Biggest Headlines of Last Year | Best of 2021 Part 3

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welcome everybody to another episode of game dev unchained the number one game development podcast of game development and the lifestyle thereof i am your host brandon pham back at it with the part 3 of 5 series of what is the best of 2021 in this part 3 i want to kind of go over all the round table news the past year that basically laid out what this year looks like the first up is about blizzard blizzard itself has been going under a turmoil of internal issues and have been kind of publicly about how how these issues kind of unfolded with a lot of harassment suits a lot of trouble with their employees uh and employers kind of reacting in a bad way which kind of followed with a lot of walkouts and overall bad news so with this first part highlighted with ray graham we talked

about how blizzard and what the after effects of that means which we saw later in the year how ubisoft and other bigger companies were kind of going through similar issues so please enjoy this is from episode 282 blizzard under fire enjoy red this this is the part where all right something's up another african-american employee who worked in information technology was similarly micromanaged by her manager unlike the men on her team when she requested time off worker manager made her write a one-page summary of how she would spend that time off when no one else had to do any write-up all right that is that is a red flag if you have to write a note what like you're in fifth grade of how you would spend that time i am off that's crazy yeah that that's a bit crazy yeah that that is uh not normal but uh yeah i mean the main issue is

with the bigger company like activision blizzard they often try to push this under the rug as quickly as possible before it snowballs into what it is now a big problem and it's unfortunate but it is kind of like the norm uh for for these companies to act and react that way and i'm kind of curious to see uh especially with blizzard right what i'm seeing with blizzard because blizzard has kind of been on like a uh downfall ish as of late in terms of uh monthly subscriptions to all their franchises right combined it's been kind of dropping i think the last graph i saw was 50 over like three five years or something which is a lot not just wow overwatch everything and so um it's part of the onslaught of what we've been seeing where activision blizzard or blizzard is becoming more and more active vision

control right uh there was a couple years ago where activision's management kind of went in and blizzard doesn't manage really their own team anymore they're starting to use the publishers uh team to kind of uh market their game and and at least manage that part of it so we saw like the external development or external management from activity starting to move in uh and take more control of blizzard a few years ago because of the slow downfall uh that we're seeing now with a lot of their thing right and now with blizzard ogs kind of being pushed out uh you know how much of blizzard is left is what i'm asking i mean i mean well blizzard has been bleeding it's og talent for a while but like i mean that might be a good thing yeah right that might that might be change and given bringing fresh ideas and fresh

things and and the next thing they knew might be another huge success right like it's hard to say if it's like these special snowflakes were the ones that made these great games are they maybe they're the ones that made those great games at the time and that idea was hot at the time and in the year 2021 that idea is no longer hot right you know what i mean and then now you need the fresh new blood that's thinking differently about what the next big thing is going to be or the next experience is going to be yeah it's it's hard to say it's hard to say but like but this decline of blizzard has been going on for a while meanwhile activision stock is doing the best it's ever been doing you know what i mean um so i don't know how much of that's really been hurting their their bottom line yeah i mean if in the end they're just worried about their stocks going up or down then a blizzard blip uh war or them

but i don't know man i feel a lot of what the stock's been going through is kind of remnants of old success of the blizzard flame right well the the other the other part of activision has been going very well right call of duty call of duty candy crush right yeah yeah king king and and [Music] well here's the dangerous part right there's something i did read the blizzard kind of slowly flaming out call activision the other half quote unquote are going harder and harder with the just call of duty right a lot of the other franchises besides khada are kind of being roped into the cod development family and uh they're really putting all their eggs in one basket so there's like a lot of particles that i'm seeing what are the warzone numbers yeah it's doing well no no it's not dude well

like i think that's an understatement right like yeah warzone is doing incredible right it's and so yeah like that's what they're gonna do right i would love to know what war zones yeah i'll look it up right now um i mean the epidemic did it wonders i think i i think in terms of growth or during the panic it did its best division blizzard's call of duty drives 27 of q1 revenue in 2020. that's in 2020. you know you know uh revenue is growing yeah revenue grows 21 and and driven by black ops you know and i think yeah i'll call it call you he's the money maker you know what i mean and maybe you can't be you can't really be mad at that yeah and it's mobile it's actually doing really well too yeah cloud mobile

yeah i mean my concern is that maybe there's too much focus and there's not new ip and stuff but you know this is something that we've seen in industry forever you know like like when gta was the hot hot thing you know everybody was making gta clones and pouring a lot of money into the next open world thing um that's calmed down quite quite a bit and now the next the next wave of investment from all the companies seems to be like i need some sort of games as a service shooter that people will play you know what i mean yeah well on behalf of the california department of fair employment housing it seems like men were being groped as well oh my god it's not a safe place to be anywhere man you can't be this good looking

