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Frostpunk creators cancel "Project 8" and lay off staff amid concerns that "narrative-driven, story-rich games" don't sell (www.rockpapershotgun.com)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The title is a bit missleading considering that the actual article mentions a lot other problems that plagued the development.

Project 8 faced both progress and challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic made team stability difficult, but some quality improvements were achieved. However, critical issues persisted, causing delays and budget increases. The latest review revealed unresolved problems needing more time and money, along with revised sales forecasts, raising doubts about the project's profitability.
-- TLDR by Microsoft copilot

While there's still demand for "narrative-driven story-rich games" one should keep realistic expectations. For this genre I feel smaller scope and indie developers work much better.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Oof.

"The COVID-19 pandemic made team stability difficult,"

Makes me suspect they were woefully behind the rest of the field in development practices. My team, and many others, gained productivity when all the wasteful manager ego stroking in-person meetings stopped.

Alternately, it tells us they rely on a weird dev kit with a lot of esoteric hardware. Though I would still call that out as being super out of date. Nothing is particularly hard to emulate today, for teams that prioritize having rebuildable test environmenta.

Just wild.

Bummer about the layoffs. Probably won't fix their agility problem, though.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago

I think it's probably true though. I pitched my game to them and they graciously responded and said they are looking into publishing narrative driven games but rather mechanically complex games.