SkylineRKR
Member
Avengers could've been like Guardians, which i've heard is a solid SP game. Perhaps that would've fared better.
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Square Enix claims Crystal Dynamics was the wrong fit for ‘disappointing’ Marvel’s Avengers
Furozen
Member
That's Eidos Montréal's take, not CD's.
Nickolaidas
Member
Fucking douchebags.
They force the devs to make this game a grindfest GaaS, and then call them responsible for the pattern not working out.
They force the devs to make this game a grindfest GaaS, and then call them responsible for the pattern not working out.
Team Andromeda
Member
I thought the game was good. I don't understand the hate directed to Crystal or the game myself. Sure, It wasn't 10 out of 10 stuff, but still rather decent with some nice moments
. I would still rather had seen Crystal have made a sequel to Rise of the TombRaider myself
. I would still rather had seen Crystal have made a sequel to Rise of the TombRaider myself
FunkMiller
Gold Member
kuncol02
Banned
There is no studio that would make good Avengers GAAS game. Not if player are expected to play as existing avengers.
Yeah, but that's a separate issue.
Wildebeest
Member
A lot of cheerleading for pure single player story mode here. But it is partly trends like Crystal Dynamics using a formula of QTE cutscenes and using very disposable gameplay which drive people to more persistent pure gameplay experiences like games as a service. It is more satisfying to collect loot you can use over time than to collect "achievements". Both are gamified reward loops but loot in a persistent game has the advantage that you can actually use it to have some fun while the "achievement" is purely extrinsic and unfun. There is no iron law saying that games as a service cannot drop very memorable and affecting story developments along the way.
Really the advantage of the single player experience is that they can be crafted to not waste your time so much. But what is time-wasting or content is subjective. The appeal of the single player game is not that you "play them how you want" but that you "pay your money and live with our choices".
Really the advantage of the single player experience is that they can be crafted to not waste your time so much. But what is time-wasting or content is subjective. The appeal of the single player game is not that you "play them how you want" but that you "pay your money and live with our choices".
Nocturno999
Member
What a pathetic statement form SE. Jesus.
oldergamer
Member
This is really a strange statement for a publisher to make on one of their own studios. Eidos Montreal also made guardians of the galaxy. A game that looks to be a hit, but it really makes no sense to call out crystal dynamics in this manner.
Kiddo Cabbusses
Member
Shouldn't throwing one of your own studios under the bus like this be seen as a PR disaster move and a red flag?
It's even especially scathing consider Square Enix wouldn't even throw Yuji Naka under the bus for Balan Wonderworld and that was full-blown kusoge territory. And that's not even the first crappy bomb that SE was involved in! Heck, it arguably was not even as bad as Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within! What the heck did Crystal Dynamics do to them in private to warrant such a public roasting?
It's even especially scathing consider Square Enix wouldn't even throw Yuji Naka under the bus for Balan Wonderworld and that was full-blown kusoge territory. And that's not even the first crappy bomb that SE was involved in! Heck, it arguably was not even as bad as Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within! What the heck did Crystal Dynamics do to them in private to warrant such a public roasting?
ZoukGalaxy
Member
Yeah, and also using UGLY ASS AVENGERS MODELS was bad fit after 10+ years of MCU awesomeness.
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Zekra Dezivad
Member
Well, also making an Avengers game without considering what characters people would like to play that was a bad idea.
The game just asked for funny dialogues and spectacular combat with characters also seen in the movies to ride the wave of the cinematic universe. It's so easy that shows fucked up the whole premise is.
The game just asked for funny dialogues and spectacular combat with characters also seen in the movies to ride the wave of the cinematic universe. It's so easy that shows fucked up the whole premise is.
Mister Wolf
Gold Member
I doubt they wanted it to be a GAAS. Bet that came from the suits at the top.
Yeah but I wonder what the expectations on Babylon Fall really are.
I do agree that game is not going to be good though.
JoeBudden
Member
Like I said man, let's just look at the Maestro arc for example and how CD treated such a powerful supervillian and his lore. It was embarrassing and insulting to the Marvel lore and fans. This is a guy who kills all the Avengers in the comics in his own timeline, and they relegated him to a boss fight with hardly any build up story wise.
If you go back to the reviews, there were tons of complaints on character design looking generic, the overall story being bad, and more. I'm talking about things outside the repetitive gameplay loop that comes with GAAS games. All these things are elements of the game that would've remained constant if the game was a GAAS game or not. And they all demonstrate a lack of talent and experience by CD.
