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PlayStation has formed new studio Dark Outlaw Games with Call of Duty Zombies lead Jason Blundell

Fbh

Gold Member
Hopefully Sony is already negotiating this game appearing on Secret Level Season 2, so it too can live on in a mid animated anthology after it gets cancelled or shut down.
I've been told the art directors are hard at work creating amazing characters!

JBpDGLo.jpeg


But don't they like have say on anything? Just no strings attached? Give em money and wait for them, if they get something cool, if not tough luck? šŸ˜

I mean, Sony pulled out from the project which is ultimately what led the studio to be shut down.
When you work with external companies you usually don't get to tell them how to run their business. But you can set terms, conditions, milestones, etc that, if not met, will terminate your business relationship with them...which is exactly what Sony did.
 

nial

Member
But don't they like have say on anything? Just no strings attached? Give em money and wait for them, if they get something cool, if not tough luck? šŸ˜
That's literally how it works in a developer-publisher collaboration. The only thing you can do when stuff starts running into issues and not producing any results, is to pull the funding.
Expecting Sony to do anything for the management issues of a company that, once again, they do NOT own is stupid. In what world do you live?
 
New IP or whatever but I just want Sony to give Resistance or Killzone another chance.

Well the rumor is this is a Killzone-related game, which would be cool. Honestly there hasn't been a graphical powerhouse FPS since Shadowfall and that's been over a decade. GG just never nailed the gameplay loop.

Blundell & his team would be able to do that and finally make the best Killzone game ever.

Another GAS attempt ?

If it's Killzone-related, probably not. Likely going to be something with a meaty SP campaign but also lots of MP modes making it a mixed live-service game. Think something along the lines of GT7.
 
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EN250

Member
Hopefully Sony is already negotiating this game appearing on Secret Level Season 2, so it too can live on in a mid animated anthology after it gets cancelled or shut down.
I've been told the art directors are hard at work creating amazing characters!

JBpDGLo.jpeg




I mean, Sony pulled out from the project which is ultimately what led the studio to be shut down.
When you work with external companies you usually don't get to tell them how to run their business. But you can set terms, conditions, milestones, etc that, if not met, will terminate your business relationship with them...which is exactly what Sony did.
Ok, so there are some options like in any other business with milestones and other stuff, it's not like Sony couldn't do crap and devs could burn money infinitely šŸ˜‚

In that case, I guess they did what they could at the time, that money could have funded something better, what a waste
 
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Mibu no ookami

Demoted MemberĀ® Proā„¢
It is said that this is to compete with COD and Battlefield.

To that I say, good luck.

Han Solo Good Luck GIF by Star Wars

Who said it was to compete with CoD and Battlefield?

Even if it's true, it makes sense that Sony would build an internal studio to do so rather than rely on a startup. It'll make recruiting a lot easier if it is a Sony studio.

Nothing to be confused about. Blundell left Deviation and the game didn't work out there with them, so Sony pulled it while also opening this new internal studio under Blundell. There's a pretty reasonable chance that they're picking up where Deviation left off on that project as a lot of former Deviation staff are working with him in the new studio. Deviation is gone, closed last year.

We will likely never know the finer details about what went wrong with the project at Deviation, but that's none of our business anyways. All we can say based on observation is that it didn't work out.

Think you have to be careful about making assumptions. Can you name 5 people who work at this studio that worked for Deviation games? The idea that they're picking up where they left off makes a lot of assumptions about who has access and ownership of assets that none of us would be in a position to know.

Blundell was a co founder so not sure why he would leave his own studio. If Deviation games didn't work out not much confidence this one will either unless it's fully playstation owned. Even then who knows.

A lot of people fundamentally don't understand how difficult it is to make a successful game. As a result they don't understand that when a project fails, it's probably not one person's fault. Blundell obviously wasn't happy with the direction the studio was going and decided to leave. That doesn't say much about the project though. Deviation games came into existence during one of the most difficult times to build a start up to make games, which was during the pandemic. All the difficulties of any project x100.

Titanfall wasn't super successful but Apex Legends was. Can you explain why? The Star Wars Jedi series has also been somewhat successful. According to you, shouldn't Titanfall have been indicative of future success?

There are a lot of people for this studio to recruit and there are so many factors as to whether or not the studio can be successful.

What's the budget of this studio vs what the budget for Deviation games was. What is the mission statement for the new studio? Is it the same as Deviation Games? Are they making the same game or is it a different game?

Let's paint the picture that I think most people assume when they think of a Blundell studio, that the mission statement is to build a counter to Call of Duty before the parity deal expires. Let's assume that deal ends in 2033. Blundell may have come to Sony with the idea of creating a CoD killer when he left Deviation at the end of 2022. Let's make an assumption that the goal would be to deliver a game by 2028.

Maybe Sony puts half a billion dollars into the recruitment and development of this project. Maybe that's a sizeable improvement over the budget from Deviation games, which is rumored to have been around 50 million dollars.

Do you know how recruitment works? There are several factors actually. First, there's a massive amount of out of work developers, that's a pot you can look into. Second, you can look at other Sony studios in the area. Third, you can poach a lot of junior employees and making them less junior employees, or employees and make them senior employees, or senior employees and make them leads/directors. This generally all comes down to money.

Deviation games clearly wasn't given a long runway. The studio was formed in 2020 (height of the pandemic), the deal with Sony was announced in 2021, Blundell left in 2022, their game was seemingly canceled in 2023, and the studio closed down in 2024.
 
Blundell wouldnā€™t confirm where the studio is in terms of production schedule, other than that the studio has been going ā€œfor a little bit of time.ā€

ā€œItā€™s about getting the team to gel,ā€ he continued. ā€œIā€™m a programmer at heart so letā€™s test those assumptions, is it working?ā€¦ Youā€™re trying to hit that escape velocity.ā€

Blundell also confirmed he will serve as studio head and director for Dark Outlaw Games.

Tinfoil hat time:
Deviation games was full of woketard purple haired wankers who wanted to self-insert themselves and their shitty ideology into the game in order to own the chuds.

Blundell after a while just said, "fuck it! Burn it down, Sony!" so Sony did just that. Pulled the plug on the game and the studio, laid everybody off except Blundell and gave him to chance to build up a new team working on a new project with people whose mutual primary goal is to delight gamers.
 

larrybrady

Member
So this is %100 a gaas game? Already lost all interest in it if soā€¦. But I hope itā€™s a home run for the gaas lovers
 
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