I don't know if I should have expected different (not really familiar with individual game journalists) but for a video labeled "Cold Take" it felt more like listening to a series of hot takes.
>This is not a $200 million game, this is a $5 million game at best, the rest was spent on sipping Singapore slings on the sandy beaches.
Sure you don't want to have a more substantive view of how executives mismanaged the project in your "cold take" about poor executive performance?
>This is not a $200 million game, this is a $5 million game at best, the rest was spent on sipping Singapore slings on the sandy beaches.
Also just transparently, blatantly false and stated in a way that doesn't make it seem like sarcasm or a joke. Makes it hard to take anything else in the video seriously. The game is infamous for how long it spent in development! Salaries are expensive.
This video focuses on the video game industry. If you were looking for an insightful discussion of low performing execs in general, this isn't it. I wouldn't even describe these decisions as poor.
If you want high quality anything, you need to pare down the set of people who make decisions about it to a very small number. That's how all these great games were made. I believe the Elder Scrolls franchise has a single "loremaster", and as a result the lore is good. If you want the story to be good, one person has to have the final say on the plot, etc. That's not what a large corporation is trying to do.
Large corporations are trying to ensure that a known good approach isn't strayed far from (prevent screw-ups and ensure mediocrity at the expense of innovation). The recipe is boring and well understood: require many people for every decision, ensure that processes are designed for a representative low performer, ensure no one's strengths are relied upon so they can be easily replaced. This is what has produced the same Call of Duty with better graphics and more weapons every year for the last decade. It's a recipe that works. Eventually it won't, it will get old, and innovation will be required. A corporation can't do that (innovate), so it will have to shut down the project or risk going under.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 31.6 ms ] threadEDIT: I guess I should have said "This behavior is only because of perverse incentives."
>This is not a $200 million game, this is a $5 million game at best, the rest was spent on sipping Singapore slings on the sandy beaches.
Sure you don't want to have a more substantive view of how executives mismanaged the project in your "cold take" about poor executive performance?
Also just transparently, blatantly false and stated in a way that doesn't make it seem like sarcasm or a joke. Makes it hard to take anything else in the video seriously. The game is infamous for how long it spent in development! Salaries are expensive.
"The product is the stock"
If you want high quality anything, you need to pare down the set of people who make decisions about it to a very small number. That's how all these great games were made. I believe the Elder Scrolls franchise has a single "loremaster", and as a result the lore is good. If you want the story to be good, one person has to have the final say on the plot, etc. That's not what a large corporation is trying to do.
Large corporations are trying to ensure that a known good approach isn't strayed far from (prevent screw-ups and ensure mediocrity at the expense of innovation). The recipe is boring and well understood: require many people for every decision, ensure that processes are designed for a representative low performer, ensure no one's strengths are relied upon so they can be easily replaced. This is what has produced the same Call of Duty with better graphics and more weapons every year for the last decade. It's a recipe that works. Eventually it won't, it will get old, and innovation will be required. A corporation can't do that (innovate), so it will have to shut down the project or risk going under.