Just to clarify I think that New World is looking much better in recent months and it looks like they may have at least that project on the straight and narrow from here on. I'm much more optimistic about the project than I was 6 months ago, they've done quite a lot of positive changes. There's still a ton of unanswered questions and ultimately all I want is for the game to be the best it can be. This was fascinating how incompetent the handling of their gaming division has been though.
Have you considered playing PSO2 New Genesis when it comes out later this year and making content for it? It looks like it's going to be EXTREMELY popular.
my look on New World i got to say it looks like it will go the same way as Archage Poff at the start when i did start to look on it was promesing but i did pick Ashes
Yeah I don't understand how timestamps are frequently not noted during editing and included in the video details of most RUclips videos. Who ever edits the video is seeing the video and the stamps anyway.
Because it takes additional time to do that fanboy, tedious time. No problem adras, I usually only do it for long videos to make it easier but I'll try and do it for more structured content too.
Also, in the short term, time stamps might make people watch less minutes per video resulting in less money. However, I believe it helps foster a more loyal viewer base who’ll come back time after time to continue to watch partly due to such conveniences.
@@KiraTV1 I find this very interesting because I've been following Star Citizen. They started with CryEngine and moved to Lumberyard. Now apparently moving back? I think it's a slow motion train wreck but I don't recommend making criticism of it. The fan base is rabid and cultish and will tear apart any unbelievers. Its kickstarter was in 2012 and there is still no release date. Well there was a 2014 release date :). In 2021 they have no date to even be in beta as it's in 'early alpha' according to them. It's raised 400 million dollars mostly in microtransactions if you can call ships that cost hundreds or thousands of dollars microtransactions.
I almost feel like they would've been so much more succesful if they had bought a handful of studios and then gave them a boat load of cash saying "Make the game you always wanted to make."
@Gabby there’s a fine balance between giving creative people the freedom they need to flourish and the structure they need to succeed. Look at GRR Martin and game of thrones. Once he was a household name it seems the deadlines straight up disappeared and with it his productivity.
As an attempted Eve Online player, it cuts a little deep to me. But probably not even close to half as deep as a committed player. Even if it is entirely true.
IMO Amazon's goal is to rope the world into their "eco system". They realised that gaming is a huge doorway and they don't care how much they fail. As long as they have enough money to throw at it they will continue to make shit until they get it right. Their own game engine is part of their eco system. How can you maintain complete control if you use third party software like UE for example. It's obvious that the hierarchy don't care about nor understand Gaming or Gamers. Their ultimate plan, their eco system of control is the goal.
@@liwendiamond9223 I can only imagine you're talking about his ex-wife divorcing him, and if so you need to stop talking about shit you don't understand. While true that she instantly became one of the richest women in the world just from divorcing him, at the same time she was a major role player within Amazon for years before it became as massive of a conglomerate as it is now, so she rightfully deserved to receive that money. Of course the internet is going to paint whoever they want however they want, and of course they're going to paint her as just another gold digger.
Amazon wants to be the world's retail monopsony. It's sort of the inverse of a monopoly - instead of controlling the supply, they want to control the demand, so all producers must sell their products to Amazon, who then sells to the consumers. It's kind of amazing how close they are getting to this goal.
Let's hope they spend all their money failing before they achieve world domination. Amazon is cancer, and sure it behaves like a tumor, consuming any resources around it, growing without any contention, and starving the host to death.
@@KiraTV1 Yes I can see that when you’re critical of the big studios and games. I get the feeling some RUclipsrs hold back on damning criticism in the hopes of receiving free games or benefits or the like from those big companies. Keep up the good work bro.
Oh yeah man , I'm not in the new world partner program for this exact reason lmao. I dont want to be one of the people like "yeah man everyone but me is a sellout" because I know there's levels to it and nuance , as well as people need to make a living and then of course just different opinions...plus there are channels other than mine that do have critical content. But I do go that extra mile at times and cover things perhaps not good for my financial situation , even stuff that nets me big time subscriber losses and potential view growth. I'm just doing it my way and it won't be for everyone . I'm glad you see the parallels in my work and his. Try my best man , thanks for the kindness
@@angrehtimmeh1072 Not to promote anyone here, but there's also a channel that tries to continue on TB's legacy, the name is "SidAlpha". I'm sure you'll be able to get TB's feel in his videos as well.
Amazon should just go into publishing. Let these studios that know how to make good games, make the games and they just give them the money to get the game completed. Amazon can get their cut from publishing.
If they went on a publishing stance with New World they might have actually ended up with a billion dollar game. The devs KNOW what they are doing but they are not allowed to actually do them. There are people pulling strings with 0 experience in gaming and Kira is 100% right when he says they want to "manufacture" fun, because these guys are literally from the manufacturing industry.
Diablo and Warcraft and Blizzard in general are second tier Games. I wouldn't call Diablo or Blizzard or even Star Craft top tier by any means. They are just mass mark consumer pop games. Blizzard games aren't noted as being brainy or having a top tier story. They aren't the Elder Scrolls by any means. At least the Elder Scrolls has a large diverse open world or story. Portal was clever and Half life has character you wouldn't see in Hack and Slash Diablo. Path of the Exile has more story than anything Diablo related. Diablo is just a cheap Angels vs Deamon's knockoff. Blizzard Starcraft2 was very conservative and didn't expand the story or game.
@@maejune2179 Blizz wasn't always second tier. You are prob referring D3 and Starcraft 2... but back when Blizz was North and south Blizz they were the KINGS of gaming. Look at WoW classic, even today it's more popular than most MMO's that have no sub fee.
This is fucking awesome. More like this please. Just detailed, nitty-gritty analysis that gets rid of sentimentality and "hype" and scrutinizes things intensely. if this genre is to move forward at all, then this is the kind of mindset we need.
Lumberyard = Cryengine 3 + Amazons modifications Star Citizen ran on Cryengine 3 and also on the very same branch that Lumberyard uses. Their "switch" from Cryengine 3 to Lumberyard was a switch only in name, which also kind of was what pissed CryTek (CryEngine owner) off and why they started the entire lawsuit to begin with That said, I believe that Cryengine 3 is a pretty flawed engine overall (from a tool standpoint as a dev and also various other issues it has on clients running it) and I have not a single clue why anyone would want to use that as a basis for any online, let alone MMO game, when the entire point of Cryengine 3 was to be a singleplayer fps engine with barely any optimizations or regard for large scale multiplayer or open world
@@MyN0N4M3 they aren’t using cryengine , they are using lumberyard modified into starengine ... so far gone from crysis engine you really can’t compare the two . Frames are trash in star citizen , but that has nothing to do with cryengine , just look at Dayz , last oasis , or any damn multiplayer Open world loot game .... there’s huge hiccups and technology just isn’t where it needs to be for servers to be lag free and FPS robust with 60+ players , combat , Looting , explosions , possible territory control . Crysis ran like ass on most PCs and it was single player , didn’t even have to hurdle over the challenges these new games have to . That being said , lumberyard and star engine are “fine” the way you say any “cutting edge” game could be . We need tons of improvements , but it’s the incompetency of the employees involved and the original company who wrote cryengine to give help when there’s legacy bugs (or lack thereof) that really stunt a games progress beyond the usual technological hurdles .
@@pandahsykes602 The (upgraded) Crysis engine wasn't that bad. I played the Multiplayer (from the Warhead expansion) and it ran 60fps with 32 people on the server in huge maps with vehicles and looked gorgeous. That was in 2008. The engine would have been great for slower paced military shooter that are more on the tactical side. But you are right, using the engine for anything else than FPS is not very clever. Its basically the same thing with EA forcing all their dev teams to use Frostbite engine for everything. I wonder how Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect: Andromeda would have turned out if Bioware would have used UE4 instead.
I love how StarCitizen devs, whenever they are talking about Luberyard engine during their "dev talks" suddenly become sad and try to compose very diplomatic statements.
Sounds like you haven't checked on the project in a long time because they haven't mentioned Lumberyard in forever. In fact, they've evolved the engine with so many of their own tools/tech that it is unofficially called the Star Engine and can do waaay more than vanilla Lumberyard.
So Amazon Games is basically like every other big games company, except for the fact they don't have a 20 year old succesful title that lives off nostalgia bait. All power to the indie companies, get those nerds more money.
@@FoxyRaven-TV whey they sell out they are no longer indie. Find other studios that are actually indie and give them the money. Cleanse and repeat until the scene understands where demand is heading.
@@FoxyRaven-TV Well several closer folks on my steam friends list are still in it every day. I mainly bursted in it early on, but could see playing it more at a later time.
Games that have a specific game loop and requires additional content going down in player numbers? Never ! That must mean the game is bad and not exactly as expected.
"Amazon can make anything..." - as long as they can use their hundreds of billions to purchase, or bankrupt, the competition. They can't do this in the gaming industry (yet), so they are forced to compete, and are failing miserably. Just a typical huge corporation that makes billions by purchasing any competition they can't destroy - they profit by destroying, and that just doesn't translate into the gaming world....until they have trillions to spend to purchase/destroy the competition. Let's hope they decide to give up before they do that.
