She just received the lifetime achievement award at GDC, i think "the industry" does not wrong her at all :P
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Why does the industry keep fucking Amy Hennig over?
- Thread starter NTGYK
- Start date
Just a string of bad luck on her part. She is a trooper though and I'm sure what ever she puts out next will be amazing.
She's hardly alone. A ton of classic game directors have been basically forced out of the business and had to restart as indies. I think the industry overall is extremely toxic to any individual creator, and putting a 5 year multi million project entirely on one person's shoulders is inhumane.
I would love for Crystal Dynamics to somehow get her back on staff and starting a new Soul Reaver or Legacy of Kain game, even a reboot.
However, I would also love world peace and goodwill to human-kind, but I don't see that happening either. :(
However, I would also love world peace and goodwill to human-kind, but I don't see that happening either. :(
Oh look another post down playing her role in uncharted 4. Surprised there is no comment about how amazing drukman is.
Extremely bad luck and a possible case of studio in-fighting with whatever happened with Uncharted 4, but the latter we will never definetly know since she likely signed a million NDAs
Stating what happened based on extremely reliable reports is downplaying? Lol, in what world?
From what we've heard I sugarcoated it even. Uncharted 4 was an absolute aimless mess before it was rebooted based on some of the reports.
Just wanted to thank you for saying who she is.
In most cases, these threads don't mention what these people are known for (most recent example is the projared thing, still don't know who he is).
We are a minority here who are quite ignorant when it comes to this industry.
And sometimes too lazy to look it up :(
Yep, that's my dream. I've been waiting on LOK/Soul Reaver game for like 15 years now or something. So annoying.
Of course it does. If you need a big prolific male person being screwed over by company politics, Kojima is the obvious example.
Had he taken a position at EA rather than with Sony, we'd probably be able to have this same thread about him. The list of notable things torn down by EA despite quality isn't exactly short.
Sony is a massive exception to the rule due to being a platform holder.
The industry is definitely in a different place regarding sp games right now. That being said, with 2 projects canned in a row (the first being in a studio that by all accounts had a lot of respect towards Amy, and the second by a studio that specifically went after her to work on a big star wars project), it's hard not to give her at least some sort of responsibility for those failures.
Respawn are currently making a single player Star Wars game without a multiplayer mode.
How's being a platform holder make them an exception? Their singleplayer games are successful because they're good.
Not everything is multiplayer. There's no "rule" to begin with. Bethesda, Capcom, Rockstar, and Ubisoft make high budget singleplayer games. Even EA is making Jedi Fallen Order.
I think this is it. There are other well known developers who have kind of just faded away into the background due to the nature of how the gaming industry is right now.
A 5 year multi million project is never entirely on one person's shoulders. No project is ever entirely on one person's shoulders. For both successes and failures.
After they cancelled Visceral's game. Let's be honest, EA's handling of Star Wars has been horrendous anyway so I'm not remotely trusting anything about that game until it's released.
Being a platform holder is about selling hardware, so it's about evergreen games that people put on lists for reasons to buy a console. Not saying they don't do multiplayer and microtransactions or that the games aren't good, but they're more likely to take risks on projects.
Rockstar's "single player games" also have some of the most microtransaction baited multiplayer modes ever created.
Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Spider-Man and Red Dead Redemption 2 are among the best selling games of 2018. There will always be a market for singleplayer games.
This is a good well-written post and I like that it exists. I agree that it's not the SP/MP divide that we often focus on, nor even the AAA vs indie thing. I think it's the idea that development is increasingly becoming a succeed or die trying endeavor in this industry and that is incredibly stressful. It is no mistake that we are hearing about an unending stream of worker mistreatment, toxic cultures, and bad coping mechanisms. I don't think she's necessarily obsolete, by any means. She wanted and needed a reset. Glad she's getting it. Maybe the industry needs one too.
Because they get a better return on a game (no platform holder fees) and the marketing costs can be subsidized by the sales / returns delivered by the plaform, not necessarily by the game itself.
Look at this way; if it costs you 60$ in marketing to get a user to purchase a game, you will be losing money because you aren't getting that return from the game and the marketing costs are getting pushed there by multiplayer games that get something more than that in return per average customer (crude example, there's a lot more depth to it). So if you're just a publisher expecting that sort of marketing costs, you can't really use performance marketing as tool to push the game towards the sales it needs. However, if you're a platform holder you can not only "remove" the platform holder fee, but also take into account that your exclusive titles are part of of getting people into the platform economy and contribute to hundreds of dollars in revenue per user.
