It's so rare to find someone so knowledgeable in the games industry to speak so freely on TH-cam. Your channel is quite underrated. I wish your channel great success!
I'm currently studying software engineering focusing on game development at university and in your videos you touch on topics I've learned, it's really good to know that what I'm currently learning is preparing me for a future in the game development industry. Furthermore, you reiterate the importance of playtesting and QA testing. From personal experience, prototyping and making games in an academic setting, play-testing was one of the only opportunities I had in learning if what I was making worked or not, and in finding the right balance for control settings, etc. Getting complete strangers for play testing was difficult, but yielded the best, most objective and useful feedback. Some of the harsher comments hit home and was upsetting, but they gave better opportunities to redesign and continuously refine the end product. It's really opened my eyes to recent pitfalls of 'AAA' games and how studios have clearly skipped out on such foundational aspects of game development. Something in their development cycle was seriously broken, and amazing that it wasn't picked up on via internal reviews or QA testing. It would be very interesting to see a post-mortem from the development team (not from management). Thank you for your videos!
Cool assumption? They still had garbage in the 80s re: E.T. The problem with Redfall isn't unique, and isn't solely in 'talent', as the video explains. You could have the best programming talent in the world (from the 80s, even) but if you don't get good playtest feedback, or don't incorporate said feedback into development, then chances are you're producing garbage that your audience doesn't find fun.
@@grtcara8386 ah, nothing like the old generation to think the new generation only likes garbage. Remember when your parents thought video games in general were garbage and a waste of time? Think about that
Its amazing to get such a free insight into whats going on behind the scenes, from someone who was basically behind most of the childhood/teen games I've played
I think the reason all of this happened is because Microsoft has largely left their new acquisitions keep running their business the way they have in the past and also didn't have the quality control in place to catch the problem. Xbox ended up inheriting this disaster as a result of Bethesda's terrible decision to make a veteran singleplayer immersive sim developer work on a type of game they didn't have the slightest interest in just to cash in on the "live service" fad.
I heard certain long term members of staff left before they were forced to work on this. It's not what the studio is set up for. The game should never have been forced on the team let alone released with bugs.
Oh man... seeing that excel bug tracker from your time at XBox and realizing that I also used something almost identical in 2017 is so awesome hahaha I swear I find such gems in each and every one of your videos ^^
Your experience is impressive, and your videos are excellent. I would love to see a video about how you handled the production of games from start to finish in the pipeline.
Now, in November 2024, reviewers are sure to mention that Dragon Age: The Veilguard runs at 60FPS. That's not a selling feature for me; it should be standard and not worth a gold star of approval.
It RuNs GrEaT sO yOu ShOuLd BuY iT…. Whenever I saw slop comments like that on steam, I knew they were only saying that because everything else about the game was inexcusably bad.
Laura your channel is amazing I hope you are enjoying making these. A lot was made of the role Gamepass may have played in Redfall. Do you think a game's quality is adversely effected by the "day one" subscription model?
From what i understand Phil Spencer said they were hand off on Redfall unlike Starfield. Redfall developers at Arkane weren't excited about the development of the game a new report claims, with many leaving the studio during production. Redfall was in development before Microsoft bought ZeniMax, Bethesda and Redfall was olny being made as a online live service games to make ZeniMax, Bethesda money.
I find that really weird, dont you need to go through a whole certification process to release a game on the xbox platform? Hand-offs should not mean "we dont test". I dont believe that therefore.
What happened is almost surely summed up in two words: Toxic Positivity. When you can’t hurt people’s feelings because that’s violence, you get this kind of result. The man in charge shouldn’t apologize. He should resign or be fired.