Man, I just worked the longest shift I've ever had as an Amazon driver lol thanks for this long form content I get to consume on my 45 minute drive home 🤌🏼
i worked as a seasonal helper for UPS drivers recently over the christmas season and i gotta say that these companies got to treat you guys and gals better. basically being forced to piss in bottles inside the trucks to stay on schedule along with a host of other unhealthy behaviors doesn't make a job like that very much fun. obviously once you get some seniority and you're making close to 35 or 40 bucks an hour it's a bit more bearable, but that doesn't excuse these companies expecting employees to develop unhealthy behaviors just to maintain the often overloaded schedule that the drivers have.
@@fantasticmrnox Well, if you mean "asian games are so p2w that rich people waste their money for a minute of fame" then sure. But noone really plays them. If they had a solid playerbase, devs wouldn't close down servers after a year or 2 xD
"Lumberyard is Killing This Company" I think we could all tell something was wrong when they managed to make two games in a row people that complain about looking dated in a fork of the CryEngine. I constantly bring this up because it's just such a marker of the turmoil AGS is going through to me. This engine has been used in what, four games? Can't think of a single one that looks like anything special. Normally, it wouldn't matter, because I'm not a 'graphics over everything' kind of person. But Amazon is Amazon. They can *make* billion dollar studios, they have these billion dollar studios, but are putting out games that end up never coming out or are subpar. Star Citizen, as of current, is literally technically the best game made in Lumberyard so far, and it doesn't even run in it anymore. *Star Citizen*. I know there are talented artists and coders working on this thing, and I don't blame them for how poor I think the game looks. But I feel as if there's something limiting them. All these fancy features and nothing to show for it. Pretty much explains the entire company.
If you try to download, install, and run the engine, you will immediately see the problems. It's a technical cluster fuck with incredibly poor compilation and build performance. The problem becomes much worse when you realize the install process can easily be one of the worst experiences I have ever had.
Sounds like a failiure waiting to happen. Technical cluster fucks with poor build compilation and performance... let's see, Overkill's The Walking Dead comes to mind... maybe not good condiitions to put your employees through for a game that nobody thinks looks or plays like anything special.
@@medijate I don't I can really overstate it's power in what it's able to produce. It looks like it has very powerful tools. It's just everything is a raw waiting game to compiling, building, *opening* projects and files and the install process is legit one of the most convoluted software installs of all time. You can tell whoever fucking made that gave 0 shits about actually installing it and more to make brand deals with other tech companies. Other installs? Download, select folder, install, Fin. Lumberyard's installation is legit quantum mechanics in the 4.5th dimension.
Roanoke (row a noke) is an interesting story. Village started up in Virginia (I think) that just vanished. Only thing left was a carving on a tree. Big companies and rich people, a deadly combination for sure. It's a surefire way to lose sight of what really matters. Great video, love all the information you can find. I don't even really play games anymore, but still find your content super interesting. Nice job
First time viewer: I was surprised to see just how much insight that you have into this Amazon gaming problem. I am not sure if you got your knowledge only from reading that article? I feel like you have more experience in this games area to be able to provide such educated opinions...well done!
As someone that's been in the New World alpha tests since the very beginning, it's been obvious from a tester perspective that the expertise and care that was going into this game 2 years ago is all but evaporated. Back when it was still a "hardcore" survival game (even then it wasn't that hardcore), the devs would always talk about expanding the territory control system, adding more depth both within and between guilds, adding open world dungeons to compete for, and really creating a truly sandbox game with player interaction and political intrigue. Now, every update we get is just cookie-cutter PR speech that drastically overhypes minor changes. Like the upcoming changes to crafting and its UI; reading their update makes it sound like they've reinvented their crafting system and made the UI way more friendly and usable.... I can tell you it is marginally better but still nothing to shake a stick at. I hope they can recover this game because the western MMO market is in such a terrible state but the way Amazon has treated it so far doesn't fill me with confidence.
I mean, you kind of can, but just like in any other industry, you have to respect the realities of how manufacturing these products works and respect the knowledge of subject-matter experts who actually do these things, rather than assume you can just mindlessly chase superficial elements of trends and conjure success. Just like you can manufacture food on a factory floor and have it be at least serviceably good, but not if you just make products that _look_ like current food trends and completely ignore the basics of culinary arts and how foods and flavors work.
Let me say: Jeff Bezos is one of the richest man of the world. With his money resources he could buy the best developers/studio of the world and could create the best MMO ever!! I dont understand how the recent developers develop so "poorly" . With Amazons resources they could create a game superior that Star Citizen developers look like an indie studio!
@@KiraTV1 +1 This industry is rife with management constantly fucking things up. It doesn't matter if you clone Hideo Kojima 400 times to spread him out across 400 projects. Manage the Kojima clones poorly and the result is the same with AGS. I've been in AAA teams where top management don't even play games, but are there taking home $20k a month just because they're pals with someone in corporate HQ.
This 40 min piece is suprisingly structured and was a realy good watch, good job man. Btw I think they'll delay New World again, despite many changes, based on recent news it looks like they basically started working on an endgame.
Though i'm currently still sitting at the end of my 3rd semester majoring in animation, i had also decided to work my butt off and hope to slowly make my way into a game studio.. but bro, after listening to all these.. frazzini scares me man.
Well they kinda are, the best thing you can do is stay an indie developer and put your games on steam an build up your fanbase and game even more over time and put out more of your games etc...
This is unfortunately life for most people in game development. You're either rolling dice for failure or success every day as an indie, or you're working for a company that doesn't know or care about the industry - only to bend that industry to the will of their 'investors' and fuck everyone else.
While from what I hear it can be a tough industrie, It is safe to assume not all studios are run like Amazon. Some are successful, thats different from Amazon.
It reminds me a great deal of what we've heard about Anthem and the Frostbite Engine. I get that these companies don't want to have to pay royalties but at some point they have to stop reinventing the wheel.
@@KiraTV1 It's a little scary to me that this is becoming EVERY major company right now... It makes me think about how the "square shape into circle hole" logic has actually worked! To a certain point the only factor affecting your success rate is money, y'know the old "too big to fail" adage. We are finally reaching the point of which the hubris is finally causing that method to implode - the total disconnection companies are now collectively suffering as a result of unregulated bald-faced greed running unchecked for twenty plus odd years is resulting in a total collapse of the system itself on almost every level. I wonder if I ought to finally make a video on this. Lol.
@@MrTalithan Nintendo seems to be running a long term strategy of simply surviving until everyone else destroys themselves. Upside for us is that we get good games and consoles out of it. Downside is the plan may not work out, because much of their competition are tiny parts of huge companies that survive on other money sources.
This is a creative hell! I sympathize to all these people... yeah they probably got sh*t load of money but this soul reaper, aka Frazzini, probably made their lives miserable. My mind can't comprehend how you fail when having the top 1% of the 1% of the gaming artist/engineers in the world. This is what a huge ego is getting you I guess...
I mean issue no 1 is thinking Amazon makes anything. They don't. They're a marketplace, a middleman. They provide a place to sell, and take a cut. These arent 'creatives,' theyre marketers and businessmen. You know, like at Activision Blizzard, a company everyone loves
This is a good point, a bunch of folks seeing how badly a games division can be run when it has an almost bottomless money pit is instructional, good things can still come from bad starts.
That's the only positive aspect. A group of disgruntled ex-employees bent on not committing the same mistakes as Amazon, and with the experience to boot.
When my friend told me to play this game as soon as they said "Amazon Games" I fucking, no, that's like saying "Hey drink this bottle of water I may or may not have pissed in"
“You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is ‘Never get involved in a land war in Asia,’ but only slightly less well-known is this: ‘Never give a gaming studio to a Sicilian when profits are on the line!” -Frazzini the Sicilian
This is something I was just discussing with a new acquaintance - 'game director' is a specific ability to coordinate a vision that very few actually have and it isn't really taught to you and yet it seems like these companies find these 'directors' that don't play games and don't have a personal history or interest in developing their own vision, give them insane power and money and wonder why it isn't turning out right?
I wouldn't say that a gamer is needed. The director just needs to listen to the devs and the community surrounding the games they develop. And, I've seen multiple games fail horribly after listening to much on the gamers in their communities, so it's a balance act. But you really don't need a gamer in charge. Because every gamer has their own ideas on what a "fun game" really is.