it's like it's a good thing you don't have to worry about it you'd be surprised man i am a type for some people stop it oh geez yeah i mean i know some friends that actually left right before this all blew out knowing that it would become prom but they did say that um they say they witnessed some of this but at the same time they feel like a lot of these claims or are uh kind of leftovers from the old crew um [Music] like a lot of the big stories are kind of from well they're from they're from a while they're from uh some some time ago um but also like in that story that we're not really focusing on is also like talks of pay yeah iniquities right and that's

that's something that's they found to still be ongoing right um so like it's not necessarily just like oh yeah that that that's not a problem anymore it's always something that you have to be always mindful of and have policies and things in place uh that won't let it just breed investor you know what i mean yeah i kind of want to ask you about that right with this kind of hybrid approach a lot of companies still figuring out exactly how many people they want back in the office how many they don't uh we're seeing the tech companies around the bay area kind of focused on um on on on kind of reducing pay if you're not in the area right if you're in another state how do you see that factoring in with all this um unequal uh payment and all that stuff like is it

gonna get lost all this kind of progress we're making on this side like that that's gonna mess things up a bit well yeah that was actually that's so that's been a hot topic because there's like a camp of people there like if i'm going to do the same job as somebody else it doesn't matter where i live just save money for the same work sounds like an employee yep yeah period right um at the same time i'm living in cheap idaho idaho and i i could buy a mansion for two dollars and i walk around town wearing gold crown every day yeah what am i doing to that local community because some company in california has enough money just to pay me crazy amount of money right um some people would say that community in idaho needs everybody needs to get paid but that could have a really crazy impact on the economy of that of that place right so there's the other camp

that argues that you have to get paid the local market rate for that type of job and where where you live right that's an interesting i don't know like how that place is staying equity in a way right because like when it comes to gender male female no gender whatever yeah the person if two of the same people are in like idaho then the patient's in right yeah but if they're in san francisco the pay should be the same but it should be this san francisco rate and like you know in the hr and the comp team will will argue why this is important all day long right um but none of that will still convince people that you know same work you should get the same day no matter where you yeah i mean it might be easy because you're bringing the same value because you bring the same values right i think it's easier for people that is just starting to get on board

and then you can make that argument and it's like whatever but somewhat what we're seeing is a lot of people who are used to a salary are getting reduced salary because of this but i mean i mean that's just like you know you've you've interviewed for jobs in different places to relocate and stuff right and and immediately they tell you well you know our cost of living is way less than san francisco right that's the first thing they they want to tell you because they're about to tell you that they're not going to pay you the switch right right and and if you look at it on paper you move that place you're getting paid less sometimes you sometimes you end up living even better because because it's like it's way cheaper right and the big gut is still not the paycheck is less than the change in cost of living you know what i mean um so like some of you still come out ahead but like that's that you know that's been a thing that's been i thing ever since i've been in the industry but is it really a thing thing that somehow you

getting paid more in a community that's used to a certain lower salary is it that big an effect i mean what what what is the let's explore that a bit more because i that's the first time i really thought of that like what are the dangers of someone rich in your neighborhood like is he buying up more land what like what's the fear here buying more like yeah well i mean look in and out like the whole the whole term gentrification right yeah is rich people going to just pushing others out and you just push others out because now you can afford to buy whatever right and so then you buy whatever drive up the drive up the housing costs because you can't afford it and it pushes lower income folks out right um that's texas right now san francisco oakland right like new york well well texas is a hot spot right now a lot of our friends a lot of people we know are kind of moving to that new tex hub space right yeah you know

what but you know what they're moving there because they're oh texas is cheaper but then they're all bringing california jobs and a bunch of money and it's all rising up right now the locals are complaining about it yeah yeah yeah all right same thing same thing in seattle same thing in seattle right so that's that's you know it's a problem that's something that you have to be mindful of right like how will that actually impact the community so that that is a legitimate argument it's not just an employer being i mean like it is but the the person getting the people doesn't care regardless right like yeah all right everybody for the second part i want to highlight one of the biggest issues last year that we saw kind of unfolded was epic versus apple so why is this significant well throughout the year and a little before that we were seeing how epic with fortnite was going up in arms against the big big apple right big apple uh didn't back down

