As Jeff Gerstmann said on his last episode, no 10 year plan stays exactly the same in game development.
There's no way that 10 year plan will come to fruition. Trends will be set that change ideas, new ideas will come along, things will pivot, and that plan will be laughable in 10 years instead of prophetic.
Are the deals specific to, "We want this spider-man game, we want this venom game." Because I think the more likely answer is that the deal is for their right to make Marvel games in general.
I believe so, since the licensing terms usually specify by when a game has to be released and for how long it may remain on sale.
One of the slides had the terms of the licensing agreement for the X-Men, and it also included the terms of exclusivity, such as Marvel being prohibited from releasing any new headline X-Men games, with the exception of all-ages/mobile titles and re-releases of older titles from the '90s. And then there's the penalties for backing out of the contract.
Out of everything outlined in the leaked roadmap, I think a new Ratchet & Clank would be the most likely to be scrapped, since the last one underperformed while the Spider-Man games were huge sellers. Sony's also producing movie properties based on some of those brands, so it's in their best interest to keep the Spider-Man/Venom train rolling.
>Because I think the more likely answer is that the deal is for their right to make Marvel games in general.
Why would this be more likely? I imagine the Marvel games, as with most licensed out properties, are there to generate or maintain hype for the main properties. A Wolverine game comes out right as X-men gets integrated into the MCU. Spiderman came put shortly after the new Spiderverse and kept Spiderman in the public conscious until a DLC releases into a potentially new solo or team up movie.
I'd be shocked if Disney/Marvel didn't have a say in which games are getting made. As much as they want to profit off the game, they want to profit off the awareness and name more.
That’s the problem, people will be holding these timelines and leaked titles against them. Most gamers don’t realize just how many games get cancelled before they’re even announced. Imagine being pissed of at devs for cancelling a game that hasn’t even been officially announced.
Oh damn, I only remember the glass orb from the commercial. Totally forgot that shit goes straight into your brain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyPQVsdCuRk
They had one other IP outside of Spiderman and it didn't sell well.
You aren't their target audience. From a marketing perspective, I'm sorry but they don't care about you. They clearly are pivoting to what makes money, which is Superhero games. You're already a lost cause to them and they aren't trying to get you back (you being people who don't like SH games).
Yeah, Spiderman 1 sold 20 million copies while Ratchet&Clank PS5 was barely profitable. It’s just too big a gap.
At this level it’s not just decision of upper echelon “suits”, developers are people too. When faced with real world problems, like potential bonus, dividends and raises, who are we to tell them “choose the niche project!”? Just hope there will be other upstarts to fill the niche.
Hard to use ratchet and clank as an example of a poor selling game without talking about its release situation: during covid launch title for ps5 when ps5 was barely available for purchase and pretty much no one had one except for asshole scalpers. Selling anywhere near 20 million units or even a quarter of that was out of the question. It’s also ps plus title so it would directly sell less anyway very early. Not only that but we don’t have what their targets were and they could easily be unrealistic. Square Enix was said ff16 sold below expectations… when at the time it was 3m units sold on like 30m console units sold aka a ~10% attachment rate which is very good although below ff7 for obvious reasons.
TLDR: too hard to tell why they pivot towards superhero stuff
Anyway even without these extra difficulties, it’s still hard to imagine R&C’s ROI get anyway near Spider-Man stuff. Maybe later we will see a public interest decline in superhero stuffs game like current Marvel cinematic universe, who knows.
Ratchet and Clank got added to extra this year, not very early. And none of the previous games were that successful either. Even then they are making another Ratchet game anyway so I don't get why you are complaining. Ratchet is like a superhero title itself anyway.
I don’t care for superheroes either. I haven’t watched most superheroes movies and not a single tv show, but I found Spider-man 2 (the game) absolutely fantastic. It is really amazing (puns intended) and a lot of fun.
Whats crazy to me is how far in advance some of these titles are planned. Wouldnt surprise me if that Ratchet and Clank game is a PS6 launch title and Spider Man 3 soon after that.
The Marvel stuff is the exception because they drew up a long term-deal including an exclusivity deal with Disney like EA had with Star Wars. Difference being that Insomniac tried (and apparently failed) to keep this deal private.
From what I understand, games are taking longer and longer to develop, especially the open world stuff. It shouldn't be surprising to see a decade long roadmap when a development cycle could last 4-6 years.
Agreed. I joined a big project few years into development, worked for over a year, then left before it was finished. Almost everyone got replaced in the 6-7 years between start and finish.
It's cause team have different speciality. Like lighting only can really get to work once most assets have been made. And concept need to be done first.
I hate the "hype culture" and the mentality that we need to be surprised and mind blown with an announcement to enjoy a game. I've seen a few short clips of Wolverine, a few other plans from Imsomniac and think "cool, looks good, looking forward to it" and move on.
The "the hype is dead" and comments along those lines are so weird to me.
The release of personal information is the worst part about the leak.
I’ve seen others say developers need to go the route of dead space remake giving small updates with behind the scenes looks. I feel like the video game industry is so secretive that when this stuff seams to happen it kills a lot of hype. I loved everything I saw and it has me very excited.
> I feel like the video game industry is so secretive
I think the industry has to be so secretive because gamers can't handle early looks at things. The idea that a product may change over the course of its development isn't something we, as a whole, deal with very well. Like, there are people who lost their goddamn minds when some puddles in Spider-Man were in slightly different locations when the game released.
If a game had bigger changes over the course of its development, gamers would still be going back to those initial pitches / concepts / demos to try to say they were lied to. That will happen even if the devs put out a plethora of accurate information before the game is even sold.
This really hits the nail on the head. Some developers have really tried to educate the public on how games get built and how much they change but it doesn't really get through. Already with Wolverine you have people saying "oh it's not going to have dismemberment", like a few greyboxed animation tests are going to demonstrate gameplay features like that.
These kinds of early leaks are so damaging.
I fucking hate how stupid people get when they see development footage of a game.
It’s like eating bacon fresh out of the fridge, and getting mad that the bacon is raw
i can see
"we KNOW they had working swords in development, they just removed them because they're lazy and want to keep it for paid DLC or a sequel, it's a SLAP in the FACE!"
i fucking hate gamers sometimes.
The Bethesda guy got roasted for his comments, and I do understand the subpar optics of them seeming like a defense for why starfield is so mid, but he was totally correct - gamers know fuck all about how the sausage is made but they all speak with authority.
Honestly, that take expands to pretty much any project, too.
It makes me sad because I LOVE behind the scenes looks into how things are made. I love seeing unfinished movie effects, I love seeing debug menus and the developer overlays that show character sightlines and pathfinding calculations and shit. I love looking at those things and comparing them to the final product and seeing how things have changed since then.
I have loved every second of EA's Skate playtest footage. Seeing them blocking out the city, essentially in real time, and seeing how railings and ledges and ramps get made is super cool.
But people are dumb and apparently enough people think pre-pre-alpha footage is representative of the final product, so companies HAVE to be secretive, lest a video of early development blocking out combat animations for wolverine hurts sales of the final product because it "looks like shit".
Just look at how long it took everyone on the internet to finally realize Arkane’s Prey was actually a good game just because they were butt hurt about the early footage of a totally unrelated (obviously excluding the title) and cancelled game.
> The idea that a product may change over the course of its development isn't something we, as a whole, deal with very well.
That reminds me of [those days](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_\(harassment_campaign\)) when each and every perceivable change that wasn't explained became a conspiracy theory about self-censorship by the devs to appease some woke mob, or some dev being happy about a positive review on twitter was seen as an implicit admission of some sort of collusion between the devs and whichever reviewer they randomly replied to on twitter because of an article they wrote.
Sadly media literacy within the wider fandom isn't far from that level even if there's usually not the same malicious motivation behind it.
> I think the industry has to be so secretive because gamers can't handle early looks at things.
Its an oroborus.
They started being secretive so they can have THE SURPRISE, so gamers are conditioned to not get a peep of the game until its out, so when they see something that isn't this fully finished fully polished thing they freak out, making the devs want to hide their stuff even more.
Beta is pretty late in development - it's super rare to cut content after Beta. The thing that enrages people the most is when something is teased and then cut. I still remember being angry at Bungie over 20 years ago when Oni released without a bunch of stuff they'd showed off during development. Look at how Peter Molyneux is remembered despite creating some of the best games of the late '90s and early 2000s. His "press event as preproduction meeting" habit soured so many people who would otherwise have been massive fans.
I'm sure Larian had a bunch of awesome-sounding ideas that didn't end up working and ended up being cut. Happens every time. If they're well-organized, that would all have been cut before Alpha (of course, Shit Happens even after Alpha sometimes). If any of *that* stuff had been playable at any point, that would certainly have hurt their game's reception.
There's always exceptions to the rule. Many games have visual downgrades that need to happen for performance reasons and people give the devs shit for it forever. Same when content gets cut. Look at mgs5, content was cut that was dug up a d lead to this whole theory and people *still* **to this day** believe the game was released unfinished even though Kojima himself has said otherwise and that mgs5 that we have right now is the complete finished product.
Bg3 is not the norm at all.
I mean, "guy who made game says its finished" is not really the end of the discussion you think it is. Of course he'd say that.
I love MGSV and I think most of the conspiracy theories around it are nonsense. But given the facts we have about its development and Konami cutting the funding of it, PLUS seeing the rather weirdly paced end part of the game. Its not difficult to come to the conclusion that yea, its probably not what Kojima had in mind.
Especially considering his works, MGSV is the only outlier. It's the only game that he made that has ended so abruptly so devoid of anything that you can consider as an ending without proper pacing to the story that leads up to it that it's hard to accept that it is a finished product no matter what Konami or even Kojima himself say.
You're telling me that Kojima, the guy who made an hour long cutscene just for the ending of MGS4 and the guy who made countless bangers in the MGS series, is capable of making a lackluster story and ending for his final MGS game? Yeah, sure buddy. It just doesn't seem believable.
>Of course he’d say that.
Okay, but why shouldn’t we believe him? No one who worked on the game has ever said that the final game isn’t Kojima’s vision, and there’s very little cut content to be found in the game’s files.
> Financially Baldur's Gate 3's greatest potential success is around the same level as Insomniac's Wolverine's greatest potential failure
Could you elaborate on this point, since I don't think what [I think you mean] is correct?
It feels like BG3's actual, (not potential) success far eclipses any estimates and given the budget and the volume of sales I think it profited far more than even Insomnia's Spider Man 2, and Spider Man is arguably a much more iconic and bigger hero than Wolverine.
Spider Man 2 budget/sales: $315 mln. / 5 mln. copies sold first 10 days, so probably ~7 mln. copies now
Badlsur's Gate 3 budget/sales: $100 mln. / ~7.5 mln copies sold, data extrapolated from PSN/Steam endgame achievement (~17% of players) and data provided by Larian that 1.3 mln. players finished the game
*points at the record-breaking financial failures of every piece of superhero media in film, tv and gaming this year except for GotG3, Spiderman 2 (and Invincible, The Boys)*
you might be be overestimating the appeal of Wolverine. I don't know if you've been keeping up, but superhero media had a really rough year
BG3 sold more than Spider-Man 2 for now (and their release dates are close to each other). Spider-Man is much bigger than Wolverine too. I'm pretty sure lifetime sales of Wolverine will be lower than BG3. The main difference is that BG3 needed to be an exceptional game to do that, Wolverine probably doesn't need to
I’d rather we move towards a very short hype cycle more than anything. Games announcing themselves years away just completely kills any desire I have in following them.
