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[GigaBowser]

Sure there are still some great studio's out there, but I just read a post where someone said game development talent have moved on to other industries or retired and aren't what they used to be,

and it struck me,

they were right

Think about the industry and all the most notable game developers...

Kojima, Itegaki, Miyamoto, Carmack, Mikami, Gabe...

They're all past their primes or outright retired.

What we're left with are a bloated teams of wannabe movie graphic designers who don't know the first thing about making fun games. Add to that cancel culture and wokeness pushing away all of the real talent and replacing them with blue haired smurfs because of equal opportunity, and what we're left with is watered down talent that are giving us crap like Batman: Gotham Knights and Saints Row between remastering and reselling us games from an era where developers actually knew what they were doing.

You know it's a harbinger of doom when Rockstar goes from "toxic frat boy culture" and the Houser brothers,

to this

GTA 6 development slowed partly due to Rockstar reform — report

GTA 6 development is apparently slow-moving due to Rockstar Games' culture reform, which is working towards becoming a "kinder, more progressive company," a recent Bloomberg report has uncovered.

www.trueachievements.com

Edit startling new thread development: White Knights, this isn't even aimed at women developers, it's a declaration that publishers are no longer attracting the best talent and assembling the best development teams in general because reasons........

 

[PonyStation4]

Games have become more expensive to develop while still selling at $60, along with more competition at lower price points such as $20 and under indie games. It's just not worth taking risks on a high budget game

 

[sobaka770]

You're doing a great disservice to your argument by paying this Twitter message. Women in gaming and in dev are not the problem, and it's nice of rockstar to wish them a happy 8th of March.

As for the talent at the top - yes, a lot of visionaries got replaced by suits and passion projects became corporate. It happens everywhere, in each industry. And considering how expensive AAA production had become - nobody will take a risk at this point. Look for AA or indie space for your darlings.

 

[GigaBowser]

Games have become more expensive to develop while still selling at $60, along with more competition at lower price points such as $20 and under indie games. It's just not worth taking risks on a high budget game

Yes, yes.

Also cell phone games, f2p, wokeness.

There's less incentive and opportunity for visionaries in the AAA space.

 

[IlGialloMondadori]

You’ve solved it, Sherlock - it’s wokeness and the females that are the problem, not you.

OP wrote something idiotic, and is clearly someone who has never been in engineering and development.

 

[kanjobazooie]

You deserve a nobel prize for this discovery.

 

[Kagey K]

I used to like hearing stories about the old Xbox Live Arcade limits and what devs had to do to overcome it.

Now it's just hundreds of gigs of unorganized code

 

[Filben]

No, it's the market and the mass audience that drive publishers and developers and produces practices and systems and mechanisms many core or older gamers despise.

Yes, there is a level of incompetence (shader compilation stutter on UE games on PC), but the big players deliver what the mass of players demand. It's the same with pop music, mainstream Hollywood films, etc.

 

[Romulus]

It's the same everywhere. People are distracted throughout the day by social media now. It adds up to medicory.

 

[IlGialloMondadori]

OP lecturing on why women devs have ruined gaming.

 

[IlGialloMondadori]

It's the same everywhere. People are distracted throughout the day by social media now. It adds up to medicory.

MediCory, my second favourite Cory.

 

[jhjfss]

How do you evaluate that AAA games are "declining"?

 

[phil_t98]

Sure there are still some great studio's out there, but I just read a post where someone said game development talent have moved on to other industries or retired and aren't what they used to be,

and it struck me,

they were right

Think about the industry and all the most notable game developers...

Kojima, Itegaki, Miyamoto, Carmack, Mikami, Gabe...

They're all past their primes or outright retired.

What we're left with are a bloated teams of wannabe movie graphic designers who don't know the first thing about making fun games. Add to that cancel culture and wokeness pushing away all of the real talent and replacing them with blue haired smurfs because of equal opportunity, and what we're left with is watered down talent that are giving us crap like Batman: Gotham Knights and Saints Row between remastering and reselling us games from an era where developers actually knew what they were doing.

