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The story of every successful game studio in the 2000s and 2010s seems to end with a businessman, not its founder nor a gamer, running the company into the ground.
Probably has to do with the fact that it is rare for said game maker to be someone both with a sense for what the gaming community wants AND good enough business sense to be able to keep a company alive and growing in such a competitive field. You can somewhat see parallels in how some of the bigger RUclips channels from the early days rapidly grew into giant content creators, got involved with corporate media companies to help maintain/grow their brand, and then steadily trickle downward because the new head doesn't understand exactly what made the original content enjoyable.
I mean that's true... but that's also the equivalent of "every rain ends with a rainbow". It's a business, as mentioned one of the most lucrative in the world. The fact that businessmen are responsible *on paper* for the demise of most businesses is far from the worst possibility. Because you dont gotta look very hard even in the video game space to see case's where it is actually the founders fault and in headline's it reads something like: "Game studio files for bankruptcy after founder spends budget on luxury cars, cocaine and hookers" or maybe something like "Studio forced to cancelled awaited project due to staff shortages caused by alleged sexual harassment"
Volition actually filed for bankruptcy around 2012 and the company was cut, quartered, and sold off to other studios. Most of their employees quit or were laid off, with Saints Row 5 (Gat out of Hell) being one of the last titles they released. Years later this entirely new group of employees under the same Volition name took over the remnants of the company. As far as I know none of the people who made the new 'Saints' game were part of the original teams that made any of the other games. Hopefully that fully explains why the game was yanked in such a different direction to anyone reading.
there were SR2/SR3 staffers on the reboot, actually, though i don't know how many. both narrative leads were at volition for a while iirc -- one as former QA who moved to writing gradually; one as a producer
Honestly, as sad as it is, this is what we need in the gaming industry. We need failures to remind these companies that they can actually fail if they push the envelope too far with high price tags and low quality
To be fair Saint's row was already on it's last legs as it was. Unless they released some banger of a game that revived the series it was on it's way out the door anyway. Franchises and companies that are still mainstream can still get away with all kinds of nonsense before they'd fail or even lose money. So I don't think this really "reminds" anyone of anything.
Why are we blaming devs when its the publisher's fault? Daedalic was making games they shouldn't have been making because of their publishers. EA has buried so many dev companies, but any time a stinker comes out people blame the devs and let another studio get shut down while shoving more money into corrupt greedy AAA publishers mouths while they eat up dev studios and spit them out after a single flop. I see dev studios being shut down left and right, but no AAA publisher has had to close its doors for a string of flops they were responsible for making. It's so dumb how many people put the majority of the blame on dev studios when they're being put to the grind to make a game they don't want to make and then getting fired for not living up to impossible expectations and promises made by their publisher.
But that had nothing to do with it~ Everyone like's to be singled out and told they are evil capitalist / every ist and phobe under the sun and are non progressive trash. =P
Exactly. I used to love the Saints Row games, and I don't feel one ounce of sympathy for Volition tanking. They took the Disney approach of blaming everyone else except themselves for making a garbage product. They got what they deserved.
Not particularly. Sea of stars and chained echoes show that even old games can lay a skeleton for new ones as both used Chrono Trugger as their base. Another example is DUSK who took inspiration from Quake. Point us that something will come out to fill the void that Saints row left but it's all up in the air really.
If I remember hearing, Gearbox has the rights to SR so it may still live on but just not with the original developers and staff. But yes I agree, do not mourn let's celebrate it for what they developed.
True. I mean it sucks for them, but you know the old adage "Go woke, go broke." They're just suffering the consequences of their own modern companies' actions. Don't worry, hopefully these modern dev companies (that are shells of their former selves) will figure out that gamers are repulsed by that garbage being in their games... eventually.
That’s what people keep forgetting. After 20-30 years almost everyone who made the original team great are long gone. The infinity ward that made the original MW2 are not the same people releasing the reboot today. The Bungie that made Halo are not the same people making Destiny.
Goodbye Volition, it was fun having you around but now, it is sad to say goodbye. “The saints legacy ends here, not with a bang but with a whimper” - Killbane
The gaming industry has become a sad place for gamers and devs. I think BG3 reminded us all what a true passion project game truly is and how amazing games can be when it's not entirely built by greed.
I say more then half of passion projects are seemingly just snuffed out in games that are hyped up extremely. (Probably due to people not keeping their expectations in check) Or maybe it's just the shareholders pushing the devs to unreasonable conditions just to make a quick profit. I honestly had more fun branching out and just playing whatever.
An ex blizzard developer once said “all your favorite video game developers you loved in the past are now gone, because they either died or move on. It’s sad but true”
The only place where that isn't so much the case is Nintendo, but only because they are siphoning every last drop of the waning creativity of their older devs instead.
Guess they shouldn't have put out such a garbage tier cringe as fuck woke re-imagining of a classic IP then, whilst being combative to fans ever since the first cringe marketing images came out. If you intentionally turn your back on everything that made players love your games, then you deserve fail. I genuinely have no idea what the fuck they were thinking with this reboot. Did they SERIOUSLY think the gamers who have supported them for DECADES now wanted some cringe woke zoomer version of The Saints? The characters from the previous games would've beaten up these whiny losers and taken their lunch money, then shot them for being so pathetic. They turned their back on their core audience and for what? Did they seriously think GenZ would like this? And even if they did, that it would be enough to make up for all the lost audience? Even my normie friends weren't interested in that game, because they said it looked cringe and lame. Literally nobody wanted that so how it got beyond the ideas stage is baffling. At no point did anyone stop and go "guys wtf are we doing this is such a shit idea"...
I was in the industry in the early 00s. It was just starting to get corporatized. There were some fairly large sized production houses, but they weren't corporatized yet. Most of those started as startups or grassroot devs. Then the big names like Sony, EA, Activision (when it was on it's own) and other conglomerates started looking at the business and realizing the potential. That's when writing games started to get unfun. I never minded the crunch - it is and always will be part of this profession whether you are writing games or business software. What I minded was the fact that it was all faceless. I was best friends with my producer in the first place I worked at. She was awesome and we worked very well together (and before you ask - completely platonic). Everyone at that company had the same mindset. Then we were bought out by Activision and it became hell. She was replaced with some corporate shill who's only job was to ensure we made ridiculous deadlines. You wonder why software is so flawed these days? I'll give you a hint - it has nothing to do with the devs.
It’s the unreasonable set deadlines, I’ve noticed that with even CD Project Red when they stated they were pushed to release it early by producers and share holders.
The moment trash CEOs started pouring in... that's when the industry was on a death path. I'm waiting for it to die. Maybe we'll learn a lesson and stop touching CEO trash.
@@everlynevins How the fuck you figure that? The reboot killed any sliver of hope that the franchise had left. No point in any company investing in a title everyone moved on from.
I actually worked on the original Saints row. August 29th, 2006, was the day a game I helped with had its release day. I couldn't stop going to the toilet for nerves. I was so young, and everyone was passionate about the game. We all loved it. We made loads of questionable choices with the game, but ultimately, it worked. The customer liked the game, and we all loved it. I was so proud. The newest version I just can not get into. I'm much older now, but I'm pretty sure that's not why I don't enjoy it. All the original people are well gone now, and all moved on. It's now just run as a cash cow, not a project of love, and making a game I wanted to play. Some amazing stuff coming out in 2024 though people. Wait until the support for last gen consoles stops. The level of games we will then see will be amazing.
As a console player turned PC player by games like DayZ mod and ext, I'm really really looking forward to what they do when they leave the shackles of older generations. Everything is still a mess from COVID and stuff, but if/when things stabilize, it will be a bright future.
I dont know what connections you have, or if you still have that passion that (as is normal) fades during a career. But man, if someone were to make a good open world crime-centric game, it would definitelly succeed. Rockstar is milking GTA V for another 10 years, Volition and Saints Row are dead and have been on life support for the last decade. Mafia series is over and 2K doesnt have a substitute. The True Crime/Sleeping Dogs series just ended, apparently. Theres a huge gap, and im confident people want to fill it with something
@deadjuice18801 stabilise? Covid? M8 it's been a mess way before covid, that makes little difference The shackles of the old generation have been cast off, hence the lack of quality, care, polish and the extreme overmonitisation of EVERYTHING THIS IS THE FUTURE, COME BACK TO REALITY Have you been living under a rock?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
2000-2007 was the golden age of gaming and it has been on a never-ending downward slope since. So many iconic classics all within such a short timeframe.
@@HaliaxOfTheChandrian back then I imagined how great future games would be and now a halo game launched awfully and charges you for colours, this timeline sucks
That's because the late 90's to late 2000's were in fact the actual golden age of gaming, because it was experiencing big growth at the time. It hadn't been completely taken over by money infested mentally ill executives and boards and CEO's. Developers were mostly left to their own devices. Once the industry got big enough, and once companies like EA started making hand over fist in money, that's when everything changed. You were sold a complete experience for the box price and that was mostly it barring expansions. Nowadays videogames are broken down into pieces to be sold off piecemeal as "micro"transactions, and are often released unfinished because they sell well regardless. The industry is basically a shadow of It's former self, taken over by people that are absolutely obsessed with money to the point I would call them mentally ill.
I mostly agree with that, but i feel like 2013 was a hard cut off point. Games have been pretty awful since the xbox one/ps4 launch 2014. i'm not sure how accurate that is, but i feel as though that was a huge turning point that's only continued to get worse as time goes on. i'll very confidently say gaming hasn't been good in almost a decade.
Most of the studios that are beloved by fans simply don't actually exist anymore, most of the people that worked at these studios when they became beloved, household names are not still with those studios which causes the studios to bring in new people that don't know how to capture the same feeling or the same amount of polish. There was an interview from a dev recently that talked about the downfalls of their current game and they explained that the majority of the team had never worked on a game before, and it explained why the standard of what was being put out was so terrible. Indie devs have been the biggest saving grace of the gaming industry for the last like 5 years, we consistently have banger indie games to play while we wait for the next big AAA game to come out and either succeed or flop.
true mate a living image of this is rockstar look to their fan base years ago compared to now sure people love their game titles but hardly anybody loves rockstar as a company anymore
Corporate suits buy beloved gaming studios and tell the studio to either change how their company works for the worse or become jobless. Anyone worth their salt knows they can build their own project or work somewhere else. So the Studio now becomes a soulless lich committing necromancy to squeeze every penny out of every IP they own. Larian is the only Western AAA Studio that hasn't sold out. And that's why they made the best game of 2023.
It's sad to see a thing from my childhood come to an end. Then again, I'm not really surprised let alone do I feel bad. They did it to themselves: They ignored feedback and went out of their way to insult/mock the fans that showed concerns about the direction the reboot was going.
@@keco185 I know, but usually whenever Charlie talks about a company, it’s always because they did something greedy or pathetic so I was joking about how it’s rare that he feels sorry for a company
@mortem4342 sure. So, to summarize, when the first trailers were released for Saint's Row, a large portion of the Fandom wasn't happy with it. It seemed to betray everything about what made the franchise special, and the main characters were cringey college students with no personality. Instead of taking the criticism on the chin to make a better product, Volition decided to take a page out of the Disney public relations playbook, and accused the Fandom of being bigots. Naturally, many decided to boycott the game entirely in response. I feel no sympathy for those toxic devils at Volition. The fact that they went bankrupt is just the icing on the cake. You can't drop a steaming turd on your fan base and expect them to pretend like it's an ice cream sandwich.
@@Shrieqer Thank you for explaining, as someone that only ever played one Saint's Row game (the one that takes place in hell which I can't even remember if it was a DLC or not) I had no idea about this so it does bring some more insight into the situation. I definitely don't feel as bad now, especially since I'm pretty sure most of the devs that actually cared about the franchise are gone.
I feel bad for some of them, I don’t feel bad for whoever made creative decisions for that dumpster fire, and I don’t feel bad for the social media team antagonizing the old fanbase. everyone else I feel for.
I only feel bad for the people just doing their job for a paycheck. Not their fault that the higher ups were out of touch and now they're out of a job. Oh and also idc about those social media wierdos tryna dunk on their fans tho, they sunk with the ship.
Yeah, specially the developers themselves and the ones that really are working, obviously not all, but in almost every big gaming company, a big part of their employees are people that love the games and their ips, and want to take part in the process and work on them, just for a brain-dead corporate dude that has enough money to buy a country to come and ruin not only the game but also close the company once that shitty project they wanted to make to get easy money failed.