instead they doubled down and banned fortnite and epic from its app store well epic kind of fighting for the little man uh came back with saying that you know there was basically a dictatorship in the app store and how apple needs to kind of open its doors so that not everybody needs to be charged 30 so even though epic was found later to be in violation of everything eventually apple had to overturn uh its 30 percent cut to just 15 so there were a lot of changes that came positive out of that ray graham and i dedicated episode 273 the final showdown between epic games and apple uh so the epic game store uh made 235 million dollars in two years so that's at a loss because uh the last time we talked about that uh they spent well over 330 million uh

just to buy the first person uh parties something around those lines to kind of have those exclusives i don't think it was 300 i thought it was like 25 million wasn't it no man i'll look this up man you look it up water yeah it was a ridiculous number i've ever been that high maybe i'm just tripping tim sweeney said that was a success so it was absurdly high i remember uh if you were looking for that's what it was they spent at least 11.6 million on the free games right that's what it was on the free games yeah yeah and got five million users in return yep yes yes yes uh and then they also revealed they spent over 444 million in 2020 attract more pc gamers so that's just marketing yeah wow man i didn't know they had to expose all that it's a private

financials man because the whole case is about how much money you make and what's what's the size of the market and all that kind of stuff right so so you have to you have to you have to release release all that information if if you really want to make your point i guess the one surprising thing that i don't know if you were aware and we're looking at an article from push the reveal of the uh revenue for fortnite 50 of that was made on playstation surprise i'm very surprised why i don't know for some reason i thought the switch or something more affordable was was going to be a stronger player but i had no idea that sony had that much power well it's not about slowly having power is sony has a lot of users right they do have a lot of users yeah but like switch was pretty much up there too dude yeah but i mean but when it comes to the revenue the revenue is from people

buying stuff right and so the crowded people that would have the most expendable extra cash to be throwing at fortnight things would be the ones that could afford the workstation console you think five billion dollars made just on playstation sony was happy like why are they complaining because sony still does the 30 right don't they on microtransactions yeah i would imagine somebody must have got something out for that yeah and they're mad at apple because apple apple wasn't even 10 or something let me see uh what is it uh they have the numbers here actually iphone 46 was from playstation 4. 27.5 percent uh was contributed by xbox one and then only seven percent was only on ios wow that's good so the remaining eighteen percent were between pc wow that was pc is still such a small market android and nintendo

switch that is surprising so it's just 18 pc android no sense to the nintendo switch that's why no one cares about these guys playstation playstation killing it um i guess it was a good idea to to not do save the world mode you know after all uh i love i love that mode you know and it just nobody played it got no love and then they pivoted to battle royale and that was that say the world was the original yeah it was the original um you built forts and zombies and come and attack your forts basically yeah it was the game before you know pub g told them yeah and it's one of those i guess pretty uh synonymous story when it comes to success right it had has a bad bad guy origin right but then looking back like nine billion dollars later

looking back it was the right decision it's like i mean i mean okay it's like this right and some people out there are all about capitalism and all those things right and so yes as a purely capitalistic move you see trend you move to where the trend is at and you exploit and they definitely did a lot of work to exploit and and monetize the hell out of it and you know the content kept coming right in the content delivery and everything that's a lot of work you know i mean so they definitely put some effort in uh but the same time you know sometimes you know yeah sometimes the good guys don't win right that's that's that's i feel like most times good guys [Laughter] [Music] we're still here i'm still here talking to you man anyways when it comes to it nine billion dollars it's it's all about being as cutthroat as you can in order

to do it what's funny that they're in this case because we feel like these two companies are pretty cut through and they're fighting each other on it um what's interesting about this playstation uh uh information is we'll we'll kind of hear more stories to it but you know a few weeks back like a playstation sony didn't want to do the cross play stuff like they were most resistant um obviously with that many micro distance action and many play 50 right of the playing field i guess they had somewhat of a say of wanting to keep that uh within their ecosystem as much as possible right yeah and you know they have enough players to do stuff like that you know they can block they don't necessarily need to be promoting cross play if they have a bunch a really large player base yeah so there's this is nine factoids that i found on msc money uh that was

the most interesting bits from this court case that kind of review thanks right so you being the ex-apple guy these are skeletons from your closet uh that we kind of knew about but now make uh unavoidably clear that you know apple definitely has an agenda right obviously what yeah okay hold on here's the thing if you if you think this is a big bombshell or some sort of news the apple ecosystem is a closed is it's very important right and i mean and it's an apple has got a bit on record saying that it's closed for a reason and this is why it's closed and of course they say all the good things right like protection of the users and privacy concerns and all those things by the end of the day so that they could completely control hardware software integration make it nice right the integrations are super nice but it is a closed ecosystem right and

