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Radical Entertainment shutdown

if the idiots running those studios didn't sell themselves out to be bought they wouldn't have to worry about being shut down.
 
thejunglegod said:
I'm scared at the rate at which game companies are shutting down.
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Theyre spending un-godly amounts on games these days with all the CGI work and Voice acting, thinking their makeing films.... when in fact its just usually over the top cutscenes that really arnt as needed as they seem to think.

I think its fine a few learn this the hard way, games should be about the gameplay, and most games that come out dont have no where near the work put into the story/actual gameplay they need, and way to much $ spendt on voice acting and CGI like movie quality cutscenes.

I much rather have a turn based RPG like fallout 1&2, with great story and tons of work on the dialog, and near endless random encounters and quests and small things to do in the game than another silly First person shooter game, with too much $ spent on graphics and voice acting.

The first person shooters are a dime a dozen these days, its been done already and is still going on.

Heres a concept for game studios out there, looking to do something differnt.... go old school! *shock*
Make a Turn-based RPG with tons of story/dialog (text if needed) and tons of fun stuff to do in it and small lil quests ect.
Make sure its open world, with exploration and not pigionholed into walking 1 zone after another = profit.
 
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Games industry is like any other industry really, it's eventually saturated by businesses to capacity that the market can bear, and they fight it out for their slice of the pie and with too many businesses fighting not all survive.

We hold the gaming industry sacred for some reason, we shouldn't really, it's no different from something like a butcher going bankrupt in a town where there's too many butchers.

Arkadrel said:
Theyre spending un-godly amounts on games these days with all the CGI work and Voice acting, thinking their makeing films.... when in fact its just usually over the top cutscenes that really arnt as needed as they seem to think.
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I agree, basically it seems like that sort of thing is used to appeal to the casual audience and rake in a lot of "safe" sales. While it's expensive to invest in initially it has a fairly reliable and predictable ROI which is what you want with very large investments, no risk.

A much better use of resources is to have some artistic freedom and run with some new and clever ideas, look at things like DayZ and minecraft, both very high success and popularity relative to the effort to make.

It would be nice to see a gaming crash and have gaming go back to its roots, that would be fantastic, I'd pick 1 minecraft over 1000 CoD games, every time.
 
Well I'm not sure voice acting and cgi work is a major portion of the budget (it might be but I would like to see some numbers). I do think that a very good game with good voice acting and reasonable cut scene can be made for 3 to 5 million over a 2+ year timeline if the company is well run. That is a pretty big budget; but we are hearing some studios spend 10x that so the waste is probably not simply 'too much on voice acting and cgi'; perhaps they hire the wrong people or too many people to do the work; spend too much on management; trade shows and advertising or cut bad deals with publishers (which can be a very expensive mistake).

Last but least activision decision to shutdown the studio does not nec mean the studio itself was unprofitable; the decision might have to do with management decision to focus in other areas; or internal politics.
 
After reading the Penny Arcade article on the shutdown, I just get the feeling that they need some budgeting tools to control costs. Use something like Earned Value to determine how much the project is really going to cost and allow yourself to make adjustments in time to actually matter.
 
For every studio that shuts down, there's one that pops up. Many times, lead designers and programmers of shuttered studios end up bandying together to open their own "indie" studio. Yeah, the indie games aren't usually as glamorous, but many of them are very enjoyable. And as far as I can tell, more games are being released than at any time in PC gaming.
 
Arkadrel said:
Heres a concept for game studios out there, looking to do something differnt.... go old school! *shock*
Make a Turn-based RPG with tons of story/dialog (text if needed) and tons of fun stuff to do in it and small lil quests ect.
Make sure its open world, with exploration and not pigionholed into walking 1 zone after another = profit.
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Your idea of something "differnt [sic]" is to do something that was done to death years ago? Going old school is not different, that's why they call it OLD school. I threw out the rest of your post after reading this.
 
gorcorps said:
Your idea of something "differnt [sic]" is to do something that was done to death years ago? Going old school is not different, that's why they call it OLD school. I threw out the rest of your post after reading this.
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Fans of older genres do not just vanish. If you have realistic project management, you can do a decent job of creating games based on old (or new) themes, that will make you money.

Blockbuster mentality will lead to much greater hit/miss rollercoaster rides.
 
gorcorps said:
Your idea of something "differnt [sic]" is to do something that was done to death years ago? Going old school is not different, that's why they call it OLD school. I threw out the rest of your post after reading this.
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When I said "differnt" I didnt mean, something never done before.
I was kinda hopeing people could figour that much out on their own.

I mean "differnt" in that its not something anyone else is doing right now.

When was the last time you saw a turn based RPG with tons of story? focus on open worlds + random encounters and tons of small side quest and mini games?

I havnt seen any, in ages.
People that design games are all about first person shooters and good graphics, but games like that are a dime a dozen. = hard to stand out.

And believe it or not, ALOT of people miss the old school games, like I mentioned above.
If someone did take it upon themselfs to do such, I bet theyd make a sh*t ton of $, simply because theres no conpetition currently.
 
You know something is seriously wrong with the games industry when selling 1 million copies is considered a "failure" and warrants shutting down the entire studio. (I know this is Activision we're talking about here - if it doesn't get CoD levels of sales or can't be milked on an annual basis, then axe it - but still.)

1 million copies should not sink a franchise. 1 million copies is a pretty strong seller.

So I'm guessing this is another case like Kingdoms of Amalur? Game sold fine, but still lost money due to terrible budgeting? Was it all the money they spent on ridiculous marketing?
 
LessThanDan said:
You know something is seriously wrong with the games industry when selling 1 million copies is considered a "failure" and warrants shutting down the entire studio. (I know this is Activision we're talking about here - if it doesn't get CoD levels of sales or can't be milked on an annual basis, then axe it - but still.)

1 million copies should not sink a franchise. 1 million copies is a pretty strong seller.

So I'm guessing this is another case like Kingdoms of Amalur? Game sold fine, but still lost money due to terrible budgeting? Was it all the money they spent on ridiculous marketing?
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Its not a similar situation. 38 pissed away over a hundred million in an over ambitious MMORPG.

1million is a failure these days because game budgets have skyrocketed out of control.

The upper end budgets for AAA used to be $10million. And that wasn't all that long ago. Now AAA titles have $50million+ budgets. Some even more. Not saying this game had that but it not doubt cost more than games used to, when the 1million sold mark meant complete success.
 
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Arglebargle said:
Fans of older genres do not just vanish. If you have realistic project management, you can do a decent job of creating games based on old (or new) themes, that will make you money.

Blockbuster mentality will lead to much greater hit/miss rollercoaster rides.
Click to expand...

Then don't say it's something different... if anything it's something classic or proven
 
Arkadrel said:


Heres a concept for game studios out there, looking to do something different.... go old school! *shock*
Make a Turn-based RPG with tons of story/dialog (text if needed) and tons of fun stuff to do in it and small lil quests ect.
Make sure its open world, with exploration and not pigionholed into walking 1 zone after another = profit.
Click to expand...

This is why I backed Wasteland 2 on kickstarter. I'm hoping it fills the void.
 
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