Sadly this goes for many companies. Boardmembers deciding how a game should be, yet the developers being punished when it fails. People in suits should not meddle with how games are made. Just like the developers shouldn't meddle with the administration of the company. Suits always look at what other games have done "O call of duty goes modern warfare, alright people let's make a modern warfare game and we want it to be bigger and better then Call of Duty! Get on it..you have 2 weeks!". We saw the same with Sim City. What do Sim CIty players like? Build a big ass city right? Be creative and build the city of their dreams right? What do the suits see "World of Warcraft is online right? World of Warcraft has 12 million (back then still had those numbers) active subs right? Alright, let's make Sim City a multiplayer game! All the big games are multiplayer, WoW, CoD you name it, it's online! How to ensure people need to be online with others? Give them hardly any fucking space to build their cities on, so they need other players to focus on other parts of a city to make them work together. Wouldn't that limit the creativity? Fuck you is what, fucking dev get on it!". Game failed like no tomorrow and what do the suits do, instead of going like "Yeah we fucked that up" they closed the fucking studio after they had the studio taking the blame for it. Disgusting. We need the game industry back in the hands of proper people again. People with passion for games, who know what gamers want and who want to take creative risks and not thinking about "We need to make a shit ton of profit thus we need to sell atleast 5 million copies in the first month otherwise it's deemed a failure and we close the studio responsible for the game down even when it's a legendary studio". Thankfully the indy scene gets better and better, as well as the studios below AAA, i don't know how you call them? But studios like Spiders.
Recall a story by a published author who frequently got people (at book signings, cocktail parties etc.) say things like "Yeah, I'm going to write a book; how hard can it be?". One neuro-surgeon was dismissive of writing, claiming he was going to write a book (sounded like he was intimating "over the next weekend off" to our Author). Author replies, "Of course. And after my weekend workshop on brain surgery, I'll be taking clients for surgery next week". Failing to comprehend the amount of research, study, hard work (and money!) that goes into being successful in someone else's area of expertise is a really common problem for many people. It takes more than a few weeks.
Vindication for Kira! Good to see like others have said a brit that is transparent and critical of big video game studios. A breath of fresh air! Why don't you have more subs? Subscribe to this men already!
Haha we on that grind mate, one day maybe we'll be much bigger but I'm honestly just happy I've managed to get to this stage so far. Appreciate the support
I'm a developer and I have worked for few huge companies and yes - they all have problems and lumberyards... But they are big, rich and successful for a reason... So I believe if Amazon really decided to become a game developer - they most likelly will succeed. But let's just wait and see... Anyway, so far New World looks good enough, definitely I will it give it a try.
So actualy director of amazon game industry hired some best guys in industry fot lot of money and then dont listen their advices? Sounds like problem is not in tail but in the head.
And robbing gamers of possible good games. There are very few good game devs on Earth and every such developer working in shitty studios like this means no one is working on great ideas at given moment.
I'm less concerned about this Frazzini guy crashing every game under his leadership. What I am concerned about is Bezos attempting to turn games into a rental service where you don't even get to own a physical copy anymore, you just get to pay for limited use of it. I don't want that kind of system to be successful, as the basic rights of the consumer when it comes to used games or just modification of code is already pretty sketchy. Nintendo is bad enough with their draconic copyright control, I can only imagine how much worse Amazon would be with it.
I worked at Amazon in the AV department when he told the story of starting the game department. Frazzini literally had nothing to do with games but thought they could make money, wrote and re-wrote his proposal multiple times and finally proposed it to bezos. After the first meeting they had huge amounts of funding (initial amount is under nda i think). I knew right then that this would be a shit show where every issue would be fixed by throwing money at it. It was his playground and he knew it. Unfortunate because they could have done some great things.
would have being wiser to just buy a studio and use it to make games. hell we need Triple A studios that value good writers an aim at making blockbusters like mass effect. but those idiots only want to make a money machine. though from my experience in the long run MMO make less money than a successful RPG or shooter and they are a lot cheaper to make.
@@roiking2740 mobile costs less time to make than MMOs and Console/PC-RPGs and makes even more money. Look how every MMO company is trying to make game apps nowadays.
@@nadijung7503 yeah but those are not games, those are figurative cash cows. and i assume amazon wants to make somewhat legitimate money not be in the "drug" business
I don't care where a company comes from. The moment it's proven to be knowingly engaged in racism, sexism, or any form of bigotry without an immediate correction, nothing it produces is relevant to me. No form of art or entertainment is worth degrading the human beings that work to create it, or justifies undermining basic principles of equality. It's disturbing how many major companies are guilty of this.
The fact that "Why would you wanna piss off Amazon, it is not a good idea" is an honest phrase means we already live in a corporate giant dystopia where our lives are nothing but tools at their disposal.
The "It's a niche within a niche" line reminded me of the "Always has been" meme. I think that not understanding that and approaching game developement mainly from a marketing perspective is similar to cooking a dish without knowing what your main ingredient is. The result will most likely be a messy failure. :)
Much of this definitely sounds believable, especially given their external record of repeated failures. However, I also feel we might be falling prey to some confirmation bias, as that paragraph on "sexism" contained zero definitive examples of clear sexism and makes me question what other elements of the article are more so opinionated framing than fact.
I believe that many of the bug fixes that CIG work on for Star Citizen's version of Lumberyard are passed along to Amazon's gaming division for building New World, I imagine that's usually part of the deal. I could be wrong though as I'm not technologically familiar with the process of it.
oh man noooo. nonononono i dont want to see something bad about this game again i am craving for an mmorpg i am sick to play since 6 years archeage. I think i will even play Archeage on 2k55 if we continue like that
Me beeing a web dev, I'm actually shocked at some things I've seen about this studio. It's actually crazy people with that amount of money can't get things done right.
What I've seen so far is equality, good developers and good work environments. One would think that Amazon could be an example, having every resource possible. They're doing everything wrong.
I'll be honest, the cries of sexism piss me off. So a woman gets passed up for a man. Sexism. A man gets passed up for another man. What is that? Business? People move up in a company when they fit in with leadership and play by the rules on top of making the customer happy and padding the bottom line. I've NEVER in my career seen raw examples of sexism. It's patently absurd that the only reason that can possibly exist for a woman to not get a promotion or have mend hired above her is because of sexism. What about all the men that get passed up or have men hired above them? I know! Let's set more quotas. Let's hire X number of women and other other identity group regardless of their ability so that we can look virtuous. Make sure people know that we don't hire them because they are good, but because they are a specific sex, or race. It's stupid and tiring.
Same for Immigrant people, i cant count the number of time when an immigrant pass before another born american or born canadian one because of race ratio workers. Example : ''We need to hire more Spanish and Black people to represent the Quebec" so the exam and the requirement are not required anymore in my opinion, if you would know how many immigrant don t know how to write or speak in english or french for quebec, it s a shame and they still pass in front of other that are born and success at school. Welcome to this S*it world.
The thing is that most major game companies only got as big as they are because they started out with genuine gamers. Enthusiasts that loved the genre and were willing to put their futures where their mouth is by making it their career. You see this again and again and again. As the original founders of these companies age, they either retire, move on to private projects or get pushed out by marketing people, suits and CEOs that know nothing about gaming, don't understand their customers and only want one thing: a higher return on investment. They don't understand why some of the stuff the original company did that didn't visibly improve their stock options had to be done the way they were done to keep faith with their audience. They don't understand why the people working in the company needed to at least know enough about gaming to not produce garbage. To them, it's all just numbers. Engagement, time spent playing, revenue per active client, monetization opportunities and market share. They make decisions that make financial sense but cripple the heart of their products and cost them community goodwill and faith.
Tbh I hate people saying that New World was full loot when it was partial loot. You kept your armor and weapons if you weren't tagged as a murderer and that's pretty much all you need. RIP New World :(
@@OnlineHipHopTV Murderers were the only ones who were fully lootable. Everyone else only had the items in their inventory drop on death so transporting things was scary but your items in towns weren't able to be looted by anyone so they weight capped the storage. It was fun while it lasted
26:58 Netflix has a very different philosophy from Amazon. Netflix prefers small teams of people that they pay handsomely but fire if they're not amazing, whereas Amazon is a larger company that needs more people and prefers being frugal.
It's so interesting. I would imagine if you had a lot of money, the means to easily acquire talent and not have the obstacle of time/deadlines to worry about, one could create some really nice games but seeing things like this tell us that's there's so much more to it. I always day dream if I were very rich I would start my own game company and remake my favourite games or create the things I like. This shows that this industry really is unique when it comes to making a product, things that cannot be measured like creativity and passion are taken into account.
I think you nailed it. "they think it's easy." They just can't conceptualize that it's more than just 3d assets and physics. That is literally all video games are to them, because they have no concept of it. They think anyone playing a game needs to be hyper stimulated, and it dosen't matter what you have as long as you jangle it in front of their face loud enough it will get their attention.
Exactly I feel like these companies are after the easy profit from twitch or shitty mobile games, they dont wanna spend the resources and time to properly make and run AAA game, let alone AAA MMO which is the hardest type of game to keep alive...
What I don’t understand is why did they make an MMO looter? They clearly wanted to make a finacially successful game that would draw in a large audience, and all they would have to do is take one glance at the game awards and they would see action RPGs with deep story are clearly what’s in. Does anyone at that company do research, or do they assume that if they throw enough money at it, it will have to succeed?
They are Amazon. Why didn’t they just buy out known companies. Give them a blank check and tell them to make whatever they wanted. While buying up exclusivity rights. They would have dominated the market easily.
Star Citizen uses Lumberyard after migrating from CryEngine in 2016. Though their CryEngine version was anyways heavily modified and so is now Lumberyard (since they are effectively the same engine).