Nah I really feel bad for those few people who tried to make an actual good saints row gangster game but the higher up won’t let them make their creative vision and just have a bunch of colored hair people create slop for “modern audiences”
@@EternalNightingalefr, the first few Saints row games were successful because they had dark humour and were unapologetic about it. They took what made the first games successful and threw it in the trash to avoid offending people. The new one is inoffensive and uninspired
@@EternalNightingaleThe problem is that nobody over at volition wanted to make a good saints row game in the vein of the previous entries. This notion that it's always higher ups driving poor creative choices and putting out a subpar product is a scapegoat. Sometimes devs make terrible decisions and aren't very good. If you're out of touch with the consumer and specifically the audience you have cultivated over the years which results in huge loss then maybe you deserve to be out looking for different job better suited to your talents.
Honestly, the writing was on the wall. The shift from SR2 to SR3 alienated a decent portion of the fanbase despite it still being a really solid game with SR4 continuing the trend 3 set and killing off a large part of the cast making things worse, 4 going on to have a divisive Gat centric tie in game with two canon endings continued the alienation, Agents of Mayhem downright split the fanbase in half and anyone left was completely pissed off by how unfinished, unpolished and insulting the Rowboot was. A lot of Volition's senior staff also started leaving, apparently the work environment was growing pretty bad, and so went a lot of the actual heart behind the Saints Row series. They basically predicted their own end in SR3. To quote Killbane: "That's not how this book is written. The Saints legacy ends here- not with a bang, but with a whimper." Hell Killbane's entire monologue before his death can be used to sum up the last few Saints games. Its like the wrote their own cautionary tale and then fell victim to the thing they warned about.
I guess I can't say much since I started with 3 and 4 but I look back on those two games very fondly, but everything past gat out of hell I either didn't know about or didn't play. So I guess people who started with 1 and 2 feel similarly
In the "old" days, the developers held more power. And while the developers wanted to make money, they also wanted to put out a good game they were proud of. Today the publishers run the entire show. And all the publishers care about is profit margins, stock options, and keeping shareholders happy.
They still do, but they give the power to the wrong kind of people/devs unfortunately. The reboot clearly came from someone with a specific idealogical vision and it didn't resonate with vast majority of people besides being mediocre gameplay wise. The publisher/execs wouldn't have told them they want this specific millenial political humour and self insert characters. This was someone in the core dev team with control of it. They thought they had their audience figured out or wanted to appeal to a new one ,but they didn't.
@@lancevance6346 This isn't how it works. Do you genuinely believe this was the vision of one out of touch person? This was a collective business decision that was dedicated to pandering to jaded, disillusioned millennials and older gen-Z youth. It was an attempt to milk it. Developers absolutely do not hold power in a studio, because they don't have the money, they're the ones getting paid. Whoever holds the funding, holds the power. And those that hold power rarely entrust the financial security of their investments to lowly developers.
@@lancevance6346 If devs held power, the industry wouldn't look how it does. It would be a world where a game with attention to detail like Baldur's Gate 3 isn't seen as a phenomenon. Because contrary to popular belief, devs want people to love what they create. Its art to them, its years of their work. Those that don't have that passion typically have been numbed by nearly a decade of soul-crushing releases that weren't allowed to be good.
The original Red Faction was also incredible for its time and a great classic FPS to revisit every once in a while. Red Faction Guerilla was one of my favorite 360 games, the multiplayer was really unique with the extra gamemodes based around destroying and rebuilding stuff, especially with the equipment packs and their map-changing effects.
This actually hits pretty close to home for me. I have friends who’s parents worked at volition and volition itself was something we talked about at school. It’s really sad to see it go especially given the studio was a good spot in downtown Champaign and was good at making games for a while:(
what happened that made the entire studio turn their back on their core audience, and actively put out a game they knew that the players of their previous titles would hate? The cringe AF saints row reboot is the kind of thing that the first games would have taken the piss out of, or bullied, or had as a parody game in the virtual simulation, where the MC is tortured by being forced to interact with people like the main cast of the reboot. What happened to make such a drastic change at the studio, and decide to put up a massive middle finger to the fanbase that had supported them for DECADES, just to get some woke ESG points? Was it a new boss? Old devs leaving? Hiring activists instead of writers? WTF happened? Either way, it may suck to hear, but after how fucking garbage the reboot was and moreso their mindset regarding the game and the writing, they deserved to shut down after that crap. You don't get to shit all over everyone and everything that made you successful in the first place and continue making money. Something Disney is trying their best to not learn in recent years despite all their massively public failures and crashing stock price.
Hi-fi Rush was such a breath of fresh air for the gaming industry. It was the first time in years I actually felt some genuine excitement from gaming. A complete game at launch, no dlc, no major bugs, no microtransactions, no multi-year long ad campaigns. It just felt like a return to form, however brief it was.
There’s a few games like that this year. All of them are indie and that’s what worries me. I’m excited for SM2, Ghostrunner 2 and a few other mainstream games but that’s it. My eyes are on Bomb Rush Cyberfunk rn and that game is SO damn good. Really wish it wasn’t as short as it is but for 40$ it’s a payment I’m willing to make for a bit of fun while I wait for more games I want to buy.
this year for me its trepang2 and bg3 trepang2 for its silly fast paced testosterone gameplay i dont really like crpg, but bg3 it just that good it easily hook me for 100hours +
You should play some Nintendo games. Fairly consistent quality across the board. Edit: and before anyone says it, Nintendo doesn’t make Pokémon, so that doesn’t count. I do wish those games were better, though 😔
I work in the game dev industry, I see how some projects are being lead, how some processes look like, and I am not at all surprised that so many projects fail. And you can see that a lot of the times, when a game production is focused on prototypes and constant testing those games usually are the ones that make a name for themselves in the gameing space, yet prototyping isn't a standard for some studios, they will try to focus on stuff like 'how do we make it look more premium'
its funny but the "premium feel" they are chasing is why all of these AAA games are starting to look the same. it's also why when fromsoft comes by doing their own thing that fromsoft ends up making GOTY.
I'm not surprised to hear this. I've seen so many studios brag about how "real looking" their game is going to be and in some ways I do think its cool, but usually when i hear it as a selling point it does make me wonder if they are putting most of their effort into a cool LOOKING game, and not a game that is fun. This is a pretty well known complaint but I also feel like the lack of prototyping is somewhat related to micro-transactions? I feel like at least some of the time they don't feel a need to prototype since they already feel like they know what they are doing. Like live service games, the model already exists, they can just make "their" version and hypothetically make money from it. But now we're at a point where we're over-saturated in live service games and most of them lack any creativity or a hook.
I’d rather get a low graphic game that has fun game play then just high textured graphics with boring gameplay. Which is why Minecraft is still alive the game play is fun.
It's a tragedy, but this was not the same Volition that we all knew growing up. The old guard are gone and in their place were developers who basically shat on their old audience trying to chase that millennial crowd and it backfired terribly. I won't exactly weep for the studio's demise but I will weep for the good times.
yeah there are like a very small handful of AAA developers that I even trust enough at this point to want to pay full price for their games, everything else they've put out is such garbage these past few years, it's why I largely only care about indie games at this point with few exceptions (helps that I also don't care *that* much about stuff like graphics, like sure, huge open worlds with beautiful, photorealistic graphics are cool and all, but if that's like, pretty much the *only* selling point of a game, then there's no way in hell I'm going to pay $70 or more for it, like I'll take a well-made game with literal 16-bit graphics over something technically cutting age but riddled with game-breaking glitches and overall lacking in substance any day of the week). Imo, the mainstream gaming industry has just hit a point where it's a lot like Hollywood, and that's *definitely* not a compliment, but at least unlike the film industry the game industry isn't overall also dying a horrible death and struggling to get consumers to even spend money on it, so I'm holding out hope that it *is* just a bubble situation that won't last forever, rather than some kind of longer term decline
It's sad. Business men will always choose the most cost effective easy route to money. And the creative people who lose their jobs, are in a position of either churn out shit or end up without a job.
no just stop ruining ip with garbage modern takes where they wokify everything an nobody is here for it it just makes for garbage content. At this very moment there at least 3 or 4 high profile triple AA games that have released or releasing where there aint no problem. less woke garbage is what happened here. everyone was telling them going in and reminding them when it failed it was atrocious
Daedalic hurts so bad. I adore all of their P&C games so much, theyre so extremely fun and charming to play, it's so sad to see them go because of a game that wasn't even up their usual space, it just really hurts. :(
I've always had a soft spot for the Deponia games despite them being an unpolished buggy mess at the best of times. The shift to tackling the LOTR IP in a title that is far from their usual style was just bizarre though. If they made a quirky point and click LOTR game they mightve had an audience as well as the experience to pull it off, but instead they just flunked the whole thing so badly they imploded. Cant help but wonder if they made the conscious decision to make such a game or if they were pushed out of their comfort zone by higher ups because they clearly didn't know what they were doing.
The Edna point and click series and the Deponia series are absolute classics, I grew up with them and adored them, my heart is breaking for daedalic. They made amazing games.
Welp, it's their own fault for taking on such a big IP and trying to make a game they simply have zero experience with. This was supposed to tell some of the backstory of Gollum/ Smeagol, it could have absolutely been point and click or atleast a story based 2D-platformer, but they just had to go 3D. Sadly they messed up everything, the story, the visuals, the gameplay, it all was just bad..
@@kronksstronkstonks6360 yeah I agree, I think they wouldve had a much better chance. Who knows who or what may have caused them to go the route they went, but ofc its still just painful when you know they have actual talent and are capable of making better stuff :(
@@atherisGAY Yeah, Harveys new Eyes was the first game I ever came across from them and it was so hilariously morbid humor. I bought an entire steam bundle from them because I wanted to see more, Night of the Rabbit was such a pretty game too and Deponia ofc as well!
The big problem is not only are these studios so much more massive it's who they're employing. Working in the gaming industry has become to main stream and things are becoming a combination of "too many cooks in the kitchen" and not enough independent practical experience (i.e. everyone is learning how to do things the exact same way en masse so games all feel very similar). Also the whole price and time of development is an issue of the industries own making. No one is forcing them to constantly makes games in increasingly higher graphics since graphics from 10 years ago still look fine, just give them a bit of polish not everything needs to be 4k. That's an issue they made for themselves, like wise in this digital age there's little reason to still have multimillion dollar advertising budgets like they did back before everyone was on YT, Facebook, X, etc. Just release a video on YT or something and word will get around by itself, no need to spend $100 million to play ads on TV or rent a booth a massive convention (it's why a lot of them started doing stuff like Nintendo Direct).
Even a game with a relatively decent budget like Hi Fi Rush doesn't need marketing. Nowadays, learning about a new release is very much a meritocracy; if your game is good, reviewers and LPs and streamers and word of mouth will do all the marketing you'll ever need. I wonder how many people even remember Kingdom Hearts has a pc release, because Epic is so bad at word of mouth promotion.
I would feel bad if the game devs themselves didnt attack the fan base all the time. They knew what was at stake, they clearly saw what happened to similar games, and at no point did they ever try to course correct. They ran that ship straight into the rocks at full speed yelling from the masts that this was all the fans fault for not just giving them money like they always have.
Why so many bots in the comments section? Penguinz0 didn’t do anything wrong! All he did was uploading a new video for his viewers on a daily basis. He needs to make a video about these bots immediately!
This news hit me hard. I live in the town Volition was based in, knew a few people who had worked there, and almost did myself. It was a little sense of pride knowing that there was a AAA studio in my small college town. Such a great track record, it truly is sad that this is how they had to go out.
@Verasoul or maybe he has a soft spot. When your grandparents get dementia in their old age you don't exactly hate them just what's become of them. I however have no such feelings. Fuck em
@@VerasoulYeah. Studio was already dead, just suits parroting the corpse around for it's name like Activision to Blizzard. Still feel bad for the somewhat competent people that must be swept up in the closure, but the market must correct.
Daedalic is a very tragic loss. Their point-and-click adventures receive a lot of love, especially in the German-speaking gaming community. The "Deponia" series, "The Night of the Rabbit", "Edna bricht aus"… All great games!
I can't really feel bad for the devs and the social media manager that insulted the og fans by calling them "terrorist" and telling consumers to not to buy their game if they don't like it because they didn't bother listening to feedback. I do hope that everyone else manages to get right back up.
To be fair, OG fans told them to scrap everything they were working on and start over. By that point it was already too late. Based on the end product, they should have seriously considered it.
