*Thomas joined the call*
"Thank's for inviting me Phil how are things?"
"Thank you Thomas, I just wanted to say that you've been a great friend of Xbox. We love MOON Studios and obviously the great work that you guys have done for Xbox. Look we're taking Xbox into a new exciting Direction and as one of the heroes who delivered for us at Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X launch I want you to be part of this new story and give you guys a much bigger role at Xbox Studios going forward."
"Wow, thanks Phil. I trust you read my draft game design document for Ori 3. I'm really excited about the new direction and I'm sure that with the additional budget we can..."
"Absolutely fantastic work but we're sort of in a transition right now to see where the market goes and evolves and exploring other exciting opportunities now that we've expanded our development teams."
"Transition... ?"
"Let me explain what we discussed here with the team in Redmond. We know that this pandemic is hard on you guys in Europe and we want to keep true to our no crunch policy. MOON Studios will be rebranded to XBOX STUDIOS AUSTRIA, don't you just love that logo? And no more paperwork, how cool is that Thomas?"
"I uuhhh"
"Fantastic right. You will become part of our premier team of XBOX STUDIOS EUROPE under the leadership of Jade Raymond who will soon join us on this exciting journey. Platform games are not doing well on Xbox. We know this and we intend to fix this soon. The rumors are true, we're buying SONIC to cultivate an audience for platform games on Xbox. In the mean time we don't want to hold you guys back in what you do best. So instead we've decided that Xbox Studios Austria will use all their incredible talent to assist with the development of FABLE and HALO INFINITE and you will finally join the big leagues. If this pays off you'll be co-producing HALO and SONIC games before you can say MASTER CHIEF. We have some fantastic UI and 2D Art contract positions that are just perfect for your team and as you know the budget on HALO is INFINITE. So you can really do that pixel magic on an incredible scale. What do you say Thomas, are you excited to be on this journey with us?"
"I don't know what to say Phil..."
"I knew you'd love it and I know you love Xbox and video games! Say, have you played Cyberpunk? I gotta say you guys in Europe make fantastic games. And I think that when we get back to Ori once SONIC puts us back on our feet... and I personally love Ori we can really take it to new exciting places. Maybe even a different universe, you know get really ambitious like No Man's Sky. Once I get the new designs for SONIC I would very much like your take on them! Hang in there my friend and give my best to your amazing team!"
*Phil left the call*
This is something that's been bothering me for a while and I get kinda riled up about it every time I see it unfold. And every time it keeps happening, people keep falling for it...
It all started with Molyneux. He was the master of 'Instead of telling you what my product is, let me just go wild with what I think it could be and get you all excited!" - And that was fine, until you actually put your money down and then the game was nothing like what Peter was hyping it up to be. He pulled this shit for a good decade or more with journalists and gamers loving listening to Uncle Peter and the amazing things he's doing for the industry. It took him to release some pretty damn shoddy games for press and gamers to finally not listen to the lies anymore.
Then came Sean Murray, who apparently had learned straight from the Peter Molyneux handbook. This guy apparently just loooooved the spotlight. Even days before No Man's Sky released, he hyped up the Multiplayer that didn't even exist and was all too happy to let people think that No Man's Sky was 'Minecraft in Space', where you could literally do everything (you being able to do everything is generally a common theme behind the gaming snake oil salesmen, cause hey, that sorta attracts everybody!). Obviously there was massive backlash when No Man's Sky finally released and the product being nothing like what Murray hyped it up to be. But what happened then? They released a bunch of updates, so let's forget about the initial lies and deception and hey, let's actually shower him with awards again, cause he finally kinda sorta delivered on what he said the game would be years earlier. Thanks, Geoff Keighley. Rewarding that kinda behavior will surely help the industry grow stronger.
And then came Cyberpunk. Made by the guys that made Witcher 3, so this shit had to be good. Here's our Cyberpunk universe and - trust us - you can do fucking everything! Here the entire CDPR PR department took all the cues from what worked for Molyneux and Murray and just went completely apeshit with it. Gamers were to believe that this is "Sci-Fi GTA in First Person". What's not to love? Every video released by CDPR was carefully crafted to create a picture in players minds that was just insanely compelling. They stopped just short of outright saying that this thing would cure cancer. This strategy resulted in a sensational 8 million pre-orders. What happened then was this: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=_CymqHdNYkg. The product was a fraction of what the developer hyped it up to be and on top of that it barely even ran on consoles that it was supposed to 'run surprisingly well on!'.
I'd argue that all 3 of those are clear examples of you folks all being made fools of. And even the 'journalists' in this industry happily played along, each and every single time.
And let me also say, from the perspective of a developer, all of this just sucks. Back in 2014, I remember some journalist from some big publication telling us that Ori almost got the cover article of some magazine I read frequently, but ultimately they had to pick No Man's Sky cause it was the 'bigger game'. I kinda agreed back then, thinking to myself: "Ok, I get it, they have to promote the bigger game, they obviously have to go for the clicks. Sucks, but that's how the game is played." But then I really felt bamboozled once No Man's Sky came out and it became clear that all this hype was really just built on lies and the honest guy who just showed his actual product really got kicked in the balls because the lying guy was able to make up some tall tales that held absolutely no substance.
I know this whole thread might come off as me sounding bitter and I'm sure there'll be some people that see this as me shitting on other devs. No, I'm not. I'm shitting on liars and people that are okay with openly deceiving others. I'd argue that we should all agree that this shit is not okay. If I go and buy a car and the car salesman sells me a car that supposedly has 300 horse power, but on the drive home after the purchase I notice that he switched out the motor when I wasn't looking, I'd be rightfully pissed off, cause I was deceived.
And yet, gamers and journalists don't really seem to mind all that much. Yeah, the backlash is coming, but usually you see a ton of people then arguing that they like the game that came out of it anyway. That is so not the point. It doesn't matter if the snake oil actually tastes fine. Don't sell me on features that don't exist. Don't paint a picture that you'll not be able to deliver. Just don't fucking lie to me. You're fucking over gamers, you're fucking over journalists (that should know better, so shame on you!) and you're fucking over other developers.
There, I said my piece, felt like a chip I needed to get off my shoulder and I think this is a wrong that we should set right so that this won't happen anymore.