and so yeah like that that whole factory that came out of the case about imessage was locked down because you know they wouldn't want to put on android yeah well yeah ios is a lockdown ecosystem of course it is right so uh yeah this is the party why you they want you to buy more apple stuff like that's just how it works it makes sense man like it's always since uh in any tech right uh a private party is always the cooler party than the one that's open to everybody right so i mean that's the facebook social network premise right there but i i will say this i mean i'm listening through the steve jobs um uh book right now his biography uh basically like it's okay to be an [ __ ] uh that's that's stuff i don't know which one you're reading uh but the one i read was it was pretty uh it was the one by the famous yeah the famous one

right after he died yeah yeah but yeah i know which one you talk about okay but for the listeners let me look it up by walter isaac isaacson yeah yeah yeah i'm listening to that i mean it was very interesting i i i yeah yeah i'm still in the middle of it but like i'm coming to respect where how apple plays into the tech world right i mean they've always been the innovators before microsoft and they've always been this closed system uh i mean they're they've been through it with microsoft as basically servicing everyone else and now they're going through with android that is servicing everyone else so the common denominator has always been apple and uh it's funny that you know microsoft tried to get in the phone business and completely failed right so uh yeah this first little factoid right here uh for those that are watching was uh mainly about how apple keeps his

imessage within the system uh what's interesting is you know of course they had ideas to make it more like whatsapp where anybody can kind of message within each other or within that system but then uh you know as soon as it was brought up in 2013 and 2016 it was completely shut down for the same reason that ray kind of shared right but it's nice to kind of hear the money where's the money in that there's something i know it makes sense it makes sense and apple is how much i hate it right i do like that smart watch like it is unbeatable and unequal uh and trust me i try i'm wearing a fitbit smart watch because that's literally the only useful smart smartwatch that isn't the apple i looked at the galaxy watch right i was like what the [ __ ] is this is the ugliest clunkiest thing it's barely supported and basically every other watch

besides the apple watch uh this just does not match in quality and in price and it almost made me feel like should i buy my iphone so it works in that degree right it's like this product is so cool where i might have to buy in with this [ __ ] right i'm gonna stick with my smart watch for now right i'm good i'm good with my fitbit uh so this is the the fact that i was bringing up earlier with the playstation how the cross play was such a huge deal right where playstation was the most resistant but it showed that uh it was a way sketchier uh there was like a lot of emails back and forth between them epic and sony and there was a lot of complicated like proposals to to make it work and profitable mostly on the to the sony camp right because you know they're sitting there with the numbers in front of them and then obviously hey i want more of the pie

if you want to open this up for so many players to play with others right it benefits you obviously because your game is going to be bigger but we need to see some of that cheese uh to make this work so obviously they made some concessions because now it is cross play and it is it is a milestone that you know i don't think a lot of the industry gives credit to epic like that was the first major game that ushered in cross play in a meaningful way right um i can't remember another game that is as impactful and i hope in the history of games that a whole chapter is dedicated to that because i don't remember a game i ever played with anyone on another system and how revolutionary of an idea that is an epic did it right it is cool to play with other people look i mean that's not the first game to ever do that

the big major one i don't think even cod did that until after nah man yeah like like i'm sure there has to be some fighting game street fighter not a game that is that big where everyone's playing and talking about street fighter dude you tell me this you guys have a big game bruh it's not that it's not as big as fortnite bro it's not making it's not making nine billion dollars in two years that is correct however that's a big triple a game i'm sure there's been others that have been cross playing and what's that r cross play and they just don't talk about it like you know because it just it just kind of works right across different yeah you know windows and xbox or you know one platform or another like there's been multiple instances of that before for sure yeah i wouldn't call it as revolutionary is all i'm saying right right right right but i think the impact is definitely felt the most with before right with every kid during the pandemic

before the 50 50 of the revenue yeah yeah that's huge for sure for sure that's my fact uh the last uh well the third piece of news is you know one of the biggest thing and that epic has been arguing is that you know all the rules aren't fair right appa has like this hard fast roll 30 percent but you know there's a history of them kind of letting certain companies bypass that rule so they're picking and choosing who their friends are and that is a very strong argument and just basically been proven uh through through this case right with apple basically treating netflix and amazon uh very special because of the amount of users that they bring in yeah uh you know the 30 cut isn't exactly 30 for for any of those two like i last time i heard it was half okay like i mean yeah like i think i think apple could afford