You know it's a harbinger of doom when Rockstar goes from "toxic frat boy culture" and the Houser brothers,

to this

so the company who has one of the most successful games share a twitter picture of the female staff who work there and it triggers you. got it

 

[Con_Z_ǝdʇ]

The gaming market is just highly oversaturated.

It's very easy to find examples for your arguments if you narrow your view just enough. You are very superficial here, as always.

I choose to believe that the times have never been better. I don't even have time to play half of the games i would like to. With an endless supply of Indies, AA and AAA games i can cherry pick while having an awesome time throughout the year.

Yes, there are many bad games out there. But, for every mediocre experience there is just another gem right around the corner.

 

[ANIMAL1975]

Sure there are still some great studio's out there, but I just read a post where someone said game development talent have moved on to other industries or retired and aren't what they used to be,...

You have a good example on Gaf,
VFXVeteran left the industry to a weapons fabricator to program missile chips.

Games have become more expensive to develop while still selling at $60, along with more competition at lower price points such as $20 and under indie games. It's just not worth taking risks on a high budget game

But i think the core problem is a creativity hiatus situation, all that you mention comes after.

 

[ADiTAR]

Tho I don't agree with the OP way of saying it. There's a decline in creativity and polish in all industries.

The problem is lack of criticism and being unable to get offended, which is the main driver for creativity. Because when someone tells you your idea sucks, then you come up with a new one. A better one. You're able to criticize yourself and push yourself for better. You look inward and rethink. And that ranges through all the fields, including if you're a programer with finding a better way to write a script.

I'm sure there are horror stories about Steve Jobs that we may never hear about, but from what you can gather online, he was ruthless, very opinionated, and demanding. He would have led Apple in a different direction it's heading now, with way more interesting innovation and better quality overall (I have their new Mac16" and the camera bump is stuip af). He would have been fired in today's climate.

 

[GigaBowser]

so the company who has one of the most successful games share a twitter picture of the female staff who work there and it triggers you. got it

I have no problem with female game developers if they are the best at what they do and the most qualified for the job.

Who are your favourite female game developers?

List them for me.

You might have heard of this before...

Modern Game Developer transition point starting in the PS360 era (2007), to 2014 - present.

A post so telling I brought it back to the first page for all the world to see.

 

[winjer]

The industry has grown a lot, but there isn't enough talent to go around. So now anyone that can do something will get hired.
Also, in the early decades, game developers were also gamers. So they knew how to make real games. Today I find game makers making basic mistakes, that were already solved years ago, simply because they rarely played a game.

It's also the gamers fault, for so many times buying broken, unfinished games. This has incentivized a lot of companies to release and sell now, fix later, if ever.

 

[phil_t98]

I have no problem with female game developers if they are the best at what they do and the most qualified for the job.

Who are your favourite female game developers?

List them for me.

so why share the picture, to be honest I don't really know any male developers and why should I? I play games not look into profiles of people who make the games. if it is something I enjoy then awesome if its something I don't enjoy I just don't play the game regardless of who makes it or not

 

[01011001]

Games have become more expensive to develop while still selling at $60, along with more competition at lower price points such as $20 and under indie games. It's just not worth taking risks on a high budget game

the thing is, games during the NES, SNES era up to the PS2 era also sold for $60, but were super low budget compared to today while $60 also was way more money back then.
teams in those days often only had like 10 developers and development time was less than 2 years or even less than 1 year.

so imo the price to budget ratio is normalising.

high budget movies also have ridiculously high budgets and they sell for less per copy than games while having zero issue recouping the money before even releasing retail copies, financing themselves simply through comparatively cheap cinema tickets

 

[SJRB]

 

