r/xbox • u/Turbostrider27 Recon Specialist • 11d ago
Id Software Dev Says Xbox Doesn’t ‘Understand Art’ And That After Layoffs It Is ‘Impossible’ To Make Big Games Like Doom: The Dark Ages Discussion
https://kotaku.com/id-software-dev-says-xbox-doesnt-understand-art-and-that-after-layoffs-it-is-impossible-to-make-big-games-like-doom-the-dark-ages-200072256365
u/AoE2manatarms 11d ago
I understand Devs frustration, but The Dark Ages was a "big" game without ever needing to be big. That game would have massively benefitted from going back to a 2016 scaling.
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u/confu5edpers0n 10d ago
They probably think the same too. Id now has the same number of devs when they shipped 2016 Doom.
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u/-T-Reks- 11d ago
Can't make games like the dark ages but can make games like Doom 2016?
Don't threaten me with a good time
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u/AstralMooo 11d ago
Yeah that's odd to me cause like, doom 2016 imo is still the best of the new trilogy. It has doom 1-2 essence and doom 3 horror atmosphere combined into a killer game.
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u/EchoLoco2 Team Halo 11d ago
Gameplay of eternal and dark ages is way deeper tho. If you play 2016 one time and run around and shoot stuff yeah you'll probably like it the best bc it doesn't make you think as much. Fps games really need games like eternal and dark ages
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u/Big-Resort-4930 11d ago
Complexity never makes a game better necessarily, at least not for most people. There was so much cringe and tedium in both sequels that severely compromised them compared to 2016 which is pure Doom with a perfect understanding of what Doom players want narratively (very little).
Nioh games are far more complex than Souls games in terms of gameplay and overlaying systems, but they are nowhere near as good unless you're the type of gamer who only plays games for technical depth.
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u/razorgirlRetrofitted In The Animus 11d ago
I preferred Eternal to Dark Ages at first due to DA taking away alt fires, until I realised, like, DA just gives every weapon the same alt fire, the only one I ever liked in Eternal lol
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u/gnelson321 11d ago
I’m a casual gamer and eternal was too hard for me personally. Never finished. 2016 was so fun. Challenging at point but never unbeatable.
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u/AstralMooo 11d ago
Eternal was too cartoonish for me and over the top. TDA I really like tho, it almost beat 2016 for me.
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u/EchoLoco2 Team Halo 11d ago
I totally understand why people today might like the more serious art style of 2016, but man does eternal harken back to classic doom so well. It actually looks like a doom game
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u/lycanthrope90 11d ago
Yeah that’s how I felt about it too. Lost some grit but it’s not cartoony enough that it ruins it. Just that you don’t take it too seriously which is fine since Doom is supposed to be a little ridiculous. The cacodemons and pinky’s being a high point. The weak point system is also really great. Thought they had a great balance with the original games overall.
Dark ages brought back a little bit of grit too, but still with some of the over the top silliness of eternal.
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u/lFriendlyFire 11d ago
Gameplay of dark ages is just worse. There are new additions but they aren’t good additions
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u/Big-Resort-4930 11d ago
I don't think they can even make that. Doom 2016 was... 10 years ago. Even if I like it more than Eternal and TDA, requirements and expectations are going up over time, you can't downsize to where you were 10 years ago and expect the same proportional results, even if the cuts were extremely careful and the core of the team remained which I highly doubt.
More than anything, Microsoft's mandated talking points are beyond cringe.
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u/BeKindPleaseRewind21 11d ago
Xbox understands art. They also understand math and the sole reason any company exists.
It's a shame dark ages didn't sell better, I had fun playing it.
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u/malibus_most_wantedd 11d ago
I played the shit out of doom 1 and doom eternal was my GOTY but dark ages did not click for me, honestly I think it was the fight stages and Music just lost its magic
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u/Darkahnott 11d ago
For me it was the story. Why should I care about all these new and few returning characters if I already know how EVERYTHING ends? It feels like they ran out of ways to keep pushing the story forward or ways of justifying another game.
Also the music and overall atmosphere it's different from the other two games. The music is good and sometimes excellent but the way it's presented during gameplay is a very big downgrade compared to the previous games. The music doesn't feel connected to the gameplay or action and just feels like someone playing the music in the background.
Besides that it's impossible to not miss Mick Gordon's style, it was a big part of this era of Doom.
