The degradation of the gaming industry on the example of one studio

I really love the old games from Naughtydog, and the JAK and DAXTER trilogy is generally one of my most beloved. But at the same time, I completely do not enjoy their new projects, although it would seem that they were made by one studio. What’s the matter? I decided to figure it out.

To begin with, I drew up a table for the total duration of all the games of the company since 2000, and also allocated the number of gameplay and Kitszen in them. I played many of these games myself, but since the memory is changeable, I used the Howlongtobeat site to check the data.com, as well as different longplays on YouTube. It turned out the following:

Count % shows what percentage of the total duration of the game he occupies various kinds of videos and cats. For clarity, it is better to look at the graphs.

Green columns show a share from https://nonukcasinosites.co.uk/scratch-cards-not-on-gamstop/ the total duration of the game occupied by Katsets. And if earlier they occupied somewhere around 1/10 from the entire game, then after the first Ancharteda-about a third. Well, with the release of Last of US, this indicator generally struck all the limits of decency. And here, for sure, many will ask me the question – so what? What is bad in the fact that Kitsen is more? For starters, I will give the following analogy: what could be better than a juicy piece of meat? Of course juicy meat with sauce! And what will happen if you add more sauce? And yet. And yet. And yet. We will flood all the meat with sauce, immerse it in a jar with it. And now, to eat meat, you must also drink the whole jar of sauce. And you will no longer really want to eat this. Is meat bad – no. Is the sauce bad – no. It is bad when the sauce is more than meat. The same thing with video games. I have nothing against long Kitszen or plot-oriented games. Yes, and chew gameplay without kitszen is also sometimes dull. But I do not understand such a situation when almost half of its time, the game plays itself. And then I then why then? Maybe I’ll go better the movie, I’ll watch the movie, but you yourself will do everything here.

Another lower schedule destroys another belief, they say modern games have become much more voluminous than the old ones, therefore, they come out less often, but it turns out to be not at all like that. TLOU 2 was the most long game after … JAK 2, which was released back in 2003. Moreover, how adequate to compare their duration, because the games Jak and Daxter were in the open world. Even the first, most primitive part gave the possibility of re -passing locations to collect all the secrets. In the second and third part, there is a loud map, side quests, secrets and activity, so that if you wish, you can stretch them for 20-30 hours. Antchartada is absolutely linear and there is nothing to do there after passing the plot.

So why did it happen? We continue the investigation.

In the third picture there are two fathers of the founders of the company and the main gaming designers, both of them left about 2005, and not only they together. For example, Bob Rafey, the art director of all bandits and jacks, also left after the first Ancharteda. In general, it was Fortune Drake that became a swan song for many company employees. Do not understand me wrong, I understand perfectly well that the personnel of personnel has always been and will be, new specialists replace old and all that, but, there should be some continuity when young workers adopt the experience and ideas of the old. Whether this happened over time in the nottidog? Take a look at the main persons participating in the development of the last game.

The great and terrible Neil Dracman, in fact, is actually the most worthy of all, he at least worked on many different games in the past, however, as an ordinary programmer. How he became a creative director and chief screenwriter – it is not clear. But other employees have even less experience. For example, the second screenwriter – Halei Gross did not work at all, on any major game project before that, several episodes from different second -rate series and all. How a person without the slightest experience in Gamdev is allowed to write a story for one of the title series? With others – the same story, and I had to thoroughly delve into, in order to even understand who all these people, no information on Wikipedia. Although this is a super-known company that sells millions of copies of its games, while information about its employees can hardly be found somewhere. For two main game designers, this is only a second project in his career, while Richard Cambier somehow did not participate in the development of the 4th ANCHARTED or DLS to him, where he was at that time, is not clear. There are even less information about other employees. And from here I want to go to my main thesis.

We often accept the studio as some kind of monolithic organism, we see the Naughtydog, Bethesda, BioWare icon and we think that these are the guys who have made so many great games, how can they screw up like that? But in reality, those very people have not worked for a long time in those very studios. Again, the problem is not in new faces, the problem when they appear out of nowhere and immediately receive dominant roles in the development of a large project.

If we compare the main people who participated in the development of JAK 3 and The Last of US 2, then only two people come out on both titles. The game is not made by companies, people make games. Like any art. You cannot replace the artist with another artist and pretend that everything was so. Sometimes it is possible to find or grow replacement to the old creators, and sometimes not. The reason why the old people leave the most diverse, some are corny tired, burn out, find themselves in something else. But often greed becomes all the wine. After all, really talented experts will ask for themselves and the corresponding fee. And the creative director turned on his business can confront with the publishing house regarding the vision of the game. Therefore, it is much easier to hire ordinary artisans – hired workers who, without fire in the eyes, fulfill any of your assignments. And part of the game is completely outsourced to the Indians who blind you any code is three times cheaper than the programmer will request in your country. For saved money, you can write out bonuses (hello, Bobby Kotik), or inflated the advertising budget.

Therefore, when the next time they announce the continuation of your favorite series. Do not be surprised and do not build illusions, but better see who is hiding behind a loud name right now – BioWare, Bethesda, Naughtydoge