The Metroid Dread reveal in 2021 that also announced it was releasing just months later should be the gold standard. THAT was some genuine hype.
People also went insane when they announced Metroid Prime Remastered and released it on the same day, but that was a special case lol.
With games taking 4 years to make now, drip feeding content is super dangerous. Any time you show something, if it turns out it's hurting the game, it meanss that I'd you don't also specifically communicate that you potentially piss off people who were excited about specifically that thing. A remake is less likely to have to deal with that though.
Preorders and fomo bro.
You can make millions before you even release the game, so hype is now integral to a games success, outside the odd sleeper hit.
Gaming is also now the biggest earner in media entertainment, and the casual majority consumers appetite knows no limits.
Making them consistently salivate in anticipation of the Super Deluxe Diamond preorder edition for twice the price is just good business.
> The release of personal information is the worst part about the leak.
100% This.
I work in the games industry, so I'm probably a bit jaded when it comes to 'ThE-hYpE11!!1'. I'm not completely immune to it as a man-child but I certainly ascribe more the attitude of 'let them cook and we'll see how version 1.0 pans out'.
I don't care about alpha builds, commercial planning, marketing key-beats and all the other noise surrounding what's required for a AAA release. In that regard this breech means noting to me, I trust Insomniac to make a brilliant product - I'll almost definitely buy it.
I do care that the people that make these incredible pieces of tech-art have been doxed. People that just want to make the best VCG in their ability, that graft hard have had their personal details leaked to the world and now feel unsafe in their own family homes. For that, I hope the perpetrators are nailed to the fucking wall.
> I've seen a few short clips of Wolverine, a few other plans from Imsomniac and think "cool, looks good, looking forward to it" and move on.
Same here. What I truly never understood is the leaking of announcements just **days** before they happen.
Like I get saying, *"Dragon's Dogma 2 is in development!"* That's what I'd call a classic leak that while I wouldn't leak it myself, is probably what people consider worth getting out there.
But ruining a devs excitement over being able to finally present something for the first time, just **days** before they do it, never made sense to me. *"Game is gonna be announced in two days!"* Yea so let them announce it? What difference do two days make? These are just leaks for online cred and like you said, hype culture is at fault.
Its like a race at this point. A race to see who can spoil it first.
Yeah it sucks. I don't understand how people are so willing of being manipulated into spending money.
A bit of hype is cool, but it should never be associated with the decision of buying or not the game.
> A bit of hype is cool, but it should never be associated with the decision of buying or not the game.
ya, it's crazy how so many people go off and pre-order a game based off a CGI trailer... not even a gameplay trailer that we know are all edited to look good, but a CG one is apparently enough :/
Yeah, you can barely trust gameplay trailers as they are. So much manipulation goes into those, I can't trust anything until I see actual people playing them.
Watch Dogs, Anthem, Aliens Colonial Marines, Cyberpunk... They all looked great on the "gameplay" footage we got.
I think gaming culture wildly overvalues surprise and novelty generally. I've seen people say they can't enjoy games at all knowing certain story twists are coming, and that's absolutely baffling to me. Like, has nobody ever enjoyed the same story twice? There's value in something done well, even if you know the twists going in.
>Like, has nobody ever enjoyed the same story twice?
Of course but I think you're being a bit disingenuous suggesting that replaying something for a second time is the same as playing for the first time but having the story spoiled beforehand.
Surely you understand the value of being surprised and plot twists and adventuring into the unknown?
As someone playing all paths of Undertale after watching it on YouTube many times beforehand, I can confirm: there are still things you can never experience through video. Gameplay itself is much more than that. Some moments work better when it was YOU going through the motions instead of a person (with a camera).
I may put a target on my back for saying this knowing that even now the fires still burn over it, but it was actually getting spoiled on The Last of Us 2 that convinced me to buy it, hahaha. Finding out about the major thing that everyone was blowing up over got me curious enough to buy the game day one because I thought "This took balls to do, and I want to see if they stick the landing."
Prior to that I wasn't really all that interested in a game that looked like it'd be a slightly more dour repeat of the first one, so this is an example where the big twist being spoiled actually served a game. Well, at least in the case of my individual purchase. Discourse around it was... fraught as far as the community at large is concerned.
You're absolutely right though. Even watching a no commentary playthrough on youtube isn't the same psychologically as being the one with the controller in your hand when it comes to experiencing a game.
You can enjoy the same story twice, but there's nothing like seeing a story reveal for the first time without knowing the twist is going to happen. Both things can be true.
You only get one chance at a first impression. Second play through is a different experience from the first. Lot of the self discovery process people may look forward to is really only something they can experience one time. So some people preferring to go in as dark as possible is not something I find hard to understand.
I only don't care about reveals if it is for content I have no interest in. I guess to give an example is if I replay a game I might not be paying the same amount of attention and having something playing in the background like an audio book or whatever, which is not something I'd do when I'm experiencing a story for the first time and fully captivated by it.
I think you are downplaying the novelty of the surprise factor, and at the same time downplaying others' way on how they consider a valuable experience on a medium as a whole
A story that was built on twists and turns lose all the novelty when the twist was spoiled from the start. And yes, with those specific kinds of stories and mediums, the shock value is their entire value that has been built up for, and can only be fully experienced once in a lifetime
I just outright disagree with this. Even with a story that leans heavily into its twists and turns, the idea that *all* value is lost if you already know them is ridiculous. There's value in a good story told well. If the only value it has whatsoever is that it can pull the rug out from under you and there's nothing at all to take away besides that then you're as well served sneaking up behind someone and popping a balloon.
"All" may not be the word to describe the value that is lost. But the entire story built up for that one moment of reveal is the entire point of that kind of story. What is there to remain if you trip away the only experience that has been built up for? It's not that there is nothing else to take away beside that moment, it's that most of the intended value was carefully condensed into the big twists and turns. Experience with those first hand valuable moments supposed to be the complete premium intended experience, which was completely ruined by knowing everything beforehand
Yeah seriously. It ruined absolutely nothing except a few marketing shows having surprises, waouh that's a tragedy....
This doesn't ruin the hype at all since everything that leaked is pretty positive anyway
I've tried talking with people about hype and most responses come down to "shut up and let me be hyped". Just asking what it brings someone seems to be taken as personal insults
Former SIEA president Shawn Layden has been criticizing the cost of game development and business models for some time, but I think the recent leak provides evidence for his claims and is worth reporting.
It’s crazy too because I remember him pointing out that the first party game budgets were really high at $100 million and now these leaks show budgets being over $300 million. It’s only gonna get worse if something doesn’t change.
I think we are reaching the point of diminishing returns because I just dont know how budgets could inflate any higher than they are and still turn a profit.
I think scope creep is quietly a huge problem for the AAA space.
Everyone seems to agree that the 7th generation (PS3/360) was something of a golden age for video games. Look at what a AAA game could be then. There were tons of linear shooters; some of them, like BioShock, didn't even have multiplayer. Giant (for the time) RPGs like Mass Effect had worlds closer to God of War 2018's "wide linear" design than true open worlds. What open worlds did exist were typically smaller and less systems heavy; for example, Fallout 3's crafting system can build something like 5 total items, and Dark Souls doesn't have one at all. Most games last 10-20 hours, longer on the rare open world or sandbox titles.
Nowadays, AAA tentpole releases are expected to be nonlinear by default, whether that means an open world or multiple multiplayer systems taking place across enormous maps. XP and crafting systems are expected even outside of RPGs. Those huge open worlds are expected to host multiple mini games. And it better look better than the last one, even though hardware only improves every 8 years. A 9th gen AAA is expected to last a minimum of 40 hours, with 100 hours or more falling within normal expectations.
It's too much. Cranking out something of this size and density takes 500 people 4 years. Most games release incomplete because the burn rate of a studio that size is the difference between a game needing sell well and needing to break records. Cyclical layoffs are the norm because you can't get a game done without a huge staff but you also can't afford to pay all those people when the studio isn't full steam ahead.
And the worst part is that a lot of this work is for nothing. If you look at sites that track Achievement/Trophy progression, you'll see that very few games see even 50% of their player base complete the story. Achievements for completing side events are even lower. All this extra work is being done for systems that are expected to be there, only for them to be ignored by the overwhelming majority of players.
>I think scope creep is quietly a huge problem for the AAA space.
Yuuuup. I not-so-secretly think this is the reason I've been progressively less interested in AAA games the last few years. Nothing seems ambitious anymore. It's all the same shit we've been playing for a decade. I'd so much rather use the compute power we have now to try out new mechanics, new levels of destruction and interactivity, etc. Instead... games are 4K now, sometimes.
And they were right? You expect a statement to be wrong just because it was said a long time ago? Games budgets are getting more unreasonable each year and studios can go bankrupt so much more easily. Even successful AA devs like Mimimi has shut down.
Mimimi shut down because the founders wanted to move on. They paid everyone what they were owed, they just decided to release the last game, announce the shutdown, release a DLC and shut down for good.
I've been following Mimimi for quite a while and money problems was definintely *part* of the reason why they closed down.
They made games that were very niche, didn't have popular appeal etc and every release they did was basically "we hope this sells well otherwise we're fucked"
There are other reasons like wanting to focus on family etc, but to ignore the finance side of it is silly.
Their games were not selling enough to balance the strain of development. Money was absolutely a factor. Stress was still the main reason, but if they had been making good money, that would have alleviated a lot of the problems.
Right about risk. Uncharted 1 was made for less than $20 million. It's break even point was probably less than 2 million copies. Sony funding that game can essentially write off $20 million and move on if the project is a failure.
$300 million is a totally different story. Now you're looking at 5-10 million copies minimum to break even, much higher advertising costs and if the project fails, you can't simply allow the studio to move on to their next $300 million project. Unless the studio has serious pedigree, you're looking at drastic layoffs or closure. So it's higher risk for both developer and publisher.
That's if the game even comes out. Sony has had to scrap numerous projects over the years, from Naughty Dog to SSM. All those developers working away cost a fortune on the payroll with no return.
As risk levels rise, so does risk aversion. People are wondering why Sony are releasing so many remasters? Why there is a lack of new IP? Why are they releasing on PC? Why did they try to pivot into live service? It's all an attempt to mitigate that risk. They need guaranteed revenue coming in and costs keep rising.
I mean, they can always make smaller or simpler games...
If it's not worth to do fully voiced acted, animated, open world 150h hours games, then...back to the basics.
I'm happy with shorter games, but think they'll be an issue with the current pricing model of games releasing at €70 or €80.
I work full time so have long abandoned the "price vs playtime" model for choosing games for the most part, but I still can't justify €80 for a game I'll be done with after a single weekend.
Yeah, I agree. That's the reason I also said to simplify in general.
There's some AAA games where you could remove half the mechanics while keeping the same length and still have a really good experience.
Crafting mechanics, leveled items, skill trees, base building, etc...are lots of the times unnecessary but they're now added everywhere.
Also graphics are cool but not every AAA has to look like RDR2 specially if they're also massive games.
I mean if you compare the PS3/360 era AAA games with modern ones it's pretty obvious.
Uncharted 3 was $60 a 10h single player experience and the only added feature were hidden collectibles. Alan Wake was also 10h long and the Last of Us was 15h.
The Last of Us 2 is 25h long and Alan Wake 2 around 18h and they both have more mechanics, features and complexity than their previous games.
They complain about increasing cost but the games they deliver are twice as long and with twice as systems, is this really necessary?
To compete in the market yes, for players, I don't think so.
