Schreier: Firewalk Studios is being shut down (Official and Neon Koi is being shut down)

[JRPGfan]

haxxiy said:

Mnementh said:

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.

I mean, that's the thing. A lot of people claim that the industry is missing AA games, that everything nowadays is too expensive and time-consuming and that's costing the industry, etc.

But the thing is, people nowadays don't buy AA games. Period. They almost unanimously fail with rare exceptions, meaning going back to the old PS2 days where that used to work seems out of the question with today's market.

So, you might as well go for high-risk, high-reward GAAS in that scenario. Blame the game, not the players.

They need to adapt some of the cost saving techniques used in the past.

Isometric views, backgrounds are just 2D art (but handcrafted and beautiful). Instead of anything being open world.... reel it back in, make it more linear, just allow a bit of freedom with a few branching paths and some exploration and hidden spots here and there.  That sort of thing, worked well in the past.

You cant expect a good outcome if you do a low budget, full open world game.
That stuff takes way way to much time and resources, so if your that limited, you'll end up spread to thin and the AA budget will result in a poor open world game.

You need to manage expectations and be realistic, and instead focus and polish where it makes sense.

Last edited by JRPGfan - on 30 October 2024