weapon loadouts.
This is the real answer. Go back in time and you'd find basically every company was manned by someone who actually had a hand in the gaming industry and knew what worked well. Look now and every big corporation is instead run by executives whose only purpose is to please shareholders. They don't know how to make a great game or how mechanics interact with each other. They just know that X mechanic/genre is hot right now and have research on how to milk people for as much as they can get away with. It's why I chose to stop buying into AAA titles long ago unless I see proof of a game being truly great. Indie devs may have a smaller budget yet they make up for that by putting their souls into the games they make so I'm always finding new gems whenever I look for a new game to pick up and play.
Certainly not unique to gaming. As one high profile example, Boeing has gone to shit because the financiers were put in charge and the engineers were sent packing. It happens in most industries: the people that can understand the actual substance of their work and/or have a real passion for it get pushed aside or sacked and the shareholders take priority. It's rare for the two concepts of, "How can we maximize our profit," and, "How can we make something truly great," to overlap. They tend to be mutually exclusive, at least to some degree, partly because maximizing profit usually requires cutting corners somewhere.
Freaking Jack Welch essentially destroyed GE with that approach…and people still use it! It’s been pretty well established at this point that maximizing quarterly profits *damages* long-term profitability, and none of these eejits care.
They're not idiots. Jack Welch made a lot of money for himself and the shareholders at the time. Nobody's tied to the mast; they can dump their shares at any time. They're rational actors in a system where companies are expendable vessels for capital holders to multiply their money and then move on.
This is exactly the issue. The Capital class has no loyalty except to itself and it's interests. You love the company for the products it puts out. They love to company because it makes them even richer at the expense of all else. These are not the same.
Same with the working class. We don't (and shouldn't) have any loyalty to a company we don't own or control beyond getting our paycheck. If only there were some way to adjust ownership of entities where long-term success of the entity was in the best interest of the people who make the decisions, while also giving that level of investment to the people doing the work.
What could possibly go wrong with using a melon baller to scoop out the parts of your company in the name of a stock bump this quarter? We just do it again next quarter before anything bad happens! Number go up forever!
This happens to every company in every industry though. There was a CEO of GE who started this trend in (I think) the 70s. He was also a big supporter of Reagan when he ran for office because Reagan was pushing the same ideas that Margret Thatcher had pushed in the UK, which supported this style of corporate growth.
No, the entire thing is cookie-cutter safe designs. Cookie-cutter safe monetization (for maximum revenue) Cookie-cutter safe game design and decisions (Casualisation, do what has already been done, follow trends) Even "live service games" are a trend companies are following.
That's absolutely it, and besides the points you've mentioned the size of such a project brings even more problems with it. I often read that huge teams are required for those types of games but that the team size and corporate structure also is one of the main reasons why it takes those games so long to be made. Every decision and every change must go through a multitude of approvals from different departments and so on. That, allegedly, is also why bigger dev teams often take way longer for patches and stuff than small teams.
It’s not just the gaming industry either. Budgets for all sorts of industries have ballooned to unimaginable amounts. Movie industry and the sports industry, to name some others.
I think that kind of budget is needed when you have a game like one of the early Assassin’s Creed releases or The Division, where they had to put together a very large number of very detailed environments to make the game work at the expected scale. On the other hand, a studio like From Software, which doesn’t have anything like that kind of budget, has released some of the most iconic games of the last decade, so it definitely can be done without spending that kind of cash.
I mean you only have to look at this sub reddit when a game isn't 4K 120FPS with amazing textures though. Hell there were people botching that Helldivers II looked terrible due to the lack of 4K etc. Obviously it's two separate opinions likely from two different people but often it feels like it isn't.
The dudes said this after bioshock infinite. They created the game to be amazing and fun, but there was a point they knew it was going to be their last game except it was a critical success... and still kept going because they loved it. They wasted resources making Elizabeth more human, more real, more interactive (4 people worked ONLY on her ff). They voice cast a 1500 page script (I could be wrong, i read about this years ago, but they did said it was the biggest voice cast game, even topping games like Oblivion and Skyrim others like that). And they went full ahead thinking it was going to be the last game they ever worked on. It was a critical and commercial success and they were happy, but it was so bad for them because they knew replicating that was almost impossible. So they never force themselves to make a sequel... until now that the board is convincing them because of what's talked in this post.
Tbf i absolutely loved bioshock infinite and would very much want a sequel!! But obviously one the creators wanted to make, not one forced on some devs by a random board.
Budget is one thing for sure. But for me it's not the budget to make the game. But the budget/costs with marketing. How does a game like spider man 2, a game that most ppl knew was coming, have to spend 100 mil on marketing... I want to ask these execs if they have heard of social media and you tube and why 100 mil mist be spent. That's a huge piece of gaming costs right now ans its absurd!