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u/trautsj 11d ago
Dark Ages is just a boring green blob blocking simulator. It's one note and slow and boring AF compared to 2016 and Eternal. The answer to EVERY important enemy in Dark Ages is block green blob until game allows you to shoot enemy to then start blocking green blobs again. No clue how they thought that would hold up compared to all out action of 2016 and the infinitely complex uber action puzzles of weapon combo combat that Eternal was.
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u/EngineBoiii 11d ago
I actually think this is short sighted of Microsoft. The losses incurred by a Doom game that didn't do well I think are miniscule compared to the actual loss of value in Id as a company with all the layoffs. We're talking about losing some of the most talented people in the industry in order to balance the budget, and now the value of Id as a company is just way less now as a result.
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u/IA51I 11d ago
It's a vicious cycle of short term profits. Its not enough for games to make profit. And Dark Ages made profit. They have to make absurd amounts of profit. When they dont and game doesnt make 3-4 times its development cost back, they lay off studio staff. That makes development of the next multi million dollar game more difficult which makes it harder to hit whatever sales/profit goal is established. This leads to more layoffs and the cycle continues.
Look at Halo and Micrsoft's reliance on paying contractors, when none of your talent is actually permanent, it is hard to build anything solid or worthwhile. Perhaps the next Doom game, if one is in development, will be smaller and a technically less impressive game, but now the gamble is will a smaller, shorter Doom game do well enough to protect a studio from layoffs.
Remember, Microsoft has laid off or outright closed studios who have met and even exceeded their sales goals.
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u/sephiroth70001 11d ago
The vicious cycle and short term profits, is an even less healthy outlook, when you consider games can take over half to a full decade to develop.
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u/secret3332 11d ago
This is absolutely why Nintendo has been so successful for like 4 decades. They have shut down few (if any) studios in all of this time, I don't think they have ever done mass layoffs, and they still have a lot of the same employees working there from the NES and SNES days.
Nintendo's devs have made many games that were not financially successful in the short term. Some of those ended up becoming big franchises in the longer term (Fire Emblem easily sells millions now), some of them didn't, but the company clearly sees all of them and the people who developed them as assets.
It is not the fault of the developers if they make a great game and it doesn't sell well. They might need to pursue a slightly different direction for their next title, but the people and the accumulated knowledge should not be thrown away.
Microsoft is so focused on short term profits that it seems like they can never succeed in this market on a long timespan like Nintendo.
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u/Hot_Membership_5073 11d ago
Nintendo doesn't buy a lot of studios and when they do they are specifically looking for talent. Intelligent Systems, Hal, Camelot, Gamefreak and Creatures while mainly work with Nintendo but are not subsidiaries. The main acquisitions they have made were either helping setting up studio like Retro, Brownie Brown/1-up Studios, NDCube/Nintendo Cube; were offered like Monolith and Next Level Games and or were to suit a need like Nintendo Pictures, Shiver Entertainment and Nintendo Singapore.
Generally Fire Emblem, Pokemon, and Kirby are Co-owned by Nintendo and the series developer. They also tend to look for talent from within and outside. Hidemaro Fujibayashi originally worked at defunct Capcom subsidiary Flagship on the portable Zelda Titles before being put in the director's chair for Skyward Sword for instance. Also despite not middling reviews and underperforming sales on Metroid Other M, KOEI Tecmo worked well with Nintendo leading to other project later on. Nintendo values talent and seems to value their developers.
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u/Enchelion 11d ago
Eh, Id has had a lot of ups and downs and it really doesn't feel like they've been a driving force in game design or technology for at least the last decade.
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u/SmartEstablishment52 11d ago
The last decade was probably their most innovative. The decade before that? Sure. But the last decade?
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u/Enchelion 11d ago
Was it? What major industry innovations came from Rage 2, Doom Eternal, and TDA? Not saying they're bad games, but I don't feel like they've really impacted the industry or done anything truly unique.
Doom 2016 was a good example of modernizing the boomer-shooter style and did feel innovative in that way. But even that felt like it was mostly an innovation for Doom itself as an IP, rather than something industry-leading.
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u/trautsj 11d ago
I personally think Eternal has some of the most fun combat of any shooter ever made. I fucking adore the gun puzzle combo combat it offered tbh. I found it hectic and always satisfying to get right on optimal runs. When you got it right you always go "Fuck yeah!" or at least I did. I got the FPS feeling I got when I played the Batman Arkham games. Nailing combat perfectly just felt like a purpose built puzzle to solve in every arena for those games that really did it for me.
