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by kmeisthax
1538 days ago
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To continue on the similarities, Epic and Rareware also had/have problems with worker burnout. Pretty much every N64 Rareware classic drove at least a few people out of the company. By the time Nintendo and Microsoft got into a bidding war over the company there wasn't much talent left in it[0]. Fortnite is the same way: the fast pace of content churn means people are working constant overtime, and the perpetual nature of the game means there's no release that you're crunching for. I would disagree that this was good management, though. Burning out your talent is how and why game studios fall apart over time. Had they retained talent and kept crunch time low they probably would have continued churning out hits on the GameCube and Wii instead of stinkers on the Xbox. In fact, Nintendo probably understands this[1] - for example, when Retro Studios imploded they bought them out and immediately banned overtime work at the studio. [0] Microsoft didn't understand this, and this is why they wound up overpaying for Rare. [1] Or at least did in the Iwata era. No clue if Kimishima or Fukukawa have the same convictions, but given that Nintendo hired them both internally I imagine they do. |
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well, "effective" management. Not necessarily good. Seems like a story that pretty much all large gen 5 (and many gen 6) studios share. It was this new cutting edge field right before/after the dotcom bubble requiring (at the time) very niche talent and passion. Perfect formula for burn and churn.
This was likely one of the many thousand cuts the industry faced when moving to the HD era in gen 7. You couldn't just brute force a bunch of assets to work at the expected HD fidelity without stepping back and actually understanding what the machine is doing. You couldn't just have two artists doing everything for asset production; you needed an organized pipeline of specialists. You absolutely needed a producer/manager/director to make sure pieces are fitting together. Huge wakeup call for game developers on software/business practices most other parts of the industry had to employ for years.