to charge less yeah right and especially when it is somebody who has that many users like amazon although amazon still doesn't sell anything about the on the app on the iphone in the app right like well it sells stuff but it doesn't sell digital things you can you can't buy still can't buy kindle books on your apple device you have to go to the website to buy a kindle right i mean amazon still bypasses that yeah cause that's because amazon's like yeah we not we're not paying but we're not paying for every book right um and so it's understandable to have deals like if it's your platform you can do where the hell you want right and you can strike up deals with people however you want if you want to give if you want to give uh netflix and amazon deals you can decide to do that and then say screw epic epics like try to act as if they are on the level of like amazon and netflix and it's like nah and i'll tell you not only on top of that like it's we already talked about this this whole

thing is just silly epic they want epic game store on ios devices okay the next part is about stadium now stadia unfortunately wasn't as successful as google wanted it to be or didn't give it the chance um that it could have had uh basically cutting a five-year commitment to two years which in any case you can't make games like that right so uh with stadia shutting down what was significant is you saw the rise of streaming games being more applicable with microsoft going full in as well as playstation putting some effort into the space so even though stadia was supposed to be this gigantic uh force to kind of break open what streaming games could look like it opened a lot of doors for other companies to succeed through its own failure right so this episode is from 258

stadia shutting down built as enjoy of me a long time ago there's no way stadia is a thing ever there's just nowhere coming back i mean i'm starting to see studios severing ties you know these third party that are supported supposedly the focus of stadia are are slowly cutting ties with them so i mean the writing's on the wall there's no one's left except for phil the only people the only people that were like the games that were on stage were bought and paid for mostly right so they're like yeah sure a little bit all right so they're just finishing what's on on yeah they're not out there fishing for more developers yeah well i would i would imagine i would mention with this new focus that they're definitely not looking to put more games on like i cannot see stadia as a brand uh living much longer yeah and with this and with the notices heading down sgme

they very well could have just said hey we're just going to kill stadia entirely as a brand and and and pivot it elsewhere but they they stop short of that which like that's also kind of odd to me um what is this i'm trying to read this no one support platform smoothly for it i've not done anything to violate your terms of service ah see every time i see at google stadium what is this about you know some context is i i also thought that's that but that's nothing really that's just like the headlines were all like trying to blow it up but it's really just homeboy lost access to all of his google stuff somehow through some reason and he was like and he's like this is unacceptable i'm gonna just make sure my game doesn't come to save you at this point because google's trash that's really that's really what happened right it has nothing really to do with sgme being shut down is more to do with his personal google account got wiped somehow or you lost access to it somehow

and then got really mad about it yeah well terry is like a big game yeah rightfully rightfully so rightfully solo you know what i mean so all right here here's some numbers here 150 employees that's all they had that was it so recently shut down all of its internal games to affecting approximately 150 people well i thought they were like in the thousands or something so they were still growing yeah there's no way man to build a triple a game with 150 come on now well you gotta start small like you have to figure out what you're doing first right i did the team and much team down you start small three years ago you don't start small three years in so probably there is some credence to what you're saying now they're asking for 300 miller and growing the team bigger and google's like what do you mean like you saw that you saw the the letter that they wrote like what does this say let me find it a formal letter of why they're shutting down

yeah uh i guess it is worth reading let me kind of pick uh pull it up right now was it phil that wrote it yeah there's a letter from his fell but um [Music] that dude where else he's gonna run to yeah see like one of the one paragraphs in 2021 you know we're expanding our efforts to help game developers and publishers take advantage of our platform technology and deliver games directly to their players we see an important opportunity to work with partners seeking a gaming solution all built on stadiums advanced technical infrastructure and platform tools we believe this is the best path to building stadia into a long-term sustainable business that grows with the industry right so this is the same bruh video games ain't where it's at we're talking about like because at the same time you know the amount of money that google's dealing with and the type of

profit and scale that they're dealing with right yeah like video games ain't that for them you know what i mean and they're like no like the way to get scale and actual make it a long-term sustainable thing is to turn it into a platform right like it makes sense if you're if you're on the bean counter side of things you know what i mean and you're just like trying to make it try to make it make sense how do we get the maximum amount of profit out of the money that we spend yeah but no one's going to your yard to taste your milk if you're not doing any custom stuff to show off the technology because people are are converting stuff maybe but it's going to be minimum spec of just like it being there to show true power of exclusivity it's important and the one thing about this too or the letter where it goes what does this mean if you're a current or future stadia gamer you can continue playing all your games on stadium stadium pro and we'll