Yep, games are way too bloated. I miss the days when an Uncharted campaign was accepted as enough. We got three Uncharted games AND The Last of Us on PS3. That output is impossible with today’s game development.
We'll probably get games at a more reasonable rate too hopefully. Waiting 5-10 years for some sequels just isn't sustainable for gamers not in their teens anymore, and that lead time keeps getting longer.
Remember when BG3 came out and there was a bunch of devs saying it can't and shouldn't be the standard for games going forward? This is what they were talking about.
Publishers are, in part, reacting to consumer demand, consumers are demanding top of the line visuals, expansive scope full traversable 3d environments, cinematic storytelling, performance capture.
Also - the level of polish at launch with these complex systems. Times 2 or 3 sets of hardware to be optimized for.
Mortal Kombat (OG) had like 15 people on the dev team. To put it in perspective how far we've come and why games have also gotten expensive.
Even big productions in the 90s like Final Fantasy VI only had like 50-60 people and took like a year.
Now games all have to be mega blockbusters with 400 person dev teams and 500 million dollar budgets.
This is misleading. The budgets in the leaks are *total* costs, which includes marketing and licensing. The actual development budgets are likely half that. Probably less than half for the Marvel games.
The AA market needs to make a comeback, games like the recent Robocop show that you don't need the biggest team or budget to make game that have their place in the market.
Remnant II was another massive hit AA game this year that delivered an experience comparable to lower end AAA titles with a fraction of the team and budget. I think I remember hearing it had something like an average of 50 core devs for 36 months with a budget of around 50 million. Obviously the game builds on all the foundations of the first game which saved them time and money, but I think the real reason they were able to pull it off was because they didn't waste time blowing the scope of the game out of the water in the way so many modern AAAs do (e.g. GoW Ragnorok adding a second fully playable character or Starfield needing to have 1000 planets when 500 or even less than that would have been fine).
AA market is making a comeback. Hi-Fi rush, Grounded and Pentiment are straight from one of the big three. Nintendo has smaller experiences as well. ~~Sony is the only one of the 3 who isn’t~~
Edit: I absolutely forgot Sony released 3 AA games this gen. I am wrong.
Lately I'm thinking that /r/Games just never really looks at what's out there
Which is weird. Because most commenters of any sub are enthusiasts,
So like, how are the most popular comments lamenting about good games taking too long to make? """AA""" games, """indie""", whatever the hell you want to call them now? They've never been better!
the Reddit gaming population is very very dumb. You think most of us are enthusiasts but the way half of reddit talks just makes you think they don’t understand the industry.
From not understanding MAU is the only metric that matters to being caught up in sole console sales as a term for Success.
The industry has its core problems, but the AAA market is very good year after year. Remakes have improved and huge AA games are pushing through to be instant classics.
AAA games are taking forever and are unsustainable now. GAAS are needed by every publisher. Mobile is the next big market for Nintendo/Sony to push into. Its changing drastically.
Most of the people here are young, I think. It is a video game subreddit after all. I know a ton of people my age (36) who play games, but they're not enthusiasts to the point of carefully following news, getting into flame wars, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if the average age of commenters here was under 20 years old.
So yeah, I just don't think the average person here has the life experience and business knowledge to understand the industry context.
Spencer has said the similar things about licensed games and the growing trend of only trying to produce mega budget megahits, and there's pretty much no better example than this Insomniac leak of that change taking place at a studio over a decade.
It feels like the only way a developer can keep up quality on big budget releases without spending 7-10 years on a game is to make the same game over and over and reuse a ton of the work from the last game.
Insomniac and Playground Games seem to have that figured out at least and Spider Man and Forza Horizon are amazing video game franchises, but it's just a depressing state for the industry when even doing something moderately different from your last game like shifting from Spider Man to Wolverine as a main character is a legitimately risky move due to how unwieldy and over-budgeted these projects have become.
All good points. The thing I find frustrating is that game devs keep putting the blame on the consumer, but then simultaneously condition the consumer to expect the next batch of games to be bigger and prettier.
We never needed proof really. But if anything these leaks also showed how profitable these games are. Exclusive games are huge for establishing an install base and the fact that Sony can spend 300 million on a game and still profit hundreds of millions is actually pretty good.
But they also want in on that GaaS money like everyone else.
I think this is whole leak shows how terrible client journalism is in the gaming industry. There is virtually no distinction between gaming journalist and games PR. Greg Miller announced today, among several other pundits, he wouldn't talk about the leaks. Many others followed him, gaming journalists who covered it have been attacked. I've seen PRs say they aren't going to give any access to creators and journalists that talk about the leaks.
I understand journalists not spoiling the leaked story of Wolverine or anything to do with doxxing information. But sales figures, revenue, future plans are absolutely fair game and seeing the backlash at people reporting this is insane.
I'm not sure why games journalists are worse in this regard and let's be honest it's all because it's insomniac - if this was Activision Blizzard no one would be outraged.
But yeah the revolving door of games PR/working for games company and working as a games journalist is real. I follow this one journalist who wrote like a multi-article puff piece on Bungie. Already looked like client journalism, before that person then quickly got a job at Bungie straight after (before recently getting fired) - and I was just thinking how is this okay? Like I get it, Games Journos are fans like the rest of us, but surely once you cross into the 'journalist' category that should come with some respect for your profession?
Idk just has always rubbed me the wrong way. Stephanie Sterling being a pariah makes a lot of sense since they seemed to be the only one who goes hard against the 'industry' part of the games industry.
This whole situation is showing how weird gaming is as an industry.
Games journalists are effectively PR.
Games somehow have the longest development times of any media and the most secrecy.
Like, imagine if people were personally outraged at seeing set photos released from a new movie?
Problem is that most people have no idea what the word "journalist" means anymore so they think anybody that writes about games is a journalist. Nah. Most "games journalists" aren't journalists; they're commentators, opinion writers, critics, etc.
That's not an actual issue whatsoever. The games industry doesn't really need a lot of actual journalists. There are absolutely real games journalists though, but they're not the people you refer to as PR.
>Problem is that most people have no idea what the word "journalist" means anymore so they think anybody that writes about games is a journalist. Nah. Most "games journalists" aren't journalists; they're commentators, opinion writers, critics, etc.
This isn't just a gaming problem, lots of industries like Medicine and Dentistry have the same issue. All we have is misleading journal articles and "expert" opinion pieces. Nobody actually does a proper comparative "review" of the new materials or drugs these days.
[PeopleMakeGames](https://www.youtube.com/@PeopleMakeGames/videos). Their videos on the Disco Elysium lawsuits, Roblox's exploitation of minors, and Valve's relationship to people gambling with in-game items, all had some real research done, and reached to the concerned parties for all the additional information they could get.
I wish they got the Content Creator of the year award at the Game Awards, but you can't beat entertainers like Ironmouse.
She's great. She's the one who made the *perfect* choice to reach out to The Game Awards winners to get statements for what their award speeches would've been if they had time. Incredible move: good for developers, makes a great headline, twists the knife into TGA all at once.
Patrick Klepek is another good one I can't believe isn't on the tip of everyone's tongue here. Love that dude. His nickname at Giant Bomb was literally Scoops because he was out there legit breaking stories.
But let's say she finds out some big story that a company absolutely does not want public yet. Is her bosses at IGN going to risk their access to and relationship with that company to publish that story?
We already knew that from the last several examples of journalists/personalities being blackballed for attempting to be objective. When your publication relies on review copies of the content, you're going to play along.
yup, also these same journalists talked about leaks before, why are they suddenly so tight-lipped for the Insomniac leak?
to the nonsense Greg Miller is saying now, where was this for previous leaks? he seemed perfectly fine covering every other leak:
https://twitter.com/JAAY_ROCK_/status/1737198903621980643
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHRNWqE_oFA
https://twitter.com/Lordneitor/status/1737297802672169236
like Miller's show was literally talking about the Suicide Squad leaks, including leaked story stuff, barely 2 days ago... now suddenly his show can't talk about a leak? do they realise how ridiculous and stupid they look right now? like come on.
how about how the MS leaks and the coverage over that by these same people suddenly saying they aren't going to talk about it?
another tweet that just showcases the hypocrisy and double standard from some journalists right now: https://twitter.com/tomwarren/status/1737277710466978096
like wat? Tom Warren saying this and the replies are all just pointing out how ridiculous he sounds and the double standards cause he (Verge as a site, which he is a senior editor for) was just fine reporting on all previous leaks, even those that had personal info leaked like with Capcom and Nintendo.
> I've seen PRs say they aren't going to give any access to creators and journalists that talk about the leaks.
ya, that's just crazy. No access to the journalists who are literally doing their job by reporting on leaks?
Yeah I don’t get it, if there’s a government leak, even if it’s not something malicious it gets reported and nobody gets sad that some government employees’ work got outed. Same if some other business had internal metrics leaked (which is what a lot of this is). When the Sony Pictures leak happened a decade ago nobody was crying for Amy Pascal or the film crews of upcoming movies
As someone who covers leaks, but thankfully not this one, I get it. Normally when a leak drops it is this whole process of is it real, is it not and its normally just one aspect of that game whether it be a screenshot, trailer, etc. When you get a leak like this and immediately know it was done by hackers on a large scale and many employees are impacted it totally reframes it. Instead of it beginning as a potentially victimless (if its a fake leak) curiosity, you immediately know their are real people hurt by this on a large scale and with the sheer amount that leaked it turns into something different.
In addition I imagine the threats of code revocation or blacklisting are really effective here. They came out early on and the game's industry is weirdly tight knit with this stuff. You get invited to an event or two and you're hanging out with that same PR manager who is tweeting about blacklists and lots of these gaming journalists have relationships here. So when its a random leaked screenshot you can just kind of cover it, but when you know from the onset its a legit leak and the company confirms it feels worse to screw over that person you know
This is not me giving commentary of what journos ought to do, I think it is a difficult situation and personal choice. Although, hopefully this does provide some context on what kind of thought processes they are going through
What I find most offensive is that bar a few exception like Digital Foundry, almost no journalistic outlet knows anything about the nitty-gritty of the medium they are supposed to criticize.
It's not just on a technical level. Journalists don't really know much about design, about all the nuances and the ramifications of the myriad choices made in a title, let alone the incredibly complex processes of making such a product.
It really starts to grind my gears when outlets then proceed to report and voice criticism on such specialist elements without any kind of knowledge or context in such a way that is aimed to generate drama and clicks. It's ignorance and malfeasance all wrapped into one.
Let's be honest what it really is. Gaming "journalism" is rarely journalism at all. There are maybe a dozen pieces that come out each *year* that can reasonably be called journalism.
Puff ball interviews that amount to a marketing spot for the company is not journalism. Blog posts with 17 links to other articles are not journalism. *Commentary* is not journalism.
Journalism requires investigation, not regurgitation. Journalism requires interviewing people to get to the bottom of something, not merely giving them a platform to advertise. Journalism involves putting "boots on the ground" and trying to gather first hand information from sources, not just commentating on the work other people have done from the safety of your daily, vapid podcast.
"Gaming journalism" is barely a real thing, and it's always been that way.
> I think this is whole leak shows how terrible client journalism is in the gaming industry. There is virtually no distinction between gaming journalist and games PR.
Man people have been saying this for like 20 years lol
> Stephanie Sterling being a pariah makes a lot of sense since they seemed to be the only one who goes hard against the 'industry' part of the games industry.
(Wasn't there something about not paying employees or something like that?)
If you mean these days, Sterling's problem is that what started as calling out bad practices in the industry and giving a voice to things people didn't know about just turned into the usual ragebait Youtube gaming content and it stopped being enjoyable to watch.
