[earthtourist]

I've really enjoyed this series. I do wish they just told stories about developing their games without the contrived framing of every one as a "near death" story. It's just unnecessary and rings pretty false in most cases. It feels a bit like tricking non-technical people as well.

Despite that flaw, I do like it. I hope they keep em coming.

[jerf]

"I do wish they just told stories about developing their games without the contrived framing of every one as a "near death" story."

Unfortunately, the gaming industry really does seem to work on a model where darned near every major game is a near-death experience for the company in question. It remains fairly common even today for relatively large companies to essentially be brought down by one bad release, resulting in them getting acquired by EA. If you look out at the studio landscape over history, it is still very, very frothy. There aren't really that many studios that have been around for even five or ten years; most of the names that will leap to mind are now actually particular name brands of conglomerates.

I think it's a real thing to a large degree, not a contrived framing.

(I would credit this to the way that games have been getting exponentially more expensive over time; in such an environment, the next game is going to naturally take most of your money, even if your previous game was a wild success. I think we're now about in the middle of that no longer being true. We're not done yet; AAA games are still trying to slug it out on the exponential curve, but more and more we're seeing successful games made at an earlier plateau of cost, including the entire output of companies like Nintendo.)

[mywittyname]

This makes sense, old school game development required paying (relatively high) salaries for years before maybe getting a payday. It would be difficult/impossible for any company to keep 5 years of salaries in savings to mitigate the risk of your next title failing.

Yeah, this ignores the role publishers play, but I doubt a publisher is going to give a relatively new studio too many opportunity. You're game needs to make money if you want another shot.

[philistine]

Consoles like the Game Boy and DS saw huge opportunities for small teams who kept their budgets in check. But it was always perceived as less important than console work due to the industry’s addiction to technology.

But the Game Boy and DS were the biggest markets of their time. Perhaps we’re finally valuing smaller teams more than the Titanic AAA studios.

[boffinism]

To be fair, the ones that are genuinely focussed on overcoming serious problems are the best in the series, especially when the problems are a bit technical. Crash Bandicoot and Prince of Persia, for example.

[myself248]

ref: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/03/war-stories-how-princ...

Very much worth watching.

[greenshackle2]

Not from this series, but if you like these kinds of things, the FFIV documentary is pretty good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs0yQKI7Yw4

(However it's bit more about organizational failures than technical failures.)

[CydeWeys]

Agreed. They're over-dramatizing the typical bumps that you hit in any major software engineering project. "X was hard, and we had to spend longer working on it than many other parts of the project, but we figured it out."

[travbrack]

Gotta get those clicks