Posts

How Many Years Does It Take To Develop A AAA Game?

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If you said “6-7”, you’d be right, and also just completely fucking cooked.  Good morning everyone. A rare occasion is upon us: I’ve somehow been inspired to write two posts in the same month. Whether that means next month’s entry is doomed remains to be seen, but given that it’s the holiday season, I may be a little occupied anyway. On Sunday night, I ended up in a lengthy conversation about the current state of AAA games and the time it takes to make them. It all started with a post from someone annoyed that Naughty Dog’s upcoming Intergalactic is only the studio’s second release this generation, and that this is, apparently, some kind of scandal. We’re in an unusual moment for gaming. We’ve never had such steady access to great new releases, but we’ve also never had to wait this long for them. This year alone we’ve had Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 , Hollow Knight: Silksong , Hades II , Death Stranding 2 , and plenty of others proving the post-COVID drought is finally behind us. ...
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Sony: New Frontiers

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  I imagine it’s got to be a hell of a week to be Sony Interactive Entertainment. To be honest, it’s more like it’s been a hell of a decade. While there’s easily 5-10 years of rather unprecedented shifts in the gaming landscape that has concerned Playstation directly, I want to zoom in and focus on what’s happened specifically in the last week. It’s been unusually loud at SIE; even when factoring in that they’re quite vocal this time of year, this week alone we’ve had a new (and unique) State of Play from and largely concerning Japan, we’ve had a new competitor rise valiantly from the ashes of Xbox hardware in Valve’s Steam Machine, and, perhaps most controversially, the announcement of not one, but two mobile games made out of Sony IPs that will not be releasing on their main hardware in Ratchet & Clank: Ranger Rumble and Horizon: Steel Frontiers . I don’t want this to be an SIE newsletter, I’m much more interested in looking at the larger implications for SIE moving forwar...
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Ghost of Yotei: Bodies, Bullets, and Beautiful Backdrops.

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  Good morning. As of writing this I'm not quite done with my first play through of Sucker Punch Production's Ghost of Yotei; but much like the titular "Yotei Six", I fear the end is near. This is not a narrative spoiler discussion, but it will discuss mechanics. Five years ago Sucker Punch reestablished itself as a Playstation Studios powerhouse with its third major franchise (fourth, if you count the N64's solo release, Rocket: Robot on Wheels in 1999) , Ghost of Tsushima . While Tsushima was widely lauded for its perfect approach to the open world formula, it did not attempt to reinvent the wheel. The combat was excellent; fast, visceral, and easy-to-pick-up-yet-hard-to-master. The attention to detail with respect to Japan's history was not only praised by players, but by the people of Japan, its historians, and even government officials, for being accurate and respectful, while showcasing the surrealist beauty of the archipelago's 13th century. The s...
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