BREAKING: Warner Bros. Games is shutting down Monolith Productions, Player First Games, and WB San Diego, sources tell Bloomberg News.
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I'll tell you a secret. And this is coming from somebody that was at the top-top Top of the gaming world for 2 decades... 95% of tech people are complete frauds and charlatans. Its a miracle anything ever gets made. Look at today's coders... they don't even know what a computer does, they just download other people's modules, cobble them together and pray. The vast majority of people who self-identify as being in "comp sci" don't even understand the very basics.
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There were some AAA standouts, like Baulder Gate 3 and Hogworts Legacy, that did very well. It is possible if the company focuses on producing a fun user experience.
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The Problem is... I Love The fucking Gameplay, this together with the Nemesis System was super addictive to me.
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Success in indie development tends to be very uncertain though. Unless you end up at an established indie studio with a good track record but it's not like indie studios hire in droves.
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Seems like if you're publicly traded you can't also be profitable in the videogame industry.
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Can I subscribe to more of your experiences and insights?
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Replace mega corp with ‘a publicly traded entity’ and you’re spot-on the money.
There are a very few studios that aren’t beholden to the whims of vulture capitalist investors, and they’re the only ones still putting out absolute bangers (Larian), upholding their promises (Hello Games) or keeping the entire gaming industry from consuming itself in a blaze of pure shitfuckery (Valve).
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Yeah, I'll see if I can help make that happen. Decent enough movies to come out.
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But the story beat is static, it always gives you the same enemy in the same situation. The nemesis system turns that story beat dynamic. Every time you hit that story beat you get a different enemy in a different situation. It doesn't give everyone the same story, it gives everyone their story. It's innovation is how the system sets up stories and ties them into the gameplay. The system is designed to draw you into an encounter with a nemesis, there are multiple outcomes to that encounter. Those encounters become callbacks in the next encounter and so on and on until you've create a storyarc against that enemy.
For example I remember having a nemesis I couldn't kill with a sneak attack (which was very much my preferred way of getting rid of nemesis I wanted to get rid of). So I had to fight him head on and I set him on fire. He managed to escape while I was being overrun by grunts. One of the grunts slayed me and became a new nemesis. Meanwhile the one that got away gained a new weaknesses to fire. One storyline branched into two storylines. Not only did my individual story born from the nemesis system branch out, the gameplay encounters with those nemesis also changed from the previous encounter. The next time I fought my old nemesis I had a new trick up my sleeve, I could use fire against them. As for the new nemesis, well get to him.
That's the innovation of the nemesis system. It's a story generator that gives you your story and each encounter alters the gameplay for the next encounter. But that's only the foundation of the nemesis system. The Nemesis hierarchy and relations between them is an extra layer of storytelling. For example that grunt who killed me turned out to become a really annoying nemesis, I really struggled killing him and every encounter only made him stronger. So I devised a different strategy. I ended up turning other orks that surrounded him in the hierarchy and started using them to do my dirty work. In the end I wasn't the one to slay my new nemesis, it was a different ork (under my control) who challenged him and killed him.
And final note on what really makes all of it work is the presentation. The orks aren't just a randomized collection of traits, they're voiced and somewhat visually unique and whatever randomized outcome they get to at the end of the encounter gets properly presented in the next encounter. The presentation is the glue that ties all those encounters together into one story. You're presented with an actual nemesis and not just some generic mute and they "remember" the things you did to them before. They feel like a nemesis and not just some randomly generated grunt.
If you tried it and didn't see the appeal I'm guessing the game was too easy. I wasn't impressed by the nemesis system until the orks had a chance to escape or I was forced to retreat or I got killed. The system really opens up and gets interesting when the game gets so challenging that you're no longer certain what will happen in any encounter.
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If you have a blog or memoir, I would love to peruse it
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I can finally give up on a sequel to Shogo Mobile Armor Division. What a sad day but Monolith also hadn't released a game in 8 years. If Rocksteady hadn't made the Arkham asylum series they would be gone too.
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Nobody wants to hear them. Because I disabuse people of their cherished views and it doesn't end well. Thanks though.