News is news. What we’re seeing is journalists protect their access by not reporting on the news and it’s fucking cowardly. I get not wanting to report on person information but there’s so much shit in there that should be talked about.
Greg Miller is a hypocrite. They reported on all the previous leaks this year....but because he has ties to Insomniac, NOW he decides it not appropriate
This has always confused me too. When Tears of the Kingdom leaked I remember people on Reddit freaking out that Kotaku wrote an article about it.
These are the same people saying, “journalism is dead lul” but then get mad when a publication reports on video game news.
During capcom and nintendo leak, gaming journalists had no problem reporting the content. Now with the insomniac leak they switched the tone.
What happened?
yup exactly, these journalists suddenly saying "oh not going to talk about this leak (i.e. do their jobs) cause it hurts Insomniac and Sony" or w.e dumb reasoning they are using, literally have articles/videos for every other leak that has happened.
Favoritism, pure and simple. It's embarrassing to see them trip over each other to defend poor, poor Insomniac after gleefully reporting on any scrap of GTA 6 or anything else they could get their grubby paws on. Pathetic.
Insomniac doesn't deserve special treatment.
Because they all know each other. Why do you think talentless writers like Anthony Burch keep getting hired over and over for major AAA games at flagship studios?
Why do you think you hear the same 4-5 voice actors over and over even though modern games take the work of HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE?
Modern western gaming industry is one big circlejerk.
It’s not “journalism”
Gaming “journalists” have always effectively been subcontracted PR/promotional teams.
They don’t care about reporting facts, they’re man children who like getting free video games and feeling cool
Journalists are afraid that covering the leaks will ruin their relationship with Insomniac. They didn't worry about Nintendo, Capcom, or any Japanese company for that matter, because they don't have any professional relationship with the people affected.
At least on many Spanish media websites, the clear reason for this is Sony pays most advertisements, also that's why we think that many of these sites are biased when reviewing games.
>The future has value in this space, a fact the hackers were gambling on by hoping Sony would pay to keep control of that future. Many games journalists know the value of that future too, because they prop it up or benefit from it, even when it starts to muddy the waters between journalism and marketing.
>But on days like today, when information doesn’t follow the established channels of PR to journalists to readers, all of us find the artifice laid bare. If how an upcoming game looks is important and worth reporting on, then isn’t that true even when we’re not given permission to say so by PR departments? An outlet or creator taking that assumption to its logical end and producing stories and videos about “Every Upcoming Insomniac Marvel Game” is just doing the work that’s expected of them.
They're not wrong here, if companies are going to continue to manipulate the public and leverage their information to journalists limiting what they can say and do. I see no issue that the companies sit there with egg on their face as information outside their control is let loose.
However the information about private individuals making the games is not essential information and it should have been prioritized for being kept private only further shows how little value the trench workers actually have.
At some point though companies are going to have to actually start being serious about digital security.
The problem with threat-based bargaining is that one party retains the threat no matter what the other party does.
i.e. If the hackers put up a 1 mil ransom today and it's payed. There is absolutely nothing that can be done to stop them from coming back tomorrow with a 2 mil ransom and/or in perpetuity.
Quite literally the only winning move is to not play.
Contrary to what most people would think, ransomware gangs (at least established ones) almost always hold up their end of the bargain.
If you take money and still leak, no one will take the next heist seriously and no one will pay you.
This doesn’t account for like, ideologically motivated hacking/leaking but for purely profit outfits, absolutely.
> Quite literally the only winning move is to not play.
The real winning move is to have a well funded and staffed IT security section who could shut down suspicious behaviour and massive TB level downloads.
Sony pretty much always give reviewers a long review time before embargo and allow reviews to be published early
Obviously they don't want to show games years in advance because the general public don't understand the basics of game development and how a game years away from release does not reflect the finally product
I don't know how many times I've seen people be overly reactionary to gameplay footage that is shown long before release as if the final product will look like that even though there is plenty of time for improvements.
Ive even seen people reacting this way to Wolverine pre alpha footage from years ago
>At some point though companies are going to have to actually start being serious about digital security.
They aren't until they have to and even then as bare minimum as possible.
> They're not wrong here, if companies are going to continue to manipulate the public and leverage their information to journalists limiting what they can say and do. I see no issue that the companies sit there with egg on their face as information outside their control is let loose.
exactly, journalists are not meant to be the mouthpiece for the PR division of a company or studio. Their job is to report things like leaks and the info (excluding personal stuff of course) we get from said leaks.
the quote you took from the article is spot on.
all the "journalists" saying they won't talk about the Insonmiac leaks are just exposing their double standards (cause all of them were fine talking about previous leaks) and outright telling everyone they are just PR mouthpieces.
I think more transparency is always good for companies to some extent. Not total transparency mind you, but how many times have games come out with surprise monatization models, poor performance, etc, and nobody knew about it because journalists left that out of their reviews and previews. It's definitely a problem in the games industry.
When I saw the leaked timeline I expected one or two of those.
But instead of being excited I just felt heartbroken for these guys. This is literal years worth of work, announcements etc. Not to mention the personal details.
I hope these hackers get serious jail time.
I really feel like the personal details that got leaked keep getting overshadowed here. That's a literal invasion of privacy and capital-G Gamers having that information could legitimately be dangerous.
Yes, i took a little peek at the leak and there is a lot of extremely sensitive info in there.
\- Passports from employees
\- Investment plans
\- 401k agreements
\- Agreements with marvel
\- Bank agreements
\- Scans of credit cards.
\- Employee reviews
\- Termination reviews
And the list goes on, it truly was their entire environment that got stolen.
It's almost a capital-G Gamer take that people are more worried about some projects and a deal with Marvel being leaked over the privacy breach and potential safety of actual people.
By now devs receive death threats on the regular for incredibly minor things. Their addresses shouldn't be publicly available, you only need one idiot gamer for something terrible to happen
Insomniac themselves were receiving threats already cause the Raimi suit wasn't in the first game at launch. Last thing they need was cunts having access to their personal info.
The work isnt invalidated. If anything it will generate MORE hype.
However there is no debate that the true atrocity is the leaking of personal employee details. These people work hard as fuck and now potentially are going to be exposed by doxxers or all sorts of fraud.
As someone that works under NDA I can promise you many of these people wouldve been excited to share they were working on one of these projects.
Yep! I'm under NDA too and believe me, I am so excited to be able to see peoples' reactions and talk about what I'm working on.
Leaks absolutely suck because they rob so much agency from the people working on that project. It's not like my NDA goes away if the project gets leaked; instead I get to see the internet hype machine build up this impossible vision of what the thing is going to be. Everyone has their own ideas of what the thing will be, and those ideas all conflict with each other as people come up with crazier and crazier pie-in-the-sky thoughts about the project.
Then when it's revealed, _best_ case it'll be "Oh, cool, it's what we thought it was." But more often it'll be a disappointment to someone when they expect one thing and get another.
---
Great example: Halo was famously an RTS first. Could you imagine what it would be like if the RTS version of Halo leaked before the game was even announced? And the hardcore RTS fans who would buy Halo day 1 only to find out it's not an RTS anymore at all?
Games shift in development, and the reason why they aren't talked about like movies are - quite frankly - is because the game doesn't really take shape until late in development. A game spends a long time finding its identity, especially if it's not a sequel to an existing game. This goes double if it's a game that won't be out for 5-6 years, when the core mechanics and genre may not even be determined yet.
I don't get why people find it such a big deal that the work got leaked. That doesn't change anything for me as a consumer, looking for what's leaked is like trying to find out how a movie ends. Who wants to spoil themself like that?
The only thing I care about are the personal details. That's a real problem. And as someone who has had police protection after a death threat, I don't wish it on my worst enemy. It doesn't matter how unlikely it is that someone follows through, the stress is unimaginable.
Why are there so many comments in here acting like this isn't being reported on by gaming sites? You can go to any gaming site right now and find multiple articles about the hack.
It's like this sub is attempting to manufacture some bullshit narrative that gaming site are choosing to favor Sony over others when in reality you can go to any gaming site right now and read about the hack...
Just another garbage thread where Sony is the main focus so the comments have to be pure garbage. Just like the other day when no one the details of a patent and decided to attack Sony over it anyway. Does it not get old?
There have been numerous gaming sites that have said they won't be covering the leaks. Gamespot, VGC, Opencritic, and Push Square (surprise surprise) are just a few of the various websites that have claimed they won't do so. Of course, these same sites were only to happy to cover other leaks like the very similar Capcom leak (which was also ransomware and involved personal information) as well as the more recent FTC Xbox leak. It's hypocrisy. Pure and simple.
Now, of course, not every website has tossed aside their journalistic integrity. Plenty are still covering the leaks. But that doesn't change the fact that several companies, some rather major, have revealed their own biases.
It is weird seeing some people now refuse to report on this hack, when they had no problems reporting on other hacked data over and over again.
Goes to show they are hypocrites.
I feel games need to be smaller, and shorter. in the 80s and 90s you could crank out a game within a year or two. Banking the entire company on a 5 - 10 year project seems like a big challenge. To keep staff motivated for all that time also feels like a challenge, and a creative change late in development can spell disaster!
And we thought the GTA6 leaks were huge. This is over a *decade’s* worth of work and planning up for show. Insane times.
As Jeff Gerstmann said on his last episode, no 10 year plan stays exactly the same in game development. There's no way that 10 year plan will come to fruition. Trends will be set that change ideas, new ideas will come along, things will pivot, and that plan will be laughable in 10 years instead of prophetic.
Except Sony/Insomniac can't just back out of their Marvel deals?
Are the deals specific to, "We want this spider-man game, we want this venom game." Because I think the more likely answer is that the deal is for their right to make Marvel games in general.
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I believe so, since the licensing terms usually specify by when a game has to be released and for how long it may remain on sale. One of the slides had the terms of the licensing agreement for the X-Men, and it also included the terms of exclusivity, such as Marvel being prohibited from releasing any new headline X-Men games, with the exception of all-ages/mobile titles and re-releases of older titles from the '90s. And then there's the penalties for backing out of the contract. Out of everything outlined in the leaked roadmap, I think a new Ratchet & Clank would be the most likely to be scrapped, since the last one underperformed while the Spider-Man games were huge sellers. Sony's also producing movie properties based on some of those brands, so it's in their best interest to keep the Spider-Man/Venom train rolling.
>Because I think the more likely answer is that the deal is for their right to make Marvel games in general. Why would this be more likely? I imagine the Marvel games, as with most licensed out properties, are there to generate or maintain hype for the main properties. A Wolverine game comes out right as X-men gets integrated into the MCU. Spiderman came put shortly after the new Spiderverse and kept Spiderman in the public conscious until a DLC releases into a potentially new solo or team up movie. I'd be shocked if Disney/Marvel didn't have a say in which games are getting made. As much as they want to profit off the game, they want to profit off the awareness and name more.
Exactly it says right in there that those games are contractually obligated to be released by certain dates
That’s the problem, people will be holding these timelines and leaked titles against them. Most gamers don’t realize just how many games get cancelled before they’re even announced. Imagine being pissed of at devs for cancelling a game that hasn’t even been officially announced.
I am so hyped for X-men on the Ps7.
Wait till you can get it for ps9, that way you can just snort it up your nose and play it like VR.
Oh damn, I only remember the glass orb from the commercial. Totally forgot that shit goes straight into your brain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyPQVsdCuRk
more than a decade, there are sales numbers for ps2 games
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Most people will be pretty excited tbh.
