It’s a 300 strong studio, Pentiment and Grounded are simple side projects (pentiment was great, grounded too) that have a minute scope and could well be developed by a handful of people (see Valheim, Stardew, etc) that leaves an entire studio to develop their overpromised and underdelivered AAA shovelware to boost the ranks of Gamepass while charging 70€ on steam to milk the fans of PoE. In 6y a 300 people strong studio backed by one of the richest companies on earth and charging AAA sales price, is manifestly little and woeful mismanagement. Luckily, most people didn’t fall for the culture war BS from the US and the game hasn’t sold (or was returned) for shit, which means they will likely do a better job with outer worlds 2, hopefully…
Comment on Fable delayed to 2026
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 week agoThey pivoted after two unsuccessful prototypes, and they’re a multi project studio. In that time frame, they put out Grounded and Pentiment while assisting on State of Decay 3. That’s about as good as management gets.
Viri4thus@feddit.org 1 week ago
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 week ago
It’s a 300 person studio that is basically never all allocated to a single project. That’s extremely efficient with the resources they have. And remember that Outer Worlds 2 has also been in ongoing development for the better part of that same 6 years.
Viri4thus@feddit.org 1 week ago
Can we please stop pretending Obsidian post acquisition is a dinghy independent studio rather that the real cog in the metastatic tumor that is Microsoft? The game credits ~1.2k people, that’s 4x the studio size. There’s 0 excuses for how mediocre Avowed is, especially when they charge 70€ for it! BG3 in contrast has a similar professional credit list while costing the consumer less 10€ and being an excellent game. Good management is not churning out mediocre shovelware while charging AAA prices.
masterspace@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
Bruh avowed is great, I’ve been loving it.
This sounds like a you problem.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I’m not excusing Avowed for anything, because it’s excellent. BG3 is a better game, true, but it’s a better game than almost every other game ever made too, and it was built reusing a ton of work that the studio had already done over the decade that came before it. There’s a very, very good chance that lots of work on Avowed was done knowing that it would be used in Outer Worlds 2 also, reducing the risk of spending money on both projects. Making great games isn’t a function of how much money was spent on them, or Balatro wouldn’t have been nominated for game of the year. I’m not saying they’re some scrappy indie studio, but it sure seems like they know the answer to the question, “How much money can we spend making this relative to how much money it needs to make?” Spending more money on Avowed wouldn’t have made it more financially successful. It’s why there was that headline about wanting to make a Pillars tactics game and evaluating how big that game could feasibly be for that market. I got more value out of Baldur’s Gate 3, but that doesn’t make Avowed not worth $70 to me.
Good management is getting a working product out the door and keeping your people happy and employed. This game reviewed well; not phenomenally, but well. And Obsidian is spoken of in high regard when it comes to employee satisfaction. All that while getting several other projects moving along too. It’s impressive. And I’m sorry Avowed wasn’t what you wanted to play.
TheLowestStone@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Grounded is a masterpiece. One of my favorite games of the last decade. Pentiment is also fantastic but it’s not really a technical marvel.
I haven’t played Avowed yet because the somewhat mixed reviews and $70 price tag plus my backlog of games encouraged me to wait for a sale.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I’d be willing to give Grounded a try, but last I checked, you can’t host your own server offline, which is my line in the sand. I haven’t gotten around to Pentiment yet, but I just rolled credits on Avowed this afternoon, and it was awesome.