The reaction to Clair Obscur has been wild. I had a friend I haven't talked to since high school - when we were both big Final Fantasy fans - reach out to ask if I'd played it. A bunch of guys at work are talking about it who I didn't even know were gamers. I hope we see a lot more of these passionate, creative projects and the infrastructure to support them.

I don't think it's just "time to cook", pretty sure the devs having actual passion behind it also helps a lil bit.

Big corpos going just for the numbers are really good at stomping out all of that

honestly though, the game is a complete package AND it doesn't come with a bunch of fucking microtransactions/live-service/etc. etc. Gaming is the one area where I think we would all like to see our games be made the same way they were 10-15 years ago, instead of the bullshit from today.

Agreed. They could have left Dragon Age in the oven for three more years and it would still be meh.

Duke nukem forever would like a word.

Yeah, or keeping suits who aren't gamers away from making calls about the game's development.

Last three Bioware games had plenty of time to cook. The chefs were just bad. They chose the wrong ingredients multiple times, had to start over and still ended up with something barely edible.

I know it's popular to go "developer good, publisher bad", but in Bioware's case, from what I've read, they were mostly just given the rope to hang themselves.

I dont think his point is 'These amazing games are what you get if you give devs tine' but rather 'you can only get these games from giving devs time'. Its no guaruntee by any means, but you are never going to get greatness from suits focus grouping decisions and crunching out a game.

I know it’s popular to go “developer good, publisher bad”, but in Bioware’s case, from what I’ve read, they were mostly just given the rope to hang themselves.

Ever since ME Andromeda they've been outsourcing a lot of the work, and/or using smaller and inexperienced studios while promoting and launching them as if made by the main studio.

the same way they were 10-15 years ago

So with more crunch and no unions? It goes both ways, it's not a monolithic culture where passage of time simply makes things worse

They've been trying to "Central Engineering" things.

I worked as a massive chip company, they thought they could fix things by moving a lot of engineering out of the groups and into a single place where different groups and products could borrow and plug and play tech from.

Which was a great idea, except the groups didn't really understand what they wanted, and central engineering just wanted to make what they thought people wanted, which often fit nobody but looked really cool.

Bioware looks like they've been trying to pull all the game engine stuff central, which would be fine but the frostbite engine didn't work for half of what they wanted, and more importantly the "divisions" ended up just being pushed to make "something" to show off their best new tech, even if there was 0 story or creativity behind it (I'm looking at you Anthem).

You should see unions soon. Gaming industry is going to force every game designer and developer under a union because of the insecurities. A union guarantees they can't fuck with you like the crunches. Or the absolute worse is when they have to do unpaid overtime which I think is illegal.

To be fair, I've read that Sandfall also outsourced a lot of work for Expedition 33, which is how they've kept the team small.

I see no issues with outsourcing if done right: not every small developer needs to have a motion capture crew, etc.

If there are companies out there that can provide that for you at a reasonable cost, then you just need to focus on the core gameplay and the artistic aspects of your game.

This way you don't bloat your headcount with hundreds of people that you'll have to sack after the project is done, seems like a win for everybody.

Taking the pot off the stove, throwing away and starting again, then repeating it many times is not giving it time to cook

It is one of the reasons. The major reason is that companies aim for maximum profit with low risk, and not best products.

So for them, 10 meh games that gonna sell is better than 10 risky and maybe exceptional games, because they treat games as a dose to junkies. Thats why you have 200 Call of Duty and 500 Assassins Creed, games.

Deadlines, pulling plugs, moving people to different games all the time to reduce costs are the results of gaming becoming an industry. And guess what, they will continue that, even if more BG3 and Expedition 33 come out to hit them.

I was skeptical about it. I saw a lot of it being compared with Final Fantasy and I've been largely pretty disappointed with most Final Fantasy offerings since X.

Picked it up recently on the recommendation of another Lemming and, holy shit, this might be the best RPG I've ever played. Hands down, it's that good. God bless the French. This game is making me feel things I haven't felt since I was a teenager.

Yeah, and given this is coming from a dragon age writer that's pretty explicit.

A cancelation is a full stop and needs to be treated as such with any resources from it that can be carried forward needing scrutiny before being brought in, with them understood as a fortuitous situation. None of this 'we've spent 10 cumulative years on it" when this round is just one year

Most office workers are categorized as computer work, which was lobbied to be exempt from paid overtime laws.

I originally wasn't going to get it. I saw the Persona style combat menu and RPG... I have limited time to play games so I have to be picky.

I caught someone playing it... oh yeah, bought the game right away. The writing is amazing, and there's no "grind" you often find with many of the JRPG-style games