Corporate meddling gets blamed for ruining things all the time but the truth few want to admit is that some amount of meddling is necessary.
Look at all the big flops Xbox has released over the last year - Redfall being a prime example. We kept hearing how Microsoft was happy to leave those studios to it, to give them the time and resources they needed and they still released dog shit.
When it comes to AAA, it’s so expensive you need some amount of corporate input to make sure people will actually buy the damn game.
Of course there’s extremes to both sides - pretty much anything Activision ever touched was ground to a lifeless micro transaction shell.
But everything we know about concord is trekking6 us that the team itself, including the big bosses, were overly positive internally. Nobody had the balls to interfere.
If they had just one exec who was willing to piss the entire team off, maybe the result would be different.
The way I see it meddling by incompetent corporations in competent teams is bad, meddling by incompetent corporations in incompetent teams probably makes something even worse, meddling by competent corporations in incompetent teams probably doesn’t nearly have enough influence to make something actually good and only meddling by competent corporations in competent teams might actually have a chance of helping at all.
I don’t think you can claim that the team behind concord is incompetent. I think they delivered something that nobody wanted but they delivered that competently.
I agree that incompetence generally doesn’t end up with a good product but sometimes even good competence all around doesn’t win. Sometimes it really is luck and timing.
Redfall being a prime example. We kept hearing how Microsoft was happy to leave those studios to it, to give them the time and resources they needed and they still released dog shit.
Yeah, the studio that developed Prey (a dumbass name that zenimax forced them to use) went on to develop Redfall after Microsoft bought them.
Clearly they were a bunch of idiots before the acquisition who had no idea what they were doing, and the only problem afterward was that Microsoft didn’t boss them around enough.
Thats not the entire story is it? How often is it corporate meddling?
Corporate meddling gets blamed for ruining things all the time but the truth few want to admit is that some amount of meddling is necessary.
Look at all the big flops Xbox has released over the last year - Redfall being a prime example. We kept hearing how Microsoft was happy to leave those studios to it, to give them the time and resources they needed and they still released dog shit.
When it comes to AAA, it’s so expensive you need some amount of corporate input to make sure people will actually buy the damn game.
Of course there’s extremes to both sides - pretty much anything Activision ever touched was ground to a lifeless micro transaction shell.
But everything we know about concord is trekking6 us that the team itself, including the big bosses, were overly positive internally. Nobody had the balls to interfere.
If they had just one exec who was willing to piss the entire team off, maybe the result would be different.
The way I see it meddling by incompetent corporations in competent teams is bad, meddling by incompetent corporations in incompetent teams probably makes something even worse, meddling by competent corporations in incompetent teams probably doesn’t nearly have enough influence to make something actually good and only meddling by competent corporations in competent teams might actually have a chance of helping at all.
I don’t think you can claim that the team behind concord is incompetent. I think they delivered something that nobody wanted but they delivered that competently.
I agree that incompetence generally doesn’t end up with a good product but sometimes even good competence all around doesn’t win. Sometimes it really is luck and timing.
Yeah, the studio that developed Prey (a dumbass name that zenimax forced them to use) went on to develop Redfall after Microsoft bought them.
Clearly they were a bunch of idiots before the acquisition who had no idea what they were doing, and the only problem afterward was that Microsoft didn’t boss them around enough.