It's fascinating to hear how little care and attention Amazon gave to establishing their game development business compared to how seemingly meticulous they were with Amazon Web Services and the Well-Architected Framework, almost night and day different. I'm beginning to wonder if AWS' success was more luck than judgement now... :)
Unless they are making another MMO, Smedley should have been working on New World. I played the first Alpha of New World and I thought it was really good but I love full loot pvp games. I think they shoulda built on that concept and just changed it to a limited loot system. Then they coulda released a Theme Park MMO built by Smedleys team that used a ton of resources from New World. The guy built the 2nd and 3rd biggest MMO, ever! We’ll see but I always felt like the studio culture was “take as long as we can” while they we’re cashing those huge checks.
27:58 I’m obviously super late here, but the reason they wanted to use their own engine is that they’re a part of the AWS org. That means lumberyard, and driving more business to AWS *is* the point of their entire gaming division. More prime subs would have been a nice bonus, but would pale in comparison to the profits of getting even a few large titles using AWS as their backend, the games were really serving as a giant advertisement for lumberyard and the cool things you could do with it. Really the whole thing looks like they’re attempting to use the same tactics that worked in the IaaS and PaaS businesses, without recognizing that game development is a fundamentally different business.
Corporations are ruining games and gaming in general, they have been for years now. Who in their right mind thought that a big corporation like Amazon would ever made a game that is actually good and has gamers in mind first? Its just another corporate grab trying to milk money from gamers by making the most basic game they can make and then milk it for all they can
This happened in a small company I used to work for. We got a new director in who knew absolutely nothing about application development. Within 6 months the company was shut down (Id left within a week of the new director appearing coz he was completely useless but my pal stayed until the end, giving my all the juicy gossip oc ;) ).
They don't even have a proper website for their game engine. It took me over a year of watching their engines progress to find their forum because it is a link hidden in the middle of some random page on the site. I pointed out to them that their website was a problem for pulling in devs and they said it would be fixed but over a year later nothing was done. They already had all the content, it would have taken a DAY to make a decent layout and cut and paste the content into a few pages. It just needed a damn organized navigation menu so you could find things.
Its crazy because like me ,everyone seems to voice that they have and keep hope for New World. You would think they would buckle down and do everything they could to meet expectations. Also with pockets like Amazon's New World should be vast, intricate and full of depth.
I love the fact that Amazons dream hires were people that hadn't had a successful project in years. I can't tell you the last time I heard Smedley's name. I mean if you want to build a great game in 1998 you hire someone from Command and Conquer and John Smedley.
The more an employer says they want employees to have backbones or not be yes-men , the more they actually want the opposite, they just want the illusion of freeminded employees.
I disagree. There is a huge difference between unnecessary changes in the name of political correctness, and necessary changes to fix a tasteless theme that is going to hinder the games popularity. Creating a game where you are killing only native Americans is about is tasteless and idiotic as making a game in which you kill only white people, or only black people, or only men, or only women. Doing so would not only be asinine, but it would be a financial disaster on release when media got a hold of it and turned it into the latest scandal. Creativity can largely go unchecked, but there still needsto be certain limitations if you intend to make a product that's going to be successful with a broad audience, which every MMO needs to do by the nature of being an MMO.
@@Warrior_Culture You're the problem. Humans are social political animals, games are none of those. If you want to become a real gamer, you leave that social political crap behind, and focus on fun. I didn't see protests when games were nothing but slaughtering white people..... I assume you're stemming from American politics judging by the game's origin's & your double standard ideals. Leftism political correctness brought us the last of us 2. It was a disaster. Cancel culture hates gamers in general, what makes you think adopting it would be a great idea? Your ideas of a "broad" audience will never be achieved if you're trying be the antagonist to minor details of NPCS. Especially if you're trying to cater to the ideas of racial superiority in minorities. If a game is based in Africa, then yea, you'd most likely be killing black people. If it was based in America, then yea you'd most likely be killing Native Americans. If it was based in Ogrimmar, then yea, you'd most likely be killing orcs. If it was based in ancient Britain, you'd be killing white people. No race is safe, and it's not just race, political correctness attacks a multitude of creative designs that makes a video game appealing. For example, if political correctness had a say in video games in the first place, murder/killing wouldn't be a thing. ----------------------------------------------------------------- In the end, when politics enter games there's always one common theme in the end. The game ends up flopping, then blame is shifted, usually using race etc. whatever is the opposite spectrum. There's never a sense of self-reasonability from the devs, they expect the audience to love it for their ugly political views, then end up milking their SJW whales, and abandoning the project.
You're absolutely right! Money doesn't have the ability to create a video game. They can try for as long as they have the money to. But, they're still not game designers. So, they don't understand their audience who may want to play their video game.
There really is a crisis of ignorance of expertise today. People don't know, just HOW MUCH MORE, people with experience and expertise actually know, than them. Scientists, doctors, engineers, developers... laypeople underestimate just how much more these people know. They underestimate how difficult things are based on their ignorance. They think "anyone can do anything". "It's just pushing a few buttons right?" "The sky is the limit!" "Educate yourself." "Come on, we're all just guessing here. Your guess is as good as mine. Don't get pretentious, it's just making video games. HOW HARD CAN IT BE??"
Just to clarify I think that New World is looking much better in recent months and it looks like they may have at least that project on the straight and narrow from here on. I'm much more optimistic about the project than I was 6 months ago, they've done quite a lot of positive changes. There's still a ton of unanswered questions and ultimately all I want is for the game to be the best it can be. This was fascinating how incompetent the handling of their gaming division has been though.
Have you considered playing PSO2 New Genesis when it comes out later this year and making content for it? It looks like it's going to be EXTREMELY popular.
I'll 100% be on pso2 ng
Truth that game still have to address content quantity and why factions are soo pointless, which are big giant deals imo. I
Give no mistake, they're good at coding and artwork. They're lacking the real gamer as a game director.
my look on New World i got to say it looks like it will go the same way as Archage Poff at the start when i did start to look on it was promesing but i did pick Ashes
Thank you for the extensive timestamps, not enough ppl go out of their way to make their videos this easy to view.
Yeah I don't understand how timestamps are frequently not noted during editing and included in the video details of most RUclips videos. Who ever edits the video is seeing the video and the stamps anyway.
Because it takes additional time to do that fanboy, tedious time.
No problem adras, I usually only do it for long videos to make it easier but I'll try and do it for more structured content too.
@@KiraTV1 i usually look for it on long videos because its more likely ill tune off midway and then come back another time to watch the rest.
Also, in the short term, time stamps might make people watch less minutes per video resulting in less money. However, I believe it helps foster a more loyal viewer base who’ll come back time after time to continue to watch partly due to such conveniences.
@@KiraTV1 I find this very interesting because I've been following Star Citizen. They started with CryEngine and moved to Lumberyard. Now apparently moving back? I think it's a slow motion train wreck but I don't recommend making criticism of it. The fan base is rabid and cultish and will tear apart any unbelievers. Its kickstarter was in 2012 and there is still no release date. Well there was a 2014 release date :). In 2021 they have no date to even be in beta as it's in 'early alpha' according to them. It's raised 400 million dollars mostly in microtransactions if you can call ships that cost hundreds or thousands of dollars microtransactions.
I almost feel like they would've been so much more succesful if they had bought a handful of studios and then gave them a boat load of cash saying "Make the game you always wanted to make."
100% this
Almost certainly would
@Gabby there’s a fine balance between giving creative people the freedom they need to flourish and the structure they need to succeed. Look at GRR Martin and game of thrones. Once he was a household name it seems the deadlines straight up disappeared and with it his productivity.
@@OpiatesAndTits or he just lost interest and didn't want to bother meeting the high expectations from his fans.
It's no brainer sorry of a thing. I think New World will be a dud as well.
"its a niche within a niche" As an Eve Online player, that cuts deep...
Proud to be part of that niche tho
@@Wiplasher same here. Fly dangerously
that'd be triple niche cuz is Space
@@TheZenytram true
As an attempted Eve Online player, it cuts a little deep to me. But probably not even close to half as deep as a committed player.
Even if it is entirely true.
IMO Amazon's goal is to rope the world into their "eco system". They realised that gaming is a huge doorway and they don't care how much they fail. As long as they have enough money to throw at it they will continue to make shit until they get it right. Their own game engine is part of their eco system. How can you maintain complete control if you use third party software like UE for example.
It's obvious that the hierarchy don't care about nor understand Gaming or Gamers. Their ultimate plan, their eco system of control is the goal.
Yeah, Bezos wants to be Lex Luthor. He's so toxic of a man the only women who will marry him will do so just to sap his wealth.
@@liwendiamond9223 I can only imagine you're talking about his ex-wife divorcing him, and if so you need to stop talking about shit you don't understand. While true that she instantly became one of the richest women in the world just from divorcing him, at the same time she was a major role player within Amazon for years before it became as massive of a conglomerate as it is now, so she rightfully deserved to receive that money. Of course the internet is going to paint whoever they want however they want, and of course they're going to paint her as just another gold digger.