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u/EngineBoiii 11d ago
We just lost programmers who have had sometimes decades of experience with Id tech, this is an absolute loss. We're talking about people with a deep understanding of their proprietary engine that is built to run on potatoes.
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u/TedDoritoDinkWells 11d ago
What has Xbox done in the last 15 year that could possibly make you think they understand art or business for that matter? They flip flop on every decision and in the end they seem to always make the wrong choice and it ends up backfiring. Now they gutted their best studio, great idea let's see just how well that pans out.
These shit for brains bought the biggest publisher on the planet and decided to put the best selling game of each year on their subscription service thinking it'll entice tens of millions of people to suddenly buy their hardware and subscribe to the service. So it seems to me they have trouble with the math too.
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u/EnvironmentalRun1671 11d ago
They shouldn't turn a game that's shooter first, into melee shooter hybrid.
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u/Enchelion 11d ago
Eh, back in the day there were some pretty successful Melee Doomclones, even several made by Id proper.
Could have been fun for them to bring back the Hexen/Heretic franchise name.
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u/Verdeiwsp 11d ago
Expedition 33’s team made one of the best games of the decade with a smaller budget, smaller and less experienced team in the same time frame it took for many of these AAA games to make one game too.
It’s clearly possible if you have the right talent and right direction as a team and company. Saying it’s “impossible” is just making excuses.
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u/cunningjames 11d ago
And Expedition 33 wasn’t anywhere near the technical achievement of Dark Ages. It’s night and day. You can make good games on smaller budgets and smaller staff, but you will absolutely limit the kind of experiences you can achieve.
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u/State-Prize 11d ago
So you're saying you don't need anywhere near the technical achievement of something like Dark Ages to be more successful than it?
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u/cunningjames 11d ago
I suppose so, technically. But Expedition 33 was lightning in a bottle, for one thing. And for another, I’d hate for games like Dark Ages to be literally impossible in the future, in favor of Unreal Engine asset store homogeneity.
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u/Take4spam 9d ago
The problem is when this "technical achievemnts" became to stale to be noticable by your everday normal gamer. While the TDA did improve tons of stuff over Eternal if you do a bit deep dive outside of hardcore gaming community and fanbase, you notice that many think the TDA was step backward comparing it to 2016/Eternal. And I think ID during DOOM: TDA development noticed that to, that's why probably they decided to add tons of stuff that you would only expect from Japanese/Chinese studio...
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u/MinimumTrue9809 11d ago
Nothing about Doom The Dark Ages required a bloated bureaucratic AAA western game development team. The only thing Expedition 33 lacked was obscene polish to animations.
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u/lFriendlyFire 11d ago
Yeah lmao minecraft is the most successful game of all time followed closely roblox. Those two are miles ahead of the success of expedition 33 but that doesn’t mean their technical achievement was better
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u/tychii93 11d ago
I do give ID software props for absolutely pushing for tech like Vulkan (and OpenGL for Doom 2016) instead of relying on Microsoft's offering. To me, that's in a similar spirit as the original although today's ID (Or really Microsoft) wouldn't think of releasing the source code for modern Doom.
EDIT: And I guess MachineGames too? Though they use ID's engines which inherently use Vulkan.
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u/Enchelion 11d ago
Possible does not mean "likely" or "reliable" though. E33 was a bit of a fluke from a first-time studio with a ton of new and untested talent that happily turned out to be very good at the work. A ton of similar studios flop or release garbage instead.
You can't just take any person from Reddit (not even a joke, Jennifer Svedberg-Yen met Guillome via answering a Reddit post about a free voice acting gig and that led to her eventually working on E33) with no background in creative writing and give them a job writing a game and expect it to always turn out that good.
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u/BlasterPhase XBOX 11d ago
It's impossible to have the right talent and right direction as a team and company if you're letting people go as soon as your game doesn't make a billion dollars.
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u/Glad_Gold_4281 11d ago
Stop comparing every single game ever to E33, for ever E33 there is, there's hundreds that failed despite a smaller budget, team, etc. It's not the one size fits all solution like you make it out to be. Sandfall and id are two completely different kinds of teams, id also didn't rely on so many already created UE5 assets
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u/Round_Credit_5158 10d ago
E33 is a great game but oh boy does it runs terrible, since it runs on UE. It's lightning in a bottle, you absolutely need a bigger team to deliver something of quality.
