I think it's more that Assassin's Creed is carrying a lot of the company on its shoulders, and they're doubling down on it, along with other reliable big franchises at the expense of anything else. If you say it's flailing because of sales, I don't think that's true. Both Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Mirage have sold really well. If it's that you don't like the direction the franchise has gone, well that's valid.
The bigger question for me is how the internal turmoil is affecting their games' development. With folks being laid off, others leaving due to the toxic environment, and the general reputational damage that may be impacting recruiting, how will they continue to put games out on schedule and to their typical polish? It doesn't feel like we yet know how that is really playing out.
I was really starting to enjoy Escapists' Stuff of Legends series. They told some of gaming history's wild stories like Everquest's dragon that was supposed to be unkillable and the time it got killed, a massive EVE Online bank scam, and a story about a guy who's been playing the same Civilization save for 11 years.
I think it's more that Assassin's Creed is carrying a lot of the company on its shoulders, and they're doubling down on it, along with other reliable big franchises at the expense of anything else. If you say it's flailing because of sales, I don't think that's true. Both Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Mirage have sold really well. If it's that you don't like the direction the franchise has gone, well that's valid.
I love Valhalla, but it is just too much of a good thing for many people. And even I, a hardcore AC fan who played 100% of Origins and Odyssey, wasn't able to make it through all the various bits and pieces of Valhalla. I liked what I played of Mirage, but it feels like a rote reimagining rather than its own thing. Memorable supporting characters and enemies have been one of the lynchpins of the AC series, and Mirage doesn't quite deliver on that count. AND it looks to me like they still haven't figured out what to do with "Those Who Came Before," or the Isu, or "The Ancient Ones," or whatever they're going to call them going forward.
By calling AC a mess, I'm referring more to "Codename Red" which is their attempt to games-as-a-service-ize Assassin's Creed. That is just not going to fly. Other big publishers are backing off the games-as-a-service model as it is just too hard to get a large audience of people who will devote themselves to a single game long term. That's what a successful GaaS title requires, and only a very few have been able to keep that model working for them in the past 5 years or so. Over the past year or two quite a few have either fizzled on launch or been put in maintenance mode because it's too expensive to keep up with players' insatiable hunger for new content.
It's true that Mirage sold well, but Ubi has not yet seized on that and announced more single player experiences that don't take hundreds of hours to complete. Maybe they will soon. For now though, they have a sh*t-ton of long term multiplayer games that they're still trying to float. Or sink, in the case of Skull & Bones.
I guess the entire Escapist video team quit in solidarity with the EIC, and they're starting a new Patreon-supported thing together. I don't know if this new era of worker-owned journalism co-ops is going to be sustainable, but it sure seems like it has the potential to be better than the old era of VC-powered resource extraction death marches.
Pretty cool that the Youtube already has over 22k subs.
One thing about these big places doing layoffs.
Seems like it's not the goal to turn a profit. The goal is to make all the profit. Ever.
Bungie's profit targets were missed by a huge amount. That's a strategy/leadership problem. Add in the cost of capital right now and if your corporate game plan is "never-ending enormous profits while having unlimited access to cheap loans" you're going to Game Over pretty quick.
Pretty cool that the Youtube already has over 22k subs.
Linky!
steinkrug wrote:Pretty cool that the Youtube already has over 22k subs.
Linky!
The Escapist was quite a good little community. Zero Punctuation was obviously the headliner, but they had other good stuff - Cold Take, Stuff of Legends, 3 Minute Reviews. Looking forward to seeing what the creatives do next.
Pretty cool that the Youtube already has over 22k subs.
Now up to 41k!
They just did an intro stream, havent watched it. They sure got a logo fast!
Thanks for the link TastyPudding
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Remap
Second Wind
Aftermath
and probably more
Worker owned and operated media outlets are the only way for people to survive now.
Nextlander
MinnMax
Maximum Fun is another, although that's exclusively podcasts.
I didn't think Max Fun was ever really a video games thing. Some of the McElroys cut their teeth in games journalism and still do some games stuff on YouTube, but as far as I can tell Max Fun has always been a pretty general pop culture / comedy brand.
You're right, HB; I was just adding them to the pile of "worker owned and operated media outlets". They do have Triple Click, though, which is a video-game podcast, and a damn good one!
Wasn't sure really where to put this, but Polygon has an outstanding survey of 2023 books about video games. Many of them are coffee table style books with lots of pictures. At least one is a somewhat academic analysis of a specific genre. Most of them look fascinating to me.
Check it out:
https://www.polygon.com/23940553/bes...
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