Amazon wants to be the world's retail monopsony. It's sort of the inverse of a monopoly - instead of controlling the supply, they want to control the demand, so all producers must sell their products to Amazon, who then sells to the consumers. It's kind of amazing how close they are getting to this goal.
good, let them burn their money forever. They'll never make a good game by trying to BUSINESS one into existence.
Let's hope they spend all their money failing before they achieve world domination. Amazon is cancer, and sure it behaves like a tumor, consuming any resources around it, growing without any contention, and starving the host to death.
Good thing you’re around. There has been a hole in the RUclips market of true consumer minded critical youtubers since John Bain died.
Rip to the goat. Massive inspiration of mine.
@@KiraTV1 Yes I can see that when you’re critical of the big studios and games. I get the feeling some RUclipsrs hold back on damning criticism in the hopes of receiving free games or benefits or the like from those big companies. Keep up the good work bro.
Oh yeah man , I'm not in the new world partner program for this exact reason lmao. I dont want to be one of the people like "yeah man everyone but me is a sellout" because I know there's levels to it and nuance , as well as people need to make a living and then of course just different opinions...plus there are channels other than mine that do have critical content. But I do go that extra mile at times and cover things perhaps not good for my financial situation , even stuff that nets me big time subscriber losses and potential view growth. I'm just doing it my way and it won't be for everyone . I'm glad you see the parallels in my work and his.
Try my best man , thanks for the kindness
@@KiraTV1 yes I try not to use false dichotomous thinking like that too.
@@angrehtimmeh1072 Not to promote anyone here, but there's also a channel that tries to continue on TB's legacy, the name is "SidAlpha". I'm sure you'll be able to get TB's feel in his videos as well.
Amazon should just go into publishing. Let these studios that know how to make good games, make the games and they just give them the money to get the game completed. Amazon can get their cut from publishing.
If they went on a publishing stance with New World they might have actually ended up with a billion dollar game. The devs KNOW what they are doing but they are not allowed to actually do them. There are people pulling strings with 0 experience in gaming and Kira is 100% right when he says they want to "manufacture" fun, because these guys are literally from the manufacturing industry.
Diablo and Warcraft and Blizzard in general are second tier Games. I wouldn't call Diablo or Blizzard or even Star Craft top tier by any means. They are just mass mark consumer pop games. Blizzard games aren't noted as being brainy or having a top tier story. They aren't the Elder Scrolls by any means. At least the Elder Scrolls has a large diverse open world or story. Portal was clever and Half life has character you wouldn't see in Hack and Slash Diablo. Path of the Exile has more story than anything Diablo related. Diablo is just a cheap Angels vs Deamon's knockoff.
Blizzard Starcraft2 was very conservative and didn't expand the story or game.
@@maejune2179 Blizz wasn't always second tier. You are prob referring D3 and Starcraft 2... but back when Blizz was North and south Blizz they were the KINGS of gaming. Look at WoW classic, even today it's more popular than most MMO's that have no sub fee.
Oh god I just found out that Star Citizen is made on Lumberyard LMAO
So that's why it's taken so long, they're just watching Amazon Prime shows while waiting for the code to compile, lmao.
Every time I hear Star Citizen I am transported to a place and time that I don't want to go back to lol wtf happened to the industry
I wouldn't worry about Star Citizen, it's not a game, it's a pipe dream.
@@Kousaburo It's one more problem piled on top.
more Star Engine than Lumberyard
These revelations expose Amazon executives as the clueless prawns we always suspected they were. Fantastic.
This is fucking awesome. More like this please. Just detailed, nitty-gritty analysis that gets rid of sentimentality and "hype" and scrutinizes things intensely. if this genre is to move forward at all, then this is the kind of mindset we need.
nah what we need is battle passes
Agreed. Kira is the MauLer of the gaming world
So this is the engine that Star Citizen switched to, even though they had to deal with a lawsuit for ditching their previous engine? Daaaaaaaamn
Lumberyard is just a licensed and modified version of CryEngine.
Lumberyard = Cryengine 3 + Amazons modifications
Star Citizen ran on Cryengine 3 and also on the very same branch that Lumberyard uses.
Their "switch" from Cryengine 3 to Lumberyard was a switch only in name, which also kind of was what pissed CryTek (CryEngine owner) off and why they started the entire lawsuit to begin with
That said, I believe that Cryengine 3 is a pretty flawed engine overall (from a tool standpoint as a dev and also various other issues it has on clients running it) and I have not a single clue why anyone would want to use that as a basis for any online, let alone MMO game, when the entire point of Cryengine 3 was to be a singleplayer fps engine with barely any optimizations or regard for large scale multiplayer or open world
@@MyN0N4M3 they aren’t using cryengine , they are using lumberyard modified into starengine ... so far gone from crysis engine you really can’t compare the two .
Frames are trash in star citizen , but that has nothing to do with cryengine , just look at Dayz , last oasis , or any damn multiplayer Open world loot game .... there’s huge hiccups and technology just isn’t where it needs to be for servers to be lag free and FPS robust with 60+ players , combat , Looting , explosions , possible territory control .
Crysis ran like ass on most PCs and it was single player , didn’t even have to hurdle over the challenges these new games have to . That being said , lumberyard and star engine are “fine” the way you say any “cutting edge” game could be . We need tons of improvements , but it’s the incompetency of the employees involved and the original company who wrote cryengine to give help when there’s legacy bugs (or lack thereof) that really stunt a games progress beyond the usual technological hurdles .
@@pandahsykes602 The (upgraded) Crysis engine wasn't that bad. I played the Multiplayer (from the Warhead expansion) and it ran 60fps with 32 people on the server in huge maps with vehicles and looked gorgeous. That was in 2008. The engine would have been great for slower paced military shooter that are more on the tactical side. But you are right, using the engine for anything else than FPS is not very clever. Its basically the same thing with EA forcing all their dev teams to use Frostbite engine for everything.
I wonder how Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect: Andromeda would have turned out if Bioware would have used UE4 instead.
@@pandahsykes602 "so far gone from crysis engine you really can’t compare the two"
How do you know this?
I love how StarCitizen devs, whenever they are talking about Luberyard engine during their "dev talks" suddenly become sad and try to compose very diplomatic statements.
Sounds like you haven't checked on the project in a long time because they haven't mentioned Lumberyard in forever. In fact, they've evolved the engine with so many of their own tools/tech that it is unofficially called the Star Engine and can do waaay more than vanilla Lumberyard.
Its all CryEngine underneath, and if you can't make games with the most technologically advanced game engine in the world, you can't make games.
@@eclipsegst9419 who can't make Games?
Oh man what have you done, now I have to watch whole 40mins at almost 2AM
So Amazon Games is basically like every other big games company, except for the fact they don't have a 20 year old succesful title that lives off nostalgia bait. All power to the indie companies, get those nerds more money.
@@FoxyRaven-TV whey they sell out they are no longer indie. Find other studios that are actually indie and give them the money. Cleanse and repeat until the scene understands where demand is heading.
@@jimmymelo5282 Valheim is killing atm.
@@FoxyRaven-TV Hater alert! 😂
Judt cause you don't like it doesn't mean it's not a great match to the thread head.
@@FoxyRaven-TV Well several closer folks on my steam friends list are still in it every day. I mainly bursted in it early on, but could see playing it more at a later time.
Games that have a specific game loop and requires additional content going down in player numbers? Never ! That must mean the game is bad and not exactly as expected.
"Amazon can make anything..." - as long as they can use their hundreds of billions to purchase, or bankrupt, the competition. They can't do this in the gaming industry (yet), so they are forced to compete, and are failing miserably. Just a typical huge corporation that makes billions by purchasing any competition they can't destroy - they profit by destroying, and that just doesn't translate into the gaming world....until they have trillions to spend to purchase/destroy the competition. Let's hope they decide to give up before they do that.
Man, I just worked the longest shift I've ever had as an Amazon driver lol thanks for this long form content I get to consume on my 45 minute drive home 🤌🏼
Thats perfect mate. Glad I could help and stay safe from the rona bro, you doing a much needed service. 🙏
i worked as a seasonal helper for UPS drivers recently over the christmas season and i gotta say that these companies got to treat you guys and gals better. basically being forced to piss in bottles inside the trucks to stay on schedule along with a host of other unhealthy behaviors doesn't make a job like that very much fun. obviously once you get some seniority and you're making close to 35 or 40 bucks an hour it's a bit more bearable, but that doesn't excuse these companies expecting employees to develop unhealthy behaviors just to maintain the often overloaded schedule that the drivers have.
If they hired me instead of Frazzini and gave me that much money we would be playing SAO rn.
Kk
Not everyone is interested in asian styled games, you know :P
@@Schmorgus but Asian styled games sell yknow
@@fantasticmrnox Well, if you mean "asian games are so p2w that rich people waste their money for a minute of fame" then sure. But noone really plays them. If they had a solid playerbase, devs wouldn't close down servers after a year or 2 xD
@@Schmorgus it sells in the east where the intended playerbase is so they keep pumping out so much of the same shit
"Leaders are right a lot". Lol smart leaders listen to their people. Talk about getting high on your own supply.