continue to bring new titles from third parties to the platform we're committed to the future of cloud gaming and we'll continue to do our part to drive this industry forward that paragraph yeah i don't believe i don't believe you bro like i don't i don't believe i just don't believe you at that point right oh yeah it's a done yeah at this point that's that's where you that's where you lost me right so yeah we'll see we'll see oh my god so like there's so many things to this where where i told you so man i told everybody on this show as soon as it was announced it's like it's google man they're gonna quit as soon as it doesn't look like a billion dollar thing day one i will i'll just i'll just challenge you a bit and say you're like you you figures the whole stadia thing would just flop and be dead off right it's dead

spoiler like wanda with vision you're holding on to the corpse get out of westfield west view why are you it's episode four and it's your fault uh for not watching the best show ever but some people are waiting for the whole season to be done before yeah and they're lame they're prolonging their chances of being spoiled it's not my fault um but yeah there's nothing left here i i will say streaming is still kicking in alive uh there's so many streaming services even nvidia ironically is lasting longer than stadia didn't see that coming i thought cd would stay a little longer but you know what xbox is doing and their focus of like acquiring like some major studio power and iep it's really exciting

uh i think they're gonna out of everybody is gonna do it right they're going to have the content exclusives to make it fun and awesome and playstation will kind of lag behind in terms of that because they have such a strong sixty dollar seventy dollar purchase strategy going i have no idea what sony what he's doing in terms of cloud gaming honestly because playstation now is not it right places now is a slow test but what they have is like this library of playstation previous generations that like nintendo they just put it somewhere man i'll be happy to tune in and play final fantasy any of them really uh just to have a service going and not be worried about my phone chugging and stuff like that there's there's a lot of value in it for sure i i don't know about i don't know i don't like i clearly see what microsoft is doing like clear clear clear as day i don't see what's what sony's doing with with the whole excel with the whole

streaming thing at all i saw is in the mix of course amazon i i never you're not talking about that the that article but anyway it was uh the last article was the bloomberg one the blue burger i i don't know the specific article the last thing i saw was that new ceo really putting a focus on the gaming division like he as part of his which is pretty surprising of the ceos like highlighting games as like one of his focus i'll say that's very convenient after the bloomberg article okay so what was the bloomberg article king i'll pull it up as you kind of go over there well this is generally it was just like an another you know jason schreier thing triers ripping ripping a new one x expose just talking about um the video game division of amazon game studios and it was not it was not very flattering um

oh you mean they suck and i think the headline was something like you know here we go so much money but why can't they make a good game or something i can't remember what the headline was well i hate to say it they just got the wrong people running the ship so here's the bloomberg article amazon you basically summarize the the multiple page long article yes they had the wrong people running [ __ ] amazon can make just about anything except a good video game yeah yeah yeah so uh i think uh i think they probably have a hand in google's decisions like hey who's similar to us who's kind of a little ahead of us who has the muscle power oh [ __ ] down the block amazon how many years they're in that that article is talking about their game division which is actually separate from the division that's doing luna right and right luna is their engine

luna is the it's the streaming service there uh streaming series okay the game thing is there's like lumber yard and actually yeah yeah that's right like if you could name if you could name one video game that amazon game studios was making without looking it up i would be really impressed um dude i'd be impressed if someone's actively looking for a game that amazon is waiting on let's just take it one step at a time who's really caring at this point i think two of them came out two of them have come out actually um you know the grantor the grand tour game was from amazon game studios yeah sure no one's playing it and also crucible principle which which was a free-to-play game and it got shut down like sometimes yeah because it's a dumb name for a game there's nothing exciting about that everything i've heard about amazon and them trying to figure this out and pump something out it's again we're not talking about the individual talented developers it's just mismanagement

really it's it's not understanding how the game dev business work and i think um at least through the grapevine there's just been challenges internally of not really breeding creativity uh and that's just classic bad studio culture and so under those environments you can't pressure someone to make hit and you have these egos that are probably under qualified to even take care of things and they're running the ship to the ground i mean what's uh guys like if you want to rent me to give you a 101 on game development i'll be happy to tell you and i i'm i can do that like you know eastern asian thing where i read your face and be able to tell your whole life just from the expression he's an [ __ ] don't trust that guy don't go down that hall uh you'll never come back with any productive right that group is trouble

uh but i will say this i do respect that they are going and they are cranking it and they have the will power to figure it out and the thing is yeah honestly i was calling i was calling their demise much sooner than google stadium yeah so see how far wrong you are yet again brandon is correct amazon here's the thing figure it out here's the thing am i wrong right when they've shipped no games or the game station ships have been bad and they've been canceled uh or like which ones which one's worse like completely shutting down just giving up or keep going and just never shipping anything of any of the latter by far because then our friends keep getting employed and they get paid pretty damn good salary right from that article yeah pretty good pretty good salary but that's also what bred