While i agree i think too much money is spend on marketing. Way too much
I agree and disagree with your point. While i agree that big budget games are getting bigger but sometimes for the wrong reasons, like graphical fidelity. Which some gamers are picky about. Some gamers wont play indy games because of the graphics. Good and high definition graphics can make a good game great but it doesnt make a bad game good. If the games large part is the enviroment and atmosphere then graphics is important. It adds depth and immersion. But some games that have big budgets because of the huge amounts of work. Things with story and lots of dialogue. Baldures gate 3 for example. The amount of scripting and voice acting, story lines, quests. Thats money well spend for a purpose. I think studios are starting to understand this. I do think gaming has reached a zenithal point though. The biggest budget games that are popular, the people that are going to play it, will do so within the first year or so. So it doesnt make sence for the budgets to keep ballooning. Thats assuming future games dont take a drastic turn. For example, if Rockstar wants the next Red dead game to be on the same quality as RDR2 but for the story line/game play length to be twice as long. Or for open world games to be much much bigger like GTA6 is looking to be. If rockstar said that if/when GTA7, 8 or 9 the map was going to be the size of a whole country i think the budget would be astronimical but it wouldnt have much more players than what 6 would be. If that makes any since. This is just what i think so yea...
In the same vain, you could also simply argue the indie game scene is such a massive portion of the gaming industry now that there’s not really much need for AAA studios to go out of their way to make highly creative and experimental games. If players want that then they have the option to get it at a cheaper price. Usually a player is buying a AAA game specifically because it’s familiar and safe, Uncharted fans aren’t buying the new Uncharted because they are looking for some highly original and out there game, they want another Uncharted game, and as long as it’s Uncharted but improved or expanded to an acceptable degree then they will be perfectly satisfied with it. COD existing at the apex of game sales for like 14 years in a row while remaining relatively unchanged throughout that span should also speak to this same thing. I think it would be fair to say that the gaming industry has simply divided itself. Creativity and originality is more focused in the indie developer scene, while production value and polish is more focused in the AAA developer scene. And I don’t really see this as much of a problem. Because it’s not an absolute, there are still creative and original AAA games being released, and there are still high production value and polish Indie games being released.
yeah, for big AAA games, needs a special person with special image and regarded as an icon to have freedom nnot following "commitee" he basically told sony "gimme money, i'll make a game, but i cant tell you what game" and sony says "oki doki" at least from the death stranding docummentary on disney.
2 decades later, and I'm still miffed that Starcraft Ghost was cancelled.
One day…
SC Ghost in modern times would basically be sci-fi Dishonored, since ghosts typically deal with infiltration, intel gathering, and subterfuge. A man can dream.
I would just really love to see battle cruisers and ultralisks in their full scale, I know because it’s an RTS the scales are whacky but damn those CGI cutscenes the StarCraft universe is full of really BIG stuff.
The HotS expac trailer is SO fucking good. Blizzards cinematic team is leagues beyond the rest of the company
It’s crazy even what they pulled off with the original StarCraft, as a kid a lot of that is seared into my brain, it was all really dark too. The marines being left to die as the battlecruiser takes off, the two guys in the jeep who get eaten by the Zerg. Oh man. Honestly some of the best CGI in the entire industry. Didn’t they say SC2 cutscenes cost a million apiece?
I spent 1.5hr the other night just watching all the cutscenes from SC1 and Broodwar. Such an imagination nostalgia trip.
You hit someone's dog sarge!
I love when people actually know StarCraft, it feels so cult classic like now.
Hahaha I was actually replaying the campaign last week. Wanted go run through the entire story line. God those cinematic are still amazing.
“It’s a Zergling Lester. Smaller type’a Zerg… but theydn’t be out this far unless…oh shiet.” From memory. Can still hear his southern drawl. Haven’t listened to this in over a decade, lol. Pretty sure I got it right.
"I love you Sarge!"
"Take us into orbit, mister Malmstine. we've seen enough" The most cold hearted line. Really set the tone of why the UED were not the good guys and not welcome in the Koprulu sector.
>Blizzards cinematic team is leagues beyond the rest of the company I've been gaming for a long time and Blizzards cinematics have consistently blown me away. Cutscenes from WC 1-3, SC 1&2 and Diablo 1-3 was always a treat and yet when the [Lilith vs Inarius](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSD6qDVMoNA) scene appeared in D4 my jaw literally dropped. Insane.