The amount of effort you put into dividing the video into sections is amazing!
Thank you !
"Lumberyard is Killing This Company" I think we could all tell something was wrong when they managed to make two games in a row people that complain about looking dated in a fork of the CryEngine. I constantly bring this up because it's just such a marker of the turmoil AGS is going through to me.
This engine has been used in what, four games? Can't think of a single one that looks like anything special. Normally, it wouldn't matter, because I'm not a 'graphics over everything' kind of person. But Amazon is Amazon. They can *make* billion dollar studios, they have these billion dollar studios, but are putting out games that end up never coming out or are subpar. Star Citizen, as of current, is literally technically the best game made in Lumberyard so far, and it doesn't even run in it anymore. *Star Citizen*.
I know there are talented artists and coders working on this thing, and I don't blame them for how poor I think the game looks. But I feel as if there's something limiting them. All these fancy features and nothing to show for it. Pretty much explains the entire company.
If you try to download, install, and run the engine, you will immediately see the problems.
It's a technical cluster fuck with incredibly poor compilation and build performance.
The problem becomes much worse when you realize the install process can easily be one of the worst experiences I have ever had.
Sounds like a failiure waiting to happen. Technical cluster fucks with poor build compilation and performance... let's see, Overkill's The Walking Dead comes to mind... maybe not good condiitions to put your employees through for a game that nobody thinks looks or plays like anything special.
@@medijate I don't I can really overstate it's power in what it's able to produce.
It looks like it has very powerful tools.
It's just everything is a raw waiting game to compiling, building, *opening* projects and files and the install process is legit one of the most convoluted software installs of all time.
You can tell whoever fucking made that gave 0 shits about actually installing it and more to make brand deals with other tech companies. Other installs? Download, select folder, install, Fin.
Lumberyard's installation is legit quantum mechanics in the 4.5th dimension.
Roanoke (row a noke) is an interesting story. Village started up in Virginia (I think) that just vanished. Only thing left was a carving on a tree. Big companies and rich people, a deadly combination for sure. It's a surefire way to lose sight of what really matters. Great video, love all the information you can find. I don't even really play games anymore, but still find your content super interesting. Nice job
Very interesting video, loving the chapter timestamps and all, but...
That Elsa mug though, that's the real MVP.
Best mug for sure
"Coming in 3rd to the party..."
GOG slowly walks to a single swing and cries.
First time viewer: I was surprised to see just how much insight that you have into this Amazon gaming problem. I am not sure if you got your knowledge only from reading that article? I feel like you have more experience in this games area to be able to provide such educated opinions...well done!
As someone that's been in the New World alpha tests since the very beginning, it's been obvious from a tester perspective that the expertise and care that was going into this game 2 years ago is all but evaporated. Back when it was still a "hardcore" survival game (even then it wasn't that hardcore), the devs would always talk about expanding the territory control system, adding more depth both within and between guilds, adding open world dungeons to compete for, and really creating a truly sandbox game with player interaction and political intrigue. Now, every update we get is just cookie-cutter PR speech that drastically overhypes minor changes. Like the upcoming changes to crafting and its UI; reading their update makes it sound like they've reinvented their crafting system and made the UI way more friendly and usable.... I can tell you it is marginally better but still nothing to shake a stick at. I hope they can recover this game because the western MMO market is in such a terrible state but the way Amazon has treated it so far doesn't fill me with confidence.
Keep up the good work Kira. These big companies need to understand you can’t manufacture fun like it’s a factory floor.
I mean, you kind of can, but just like in any other industry, you have to respect the realities of how manufacturing these products works and respect the knowledge of subject-matter experts who actually do these things, rather than assume you can just mindlessly chase superficial elements of trends and conjure success. Just like you can manufacture food on a factory floor and have it be at least serviceably good, but not if you just make products that _look_ like current food trends and completely ignore the basics of culinary arts and how foods and flavors work.
once I heard they brought someone in to see if their game was "racist" I knew it was over.
countless games about shooting white people. and no one gives a f. but if they have a colored person in it, it is racism :D
Let me say: Jeff Bezos is one of the richest man of the world. With his money resources he could buy the best developers/studio of the world and could create the best MMO ever!!
I dont understand how the recent developers develop so "poorly" .
With Amazons resources they could create a game superior that Star Citizen developers look like an indie studio!
Inability to delegate to competent people. Cronyism. Thats pretty much the issue here.
Ags is the visual representation that throwing money at the problem doesnt work.
@@KiraTV1 +1
This industry is rife with management constantly fucking things up. It doesn't matter if you clone Hideo Kojima 400 times to spread him out across 400 projects. Manage the Kojima clones poorly and the result is the same with AGS.
I've been in AAA teams where top management don't even play games, but are there taking home $20k a month just because they're pals with someone in corporate HQ.
This 40 min piece is suprisingly structured and was a realy good watch, good job man. Btw I think they'll delay New World again, despite many changes, based on recent news it looks like they basically started working on an endgame.
The company is named after a rain forest, and they called their engine Lumberyard
Though i'm currently still sitting at the end of my 3rd semester majoring in animation, i had also decided to work my butt off and hope to slowly make my way into a game studio..
but bro, after listening to all these.. frazzini scares me man.
after all the recent news the past years from major game studios it seems like game development is just another word for slaves.
Well they kinda are, the best thing you can do is stay an indie developer and put your games on steam an build up your fanbase and game even more over time and put out more of your games etc...
This is unfortunately life for most people in game development. You're either rolling dice for failure or success every day as an indie, or you're working for a company that doesn't know or care about the industry - only to bend that industry to the will of their 'investors' and fuck everyone else.
While from what I hear it can be a tough industrie, It is safe to assume not all studios are run like Amazon. Some are successful, thats different from Amazon.
As someone who worked for them. Yes this is true and how they run things.
It reminds me a great deal of what we've heard about Anthem and the Frostbite Engine. I get that these companies don't want to have to pay royalties but at some point they have to stop reinventing the wheel.
Indeed , forcing a square shaped peg into a circle shaped hole just because you're too greedy or arrogant is the worst.
@@KiraTV1 It's a little scary to me that this is becoming EVERY major company right now... It makes me think about how the "square shape into circle hole" logic has actually worked! To a certain point the only factor affecting your success rate is money, y'know the old "too big to fail" adage.
We are finally reaching the point of which the hubris is finally causing that method to implode - the total disconnection companies are now collectively suffering as a result of unregulated bald-faced greed running unchecked for twenty plus odd years is resulting in a total collapse of the system itself on almost every level.
I wonder if I ought to finally make a video on this. Lol.
@@YayaBeanz And then you have nintendo over in it's own corner, making quality titles 9/10 times.
@@MrTalithan Nintendo seems to be running a long term strategy of simply surviving until everyone else destroys themselves. Upside for us is that we get good games and consoles out of it. Downside is the plan may not work out, because much of their competition are tiny parts of huge companies that survive on other money sources.
This is a creative hell! I sympathize to all these people... yeah they probably got sh*t load of money but this soul reaper, aka Frazzini, probably made their lives miserable. My mind can't comprehend how you fail when having the top 1% of the 1% of the gaming artist/engineers in the world. This is what a huge ego is getting you I guess...
I mean issue no 1 is thinking Amazon makes anything. They don't. They're a marketplace, a middleman. They provide a place to sell, and take a cut. These arent 'creatives,' theyre marketers and businessmen. You know, like at Activision Blizzard, a company everyone loves
The best thing that comes from these scenarios is breakoff game studios formed by former employees. Amazon's seed is valuable in that regard.
This is a good point, a bunch of folks seeing how badly a games division can be run when it has an almost bottomless money pit is instructional, good things can still come from bad starts.
That's the only positive aspect. A group of disgruntled ex-employees bent on not committing the same mistakes as Amazon, and with the experience to boot.
When my friend told me to play this game as soon as they said "Amazon Games" I fucking, no, that's like saying "Hey drink this bottle of water I may or may not have pissed in"
“You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is ‘Never get involved in a land war in Asia,’ but only slightly less well-known is this: ‘Never give a gaming studio to a Sicilian when profits are on the line!” -Frazzini the Sicilian
hope amazon doesn't fucks up the publishing of Lost Ark Online in the west this year
Give no mistake, they're good at coding and artwork. They're lacking the real gamer as a game director.
This is something I was just discussing with a new acquaintance - 'game director' is a specific ability to coordinate a vision that very few actually have and it isn't really taught to you and yet it seems like these companies find these 'directors' that don't play games and don't have a personal history or interest in developing their own vision, give them insane power and money and wonder why it isn't turning out right?
I wouldn't say that a gamer is needed. The director just needs to listen to the devs and the community surrounding the games they develop.
And, I've seen multiple games fail horribly after listening to much on the gamers in their communities, so it's a balance act. But you really don't need a gamer in charge. Because every gamer has their own ideas on what a "fun game" really is.
Sadly this goes for many companies. Boardmembers deciding how a game should be, yet the developers being punished when it fails.
People in suits should not meddle with how games are made. Just like the developers shouldn't meddle with the administration of the company.
