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Frostpunk creators cancel "Project 8" and lay off staff amid concerns that "narrative-driven, story-rich games" don't sell (www.rockpapershotgun.com)

submitted 2 months ago by simple@lemm.ee to c/games@lemmy.world

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[-] KeenFlame@feddit.nu 4 points 2 months ago

Ah, so managerial problems again who would have thought but that's OK we that make the things can suffer a little more

[-] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

Sad but I can see their point, considering that most customer attention spans are limited to memes now.

[-] Phil_in_here@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 months ago

I'm in there. I see "story rich" and it reads as a crutch for no gameplay, or a premise for a book without the responsibility of pacing.

I know that's far from true, and there are loads of great story-rich games that are fun and engaging. But when that's the main tag, it turns me away.

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[-] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

NGL the title always seemed like it wanted to be a mobile game so the studio saying this doesn't surprise me.

[-] random_character_a@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

Not agreeing, but if I look at my own purchases for the last few years, there aren't many story driven games there. God of War and Starfield. Didn't play much either one.

[-] MarcomachtKuchen@feddit.org 2 points 2 months ago

Ok guys valid points from everyone here. But who here has bought the latest 11bit Studios games? And I'm not talking about Frostpunk 2. I'm taking about Indika, The alters, The Traumathurge,... all of these games seemed like really cool things to me, sadly I could not afford them.

[-] DankDingleberry@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

thats a shitty excuse if i ever heard one

[-] _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 months ago

More like it’s a shitty headline. The article shows there’s a little more to it, specifically that it was going to go over budget and they hadn’t figured out what they were gonna do.

[-] dustyData@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Typical infantile C-suite logic “I didn't do X well, therefore X is impossible and no one can do X! It's not my fault, I swear!”

[-] Vipsu@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

The title is a bit missleading considering that the actual article mentions a lot other problems that plagued the development.

Project 8 faced both progress and challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic made team stability difficult, but some quality improvements were achieved. However, critical issues persisted, causing delays and budget increases. The latest review revealed unresolved problems needing more time and money, along with revised sales forecasts, raising doubts about the project's profitability.
-- TLDR by Microsoft copilot

While there's still demand for "narrative-driven story-rich games" one should keep realistic expectations. For this genre I feel smaller scope and indie developers work much better.

[-] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 1 points 2 months ago

Oof.

"The COVID-19 pandemic made team stability difficult,"

Makes me suspect they were woefully behind the rest of the field in development practices. My team, and many others, gained productivity when all the wasteful manager ego stroking in-person meetings stopped.

Alternately, it tells us they rely on a weird dev kit with a lot of esoteric hardware. Though I would still call that out as being super out of date. Nothing is particularly hard to emulate today, for teams that prioritize having rebuildable test environmenta.

Just wild.

Bummer about the layoffs. Probably won't fix their agility problem, though.