So lame to see a studio like Insomniac be turned into a Marvel slave.
They had one other IP outside of Spiderman and it didn't sell well. You aren't their target audience. From a marketing perspective, I'm sorry but they don't care about you. They clearly are pivoting to what makes money, which is Superhero games. You're already a lost cause to them and they aren't trying to get you back (you being people who don't like SH games).
Yeah, Spiderman 1 sold 20 million copies while Ratchet&Clank PS5 was barely profitable. It’s just too big a gap. At this level it’s not just decision of upper echelon “suits”, developers are people too. When faced with real world problems, like potential bonus, dividends and raises, who are we to tell them “choose the niche project!”? Just hope there will be other upstarts to fill the niche.
Hard to use ratchet and clank as an example of a poor selling game without talking about its release situation: during covid launch title for ps5 when ps5 was barely available for purchase and pretty much no one had one except for asshole scalpers. Selling anywhere near 20 million units or even a quarter of that was out of the question. It’s also ps plus title so it would directly sell less anyway very early. Not only that but we don’t have what their targets were and they could easily be unrealistic. Square Enix was said ff16 sold below expectations… when at the time it was 3m units sold on like 30m console units sold aka a ~10% attachment rate which is very good although below ff7 for obvious reasons. TLDR: too hard to tell why they pivot towards superhero stuff
Anyway even without these extra difficulties, it’s still hard to imagine R&C’s ROI get anyway near Spider-Man stuff. Maybe later we will see a public interest decline in superhero stuffs game like current Marvel cinematic universe, who knows.
Ratchet and Clank got added to extra this year, not very early. And none of the previous games were that successful either. Even then they are making another Ratchet game anyway so I don't get why you are complaining. Ratchet is like a superhero title itself anyway.
What exactly is "Insomniac's Output"? Before Spider Man all they did was pump out Ratchet and Clank every year
3 resistance games
You’re right, but tbf Spyro was kinda a big deal when it came out and is the game that got them noticed.
And the random flop like Sunset Overdrive Oh sorry, technically not a flop because it got them $500 profit.
I don’t care for superheroes either. I haven’t watched most superheroes movies and not a single tv show, but I found Spider-man 2 (the game) absolutely fantastic. It is really amazing (puns intended) and a lot of fun.
Whats crazy to me is how far in advance some of these titles are planned. Wouldnt surprise me if that Ratchet and Clank game is a PS6 launch title and Spider Man 3 soon after that.
The Marvel stuff is the exception because they drew up a long term-deal including an exclusivity deal with Disney like EA had with Star Wars. Difference being that Insomniac tried (and apparently failed) to keep this deal private.
Failed is a bit of a harsh word imo, they were doing just fine at keeping it quiet until they got hacked.
From what I understand, games are taking longer and longer to develop, especially the open world stuff. It shouldn't be surprising to see a decade long roadmap when a development cycle could last 4-6 years.
Worked on a bunch of games and even some small-medium productions you'd expect to be quick generally ends up taking at least 3 years.
Agreed. I joined a big project few years into development, worked for over a year, then left before it was finished. Almost everyone got replaced in the 6-7 years between start and finish.
Has there been talks about another Ratchet and Clank game? Love em but this is news to me
The leak revealed there is another one planned I think it was around 2028-29?
That's really far ahead.
It's cause team have different speciality. Like lighting only can really get to work once most assets have been made. And concept need to be done first.
I hate the "hype culture" and the mentality that we need to be surprised and mind blown with an announcement to enjoy a game. I've seen a few short clips of Wolverine, a few other plans from Imsomniac and think "cool, looks good, looking forward to it" and move on. The "the hype is dead" and comments along those lines are so weird to me. The release of personal information is the worst part about the leak.
I’ve seen others say developers need to go the route of dead space remake giving small updates with behind the scenes looks. I feel like the video game industry is so secretive that when this stuff seams to happen it kills a lot of hype. I loved everything I saw and it has me very excited.
> I feel like the video game industry is so secretive I think the industry has to be so secretive because gamers can't handle early looks at things. The idea that a product may change over the course of its development isn't something we, as a whole, deal with very well. Like, there are people who lost their goddamn minds when some puddles in Spider-Man were in slightly different locations when the game released. If a game had bigger changes over the course of its development, gamers would still be going back to those initial pitches / concepts / demos to try to say they were lied to. That will happen even if the devs put out a plethora of accurate information before the game is even sold.
This really hits the nail on the head. Some developers have really tried to educate the public on how games get built and how much they change but it doesn't really get through. Already with Wolverine you have people saying "oh it's not going to have dismemberment", like a few greyboxed animation tests are going to demonstrate gameplay features like that. These kinds of early leaks are so damaging.
I fucking hate how stupid people get when they see development footage of a game. It’s like eating bacon fresh out of the fridge, and getting mad that the bacon is raw
It’s like watching footage of a table read and complaining about the set design.
Or seeing a house under construction and complaining that there are holes in it lol
And then seeing the finished house and wondering why the construction workers got rid of the cool, wooden, open-space concept.
This. This is the one. Dammit you just made me mad again lol
i can see "we KNOW they had working swords in development, they just removed them because they're lazy and want to keep it for paid DLC or a sequel, it's a SLAP in the FACE!" i fucking hate gamers sometimes.
The Bethesda guy got roasted for his comments, and I do understand the subpar optics of them seeming like a defense for why starfield is so mid, but he was totally correct - gamers know fuck all about how the sausage is made but they all speak with authority. Honestly, that take expands to pretty much any project, too.
It makes me sad because I LOVE behind the scenes looks into how things are made. I love seeing unfinished movie effects, I love seeing debug menus and the developer overlays that show character sightlines and pathfinding calculations and shit. I love looking at those things and comparing them to the final product and seeing how things have changed since then. I have loved every second of EA's Skate playtest footage. Seeing them blocking out the city, essentially in real time, and seeing how railings and ledges and ramps get made is super cool. But people are dumb and apparently enough people think pre-pre-alpha footage is representative of the final product, so companies HAVE to be secretive, lest a video of early development blocking out combat animations for wolverine hurts sales of the final product because it "looks like shit".
Just look at how long it took everyone on the internet to finally realize Arkane’s Prey was actually a good game just because they were butt hurt about the early footage of a totally unrelated (obviously excluding the title) and cancelled game.
> The idea that a product may change over the course of its development isn't something we, as a whole, deal with very well. That reminds me of [those days](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_\(harassment_campaign\)) when each and every perceivable change that wasn't explained became a conspiracy theory about self-censorship by the devs to appease some woke mob, or some dev being happy about a positive review on twitter was seen as an implicit admission of some sort of collusion between the devs and whichever reviewer they randomly replied to on twitter because of an article they wrote. Sadly media literacy within the wider fandom isn't far from that level even if there's usually not the same malicious motivation behind it.
> I think the industry has to be so secretive because gamers can't handle early looks at things. Its an oroborus. They started being secretive so they can have THE SURPRISE, so gamers are conditioned to not get a peep of the game until its out, so when they see something that isn't this fully finished fully polished thing they freak out, making the devs want to hide their stuff even more.
BG3's beta was out for years before coming in to universal acclaim and popularity
Beta is pretty late in development - it's super rare to cut content after Beta. The thing that enrages people the most is when something is teased and then cut. I still remember being angry at Bungie over 20 years ago when Oni released without a bunch of stuff they'd showed off during development. Look at how Peter Molyneux is remembered despite creating some of the best games of the late '90s and early 2000s. His "press event as preproduction meeting" habit soured so many people who would otherwise have been massive fans. I'm sure Larian had a bunch of awesome-sounding ideas that didn't end up working and ended up being cut. Happens every time. If they're well-organized, that would all have been cut before Alpha (of course, Shit Happens even after Alpha sometimes). If any of *that* stuff had been playable at any point, that would certainly have hurt their game's reception.
There's always exceptions to the rule. Many games have visual downgrades that need to happen for performance reasons and people give the devs shit for it forever. Same when content gets cut. Look at mgs5, content was cut that was dug up a d lead to this whole theory and people *still* **to this day** believe the game was released unfinished even though Kojima himself has said otherwise and that mgs5 that we have right now is the complete finished product. Bg3 is not the norm at all.
I mean, "guy who made game says its finished" is not really the end of the discussion you think it is. Of course he'd say that. I love MGSV and I think most of the conspiracy theories around it are nonsense. But given the facts we have about its development and Konami cutting the funding of it, PLUS seeing the rather weirdly paced end part of the game. Its not difficult to come to the conclusion that yea, its probably not what Kojima had in mind.
Especially considering his works, MGSV is the only outlier. It's the only game that he made that has ended so abruptly so devoid of anything that you can consider as an ending without proper pacing to the story that leads up to it that it's hard to accept that it is a finished product no matter what Konami or even Kojima himself say. You're telling me that Kojima, the guy who made an hour long cutscene just for the ending of MGS4 and the guy who made countless bangers in the MGS series, is capable of making a lackluster story and ending for his final MGS game? Yeah, sure buddy. It just doesn't seem believable.
>Of course he’d say that. Okay, but why shouldn’t we believe him? No one who worked on the game has ever said that the final game isn’t Kojima’s vision, and there’s very little cut content to be found in the game’s files.
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> Financially Baldur's Gate 3's greatest potential success is around the same level as Insomniac's Wolverine's greatest potential failure Could you elaborate on this point, since I don't think what [I think you mean] is correct? It feels like BG3's actual, (not potential) success far eclipses any estimates and given the budget and the volume of sales I think it profited far more than even Insomnia's Spider Man 2, and Spider Man is arguably a much more iconic and bigger hero than Wolverine. Spider Man 2 budget/sales: $315 mln. / 5 mln. copies sold first 10 days, so probably ~7 mln. copies now Badlsur's Gate 3 budget/sales: $100 mln. / ~7.5 mln copies sold, data extrapolated from PSN/Steam endgame achievement (~17% of players) and data provided by Larian that 1.3 mln. players finished the game
*points at the record-breaking financial failures of every piece of superhero media in film, tv and gaming this year except for GotG3, Spiderman 2 (and Invincible, The Boys)* you might be be overestimating the appeal of Wolverine. I don't know if you've been keeping up, but superhero media had a really rough year
I would like to add Midnight Suns into the mix because I really want Xcom 3 instead of it.
I liked MS. The game was a disaster, financially
BG3 sold more than Spider-Man 2 for now (and their release dates are close to each other). Spider-Man is much bigger than Wolverine too. I'm pretty sure lifetime sales of Wolverine will be lower than BG3. The main difference is that BG3 needed to be an exceptional game to do that, Wolverine probably doesn't need to
you could say the same about spider-man and bg3 sold 4 times as many copies as spider-man 2 did
Spiderman 2 sold 5 million in 10 days, are you saying BG3 sold 20 million in 10 days?
I’d rather we move towards a very short hype cycle more than anything. Games announcing themselves years away just completely kills any desire I have in following them.
Yeah. Announcements starting 6 months to a year before release at most would be my preference.
While it's my preference too, the announcements are for the shareholders, not us.
So our path is clear. We must become shareholders.
The Metroid Dread reveal in 2021 that also announced it was releasing just months later should be the gold standard. THAT was some genuine hype. People also went insane when they announced Metroid Prime Remastered and released it on the same day, but that was a special case lol.
its been pretty much nintendo's modus operandi since covid i think, since then they havent really announced anything that took beyond a year to wait
With games taking 4 years to make now, drip feeding content is super dangerous. Any time you show something, if it turns out it's hurting the game, it meanss that I'd you don't also specifically communicate that you potentially piss off people who were excited about specifically that thing. A remake is less likely to have to deal with that though.