In NerdSlayer’s “D34th of a Game” for Redfall, he spoke with some of Arkane Austin’s employees/developers about the game and apparently Redfall began as A SINGLE PLAYER GAME that Microsoft might’ve mandated become a Live Service pretty late into development…hence the issues with performance and how it felt constantly out of sorts with what it’s trying to run. I’m no developer, but you can really tell that they had to clip the game’s wings just to make it into what Microsoft wanted and the lack of passion from that moment forward truly showed. They just kinda gave up and relented. Which is sad because you can see in the game’s overworld exactly what they wanted to go for! They replaced a lot of the loot/NPC Encounters with Miscellaneous “Survival Stuff” that acts as currency while not giving you much to work with. It’s amazing that something like Tango GameWorks’s Ghostwire Tokyo and Hi-Fi Rush even got completed and with good performance and POLISH given what Microsoft has devolved into
Redfall should never have been made. Arkane of all studios should never have been shackled to a live service looter shooter. It is a waste of their talents in a genre they aren't experienced in, doing a type of game they haven't done before. I doubt anyone applying to work for Arkane thought they would be making something so far away from what the studio is known for. I think the game only existed because Zenimax wanted to boost their valuation before being bought by Xbox. Its a shame talented people had their time wasted making Redfall instead of something they could have been passionate about.
Great video! As you may have found out since your publish of this video, this project was doomed from the jump. Arkane Austin was a studio that made renowned games. When their parent company, Bethesda, ran into trouble during the 2010s, management shoved a multiplayer game down the throat of a team who makes immersive single player games. I believe Bloomberg reported 70% of the existing staff jumped ship prior to release. While all of your points are relevant and valid, the question here ultimately is about communication. Did Microsoft HQ know that their new subsidiary Bethesda had a tortured product that should’ve been cancelled well in advance? Undoubtedly they should’ve, but something went wrong in the communication pipeline. And as many others ask: why do people at Xbox who fail again and again keep their executive positions, or fail up as it were? Sarah Bond has been promoted multiple times and hasn’t been successful at shipping products. Matt Booty is the same way. Why did it take Microsoft a year, as of last month I believe, to close Arkane Austin?
Hi, I just discovered your channel, it's amazing! Have you thought about doing a video after the latest new of Xbox closing three studios (one with a highly acclaimed title) and the reorganization of another? Thanks for the channel!
Completely lost me at "let's trust user reviews over critics". 95% of user reviews are either "great game, loved it 10/10" or "there is LGBTQ representation or a POC in the game, 0/10"
9:09 Failure means death for a AAA studio. Apparently even success means death, when your parent company thinks your studio isnt worth keeping alive because it isn't raking in billions. Letting devs make great games, doing what's right, cultivating the next generation of developers, nothing matters nothing but profit margins. Profit use to be the the main goal closely followed up by making a good game people will enjoy. Now profit is the one and ONLY goal and it is very sad to see...
IMO one of the biggest failure points in the modern video game industry is the overwhelming push towards outsourcing QA. Not only is QA not in the same building, they likely aren't in the same country or speaking the same language, and yet companies expect to get the same return. I love the picture you paint of a bug bash. As an indie, I often have people playtest my game in-person at local events and (once its more polished) at conventions. Still a far cry from the widespread reality of outsourced QA.
loved dishonored and the new prey game, shame this didn't turn out. Hope the studio gets back to making story driven single player games, which is what they are good at!
"What's wrong" in this case is the process being put above the game. In the eyes of the modern MBA, successful execution of the process is the goal, the product is but a side effect. Undoubtedly many a resume will include "successfully facilitated the 'X aspect of game development' at Arkane for Redfall, etc." As in their minds they played their part in the process and it's somebody else's fault that the project wasn't successful. No one person is at fault nor any blameless, marketing, playtest, art, sound design, *everybody* is guilty of not speaking up when the product is crap, even if the process was followed to a T.
4:24 It's amazing how poignant this statement is now, especially since EA has admitted that Dragon Age the Veil Guard underperformed by a very large margin. I will never forget those 9s and 10s that the journalists were espousing, only for me to refund the game after two hours.