Suits always look at what other games have done "O call of duty goes modern warfare, alright people let's make a modern warfare game and we want it to be bigger and better then Call of Duty! Get on it..you have 2 weeks!".
We saw the same with Sim City. What do Sim CIty players like? Build a big ass city right? Be creative and build the city of their dreams right?
What do the suits see "World of Warcraft is online right? World of Warcraft has 12 million (back then still had those numbers) active subs right? Alright, let's make Sim City a multiplayer game! All the big games are multiplayer, WoW, CoD you name it, it's online! How to ensure people need to be online with others? Give them hardly any fucking space to build their cities on, so they need other players to focus on other parts of a city to make them work together. Wouldn't that limit the creativity? Fuck you is what, fucking dev get on it!".
Game failed like no tomorrow and what do the suits do, instead of going like "Yeah we fucked that up" they closed the fucking studio after they had the studio taking the blame for it. Disgusting.
We need the game industry back in the hands of proper people again. People with passion for games, who know what gamers want and who want to take creative risks and not thinking about "We need to make a shit ton of profit thus we need to sell atleast 5 million copies in the first month otherwise it's deemed a failure and we close the studio responsible for the game down even when it's a legendary studio".
Thankfully the indy scene gets better and better, as well as the studios below AAA, i don't know how you call them? But studios like Spiders.
Recall a story by a published author who frequently got people (at book signings, cocktail parties etc.) say things like "Yeah, I'm going to write a book; how hard can it be?". One neuro-surgeon was dismissive of writing, claiming he was going to write a book (sounded like he was intimating "over the next weekend off" to our Author). Author replies, "Of course. And after my weekend workshop on brain surgery, I'll be taking clients for surgery next week". Failing to comprehend the amount of research, study, hard work (and money!) that goes into being successful in someone else's area of expertise is a really common problem for many people. It takes more than a few weeks.
Jason Schreier is an excellent video game journalist. His work covering Anthem was also incredibly informative.
Vindication for Kira! Good to see like others have said a brit that is transparent and critical of big video game studios. A breath of fresh air! Why don't you have more subs? Subscribe to this men already!
Haha we on that grind mate, one day maybe we'll be much bigger but I'm honestly just happy I've managed to get to this stage so far. Appreciate the support
As someone who’s looking forward to new world and eventually the new lord of the rings game this was really interesting.
well i guess you are extremely angry right now
@@TheZenytram what haplened? Something got canceled again?
@@shmel3689 the LotR.
Kind of like how old politicians are trying to rule an ever-increasingly technological world
Everything that Amazon does turns into a prison. They are experts in destroying the fun of working.
I'm a developer and I have worked for few huge companies and yes - they all have problems and lumberyards...
But they are big, rich and successful for a reason...
So I believe if Amazon really decided to become a game developer - they most likelly will succeed.
But let's just wait and see...
Anyway, so far New World looks good enough, definitely I will it give it a try.
So actualy director of amazon game industry hired some best guys in industry fot lot of money and then dont listen their advices? Sounds like problem is not in tail but in the head.
Yeah its absolutely crazy to think you know better than actual experts you're paying double the industry standard.
And robbing gamers of possible good games. There are very few good game devs on Earth and every such developer working in shitty studios like this means no one is working on great ideas at given moment.
its all to appear pro active ( another buzzword from corporate) to impress the investors
Before someone says it, no Star Citizen isn't actually on Lumberyard. Also, it's not a successful, stable game. It's not a game.
@Reborn Even for a tech preview, nothing beats it.
I'm less concerned about this Frazzini guy crashing every game under his leadership. What I am concerned about is Bezos attempting to turn games into a rental service where you don't even get to own a physical copy anymore, you just get to pay for limited use of it. I don't want that kind of system to be successful, as the basic rights of the consumer when it comes to used games or just modification of code is already pretty sketchy. Nintendo is bad enough with their draconic copyright control, I can only imagine how much worse Amazon would be with it.
Every mmo you're renting a copy of a service already though. It can be revoked any time
I worked at Amazon in the AV department when he told the story of starting the game department. Frazzini literally had nothing to do with games but thought they could make money, wrote and re-wrote his proposal multiple times and finally proposed it to bezos. After the first meeting they had huge amounts of funding (initial amount is under nda i think). I knew right then that this would be a shit show where every issue would be fixed by throwing money at it. It was his playground and he knew it. Unfortunate because they could have done some great things.
would have being wiser to just buy a studio and use it to make games. hell we need Triple A studios that value good writers an aim at making blockbusters like mass effect. but those idiots only want to make a money machine. though from my experience in the long run MMO make less money than a successful RPG or shooter and they are a lot cheaper to make.
@@roiking2740 mobile costs less time to make than MMOs and Console/PC-RPGs and makes even more money. Look how every MMO company is trying to make game apps nowadays.
@@nadijung7503 yeah but those are not games, those are figurative cash cows. and i assume amazon wants to make somewhat legitimate money not be in the "drug" business
Great video, 40 mins felt like 10!
Thanks mate glad you enjoyed!
I don't care where a company comes from. The moment it's proven to be knowingly engaged in racism, sexism, or any form of bigotry without an immediate correction, nothing it produces is relevant to me. No form of art or entertainment is worth degrading the human beings that work to create it, or justifies undermining basic principles of equality. It's disturbing how many major companies are guilty of this.
The fact that "Why would you wanna piss off Amazon, it is not a good idea" is an honest phrase means we already live in a corporate giant dystopia where our lives are nothing but tools at their disposal.
took you long enough to figure out
@@HoaxManTheOne I am referred to as very special after all
The "It's a niche within a niche" line reminded me of the "Always has been" meme. I think that not understanding that and approaching game developement mainly from a marketing perspective is similar to cooking a dish without knowing what your main ingredient is. The result will most likely be a messy failure. :)
They have no clue what the f they are doing, started as survival and changed to mmorpg. That says it all.
Heard it before. I dont care, game lookig better.
@@lordtouchme5735 It is, i'm not saying it isn't
Much of this definitely sounds believable, especially given their external record of repeated failures. However, I also feel we might be falling prey to some confirmation bias, as that paragraph on "sexism" contained zero definitive examples of clear sexism and makes me question what other elements of the article are more so opinionated framing than fact.
Star Citizen is coming along nicely with Lumberyard, which begs the question: is New World suffering a game engine problem or a management problem?
I believe that many of the bug fixes that CIG work on for Star Citizen's version of Lumberyard are passed along to Amazon's gaming division for building New World, I imagine that's usually part of the deal. I could be wrong though as I'm not technologically familiar with the process of it.
Frazzini needs to be removed for someone in their 30's, whom plays videogames, and is a driven businessman; a realist gamer.
oh man noooo. nonononono i dont want to see something bad about this game again i am craving for an mmorpg i am sick to play since 6 years archeage. I think i will even play Archeage on 2k55 if we continue like that
If you like archeage you will need to wait for ashes of creation
"Its exactly like riot games" Except Riot games is successful.
Always loved the irony that Amazon have to products related to tree destruction: Kindle and Lumberyard.
It's like Amazon tried to write books first before selling them and put their business people in charge of telling the writers what to write.
Me beeing a web dev, I'm actually shocked at some things I've seen about this studio. It's actually crazy people with that amount of money can't get things done right.
"Me being a web dev" Is that supposed to mean something? lol
What I've seen so far is equality, good developers and good work environments. One would think that Amazon could be an example, having every resource possible. They're doing everything wrong.
I'll be honest, the cries of sexism piss me off. So a woman gets passed up for a man. Sexism. A man gets passed up for another man. What is that? Business? People move up in a company when they fit in with leadership and play by the rules on top of making the customer happy and padding the bottom line. I've NEVER in my career seen raw examples of sexism. It's patently absurd that the only reason that can possibly exist for a woman to not get a promotion or have mend hired above her is because of sexism. What about all the men that get passed up or have men hired above them? I know! Let's set more quotas. Let's hire X number of women and other other identity group regardless of their ability so that we can look virtuous. Make sure people know that we don't hire them because they are good, but because they are a specific sex, or race. It's stupid and tiring.
Same for Immigrant people, i cant count the number of time when an immigrant pass before another born american or born canadian one because of race ratio workers. Example : ''We need to hire more Spanish and Black people to represent the Quebec" so the exam and the requirement are not required anymore in my opinion, if you would know how many immigrant don t know how to write or speak in english or french for quebec, it s a shame and they still pass in front of other that are born and success at school. Welcome to this S*it world.
More of these long videos. You've become my favorite RUclipsr since I found your channel a couple weeks ago. love the content!
Thanks so much man , I'll hopefully put put a podcast at some point and then have some super long format videos for you
It's 'row
-uh-noke' (Roanoke). I live in VA so that story has been beaten into my head since like Grade School.
The thing is that most major game companies only got as big as they are because they started out with genuine gamers. Enthusiasts that loved the genre and were willing to put their futures where their mouth is by making it their career.
You see this again and again and again. As the original founders of these companies age, they either retire, move on to private projects or get pushed out by marketing people, suits and CEOs that know nothing about gaming, don't understand their customers and only want one thing: a higher return on investment.
