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New Report Details Mismanagement And More Behind The Scenes At Amazon Games Studios | MMORPG.com
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New Report Details Mismanagement And More Behind The Scenes At Amazon Games Studios | MMORPG.com
In a report by Bloomberg, reports of mismanagement and more at Amazon Game Studios and the games division, have been revealed.
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I knew there will be problems the first time I heard that Smedley is working at Amazon.
I hope Amazon takes the charge and ..clean this mess until is not too late.
Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy?
Blizzard Boss: Making gamers happy is not my concern, making money.. yes!
Why it is listed under news is beyond me. Has not been a real news from that rag in ages.
I will say a game like New World has SOME potential but it would take a LOT more work to get me on board.
I also don't like their approach to pve entering into some instance portal NO THANKS.
Smedley...lol,who cares about that guy anymore,he and Lord British should get on a rocket ship and try and con a different planet.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Call me skeptical, but that sounds like a woman just grasping at things now (knowing fully well she will be taken seriously).
Jason Schreier is legit. He gets first hand info from people on the inside. You may not like what he reports but he's as legit as it gets in the industry. He just happens to be a complete asshat on twitter and such. It's been obvious for a while that the Amazon Game Studio has been a mess.
Have to give Amazon Studios credit, they clearly live the old software development adage, fail early, fail often.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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+1
You read Jason Schreier articles no matter the platform. One of the few journalists that's actually good at his job, probably the best in the gaming industry.
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― CD PROJEKT RED
Who probably doesn't even play games.
But that's setting the bar low... I agree.
With Amazon's resources I'm not sure how they didn't just nab the cream of the crop...
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
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This article is being too kind by calling it "mismanagement" which usually implies random business mistakes which this clearly is not. They knowingly continued to fleece Amazon who didn't know anything about game development.
So what they did and continue to do is keep games in perpetual development(New World) or make half effort games, cancel them and blame whatever they can to deflect the attention from themselves and keep collecting those paychecks. Think of how crowdfunded games almost a decade later are still being developed in a similar way except instead of fleecing and lying to joe public these people are fleecing and lying to Amazon. Imagine burning through hundreds of millions and having not one single product over a 4/10 or 5/10 rating. At what point would an individual(top devs at AGS) throw in the towel and admit that the task before them is beyond their ability? These individuals knowingly destroyed any chance of providing even a remotely quality product just to benefit themselves.
I said years ago very early on that they needed to fire every last person there and start fresh cause the hires were being manipulated from the start. People were being hired to ensure that the top bureaucracy would never be at risk and that type of structure is the opposite of what an artistic environment should be. They are now over a billion(s) down with nothing to show for it. They would've been better off hiring people on this site, give them some funds and let them roll with their ideas. I'm sure whatever game delete would come up with that would be kinda/sorta like vanilla WoW would've been better than anything these fraudsters could even imagine at 1/40th of the cost.
500mil per year x4-5 years = 2 billion+
That is 40+ vanilla WoW or 20+ WAR or 4 SWTOR
A problem in this situation and also generally in the video game industry is that devs are reluctant to call out other devs and when they do they get attacked from every direction making the attempt to bring truth not worth it so you can't blame them. When you look at crowdfunded MMO's that are obvious scams no dev will speak out against it for fear of industry ridicule even if the scams are stealing millions from gamers.
Oh and btw the last part mentioning New World and "murdering inhabitants" is BS to anyone who followed the game from the start and they know it. Not once did anyone ever publically mention anything like that and if you can prove they did post it cause as far as I know it does not exist.
I can almost place a Vegas bet now though that that's what they'll eventually use to cancel the game citing 'development of the game started with hints of racism so we cannot continue' or something like that.
It feels strange to type it but I genuinely feel bad for Amazon. No one should be taken advantage of in the way they were I don't care how much money they have.
Crucible was just BAD and boring, as for New World, it felt like a massive clunkfest, the world and theme did not appeal to me, it looked super generic and worst of all - the controls felt like they were designed for a console joystick rather than mouse and keyboard. Not having jumping in the game was also stupid for me, the combat devolved to stunlocking enemies, it was bad like ESO, but somehow worse.
I don't think New World will succeed - it will launch, like Crucible it will get a lot of negative reviews on Steam, then players will leave and they will "go back into Beta", then they will shut it down. The only exception that I see is that New World being an MMO, it will have a bigger audience that has slightly more tolerance for shit, so it will survive a little longer than Crucible.
I'm now concerned about that new Middle Earth MMO that is coming. If they treat it the same, it will be bad, but it being Middle Earth, maybe they have someone standing over their should making sure they don't give the franchise a bad name, but who knows...
As for Amazon, I really hate the fact that the head of Gaming is a person who probably doesn't even play games... My question is "How does that even happen?" You don't put a cucumber seller to run a nuclear power plant.
My country is so corrupt that the literal mafia runs it, but I did not imagine the same for the US. I was there in 2013 during a Work & Travel program and it seemed a lot nicer. But this literally puts the corrupt government to so much shame, they should pull out their notepads and start taking notes.
That's where gaming is today in many AAA companies, CD Project is not alone, a disconnect between those making the game and those running the company. Gaming is an entertainment business, when you look at the heads of Hollywood studios you see people who have been in that area for years.
Gaming on the other hand gets people like Mr Frazzini, who was never previously involved in the development of a game and headed Amazon's book store. I mentioned recently that EA only has one director with any gaming experience, is anyone surprised gaming consequently stumbles now and then?
It's not JUST that they don't have the necessary experience. It's also that they tend to shoot for the moon and waste a ton of money trying to figure it all out.
Also the lawsuit was settled between closed doors so it's unlikely we'll ever hear anything further about it.