Love your realistic informed common sense analysis. So sad to see these things happen and the potential of a great game never realised. Saints row reboot is another example where all the feedback and red flags were ignored causing disappointing sales and restructuring/loss of the studio. Really tragic. One question I would love you to answer is why writing in games is so poor. Sony has become dominant due to amazing characters and stories resonanting with gamers. Yet many studios such as Bethesda are dumbing down their writing with every release. With Starfield having an incredibly weak and repetive main story/quests. Why spend hundreds of millions on engines and assets and so little on writing? I wish someone could explain. Fallout 4 for example you wake up after 200 years and you still think your son is a small child who needs to be rescued. You can guess the twist from the opening cut scene.
"Xbox was the best with testing" so what happened to them? Investors and the MVP mindset! Its no longer about competition or passion, now its MVP (Minimal Viable Product) practices and prioritizing company profits above all else! Sure it works in the shortrun, but if you burn ur consumers enough, they will go to the competition. Sony, Nintendo, etc! Im one of those consumers. I sold my Xbox for a PC this year and will not be returning!
I appreciate your experienced, inside knowledge of the real life work process of dealing with bugs and making a game look and function well, because from an outsider's perspective, Redfall just looked like an ugly mismatch between what a development team had a lot of recent experience doing exceedingly well in single player, narrative-driven games (Dishonored, Prey, Deathloop) and what the executives wanted them to build in an open world co-op looter shooter that every executive wants to be THEIR money-printer because of this shift in how games are monetized. Even if it hadn't been buggy at launch and even ignoring comparisons to Arkane Austin's other, stellar games, even ignoring that a looter shooter doesn't necessarily need narrative and character elements as well developed as other types of games, I'm not sure a non-buggy Redfall was going to be a financially successful multiplayer looter shooter because successful because it seems like a crapshoot as to which ones are hits and which are forgotten, but executives can't resist trying to ship the unicorn. That's certainly the prerogative of the executives to try and push, it's just a shame that an outstanding studio's catching the flack for not hitting that totally different mark when so few studios have been able to.
Thank you for sharing your experiences. As a fan, it feels that Microsoft has become too hands off from its studios and does not know how to properly manage them. Halo Infinite was delayed a year and came out unfinished; it should not happen with your flagship product.
Love this channel, but I think that we need to admit that User reviews can definitely be manipulated. Review bombing is real (both positive and negative). Steam has a great system because people ACTUALLY own the game and have played it....
Looking back at this now puts decisions made in recent times in a different light; there's a context beyond the hardware brand now that we understand there will be no red lines, software will be ubiquitous, "rival" platforms are an opportunity not the enemy - a great place to exploit your existing back catalogue and worn IP, and regular, dependable income trumps dice-roll risks of one-off titles. Like it or not, games get a pass on Game Pass. Shipping a less than stellar product if fine when there's always way more down the pipe for a consumer to look forward to and keep them from cancelling the reup.
You should definitely without a doubt take Phils job. I honestly believe you are what xbox needs to compete again. I noticed myself leaning towards my PlayStation 5 more frequently.
I still haven’t hooked or turn on my series X yet I was hoping Redfall would give me the reason to but sadly no Hopefully Starfield will be that game 🙏🏿😎
Speaking on the whole "mock review" thing.....they're basically worthless. When we had one on a certain game set in a very well known magical universe, they came back with a terribly low score for our game, and stopped just short of accusing the development team of being anti-semites. Long story short, our game over performed the mock review by about 30 points. 🤷♂
Thankfully we'll always have Prey, if only the idiots at Bethesda hadn't insisted they call it that it might've had the success it deserved. Brilliant game. Phil (don't get me started on Todd) has as much to blame as anyone though, his hands off approach is not better than the control freak approach they eventually gave Bungie (and many others), there has to be a happy medium somewhere. I'll tell who also apologises a lot, politicians and many cases they double down on what's not working. AAA is mostly dead for me, I don't think most of the established major publishers and developers are ever going to change, they are incapable and unwilling to. That's why I mostly play AA and indie now.
The reason the industry is in the state it's in right now it's because people like Laura don't work on it anymore. I have a strong feeling the people working on these kind of games nowadays are the kind of people who are not upfront or open with criticism.
