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| Mnementh said: The common thing here is: all these devs had the room to continue after failure, to learn from it, to form that experience into a better game next time (or improve the same game in case of NMS). Yet Firewalk is denied this learning experience. And that is not on gamers, that is on Sony. They don't allow Firewalk to learn and turn into a better studio with a better game next time. And my guess the failure is mostly due to Sony decisions like price and live service model. I guess a lot of that is down to budget. You don't easily walk away from a 200 million failure (or possibly more). But again: that is on Sony. Why not start with a smaller budget and smaller game with an unproven and new studio. Sony did that once upon a time: they had games like Flower, Parappa, Gravity Rush and so on. Small experiences. How many similar games were cancelled or uncussessful? With such small budget it is easy to forget a failure. And these games still allow the studio to learn and grow. So no, wishing a game to fail because we dislike the direction it takes should not mean that the devs lose their job. That is a corporate decision, and it is bad as it prevents studios to build up experience and good workflow. |
That's the thing about Firewalk, they aren't some unproven studio, they're made up of industry veterans. They wanted a 200M+ budget for their live service project. I'm sure they could learn from Concord and make a much better game the next time around. But would that be worth it for Sony? How much growth do they really have left? Would their next game even be a moderate success? It made sense to allow developers like Team Asobi and Arrowhead to learn and grow.
Sony approves all sorts of budgets for all sorts of games. Concord getting 200M+ doesn't mean something like Astro Bot or Lego Horizon aren't going to be funded. We still get stuff like Destruction All Stars, Sackboy, Helldivers 2, Miles Morales, and XDEV projects like Rise of the Ronin. We even have them licensing out a niche but beloved PS Vita game in Freedom Wars. Personally I think Sony has done a good job in providing these experiences since the launch of the PS5. Could they do better? Sure. I don't think its accurate to say that Sony aren't funding smaller, more budgeted games, though.
I just don't see how wishing these games to fail means you aren't hoping that these developers lose their jobs. Many developers can't afford a game bombing, yet alone a catastrophic bomb like Concord, especially if they are independent. I'm sure some of you guys hoping it fails don't have that intention, but that's not the reality.