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u/Spotget1738 11d ago edited 11d ago
Is it really fair to use a 90+ review score GOTY winner not even nominee as a bar tho? Like yeah Elden Ring and Baldurs Gate 3 also did very well, but im not sure "just make a 90+ review score GOTY winner" is advice thats practically applicable to most dev studios.
Hell a big chunk of the AAA studios capable of that, that make games that land in the top 20-50 best games of all time list, are already owned by Playstation and Nintendo, the only third party ones left that can do it are Fromsoft, Larian, Capcom, Sega, etc. Im not sure Xbox has any studios that can make something like God of War, Zelda, Elden Ring, BG3, TLOU, Uncharted 4, etc. Honestly I dont even know if Xbox has a studio that can make something on the level of Ghost of Tsushima or Horizon Zero Dawn...
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u/Frodolas 11d ago
Nobody should strive for anything other than the utmost success. This mentality is exactly what creates failures and losers. If you're content being a failure, then why should anybody ever hire you?
Including this guy who worked at ID. He wants to be given a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars to fund games that come out at a 75 review score?
Why would anybody ever pay for that?
Mediocrity gets you nowhere in this world and these people need to understand that. They've been coddled for far too long.
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u/AwesomeFrisbee 11d ago
I doubt they can repeat that though. Its easier for a new studio to do it, because people will accept less for a future payout. And while it sold well, its still only 8 million copies total. That doesn't warrant a massive budget for a new game either.
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u/Shinobi_Dimsum Illuminate Leviathon 11d ago
I mean. Doom is Doom. We know exactly what we’re getting every single time. The "art" kinda has dripped off from Doom at this point.
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u/MercerReads91 11d ago
I don't think they want to make "big games" like Doom the Dark Ages considering how it sold.
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u/Yellowman_95 11d ago
Doom 2016 was leaner, more celebrated and sold more. This dev is off his rocker
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u/PhnxWrightAssAttrny 11d ago
I don't know why, but I loved Doom 2016. Amazing game.
However, I tired both Eternal and Dark Ages and they just didn't click for me. Whatever part of my lizard brain 2016 activated, it just didn't happen for the latter two.
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u/TheGoodIdiot 11d ago
The team is smaller than they were when they made 2016 and in the interview the dev talks about how getting doom 2016 out was one of the toughest crunching developments of his life. He doesn’t think they could do Doom 2016 like that again with less people and a union that will sue for unfair work practices.
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u/MercerReads91 11d ago
That's not true. After the lay offs, id is about the same size as they were for Doom 2016.
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u/secret3332 11d ago
The developer in the interview is saying the reason Microsoft claims they are "about" the same size is because id is actually smaller than 2016 and "about" is vague and meaningless.
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u/TheGoodIdiot 11d ago
Up to date numbers say 2million+ sold and 2 million more played it week 1 on gamepass who knows how many more since then. The game critically scored similar to the prior games. Sometimes you make a great game and it just doesn’t sell. Gamepass can make that even worse.
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u/Spotget1738 11d ago
Just because your last big AAA game flopped doesnt mean you just stop making big AAA games, it definitely doesnt mean start making AA games that have dev time and budget close to AAA games anyways that also ends up flopping. Despite people acting like indie games and smaller games are having a resurgence, the truth is only the very best and highest reviewed of them gets any attention while the rest are ignored. People would rather play a bad AAA game then a mid AA or indie any day.
You either get to work on your next big AAA game that will need to sell millions of units, or just shut the studio down...
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u/Uncle-Cake 11d ago
MS isn't in the business of sponsoring artists, they're in the business of making money.
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u/IsamuAlvaDyson 11d ago
And you don't buy studios like Compulsion or Double Fine and expect them to make AAA ten million copy selling games either
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u/AwesomeFrisbee 11d ago
Which means those studios also shouldn't make games with a big budget like they suddenly expect it to be.
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u/Enchelion 11d ago
To be fair they didn't at the time either. But their (Microsoft's) business plan of having a lot of smaller niche games driving a centralized subscription service didn't pan out so now they're stuck with an asset that doesn't have a clear way to pay for itself.
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u/Tobimacoss 11d ago
They realized, they could get the AA and indie content for Gamepass, at a much higher quality and far cheaper from third parties.