Everybody knows what happened to redfall I didn’t care about the frame rate but the bugs was to much and then they came out and said what happened to redfall nobody liked working on it should’ve been the single player that’s where they messed up
Redfall really confuses me, How did this game release with such terrible performance. How did Arkane release such a mess with its past great titles. How does this get green lit to be released? How did they think this was acceptable?
How was this game approved? How was it ever approved for release? I dont get it, releasing such product is hugely damaging to the Xbox brand imo. The game was broken on launch, required patching afterwards.
I'm really confused, as you say the play test sessions and bashes with pizza and other people really sound cool, like a real perk of working in the industry, but my impression from various videos on game production today seem like these people don't even like playing games. First that comes to mine at the moment is Diablo 4 where I watched some gameplay videos with some people working on it and they barley knew what was going on had nothing interesting or insightful to say. It was an embarrassment all around to watch, in the end I even felt sorry for them.
They did not want to make redfall they wanted to make what they were good at. This order came from Behetsda not from xbox that is suprising. Tells us how much tods company has fallen and now that studio that came up with dishonored is shut down forever.. So not much to learn they killed them
You can’t go by Metacritic you can rate the game with out playing the damn thing WTF how can you go by something like that? You see these ponies out here reviewing bombing starfield zero out of 100 come on now no game deserves a zero little ponies a mad because it’s an Xbox exclusive so it gets an 0 because of that what the hell!!! PlayStation can’t do no wrong the media is bias!!! I even read one review giving stafield a 0 because it didn’t have multiplayer how many times did Todd Howard say single game only you knew that before you even play it I am sick and tired of all this BS!!!
Well ... sure Redfall should have been tested correctly before they released it - as well as your video before you uploaded it with this awful loud sound, that makes my head hurt on low volume ... in fact it is so loud and ultra low quality, every other notebook MIC of 1998 would have done a better job.
@@laurafryer6321 Oh come on Laura , pay him no mind . You did a great job as this is your first video on YT . This person is likely a major xbox fan living in denial . They don't realize you are actually one of the original XBOX founders .
What do you think of AI that takes over your job because AI does better than you? This AI fixed Redfall th-cam.com/video/EHcnkIqNlnM/w-d-xo.htmlsi=8kjhahAa9DLFRYnD
It's so rare to find someone so knowledgeable in the games industry to speak so freely on TH-cam. Your channel is quite underrated. I wish your channel great success!
Your channels is one of the reasons why TH-cam is the greatest resource in history. So much insight.
Thank you Destin for highlighting this channel and thank you Laura Fryer for your incredibly insightful and thoughtful essays.
I am so grateful to have found this channel. Thank you.
Thank you! I'm happy you are here!
I'm currently studying software engineering focusing on game development at university and in your videos you touch on topics I've learned, it's really good to know that what I'm currently learning is preparing me for a future in the game development industry. Furthermore, you reiterate the importance of playtesting and QA testing.
From personal experience, prototyping and making games in an academic setting, play-testing was one of the only opportunities I had in learning if what I was making worked or not, and in finding the right balance for control settings, etc. Getting complete strangers for play testing was difficult, but yielded the best, most objective and useful feedback. Some of the harsher comments hit home and was upsetting, but they gave better opportunities to redesign and continuously refine the end product.
It's really opened my eyes to recent pitfalls of 'AAA' games and how studios have clearly skipped out on such foundational aspects of game development. Something in their development cycle was seriously broken, and amazing that it wasn't picked up on via internal reviews or QA testing. It would be very interesting to see a post-mortem from the development team (not from management).
Thank you for your videos!
Problem is all you Gen Z’s and co are into garbage. All the best devs played through the 80’s
Cool assumption? They still had garbage in the 80s re: E.T.
The problem with Redfall isn't unique, and isn't solely in 'talent', as the video explains.
You could have the best programming talent in the world (from the 80s, even) but if you don't get good playtest feedback, or don't incorporate said feedback into development, then chances are you're producing garbage that your audience doesn't find fun.