Not only was this a bad GAAS game, but it was also a bad Marvel game.
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JimmyRustler
Member
Well, they should finally assign CD to what they are supposed to do... A new Legacy of Kain game.
Swift_Star
Banned
People saying FFVII Remake is tier trash surely can't be serious lol
JoeBudden
Member
And there are tons of successful GAAS games or just games with MTX in general. Look at Apex Legends.
Being given the Avengers IP should've been a slam dunk for them, but CD gave us a generic story with generic characters, and they didn't respect the Marvel lore or fans at all. They're a mid tier studio that shouldn't have been given the IP.
The Eradicator
Member
These companies can't seem to get it through their thick skulls that the GAAS market is already far too bloated, and already take up too much of the player's time. But yeah, definitely keep making more of them, and then wonder why no one jumps in to YOUR particular game.
Bragr
Banned
This has nothing to do with reality haha. Hades is considered a smashing indie success when it crossed over a million last year, and that is a massive indie game. Very few indie games get anywhere near 1 million, let alone 5. Most indie games are over the moon if they can reach over 300k.
Ghost of Tsushima is considered a big sales success, pushing over 6 million. Remedy had its strongest year financial year ever with Control selling over 2 million units. Very few games are even close to a 100 million budget, and most of the big games out there aren't selling what you think they are.
tkscz
Member
Bandwagoning has always been a big issue in gaming and usually always has the same results. About three to five games become successful, the other 100 games to jump on that bandwagon usually just fail.
jakinov
Member
There's no contention on indie side so I don't know why you keep bringing it up. The 5 million is the number you brought up, my point has always been for a high budget game it's not great.
Ghosts of Tshumia sold 1.5 million more copies than 5 million. Sony pays royalties to themselves and the retailer/digital cut goes back to themselves. The game is developed by a team half the size and in turn the budget $60 million (versus $100 million). So better margins, cheaper development costs, 20% more sales in a shorter period of time (GoT as potential to keep selling more copies whereas Tomb Raider has plateaud). We're looking signficantly more profit than Tomb Raider brought even if they sold the same number copies.
I watched multiple Remedy investor presentations and they brag about how with how they designed their engine they can produce games really fast and cheap [unlike other companies]. Control budget was $30 million which is uncommon and it's sometihng they bragged about. They've said they are happy with the sales but not what they were hoping for or a major success either way. And their happiness is probably on partly because their mentality is that they can continue to get sustained income via selling the game over and over via digital promotions because that's their selling point to investors is that they old games are always selling at least something because of promotions.
In regards to games with 100 million budget, many big games are and if they aren't they are closer to that than they are of Control's $30 million. There's a general consensous that costs are on the rise too. Again 5M copies for a big-budget western game is not that great. The only exception to that is if the game gets supplementary income elsewhere (e.g. ads, DLC, mtx)
Imru’ al-Qays
Member
This isn't specific to gaming, it's happening to the entire economy. Marx calls it "the tendency of the rate of profit to fall" - as capitalism develops it becomes harder and harder to make a profit, so companies become more and more obsessed with squeezing out every last bit of profit that they can by cutting costs and raising revenue. The result undermines the long-term profitability of the system (since consumers are less likely to spend money on low-quality products), which leads to recurring economic crises (see: the modern world).
Bragr
Banned
We have no idea what they spent on Tsushima and what they got back, these sort of hobby speculations on expenses and profits are pointless. Truth is, it's a big triple-A game that was profitable when it crossed 5 million and they are likely extremely happy to get there.
You are trying to rationalize your comment saying that games like Control used a smaller budget, but what you are really talking about here is massive games with absurd budgets. Which is the small majority of triple-A titles. There was some guy who said that Doom Eternal has made hundreds of millions in profits, a game that is likely at 5-7 million. That is what most triple-A games are aiming at, look at the top 30 games of last year, very few of those titles have 100 million budgets. Most developers aim for around 1-3 million to recoup costs. The monster ones need 4-5. A game that hits 5 million is very likely to get greenlit to become a franchise and is making money back.
wipeout364
Member
Pretty harsh but probably an accurate assessment. I love crystal dynamics and think they are one of the best developers out there but this was pretty far out of their comfort zone. I hope they get a chance to redeem themselves, there were some really solid aspects to Avengers but I think it was just too much for the studio and it got out of hand. It needed a bigger studio and more time or more focused design to avoid content creep. I do agree that a ton of criticism would have been avoided if they had just launched as a F2P model at the start and I suspect hey might be financially much better off long term with the game. People are much more receptive to predatory pricing with the F2P model than with having just paid full price for a game.
captainnapalm
Member
As bad an idea as Avengers was as a live service game, it probably could have worked if the loot system wasn't so god awful. You can't even see the loot on your character, and the boosts they give you barely translate into anything you can get excited about or even sometimes fully understand. When you see a loot system that crappy, and about six currencies to support it... if its Crystal Dynamics who are responsible for all that, then they are absolutely to blame. I saw some reviewer call it literally the worst loot system ever in a game like this, and he's probably not far off.