the studio culture and that's what made people miserable and that's what really made it a terrible place for a lot of people well i think during the pandemic people are actually okay like this is not so bad uh now that i'm away from that a-hole uh amazon is pretty amazing [Laughter] right you gotta look at the perspective of things like and then also like the whole decision around in choosing cry engine as your engine and then modifying it and then saying you have to shoot games on this thing and then was that weird and then switching and then switching gears and saying okay well yeah no you could choose whatever engine you want to do your game on after spending years of burning money so i didn't hear about that part is that last part in the article or recent years they just it's like an article it's an article yeah it's just like come on man you know because at that point management just want to ship something that looks like actually actually one of the one of the

articles was talking about this and uh the article was talking about one of the closest article that i was laughing at was like um instead of choosing like community or unreal uh which is like you know unreals to coca-cola and unity is the pepsi yeah they decided to make rc cola [Laughter] that's true i mean obviously the the decision dude that's cold last but not least late last year we kind of talked about uh how the next 10 years looked like and it was a great episode because we were actually trying to foresee what game development will be turning into and some of the predictions in this episode actually came true so for those who are interested in the listening full episode it's episode 286 what the next 10 years look like

you of facebook right so that that brings to me since the last time we talked for a long time we have made fun of amazon for a long long time and you were always in the camp of saying it was only a matter of time the amazon will figure out its footing as long as they keep trying right something that you know google can't really say i don't well i think a long time ago we both agreed around the table that because amazon has so much source of income and they're so stubborn right where they have put so much money into the game industry and have not shown any signs of quitting uh in times when me and you are like dude you just gotta throw in the towel at this point you're not gonna understand it takes a while and they just truck through it and now they finally have a hit right sort of a

hit at least to a point where someone's actually talking about it i see influencers talking about it i see uh some kind of interest and i also think the timing of it and the theme of the game new world is actually very fitting and that's you know the combination of like things that you can't plan um i think has helped the game kind of flourish uh as of late so i haven't played it uh you haven't played it all right but the other thing i don't think i know pc gamer rated it at 60. that's all i know at a [Laughter] it looks like hey this is what i truly believe i don't think it's like the number one rated game yeah on steam on steam it's like pop mostly positive ratings and like unmet metacritic at 75 right but the useless score on metacritic is 4.4 so like i don't know it seems it seems

like it also like when i look at it every time i see it every time i see an image of it yeah i just immediately get bored and just want to like just go to the next image i'm not interested at all in anything i see well let me pull this up while you we were talking about wow and for some reason you have like this memory of well being always wow i did not say that and i always thought of it as ugly uh and then somewhat you know they made it their own right give some credit uh let's see let me see if you cannot see like it depends on what it depends on what you call ugly right because i don't think blizzard has bad artists period of course i don't think there's a bad artist in the bunch right so like i what is ugly like what what are the what is the criteria that you're using here right uh i would like i wouldn't play the game because it's so that's the criteria yeah that sounds like you're like there's no normal maps i can't play this like yeah i mean yeah

but i mean like that's a very that's not a proper criteria right like sure sure there's more there's more that's perfect i will say this you know they made it a style and it was very definitive and i think it helped kind of find a lot of their uh games uh that isn't well afterwards right yeah and they and they adhered you know they adhered to this style you know what i mean they adhered to the style and then that's why i think the art that's why i think it's a stylistically is a good game right it's low poly it's flat like you know but it's good like it it looked good it looked good for it looked good for the time right it wasn't the most high end but it looked it looked consistent and well put together right i can't i can't hang on wow for that right uh all i'm trying to say by by kind of um talking about wow is that yeah you know if new world does last longer than you know this month

uh they'll have the time to increase their their their art capacity right i see some i see some i'm looking at some screenshots of it right now it looks you know it definitely looks better than wow did back in the day but you know honestly it's it's okay because it's so boring yeah like for me most mmo games the the measuring stick is so low right um like out of the gate i think it already looks better than most bethesda games i mean and those games do really well right so that's that's my measuring stick of like okay there's a chance here but my main thing with new world is that because of the pandemic because people were in solitude and self-isolation for a year the timing of this and all the games that have been doing well uh like that viking game um and now this bellheim and then this