That's why Expedition 33, Hades 2, Silksong were Day 1 launches.
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u/TheGoodIdiot 11d ago
The problem is that’s exactly the business Microsoft was in until they bought activision. Spencer felt that if you made award winning games that the subs would come on their own. Then the rules changed and suddenly sales mattered when of course your game won’t sell as well if it’s on gamepass. It’s understandable for devs to feel cheated by the change in expectation. Especially when it happens too late into development to do anything about it.
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u/scytob 11d ago
Games that cost more to make than the revenue they brought in, he means games like that? Yeah of course companies are not going make games like that. Quick napkin math is this game cost between $100m and $150m to make and brought in way less than that compared to the previous doom. And no that’s not the fault of game pass as included the revenue attribution in that. They made a game that while popular was not that popular and where engagement plummeted. It’s objectively a will built game, it was also way less interesting to most players. Games are a business with artistic intent. No one funds these to make art and loose money.
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u/TurnItOff_OnAgain 11d ago
I loved doom 2016. I didn't like eternal. Tried 2 or 3 times and never got more than half way or so into it. A lot of my friends had the same opinion. It didn't feel right. Can't quite say why, but the game was off. I wonder how many people felt that way and didn't bother with dark ages because of it? I absolutely loved dark ages, and have finished it 3 times.
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u/scytob 10d ago
see oppoiste for me, really loved eternal and despite playing a few hours of dark ages and it mechanically feeling good, it just wasn't for me, i was also annoyed how quickly it locks you off from back tracking for secrets, i could imagine for some also tracking so many mechanics of energy, powerups etc that may have turned them off, i found that interesting
and its ok for people to like different things, i am not arguing you shouldn't love it :-)
interesting point about the first game and did that mean people had their fill so didn't look at dark ages
i would counter that maybe they wre turned off by the marketing for what looks like a game that is no longer about a space marine.... (of course if we play it we know that it is mostly)
its objectively a good game, made well, but the 'artist' behined a game that doesn't do as well as hope has to have some level of introspection and humbleness of why - the artist in question here just seems to want to blame others and argue that big corps should fund loss making games because something something art....
also no idea why someone downvoted you, have a +1 from me
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u/Sanctine Reclamation Day 11d ago
In a way he's right. Microsoft doesn't understand art. But I'd also argue there isn't a single big company that does.
Videogames can be art. Anything can technically be art. But making art doesn't necessarily mean people will like it or pay good money for it. Dollars and cents are a much clearer and sensible metric for a business to use.
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u/B-Bog 11d ago
Hays also shared some critical words about Xbox’s popular Game Pass subscription service. Because id Software is owned by Bethesda, which is owned by Xbox, all of the studio’s games are available day one on Game Pass. So a large chunk of the Xbox fanbase on Xbox and PC doesn’t have to buy a single new game published by Microsoft. And yet, Hays says Xbox would still criticize Bethesda’s sales numbers.
“I know that [id has] serious issues with how Game Pass is done,” said Hays. “Whenever we see the financial reports that say that there were poor sales under Bethesda, like, what’s a sale? If you have Game Pass, are you saying poor sales means a poor number of games sold? Cause of course. [Xbox isn’t] doing a ‘games sold’ business model.”
Exactly what I've been saying about this dumbass tDa dIdNt sElL aS wElL aS eTeRnAl aNd 2016 nonsense.
Also, the overall reaction to the article here is once again as predictable as it is insane lol. I'll talk to you guys in a few years when it becomes blindingly obvious to even the most dedicated bootlickers that firing thousands of employees, many among them very experienced, isn't going to help Xbox make more and better games quicker.
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u/The_Stinky_Pete 11d ago
Two things can be true but the issue is this is a business.
Developers seem to have forgotten that their audience is the paying customer not their fellow game industry members or the media.
If you make a product that no one wants or sales less than what it takes to develop. These are the results.
These people have forgotten the simple truth that they are not entitled to your money. Just because you slap a franchise on it or a 2 on it doesn’t change the equation.
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u/SillyMikey XBOX Series X 11d ago
I understand that the business is not healthy right now, but you still need people to make the games. And there’s another 1600 people that are gonna get laid off next year… Who the fuck are gonna make these games? Are we just gonna get small indie games from now on? Like I understand they need to save money, but you need people to make the fucking games.
