“The team today is about the same size we were when making Doom 2016”
This quote is an interesting point. It’s still gone through some really bad churn, including Mick Gordon, which doesn’t make me trust them. But I would at least agree most studios have been over-hiring around COVID times into 100x their original size to try to make games 100x more epic. Telltale Games was the one I could most easily point to - having completed one major hit (TWD) and then trying to put their hands into 20 different pies to make 20 hits.
There’s some MBA views on growth that are just over-fantastical around game development. Nintendo and Valve have both done some shitty stuff, but they at least hold their cards, maintain cash reserves, don’t buy into sectors, and thus don’t end up nuking their own company.
What I would’ve liked to see from studios like id is: “Okay, we only need our team to be this large for Doom 2016. Now that we’ve hired this many people, we could split them into multiple studios each trying out interesting new ideas”.
That’s risk-prone, but if they want to avoid risk…just get out of game development. They’re even seeing failing returns on things like Call of Duty (and in the past decade, Halo) when those franchises get over-saturated.
“The team today is about the same size we were when making Doom 2016”
This quote is an interesting point. It’s still gone through some really bad churn, including Mick Gordon, which doesn’t make me trust them. But I would at least agree most studios have been over-hiring around COVID times into 100x their original size to try to make games 100x more epic. Telltale Games was the one I could most easily point to - having completed one major hit (TWD) and then trying to put their hands into 20 different pies to make 20 hits.
There’s some MBA views on growth that are just over-fantastical around game development. Nintendo and Valve have both done some shitty stuff, but they at least hold their cards, maintain cash reserves, don’t buy into sectors, and thus don’t end up nuking their own company.
What I would’ve liked to see from studios like id is: “Okay, we only need our team to be this large for Doom 2016. Now that we’ve hired this many people, we could split them into multiple studios each trying out interesting new ideas”.
That’s risk-prone, but if they want to avoid risk…just get out of game development. They’re even seeing failing returns on things like Call of Duty (and in the past decade, Halo) when those franchises get over-saturated.