The worst thing of all is this has had a knock-on effect, hurting the reception of Guardians of the Galaxy, which actually is a good game, so they've just screwed themselves twice over with their greed.
The worst thing of all is this has had a knock-on effect, hurting the reception of Guardians of the Galaxy, which actually is a good game, so they've just screwed themselves twice over with their greed.
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jakinov
Member
Shawn Layden said their games costed as much as 100M$. Ghots of Tshumia from linkedin posts is suppsoedly aroudn $60 million from someone boasting about budgeting for the game. Even if it was more. the margins are still significantly better and 6.5 Million doesn't seem much more than 5 million but once you past the break-even point everything is like gravy. Their first 3,4, or sometimes even 5 million could even not be profitable.
30 million dollar is a super small budget and again Remedy brags about it in their investor presentations. Here's a quote from them directly "Control was developed in three years with a budget of less than €30 million. We don’t quite require the same huge lifetime numbers as many other games with bigger development budgets. Therefore, even though Control didn’t have chart-topping sales right from the get go, we are in a good position with steady sales. We always take the long view here".
In regards to Doom, U looked it up and the numbers floating around is revenue.
Non western games and smaller budget games want 1-3 million. Japanese studios overwork their employeees more and pay developers as much as janitors so they get tiny budgets and are very happy with few million in sales.
$50-100M+ budgets aren't monster budgets, they are just big budgets. You use "AAA" to describe all these smaller budget games but "AAA" is supposed to refer to how the size of the budget. There's a reason why Square Enix was disappointed with 5 million copies sold and that's because it probasbly didn't make them very much money for the risk they had to take.
Wildebeest
Member
Game publishers just need to find a way to get the government to bail them out whenever they fail. Then they can raise budgets as high as they want and not have to worry about that weird archaic graph. Do you think we are still living in a capitalist society or something?
lefty1117
Gold Member
The game was fun. Campaign was interesting, graphics very good, the combat at higher difficulty was pretty solid. No problems with their choices around the core gameplay including using a new character to propel the campaign. Their mistakes were in game design - a crappy multiplayer flow with regionalized, platform specific matchmaking meant it very quickly became difficult to find players after the initial launch rush settled down. No crossplay. The way progression was structured meant that they didn't include a way to replay the campaign once you finished and moved into multiplayer. Imagine that, you couldn't actually replay the campaign (arguably the most enjoyable part of the game). But you could play the same multiplayer missions over and over and over. New content was very slow to come out which meant the game quickly began to feel repetitive and grindy after the campaign was done. And worst of all, to me, is the exclusivity deal with Sony for Spiderman ... locking a major fan favorite character behind one platform on a multi-platform game, just a real shitty move, a middle finger to customers in my opinion. The game had some potential but went off the rails with poor choices.
Solarstrike
Gold Member
What an asshole. Fire that guy. Game was good for what it was; a super hero beat-em up game. Wtf did he expect? Ben Hur style production values? A emotionally riveting and Oscar worthy story? They're frickin' comic book cartoons. Also, Crystal Dynamics was making great games before he was a scratch on his grand daddies left sack in the back of his Pinto with Suzy Flounderfingers
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Silent Viper
Banned
Throwing devs under the bus lol. CD its time to join the team green
Shadowstar39
Member
The sad thing is, this is probably right as JoeQ public, and kids love Gaas and pay to win. Simpletons think oh game is free.... They don't think about he implications of that. Its what has destroyed good games being on phones.In a few years will be gaas, online games, vr and metaverse
Kids have already accepted it. Its only old heads that remember the good ol days and hard core sp gamers who are hold outs. Eventually we will be too old, or small in number and the suits won't cater to us anymore. Enter end of gaming as we once new it.
Shadowstar39
Member
Not an insult... I'm gen X but would rather be called a boomer than a snowflake/sjw or whatever gen z or millenials called now. Single player, couch co-op and lan play ftw... Quake 3/UT2000 over fortnite any day. GaaS is shit.Not true but ok i guess?
