the right way is the wrong way twice

however it still fucking sucks to see hardworking talented devs getting fucking spat on. like, xbox put themselves in this position in the first place. buying up the whole industry, being too bloated and slow to make a single good game, burning everyone out, and then firing everyone who got swept up in the commotion. did you know that most of microsoft’s gaming division had been completely funded by minecraft’s profits? like what the FUCK are they doing over there?

what pisses me off is when they say this shit and try to get in everyone’s good graces but then go and do something like lay off all the devs at id who make the idtech engine and have very valuable institutional knowledge that now is just…. lost. not to overshadow all the other layoffs/studio closures, but the id one just hurts a bit extra.

good products come from teams that go out of their way to retain their talent and keep them happy as long as they can. nintendo is a great example, a massive chunk of the zelda botw/totk team have been at nintendo for 20+ years, a game like that can really only happen when everyone has been on the same page working together for a long time. it’s the most obvious thing in the world and yet these massive megacorporations just do not understand it.

halo infinite sucked ass because the entire dev cycle was a constant revolving door of endless 6 month temp contractors who would join the team, spend a few months learning the tools, do a bit of good work, only to get thrown out on the street and replaced with the next batch of contractors, all because microsoft doesn’t wanna pay for fucking health benefits. oh, you wanted to know how this bit of the engine worked? too bad, we laid off the person responsible 4 years ago. such a waste of money and talent all in the name of making number go up rather than making art for art’s sake.