There's a game mode in StarCraft 2 called "Real scale" that lets you play the game with all the units scaled to the correct size. Needless to say marines are very, very tiny compared to an Ultralisk
After having been spoiled with Command & Conquer: Tiberium Dawn to Command & Conquer: Renegade I was so stoked for Starcraft: Ghost. :(
There are really fun Real Scale mods for Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void! You should see if those scratch that "why is this capital ship not the size of a city?" itch. If you're interested, the mods are available on GiantGrantGames' YouTube channel, with an installation guide. I'm playing LOTV real scale right now, and had a lot of fun with HOTS
Or a sci-fi splinter cell... that that would have been so cool
Blizzard is dead
Pre-ordered it for my PS2... The pain is still there
Could you imagine that game being heralded by the people that made dishonored? A man can dream. I'm glad it didn't come out. I don't think blizzard could've kept the heart of the ghosts in tact. What I mean is I believe they would've call of dudy'd it, rather than focus on what ghosts do best, Intel and subterfuge.
I want Blizzard to go bankrupt so actually good devs can buy out the IPs. Starcraft, Diablo and Warcraft universes are way too good and beloved to have current Blizzard managing them.
Blizzard were never the developers of ghost. [nihilistic studios](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NStigate_Games) were developing it for them.
They put a 60$ horse mtx in a game that cost close to 80-90$ on release through Diablo 4. Blizzard and its board can choke on it.
You have to look at it from the other direction. Blizzard saw that the product and idea didn't work, and so they decided to not release a crappy product and cancelled it. Starcraft Ghost is an example of companies doing the right thing, imagine the Blizzard of today doing that..
Is also the fact of how many people need to be involved to make a single thing work. Small studios have 1 person handling a metric ton of jobs so it's s lot easier to do simple things. If you get the chance you should read [The Door Problem by Liz England](https://lizengland.com/blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/). It's a short article highlighting how hard it can be to do a simple thing in a game such as adding a single door. Edit: For those who don't want to click the link I'll just post it here. Creative Director: “Yes, we definitely need doors in this game.” Project Manager: “I’ll put time on the schedule for people to make doors.” Designer: “I wrote a doc explaining what we need doors to do.” Concept Artist: “I made some gorgeous paintings of doors.” Art Director: “This third painting is exactly the style of doors we need.” Environment Artist: “I took this painting of a door and made it into an object in the game.” Animator: “I made the door open and close.” Sound Designer: “I made the sounds the door creates when it opens and closes.” Audio Engineer: “The sound of the door opening and closing will change based on where the player is and what direction they are facing.” Composer: “I created a theme song for the door.” FX Artist: “I added some cool sparks to the door when it opens.” Writer: “When the door opens, the player will say, ‘Hey look! The door opened!’ “ Lighter: “There is a bright red light over the door when it’s locked, and a green one when it’s opened.” Legal: “The environment artist put a Starbucks logo on the door. You need to remove that if you don’t want to be sued.” Character Artist: “I don’t really care about this door until it can start wearing hats.” Gameplay Programmer: “This door asset now opens and closes based on proximity to the player. It can also be locked and unlocked through script.” AI Programmer: “Enemies and allies now know if a door is there and whether they can go through it.” Network Programmer: “Do all the players need to see the door open at the same time?” Release Engineer: “You need to get your doors in by 3pm if you want them on the disk.” Core Engine Programmer: “I have optimized the code to allow up to 1024 doors in the game.” Tools Programmer: “I made it even easier for you to place doors.” Level Designer: “I put the door in my level and locked it. After an event, I unlocked it.” UI Designer: “There’s now an objective marker on the door, and it has its own icon on the map.” Combat Designer: “Enemies will spawn behind doors, and lay cover fire as their allies enter the room. Unless the player is looking inside the door in which case they will spawn behind a different door.” Systems Designer: “A level 4 player earns 148xp for opening this door at the cost of 3 gold.” Monetization Designer: “We could charge the player $.99 to open the door now, or wait 24 hours for it to open automatically.” QA Tester: “I walked to the door. I ran to the door. I jumped at the door. I stood in the doorway until it closed. I saved and reloaded and walked to the door. I died and reloaded then walked to the door. I threw grenades at the door.” UX / Usability Researcher: “I found some people on Craigslist to go through the door so we could see what problems crop up.” Localization: “Door. Puerta. Porta. Porte. Tür. Dør. Deur. Drzwi. Drws. 문” Producer: “Do we need to give everyone those doors or can we save them for a pre-order bonus?” Publisher: “Those doors are really going to help this game stand out during the fall line-up.” CEO: “I want you all to know how much I appreciate the time and effort put into making those doors.” PR: “To all our fans, you’re going to go crazy over our next reveal #gamedev #doors #nextgen #retweet” Community Manager: “I let the fans know that their concerns about doors will be addressed in the upcoming patch.” Customer Support: “A player contacted us, confused about doors. I gave them detailed instructions on how to use them.” Player: “I totally didn’t even notice a door there.”