[phil_t98]

the thing is, games during the NES, SNES era up to the PS2 era also sold for $60, but were super low budget compared to today while $60 also was way more money back then.
teams in those days often only had like 10 developers and development time was less than 2 years or even less than 1 year.

so imo the price to budget ratio is normalising.

high budget movies also have ridiculously high budgets and they sell for less per copy than games while having zero issue recouping the money before even releasing retail copies, financing themselves simply through comparatively cheap cinema tickets

while your correct games didn't sell as many as they do today

 

[lh032]

ok kingfey

 

[01011001]

while your correct games didn't sell as many as they do today

profit margins were also way smaller back then. now with digital distribution publishers get a way bigger cut.

so we have more sales on average and higher margins. IMO that should balance things out somewhat.

 

[Shits_McGiggles]

You're doing a great disservice to your argument by paying this Twitter message. Women in gaming and in dev are not the problem, and it's nice of rockstar to wish them a happy 8th of March.

As for the talent at the top - yes, a lot of visionaries got replaced by suits and passion projects became corporate. It happens everywhere, in each industry. And considering how expensive AAA production had become - nobody will take a risk at this point. Look for AA or indie space for your darlings.

I think it is important to observe just how much more corporatized the whole industry became during the 2010s.
Much like the Germans sending Lenin into Russia to destabilize Russia during WWI, people like Anita Sarkeesian (whose arguments are no different than those of Jack Thompson) were shoved into the spotlight of the games industry. The parading of Anita and the ensuing online culture war (which benefited games journalists the most in satisfying their need to be more than just news media rejects) destabilized the industry and basically killed off any remaining sense of fun the industry at large had.

The corporatization of the games industry was in progress during the 7th generation because of the increasing costs, but the culture war and the chase for “maturity” that game journalists would never shut up about was the nail in the coffin.


The games industry was never perfect, but you can absolutely feel the sterile environment that was born from game journalists effectively winning Gamergate and how that victory gave rise to greater corporate control to ensure that the product complied with the demands of the victorious ideological group.

There is little passion and even less compassion in such environments, and without competitive pay to encourage people to stay, there really isn’t much of a reason for talent (especially programming talent) to remain rather than work in other, higher paying industries instead (or become indie, but the indie journey is incredibly perilous, and often indie devs fall into the same traps of trying to appeal to games journalists in order to have a chance of making any money. Like it or not, gaming media is such a vital aspect in the success or failure of any product).

 

[phil_t98]

profit margins were also way smaller back then. now with digital distribution publishers get a way bigger cut.

so we have more sales on average and higher margins. IMO that should balance things out somewhat.

you kno0w games these days make a shit ton of money

 

[IlGialloMondadori]

I think it is important to observe just how much more corporatized the whole industry became during the 2010s.
Much like the Germans sending Lenin into Russia to destabilize Russia during WWI, people like Anita Sarkeesian (whose arguments are no different than those of Jack Thompson) were shoved into the spotlight of the games industry. The parading of Anita and the ensuing online culture war (which benefited games journalists the most in satisfying their need to be more than just news media rejects) destabilized the industry and basically killed off any remaining sense of fun the industry at large had.

The corporatization of the games industry was in progress during the 7th generation because of the increasing costs, but the culture war and the chase for “maturity” that game journalists would never shut up about was the nail in the coffin.


The games industry was never perfect, but you can absolutely feel the sterile environment that was born from game journalists effectively winning Gamergate and how that victory gave rise to greater corporate control to ensure that the product complied with the demands of the victorious ideological group.

There is little passion and even less compassion in such environments, and without competitive pay to encourage people to stay, there really isn’t much of a reason for talent (especially programming talent) to remain rather than work in other, higher paying industries instead (or become indie, but the indie journey is incredibly perilous, and often indie devs fall into the same traps of trying to appeal to games journalists in order to have a chance of making any money. Like it or not, gaming media is such a vital aspect in the success or failure of any product).