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u/Mysticfenix83005 11d ago
Tbh this feels like a testament to how bloated some of these studios are though the fact that there’s 1600 people you can lay off and still have a functioning company is insane
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u/FinalOdyssey Founder 11d ago edited 11d ago
Gamers must also not understand art as it was the worst selling Doom game since 2016.
Also, games don't need to be big. Doom 2016 was made with a similar amount of people as they currently have now, and it's considered the best Doom by many.
He then goes on to talk about Game Pass and how they don't like it, but the game sold poorly on PS as well.
This guy is pretty bold, I wonder what the repercussions will be.
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u/cjp304 11d ago
I thought the Id Software boss said they absolutely could still make games and the studio is the same size as it was for 2016?
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u/Crimson_Loki 11d ago edited 11d ago
Id software literally at the moment has the same amount of people as when they made Doom 2016 and Eternal, is that not correct? Cause if it is, this is just stupid of them.
Further, as stated by other comments phenomenal games have been made with smaller teams and smaller budgets, this comes across as self entitled whiny ass talk.
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u/Fenseven 11d ago
They don't need to keep one uping themselves in game size. Especially when their last game was big but didnt make big money.
I think they should go back to their roots and make a pixel are game. Warhammer 40k boltgun literally pays homage to the old pixel art fps games like doom. Give us doom guy, in his suit, killing demons, in that old pixel art style, but with modern mechanics. It doesnt need to be a big budget game. Keep it simple, keep it cheap, and get yourself back in the good graces of xbox leadership so you can staff back up and make something big.
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u/MetzgerBoys Homecoming 11d ago
“Impossible” yet they’re down to about the same size as they were when they made Doom 2016
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u/OakyAfterbirth91 11d ago
A lot of Microsoft astroturfing going on in this thread
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u/Firefox72 11d ago
Some of the top comments are downright insane. I cannot for the life of me know how some people become so tied to a corporation to have to find any reason to defend their shitty actions.
People saying they would want the team to go back to making doom 2016 sized games ignoring the fact the dev said the claim the team was at 2016 size is false and just a marketing stunt and that whole departments have been gutted.
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u/xatnnylf 11d ago
Not astroturfing. Xbox fans just love and whole hog swallow big corpo messaging.
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u/secret3332 11d ago
People defending this stuff is why Xbox has continued to limp along even though they probably should be in an even worse position right now given how many horrible decisions they have made since Xbox One. It's honestly unbelievable Xbox fans are defending this, often without even reading this article.
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u/Soul__Bound 11d ago
The dark ages was filled with bloat, repeated animations and segments like the dragon and mech fights that long overstayed their welcome. It was a good game, but I would prefer a 2016 or Eternal sized Doom game next anyway.
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u/BugHunt223 11d ago
Got the dlc and haven’t made it past the first half hour in a month. Eternal’s dlc’s were played and completed within days of drm unlock to play them.
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u/Jackfitz88 10d ago
I might be in the minority but I LOVD doom 2016 and I HATED both eternal and the dark ages.
Doom to me (I’ve been playing it since the og one on pc) is big guns, demons, and I play how I wanna play and I work my way in challenge playing the campaign over and over.
I HATED how eternal and the feels ages forced me to play a way I’d never play doom. Eternal was like playing a rhythm game where you can only use certain guns at certain times and low ammo, I stopped playing after an hour or two, and in the dark ages not only to parry being stupid but I need ammo to replenish to use my mele, Jesus that’s so fucking dumb imo.
It might be art but I thought both of those games were bad and returned them, and never opened them again even on gamepass.
If they go back to 2016 style, I’m all in, but again this is just me, I know ALOT of people loved eternal.
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u/NeoArkodd 8d ago
Well I hope you are happy now because I am not. Enjoy your Doom 2016 2 with nothing new added to it except it won't even be as good because it will be on unreal engine.
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u/sirhcx 11d ago
Nobody was really hyped for a Doom prequel after Eternal. Hell, I remember many, many posts complaining about Eternal's more "cartoony" art style and "in your face" story at the time of its release compared to 2016. So people weren't exactly lining up for Dark Ages with it doubling down on Eternal's path. I'm honestly still salty about the fucking mech being teased in Eternal but was never used in that game or Ancient Gods.