right it's a chance to people to connect and people are like hungry for it and we're not completely out of it obviously at the pandemic we're we're crawling sort out it feels like it but we're not there yet and there is like this weird i don't know if you feel it man like i feel sometimes like this weird depression of like just not knowing what's going on really like it doesn't feel real real you know and i think a lot of people are kind of going through this still and finding kind of avenues like new world to to kind of feel normalized again and the timings i think it's has been helping the game kinda i don't know i don't know if during a time where we're all cooped up inside that that gravitating towards playing an mmo that will encourage you to stay cooped up inside is what people are craving right well that's what games are to them it's good enough i mean like for for me i've been like you know i've been trying to like get

out more and then of course be people in smaller groups you know these things like last thing last thing i want to do is be at a computer when i'm at a computer all day every day in the same room you know what i mean just at that age man but there's a lot of people that i find it myself like i'm not that into gaming as much as i used to um i do it mostly for motivation to create things now as my way of doing i still enjoy games obviously but like my drive of like if i were to pick and choose because of the pandemic i would like you said try to congregate with friends and socialize because i was missing that basically for a whole year but i do feel like the equivalent of that to a lot of younger folks have been these type of to them this is the the same just connecting online and talking i

don't know i don't think even the most efforts would be tired of being at home at this point yeah i mean it is a pushing and limit but it's it's i'm this game like i i normally i never play mmo right but now i i'm starting to see the appeal of it because of the social aspect of i'll go raiding and this game is fine i mean at least it's not like to a point where i'm i'm i'm sure there are bugs right i have sure i read a lot of bugs but like it's playable to the point where yeah it's enjoyable and not so so taxing it's it doesn't the graphics not great but it's not that bad you know i mean it's not like yeah it's workable i mean like social games are always going to be a good thing right because people just want to be sociable period right like it turns out like multiplayer games and social games do better than not the others that that are not social or multiplayer right because especially now yeah

gravitate towards that some people hate that right but like i think the numbers tell us you know a lot of people play social games right so that's always a good bet right but um so i don't know i don't know if it's just yeah pandemic or anything like that but yeah i don't know why this game is good like because i see reviews that are kind of like lukewarm on it yeah but then it's not a complete flop i guess because everything's like lukewarm it's not like a raging success yeah um so but what yeah like because of what has happened this past year multiple game delays and i'm sure there was a whole slate of games that were supposed to be released originally this year from two years ago are pushed back there's this huge gap right of these type of games like what other mmo can really name the past year and a half i mean what mmo can you name in the last five

years exactly right so this is coming at such a perfect time and yeah in terms of marketing and whatever you know um i've always thought because they're amazon you know this is going to be easily on the front page of twitch without any effort and because the past games they haven't done that and this legitimately are is being covered by a lot of uh influencers and streamers on their own uh gives it at least a little more credence of like oh there might be something here which i respect right they didn't force it down our throats and when i watch it it's yeah this video right now and i'm bored to tears already but this is to me what mmo is but like you know you're playing with your friends and you're on an adventure like what other games are there that can do this i mean this is what epic this is what facebook this is what all the major companies are trying to uh go towards a metaverse right which i am

looking forward to to do playing and and looking forward to them figuring that out which leads me to are you really looking forward to people figuring that out honestly i would love to make a game a mega game that um it's kind of like towards what second life was i i think uh i think there is way too much right now there's way too much content right and i would love the fact that there's one hierarchy that encompasses and organizes that and gives everyone a little bit more of a chance like i am the the idea of a metaverse that is able to be uh that breaks all barriers of what a mobile game and what a triple a game which is the main thing i feel like you what you mentioned before the aaa games are patting on themselves on the back for selling 20 million cops and such while the mobile games kind of like have the real numbers and

and and champion what really success looks like and uh i i feel like game developers all over are pretty much segregated at this point on um through ego or through what they're working on and uh there isn't like a singular voice right so i think with metaverse hopefully it doesn't completely just water down all the variety that we can give but it'll be kind of nice i think see an organized thing that everybody can enjoy and and join and play if they want to but right but that's not what's happening though right like like facebook not at first no facebook's gonna do its thing epic's gonna do its thing they're not gonna talk to each other right of course not they wanna own these are gonna be separate walled gardens right sure but they're always gonna be a number one and number two right so when i watch ready player one that idea excites me like it would be really cool

and that concludes this part three episode hopefully you guys enjoyed how these roundtable news were about a lot of ranting but informational as well and uh always looking forward to kind of sit down with my pal gray to discuss potentially what could and cannot happen so until the next episode see you guys and have a good time [Music] [Music] thank you for listening to today's episode if you are liking the podcast go to the apple itunes store and give gamedev unchain a five-star rating this will help spread the joy and love and exposure for the podcast and we thank you very much if you want to continue

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