They don't understand why some of the stuff the original company did that didn't visibly improve their stock options had to be done the way they were done to keep faith with their audience.
They don't understand why the people working in the company needed to at least know enough about gaming to not produce garbage.
To them, it's all just numbers. Engagement, time spent playing, revenue per active client, monetization opportunities and market share.
They make decisions that make financial sense but cripple the heart of their products and cost them community goodwill and faith.
Tbh I hate people saying that New World was full loot when it was partial loot. You kept your armor and weapons if you weren't tagged as a murderer and that's pretty much all you need. RIP New World :(
Sounded like a decent system. Did the murderer lose all the gear if killed? That would have been a decent reward in risk versus reward.
@@OnlineHipHopTV Murderers were the only ones who were fully lootable. Everyone else only had the items in their inventory drop on death so transporting things was scary but your items in towns weren't able to be looted by anyone so they weight capped the storage. It was fun while it lasted
@@abbyrachel9735 Yes, a shame they changed it.
26:58 Netflix has a very different philosophy from Amazon. Netflix prefers small teams of people that they pay handsomely but fire if they're not amazing, whereas Amazon is a larger company that needs more people and prefers being frugal.
It's so interesting. I would imagine if you had a lot of money, the means to easily acquire talent and not have the obstacle of time/deadlines to worry about, one could create some really nice games but seeing things like this tell us that's there's so much more to it. I always day dream if I were very rich I would start my own game company and remake my favourite games or create the things I like. This shows that this industry really is unique when it comes to making a product, things that cannot be measured like creativity and passion are taken into account.
I think you nailed it. "they think it's easy."
They just can't conceptualize that it's more than just 3d assets and physics. That is literally all video games are to them, because they have no concept of it. They think anyone playing a game needs to be hyper stimulated, and it dosen't matter what you have as long as you jangle it in front of their face loud enough it will get their attention.
Exactly I feel like these companies are after the easy profit from twitch or shitty mobile games, they dont wanna spend the resources and time to properly make and run AAA game, let alone AAA MMO which is the hardest type of game to keep alive...
As someone that plays a lot of star citizen, hearing that the Lumber yard engine is trash really isn't a surprise.
What I don’t understand is why did they make an MMO looter? They clearly wanted to make a finacially successful game that would draw in a large audience, and all they would have to do is take one glance at the game awards and they would see action RPGs with deep story are clearly what’s in. Does anyone at that company do research, or do they assume that if they throw enough money at it, it will have to succeed?
They are Amazon. Why didn’t they just buy out known companies. Give them a blank check and tell them to make whatever they wanted. While buying up exclusivity rights. They would have dominated the market easily.
Star Citizen uses Lumberyard after migrating from CryEngine in 2016. Though their CryEngine version was anyways heavily modified and so is now Lumberyard (since they are effectively the same engine).
I really love these long in-depth videos. Hope to see more if people feel the same way!
It's fascinating to hear how little care and attention Amazon gave to establishing their game development business compared to how seemingly meticulous they were with Amazon Web Services and the Well-Architected Framework, almost night and day different. I'm beginning to wonder if AWS' success was more luck than judgement now... :)
Unless they are making another MMO, Smedley should have been working on New World.
I played the first Alpha of New World and I thought it was really good but I love full loot pvp games. I think they shoulda built on that concept and just changed it to a limited loot system.
Then they coulda released a Theme Park MMO built by Smedleys team that used a ton of resources from New World. The guy built the 2nd and 3rd biggest MMO, ever!
We’ll see but I always felt like the studio culture was “take as long as we can” while they we’re cashing those huge checks.
27:58 I’m obviously super late here, but the reason they wanted to use their own engine is that they’re a part of the AWS org. That means lumberyard, and driving more business to AWS *is* the point of their entire gaming division.
More prime subs would have been a nice bonus, but would pale in comparison to the profits of getting even a few large titles using AWS as their backend, the games were really serving as a giant advertisement for lumberyard and the cool things you could do with it.
Really the whole thing looks like they’re attempting to use the same tactics that worked in the IaaS and PaaS businesses, without recognizing that game development is a fundamentally different business.
Corporations are ruining games and gaming in general, they have been for years now. Who in their right mind thought that a big corporation like Amazon would ever made a game that is actually good and has gamers in mind first? Its just another corporate grab trying to milk money from gamers by making the most basic game they can make and then milk it for all they can
Based
This happened in a small company I used to work for. We got a new director in who knew absolutely nothing about application development. Within 6 months the company was shut down (Id left within a week of the new director appearing coz he was completely useless but my pal stayed until the end, giving my all the juicy gossip oc ;) ).
They don't even have a proper website for their game engine. It took me over a year of watching their engines progress to find their forum because it is a link hidden in the middle of some random page on the site. I pointed out to them that their website was a problem for pulling in devs and they said it would be fixed but over a year later nothing was done. They already had all the content, it would have taken a DAY to make a decent layout and cut and paste the content into a few pages. It just needed a damn organized navigation menu so you could find things.
Its crazy because like me ,everyone seems to voice that they have and keep hope for New World. You would think they would buckle down and do everything they could to meet expectations. Also with pockets like Amazon's New World should be vast, intricate and full of depth.
Ive never heard of anything more corporate than hiring a human being to ask them if what your making is a bit racist.
Apperently Star Citizen uses Lumberyard i'm shocked
I love the fact that Amazons dream hires were people that hadn't had a successful project in years. I can't tell you the last time I heard Smedley's name. I mean if you want to build a great game in 1998 you hire someone from Command and Conquer and John Smedley.
You are on another level man. I can only wish I had the patience, fortitude, and drive to make this kind of video. I learned a lot!
John Smedley? OMG I was hoping I wouldn't have to hear that name again for the rest of my life. Rest in peace SWG, we miss you so much
The more an employer says they want employees to have backbones or not be yes-men , the more they actually want the opposite, they just want the illusion of freeminded employees.
My revolutionary game idea is an Amazon executive spinning on it
This has aged well, given the current launch issues.
Indeed
This was allot more sad to know that the employees who didn't ask for this long term torture
welcome to triple A gaming development, long term torture is the job desctipion.
I just googled Frazz is Cancer and apparently he stepped down "to focus on family" in March 2022.
I have been pronouncing Roanoke wrong my whole life. Great job Kira on providing info on the inner-workings of these Amazon fails
When they let politics change their game, you know the games not going show the specialization free game designers can create
I disagree. There is a huge difference between unnecessary changes in the name of political correctness, and necessary changes to fix a tasteless theme that is going to hinder the games popularity. Creating a game where you are killing only native Americans is about is tasteless and idiotic as making a game in which you kill only white people, or only black people, or only men, or only women. Doing so would not only be asinine, but it would be a financial disaster on release when media got a hold of it and turned it into the latest scandal.
Creativity can largely go unchecked, but there still needsto be certain limitations if you intend to make a product that's going to be successful with a broad audience, which every MMO needs to do by the nature of being an MMO.
@@Warrior_Culture You're the problem. Humans are social political animals, games are none of those. If you want to become a real gamer, you leave that social political crap behind, and focus on fun. I didn't see protests when games were nothing but slaughtering white people..... I assume you're stemming from American politics judging by the game's origin's & your double standard ideals. Leftism political correctness brought us the last of us 2. It was a disaster. Cancel culture hates gamers in general, what makes you think adopting it would be a great idea? Your ideas of a "broad" audience will never be achieved if you're trying be the antagonist to minor details of NPCS. Especially if you're trying to cater to the ideas of racial superiority in minorities. If a game is based in Africa, then yea, you'd most likely be killing black people. If it was based in America, then yea you'd most likely be killing Native Americans. If it was based in Ogrimmar, then yea, you'd most likely be killing orcs. If it was based in ancient Britain, you'd be killing white people. No race is safe, and it's not just race, political correctness attacks a multitude of creative designs that makes a video game appealing. For example, if political correctness had a say in video games in the first place, murder/killing wouldn't be a thing.
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In the end, when politics enter games there's always one common theme in the end. The game ends up flopping, then blame is shifted, usually using race etc. whatever is the opposite spectrum. There's never a sense of self-reasonability from the devs, they expect the audience to love it for their ugly political views, then end up milking their SJW whales, and abandoning the project.
Game used Lumberyard? Oh, Star Citizen....
And yes, indeed, it never releases either.
You're absolutely right! Money doesn't have the ability to create a video game. They can try for as long as they have the money to. But, they're still not game designers. So, they don't understand their audience who may want to play their video game.
There really is a crisis of ignorance of expertise today. People don't know, just HOW MUCH MORE, people with experience and expertise actually know, than them. Scientists, doctors, engineers, developers... laypeople underestimate just how much more these people know. They underestimate how difficult things are based on their ignorance. They think "anyone can do anything". "It's just pushing a few buttons right?" "The sky is the limit!" "Educate yourself." "Come on, we're all just guessing here. Your guess is as good as mine. Don't get pretentious, it's just making video games. HOW HARD CAN IT BE??"