Production quality is the death of high-choice RPGs. When a game has two artists pumping out dozens of assets a day and every choice just changes some text and objects around, you can afford to give the player a ton of choice. Even the early DA games were on the tail end of that, with all the dialogue voiced, requiring recording and implementation cost for every line.
These days, big games are expected to have not just voiced dialogue but to have choreographed cutscenes. Making your animators spend a week on a cutscene 5% of players will see is viewed as a waste of money, so you cut the decision branch that leads to it.
There was a period in the late 90s to early 2000s where you could make an RPG that was top-5 in every way. That will never happen again.
half_built_pyramids@lemmy.world 1 day ago
For real, Bethferny in HR isn’t killing your games. This person’s whole yt channel is a farce. Of course the exec is gonna say anything but that the exec is at fault. Literally ceo brained take from Fryer, and the gamer gaters eat it up.
velma@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
The complaint boils down to whining about having to sit in meetings being told they should treat their coworkers with respect. Blaming HR for why games suck now is reminiscent of DEI being blamed for government corruption. Of course gamer gate types are going to gobble this up hook, line, and sinker.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 1 day ago
Christ do you need some Bengay for that overreach?
velma@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
“Now, why HR? Because people are at the heart of every business challenge and every business opportunity that we’ll face in the future and we are the experts and people in our organizations, or at least we should be, but clearly based on the comments I’ve read and what I’ve seen in the industry this is not the case because game makers aren’t happy and it’s simple - makers are happiest when they are making. They don’t want endless meetings about safe spaces, ok? They want to obsess over their art. They don’t want an environment where they feel like they’re walking on eggshells.”
The reason the game makers need to sit in those meetings about safe spaces is because of the incredibly toxic work environments that these companies were fostering.