| Angelus said: Phil literally did a teary eyed interview where he himself said that they were not actively engaged enough with Arkane, and that they need to rework their whole internal processes. All I can do is look at the information as it's presented to me. I didn't say that MS needs to micromanage Bethesda. I should HOPE that they don't need to be micromanaging their studios, looming large over them like a scolding parent. But they DO need to be involved. Certainly involved enough to see red flags developing, and be in a position to intervene and stop a potentially bad situation from spiraling. This is not a binary situation of either MS totally hands off, or MS checking their pockets at the door and telling them what to eat. And it would be one thing, if there had never been any issues with their hands off approach before, but that's not the case. It's simply not good enough to keep using this philosophy as a shield and try to pass the buck to studio heads, and now Bethesda. Is there culpability there? Of course. But Phil, I hope, understands that at the end of the day, it falls on him to make sure they are not simply reacting in the aftermath of these situations. I'm kinda tired of talking about this now honestly, cus I feel like I just keep repeating myself, and some of you are just kinda cool with "shit happens, it was somebody else's fault, very unfortunate, oh well, hope we trust better people next time." I'm just not with that. Like Shaunodon said before too...it's not like Redfall was some game you were just vaguely aware of either...or at least you shouldn't have been. You made it the final piece of your first E3 show with Bethesda. You highlighted it again the year after, and then made it one of the pillars of the developer direct to start the year. At any of these points, did you actually review the state of the game? For longer than like 2 minutes? Wtf does that process look like over there? I mean Phil is always talking about meeting the teams to review stuff in preparation for these events. How in depth are these reviews for anything that isn't Starfield? We know you care about that...how much did you care about Arkane? How much do you care about Ninja Theory, Obsidian, etc? MS needs to ENGAGE with their teams. Not micromanage them. Not babysit them. Not leave them to their own devices until something goes wrong. Just. Fucking. Engage. Be involved. That's all I got to say on it. |
I am going to sum up my position on this topic and leave it at that. I do not believe more oversight of development studios is the solution. Actually I would say more oversight would cause senior developers to leave than stay. Instead when a project fails, the solution is not to throw out everything because of a failure, instead its an opportunity to strengthen the weaknesses in the process. All the other studios will not take kindly to MS changing how they handle them just because Redfall failed. Instead, what MS must do is provide each team better resources to better judge the quality level of their projects and what is acceptable as a first party studio. Better feedback on project status, issues and the what is the expectation for each project needs to be better communicated because not all projects are equal. Redfall was billed as a 70 dollar AAA game, it clearly was no where close to that level. Even if it shipped with no bugs it was clearly not at that level. This is a failure for Phil in not setting the bar and standard for any AAA game being released by MS and a failure on Bethesda in allowing this game to be published if their were major issues to be address. The most important mindset that MS must maintain is a healthy relationship with their senior developer leads. You cannot get more senior better developers if you start to take an oppressive micromanagement style that will be communicated within the industry.
What I would do if I was MS is develop an independent review team outside of each studio that is made from each development studio. This team sole purpose is not to tell each team how to do their work but to help assist them with issues and alert them problems with their project so proper help can be giving ahead of time. Also this team will be able to access the quality level of the project and determine if its at a level that meets its designation AA/AAA etc. A lot of developers never ask for help especially if they are the senior developers. This will mitigate that as a lot of times someone else has more experience in one area or another which could help a project get to the next level.
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