Yep compartmentalizing people, because these people think in spreadsheets

Yikes

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2024/09/rumour-concord-cost-usd400-million-sony-believed-it-was-the-future-of-playstation

I don't understand why people are so ready to believe this, without asking any questions. 

Does any part of Concord scream Sony's most expensive game ever (and by a lot)? 

Horizon 2 and The Last of Us Part II cost around $200 million for their entire development cycle. Those games are like top of the line for visuals, animations, etc, with hundreds of characters and cutscenes, and huge maps. 

ProbablyMonsters has put out their investment numbers, and they don't support $200 million in development before Sony bought them. They got about $250 million in funding, and that is shared with two other studios who are working on their own games. Something like $150m would be the top end, and $100m is probably more realistic. 

Spending another $200m in 18 months would also be pretty be absurd. It's not impossible, but that's at least twice as fast as the spending on Sony's biggest project. Spider-Man 2 was in development for 5 years, and about 3 of those years were with a full sized team. TLOU 2 was in development for 6 years, and about 3 of that was with the full 350 developers, with quite a lot of outsourcing. Sony's biggest games were spending $200m over a 36 month period. 

The claim with Concord would blow that out of the water, despite having a very small core team. Firewalk is less than half the size of Santa Monica or Naughty Dog. 

The idea that Sony fast tracked a game that they felt was broken, makes little sense. 

Sony's next Finance call will be interesting. Perhaps the question will be asked what the impact ($$$) was. If I was an investor on that call, I would ask.

Just saw this on X: The Korean developers of The First Descendent put this outfit in the game. Some believe it to be an intentional troll on Concord's ugly brussels sprout outfit, to show that you can still make an outfit in ugly colors like green and yellow look sexy if you care to. 

“But…..that’s illegal” - Western journalists probably 

Western vs Eastern devs these days in a nutshell.

You might want to put a trigger warning on that before someone gets upset.

The funny thing is, there are now SO MANY power fantasy novels written by female authors out there now and the main characters are almost always hot, as well as being "badass".  I think it's clear that many females enjoy visualizing themselves as attractive and powerful, just like males.

What's the problem, then?  Why the war on attractive female characters?

There is an old article posted on one of the usual suspects (IGN, Polygon, etc.) where the writer was talking about how much she loved playing a beautiful, sexy and powerful character like Bayonetta .... UNTIL she realizes that guys are enjoying the character, too.  THAT made her angry and turned her against the last game.  The entitlement of her outlook was breathtaking to read about, especially since it was all in her own head.

I think that mentality has a lot to do with the situation.

People aren't generally opposed to "attractive female characters", a lot of people are opposed to characters that they view as being overly sexualized.

Even on ResetEra, there was a recent thread where Tetsuya Nomura was talking about having attractive characters, because people don't want to look ugly, and most people I saw over there were very grateful because "they're already ugly in real life".

Elena in Uncharted is a very attractive woman (in my view). She's not overly sexualized. She doesn't have her tits hanging out for no reason. There aren't gratuitous camera angles that are on her ass for no apparent reason. 

It's also bizarre to me that the "eastern game devs" get praised, despite the obvious inaccuracy. There's nothing practical about showing your hips and wearing short dresses, while you're fighting. Are we okay with inaccuracies or are we not?

Personally I think there is plenty of space for different kinds of characters. There is space for characters who are ugly and attractive, and there is space for stories that are focused on being accurate and on stories that are focused on just having a good time. There is space for male/female characters that are sexualized.