A reorganization of Xbox studios will put ZeniMax and its subsidiaries under the control of newly-minted president of game content and studios Matt Booty.
But I found the comments around Redfall interesting/concerning. Even if a studio gets promised independence in one of these giant mergers, they only have to fuck up once to get that taken away.
I’m not going to defend Redfall in any way, it actually does sound like a case of mismanagement. But I worry about the stifling of creativity that occurs when every studio is trying to play it safe to avoid becoming the next Bioware
The sense that I got from Redfall was slightly different. Was some of the project mismanaged? Yes but that’s typical of almost any project. In fact, a lot of what Bethesda does that is successful also has mismanagement.
However, I believe that a big problem with Redfall was just that their ideas didn’t work. It spent awhile undergoing rewrites and redesigns trying desperately to find something that works. In the end, it got pushed out because they needed to be done with it and move on. They knew it wouldn’t make much money but they needed it to no longer be in production anymore.
This happens all the time. If you ever wonder why games get released and say “surely they knew this was broken before launch right?” The answer is almost certainly yes. They push it out because it’s stuck in development hell or it’s costing too much or can make some money back before dying internally.
So that’s what Redfall is. It’s a failure of a game that the studio pushed out to recoup whatever meager funds they could from development.
Firstly, yes, lol Booty.
But I found the comments around Redfall interesting/concerning. Even if a studio gets promised independence in one of these giant mergers, they only have to fuck up once to get that taken away.
I’m not going to defend Redfall in any way, it actually does sound like a case of mismanagement. But I worry about the stifling of creativity that occurs when every studio is trying to play it safe to avoid becoming the next Bioware
The sense that I got from Redfall was slightly different. Was some of the project mismanaged? Yes but that’s typical of almost any project. In fact, a lot of what Bethesda does that is successful also has mismanagement.
However, I believe that a big problem with Redfall was just that their ideas didn’t work. It spent awhile undergoing rewrites and redesigns trying desperately to find something that works. In the end, it got pushed out because they needed to be done with it and move on. They knew it wouldn’t make much money but they needed it to no longer be in production anymore.
This happens all the time. If you ever wonder why games get released and say “surely they knew this was broken before launch right?” The answer is almost certainly yes. They push it out because it’s stuck in development hell or it’s costing too much or can make some money back before dying internally.
So that’s what Redfall is. It’s a failure of a game that the studio pushed out to recoup whatever meager funds they could from development.
When did bioware ever played it unsafe?