Platform holders can ship games that wouldn't even be profitable alone if they were releases by 3rd party publishers, but have them be profitable because of the removal of fees and the overall contribution to the platform economy. That will allow you to push marketing costs higher and be more competitive against the GaaS games where the expected return per customer is a lot higher than traditional single player games.
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This so damn much. There's far, far too much assumptions around games being on the shoulders of a few key members like directors, when the reality is so incredibly far away from it these days.
Yes, because games are made by hundreds of people these days, there are people who might have been able to lead smaller teams to ship games, now unable to be up to the job of leading a games team. But regardless game direction and leadership hasn't been an authoritarian role for a long time due to the complexity of the game development and people unable to handle it have always have a difficult time getting anything out on budget/time. As to the topic, it does get difficult these days because just a couple of cancelled games can take half-a-decade of your times, yet it's still a completely normal thing that games get cancelled if they don't work out or fail to fit in with the publishers ever-changing needs.
Respawn's Star Wars game was initially announced in May of 2016
https://www.respawn.com/stig-blog/
Project Ragtag, the SW project that Amy with leading at Visceral, was taken over by EA Vancouver in October of 2017 after Visceral was shutdown the same month.
I keep wondering this
I'm sure it's bad luck but the section about uncharted 4 in blood sweat and pixels doesn't show her in the best light.
I'm sure it's bad luck but the section about uncharted 4 in blood sweat and pixels doesn't show her in the best light.
i dunno, but i was really disappointed by her work, i really don't find the uncharted writing or story interesting... it was a huge step down after legacy of kain for me
maybe she not as good as a writer as before? Plenty of writter that ends up bad after early good works and maybe she can't find anything worthwhile because of that...
but that's just my opinion, plenty of people loved uncharted so i doubt it's that in the end
maybe she not as good as a writer as before? Plenty of writter that ends up bad after early good works and maybe she can't find anything worthwhile because of that...
but that's just my opinion, plenty of people loved uncharted so i doubt it's that in the end
The Uncharted 4 rift is just something that happens when there is a difference of creative vision for a project. Not indicative of any deep-seated issues imo. Then everything else can be explained by EA being a creative graveyard.
Well, I meant it more in a creative way. Noone gets to make "their game" anymore, at that level. You have movie directors putting millions and millions into what is, basically, their vision (if you are Steven Spielberg or James Cameron), but the former star directors of games don't get that level of trust.
This is such a stupid comment. No doubt she's experienced sexism in her long career but blaming her recent failings on it? You think sexism is what brought down Visceral? Behave.
Eh, I don't know... I don't agree with this recent narrative we see on this forum.
Ubisoft, Bethesda, Capcom, Square-Enix, THQ, Bandai Namco, Sega, heck even Activision just published a FromSoft game.
Minus Activision, all those publishers mainly produce single player games. And they are some of the biggest publishers.
It's also the only big project not using Frostbite Engine, Respawn is clearly an anomaly when it comes to EA.
Why would the industry be fucking her over? Without knowing anything about actual events rather than hearsay it sounds like a mix of like unfortunate circumstances and an inability to sell people on the vision over the long term for two projects. That's it.
When you spend half a decade on one thing, and that does not work out, its not "keep being fucked over".
Its one project being cancelled.
And nice to know we make a oh poor amy thread, cause clearly she was the only person working on that cancelled game.
Its one project being cancelled.
And nice to know we make a oh poor amy thread, cause clearly she was the only person working on that cancelled game.
The point was "not everything is multiplayer". It doesn't matter if they have multiplayer modes. They focus on quality singleplayer first and foremost and their single player modes are higher quality and have more content that the majority of other games. RDR2 sold 23+ million copies in 2 weeks. They hadn't even revealed RDO at that point.
They still make their games to be profitable on their own. I don't think they can ship games that wouldn't be profitable.
Can't find the tweet but pretty sure Druckmann debunked this when Cliffy B said Uncharted doesn't have to be profitable for Sony because it sells hardware.
About uncharted 4? I think in summary, the project don't have solid direction where it want to go. Hennig team are testing a lot of different mechanic that didn't mesh well. Like they're trying making the climbing traversal more complex with stamina meter or something, manual aim for grappling hook, etc but it hinder the traversal in combat situation. Then they're trying to add like dancing mini game that will only be used once during the auction house part. They also plan to minimize shooting, Drake wouldn't even get a gun for hours into the game.
Things like that. Maybe Hennig took Uncharted 3 criticsm too seriously and got the pressure that Uncharted 4 had to be something very different.
Of all the people fucked over by the industry she seems like one of the least fucked over people so I think this thread is a bit daft. She has name recognition, is very highly regarded and I'm guessing is probably quite wealthy. She'll never be of of a job. She's fine.