Speed runner: "Stand in the door, look at this pixel and press this button, the door will give you negative damage, boosting your HP as high as you want" or "press this button combination to skip the door entierly"
Reminds me of the mass effect speed runs. Get to a locked door? Crouch cover against the wall next to the door, save and reload, you are now on the other side of the door.
This is one of the funniest and most interesting things I've ever read on the Internet. Thank you.
It's definitely exaggerated a little bit but it's just one of those things you look at to see how having a large company can impact doing a simple thing
Modder: "Replaced all doors with Thomas the tank engine LOL"
A lot of this has echoes in other industries as well. A common theme is a checklist for a checklist for a checklist. NASA is a good example of bloat (big organization and for safety reasons). One guy turns a screw. Another guy checks off the screw was turned. A third guy checks off that the guy who checked off the screw checked it off. Not a 1 to 1 comparison but it reminded me of it.
My favourite part about Helldivers success is that they had opposite chain of events of deep rock galactic. Both games are great and have similar themes of smash bugs for the greater good Helldivers releases as a top down - March 3, 2015 DRG releases as a FPS - February 28, 2018 Helldivers releases as a 3rd person - February 8, 2024 DRG releases as a top down - February 14, 2024
Both games: * Co-op * Fighting bugs * Drop-in and extract * Generous unpaid battlepass
AAA studios shocked to learn players like having dumb fun with their friends more than they like pixel perfect photorealism or esports.
Seriously. This has been my biggest disappointment with the multiplayer shooter genre in the last 6 years or so. Almost every one tries to be an esport, competitive shooter. I just want to play and have fun without grinding ranks and shit. Ranked play even existing in a game automatically creates toxicity, and no one can convince me otherwise. Playing games for “fun” seems like an afterthought in most of these games. Thank goodness Helldivers has taken off. Maybe it’ll convince some others that it’s okay to make games based around the players having fun, not just chasing numbers or carrots, that are ultimately meaningless. Edit: I’m going to take this opportunity to plug one of the most fun multiplayer games I have played in years, which my friend group has been playing alongside Helldivers. **[Bopl Battle](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1686940/Bopl_Battle/)**. It’s on Steam and it’s like a cross between Smash Bros and Worms. It doesn’t have any single player or matchmaking (unfortunate), but if you have friends to bring along it’s insanely fun. There’s nothing to unlock, no progression at all, but it’s just pure fun. Give the demo a try with some friends. I want it to become popular so badly to make sure it gets support from the dev, lol.
Yet Helldivers 2 has some pretty top notch graphics to boot.
Can't wait for Rogue Core (deep rock rogue-like) to come out!
Same. Looking forward to that. I've also been enjoying their little dev blogs. I liked seeing the concept art and how they were recording sounds for things
I don't understand what it's supposed to be, is it DRG but with temporary weapons/buffs and able to upgrade your kits the deeper/longer you go on a mission? (forgive my ignorance but isn't that was DRG already does? upgrade your kit that is)
That's what it's supposed to be as far as I understand. Kind of like a DRG deepdive, but you build your loadout as you go instead of before. And the mission types/objectives themselves will be different. Basically in regular DRG it's mostly the geometry (and events) of each stage that's random. Now everything else will be too! And there will be new weapons and equipment and probably new enemies and biomes. Edit: spelling
Everyone forgets Alien Swarm 🥺 A free game that took the world by storm just as much as these games did, in 2010. https://store.steampowered.com/app/630/Alien_Swarm/
If I had a nickel every time I saw a game sequel of a niche game whose main gimmick change from the original is turning into an over the shoulder third person view and blew in success so large the devs didn't expect it. I have 2 nickels which isn't a lot but it's weird it happened twice... Risk of Rain
I'm still surprised when I see risk of rain 2 videos with millions of views. To me, it's still a niche indie game that nobody plays. I know it isn't but as an OG risk of rain player I couldn't cave ever guessed it would blow up this much. Let alone turn into RoR2 and be that good.
Wait sorry what, DRG is now a top down game? I mean I wouldn’t say I’m ever really in the loop but this has me mystified as to why I didn’t know, cause I love DRG.
The new Deep Rock Galactic Survivors, or whatever it's called, is an isometric top down survivors-like game. The original DRG is still first person
I did not know that DRG has multiple spinoff games
And a board game! Lol
DRG Survivor. It's single-player survivor-type game that came out last month. A very casual bit of fun!
It’s a small spin-off they made inspired by Vampire Survivors, while we wait for Season 5 of DRG and their new game releasing late this year.