@@Leonson1the fans where begging them to go back to what saints row used to be for years before that trailer came out they chose to ignore them them if they had just given the fans what they wanted they might still be here
I still think that Hi-Fi Rush was such a breath of fresh air. It feels like a game that would have come out 15 years ago where studios were more eager to let their imagination run wild and deliver something truly unique. I wouldn't say that Tango Gameworks is indie, as they are part of the Microsoft family, but they kinda feel like they are. It was a brand-new IP, with charming characters and a very fun gameplay loop and it doesn't take forever to complete like most AAA titles nowadays. I would love to see more games like it.
Thoughts on the GhenryPerez review that felt like a discourse. Me personally, GhenryPerez lost his fuckin mind when he did that fuckin review of Hi-Five Rush. He hated it, the game to me didnt look bad at all and he was so fucking smuckin wrong that I lost trust to GhenryPerez. So yeah, thats my 2 cents on that bad take on Hi Five Rush. Hi Five Rush looks good btw.
It’s hard to care about them being shut down when they blatantly were showing they didn’t care about their fanbase by antagonizing them, doubling down on dumb choices they made in the recent release, and made a game they knew no one wanted further destroying the series. I’ll miss Saints Row so much, but this was bound to happen and they knew it was their last chance to make something great. Kinda over feeling bad for companies shutting down or things failing badly when it was their own doing. No matter how legendary the studio. I agree with Charlie though, he’s definitely right. I really miss the ps2/Xbox/GameCube era where there was so much creativity and room to breathe new life into the medium and that resulted in classics. Nowadays, it’s just not the same since companies know they can release the same game yearly, fill it with micro transactions and profit more. And games becoming more expensive to make. There’s hardly room for creativity in gaming on a grander scale, really. But it’s indie stuff that shines here for sure. Movies are also in the same position right now as well I believe. Costing too much, too much of the same thing, etc. Music too, actually. It’s a weird time to want good entertainment in all mediums to me, personally. All of it is kind of making the same mistakes.
I agree, said Volition is a great studio but honestly, that just a name and what matters is the people behind it and clearly the creative leads in charge of the last game werent great and i doubt giving them another game would reaped great rewards
While their social media/community management team made some extremely poor choices, at that point the game was already doomed. It was too late in the development cycle to go back and redesign the characters and story. They didn't even have the resources to fix the technical problems, resulting in a game that pretty much failed on every level and took the studio down with it.
Sooooo many different good games to choose from back then but now there’s only like 5-6 titles people get excited for and majority of the time nowadays they just flop
Volition produced 2 sub-par games in the last 10 years and actively belittled and insulted their core audience. It's sad that a bunch of classic IPs are tied to them, but they absolutely deserve this.
The last semi-decent game they made was SR3 and even that was disappointing in a lot of ways. 12 years without releasing anything good, they deserve to crash and burn after that if you ask me.
A shame that some of the employees there who actually tried to put in effort and even made some strides get told they deserve being jobless because of idiotic decisions made on the fly by higher ups, hope they find a better fitting place.
@@islandboy9381 You can apply the "poor workers" logic to literally any institution lmao. A failing organisation shouldn't be bailed out just because it employs people unless it is fundamental to society. Also a company *deserving* to go under does not mean that the non-management employees *deserve* to be jobless. Those are two independent concepts lol.
The thing with Daedalic really hurts, here in Germany most of their games are cult classics, using iconic voice actors, very unique worlds and stories. Even I found a lot of enjoyment in them, even though I don't usually play point and click games. It really makes me think this was a deliberate attempt at killing the studio, there was no way they were able to make a game the size and scope of Gollum. If anyone is interested in Daedelic: "Edna bricht aus" and "Whispered Worlds" are must plays.
I used to LOVE DAEDALIC, right up until the 3rd Deponia game (Goodbye Deponia?). That game is a fucking disgrace and turned the main character from a loveable rogue into an actual fucking psychotic sociopath. You kill a dude to sell his black girlfriend into sex slavery at the local strip club where she's forced to dance 24/7... you feed orphans to a swamp monster just to open a path... you lie to a doctor and scam antidepressant medications which you then feed AN ENTIRE BOTTLE OF to a baby... the whole game is completely fucked. The writing and atmosphere and tone is so different from the previous 2 games that i fell completely in love with when i played them... and the worst of all, nevermind all the people who DIE because of the main character and your actions as the player, but the fucking ending makes everything you did in the 2nd and 3rd games fucking pointless! You might as well have just fucking let the bad guys take the android chick at the end of the first game... and if you HAD done that, more people would be alive and the people still alive would have BETTER quality lives. The main character in the 3rd game just causes misery and suffering and none of it is funny or charming or cute like in the first 2 games. It's sick and gross and fucked up and the only reason i forced myself to play it through to the end was because i was PRAYING there was something, some way that it would redeem itself... but it didn't. It just made everything worse, and made the hours playing the 2nd and 3rd games a complete waste of time. DAEDALIC deserved to be shut down for what they did with Deponia 3. Sadly they were allowed to continue for many years before shutting down, putting out more shit in the meantime, before finally getting their karmic reward. Screw them.
Sad as their death is, Saints Row 2 in particular will always have a special place in my heart. And the Red Faction series was also really good from what I heard.
I feel bitter sweet about this. For the devs themselves, it’s bad cause they now have no job. But for the gaming industry, it feels almost like quality control.
Yeah there's several gaming companies who I 100% think deserve to go under honestly, because they have forgotten since long ago why they made video games to begin with, because the original creators where passionate about video games and were gamers themselves. Now they have thrown passion out the window and replaced it with pure greed. They have overstayed their welcome and has sullied their own legacy, once they were giants and something artists all over the world was inspired by. I'm looking at Blizzard being the number one giant who I am actually a bit saddened at how far they have fallen. Even though I never played Wow I did play Warcraft 3 as a kid and I know how many artists has been inspired by Warcraft's universe and it's characters, looking up to them and wanting to learn from them. I knew a teen who had Warcraft posters in his room in early 2000's who later became a game developer himself. So Blizzards impact on aspiring artists is undeniable with it's very distinct style of how they portrayed elves and orcs especially. Like I would be lying if I haven't drawn fanart of some wow inspired night elf at least a few times. And I've seen other artists who can draw Warcraft style orcs to perfection, it's amazing.
I think a lot of the best games came out during the 2000-2010's era because these developers and studios needed to prove that they could make an amazing product and once they reach success they get complacent and lazy and the company is ran solely on executives focused on shareholders and sales rather than letting fun, quality and content win over. They're tons of indie devs carrying the torch and some triple A studios giving there games a lot of love but its so sad to see games you once loved become empty shells and cash grabs.
I live in the area and I remember actually being able to tour there because of a work related thing last year. And everybody there still seemed like they were in love with what they were doing and Just talking to them off hand they were excited about the future. I’ve always been a local fan it’s a shame.
Yeah tbh idgaf about the suits but i feel bad for the devs and other workers who've now lost their jobs due to the suits bad action, worst part is it's the suits that'll be completely a-ok from the fallout of this.
@@Wavezzzz601I don’t they literally tried to push insane woke propaganda that people said they didn’t want…the devs made the story they wanted people should be held accountable for bad work.
@@FreddyKruegerTheDreamDemonI also think the phrase is cringe but, Overwatch 2, the new Saints Row, Budlight, the new lord of the rings show, Disney, hell even CNN was just sold for example
Feels bad hearing about Daedalic Entertainment closing down, I hope it doesn't affect Barotrauma too severely, even if Daedalic was only the publisher and not the developer like in LotR:Gollum's case.
I haven't played Saints Row 2 in a really long time, but to this day it is still one of the most fun video games I've ever played. RIP Volition, responsible for the least funny games and the best memories I've had in gaming.
Financial pressure from investors or shareholders. Competition from other games. The need to meet marketing deadlines. these are other reasons but the game engine advancements is one of the major reasons why games release early
I was talking to a coworker YESTERDAY about how much we both loved the first 3 SR games. Neither of us knew there had been a new game last year. They dropped off so hard. It's a shame, but they clearly lost whatever made their older games golden.
@@brandon7587 I played it and found it to be a lot of fun. Actually a lot of "bad" games are pretty enjoyable when you don't have a bandwagon in your ear influencing your thoughts.
Red faction guerrilla is on my top 5 games. Could not believe the amount of destruction you can cause and I loved the story. Still pick it back up every year or so and have to do a complete play through of the story before I can put it back down.
Freespace 2, Saints Row 2, Red Faction Guerilla. Even like Red Faction 2 more than the first for the simple fact that 2 has fun botmatch. It's hard for me to 'feel bad' for the team, when none of the core/original dev crew are in by SRIV. But what I am genuinely sad about this, is the point where, after all the struggle of rediscovering the lost source codes, the Saints Row 2 PC patch that was being lead-developed by the late IdolNinja(SR modder turned actual Volition dev, RIP) is never going to see the light of day.
same it was very fun with all the cheat that you can unlock too. the remastered version also added the Multiplayer packs too and the reconstror which was very nice.
The destructive environments in Red faction left such an impression on me, when I discovered the Bridges in Just Cause 4 I think it was, all I would do is spend my time destroying them in various ways and watching the mayhem or grab a front row seat and try and place my self in it
The way they handled the Saints Row reboot makes me feel like they deserved this. Not only because the game was very, very bad. Also because they blamed the fans for wanting a better game.
In the early 2000's I worked for Electronics Boutique in the same city that Volition was located. We received a really cool Red Faction concept art poster with the whole Volition crew's autographs on it. They would come in periodically to buy the newest games and were always so cool to chat with. I'm sure most of those people were gone years ago but its still sad to see the studio shut down.
as someone whos been waiting for a new red faction, or waiting for a SR2 fix or remake, this is heartbreaking..... Sadly Volition did this to themselves
It's always sad to see a studio that made beloved childhood games go down under. But at the same time, Volition pretty much dug thier own graves and then some with Saint's Row 2022.
Im so sad to hear this. Saints Row 3 is what really got me into video games in middle school. Ive replayed 3 and 4 so many times I lost count. Gat Outta Hell was so fun. I can only hope that maybe in a few years, they can regroup and get back into it and get Saints Row back to its roots.
Yeah ive played all of them, I agree the second one is really good. I have some nostalgia love behind the third one and I like how it seperates itself from games like GTA@@papaofthejohns5882
Charlie forgot to mention Volition lashed out online at people/customers and said they didn't need us. They shot themselves in the foot and don't deserve mercy.
Not as well known, but they made Freespace 2. Great game. My first proper PC game. I brought a joystick just for that, which broke. My grandfather offered to buy me a new one and ended up getting me a Cyborg USB gold. I still have that joystick and think about him whenever I see it. He passed over ten years ago.
The thing that pisses me off the most about it, too, is that I'm sure a big reason for the games' failures is from mismanagement. I feel like in the gaming space, upper management consistently wants to change things, tack on garbage no one wants, purposefully gut games, etc. and then when that causes the game to fail, it's the studios and frontline game devs that get punished. Obviously, this isn't necessarily true for all games. But I feel its consistent enough time and again. Even surgeons get more chances to screw up or fail compared to game studios...
I just don't understand how people could accept the cost of games rising by $10. The argument about inflation doesn't make ANY sense, because games cost WAY MORE THEN $60. Now there's 10 $15 season passes for the game, $40 expansions, a cash shop that sells $20 skins. Modern Warfare II doesn't cost $70. With the DELUXE PREMIUM EDITION and 5 season passes, it's closer to $150. And if games had some noticeable improvement, if they'd decided to make the first round of these $70 games feel like they're worth it, I could have accepted it. But they're actually getting worse. Probably because they realize if people bought that inflation excuse, then they can just feed us whatever unfinished mess they wanted to.
Indie Games are a breath of fresh air in the gaming industry, really. As harsh as it sounds, i really hope that this "bubble" bursts really soon, so we would have more space for better games and potentially new IPs that would be really successful. Recent Triple A games are ass anyway, so there's not much to lose.
Both the AAA and movie industry are suffering from the same problem. The productions are becoming so bloated that there is no feasible way to make back the money let alone actually profit. This has made most big productions a literal gamble.
You missed one of the biggest stories from this- a longtime community member and Volition staff IdolNinja was working on a patch for the Saints Row 2 PC version since it's been broken since release. The thing is, he was diagnosed with cancer. Despite that, he continued to work on the patch with a small team at Volition until sadly passing away. The patch was never released and is now stuck in limbo. Deep Silver is holding this man's dying wish hostage since they own the rights.