"Much like the Germans sending Lenin into Russia to destabilize Russia during WWI, people like Anita Sarkeesian"

I can't believe this is not satire.

 

[KungFucius]

Why would you expect anyone who is not a sexist piece of shit to agree with your post? Jests Christ. You are citing a picture of the female members of staff who probably still make a tiny slice of the whole team as a proof of what exactly, that having women on the team is bad? Letting the women support each other is bad for gaming?

And you double down with your sexist bullshit with replies. The reason you don't have as good a job as some women or minorities is because you are so fucking stupid that you think this is reasonable and that shows in your low quality output, not that women are given good jobs because of some quota.

 

[Shits_McGiggles]

"Much like the Germans sending Lenin into Russia to destabilize Russia during WWI, people like Anita Sarkeesian"

I can't believe this is not satire.

I mean, if you look at Anita Sarkeesian’s history of “critiquing pop culture,” it’s pretty evident that she just jumped around to different media types and genres peddling her wares until she hit the gravy train with video games. Her arguments should have been treated with the same mocking contempt as Jack Thompson’s, as they basically boiled down to the same video games are dangerous argument…. But that’s not what happened. The games media praised her and defended her at every step of the way and people who didn’t even like video games in the first place became louder and louder voices in online discourse for video games.

 

[IlGialloMondadori]

 

[IlGialloMondadori]

I mean, if you look at Anita Sarkeesian’s history of “critiquing pop culture,” it’s pretty evident that she just jumped around to different media types and genres peddling her wares until she hit the gravy train with video games. Her arguments should have been treated with the same mocking contempt as Jack Thompson’s, as they basically boiled down to the same video games are dangerous argument…. But that’s not what happened. The games media praised her and defended her at every step of the way and people who didn’t even like video games in the first place became louder and louder voices in online discourse for video games.

I literally haven't seen a mention of Anita Sarkeesian in years - until you did just now - and Jack Thompson was a news item in 90s.

It's okay to let go.

 

[GigaBowser]

Why would you expect anyone who is not a sexist piece of shit to agree with your post? Jests Christ. You are citing a picture of the female members of staff who probably still make a tiny slice of the whole team as a proof of what exactly, that having women on the team is bad? Letting the women support each other is bad for gaming?

And you double down with your sexist bullshit with replies. The reason you don't have as good a job as some women or minorities is because you are so fucking stupid that you think this is reasonable and that shows in your low quality output, not that women are given good jobs because of some quota.

You're missing the point.

Rockstar/Ubi and many others are in the midst of trying to change their corporate culture hiring all these people to fill quotas and showing it off on social media so they get good PR points after being slammed for being misogynistic because of alleged scandals like most other major publishers.

It's not at all sexist to want the best employees to be working on games, be it female or male........ not employees who fit a pr agenda.

 

[Kagey K]

I literally haven't seen a mention of Anita Sarkeesian in years - until you did just now - and Jack Thompson was a news item in 90s.

It's okay to let go.

Never. There's been a war on gaming since MKII.

The only way it ends is in blood

Nerds unite. And do nothing, as expected

 

[IlGialloMondadori]

You're missing the point.

Rockstar/Ubi and many others are in the midst of trying to change their corporate culture hiring all these people to fill quotas and showing it off on social media so they get good PR points after being slammed for being misogynistic because of alleged scandals like most other major publishers.

It's not at all sexist to want the best employees to be working on games, be it female or male........ not employees who fit a pr agenda.

How do you know these aren't the best candidates? Are you handling their pull requests or something? Why do you think it's all bad that a company changes culture after people were being bullied? Have you ever worked at a technology company yourself?

What if, wait for it, Rockstar's next game is good?

 

[IlGialloMondadori]

Never. There's been a war on gaming since MKII.

The only way it ends is in blood

A war on gaming lol. That tiny industry that makes over 200 billion a year, invested in by major players around the world. Won't somebody speak up for gaming?!