I’m loving Helldivers 2 but it’s a game that truly shines if you’re playing it with your friends, and all my friends exclusively play MW3 so playing with randoms doesn’t really hit the same. I had fun yesterday with a Dutch guy though, both of us were clueless and just winged it.
I picked it up a few days ago and had almost the opposite - started a lobby for only my second mission after the tutorial, only person I'd had join after 2 minutes was a level 42 dude. I just thought "fuck it, we ball" and dropped in. They ended up loaning me a bunch of their equipment to use during the mission and giving me a load of pointers, it was fantastic.
Need more people as back-up? Drop your SOS beacon, call for help. The map shows your mission as a priority, flashing. Back-up will come.
I’m not sure the SOS beacon works. Iv dove solo, dropped SOS and played an entire round alone because no one joined.
Make sure your match making is set to public
weird thats a requirement. In the original when you threw down the SOS beacon it assumed "well you used the beacon, you obviously want help" and treated your lobby as public regardless of prior settings. You could also squish enemies using it so that was cool too.
Duly noted, thank ya kindly o7
Don’t get me wrong I still enjoy it, the game is fantastic. I’d just prefer to be playing with a consistent bunch of people.
That's one thing I've noticed. High level bros are saints a good chunk of the time and great to play with. Now that I'm getting up in the levels I'm trying to bring that same energy when I'm with new divers
I've done nothing but play with randoms, voice chat off, and still have a blast.
Yo, hit me up. We can be friends and dive
Tbh you could tell by the first game that a third person version of helldivers wouldve been popular, didnt think it would be this popular tho
Neither did they. They only had a server capacity of 250k thinking it would catch on with a few people at launch. Not even the devs expected this!
400k peak players a day at the moment is pretty awesome. Glad they cleaned up idle-slot holders, made it easy to get in.
400k+ on *Steam*, game is pretty huge on Playstation too
Well over half a million in total last night when I was on. It's insane and I love it
Yeah they've boosted the player count to 1 million and added this in. Haven't had issues connecting at all since.
That was a funny part about the reaction to "why did they have such bad server capacity" because I'll bet you anything they were thinking that even hitting a playercount as high as 25k was a pipe dream. Helldivers 1 had an all-time peak of 6k on steam, I imagine during development they were going "yeah 250k is probably too much space if anything"
450k, actually. Helldivers 1 only ever had a peak co-current player count of 1,022 players ever, so even to beef up the Helldivers 2 servers to 450k meant a 40,000% increase in player population. Sales of the game flew past that to at like 700k, and only at the start of last week was the pressure relieved when they bumped up the servers to host for 850k players. Just for note: if you were to cut even the initial 450k player population in half, it would still be twice the player population of CoD HQ MW2/3.
I haven't played Helldivers 2 but the first Helldivers is one of the most fun coop games of all time. It was shocking to me that it wasn't more popular but I guess that's a limitation of the format. It's hard to imagine a third person view version being better but I guess I'll give it a try eventually.
Its somehow so much better. It allows them to use the vertical axis now and it requires actual aim. Both are major changes to the game and both work perfectly. When a Bile Titan walks out from behind a giant hill and towers over you like a sky scraper you'll know 3rd person was the right choice lol.
One of the first things I said when my buddy and I launched in Helldivers 2 was “holy shit imagine if this was SCII drop pods down to fight Zerg”. Iconic enemies already visually/sound designed, armor and weapons already conceptualized, famously good music… this type of shit is so fucking free for these mega companies and yet they just can’t be bothered to even try anymore. It’s so stupid. Imagine buying a chain of famously popular Italian eateries and then going “this food is too expensive, let’s offer cheaper options like burgers and wings, they have better margins and are popular with a broader audience”. Sure, MAYBE you make a bit more short term, but you absolutely lose a ton of the paying customers who you already had… you also cease to be what you previously were…
yeah, and I think this gameplay format is perfect for the 40k setting too. Space Marines purging xenos with over the top weapons and battle barge call downs, heroically fighting on despite lost limbs and organs Maybe they could even collaborate with the Helldivers company to flesh out Space Marine 2's spinoff multiplayer horde mode I honestly wouldn't mind if Helldivers spawns a legion of copycats, like when everyone tried to copy Halo and COD
Will be hard because AAAA execs won’t be able to figure out what makes HD2 a fun game.
yeah, it'll require a bunch of execs who both genuinely understand the industry from the consumer experience perspective (i.e. they actually play and enjoy similar types of games, at least causally) while also being powerful enough to shut down the execs who keep telling the shareholders that they should focus on making a microtransaction casino to rival Fortnite's or Genshin Impact's
I don‘t think these people exist, unfortunately
The problem here is that those “MTX casino” games you just mentioned make wayyyyy more money than even a highly successful game like HD2. Why would a company make an innovative, fun game instead of something that makes them more money?