The PS2 was littered with those mid budget games. Some of the most fun I've had is with things like Mercenaries and Death By Degrees. It really bums me out that Volition is gone because now I'll never see Descent Freespace's story get finished. We sorely need more space ship combat games. I can play them for hours upon hours.
Oh dude, you're a Freespace fan? I am so sorry. The last we'll ever see of that series is the legacy crosshairs during vehicle missions in that one forgettable Red Faction sequel.
This makes me worry about Ubisoft. I know they're a massive company, but the amount of games they've cancelled recently is nuts. On top of that, Skull and Bones is still in development 10 years later, that game was had to have been running up a hefty bill. If Skull and Bones flops, its gonna be a massive blow.
The one thing that keeps me from feeling bad about Volition closing is that it's obvious that most of the talent responsible for their great games left before the new Saints Row. It's a shame about the IPs, but those devs are most likely working on other great games to come.
I remember when this happened to Telltale and everyone was so shocked, and then we found out later it’s because they were expected to make big money every time with the IPs they had. They were the first it seemed and no one learned from it
Yo, they did that like three times in a row. I remember Jurassic Park nearly killed them when TWD came out. I wonder how much money they blew chasing fad IPs.
Daedalic‘s closure hurts as a German. The Point And Clicks they made where sooo good and original. Deponia, Edna, Harvey, all classics and really funny.
They fucking deserved to close down after the shit tier Goodbye Deponia took a shit all over the fans and the whole deponia franchise. Glad to hear they finally got what's coming to them.
@@havet7543 To each their own. I agree with you when talking about Wimmelbild-Spiele, but the adventure Games from Daedalic hit different. I have font memories of playing them myselfe and watching Gronkh play them
There was an article somewhere a ton of years ago were the journalist talked about being flown to a studio to see a videogame that was about to lunch and the was was actually awful but everyone in the studio was huffing their own fumes and couldn't stop bragging about how amazing this thing the sunk years of their lives into making was and how it was going to take over the industry And the article wasn't so much about the actual game as it was about that awkward experience were you want to warn them but at the same time it's not your place and it can bring you problems
Freespace and Freespace 2 were two of the best games I have ever played. And there's a passionate modding community keeping those games modern and up to date. Volition absolutely deserved a second chance.
The thing that really grinds my gears is when game CEO’s or investors or people in business call game companies “tech companies”. Equating them to apple, Microsoft, and similar companies. They are not “tech companies”. They are entertainment companies that use tech.
This happened years ago but a similar tragedy was the fate of Visceral, the studio behind the outstanding Dead Space games. Their publisher EA then ordered them to develop Battlefield Hardline (the cops and robbers one). Visceral then did a fine job and made a very competent BF game that, unfortunately, wasn't what BF fans were looking for. EA shut down Visceral after the game they ordered them to make didn't sell to their liking.
Honestly is pretty sad with visceral. Hardline was a goofy fun time, between is campaign that was told like a tv cop drama to the mp that had goofy modes and even joke hidden reload animations for some weapons. Like you said tho, it wasnt something bf fans were looking for and most people look at the game in a negative light despite it being a genuinely solid game
I really find it wild that no other game has done anything similar to Red Faction on the ps2. In MP you could dig tunnels throughout the maps and really change things. The closest you get now is that some walls can be blown up. Nothing like the ability to tunnel underground in a FPS map. It was a pretty unique experience with my friends back in the day.
I think time for Indies is coming. Like Charlie said, AAA games can't be a "fresh" title as these studios can't risk losing the money on these projects. That's why I think in next few years we will see lots of new studios and innovative new games. As well as the technology advances it is more and more easy to make good games. I think we are in the middle of a large shift in the gaming industry.
You've got a much better understanding of this than a lot of people in the industry even do. I gave up interviewing with AAA studios as a concept artist once it became clear that more things were becoming irrelevant daily (including my trade). At some point I had to ask myself "well why aren't these studios interested in guys that know new tech like AI?"... just as you say, the same tech that ended my run in the industry may very well end all of theirs...
I mean indie games are still pretty popular today. But yeah AAA titles today are just being released unfinished with nothing new interesting (and open world formulas are slowly starting to be boring)
The other thing to consider is that several of the biggest AAA studios are going to be backed or bought out by the tech empires. Look at Bethesda. After FO76, public opinion of Bethesda was at an all time low. Microsoft took the opportunity to buy out the studio at a discount. I think we will see more studios being bought out by Microsoft and Sony in the future.
is very simple. AAA is pouring too much money well past the point of diminishing returns into these games. no creativity, no drive to make fun exciting games. from soft is out here and same with nintendo being big names out doing their own thing being the antithesis to AAA and what they stand for.
It’s really not a passion issue by this point because like the teams working in these studios obviously want to create good games but they keep getting dealt a bad hand from the greedy higher ups who don’t have anything in mind other than profit. Video games developed from passion, creativity, and a genuine love for the craft always preformed well. So it’s tragic to see that be turned inside out and watch studios pump out sequels and disappointing big titles just to make a flip. No one is revolutionizing and everything is about as generic and cookie cuter as it gets, because the price of failure is too awesome
@@paroxysm6437its pretty obvious corporate greed is the problem. Games release broken and unfinished but the in game store is always sure to work day 1.
@@paroxysm6437 Yeah, these evil greedy corporate suits who work their way up putting in the hours, energy, vision, relationships and, many times, financial resources want to just throw it away on crappy releases.
@@texascpa You're so unaware and naïve about the industry it's insane. I am a game dev who's worked for multiple AAA studios and been through many dev cycles. 9/10 times it's the higher ups and management who are so out of touch with games and the industry making terrible decisions that ruins a title or even a studio.
3:37 YESSSSSS. This game is unbelievably underrated. I never cared for the story and the graphics were nothing special by any means. But the destruction was so good and I have not seen anyone replicate this. and this is such a old game at this point
It really sucks that they're closing their doors, but at the same time they thought of, wrote, and signed their own suicide note, and fought with their fans on every decision they made for the game, and more game studios need to realize that it could only take one bad game to ruin themselves
Look at them vs the Sonic movie. The studio making the movie saw everyone mocking their design for one of the most iconic characters of all time, and instead of insisting on it went back and redid all the scenes. Often times, feedback can be pointless or boiled down to "not for you," as there's a lot of feedback companies get that's not helpful. But when your longtime series fans are telling you, "this ain't it," and you insult them back and steer harder, yeah, they ain't having it.
The story of every successful game studio in the 2000s and 2010s seems to end with a businessman, not its founder nor a gamer, running the company into the ground.
Probably has to do with the fact that it is rare for said game maker to be someone both with a sense for what the gaming community wants AND good enough business sense to be able to keep a company alive and growing in such a competitive field. You can somewhat see parallels in how some of the bigger RUclips channels from the early days rapidly grew into giant content creators, got involved with corporate media companies to help maintain/grow their brand, and then steadily trickle downward because the new head doesn't understand exactly what made the original content enjoyable.
I mean that's true... but that's also the equivalent of "every rain ends with a rainbow". It's a business, as mentioned one of the most lucrative in the world. The fact that businessmen are responsible *on paper* for the demise of most businesses is far from the worst possibility. Because you dont gotta look very hard even in the video game space to see case's where it is actually the founders fault and in headline's it reads something like:
"Game studio files for bankruptcy after founder spends budget on luxury cars, cocaine and hookers"
or maybe something like "Studio forced to cancelled awaited project due to staff shortages caused by alleged sexual harassment"
As with just about everything these days does...
@TheBravery767 Yes those are also outcomes that can\does happen. But how often do those occur compared to the former?
Konami in a nutshell
Volition actually filed for bankruptcy around 2012 and the company was cut, quartered, and sold off to other studios. Most of their employees quit or were laid off, with Saints Row 5 (Gat out of Hell) being one of the last titles they released. Years later this entirely new group of employees under the same Volition name took over the remnants of the company. As far as I know none of the people who made the new 'Saints' game were part of the original teams that made any of the other games. Hopefully that fully explains why the game was yanked in such a different direction to anyone reading.
I read this and did not know this. Thanks. I figured something was very different. 😅
When the Reboot was announced. I thought weird. Haven't seen these guys in a very long time.
there were SR2/SR3 staffers on the reboot, actually, though i don't know how many. both narrative leads were at volition for a while iirc -- one as former QA who moved to writing gradually; one as a producer
This is the most incorrect statement in regards to this studio I've ever seen
@@chuukoart3869Provide some insight then. I would like to know what was going on with Volition.
Honestly, as sad as it is, this is what we need in the gaming industry. We need failures to remind these companies that they can actually fail if they push the envelope too far with high price tags and low quality
its like the “there is no good without evil” argument
Agreed and well said
Like Niantic, they're the dev that comes to mind with them ignoring their fanbase while charging more for nothing.
To be fair Saint's row was already on it's last legs as it was. Unless they released some banger of a game that revived the series it was on it's way out the door anyway. Franchises and companies that are still mainstream can still get away with all kinds of nonsense before they'd fail or even lose money. So I don't think this really "reminds" anyone of anything.
Why are we blaming devs when its the publisher's fault? Daedalic was making games they shouldn't have been making because of their publishers. EA has buried so many dev companies, but any time a stinker comes out people blame the devs and let another studio get shut down while shoving more money into corrupt greedy AAA publishers mouths while they eat up dev studios and spit them out after a single flop. I see dev studios being shut down left and right, but no AAA publisher has had to close its doors for a string of flops they were responsible for making. It's so dumb how many people put the majority of the blame on dev studios when they're being put to the grind to make a game they don't want to make and then getting fired for not living up to impossible expectations and promises made by their publisher.
They mocked their fans for saying they didn't like it
They had it coming
But that had nothing to do with it~
Everyone like's to be singled out and told they are evil capitalist / every ist and phobe under the sun and are non progressive trash.
=P
idk if they went that far but they did show clear contempt for critique @jamvey
Exactly. I used to love the Saints Row games, and I don't feel one ounce of sympathy for Volition tanking. They took the Disney approach of blaming everyone else except themselves for making a garbage product. They got what they deserved.
Just like that pile of sjw trash last of us 2
Is that real?
As a big Saints Row fan, it hurts to know this once great series is going to end on such a sour note.
Not particularly. Sea of stars and chained echoes show that even old games can lay a skeleton for new ones as both used Chrono Trugger as their base. Another example is DUSK who took inspiration from Quake. Point us that something will come out to fill the void that Saints row left but it's all up in the air really.
just pretend that Saints Row reboot is not a part of Saints Row, cuz it never was
NO WAY, I JUST MET CHARLIE ON MY RUclips! 100% REAL! (OMG HE JUST CAME TO MY HOUSE AT 3 AM!)😱💯
Thats what happens when you go woke lol
From what I saw the series will continue with a different host
Do not weep for them. The original Gs that made that company haven't been involved for years. Do not mourn their passing, celebrate what they were.
Exactly
If I remember hearing, Gearbox has the rights to SR so it may still live on but just not with the original developers and staff. But yes I agree, do not mourn let's celebrate it for what they developed.
🗣️💯💯
True. I mean it sucks for them, but you know the old adage "Go woke, go broke." They're just suffering the consequences of their own modern companies' actions. Don't worry, hopefully these modern dev companies (that are shells of their former selves) will figure out that gamers are repulsed by that garbage being in their games... eventually.
That’s what people keep forgetting. After 20-30 years almost everyone who made the original team great are long gone. The infinity ward that made the original MW2 are not the same people releasing the reboot today. The Bungie that made Halo are not the same people making Destiny.
Goodbye Volition, it was fun having you around but now, it is sad to say goodbye.
“The saints legacy ends here, not with a bang but with a whimper” - Killbane
this one line really aged well
sadly
Volition can rest in piss.
The gaming industry has become a sad place for gamers and devs. I think BG3 reminded us all what a true passion project game truly is and how amazing games can be when it's not entirely built by greed.
I say more then half of passion projects are seemingly just snuffed out in games that are hyped up extremely. (Probably due to people not keeping their expectations in check) Or maybe it's just the shareholders pushing the devs to unreasonable conditions just to make a quick profit. I honestly had more fun branching out and just playing whatever.
An ex blizzard developer once said “all your favorite video game developers you loved in the past are now gone, because they either died or move on. It’s sad but true”
A founder of Bioware started making craft beer right when ME2 launched. I think that should have been the canary in the coal mine.
@@insensitive919 ME2 did slap
@@istealpopularnamesforlikes3340and the reason your bragging about that in the RUclips comments is?