@@grtcara8386get em
@@grtcara8386 ah, nothing like the old generation to think the new generation only likes garbage. Remember when your parents thought video games in general were garbage and a waste of time? Think about that
When someone like you with so much experience in the industry makes a YT channel and shares their expertise, it's pure gold.
I love your channel!
Thank you! I'm glad you like my videos!
I’m really glad I found your channel *Laura Fryer.* You give excellent advice and present it an interesting and engaging way, thank you!
Thank you!
People are sleeping on this channel. I’m enamoured!!
Your videos are so good and informative, please do more of them. I am loving the binge!
Its amazing to get such a free insight into whats going on behind the scenes, from someone who was basically behind most of the childhood/teen games I've played
I think the reason all of this happened is because Microsoft has largely left their new acquisitions keep running their business the way they have in the past and also didn't have the quality control in place to catch the problem. Xbox ended up inheriting this disaster as a result of Bethesda's terrible decision to make a veteran singleplayer immersive sim developer work on a type of game they didn't have the slightest interest in just to cash in on the "live service" fad.
Your videos are so nice. I love hearing from you, with your experience. all the behind the scenes stuff is so interesting to hear.
I heard certain long term members of staff left before they were forced to work on this. It's not what the studio is set up for. The game should never have been forced on the team let alone released with bugs.
Thank you for this. It's very interesting to hear these issues analyzed by someone with your experience.
Do you think Game Pass is their current play test system / test team? I hope not because that is not a good idea.
Oh man... seeing that excel bug tracker from your time at XBox and realizing that I also used something almost identical in 2017 is so awesome hahaha I swear I find such gems in each and every one of your videos ^^
Your content is so rich in experience and insight into the industry.
I'm loving your videos!
Valuable insights from an experienced professional. I always look forward to your uploads!
Your experience is impressive, and your videos are excellent. I would love to see a video about how you handled the production of games from start to finish in the pipeline.
Good suggestion! Thank you!
The ending got me, did not expect to see MS BOB mentioned!
Thanks for the amazing videos.
Now, in November 2024, reviewers are sure to mention that Dragon Age: The Veilguard runs at 60FPS. That's not a selling feature for me; it should be standard and not worth a gold star of approval.
It RuNs GrEaT sO yOu ShOuLd BuY iT…. Whenever I saw slop comments like that on steam, I knew they were only saying that because everything else about the game was inexcusably bad.
Laura your channel is amazing I hope you are enjoying making these.
A lot was made of the role Gamepass may have played in Redfall. Do you think a game's quality is adversely effected by the "day one" subscription model?
From what i understand Phil Spencer said they were hand off on Redfall unlike Starfield. Redfall developers at Arkane weren't excited about the development of the game a new report claims, with many leaving the studio during production. Redfall was in development before Microsoft bought ZeniMax, Bethesda and Redfall was olny being made as a online live service games to make ZeniMax, Bethesda money.
I find that really weird, dont you need to go through a whole certification process to release a game on the xbox platform? Hand-offs should not mean "we dont test". I dont believe that therefore.
Crappy excuse. I dont always like what I do at work but I'm being paid to do a job. Sounds like some entitled little brats
Love your content, Keep up the great work!
What happened is almost surely summed up in two words:
Toxic Positivity.
When you can’t hurt people’s feelings because that’s violence, you get this kind of result.
The man in charge shouldn’t apologize. He should resign or be fired.
I want to move to the parallel universe where the follow up to Deathloop was Dishonored 3.
You are speaking the truth! Redfall should've never released in that state.
In NerdSlayer’s “D34th of a Game” for Redfall, he spoke with some of Arkane Austin’s employees/developers about the game and apparently Redfall began as A SINGLE PLAYER GAME that Microsoft might’ve mandated become a Live Service pretty late into development…hence the issues with performance and how it felt constantly out of sorts with what it’s trying to run. I’m no developer, but you can really tell that they had to clip the game’s wings just to make it into what Microsoft wanted and the lack of passion from that moment forward truly showed.