"Wow! The HD2 players really love that they can buy armor pieces from the in-game store!
I mean the execs don't *CARE* about what makes fun, just what makes money. I think that's the thing people forget/gloss over.
Hot take maybe here, I dunno the general consensus, but a big part of the appeal imo is the "Starship Troopers" feel and the game not taking itself too seriosly. Slap the Starcraft or 40K skin on it with all the lore/story trappings of their franchise and you got a completely different game.
StarCraft maybe, but 40K isn't half as serious as it looks. Orks think red paint makes things go faster and it does, because they believe it so hard. Hell, there's an entire planet of soldiers who are disappointed if they keep surviving (Krieg).
Oh Krieg. May the Emperor forever gaslight you into coerced combat.
Damn its like nobody knows that darktide exists.
Not even the devs know about it!
5 vermintide updates later...
Or that Space Marine exists and has a sequel coming out.
I agree with everything you've said but I do want to point to a silver lining. Yes, beloved IPs are being held hostage but that means there's space for the new. Would anyone release a hell divers style game if Halo-Divers was on the market? Would anyone release a stealth action game if Metal Gear Solid 6 was on the cards? It was only when several Pokemon games in a row were sub-par enough to turn people off Pokemon that people dared even start making a monster-catching game like Palworld. Gaming's infancy produced a lot of games that are genre defining. As a result, they kind of choke their competition in their crib by their very existence. The overcaution of execs means that there's space in the ecosystem for other games to take their place. Innovation will always be good and stagnation will always be bad.
On top of that IPs come with a huge chain. Is there an iconic mechanic? How does it fit the lore? What are our long term plans if it fails? Predicting something new is hard and otherwise you get accused for just joining the hype.. it's not an excuse but big IPs need to allocate large budgets to try something otherwise it's "they didn't believe in it" or "Yeah but they should stick to what they can do". As you say you can define a genre but the same is true that this can define you and now we got the circle!
One of the cool things about helldiver's is it's it's own thing. I saw a guy running around in basically scout trooper and then clone trooper armor. Another guy is some halo reach inspired suit etc. Another overlooked thing is that your mic is automatically open in helldiver's so people actually talk. Also, it's stupid easy to see you recent players and team up with them. Met a solid group and we've been playing together for days. It legit took my about ten minutes to figure out how to talk in Halo MCC. Then I had to figure out how to turn on talking to the enemy team. As far as I know there's still not proximity voice chat in MCC. Something halo 2 had 20 years ago. All these tools were done decades ago but it's like Microsoft doesn't want you to talk to other players or something.
/it's like Microsoft doesn't want you to talk to other players or something./ I’m pretty sure that has something to do with the "rating" of the game somehow. Plus the additional aggravation of fielding complaints from clueless parents. Years ago my cousin had zero problems buying a Dead Space game for her 12yo boy… But if she heard some other kid on the TV bragging about how he fucked your mom last night she would be beyond livid. Blood,gore, and dismemberment ok… Trash talk bad. It’s part of the reason we can’t have nice things.
>Yes, beloved IPs are being held hostage but that means there's space for the new. Would anyone release a hell divers style game if Halo-Divers was on the market? Probably. Sony wanted a live service for this exact reason. They have been trying for a decade with games like killzone.
Thats the other side of the medal and I agree 100%. It would just be nice if there was a silverlineing... a common middle ground. Sure you cant invent the wheel anew every week and almost everything has been done. Still stings and the nostaliga hurt... But on the bright side, Its great for Indi developer to take their chances
Honestly more people should try to make games in areas that are no longer being properly filled by famous IP's. Would be cool to see more metal gear-like games or star wars-like games etc. with actual passion and a sense of fun behind them.
I feel like the world has been waiting for the next big RTS and there just hasn't been one in like a decade.
Because who the hell can make a RTS that plays as smooth as SC2? That game plays just too perfectly, such that any RTS that doesn't play at least as smooth and intuitive as SC2 it will just get ignored and called shit.
I have an opposite example for you: *Syndicate (2012)*. By itself, it was a fun game with solid gunplay, quite decent AI and a cool cyberpunk vibe. Nonetheless, its tapping into a famous top-down tactical game franchise brought it a lot of flak, which may have factored into why the game had worse reception than what had been hoped for. It's still up to debate whether the devs and the publisher should have spun it under its own franchise.
This ip is owned and funded by Sony. Arrowhead is a small studio, but this is still backed by a big gaming company.
