Pawlicker 🔧 on Nostr: That last part is IMO the biggest one. Everyone forgets how the EAs and Activisions ...
That last part is IMO the biggest one.
Everyone forgets how the EAs and Activisions of the world were shuttering their middle-A studios or devs of less blockbuster games. The EA stuff is well documented with the famous "Killed by EA" charts that get updated yearly. With Activision they were making their mid-A devs that made some cool games in the 00s/early 10s be support devs for CoD. Rockstar did the same shit, you can see how the devs that made unique games in the PS2 and 360 era become GTA support devs.
There are many minor/less common examples too. Cave pulled out of making arcade shmups and just makes gachashit when they're not rereleasing their old games/having devs do ports of them for extra cashflow. Sega doesn't make as many games as they used to outside of their cash cows (SMT, Yakuza, Sonic), and I'm sure there are many more examples if you just go over every single dev.
And even before it was DEI cancer, they were doing the same thing where the game dev was filled with "cogs" who replaced creative vision with trying to make what the boss wants for money. And you had to do it; just look at what has happened with CoD BO3's rushed and confusing single player, and BO4 having single player completely cut out because they had the deadline to meet.
Look who 343 was hiring as a high profile example of cogs. In 2012 it wasn't DEI hires, it was "let's hire people who hate Halo to make the game". They didn't hire turbo fans who would have shit themselves to work on a Halo game but interchangeable cogs. Halo 4 would come out, get eclipsed by BO2, and much of it would feel weird (different sound effects, gameplay that wasn't like the classics, trying to continue an ended story, etc.)
Everyone forgets how the EAs and Activisions of the world were shuttering their middle-A studios or devs of less blockbuster games. The EA stuff is well documented with the famous "Killed by EA" charts that get updated yearly. With Activision they were making their mid-A devs that made some cool games in the 00s/early 10s be support devs for CoD. Rockstar did the same shit, you can see how the devs that made unique games in the PS2 and 360 era become GTA support devs.
There are many minor/less common examples too. Cave pulled out of making arcade shmups and just makes gachashit when they're not rereleasing their old games/having devs do ports of them for extra cashflow. Sega doesn't make as many games as they used to outside of their cash cows (SMT, Yakuza, Sonic), and I'm sure there are many more examples if you just go over every single dev.
And even before it was DEI cancer, they were doing the same thing where the game dev was filled with "cogs" who replaced creative vision with trying to make what the boss wants for money. And you had to do it; just look at what has happened with CoD BO3's rushed and confusing single player, and BO4 having single player completely cut out because they had the deadline to meet.
Look who 343 was hiring as a high profile example of cogs. In 2012 it wasn't DEI hires, it was "let's hire people who hate Halo to make the game". They didn't hire turbo fans who would have shit themselves to work on a Halo game but interchangeable cogs. Halo 4 would come out, get eclipsed by BO2, and much of it would feel weird (different sound effects, gameplay that wasn't like the classics, trying to continue an ended story, etc.)