I think it's a very good documentary, shows very well most of the hard work behind making a AAA game, with the exception of the most technical part of the programming area, and the budgets part negotiating with the producers and HQ, but I think that like the first one it does a great job to explaining gamedev to those who have no idea about it.
As a dev who worked in a big AAA company, indie games or mobile games and have many friends elsewhere, I think it's very representative of many other studios. I think that to have a proper production team helping them to reach milestones on time (most of the times) while also learning to say no and getting rid of E3 demos will help them to have a more healthy life and careers, it's what happened to many studios who did it before.
To see Halley Gross freaking out because some woke gaming press article attacking them saying dumb stuff like "it's impossible that they could have women working there" reminds me of a case where a very talented indie team I know who are 3 people, a threesome (like a couple but with 3 people) who are a trans woman, a cis man and a cis woman. In one of their (very good) games featured a -pretty great- trans character, and as I remember it was Kotaku who attacked them calling them transphobic! xDDD Obviously they got super pissed off.
Regarding the tsunami of players getting pissed off for what and how they did to Joel (+ the characters they wanted to use to replace Joel and Ellie), I can't believe they didn't see it coming. Even if many people realized it in the worst way: via a leak of an unfinished build showing it out of context.
Let's hope they learn from it that devs must be more respectful with beloved iconic characters like Nathan Drake, Joel and Ellie, Kratos, Mario, Sonic or Lara Croft to name just a few of them. They are the center of their IPs, you can't just kill/retire them, specially to be replaced by someone else who better fits your political views. It won't work, millions players will hate it. You have to be respectful with what and who players love.
I say that after having to handle many years ago an online event that was the funeral of our game (they even made a fucking coffin) with over 50000 attending players. The reason was they didn't like some changes we made in one of our live service games, not the closure of the game (which continued alive).
Very interesting documentary, really enjoyed it.
However, they don't really address the 2018 controversy. The final game has been downgraded, it's undeniable.
I was confused as to why some of those comments from 2018 made it into the cut, comes across like digging their own hole deeper... That might have been the target they were 100% confident to hit back then, but that demo is full of detail largely missing from the final game and I'm not talking about lighting quality
Even if they didn't specifically mentioned it, they shown the reason: games aren't "downgraded". The reason is that when games are shown years before release, most of the game still has to be done, so they make a specific portion of the game that will be shown in that demo or trailer, with the quality that they think and hope the game will have years in the future once it gets shipped.
But they aren't fortune tellers and can't predict the future. To make games is an iterative process where things are constantly evolving and being changed. Many things look good in some place but when used elsewhere cause bugs and other issues, so need to be changed or even removed.
Same goes when in the later portions of development games need to be fit in real consoles (without the extra memory or horsepower available in the development PCs they use to make the game) and achieve certain steady fps: some things must be toned down or cut because there or when used in other areas cause issues.
On top of that, some things causing bugs or issues could have been fixed with more time, but devs often end needing way more time than the one they desire (as seen in the documentary) to do all they wanted, and at some point they have to cut stuff to be on time because can't afford more delays. So they cut less prioritary stuff.
Players like you don't know or understand these things, and even if they explain it very well there will be always people with conspiracy theories telling devs to it to lie to the players due to marketing reasons. And no, it isn't the case. They simply had to make a trailer or demo and they did it how they thought the game was going to be years in the future but without having the tools to know how it would look like in the future.
So this is one of the reasons of why it's better for devs to wait until a year or so (or even less) before release to show the game: by doing it the game is almost done and looks pretty much like the game will look, or at least certain cool parts they can use for the trailer or gameplay demos. In the last year they are still finishing stuff, but are mostly fixing bugs, tweaking, polishing and optimizing stuff.
John Marston
ChorizoPicozo
dont worry I see you laughing. As someone who produces music, nothing worse when people come around and say something negative when they don't know the time and effort you put into something.