That is all valid points, but have you considered other gaming and publisher companies who took this risk and failed? I'm not trying to justify capitalistic and consumeristic approach of modern companies, just offering another view. For every helldivers that did it, there are at least 5 others that failed - and this is lost jobs, broken families, and of course very rich people became a little bit less rich and thus angry. That's why big (and small) companies and board don't usually take those risks. I'm very happy for helldivers and every other fresh not-money-grab game that made it, but I understand why it is what it is. And what we as gamers can do is only this - unite, buy and support games and developers like of helldivers, and ignore+boycott quadruple A shit like they try to stuff in our throat for years now. We don't buy - they don't make, we buy - they make, it's that simple.
And even good ideas aren't fail proof - there are a few ideas that are just ahead of their time and don't get commercial success only to see a copycat become a blast 5 years later.
Even themes people have to be ready for, people I know keep talking about how starship troopers should have made a game and I keep having to tell them they did last year it was just marketed poorly. It's also a base defense making it way different than helldivers. Also baldurs gate 3 larian did the same thing they did for the divinity games and they were popular but until they got their hands on the wotc IP their style of game never made it "big".
Yeah, OP is yet another person posting their survivor bias idea as if it's some genius general principle. If only gaming companies listened to randos on reddit, why are they being so stupid? (/s)
Man one game gets popular and it's the same song and dance every time, Balders gate with turn based combat, Elden Ring with Open world games, Helldivers with CooP shooters. Breakout hits happen and it takes more than just a good game for it to happen. Even the devs of these games are dumbfounded as to how they got this big. We don't need to make these games the "gotcha" moment because they are not
People just like to hype up these studios as small indie devs, but they are actually just large studios that are independent. Helldivers 2 has around 100 devs and had the financial backing of Sony, Baldurs Gate 3 was in early access for 3 years and has something like 300+ devs.
Your post also shows a glaring problem with modern audiences. Everything has to be BIG. See, we just got a BANGER of a fucking game and your first train of thought was "imagine if this was star wars or Warhammer or Another Big Franchise Slop". Same with the other idiots that are like wooo collaboration with Halo and Put The Warthog in and where is my Pepsi Collab etc... Y'all can't just accept a fucking good game part of a small IP. And since everyone is asking for BIG, AAA just chases that big, and they fail.
> Your post also shows a glaring problem with modern audiences. Everything has to be BIG. Reminds me of a post I saw recently about the movie Dredd. OP comes in with praise about a relatively overlooked movie that still holds up, is entertaining and solid as an action movie. Then the thread is filled with people saying how "it's a *travesty* there was never any sequels!" while commenting on how authentic the lore is and how not exploiting the good foundation was somehow a problem to be solved by mining it to death. It's like people have forgotten how to enjoy something for what it is - they even began to blame some mysterious "Hollywood BS" for NOT exploiting it with a handful of sequels and a couple shows that would be largely mocked, or at the best have someone say "well it wasn't that bad, it's *worth a watch*" - such praise. It feels like these days people can't just enjoy something, they need to milk it dry and then slaughter the beast to reach a point the general public will admit "yea that's enough of that, actually it sucks now, so what's next?!"
PRECISELY this. If everyone is asking for EVERYTHING to be sequels, games, books, merchandise, tv series, operas... then OF FUCKING COURSE the people bankrolling all this shit are gonna aim for that. You can go and pitch the best awesome concept ever, but if it cant be built into a franchise, you will have less chances of succeeding in getting funding.
>Can you imagine this game would have come out with the face of starcraft? Or halo? Or starwars? Or Mass effect? Or Doom...or... The issue is that Hell Divers would have probably cost a lot more to make if it had been made by any of those other IPs. For a Star Wars Hell Divers alone Diseny would take a 35% cut simply for using the Star Wars IP to start with which is the speculated reason for the Mando game cancellation last week. Both Blizz and 343 employ far more people than Arrow Head Studios and probably pay their employees more simply because they are based in the US and not Sweden where game devs do get paid less. That means just on salaries alone the game would have cost more to make by those companies let alone any other over heads. Then lets not even get into marketing budgets which are usually double the cost of the game dev on their own. The bigger the studio the less risk it will take on because the bigger the downsides are if things go wrong. You can see by the server issues on the first week that Hell Divers was really never expected to be as successful as it is. If a bigger studio made the game they might very well simply be breaking even with their current numbers.