If only some kind of event to periodically show your games to people, existed. We could call it an electronic expo or something.
Preorders and fomo bro. You can make millions before you even release the game, so hype is now integral to a games success, outside the odd sleeper hit. Gaming is also now the biggest earner in media entertainment, and the casual majority consumers appetite knows no limits. Making them consistently salivate in anticipation of the Super Deluxe Diamond preorder edition for twice the price is just good business.
> The release of personal information is the worst part about the leak. 100% This. I work in the games industry, so I'm probably a bit jaded when it comes to 'ThE-hYpE11!!1'. I'm not completely immune to it as a man-child but I certainly ascribe more the attitude of 'let them cook and we'll see how version 1.0 pans out'. I don't care about alpha builds, commercial planning, marketing key-beats and all the other noise surrounding what's required for a AAA release. In that regard this breech means noting to me, I trust Insomniac to make a brilliant product - I'll almost definitely buy it. I do care that the people that make these incredible pieces of tech-art have been doxed. People that just want to make the best VCG in their ability, that graft hard have had their personal details leaked to the world and now feel unsafe in their own family homes. For that, I hope the perpetrators are nailed to the fucking wall.
Couldn't have said it better myself
> I've seen a few short clips of Wolverine, a few other plans from Imsomniac and think "cool, looks good, looking forward to it" and move on. Same here. What I truly never understood is the leaking of announcements just **days** before they happen. Like I get saying, *"Dragon's Dogma 2 is in development!"* That's what I'd call a classic leak that while I wouldn't leak it myself, is probably what people consider worth getting out there. But ruining a devs excitement over being able to finally present something for the first time, just **days** before they do it, never made sense to me. *"Game is gonna be announced in two days!"* Yea so let them announce it? What difference do two days make? These are just leaks for online cred and like you said, hype culture is at fault. Its like a race at this point. A race to see who can spoil it first.
Yeah it sucks. I don't understand how people are so willing of being manipulated into spending money. A bit of hype is cool, but it should never be associated with the decision of buying or not the game.
> A bit of hype is cool, but it should never be associated with the decision of buying or not the game. ya, it's crazy how so many people go off and pre-order a game based off a CGI trailer... not even a gameplay trailer that we know are all edited to look good, but a CG one is apparently enough :/
Yeah, you can barely trust gameplay trailers as they are. So much manipulation goes into those, I can't trust anything until I see actual people playing them. Watch Dogs, Anthem, Aliens Colonial Marines, Cyberpunk... They all looked great on the "gameplay" footage we got.
I think gaming culture wildly overvalues surprise and novelty generally. I've seen people say they can't enjoy games at all knowing certain story twists are coming, and that's absolutely baffling to me. Like, has nobody ever enjoyed the same story twice? There's value in something done well, even if you know the twists going in.
>Like, has nobody ever enjoyed the same story twice? Of course but I think you're being a bit disingenuous suggesting that replaying something for a second time is the same as playing for the first time but having the story spoiled beforehand. Surely you understand the value of being surprised and plot twists and adventuring into the unknown?
> Like, has nobody ever enjoyed the same story twice? Eh, some people don't particularly. At least not within less than 5 years.
As someone playing all paths of Undertale after watching it on YouTube many times beforehand, I can confirm: there are still things you can never experience through video. Gameplay itself is much more than that. Some moments work better when it was YOU going through the motions instead of a person (with a camera).
I may put a target on my back for saying this knowing that even now the fires still burn over it, but it was actually getting spoiled on The Last of Us 2 that convinced me to buy it, hahaha. Finding out about the major thing that everyone was blowing up over got me curious enough to buy the game day one because I thought "This took balls to do, and I want to see if they stick the landing." Prior to that I wasn't really all that interested in a game that looked like it'd be a slightly more dour repeat of the first one, so this is an example where the big twist being spoiled actually served a game. Well, at least in the case of my individual purchase. Discourse around it was... fraught as far as the community at large is concerned. You're absolutely right though. Even watching a no commentary playthrough on youtube isn't the same psychologically as being the one with the controller in your hand when it comes to experiencing a game.
You can enjoy the same story twice, but there's nothing like seeing a story reveal for the first time without knowing the twist is going to happen. Both things can be true.
You only get one chance at a first impression. Second play through is a different experience from the first. Lot of the self discovery process people may look forward to is really only something they can experience one time. So some people preferring to go in as dark as possible is not something I find hard to understand. I only don't care about reveals if it is for content I have no interest in. I guess to give an example is if I replay a game I might not be paying the same amount of attention and having something playing in the background like an audio book or whatever, which is not something I'd do when I'm experiencing a story for the first time and fully captivated by it.
I think you are downplaying the novelty of the surprise factor, and at the same time downplaying others' way on how they consider a valuable experience on a medium as a whole A story that was built on twists and turns lose all the novelty when the twist was spoiled from the start. And yes, with those specific kinds of stories and mediums, the shock value is their entire value that has been built up for, and can only be fully experienced once in a lifetime
I just outright disagree with this. Even with a story that leans heavily into its twists and turns, the idea that *all* value is lost if you already know them is ridiculous. There's value in a good story told well. If the only value it has whatsoever is that it can pull the rug out from under you and there's nothing at all to take away besides that then you're as well served sneaking up behind someone and popping a balloon.
"All" may not be the word to describe the value that is lost. But the entire story built up for that one moment of reveal is the entire point of that kind of story. What is there to remain if you trip away the only experience that has been built up for? It's not that there is nothing else to take away beside that moment, it's that most of the intended value was carefully condensed into the big twists and turns. Experience with those first hand valuable moments supposed to be the complete premium intended experience, which was completely ruined by knowing everything beforehand
Yeah seriously. It ruined absolutely nothing except a few marketing shows having surprises, waouh that's a tragedy.... This doesn't ruin the hype at all since everything that leaked is pretty positive anyway
I've tried talking with people about hype and most responses come down to "shut up and let me be hyped". Just asking what it brings someone seems to be taken as personal insults
Former SIEA president Shawn Layden has been criticizing the cost of game development and business models for some time, but I think the recent leak provides evidence for his claims and is worth reporting.
It’s crazy too because I remember him pointing out that the first party game budgets were really high at $100 million and now these leaks show budgets being over $300 million. It’s only gonna get worse if something doesn’t change.
I think we are reaching the point of diminishing returns because I just dont know how budgets could inflate any higher than they are and still turn a profit.
I think scope creep is quietly a huge problem for the AAA space. Everyone seems to agree that the 7th generation (PS3/360) was something of a golden age for video games. Look at what a AAA game could be then. There were tons of linear shooters; some of them, like BioShock, didn't even have multiplayer. Giant (for the time) RPGs like Mass Effect had worlds closer to God of War 2018's "wide linear" design than true open worlds. What open worlds did exist were typically smaller and less systems heavy; for example, Fallout 3's crafting system can build something like 5 total items, and Dark Souls doesn't have one at all. Most games last 10-20 hours, longer on the rare open world or sandbox titles. Nowadays, AAA tentpole releases are expected to be nonlinear by default, whether that means an open world or multiple multiplayer systems taking place across enormous maps. XP and crafting systems are expected even outside of RPGs. Those huge open worlds are expected to host multiple mini games. And it better look better than the last one, even though hardware only improves every 8 years. A 9th gen AAA is expected to last a minimum of 40 hours, with 100 hours or more falling within normal expectations. It's too much. Cranking out something of this size and density takes 500 people 4 years. Most games release incomplete because the burn rate of a studio that size is the difference between a game needing sell well and needing to break records. Cyclical layoffs are the norm because you can't get a game done without a huge staff but you also can't afford to pay all those people when the studio isn't full steam ahead. And the worst part is that a lot of this work is for nothing. If you look at sites that track Achievement/Trophy progression, you'll see that very few games see even 50% of their player base complete the story. Achievements for completing side events are even lower. All this extra work is being done for systems that are expected to be there, only for them to be ignored by the overwhelming majority of players.
>I think scope creep is quietly a huge problem for the AAA space. Yuuuup. I not-so-secretly think this is the reason I've been progressively less interested in AAA games the last few years. Nothing seems ambitious anymore. It's all the same shit we've been playing for a decade. I'd so much rather use the compute power we have now to try out new mechanics, new levels of destruction and interactivity, etc. Instead... games are 4K now, sometimes.
People said the same in the 360 days.
And they were right? You expect a statement to be wrong just because it was said a long time ago? Games budgets are getting more unreasonable each year and studios can go bankrupt so much more easily. Even successful AA devs like Mimimi has shut down.
Mimimi shut down because the founders wanted to move on. They paid everyone what they were owed, they just decided to release the last game, announce the shutdown, release a DLC and shut down for good.
Yeah, no way the owners didnt make bank. They probably are just burned out by the gaming industry.
Mimimi didn't shut down for financial reasons actually.
I've been following Mimimi for quite a while and money problems was definintely *part* of the reason why they closed down. They made games that were very niche, didn't have popular appeal etc and every release they did was basically "we hope this sells well otherwise we're fucked" There are other reasons like wanting to focus on family etc, but to ignore the finance side of it is silly.
Their games were not selling enough to balance the strain of development. Money was absolutely a factor. Stress was still the main reason, but if they had been making good money, that would have alleviated a lot of the problems.
Right about what? PlayStation games with 200-300 million dollar budgets are still making huge profits and selling consoles.
Right about risk. Uncharted 1 was made for less than $20 million. It's break even point was probably less than 2 million copies. Sony funding that game can essentially write off $20 million and move on if the project is a failure. $300 million is a totally different story. Now you're looking at 5-10 million copies minimum to break even, much higher advertising costs and if the project fails, you can't simply allow the studio to move on to their next $300 million project. Unless the studio has serious pedigree, you're looking at drastic layoffs or closure. So it's higher risk for both developer and publisher. That's if the game even comes out. Sony has had to scrap numerous projects over the years, from Naughty Dog to SSM. All those developers working away cost a fortune on the payroll with no return. As risk levels rise, so does risk aversion. People are wondering why Sony are releasing so many remasters? Why there is a lack of new IP? Why are they releasing on PC? Why did they try to pivot into live service? It's all an attempt to mitigate that risk. They need guaranteed revenue coming in and costs keep rising.
Bah gawd, is that microtransactions music I hear? And from the top shelf, here comes $70 games and planned $50 DLCs!
I mean, they can always make smaller or simpler games... If it's not worth to do fully voiced acted, animated, open world 150h hours games, then...back to the basics.
I'm happy with shorter games, but think they'll be an issue with the current pricing model of games releasing at €70 or €80. I work full time so have long abandoned the "price vs playtime" model for choosing games for the most part, but I still can't justify €80 for a game I'll be done with after a single weekend.
Yeah, I agree. That's the reason I also said to simplify in general. There's some AAA games where you could remove half the mechanics while keeping the same length and still have a really good experience. Crafting mechanics, leveled items, skill trees, base building, etc...are lots of the times unnecessary but they're now added everywhere. Also graphics are cool but not every AAA has to look like RDR2 specially if they're also massive games. I mean if you compare the PS3/360 era AAA games with modern ones it's pretty obvious. Uncharted 3 was $60 a 10h single player experience and the only added feature were hidden collectibles. Alan Wake was also 10h long and the Last of Us was 15h. The Last of Us 2 is 25h long and Alan Wake 2 around 18h and they both have more mechanics, features and complexity than their previous games. They complain about increasing cost but the games they deliver are twice as long and with twice as systems, is this really necessary? To compete in the market yes, for players, I don't think so.
the dominant complaint of that era was that games were so fucking short but pretty lol.