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Oh I feel like I'm well over any optimistic views on anything. I've seen mountains of dollars go to absolute waste more than once, I've seen projects succeed despite the absurd negligence of everyone involved, and lies above lies above lies.
So I will find your stories amusing at the very least.
Hit me up in DMs if you don't want to go public.
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I mean I'm open to conversation, I love talking and I love sharing with other humans! You or anyone else can feel free to DM me
Please before you read on, it's going to get ugly, and know that it is not directed at you. I will leave it at that, proceed at your own risk.
In the public facing area of SM I find that I am very frank and no-nonsense and I will just state the truth, no matter how unpleasant the recipients may find it. I was on BBSs before I was on the Internet, and the Internet before the Web existed. My friend Julian and his friend Frank were the two biggest phreakers in my city and Frank did 10 years for some crazy motherfucking advanced nasty digital shit involving financial transactions. I have the resume to back my stuff up and I have so many first in gaming I don't want to hear one motherfucking word of backtalk from anybody who thinks they know more than I do. I did more in the first 5 years of my career than most people will do in their entire lives. I did not just cobble together shit, I literally innovated stuff, I built the things that people now use to build things. And I was doing it with some amazing people along the way. One of them is a major executive at a semiconductor corporation to this day and he's one of my best buds. Another has done digital film work on probably every single film that you have ever seen. I could carry on like an asshole, but I'm just scratching the surface I want you to know.
When I was still a student, I won a worldwide multimedia contest, I had made a dentistry simulator where you could actually do surgery on a patient. I won 1500 US dollars & my school was awarded $30,000 licences of Adobe and Macromedia software (Yes they were bitter rivals at that time of course). I had the very first plug-in enabled game on the Web, it was a mini golf game for the Swedish mini golf association. I literally programmed my own physics simulation for it. I made the very first touchscreen internet enabled network of gaming systems. I personally made 12 published games for those systems. I made the software and games for North America's first gaming cafe. I made the very first online parimutuel gaming system. I developed a 3D tennis game that you could play in a web browser and I believe it was a world's first. Game systems I developed and licensed are on river boats right now being played by people. I was the lead developer for gameloft.com. I developed the first online gaming software deployed by state-run lottery corporations. I wrote two books on a piece of multimedia software, I wrote the bilingual curriculum for three years of a multimedia college - That's while I was also running my own game studio from my apartment in Montreal and punching out games in my underwear on Saturday morning and selling them for 8,000 bucks. Around two extremely successful game studios until the golden handcuffs took me to the desks. Started the very first house doctor PC service in my city and I made so much money I stopped answering the phone.
Heard every ill-conceived, half-baked opinionation on gaming and I'm exhausted and I'm done with the kid gloves. I really don't give a flying fuck how much a person likes video games or thinks they're great or is in love with them or wants to be a game developer, I'm sick to death of it. Nobody has a motherfucking word to say to me and I literally don't care. I'm a very very open person, I crave knowledge, you don't get where I went by being an ignorant. But it'll be a world's first if you can show up at my door and tell me something I don't know.
And I'm sorry to say that really I truly am, because it makes me sound like a fuck face. But if you don't want to hear what I have to say, stay the fuck out of my inbox because I don't have time for dildos who dare to tell me how anything works.
Most of the time, the things people believe to be true are completely insane once you understand the underlying nuances and layers. Or more accurately the individual molecules. When you've built the tools that built the tools that built the games.
And here's a statement that will piss people off- one doesn't stand at the top of the gaming industry for two decades when you lick somebody else's asshole and sniff their farts, one leads the pack. And I did lead the pack and everybody followed me and stole my work and did what I did. Literally entire features were added to Macromedia software simply because I was taking the software places even the creators didn't know it could go.
So everybody wants to follow the leader but nobody wants to hear him say how it is, because that hurts their feelings and ego. And after going through 4 years of therapy and now being 10 years sober from severe demon drinking, I can confidently say there's some bizarre fucking issues going on with people who both want to smell my wind, but yell at me like they're angry at Daddy.
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Right on the money