They just kinda gave up and relented. Which is sad because you can see in the game’s overworld exactly what they wanted to go for! They replaced a lot of the loot/NPC Encounters with Miscellaneous “Survival Stuff” that acts as currency while not giving you much to work with.
It’s amazing that something like Tango GameWorks’s Ghostwire Tokyo and Hi-Fi Rush even got completed and with good performance and POLISH given what Microsoft has devolved into
Great stuff. New subscriber for sure.
Awesome! Thank you for your support!
Love your channel and your videos!
Redfall should never have been made. Arkane of all studios should never have been shackled to a live service looter shooter. It is a waste of their talents in a genre they aren't experienced in, doing a type of game they haven't done before. I doubt anyone applying to work for Arkane thought they would be making something so far away from what the studio is known for. I think the game only existed because Zenimax wanted to boost their valuation before being bought by Xbox. Its a shame talented people had their time wasted making Redfall instead of something they could have been passionate about.
Great video!
As you may have found out since your publish of this video, this project was doomed from the jump. Arkane Austin was a studio that made renowned games. When their parent company, Bethesda, ran into trouble during the 2010s, management shoved a multiplayer game down the throat of a team who makes immersive single player games.
I believe Bloomberg reported 70% of the existing staff jumped ship prior to release.
While all of your points are relevant and valid, the question here ultimately is about communication. Did Microsoft HQ know that their new subsidiary Bethesda had a tortured product that should’ve been cancelled well in advance? Undoubtedly they should’ve, but something went wrong in the communication pipeline.
And as many others ask: why do people at Xbox who fail again and again keep their executive positions, or fail up as it were? Sarah Bond has been promoted multiple times and hasn’t been successful at shipping products. Matt Booty is the same way. Why did it take Microsoft a year, as of last month I believe, to close Arkane Austin?
Thank you!
This channel is amazing
I think that picture of you with Paris Hilton should be in every video.
Hi, I just discovered your channel, it's amazing! Have you thought about doing a video after the latest new of Xbox closing three studios (one with a highly acclaimed title) and the reorganization of another?
Thanks for the channel!
Good idea! Thank you for watching!
Completely lost me at "let's trust user reviews over critics". 95% of user reviews are either "great game, loved it 10/10" or "there is LGBTQ representation or a POC in the game, 0/10"
9:09 Failure means death for a AAA studio. Apparently even success means death, when your parent company thinks your studio isnt worth keeping alive because it isn't raking in billions. Letting devs make great games, doing what's right, cultivating the next generation of developers, nothing matters nothing but profit margins. Profit use to be the the main goal closely followed up by making a good game people will enjoy. Now profit is the one and ONLY goal and it is very sad to see...
IMO one of the biggest failure points in the modern video game industry is the overwhelming push towards outsourcing QA.
Not only is QA not in the same building, they likely aren't in the same country or speaking the same language, and yet companies expect to get the same return.
I love the picture you paint of a bug bash. As an indie, I often have people playtest my game in-person at local events and (once its more polished) at conventions. Still a far cry from the widespread reality of outsourced QA.
loved dishonored and the new prey game, shame this didn't turn out. Hope the studio gets back to making story driven single player games, which is what they are good at!
"What's wrong" in this case is the process being put above the game. In the eyes of the modern MBA, successful execution of the process is the goal, the product is but a side effect. Undoubtedly many a resume will include "successfully facilitated the 'X aspect of game development' at Arkane for Redfall, etc." As in their minds they played their part in the process and it's somebody else's fault that the project wasn't successful.
No one person is at fault nor any blameless, marketing, playtest, art, sound design, *everybody* is guilty of not speaking up when the product is crap, even if the process was followed to a T.
4:24 It's amazing how poignant this statement is now, especially since EA has admitted that Dragon Age the Veil Guard underperformed by a very large margin. I will never forget those 9s and 10s that the journalists were espousing, only for me to refund the game after two hours.