Thank God For From Software and The Miz.
The only place where that isn't so much the case is Nintendo, but only because they are siphoning every last drop of the waning creativity of their older devs instead.
I actually have a friend that just got laid off from this project and she was so excited to finally get her dream job. My heart aches for her
Sorry about your friend man, that sucks 😢
Guess they shouldn't have put out such a garbage tier cringe as fuck woke re-imagining of a classic IP then, whilst being combative to fans ever since the first cringe marketing images came out. If you intentionally turn your back on everything that made players love your games, then you deserve fail. I genuinely have no idea what the fuck they were thinking with this reboot. Did they SERIOUSLY think the gamers who have supported them for DECADES now wanted some cringe woke zoomer version of The Saints? The characters from the previous games would've beaten up these whiny losers and taken their lunch money, then shot them for being so pathetic. They turned their back on their core audience and for what? Did they seriously think GenZ would like this? And even if they did, that it would be enough to make up for all the lost audience? Even my normie friends weren't interested in that game, because they said it looked cringe and lame. Literally nobody wanted that so how it got beyond the ideas stage is baffling. At no point did anyone stop and go "guys wtf are we doing this is such a shit idea"...
That's life. Always a new game to make, so she'll find work soon enough and hopefully be apart of a banger.
I know someone in a similar position who only started working there a few years ago. Don't feel sorry for her though: she was one of the writers.
lol@@thelordofcringe
We went from "give the fans what they want" to "fuck 'em. They'll take what they're given and like it. What can they do anyway?"
And we'll get them to pay for it.
rockstar games.
Basically activision now
And we will lose everything doing that.
@@santosarrnah
I was in the industry in the early 00s. It was just starting to get corporatized. There were some fairly large sized production houses, but they weren't corporatized yet. Most of those started as startups or grassroot devs. Then the big names like Sony, EA, Activision (when it was on it's own) and other conglomerates started looking at the business and realizing the potential. That's when writing games started to get unfun. I never minded the crunch - it is and always will be part of this profession whether you are writing games or business software. What I minded was the fact that it was all faceless. I was best friends with my producer in the first place I worked at. She was awesome and we worked very well together (and before you ask - completely platonic). Everyone at that company had the same mindset. Then we were bought out by Activision and it became hell. She was replaced with some corporate shill who's only job was to ensure we made ridiculous deadlines. You wonder why software is so flawed these days? I'll give you a hint - it has nothing to do with the devs.
It’s the unreasonable set deadlines, I’ve noticed that with even CD Project Red when they stated they were pushed to release it early by producers and share holders.
u ate this up
The moment trash CEOs started pouring in... that's when the industry was on a death path. I'm waiting for it to die. Maybe we'll learn a lesson and stop touching CEO trash.
R.I.P. to Johnny, Shaundi, Pierce, and the Boss.
😔😔
Too little, too late. They've been dead for a decade.
@@Verasoul I still had some hope, up until now.
I don't think SR is going away. Tbh.
@@everlynevins How the fuck you figure that? The reboot killed any sliver of hope that the franchise had left. No point in any company investing in a title everyone moved on from.
I actually worked on the original Saints row. August 29th, 2006, was the day a game I helped with had its release day. I couldn't stop going to the toilet for nerves. I was so young, and everyone was passionate about the game. We all loved it. We made loads of questionable choices with the game, but ultimately, it worked. The customer liked the game, and we all loved it. I was so proud. The newest version I just can not get into. I'm much older now, but I'm pretty sure that's not why I don't enjoy it. All the original people are well gone now, and all moved on. It's now just run as a cash cow, not a project of love, and making a game I wanted to play. Some amazing stuff coming out in 2024 though people. Wait until the support for last gen consoles stops. The level of games we will then see will be amazing.
As a console player turned PC player by games like DayZ mod and ext, I'm really really looking forward to what they do when they leave the shackles of older generations.
Everything is still a mess from COVID and stuff, but if/when things stabilize, it will be a bright future.
thank you for helping with the start of such an amazing series. It was fun while it lasted
I dont know what connections you have, or if you still have that passion that (as is normal) fades during a career. But man, if someone were to make a good open world crime-centric game, it would definitelly succeed.
Rockstar is milking GTA V for another 10 years, Volition and Saints Row are dead and have been on life support for the last decade. Mafia series is over and 2K doesnt have a substitute. The True Crime/Sleeping Dogs series just ended, apparently.
Theres a huge gap, and im confident people want to fill it with something
@deadjuice18801 stabilise?
Covid?
M8 it's been a mess way before covid, that makes little difference
The shackles of the old generation have been cast off, hence the lack of quality, care, polish and the extreme overmonitisation of EVERYTHING
THIS IS THE FUTURE, COME BACK TO REALITY
Have you been living under a rock?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
is it true developers would play the multiplayer using NPCs as their character
The game’s industry is the largest it’s ever been but feels worse than it did in 2007 by miles
2000-2007 was the golden age of gaming and it has been on a never-ending downward slope since. So many iconic classics all within such a short timeframe.
@@HaliaxOfTheChandrian back then I imagined how great future games would be and now a halo game launched awfully and charges you for colours, this timeline sucks
That's because the late 90's to late 2000's were in fact the actual golden age of gaming, because it was experiencing big growth at the time. It hadn't been completely taken over by money infested mentally ill executives and boards and CEO's. Developers were mostly left to their own devices. Once the industry got big enough, and once companies like EA started making hand over fist in money, that's when everything changed. You were sold a complete experience for the box price and that was mostly it barring expansions. Nowadays videogames are broken down into pieces to be sold off piecemeal as "micro"transactions, and are often released unfinished because they sell well regardless. The industry is basically a shadow of It's former self, taken over by people that are absolutely obsessed with money to the point I would call them mentally ill.
2007 was the best year in gaming, that’s not fair.
I mostly agree with that, but i feel like 2013 was a hard cut off point. Games have been pretty awful since the xbox one/ps4 launch 2014. i'm not sure how accurate that is, but i feel as though that was a huge turning point that's only continued to get worse as time goes on. i'll very confidently say gaming hasn't been good in almost a decade.
"Whoops a daisy. Can't believe you guys are responding this way. Sorry about that.....but thanks for the money." XD hahahahaha
Most of the studios that are beloved by fans simply don't actually exist anymore, most of the people that worked at these studios when they became beloved, household names are not still with those studios which causes the studios to bring in new people that don't know how to capture the same feeling or the same amount of polish. There was an interview from a dev recently that talked about the downfalls of their current game and they explained that the majority of the team had never worked on a game before, and it explained why the standard of what was being put out was so terrible. Indie devs have been the biggest saving grace of the gaming industry for the last like 5 years, we consistently have banger indie games to play while we wait for the next big AAA game to come out and either succeed or flop.
true mate
a living image of this is rockstar look to their fan base years ago compared to now sure people love their game titles but hardly anybody loves rockstar as a company anymore
100%
@@TerroristFunds Mate, Rockstar did it to themselves.
I mean : How many times did they re-release GTA V?
Corporate suits buy beloved gaming studios and tell the studio to either change how their company works for the worse or become jobless. Anyone worth their salt knows they can build their own project or work somewhere else. So the Studio now becomes a soulless lich committing necromancy to squeeze every penny out of every IP they own.
Larian is the only Western AAA Studio that hasn't sold out. And that's why they made the best game of 2023.
@@kingsarues1586 Larian isn't a Triple A studio.
It's sad to see a thing from my childhood come to an end. Then again, I'm not really surprised let alone do I feel bad. They did it to themselves: They ignored feedback and went out of their way to insult/mock the fans that showed concerns about the direction the reboot was going.
Dude , their community manager fucking antagonized and insult it’s own fanbase , the devs are to blame for this .
@@Waltersopcommunity manager doesn’t work on the game itself….
community manager does not equal dev@@Waltersop
It was some executive's decision to do it.
@mrappleslices8679so so sick of this take. "It was the boss so can't blame anyone but the CEO." Horse shit
Charlie feeling bad for a major corporation or game company is a rare sight indeed
NO WAY, I JUST MET CHARLIE ON MY RUclips! 100% REAL! (OMG HE JUST CAME TO MY HOUSE AT 3 AM!)😱💯
He said he felt bad for the team. Because believe it or not companies are made up of real people too.
@@keco185 I know, but usually whenever Charlie talks about a company, it’s always because they did something greedy or pathetic so I was joking about how it’s rare that he feels sorry for a company
@Susnation532 realest moistcritkal comment 🤖🤖🤖
Feeling bad for a big corp or game company in general is a rare sight
Charlie speaking what so many of us have thought for so long is in itself extremely comforting
Yet he glossed over a large part of the story about why Volition failed, but I suppose there's some comfort in keeping your audience ignorant.
@@Shrieqer Could also explain it and make an effort to stop the audience from staying ignorant, or you can just make a vague statement I guess.
@mortem4342 sure. So, to summarize, when the first trailers were released for Saint's Row, a large portion of the Fandom wasn't happy with it. It seemed to betray everything about what made the franchise special, and the main characters were cringey college students with no personality. Instead of taking the criticism on the chin to make a better product, Volition decided to take a page out of the Disney public relations playbook, and accused the Fandom of being bigots. Naturally, many decided to boycott the game entirely in response.
I feel no sympathy for those toxic devils at Volition. The fact that they went bankrupt is just the icing on the cake. You can't drop a steaming turd on your fan base and expect them to pretend like it's an ice cream sandwich.
@@Shrieqer Thank you for explaining, as someone that only ever played one Saint's Row game (the one that takes place in hell which I can't even remember if it was a DLC or not) I had no idea about this so it does bring some more insight into the situation. I definitely don't feel as bad now, especially since I'm pretty sure most of the devs that actually cared about the franchise are gone.
I feel bad for some of them, I don’t feel bad for whoever made creative decisions for that dumpster fire, and I don’t feel bad for the social media team antagonizing the old fanbase. everyone else I feel for.
I only feel bad for the people just doing their job for a paycheck. Not their fault that the higher ups were out of touch and now they're out of a job. Oh and also idc about those social media wierdos tryna dunk on their fans tho, they sunk with the ship.
Yeah, specially the developers themselves and the ones that really are working, obviously not all, but in almost every big gaming company, a big part of their employees are people that love the games and their ips, and want to take part in the process and work on them, just for a brain-dead corporate dude that has enough money to buy a country to come and ruin not only the game but also close the company once that shitty project they wanted to make to get easy money failed.
Nah I really feel bad for those few people who tried to make an actual good saints row gangster game but the higher up won’t let them make their creative vision and just have a bunch of colored hair people create slop for “modern audiences”
@@EternalNightingalefr, the first few Saints row games were successful because they had dark humour and were unapologetic about it. They took what made the first games successful and threw it in the trash to avoid offending people. The new one is inoffensive and uninspired
@@EternalNightingaleThe problem is that nobody over at volition wanted to make a good saints row game in the vein of the previous entries. This notion that it's always higher ups driving poor creative choices and putting out a subpar product is a scapegoat. Sometimes devs make terrible decisions and aren't very good. If you're out of touch with the consumer and specifically the audience you have cultivated over the years which results in huge loss then maybe you deserve to be out looking for different job better suited to your talents.
Honestly, the writing was on the wall. The shift from SR2 to SR3 alienated a decent portion of the fanbase despite it still being a really solid game with SR4 continuing the trend 3 set and killing off a large part of the cast making things worse, 4 going on to have a divisive Gat centric tie in game with two canon endings continued the alienation, Agents of Mayhem downright split the fanbase in half and anyone left was completely pissed off by how unfinished, unpolished and insulting the Rowboot was. A lot of Volition's senior staff also started leaving, apparently the work environment was growing pretty bad, and so went a lot of the actual heart behind the Saints Row series. They basically predicted their own end in SR3. To quote Killbane: "That's not how this book is written. The Saints legacy ends here- not with a bang, but with a whimper." Hell Killbane's entire monologue before his death can be used to sum up the last few Saints games. Its like the wrote their own cautionary tale and then fell victim to the thing they warned about.
a yt comment with more narrative weight than the entirety of the newest SR
I guess I can't say much since I started with 3 and 4 but I look back on those two games very fondly, but everything past gat out of hell I either didn't know about or didn't play. So I guess people who started with 1 and 2 feel similarly
Certified yapper
@@skyrimlover777the first two felt like completely different games from 3 and 4, truly iconic I would recommend you go back and play them
@@TheShadowPenguin911 it's been a plan for a very long time, even if its different from what I know I've only been told good things about 1 and 2.