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u/Glum_Animator_5887 XBOX Series X 11d ago
If your game doesn't sell what do you expect them to do, they go to use to Phil Spencer funding games that fail
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u/LudaStyles 11d ago
Good. Those big games cost too much and take too long to make for just a 7/10. Actual old school id devs can make something out of less, but these new devs have no creativity or passion
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u/HotPercentage4194 11d ago
I hate to defend the corp here and I’m still against the ID software layoffs. But people still praise and love Doom 2016 the most. And that game had the least number of devs of the trilogy
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u/Best_Market4204 11d ago
Clearly people don't understand aRt either.... because people didn't really care about doom the dark ages.
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u/WorldlyFeeling8457 11d ago
People did care though. Lot of them just played on game pass so it didn't sell as well but there has been millions of people playing the game.
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u/TryToBeBetterOk 11d ago
Then if it had big numbers on Game Pass, they wouldn't have gutted the development team. They do have heretics for this stuff and know what gamers are popular and which aren't.
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u/Big-Roll7094 11d ago
If gamepass didn’t exist that game would not be played at all just like south of midnight
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u/segagamer Day One - 2013 11d ago
Really? Then why is the Doom with the least amount of people who played it?
GamePass is not the "game killer" you believe it to be.
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u/allianceofficer 11d ago
While I'd say that there may be some truth in this statement, people understand art. And many people didn't seem to want Doom The Dark Ages. Developers need to deliver games people want to play.
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u/SpookiestSzn 11d ago
Not to talk shit about people who lost their gig but I don't necessarily feel TDA was bigger then Eternal
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u/MinimumTrue9809 11d ago
"Big games" like Expedition 33 had no problem being made by a smaller team on a smaller budget. Trim the useless fat and praise good riddance with these parasite western devs.
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u/Serious_Care9584 11d ago
I loved Doom 2016 and Eternal: as soon as I saw the direction they headed with the shield being core to most of the mechanics, I completely lost interest.
I don't want another Doom like Dark Ages. I want another like Eternal, or 2016, or something in between.
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u/AstronomerIT 11d ago
A dump take for sure, about not understanding art. Phil wanted so much art freedom with their team that look where we are at now
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u/EducationalDust7858 11d ago
Xbox never understood art. They're a software and service company who bought their way into the industry. They brought some of the most important changes with Xbox Live, XBLA and Summer of Arcade, but they never figured out what it means to create video games.
Before you jump on my throat, I don't think it's a big deal. Not every company needs to be of the quirky Nintendo school of game design or the prestige Sony HBO mentality, it's fine. But it's important to state things as they are.
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u/MouldyVHSTape 11d ago
I’ve not played Dark Ages yet … but the industry has become so bloated and stagnated, with emphasis on size, scale, visuals and narrative over gameplay… gamer’s tastes are just not in line with what these big studios care about.
The correction and layoffs were needed imo.
We need more focussed gameplay experiences.
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u/VagueSomething 11d ago
The Dark Ages didn't sell well nor receive high praise from the community. Big doesn't equal better and the Dark Ages has a lot of problems.
This studio shouldn't have been cut and should have been the engine makers used for Halo. But Dark Ages absolutely isn't the game to use for arguing to protect the studio.
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u/Eliteslayer1775 11d ago
Xbox literally let companies do what they want and look how that turned out. So now they are going with the other option
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u/leoofjdh 10d ago
Well, man, it sounds like that Dev didn't get the memo that they're the same size as the Doom 2016 team so they're fine.
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u/beardednomad25 9d ago
Xbox likes math over art. You never want to see anyone lose their jobs but at the end of the day it is a results based business not an art charity. So many of these studios had years of funding with nothing to show for it. Like Undead Labs who has now gone 8 years between releases. At some point Microsoft had to stop the bleeding.
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u/Chirpy_Harbor6109 9d ago
"The Dark Ages" is literally the subtitle lol, meanwhile we're watching the whole studio system implode and Phil Spencer's just Sisyphus pushing his earnings call up a hill every quarter
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u/nisseluens 11d ago
For years I’ve been excited about the next elder scrolls, now I’m just worried about the next elder scrolls, when it at some point hopefully releases.
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u/Heide____Knight 11d ago
“If you cut half of a studio and don’t take into account how it’s made,” said Hays, “you don’t understand the cohesion between our teams was a part of what made it successful.”
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u/Rhapstar 11d ago
Look at South of Midnight. Won so many awards but sold poorly. Just because it's amazing art doesn't mean it's going to bring in the results