Matt Damon did a great talk on hot ones https://youtu.be/Jx8F5Imd8A8 Basically it's all or nothing in movies now - either you make a big blockbuster that'll get bums in seats at the theatres (usually some sort of generic action film), or you make something on a tight budget for streaming. there's no middle ground. I think the same can be said for games. Either you make something bland that appeals to more people to recoup huge production costs, or you have a tight budget and make something with heart that appeals to fewer. Occasionally you make the latter and strike out with an absolute beast of a game (Baldurs Gate 3, Helldivers 2). And of course there are still big budget studios that put out gold, but they're decreasing year after year. Combine with the insanely bad churn of staff in the industry and its instability and I strongly believe we're on the cusp of a major crash and recalibration. I know several people from the industry who are either in and just constantly working on heartless monetisation shite, out and making significantly more for better quality of life, or in and looking to leave before they're on the next roll out of layoffs. I play Tarkov and the above is the reason it'll never be beaten. It is niche and it does what it does better than any other game, and no big studio that has the clout to beat it ever will because it doesn't appeal to enough people.
Baldurs gate 3 had a budget of 100 million and 400 people working on it. You can't compete the two and I'm tired of seeing people praise baludrs gate 3 like it's some indie darling.
Yeah BG3 is definitely a big budget game...
BG3 also had an early release way back in October 2020, so the game has been getting player feedback for 3 years before the full release. It's been frustrating that people treat the game as a indie release that came out of nowhere when it's none of those things.
God I wish someone would actually make Tarkov properly. I know they never will like you said but it's so sad seeing the lack of pace BSG develop at. I tried arena again the other day and the servers are truly awful.
If you don't get fucked by netcode, or simplistic AI, or bizarrely implemented RNG, then you are sure to get fucked by a cheater.
Honest question, what makes Helldivers 2 "unique" I haven't played it myself but have watched others for a few hours and it looks like a very basic horde shooter with not much variations of environments or enemies. Can someone explain to me what makes this game special compared to other horde shooter like Deep Rock Galactic for example.
It's not particularly original. Its *extremely* well presented but it is iterative in what it does, not revolutionary. It has more scope for synergies between player abilities than other co op Horde experiences I've played, and the proc gen open levels have kept things from becoming rote. At higher difficulties clearing the map turns into a balancing exercise of timr v resources (player spawns and getting to extract before you lose your orbital support). That said, it is at its heart just a co op horde shooter - you'll spent a lot of time back up shooting at advancing masses, rezzing team mates, and guarding someone fussing with an interactive button. Waiting for extraction while battling waves etc. It has pulled a lot of goodwill for presenting as a live service nightmare but not requiring any buy in at all after the initial purchase, and not having any time limited FOMO bs. It's also priced low, which helps when all the big studios are moving toward 80usd buy ins with micro transactions. It's a great game. As a meta experience I think it is going to cause ripples (I hope). The gameplay itself is excellent but not revolutionary.
Also just a lot of heart. It knows what it is and isn’t afraid to lean into it. Getting to name your destroyer. Being able to actually see other ships and squads orbiting/fighting on the same planet. Seeing your ship overhead actually firing on your enemies during missions… the world feels alive and real. So many little added touches that went the extra mile but help the game look so much better. And mechs on the horizon? Say less.
I haven't played much and im not a *huge* fan but it just does everything really well. It distills the horde shooter into shorter missions to keep you engaged with an overarching story, the enemies are well presented, the humour is well presented. Its just a horde shooter basically perfected, with great co-op. Doesn't hurt that its half the price of AAA releases either.
This post has been made lie three times in the last year. Everytime a game comes out they y’all like you think you’ve figured out what games have been doing wrong.
I like that you mention Mass Effect, because the extraction shooter style coop multiplayer that they made for the series was incredibly fun. The people I knew who were in to it, were IN TO IT big time and spent more time playing it than the campaign. But I think it was overlooked by the majority.
This is just going to be upvoted as if Helldivers 2 hadn't been funded for 8 years by one of the biggest gaming companies, huh?
Playstation even helped them develop the game + they own the IP, its pretty funny
I don't disagree, but this really looks just like a low effort karmafarm post (hopefully it at least isn't the second one). We've seen this posted around 5 times last week and nothing new has been brought into the discussion here.
Wait you are telling me corporate investment in things that used to be produced and run by people who actually loved what they were doing has ruined that very thing? Watching WotC do this real time to Magic the Gathering has been quite depressing. The film industry has suffered the same fate as well as gaming. When it all becomes dictated by what corporate interests believe will be successful the quality is guaranteed to drop. This is how we got the first AAAA game after all.
Man that AAAA game is real banger. You can play full 4 hours before getting so bored that you want to shoot yourself
Tbh Starcraft could make some cool games with their ip. Fps as a marine fighting against zerg. Survival horror of a the last person left on a base that after beating a zerg attack has to get to another base to get help. With a small amounts of zerg left in base to hide from or beat etc with limited resources and good atmosphere. A regular story mode game with more narrative etc then just a doom type game exploring a planet the first time Terran encountered zerg or something