In the "old" days, the developers held more power. And while the developers wanted to make money, they also wanted to put out a good game they were proud of. Today the publishers run the entire show. And all the publishers care about is profit margins, stock options, and keeping shareholders happy.
exactly
yup. games were not as long, but still hard and challenging and enjoyable and still get played these days and didn't need updates at all.
They still do, but they give the power to the wrong kind of people/devs unfortunately. The reboot clearly came from someone with a specific idealogical vision and it didn't resonate with vast majority of people besides being mediocre gameplay wise. The publisher/execs wouldn't have told them they want this specific millenial political humour and self insert characters. This was someone in the core dev team with control of it. They thought they had their audience figured out or wanted to appeal to a new one ,but they didn't.
@@lancevance6346 This isn't how it works. Do you genuinely believe this was the vision of one out of touch person? This was a collective business decision that was dedicated to pandering to jaded, disillusioned millennials and older gen-Z youth. It was an attempt to milk it. Developers absolutely do not hold power in a studio, because they don't have the money, they're the ones getting paid. Whoever holds the funding, holds the power. And those that hold power rarely entrust the financial security of their investments to lowly developers.
@@lancevance6346 If devs held power, the industry wouldn't look how it does. It would be a world where a game with attention to detail like Baldur's Gate 3 isn't seen as a phenomenon. Because contrary to popular belief, devs want people to love what they create. Its art to them, its years of their work. Those that don't have that passion typically have been numbed by nearly a decade of soul-crushing releases that weren't allowed to be good.
The original Red Faction was also incredible for its time and a great classic FPS to revisit every once in a while. Red Faction Guerilla was one of my favorite 360 games, the multiplayer was really unique with the extra gamemodes based around destroying and rebuilding stuff, especially with the equipment packs and their map-changing effects.
its one of the best games of all time and probably still to this day has the best destruction
This actually hits pretty close to home for me. I have friends who’s parents worked at volition and volition itself was something we talked about at school. It’s really sad to see it go especially given the studio was a good spot in downtown Champaign and was good at making games for a while:(
Like Champaign-Urbana? Fuck me, I didn't know they were Illinois boys.
@@TheManCalledDrHorsedamn I didn't know either
@@TheManCalledDrHorseyep, the studio was right above Big Grove Tavern
what happened that made the entire studio turn their back on their core audience, and actively put out a game they knew that the players of their previous titles would hate? The cringe AF saints row reboot is the kind of thing that the first games would have taken the piss out of, or bullied, or had as a parody game in the virtual simulation, where the MC is tortured by being forced to interact with people like the main cast of the reboot.
What happened to make such a drastic change at the studio, and decide to put up a massive middle finger to the fanbase that had supported them for DECADES, just to get some woke ESG points? Was it a new boss? Old devs leaving? Hiring activists instead of writers? WTF happened? Either way, it may suck to hear, but after how fucking garbage the reboot was and moreso their mindset regarding the game and the writing, they deserved to shut down after that crap. You don't get to shit all over everyone and everything that made you successful in the first place and continue making money. Something Disney is trying their best to not learn in recent years despite all their massively public failures and crashing stock price.
@@NateTheScot they were forced to by deep silver i think, originally the devs wanted to make a saints row 2.5 but were told that it wouldn't sell
Hi-fi Rush was such a breath of fresh air for the gaming industry. It was the first time in years I actually felt some genuine excitement from gaming. A complete game at launch, no dlc, no major bugs, no microtransactions, no multi-year long ad campaigns. It just felt like a return to form, however brief it was.
There’s a few games like that this year. All of them are indie and that’s what worries me.
I’m excited for SM2, Ghostrunner 2 and a few other mainstream games but that’s it.
My eyes are on Bomb Rush Cyberfunk rn and that game is SO damn good. Really wish it wasn’t as short as it is but for 40$ it’s a payment I’m willing to make for a bit of fun while I wait for more games I want to buy.
elden ring fills this well too
Alan Wake II
this year for me its trepang2 and bg3
trepang2 for its silly fast paced testosterone gameplay
i dont really like crpg, but bg3 it just that good it easily hook me for 100hours +
You should play some Nintendo games. Fairly consistent quality across the board.
Edit: and before anyone says it, Nintendo doesn’t make Pokémon, so that doesn’t count. I do wish those games were better, though 😔
I work in the game dev industry, I see how some projects are being lead, how some processes look like, and I am not at all surprised that so many projects fail. And you can see that a lot of the times, when a game production is focused on prototypes and constant testing those games usually are the ones that make a name for themselves in the gameing space, yet prototyping isn't a standard for some studios, they will try to focus on stuff like 'how do we make it look more premium'
its funny but the "premium feel" they are chasing is why all of these AAA games are starting to look the same. it's also why when fromsoft comes by doing their own thing that fromsoft ends up making GOTY.
I'm not surprised to hear this. I've seen so many studios brag about how "real looking" their game is going to be and in some ways I do think its cool, but usually when i hear it as a selling point it does make me wonder if they are putting most of their effort into a cool LOOKING game, and not a game that is fun.
This is a pretty well known complaint but I also feel like the lack of prototyping is somewhat related to micro-transactions? I feel like at least some of the time they don't feel a need to prototype since they already feel like they know what they are doing. Like live service games, the model already exists, they can just make "their" version and hypothetically make money from it. But now we're at a point where we're over-saturated in live service games and most of them lack any creativity or a hook.
I’d rather get a low graphic game that has fun game play then just high textured graphics with boring gameplay. Which is why Minecraft is still alive the game play is fun.
@@spoiledsalad1851
I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I'm not kidding
@@Drbeattles I thought he implying how to make a gacha game.
It's a tragedy, but this was not the same Volition that we all knew growing up. The old guard are gone and in their place were developers who basically shat on their old audience trying to chase that millennial crowd and it backfired terribly. I won't exactly weep for the studio's demise but I will weep for the good times.
Honestly the AAA bubble needs to pop, at the moment AAA studios are uninspired formulaic cesspools where creativity goes to die.
yeah there are like a very small handful of AAA developers that I even trust enough at this point to want to pay full price for their games, everything else they've put out is such garbage these past few years, it's why I largely only care about indie games at this point with few exceptions (helps that I also don't care *that* much about stuff like graphics, like sure, huge open worlds with beautiful, photorealistic graphics are cool and all, but if that's like, pretty much the *only* selling point of a game, then there's no way in hell I'm going to pay $70 or more for it, like I'll take a well-made game with literal 16-bit graphics over something technically cutting age but riddled with game-breaking glitches and overall lacking in substance any day of the week). Imo, the mainstream gaming industry has just hit a point where it's a lot like Hollywood, and that's *definitely* not a compliment, but at least unlike the film industry the game industry isn't overall also dying a horrible death and struggling to get consumers to even spend money on it, so I'm holding out hope that it *is* just a bubble situation that won't last forever, rather than some kind of longer term decline
It's sad.
Business men will always choose the most cost effective easy route to money.
And the creative people who lose their jobs, are in a position of either churn out shit or end up without a job.
no just stop ruining ip with garbage modern takes where they wokify everything an nobody is here for it it just makes for garbage content. At this very moment there at least 3 or 4 high profile triple AA games that have released or releasing where there aint no problem. less woke garbage is what happened here. everyone was telling them going in and reminding them when it failed it was atrocious
Starfield is good
Daedalic hurts so bad. I adore all of their P&C games so much, theyre so extremely fun and charming to play, it's so sad to see them go because of a game that wasn't even up their usual space, it just really hurts. :(
I've always had a soft spot for the Deponia games despite them being an unpolished buggy mess at the best of times. The shift to tackling the LOTR IP in a title that is far from their usual style was just bizarre though.
If they made a quirky point and click LOTR game they mightve had an audience as well as the experience to pull it off, but instead they just flunked the whole thing so badly they imploded.
Cant help but wonder if they made the conscious decision to make such a game or if they were pushed out of their comfort zone by higher ups because they clearly didn't know what they were doing.
The Edna point and click series and the Deponia series are absolute classics, I grew up with them and adored them, my heart is breaking for daedalic. They made amazing games.
Welp, it's their own fault for taking on such a big IP and trying to make a game they simply have zero experience with. This was supposed to tell some of the backstory of Gollum/ Smeagol, it could have absolutely been point and click or atleast a story based 2D-platformer, but they just had to go 3D. Sadly they messed up everything, the story, the visuals, the gameplay, it all was just bad..
@@kronksstronkstonks6360 yeah I agree, I think they wouldve had a much better chance. Who knows who or what may have caused them to go the route they went, but ofc its still just painful when you know they have actual talent and are capable of making better stuff :(
@@atherisGAY Yeah, Harveys new Eyes was the first game I ever came across from them and it was so hilariously morbid humor. I bought an entire steam bundle from them because I wanted to see more, Night of the Rabbit was such a pretty game too and Deponia ofc as well!
The big problem is not only are these studios so much more massive it's who they're employing. Working in the gaming industry has become to main stream and things are becoming a combination of "too many cooks in the kitchen" and not enough independent practical experience (i.e. everyone is learning how to do things the exact same way en masse so games all feel very similar).
Also the whole price and time of development is an issue of the industries own making. No one is forcing them to constantly makes games in increasingly higher graphics since graphics from 10 years ago still look fine, just give them a bit of polish not everything needs to be 4k. That's an issue they made for themselves, like wise in this digital age there's little reason to still have multimillion dollar advertising budgets like they did back before everyone was on YT, Facebook, X, etc. Just release a video on YT or something and word will get around by itself, no need to spend $100 million to play ads on TV or rent a booth a massive convention (it's why a lot of them started doing stuff like Nintendo Direct).
mainstream*
EA releases the same game, every year with different (very slightly) graphics. NHL 23 is also 22 and 21 and 19
Even a game with a relatively decent budget like Hi Fi Rush doesn't need marketing.
Nowadays, learning about a new release is very much a meritocracy; if your game is good, reviewers and LPs and streamers and word of mouth will do all the marketing you'll ever need.
I wonder how many people even remember Kingdom Hearts has a pc release, because Epic is so bad at word of mouth promotion.
@@tornadoaweKH release on pc is also ridiculously expensive so why would anyone buy it when you can just emulate it for free
@@andrewkubicki1704 Probably because people want to support the devs. And not everyone's cool with emulation
I would feel bad if the game devs themselves didnt attack the fan base all the time. They knew what was at stake, they clearly saw what happened to similar games, and at no point did they ever try to course correct. They ran that ship straight into the rocks at full speed yelling from the masts that this was all the fans fault for not just giving them money like they always have.
Charlie is the krampus of video game companies, he scolds and bleeds them of the little to no pride they had, and kills them without remorse. Poetry.
NO WAY, I JUST MET CHARLIE ON MY RUclips! 100% REAL! (OMG HE JUST CAME TO MY HOUSE AT 3 AM!)😱💯
Instead of giving them coal, he kills them with it
True
Why so many bots in the comments section? Penguinz0 didn’t do anything wrong! All he did was uploading a new video for his viewers on a daily basis. He needs to make a video about these bots immediately!
@@ThisGuyDannyyysays the bot.
This news hit me hard. I live in the town Volition was based in, knew a few people who had worked there, and almost did myself. It was a little sense of pride knowing that there was a AAA studio in my small college town. Such a great track record, it truly is sad that this is how they had to go out.
I just moved there! I saw the building when I was walking around, but didn't realize it was their home base!
I live 20 miles east of champaign lol
ay same here. had a friend who even worked there. damn shame what happened.
You live in Champaign? Damn that sucks
you can't feel sorry for people who hate their fanbase. The Hand that's literally feeding them
Yeah, Charlie was way too soft on them and did no research other than, "Hey, they shut down. Alright... cya."
@Verasoul or maybe he has a soft spot. When your grandparents get dementia in their old age you don't exactly hate them just what's become of them. I however have no such feelings. Fuck em
@@VerasoulYeah. Studio was already dead, just suits parroting the corpse around for it's name like Activision to Blizzard. Still feel bad for the somewhat competent people that must be swept up in the closure, but the market must correct.
Seriously how do you expect anyone to feel bad for the company when they insulted their fanbase? Lol
Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
Daedalic is a very tragic loss. Their point-and-click adventures receive a lot of love, especially in the German-speaking gaming community. The "Deponia" series, "The Night of the Rabbit", "Edna bricht aus"… All great games!
I never played point-and-click, and even *I've* heard of Deponia.