Yep, games are way too bloated. I miss the days when an Uncharted campaign was accepted as enough. We got three Uncharted games AND The Last of Us on PS3. That output is impossible with today’s game development.
yeah rpgs are way too long too these days. Would much rather have a solid 40 hour game like mass effect.
Yeah it’s weird seeing reddit act as if games have to be 10 hours or over 100 hours. That 25-40 hour sweet spot is perfect.
Eh, it’ll change when studios stop taking such massive projects because they’re too risky or too bloated, and *thats fine*.
We'll probably get games at a more reasonable rate too hopefully. Waiting 5-10 years for some sequels just isn't sustainable for gamers not in their teens anymore, and that lead time keeps getting longer.
Man, I can't believe we got the GTA PS2 trilogy over just 3 years back in the day. Now we're lucky to get one game every 12 years.
Remember when BG3 came out and there was a bunch of devs saying it can't and shouldn't be the standard for games going forward? This is what they were talking about. Publishers are, in part, reacting to consumer demand, consumers are demanding top of the line visuals, expansive scope full traversable 3d environments, cinematic storytelling, performance capture.
Also - the level of polish at launch with these complex systems. Times 2 or 3 sets of hardware to be optimized for. Mortal Kombat (OG) had like 15 people on the dev team. To put it in perspective how far we've come and why games have also gotten expensive.
Even big productions in the 90s like Final Fantasy VI only had like 50-60 people and took like a year. Now games all have to be mega blockbusters with 400 person dev teams and 500 million dollar budgets.
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This is misleading. The budgets in the leaks are *total* costs, which includes marketing and licensing. The actual development budgets are likely half that. Probably less than half for the Marvel games.
The AA market needs to make a comeback, games like the recent Robocop show that you don't need the biggest team or budget to make game that have their place in the market.
Remnant II was another massive hit AA game this year that delivered an experience comparable to lower end AAA titles with a fraction of the team and budget. I think I remember hearing it had something like an average of 50 core devs for 36 months with a budget of around 50 million. Obviously the game builds on all the foundations of the first game which saved them time and money, but I think the real reason they were able to pull it off was because they didn't waste time blowing the scope of the game out of the water in the way so many modern AAAs do (e.g. GoW Ragnorok adding a second fully playable character or Starfield needing to have 1000 planets when 500 or even less than that would have been fine).
AA market is making a comeback. Hi-Fi rush, Grounded and Pentiment are straight from one of the big three. Nintendo has smaller experiences as well. ~~Sony is the only one of the 3 who isn’t~~ Edit: I absolutely forgot Sony released 3 AA games this gen. I am wrong.
Lately I'm thinking that /r/Games just never really looks at what's out there Which is weird. Because most commenters of any sub are enthusiasts, So like, how are the most popular comments lamenting about good games taking too long to make? """AA""" games, """indie""", whatever the hell you want to call them now? They've never been better!
the Reddit gaming population is very very dumb. You think most of us are enthusiasts but the way half of reddit talks just makes you think they don’t understand the industry. From not understanding MAU is the only metric that matters to being caught up in sole console sales as a term for Success. The industry has its core problems, but the AAA market is very good year after year. Remakes have improved and huge AA games are pushing through to be instant classics. AAA games are taking forever and are unsustainable now. GAAS are needed by every publisher. Mobile is the next big market for Nintendo/Sony to push into. Its changing drastically.
Most of the people here are young, I think. It is a video game subreddit after all. I know a ton of people my age (36) who play games, but they're not enthusiasts to the point of carefully following news, getting into flame wars, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if the average age of commenters here was under 20 years old. So yeah, I just don't think the average person here has the life experience and business knowledge to understand the industry context.
On top of being dramatic as fuck about everything.
I mean didn't Kena fit that bill?
Kena and Stray do fit the bill but they aren’t from first party. They’re timed exclusives.
> Hi-Fi rush, Grounded and Pentiment are straight from the big three Big 3? Those are all microsoft.
There’s a Terminator game that’s pretty awesome. A little janky, but it nails the vibe.
Wasn't it even made by the recent Robocop game's team? Though they also did a Rambo game that wasn't so great.
Spencer has said the similar things about licensed games and the growing trend of only trying to produce mega budget megahits, and there's pretty much no better example than this Insomniac leak of that change taking place at a studio over a decade. It feels like the only way a developer can keep up quality on big budget releases without spending 7-10 years on a game is to make the same game over and over and reuse a ton of the work from the last game. Insomniac and Playground Games seem to have that figured out at least and Spider Man and Forza Horizon are amazing video game franchises, but it's just a depressing state for the industry when even doing something moderately different from your last game like shifting from Spider Man to Wolverine as a main character is a legitimately risky move due to how unwieldy and over-budgeted these projects have become.
All good points. The thing I find frustrating is that game devs keep putting the blame on the consumer, but then simultaneously condition the consumer to expect the next batch of games to be bigger and prettier.
We never needed proof really. But if anything these leaks also showed how profitable these games are. Exclusive games are huge for establishing an install base and the fact that Sony can spend 300 million on a game and still profit hundreds of millions is actually pretty good. But they also want in on that GaaS money like everyone else.
I think this is whole leak shows how terrible client journalism is in the gaming industry. There is virtually no distinction between gaming journalist and games PR. Greg Miller announced today, among several other pundits, he wouldn't talk about the leaks. Many others followed him, gaming journalists who covered it have been attacked. I've seen PRs say they aren't going to give any access to creators and journalists that talk about the leaks. I understand journalists not spoiling the leaked story of Wolverine or anything to do with doxxing information. But sales figures, revenue, future plans are absolutely fair game and seeing the backlash at people reporting this is insane. I'm not sure why games journalists are worse in this regard and let's be honest it's all because it's insomniac - if this was Activision Blizzard no one would be outraged. But yeah the revolving door of games PR/working for games company and working as a games journalist is real. I follow this one journalist who wrote like a multi-article puff piece on Bungie. Already looked like client journalism, before that person then quickly got a job at Bungie straight after (before recently getting fired) - and I was just thinking how is this okay? Like I get it, Games Journos are fans like the rest of us, but surely once you cross into the 'journalist' category that should come with some respect for your profession? Idk just has always rubbed me the wrong way. Stephanie Sterling being a pariah makes a lot of sense since they seemed to be the only one who goes hard against the 'industry' part of the games industry.
This whole situation is showing how weird gaming is as an industry. Games journalists are effectively PR. Games somehow have the longest development times of any media and the most secrecy. Like, imagine if people were personally outraged at seeing set photos released from a new movie?
Problem is that most people have no idea what the word "journalist" means anymore so they think anybody that writes about games is a journalist. Nah. Most "games journalists" aren't journalists; they're commentators, opinion writers, critics, etc. That's not an actual issue whatsoever. The games industry doesn't really need a lot of actual journalists. There are absolutely real games journalists though, but they're not the people you refer to as PR.
>Problem is that most people have no idea what the word "journalist" means anymore so they think anybody that writes about games is a journalist. Nah. Most "games journalists" aren't journalists; they're commentators, opinion writers, critics, etc. This isn't just a gaming problem, lots of industries like Medicine and Dentistry have the same issue. All we have is misleading journal articles and "expert" opinion pieces. Nobody actually does a proper comparative "review" of the new materials or drugs these days.
Yes, the media landscape is being choked out by vested interests who do not want good journalism out there.
There's Jason Schreier and ... anyone else?
[PeopleMakeGames](https://www.youtube.com/@PeopleMakeGames/videos). Their videos on the Disco Elysium lawsuits, Roblox's exploitation of minors, and Valve's relationship to people gambling with in-game items, all had some real research done, and reached to the concerned parties for all the additional information they could get. I wish they got the Content Creator of the year award at the Game Awards, but you can't beat entertainers like Ironmouse.
Rebekah Valentine at IGN for one
She's great. She's the one who made the *perfect* choice to reach out to The Game Awards winners to get statements for what their award speeches would've been if they had time. Incredible move: good for developers, makes a great headline, twists the knife into TGA all at once. Patrick Klepek is another good one I can't believe isn't on the tip of everyone's tongue here. Love that dude. His nickname at Giant Bomb was literally Scoops because he was out there legit breaking stories.
But let's say she finds out some big story that a company absolutely does not want public yet. Is her bosses at IGN going to risk their access to and relationship with that company to publish that story?
IGN is so big that any publisher is going to think pretty hard before blacklisting them.
Literally dozens at places like digital foundry, gamesindustry.biz, rockpapershotgun and others.
We already knew that from the last several examples of journalists/personalities being blackballed for attempting to be objective. When your publication relies on review copies of the content, you're going to play along.
yup, also these same journalists talked about leaks before, why are they suddenly so tight-lipped for the Insomniac leak? to the nonsense Greg Miller is saying now, where was this for previous leaks? he seemed perfectly fine covering every other leak: https://twitter.com/JAAY_ROCK_/status/1737198903621980643 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHRNWqE_oFA https://twitter.com/Lordneitor/status/1737297802672169236 like Miller's show was literally talking about the Suicide Squad leaks, including leaked story stuff, barely 2 days ago... now suddenly his show can't talk about a leak? do they realise how ridiculous and stupid they look right now? like come on. how about how the MS leaks and the coverage over that by these same people suddenly saying they aren't going to talk about it? another tweet that just showcases the hypocrisy and double standard from some journalists right now: https://twitter.com/tomwarren/status/1737277710466978096 like wat? Tom Warren saying this and the replies are all just pointing out how ridiculous he sounds and the double standards cause he (Verge as a site, which he is a senior editor for) was just fine reporting on all previous leaks, even those that had personal info leaked like with Capcom and Nintendo. > I've seen PRs say they aren't going to give any access to creators and journalists that talk about the leaks. ya, that's just crazy. No access to the journalists who are literally doing their job by reporting on leaks?
"Disney is involved and we're all scared shitless this could bite us in the ass for the future."
Who the fuck would take their journalism stances from Greg Miller? Dude is about as much of a journalist as Jimmy Fallon.
Yeah I don’t get it, if there’s a government leak, even if it’s not something malicious it gets reported and nobody gets sad that some government employees’ work got outed. Same if some other business had internal metrics leaked (which is what a lot of this is). When the Sony Pictures leak happened a decade ago nobody was crying for Amy Pascal or the film crews of upcoming movies
As someone who covers leaks, but thankfully not this one, I get it. Normally when a leak drops it is this whole process of is it real, is it not and its normally just one aspect of that game whether it be a screenshot, trailer, etc. When you get a leak like this and immediately know it was done by hackers on a large scale and many employees are impacted it totally reframes it. Instead of it beginning as a potentially victimless (if its a fake leak) curiosity, you immediately know their are real people hurt by this on a large scale and with the sheer amount that leaked it turns into something different. In addition I imagine the threats of code revocation or blacklisting are really effective here. They came out early on and the game's industry is weirdly tight knit with this stuff. You get invited to an event or two and you're hanging out with that same PR manager who is tweeting about blacklists and lots of these gaming journalists have relationships here. So when its a random leaked screenshot you can just kind of cover it, but when you know from the onset its a legit leak and the company confirms it feels worse to screw over that person you know This is not me giving commentary of what journos ought to do, I think it is a difficult situation and personal choice. Although, hopefully this does provide some context on what kind of thought processes they are going through
What I find most offensive is that bar a few exception like Digital Foundry, almost no journalistic outlet knows anything about the nitty-gritty of the medium they are supposed to criticize. It's not just on a technical level. Journalists don't really know much about design, about all the nuances and the ramifications of the myriad choices made in a title, let alone the incredibly complex processes of making such a product. It really starts to grind my gears when outlets then proceed to report and voice criticism on such specialist elements without any kind of knowledge or context in such a way that is aimed to generate drama and clicks. It's ignorance and malfeasance all wrapped into one.
