Curious Mike - sorry to hear man! I had no idea you even worked in the industry. What was your role?
As you have survived the industry for so long, I suspect you have proven your mettle to more than one company, and you should have zero problems finding a new home. Here's to hoping you don't have to move to get a new job with an excellent studio, unless of course you want to move, then I say find the best studio and knock on their door!
Good luck! And I hope everything works out for you soon.
Portal 2. And Valve is far from just a developer, their main business is Steam and their game dev division has become the tail and not the dog of the business.
Valve is a major exception, however, Valve's business focus on the storefront and related activities (SteamOS et all) is more akin to the publisher-side of Valve. Valve still has internal development teams that do not have anything to do with that aspect of Valve. They have, for instance, been working on Source 2. I suspect they may have been tasked a little to help port Source engine and their own in-house productions to Linux and OpenGL, but otherwise they do have their own projects.
But Valve, as a developer-publisher operation that has existed as a single corporation for the life of the company, is a super rare exception to how they conduct business. They didn't buy the dev studio and start flexing their muscle, they did then and do know what they want to do.
They have the opportunity to take their time and make us Half Life 3 on Source 2 at the pace they require to make what will ultimately be one of the best FPS games of the century, so I don't mind this one bit. :awe:
I have a suspicion that HL3 was partly in the works but perhaps was shelved or scrapped to begin work on a new engine instead of stretching the lifespan of the original Source Engine.
Blaming Bioware's mediocrity on EA is a bit off base. Has no one watched as nearly every single old guard PC developer attempts mainstream success by churning out broad audience AAA's? It would have happened regardless, the industry just isn't what it was in the 90's. This should be made pretty clear by projects like Pillars of Eternity being relegated to Kickstarter funding, if Bioware was still trying to make games like that, they would be in the same boat.
You are missing the root cause of why these "old guard" developers have begun pumping out mediocre games designed to attract a larger audience: this is what EA as a major publisher gets to push, because EA needs big hits that sell to millions so that they can continue making money, and more money whenever possible. That's the world of shareholder-controlled publishers.
It is the reason why Battlefield 4 launched a complete mess, and still isn't what BF3 was, which, while many complain was also a terrible game far removed from BF2, BF3 was simply a spectacle and well-done.
What happened with BF4, at least regarding bugs, is a similar situation as to what happened with the Halo XBONE re-release: hard release date, game must ship then, no ifs ands or buts. "Don't worry", they say, "you can patch it later."
Ugh.
The developers who, with the right publishers, have the opportunity to say, "nope, we're not ready. Delayed" are the ones that can continue to pump out amazing games even if they are designed for a larger audience.
GTA V for PC has been delayed a few times, likewise for The Witcher 3. Both should be great to play on day one, minus perhaps the odd bugs. Games are far more complicated and bugs can hide in so many areas unlike the pre-patch era, and then, I don't think anyone ever had set launch dates until they were pretty much wrapping things up.
BF3 was even a little sloppy in some ways at launch, at least for multi-monitor support and GPUs that were newer at time of launch, but they were addressed quickly. That game too had a set launch date that never budged.
Fact is, the big publishers exert their influence and demand games released on time. This has hurt the industry a lot, as I'm sure you'd agree. Games that require patches on Day 1 to even function properly (or worse, large features remain broken for months after release), that hurts all of us. They threaten funding, because these big games that attempt to please a large audience and be "the next big thing" cost a ton of money and the developer studios themselves can rarely finance that in-house. $50mil dollar games (not counting advertising) aren't a rarity anymore, and studios need publisher support. When publishers pull the plug, games can be left to wither away. As has happened numerous times.
It's a rare studio that can remain a self-publisher, or even a rare publisher that has a few studios that they let work autonomously without much pressure.
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