Love your realistic informed common sense analysis. So sad to see these things happen and the potential of a great game never realised. Saints row reboot is another example where all the feedback and red flags were ignored causing disappointing sales and restructuring/loss of the studio. Really tragic. One question I would love you to answer is why writing in games is so poor. Sony has become dominant due to amazing characters and stories resonanting with gamers. Yet many studios such as Bethesda are dumbing down their writing with every release. With Starfield having an incredibly weak and repetive main story/quests. Why spend hundreds of millions on engines and assets and so little on writing? I wish someone could explain. Fallout 4 for example you wake up after 200 years and you still think your son is a small child who needs to be rescued. You can guess the twist from the opening cut scene.
"Xbox was the best with testing" so what happened to them?
Investors and the MVP mindset!
Its no longer about competition or passion, now its MVP (Minimal Viable Product) practices and prioritizing company profits above all else!
Sure it works in the shortrun, but if you burn ur consumers enough, they will go to the competition. Sony, Nintendo, etc!
Im one of those consumers.
I sold my Xbox for a PC this year and will not be returning!
The way I see it is that it is not a Microsoft problem, but a Bethesda problem.
How? Bethesda is a Microsoft first party studio?
I appreciate your experienced, inside knowledge of the real life work process of dealing with bugs and making a game look and function well, because from an outsider's perspective, Redfall just looked like an ugly mismatch between what a development team had a lot of recent experience doing exceedingly well in single player, narrative-driven games (Dishonored, Prey, Deathloop) and what the executives wanted them to build in an open world co-op looter shooter that every executive wants to be THEIR money-printer because of this shift in how games are monetized. Even if it hadn't been buggy at launch and even ignoring comparisons to Arkane Austin's other, stellar games, even ignoring that a looter shooter doesn't necessarily need narrative and character elements as well developed as other types of games, I'm not sure a non-buggy Redfall was going to be a financially successful multiplayer looter shooter because successful because it seems like a crapshoot as to which ones are hits and which are forgotten, but executives can't resist trying to ship the unicorn. That's certainly the prerogative of the executives to try and push, it's just a shame that an outstanding studio's catching the flack for not hitting that totally different mark when so few studios have been able to.
Thank you for sharing your experiences. As a fan, it feels that Microsoft has become too hands off from its studios and does not know how to properly manage them. Halo Infinite was delayed a year and came out unfinished; it should not happen with your flagship product.
I never thought Fallout 76 had a sequel.
This was extremely interesting!!
Love this channel, but I think that we need to admit that User reviews can definitely be manipulated. Review bombing is real (both positive and negative). Steam has a great system because people ACTUALLY own the game and have played it....
Looking back at this now puts decisions made in recent times in a different light; there's a context beyond the hardware brand now that we understand there will be no red lines, software will be ubiquitous, "rival" platforms are an opportunity not the enemy - a great place to exploit your existing back catalogue and worn IP, and regular, dependable income trumps dice-roll risks of one-off titles. Like it or not, games get a pass on Game Pass. Shipping a less than stellar product if fine when there's always way more down the pipe for a consumer to look forward to and keep them from cancelling the reup.
You should definitely without a doubt take Phils job.
I honestly believe you are what xbox needs to compete again.
I noticed myself leaning towards my PlayStation 5 more frequently.
Im late to this video but i think its pretty obvious that theres either no QA or the QA is compromised and not allowed to say what they think
I liked it… for what it was “free” on game pass.
Such a missed opportunity.
I still haven’t hooked or turn on my series X yet I was hoping Redfall would give me the reason to but sadly no Hopefully Starfield will be that game 🙏🏿😎
3:10 Oh god this is so hot. I could watch an entire channel on video game CAPA.
interesting thanks for the data!
Speaking on the whole "mock review" thing.....they're basically worthless. When we had one on a certain game set in a very well known magical universe, they came back with a terribly low score for our game, and stopped just short of accusing the development team of being anti-semites. Long story short, our game over performed the mock review by about 30 points. 🤷♂
Why hasn't your channel blown up yet?