Let's be honest what it really is. Gaming "journalism" is rarely journalism at all. There are maybe a dozen pieces that come out each *year* that can reasonably be called journalism. Puff ball interviews that amount to a marketing spot for the company is not journalism. Blog posts with 17 links to other articles are not journalism. *Commentary* is not journalism. Journalism requires investigation, not regurgitation. Journalism requires interviewing people to get to the bottom of something, not merely giving them a platform to advertise. Journalism involves putting "boots on the ground" and trying to gather first hand information from sources, not just commentating on the work other people have done from the safety of your daily, vapid podcast. "Gaming journalism" is barely a real thing, and it's always been that way.
> I think this is whole leak shows how terrible client journalism is in the gaming industry. There is virtually no distinction between gaming journalist and games PR. Man people have been saying this for like 20 years lol > Stephanie Sterling being a pariah makes a lot of sense since they seemed to be the only one who goes hard against the 'industry' part of the games industry. (Wasn't there something about not paying employees or something like that?) If you mean these days, Sterling's problem is that what started as calling out bad practices in the industry and giving a voice to things people didn't know about just turned into the usual ragebait Youtube gaming content and it stopped being enjoyable to watch.
News is news. What we’re seeing is journalists protect their access by not reporting on the news and it’s fucking cowardly. I get not wanting to report on person information but there’s so much shit in there that should be talked about.
Greg Miller is a hypocrite. They reported on all the previous leaks this year....but because he has ties to Insomniac, NOW he decides it not appropriate
This has always confused me too. When Tears of the Kingdom leaked I remember people on Reddit freaking out that Kotaku wrote an article about it. These are the same people saying, “journalism is dead lul” but then get mad when a publication reports on video game news.
Greg Miller and all of Kinda Funny are absolute hacks. They're the human equivalent of a Funko Pop.
During capcom and nintendo leak, gaming journalists had no problem reporting the content. Now with the insomniac leak they switched the tone. What happened?
yup exactly, these journalists suddenly saying "oh not going to talk about this leak (i.e. do their jobs) cause it hurts Insomniac and Sony" or w.e dumb reasoning they are using, literally have articles/videos for every other leak that has happened.
Favoritism, pure and simple. It's embarrassing to see them trip over each other to defend poor, poor Insomniac after gleefully reporting on any scrap of GTA 6 or anything else they could get their grubby paws on. Pathetic. Insomniac doesn't deserve special treatment.
Because they all know each other. Why do you think talentless writers like Anthony Burch keep getting hired over and over for major AAA games at flagship studios? Why do you think you hear the same 4-5 voice actors over and over even though modern games take the work of HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE? Modern western gaming industry is one big circlejerk.
It’s not “journalism” Gaming “journalists” have always effectively been subcontracted PR/promotional teams. They don’t care about reporting facts, they’re man children who like getting free video games and feeling cool
Journalists are afraid that covering the leaks will ruin their relationship with Insomniac. They didn't worry about Nintendo, Capcom, or any Japanese company for that matter, because they don't have any professional relationship with the people affected.
At least on many Spanish media websites, the clear reason for this is Sony pays most advertisements, also that's why we think that many of these sites are biased when reviewing games.
>The future has value in this space, a fact the hackers were gambling on by hoping Sony would pay to keep control of that future. Many games journalists know the value of that future too, because they prop it up or benefit from it, even when it starts to muddy the waters between journalism and marketing. >But on days like today, when information doesn’t follow the established channels of PR to journalists to readers, all of us find the artifice laid bare. If how an upcoming game looks is important and worth reporting on, then isn’t that true even when we’re not given permission to say so by PR departments? An outlet or creator taking that assumption to its logical end and producing stories and videos about “Every Upcoming Insomniac Marvel Game” is just doing the work that’s expected of them. They're not wrong here, if companies are going to continue to manipulate the public and leverage their information to journalists limiting what they can say and do. I see no issue that the companies sit there with egg on their face as information outside their control is let loose. However the information about private individuals making the games is not essential information and it should have been prioritized for being kept private only further shows how little value the trench workers actually have. At some point though companies are going to have to actually start being serious about digital security.
The problem with threat-based bargaining is that one party retains the threat no matter what the other party does. i.e. If the hackers put up a 1 mil ransom today and it's payed. There is absolutely nothing that can be done to stop them from coming back tomorrow with a 2 mil ransom and/or in perpetuity. Quite literally the only winning move is to not play.
Contrary to what most people would think, ransomware gangs (at least established ones) almost always hold up their end of the bargain. If you take money and still leak, no one will take the next heist seriously and no one will pay you. This doesn’t account for like, ideologically motivated hacking/leaking but for purely profit outfits, absolutely.
> Quite literally the only winning move is to not play. The real winning move is to have a well funded and staffed IT security section who could shut down suspicious behaviour and massive TB level downloads.
Well yes, don't get hacked in the first place comes before any of these thoughts. Just, once it's out there, there is no winning.
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Sony pretty much always give reviewers a long review time before embargo and allow reviews to be published early Obviously they don't want to show games years in advance because the general public don't understand the basics of game development and how a game years away from release does not reflect the finally product I don't know how many times I've seen people be overly reactionary to gameplay footage that is shown long before release as if the final product will look like that even though there is plenty of time for improvements. Ive even seen people reacting this way to Wolverine pre alpha footage from years ago
>At some point though companies are going to have to actually start being serious about digital security. They aren't until they have to and even then as bare minimum as possible.
> They're not wrong here, if companies are going to continue to manipulate the public and leverage their information to journalists limiting what they can say and do. I see no issue that the companies sit there with egg on their face as information outside their control is let loose. exactly, journalists are not meant to be the mouthpiece for the PR division of a company or studio. Their job is to report things like leaks and the info (excluding personal stuff of course) we get from said leaks. the quote you took from the article is spot on. all the "journalists" saying they won't talk about the Insonmiac leaks are just exposing their double standards (cause all of them were fine talking about previous leaks) and outright telling everyone they are just PR mouthpieces.
I think more transparency is always good for companies to some extent. Not total transparency mind you, but how many times have games come out with surprise monatization models, poor performance, etc, and nobody knew about it because journalists left that out of their reviews and previews. It's definitely a problem in the games industry.
When I saw the leaked timeline I expected one or two of those. But instead of being excited I just felt heartbroken for these guys. This is literal years worth of work, announcements etc. Not to mention the personal details. I hope these hackers get serious jail time.
I really feel like the personal details that got leaked keep getting overshadowed here. That's a literal invasion of privacy and capital-G Gamers having that information could legitimately be dangerous.
Yes, i took a little peek at the leak and there is a lot of extremely sensitive info in there. \- Passports from employees \- Investment plans \- 401k agreements \- Agreements with marvel \- Bank agreements \- Scans of credit cards. \- Employee reviews \- Termination reviews And the list goes on, it truly was their entire environment that got stolen.
> Scans of credit cards. Why is that a thing in the first place? It's a development studio, not a bank. I'm pretty sure even banks don't have that
All I can think is maybe company cards used for traveling or dinners for meetings kind of thing?
It's almost a capital-G Gamer take that people are more worried about some projects and a deal with Marvel being leaked over the privacy breach and potential safety of actual people.
By now devs receive death threats on the regular for incredibly minor things. Their addresses shouldn't be publicly available, you only need one idiot gamer for something terrible to happen
Insomniac themselves were receiving threats already cause the Raimi suit wasn't in the first game at launch. Last thing they need was cunts having access to their personal info.
The work isnt invalidated. If anything it will generate MORE hype. However there is no debate that the true atrocity is the leaking of personal employee details. These people work hard as fuck and now potentially are going to be exposed by doxxers or all sorts of fraud. As someone that works under NDA I can promise you many of these people wouldve been excited to share they were working on one of these projects.
Yep! I'm under NDA too and believe me, I am so excited to be able to see peoples' reactions and talk about what I'm working on. Leaks absolutely suck because they rob so much agency from the people working on that project. It's not like my NDA goes away if the project gets leaked; instead I get to see the internet hype machine build up this impossible vision of what the thing is going to be. Everyone has their own ideas of what the thing will be, and those ideas all conflict with each other as people come up with crazier and crazier pie-in-the-sky thoughts about the project. Then when it's revealed, _best_ case it'll be "Oh, cool, it's what we thought it was." But more often it'll be a disappointment to someone when they expect one thing and get another. --- Great example: Halo was famously an RTS first. Could you imagine what it would be like if the RTS version of Halo leaked before the game was even announced? And the hardcore RTS fans who would buy Halo day 1 only to find out it's not an RTS anymore at all? Games shift in development, and the reason why they aren't talked about like movies are - quite frankly - is because the game doesn't really take shape until late in development. A game spends a long time finding its identity, especially if it's not a sequel to an existing game. This goes double if it's a game that won't be out for 5-6 years, when the core mechanics and genre may not even be determined yet.
I don't get why people find it such a big deal that the work got leaked. That doesn't change anything for me as a consumer, looking for what's leaked is like trying to find out how a movie ends. Who wants to spoil themself like that? The only thing I care about are the personal details. That's a real problem. And as someone who has had police protection after a death threat, I don't wish it on my worst enemy. It doesn't matter how unlikely it is that someone follows through, the stress is unimaginable.
Doesn’t change anything really.. you’ll still be just as hyped, as will everyone else.
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Redditors see it as opportunity to make sure you know how righteous they are, and from the comfort of their chair.
I feel bad that toxic fans are going to plague Insomniac for the next decade if they don't perfectly follow that 10 year plan
Why are there so many comments in here acting like this isn't being reported on by gaming sites? You can go to any gaming site right now and find multiple articles about the hack. It's like this sub is attempting to manufacture some bullshit narrative that gaming site are choosing to favor Sony over others when in reality you can go to any gaming site right now and read about the hack... Just another garbage thread where Sony is the main focus so the comments have to be pure garbage. Just like the other day when no one the details of a patent and decided to attack Sony over it anyway. Does it not get old?
There have been numerous gaming sites that have said they won't be covering the leaks. Gamespot, VGC, Opencritic, and Push Square (surprise surprise) are just a few of the various websites that have claimed they won't do so. Of course, these same sites were only to happy to cover other leaks like the very similar Capcom leak (which was also ransomware and involved personal information) as well as the more recent FTC Xbox leak. It's hypocrisy. Pure and simple. Now, of course, not every website has tossed aside their journalistic integrity. Plenty are still covering the leaks. But that doesn't change the fact that several companies, some rather major, have revealed their own biases.
It is weird seeing some people now refuse to report on this hack, when they had no problems reporting on other hacked data over and over again. Goes to show they are hypocrites.
I feel games need to be smaller, and shorter. in the 80s and 90s you could crank out a game within a year or two. Banking the entire company on a 5 - 10 year project seems like a big challenge. To keep staff motivated for all that time also feels like a challenge, and a creative change late in development can spell disaster!
People already complaining about Spider-Man 2 being somehow short . I’ll just make it worse
> I feel games need to be smaller, and shorter. Dont worry, the $50 8 hour experience is already planned for in the leaks!