I can't really feel bad for the devs and the social media manager that insulted the og fans by calling them "terrorist" and telling consumers to not to buy their game if they don't like it because they didn't bother listening to feedback. I do hope that everyone else manages to get right back up.
Them: tells the fans not to buy the game if they don’t like it.
Fans: alright bet *company goes under*
Them: *surprised pikachu face*
MY FARTS ARE BETTER THAN CHARLIES FARTS
To be fair, OG fans told them to scrap everything they were working on and start over. By that point it was already too late. Based on the end product, they should have seriously considered it.
@Leonson1 they could've even kept the same map, but completely redone the story. I'm sure constructing the map was the hardest part.
@@Leonson1the fans where begging them to go back to what saints row used to be for years before that trailer came out they chose to ignore them them if they had just given the fans what they wanted they might still be here
I still think that Hi-Fi Rush was such a breath of fresh air. It feels like a game that would have come out 15 years ago where studios were more eager to let their imagination run wild and deliver something truly unique. I wouldn't say that Tango Gameworks is indie, as they are part of the Microsoft family, but they kinda feel like they are. It was a brand-new IP, with charming characters and a very fun gameplay loop and it doesn't take forever to complete like most AAA titles nowadays. I would love to see more games like it.
have you heard of a lil game called no straight roads?
@@emmadevor9961 i beaten that game like 2 times and honestly that shit is a Bop
Thoughts on the GhenryPerez review that felt like a discourse.
Me personally, GhenryPerez lost his fuckin mind when he did that fuckin review of Hi-Five Rush.
He hated it, the game to me didnt look bad at all and he was so fucking smuckin wrong that I lost trust to GhenryPerez.
So yeah, thats my 2 cents on that bad take on Hi Five Rush.
Hi Five Rush looks good btw.
@JuNioRFTPhe saying the is amazing
Hell yeah
It’s hard to care about them being shut down when they blatantly were showing they didn’t care about their fanbase by antagonizing them, doubling down on dumb choices they made in the recent release, and made a game they knew no one wanted further destroying the series. I’ll miss Saints Row so much, but this was bound to happen and they knew it was their last chance to make something great. Kinda over feeling bad for companies shutting down or things failing badly when it was their own doing. No matter how legendary the studio.
I agree with Charlie though, he’s definitely right. I really miss the ps2/Xbox/GameCube era where there was so much creativity and room to breathe new life into the medium and that resulted in classics. Nowadays, it’s just not the same since companies know they can release the same game yearly, fill it with micro transactions and profit more. And games becoming more expensive to make. There’s hardly room for creativity in gaming on a grander scale, really. But it’s indie stuff that shines here for sure. Movies are also in the same position right now as well I believe. Costing too much, too much of the same thing, etc. Music too, actually. It’s a weird time to want good entertainment in all mediums to me, personally. All of it is kind of making the same mistakes.
I agree, said Volition is a great studio but honestly, that just a name and what matters is the people behind it and clearly the creative leads in charge of the last game werent great and i doubt giving them another game would reaped great rewards
Indies are the future@@ImraanSalie
While their social media/community management team made some extremely poor choices, at that point the game was already doomed. It was too late in the development cycle to go back and redesign the characters and story. They didn't even have the resources to fix the technical problems, resulting in a game that pretty much failed on every level and took the studio down with it.
@@lautarogomez9711have been for a while honestly
@@bkgrilaProbably wouldn't be as bad if they shut up
I miss the 2000s and the early 2010s games more and more as the years go by.
Sooooo many different good games to choose from back then but now there’s only like 5-6 titles people get excited for and majority of the time nowadays they just flop
Volition produced 2 sub-par games in the last 10 years and actively belittled and insulted their core audience. It's sad that a bunch of classic IPs are tied to them, but they absolutely deserve this.
The last semi-decent game they made was SR3 and even that was disappointing in a lot of ways. 12 years without releasing anything good, they deserve to crash and burn after that if you ask me.
@@GuyInAHotdogSuit69 I agree that the last good one was Saints Row 3 but enough people liked 4 so I'm not going to shit on it too hard lol
@@GuyInAHotdogSuit694 was alright. It was a dumpster fire as a saints row game but looking at it from a casual perspective its fun for a while.
A shame that some of the employees there who actually tried to put in effort and even made some strides get told they deserve being jobless because of idiotic decisions made on the fly by higher ups, hope they find a better fitting place.
@@islandboy9381 You can apply the "poor workers" logic to literally any institution lmao. A failing organisation shouldn't be bailed out just because it employs people unless it is fundamental to society.
Also a company *deserving* to go under does not mean that the non-management employees *deserve* to be jobless. Those are two independent concepts lol.
The thing with Daedalic really hurts, here in Germany most of their games are cult classics, using iconic voice actors, very unique worlds and stories. Even I found a lot of enjoyment in them, even though I don't usually play point and click games. It really makes me think this was a deliberate attempt at killing the studio, there was no way they were able to make a game the size and scope of Gollum. If anyone is interested in Daedelic: "Edna bricht aus" and "Whispered Worlds" are must plays.
I used to LOVE DAEDALIC, right up until the 3rd Deponia game (Goodbye Deponia?). That game is a fucking disgrace and turned the main character from a loveable rogue into an actual fucking psychotic sociopath. You kill a dude to sell his black girlfriend into sex slavery at the local strip club where she's forced to dance 24/7... you feed orphans to a swamp monster just to open a path... you lie to a doctor and scam antidepressant medications which you then feed AN ENTIRE BOTTLE OF to a baby... the whole game is completely fucked. The writing and atmosphere and tone is so different from the previous 2 games that i fell completely in love with when i played them... and the worst of all, nevermind all the people who DIE because of the main character and your actions as the player, but the fucking ending makes everything you did in the 2nd and 3rd games fucking pointless! You might as well have just fucking let the bad guys take the android chick at the end of the first game... and if you HAD done that, more people would be alive and the people still alive would have BETTER quality lives. The main character in the 3rd game just causes misery and suffering and none of it is funny or charming or cute like in the first 2 games. It's sick and gross and fucked up and the only reason i forced myself to play it through to the end was because i was PRAYING there was something, some way that it would redeem itself... but it didn't. It just made everything worse, and made the hours playing the 2nd and 3rd games a complete waste of time. DAEDALIC deserved to be shut down for what they did with Deponia 3. Sadly they were allowed to continue for many years before shutting down, putting out more shit in the meantime, before finally getting their karmic reward. Screw them.
Sad as their death is, Saints Row 2 in particular will always have a special place in my heart. And the Red Faction series was also really good from what I heard.
if we can get games like Hi-Fi rush that are just focused on pure fun and just enjoyable gameplay and ideas i would love to get more of it
They had a good run. Glad I can say I was there for the glory days 🫡🥲
🫡
NO WAY, I JUST MET CHARLIE ON MY RUclips! 100% REAL! (OMG HE JUST CAME TO MY HOUSE AT 3 AM!)😱💯
yeah...
I make the best content its just facts
Yep
tbh we all saw this coming, but it's still sad how this amazing series is ending
SR 1-3 are the only good games. All expansions and number 4 sucked imo.. still all those three games where better than any GTA before GTA 5 honestly.
they did it to themselves. they shat on their fans and then they shat some more.
I feel bitter sweet about this. For the devs themselves, it’s bad cause they now have no job. But for the gaming industry, it feels almost like quality control.
Yeah there's several gaming companies who I 100% think deserve to go under honestly, because they have forgotten since long ago why they made video games to begin with, because the original creators where passionate about video games and were gamers themselves. Now they have thrown passion out the window and replaced it with pure greed. They have overstayed their welcome and has sullied their own legacy, once they were giants and something artists all over the world was inspired by. I'm looking at Blizzard being the number one giant who I am actually a bit saddened at how far they have fallen. Even though I never played Wow I did play Warcraft 3 as a kid and I know how many artists has been inspired by Warcraft's universe and it's characters, looking up to them and wanting to learn from them. I knew a teen who had Warcraft posters in his room in early 2000's who later became a game developer himself. So Blizzards impact on aspiring artists is undeniable with it's very distinct style of how they portrayed elves and orcs especially. Like I would be lying if I haven't drawn fanart of some wow inspired night elf at least a few times. And I've seen other artists who can draw Warcraft style orcs to perfection, it's amazing.
I think a lot of the best games came out during the 2000-2010's era because these developers and studios needed to prove that they could make an amazing product and once they reach success they get complacent and lazy and the company is ran solely on executives focused on shareholders and sales rather than letting fun, quality and content win over. They're tons of indie devs carrying the torch and some triple A studios giving there games a lot of love but its so sad to see games you once loved become empty shells and cash grabs.
I live in the area and I remember actually being able to tour there because of a work related thing last year. And everybody there still seemed like they were in love with what they were doing and Just talking to them off hand they were excited about the future. I’ve always been a local fan it’s a shame.
Yeah tbh idgaf about the suits but i feel bad for the devs and other workers who've now lost their jobs due to the suits bad action, worst part is it's the suits that'll be completely a-ok from the fallout of this.
They were just so out of touch with actual gaming consumers…just another example of get woke go broke
@@Wavezzzz601I don’t they literally tried to push insane woke propaganda that people said they didn’t want…the devs made the story they wanted people should be held accountable for bad work.
@@MintBerryCrunch name 5 examples of "go woke go broke" for me please
@@FreddyKruegerTheDreamDemonI also think the phrase is cringe but, Overwatch 2, the new Saints Row, Budlight, the new lord of the rings show, Disney, hell even CNN was just sold for example
Feels bad hearing about Daedalic Entertainment closing down, I hope it doesn't affect Barotrauma too severely, even if Daedalic was only the publisher and not the developer like in LotR:Gollum's case.
After the ending of Goodbye Deponia, DAEDALIC fucking deserve it.
No, they didn't.@@NateTheScot
I haven't played Saints Row 2 in a really long time, but to this day it is still one of the most fun video games I've ever played.
RIP Volition, responsible for the least funny games and the best memories I've had in gaming.
Cap Fortnite is the funnest game
@@aftaahlife bro is illiterate 💀💀💀 he cannot understand the wording of the original comment 😭😭😭 he is most definitely not reading
@@aftaahlife Sure if you think being one shotted by sweaty no life's is fun.
@@aftaahlifeAverage Fortnite player's reading tension level:
fortnite funnest game what bro talking about
Financial pressure from investors or shareholders.
Competition from other games.
The need to meet marketing deadlines.
these are other reasons but the game engine advancements is one of the major reasons why games release early
I was talking to a coworker YESTERDAY about how much we both loved the first 3 SR games. Neither of us knew there had been a new game last year. They dropped off so hard. It's a shame, but they clearly lost whatever made their older games golden.
oh theres also Agents of Mayhem which no one played
@@brandon7587 I played it and found it to be a lot of fun. Actually a lot of "bad" games are pretty enjoyable when you don't have a bandwagon in your ear influencing your thoughts.
Red faction guerrilla is on my top 5 games. Could not believe the amount of destruction you can cause and I loved the story. Still pick it back up every year or so and have to do a complete play through of the story before I can put it back down.
Freespace 2, Saints Row 2, Red Faction Guerilla. Even like Red Faction 2 more than the first for the simple fact that 2 has fun botmatch. It's hard for me to 'feel bad' for the team, when none of the core/original dev crew are in by SRIV. But what I am genuinely sad about this, is the point where, after all the struggle of rediscovering the lost source codes, the Saints Row 2 PC patch that was being lead-developed by the late IdolNinja(SR modder turned actual Volition dev, RIP) is never going to see the light of day.
same it was very fun with all the cheat that you can unlock too. the remastered version also added the Multiplayer packs too and the reconstror which was very nice.
It’s a cautionary tale to developers, give the customers what they want, stop telling the customers what they want.
The destructive environments in Red faction left such an impression on me, when I discovered the Bridges in Just Cause 4 I think it was, all I would do is spend my time destroying them in various ways and watching the mayhem or grab a front row seat and try and place my self in it
I only feel bad about the fact that Moldova and Romania haven't merged yet into the one single united country they're destined to be
@Susnation532ok
Penguinz0 needs to make a video about these spam bots cuz they’re annoying
Very true, greater romania shall rise!
@@ThisGuyDannyyyyou’re one of them💀
NO WAY, I JUST MET CHARLIE ON MY RUclips! 100% REAL! (OMG HE JUST CAME TO MY HOUSE AT 3 AM!)😱💯
Saint Row 1,2 & 3 were a big part of my childhood and will always hold a special place in heart. Rip Carlos
The way they handled the Saints Row reboot makes me feel like they deserved this. Not only because the game was very, very bad. Also because they blamed the fans for wanting a better game.