 

[Frank Horrigan]

It's not that they don't have the talent (they don't) it's that the industry has changed to the point where they don't need the talent.

Why make a brand new IP with interesting writing, when you can use a dopamine loop, addiction triggers and FOMO to create a lootbox/mtx fest that relies solely on whales?

Take a look at old school Blizzard. They used to be an amazing developer, then they started raking in millions through £15 a month subs for WoW back in 2002~. The talent you need to churn out new contnent is a lot less than the talent you need to create a game from scratch. That's the industry nowadays

 

[apple_of_enlightenment]

Ah now we know where all the booth babes ended up.

 

[GigaBowser]

How do you know these aren't the best candidates? Are you handling their pull requests or something? Why do you think it's all bad that a company changes culture after people were being bullied? Have you ever worked at a technology company yourself?

What if, wait for it, Rockstar's next game is good?

As referenced in the OP, there are people at Rockstar themselves who have doubts the next GTA will be as good or as big as GTAV was because of the recent changes in their corporate culture which is slowing down development and even limiting the size and scope of the game.

 

[NiiloPielinen]

womyn are ruining muh vidya

 

[Kagey K]

A war on gaming lol. That tiny industry that makes over 200 billion a year, invested in by major players around the world. Won't somebody speak up for gaming?!

Jesus you made me think I was making this up.

But it wasn't always a 2B industry and our parents had no problem blaming our problems on video games

 

[Three]

Ah now we know where all the booth babes ended up.

Not sure if this is a compliment or an insult

 

[Black_Stride]

Frikken Genius.
Its Wokeness fault

Women and Minorities always spoiling Game development.

Some recent-ish works by women.

Environment textures, set dressing and shaders

Environment textures and shaders

Concept Art:

Environment textures, shaders and set dressing:

I could go all day.

 

[TheGecko]

It's probably me you read that from.

Another problem is you can't even legitimately criticise these blue haired freaks because you just get labeled as a racist.

It's what Disney have done with their IP... Don't like it, oh you're a racist... No Disney, it's just a shit film.

 

[TheGecko]

Frikken Genius.
Its Wokeness fault

Women and Minorities always spoiling Game development.

Some recent-ish works by women.

Environment textures, set dressing and shaders

Environment textures and shaders

Concept Art:

Environment textures, shaders and set dressing:

I could go all day.

And you've proven the point. All these freaks care about is the wow factor with looks. It's a tiktok generation brain thing.

All shine no substance and you have just proven it for us all.

 

[GigaBowser]

womyn are ruining muh vidya

 

[Black_Stride]

And you've proven the point. All these freaks care about is the wow factor with looks. It's a tiktok generation brain thing.

All shine no substance and you have just proven it for us all.

Are we really saying God of War and The Last of Us are all shine and no substance now?


Yup, I think thats my que to leave this thread.

 

[TheGecko]

Are we really saying God of War and The Last of Us are all shine and no substance now?


Yup, I think thats my que to leave this thread.

They might be visually stunning but they are litterally cover shooter and a basic as it gets hack n slash. Get back to me when there's some interesting and ENGAGING gameplay.

 

[Damigos]

Lack of imagination

Every single AAA game is a rehash or a remaster or a reimagining or sequel or prequel of something that already exists

I cant find any actual new gaming stories or mechanics or ideas that are original

 

[IlGialloMondadori]

They might be visually stunning but they are litterally cover shooter and a basic as it gets hack n slash. Get back to me when there's some interesting and ENGAGING gameplay.

Enlighten us all with your examples of the days of yore when men were men and games were only made by men that had interesting and ENGAGING gameplay, so we can get a baseline here of what we're comparing to.

 

[The_Mike]

I have no problem with female game developers if they are the best at what they do and the most qualified for the job.

Who are your favourite female game developers?

List them for me.

Bro I don't even name a favorite male game developer.

I play games, I don't worship the people behind them.