Thankfully we'll always have Prey, if only the idiots at Bethesda hadn't insisted they call it that it might've had the success it deserved. Brilliant game.
Phil (don't get me started on Todd) has as much to blame as anyone though, his hands off approach is not better than the control freak approach they eventually gave Bungie (and many others), there has to be a happy medium somewhere. I'll tell who also apologises a lot, politicians and many cases they double down on what's not working.
AAA is mostly dead for me, I don't think most of the established major publishers and developers are ever going to change, they are incapable and unwilling to. That's why I mostly play AA and indie now.
Very interesting
7:10, how they played made me laugh because its just actors trying to look like they are really playing. 😂😃
The reason the industry is in the state it's in right now it's because people like Laura don't work on it anymore. I have a strong feeling the people working on these kind of games nowadays are the kind of people who are not upfront or open with criticism.
0:18 lmao is that clip supposed to be scary? I’m sorry I don’t know what they were going for I can’t take it seriously. It’s so over the top
see the problem with doing testing is that it costs money and phil spencer is in the business of making money, not spending it
The repeating theme in these videos is that the industry is sliding into something unrecognisable and severely out of touch.
Everybody knows what happened to redfall I didn’t care about the frame rate but the bugs was to much and then they came out and said what happened to redfall nobody liked working on it should’ve been the single player that’s where they messed up
Redfall really confuses me, How did this game release with such terrible performance. How did Arkane release such a mess with its past great titles. How does this get green lit to be released? How did they think this was acceptable?
How was this game approved? How was it ever approved for release? I dont get it, releasing such product is hugely damaging to the Xbox brand imo. The game was broken on launch, required patching afterwards.
When all the comments are talking about how great the creator is, you know they purchased fake bot likes and comments.
Have you watched the video? People are enjoying Laura's videos because she has unique insight into the developer scene due to her past work.
I'm really confused, as you say the play test sessions and bashes with pizza and other people really sound cool, like a real perk of working in the industry, but my impression from various videos on game production today seem like these people don't even like playing games.
First that comes to mine at the moment is Diablo 4 where I watched some gameplay videos with some people working on it and they barley knew what was going on had nothing interesting or insightful to say. It was an embarrassment all around to watch, in the end I even felt sorry for them.
They did not want to make redfall they wanted to make what they were good at. This order came from Behetsda not from xbox that is suprising. Tells us how much tods company has fallen and now that studio that came up with dishonored is shut down forever.. So not much to learn they killed them
You can’t go by Metacritic you can rate the game with out playing the damn thing WTF how can you go by something like that? You see these ponies out here reviewing bombing starfield zero out of 100 come on now no game deserves a zero little ponies a mad because it’s an Xbox exclusive so it gets an 0 because of that what the hell!!! PlayStation can’t do no wrong the media is bias!!! I even read one review giving stafield a 0 because it didn’t have multiplayer how many times did Todd Howard say single game only you knew that before you even play it I am sick and tired of all this BS!!!
sorry but gamepass effect
Well ... sure Redfall should have been tested correctly before they released it - as well as your video before you uploaded it with this awful loud sound, that makes my head hurt on low volume ... in fact it is so loud and ultra low quality, every other notebook MIC of 1998 would have done a better job.
lol! Thanks and I'm working on it. :)
@@laurafryer6321 Oh come on Laura , pay him no mind . You did a great job as this is your first video on YT . This person is likely a major xbox fan living in denial . They don't realize you are actually one of the original XBOX founders .
@@laurafryer6321it's a great video despite the audio
Also, buy a real microphone
I did! Audio was sad on this one. Thank you for watching!
@@laurafryer6321 It sounds like your gain might be far too high
What do you think of AI that takes over your job because AI does better than you? This AI fixed Redfall th-cam.com/video/EHcnkIqNlnM/w-d-xo.htmlsi=8kjhahAa9DLFRYnD