In the early 2000's I worked for Electronics Boutique in the same city that Volition was located. We received a really cool Red Faction concept art poster with the whole Volition crew's autographs on it. They would come in periodically to buy the newest games and were always so cool to chat with. I'm sure most of those people were gone years ago but its still sad to see the studio shut down.
With Charlie on this. I miss AA or A tier games that would try new things and take risks, and if it took off, they would see where they go with it.
Companies of that size are the first to be bought by the likes of Tencent to put AAA prices and predatory monetization everywhere they can.
as someone whos been waiting for a new red faction, or waiting for a SR2 fix or remake, this is heartbreaking..... Sadly Volition did this to themselves
It's always sad to see a studio that made beloved childhood games go down under. But at the same time, Volition pretty much dug thier own graves and then some with Saint's Row 2022.
Im so sad to hear this. Saints Row 3 is what really got me into video games in middle school. Ive replayed 3 and 4 so many times I lost count. Gat Outta Hell was so fun. I can only hope that maybe in a few years, they can regroup and get back into it and get Saints Row back to its roots.
If you like 3 & 4, then you should definitely try 2. It’s less goofy than the others, but a very good story.
Yeah ive played all of them, I agree the second one is really good. I have some nostalgia love behind the third one and I like how it seperates itself from games like GTA@@papaofthejohns5882
Charlie forgot to mention Volition lashed out online at people/customers and said they didn't need us. They shot themselves in the foot and don't deserve mercy.
Not as well known, but they made Freespace 2. Great game.
My first proper PC game. I brought a joystick just for that, which broke.
My grandfather offered to buy me a new one and ended up getting me a Cyborg USB gold. I still have that joystick and think about him whenever I see it. He passed over ten years ago.
Saints Row 1 kept me out of trouble in 2006-2007 by keeping me hooked on it and staying home. Always a place in my heart.
The thing that pisses me off the most about it, too, is that I'm sure a big reason for the games' failures is from mismanagement. I feel like in the gaming space, upper management consistently wants to change things, tack on garbage no one wants, purposefully gut games, etc. and then when that causes the game to fail, it's the studios and frontline game devs that get punished. Obviously, this isn't necessarily true for all games. But I feel its consistent enough time and again. Even surgeons get more chances to screw up or fail compared to game studios...
FreeSpace 2 was one of my all time favs of the space sims.
So many great scenes.
Took too long to scroll down to find this comment! Dive dive dive, hit your burners pilot!
@@Sandaru8924 And the fucking horror of seeing another Sathanas jump in? And then another and another and another?
I just don't understand how people could accept the cost of games rising by $10. The argument about inflation doesn't make ANY sense, because games cost WAY MORE THEN $60. Now there's 10 $15 season passes for the game, $40 expansions, a cash shop that sells $20 skins. Modern Warfare II doesn't cost $70. With the DELUXE PREMIUM EDITION and 5 season passes, it's closer to $150. And if games had some noticeable improvement, if they'd decided to make the first round of these $70 games feel like they're worth it, I could have accepted it. But they're actually getting worse. Probably because they realize if people bought that inflation excuse, then they can just feed us whatever unfinished mess they wanted to.
Governments
Government wants in on the dough.
Indie Games are a breath of fresh air in the gaming industry, really. As harsh as it sounds, i really hope that this "bubble" bursts really soon, so we would have more space for better games and potentially new IPs that would be really successful. Recent Triple A games are ass anyway, so there's not much to lose.
Sometimes when charlie refers to money as clams, i picture a world where clams are our main currency
Norh Sentinel Island
i'd go live on the beach....
ill forever miss OG saints row classic
Volition: "We're not backing down on this!"
They kept their word. What did it cost?
Everything. LOL
Both the AAA and movie industry are suffering from the same problem. The productions are becoming so bloated that there is no feasible way to make back the money let alone actually profit. This has made most big productions a literal gamble.
Man, Volition had a hand in some of my favorite games as a teen. This is heartbreaking.
You missed one of the biggest stories from this- a longtime community member and Volition staff IdolNinja was working on a patch for the Saints Row 2 PC version since it's been broken since release. The thing is, he was diagnosed with cancer. Despite that, he continued to work on the patch with a small team at Volition until sadly passing away. The patch was never released and is now stuck in limbo. Deep Silver is holding this man's dying wish hostage since they own the rights.
That’s awful.
The PS2 was littered with those mid budget games. Some of the most fun I've had is with things like Mercenaries and Death By Degrees. It really bums me out that Volition is gone because now I'll never see Descent Freespace's story get finished. We sorely need more space ship combat games. I can play them for hours upon hours.
Free Space is still in my opinion the best space combat game I've ever played.
this is why i stick to my ps2 like some crazy old person
Oh dude, you're a Freespace fan? I am so sorry. The last we'll ever see of that series is the legacy crosshairs during vehicle missions in that one forgettable Red Faction sequel.
@@erikschaeffer8419emulation is a great thing
Man, I remember watching my favourite RUclipsrs playing SR4 back in the day and having tons of fun. Now learning about this is making me sad
This makes me worry about Ubisoft. I know they're a massive company, but the amount of games they've cancelled recently is nuts. On top of that, Skull and Bones is still in development 10 years later, that game was had to have been running up a hefty bill. If Skull and Bones flops, its gonna be a massive blow.
The one thing that keeps me from feeling bad about Volition closing is that it's obvious that most of the talent responsible for their great games left before the new Saints Row. It's a shame about the IPs, but those devs are most likely working on other great games to come.
I remember when this happened to Telltale and everyone was so shocked, and then we found out later it’s because they were expected to make big money every time with the IPs they had. They were the first it seemed and no one learned from it
Yo, they did that like three times in a row. I remember Jurassic Park nearly killed them when TWD came out. I wonder how much money they blew chasing fad IPs.
Daedalic‘s closure hurts as a German. The Point And Clicks they made where sooo good and original. Deponia, Edna, Harvey, all classics and really funny.
They fucking deserved to close down after the shit tier Goodbye Deponia took a shit all over the fans and the whole deponia franchise. Glad to hear they finally got what's coming to them.
@@havet7543 To each their own. I agree with you when talking about Wimmelbild-Spiele, but the adventure Games from Daedalic hit different. I have font memories of playing them myselfe and watching Gronkh play them
There was an article somewhere a ton of years ago were the journalist talked about being flown to a studio to see a videogame that was about to lunch and the was was actually awful but everyone in the studio was huffing their own fumes and couldn't stop bragging about how amazing this thing the sunk years of their lives into making was and how it was going to take over the industry
And the article wasn't so much about the actual game as it was about that awkward experience were you want to warn them but at the same time it's not your place and it can bring you problems
Yea I feel pretty bad for the fans, especially after being called Terrorists by the devs themselves. Those guys can rot for all I care.
Freespace and Freespace 2 were two of the best games I have ever played. And there's a passionate modding community keeping those games modern and up to date. Volition absolutely deserved a second chance.
Yeah, they were awesome games. It's a shame Freespace 3 was never developed.
Isn’t free space the game that has a huge star fox mod being made for it?
@@Cynder2251 I haven't heard of it but it wouldn't surprise me. I gotta look it up now.
Red Faction gorilla was such a masterpiece. I hope we get more game mechanics with destructible environments like that again...
*Guerilla
@@ferretyluv nah gorillas are way cooler
@@ryans2 Way to insult all of the Guerillas out there.
Is that the one where you play as a Silverback?
@@amannamedsquid313 Gorillas*
When something becomes mainstream, the greediest people suddenly become ‘experts’
Thats why battle bit is such a godsend. Its sending the message the industry needs to see right now.
The thing that really grinds my gears is when game CEO’s or investors or people in business call game companies “tech companies”. Equating them to apple, Microsoft, and similar companies. They are not “tech companies”. They are entertainment companies that use tech.
This happened years ago but a similar tragedy was the fate of Visceral, the studio behind the outstanding Dead Space games. Their publisher EA then ordered them to develop Battlefield Hardline (the cops and robbers one). Visceral then did a fine job and made a very competent BF game that, unfortunately, wasn't what BF fans were looking for. EA shut down Visceral after the game they ordered them to make didn't sell to their liking.
Honestly is pretty sad with visceral. Hardline was a goofy fun time, between is campaign that was told like a tv cop drama to the mp that had goofy modes and even joke hidden reload animations for some weapons. Like you said tho, it wasnt something bf fans were looking for and most people look at the game in a negative light despite it being a genuinely solid game
I really find it wild that no other game has done anything similar to Red Faction on the ps2. In MP you could dig tunnels throughout the maps and really change things. The closest you get now is that some walls can be blown up. Nothing like the ability to tunnel underground in a FPS map. It was a pretty unique experience with my friends back in the day.
As an '03 kid, I kinda grew up on saints row bc GTA was too expensive for us to get. So it's truly heartbreaking to see how far the company's fallen
Rip the absolute legends behind freespace 2. Dive dive dive, hit your burners, pilot :(
I wonder how much the IP would be.
With me and you on board Freespace 3 is sure to be a hit.
I think time for Indies is coming. Like Charlie said, AAA games can't be a "fresh" title as these studios can't risk losing the money on these projects. That's why I think in next few years we will see lots of new studios and innovative new games. As well as the technology advances it is more and more easy to make good games. I think we are in the middle of a large shift in the gaming industry.
You've got a much better understanding of this than a lot of people in the industry even do. I gave up interviewing with AAA studios as a concept artist once it became clear that more things were becoming irrelevant daily (including my trade). At some point I had to ask myself "well why aren't these studios interested in guys that know new tech like AI?"... just as you say, the same tech that ended my run in the industry may very well end all of theirs...
I mean indie games are still pretty popular today. But yeah AAA titles today are just being released unfinished with nothing new interesting (and open world formulas are slowly starting to be boring)
The other thing to consider is that several of the biggest AAA studios are going to be backed or bought out by the tech empires. Look at Bethesda. After FO76, public opinion of Bethesda was at an all time low. Microsoft took the opportunity to buy out the studio at a discount. I think we will see more studios being bought out by Microsoft and Sony in the future.
I hope you’re right
is very simple. AAA is pouring too much money well past the point of diminishing returns into these games. no creativity, no drive to make fun exciting games. from soft is out here and same with nintendo being big names out doing their own thing being the antithesis to AAA and what they stand for.
They should have remade the first two games, then made a new story more like them
It’s really not a passion issue by this point because like the teams working in these studios obviously want to create good games but they keep getting dealt a bad hand from the greedy higher ups who don’t have anything in mind other than profit. Video games developed from passion, creativity, and a genuine love for the craft always preformed well. So it’s tragic to see that be turned inside out and watch studios pump out sequels and disappointing big titles just to make a flip. No one is revolutionizing and everything is about as generic and cookie cuter as it gets, because the price of failure is too awesome
The higher ups did not push the woke nonsense that came with SR5. Sometimes the fault of the product rests with the devs.
@@paroxysm6437its pretty obvious corporate greed is the problem. Games release broken and unfinished but the in game store is always sure to work day 1.
@@paroxysm6437 Yeah, these evil greedy corporate suits who work their way up putting in the hours, energy, vision, relationships and, many times, financial resources want to just throw it away on crappy releases.
@@texascpa You're so unaware and naïve about the industry it's insane.
I am a game dev who's worked for multiple AAA studios and been through many dev cycles.
9/10 times it's the higher ups and management who are so out of touch with games and the industry making terrible decisions that ruins a title or even a studio.
3:37 YESSSSSS. This game is unbelievably underrated. I never cared for the story and the graphics were nothing special by any means. But the destruction was so good and I have not seen anyone replicate this. and this is such a old game at this point
Man this is so sad to see, Saints Row was one of my favorite games growing up.
It really sucks that they're closing their doors, but at the same time they thought of, wrote, and signed their own suicide note, and fought with their fans on every decision they made for the game, and more game studios need to realize that it could only take one bad game to ruin themselves
Look at them vs the Sonic movie. The studio making the movie saw everyone mocking their design for one of the most iconic characters of all time, and instead of insisting on it went back and redid all the scenes.
Often times, feedback can be pointless or boiled down to "not for you," as there's a lot of feedback companies get that's not helpful. But when your longtime series fans are telling you, "this ain't it," and you insult them back and steer harder, yeah, they ain't having it.