The closure of Monolith Productions, an innovative video game developer, shows what’s wrong with an industry in which game publishers have the ultimate power to shut down projects and fire workers.
The closure of Monolith Productions, an innovative video game developer, shows what’s wrong with an industry in which game publishers have the ultimate power to shut down projects and fire workers.
Reports were they took 8 years because they spent almost 3 of them making a game in a new IP, knowing that WB wouldn’t be happy about it, but it’s what they wanted to make. When that got shut down and forcibly changed into Wonder Woman, most of the talent that had been there the longest decided to just leave.
If they knew that WB wouldn’t like it but still did it anyway, thats honestly on them. They were under WB, they gotta follow their rules. If you want to.make your own thing, dont be owned by a parent company. Leave and make your own studio. Don’t waste your time for years just to leave in the end, thats stupid.
The article didn’t speculate, but that may have been the point. “We’re miserable only making games out of WB movie properties, so you’ll let this next one through, or we’re gone, and someone else will surely have us instead.”
Problem with that is that WB likely owns the IP that they were working on and creating while they were owned or working under a studio owned by WB. WB owns all that work that these developers could have kept for their new studio if they had formed one. Now they have to start over again, meaning all that time they worked on it was wasted. They can’t use it, and WB sure isn’t going to.
I can tell you that no professional (non indie) gamedev cares about that. We know damn well we have no rights over the stuff we make for our overlords.
Creatives absolutely care about art they spend years making, professional or not. They definitely don’t feel happy about wasting all that time for something they can no longer work on.
Care might not have been the right word. I care about my code too, but we know our work belongs to the company so we don’t get too attached. The thing that hurts the most with these layoffs is stopping working with the people (or entire teams) you had a good work relationship with, and, of course, suddenly being out of work.
Thats true, but art and code are almost completely different. Nobody puts in their personal emotions into the code they write. Nobody feels personally attached to that code, as there is no personal connection to it other than “I wrote it.”
That’s not true of art. The parts of a game that are not mechanical (mechanical being code, gameplay design, the “ugly” stuff, if you will) are often created by people that put their own personal emotions, feelings, and other such things into the art. It has a part of them, often deeply personal that perhaps nobody else could understand except for them, and thus having to let that go can be incredibly challenging. Though a professional artist accepts that this may happen someday with their work, when push comes to shove it is generally not easy for them to completely walk away from it. It becomes effectively, from an emotional standpoint, like their child.
I am not saying it hurts more or less than no longer working with someone else, only that the artists that created the art are definitely not feeling good about having to walk away from it and never being able to work on it again.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Rules
1. Submissions have to be related to games
Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.
This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.
2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.
We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.
3. No excessive self-promotion
Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.
This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.
4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you’re submitting before posting to see if it’s already been posted.
We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.
5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW
Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.
No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.
6. No linking to piracy
Don’t share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.
We don’t want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.
Reports were they took 8 years because they spent almost 3 of them making a game in a new IP, knowing that WB wouldn’t be happy about it, but it’s what they wanted to make. When that got shut down and forcibly changed into Wonder Woman, most of the talent that had been there the longest decided to just leave.
If they knew that WB wouldn’t like it but still did it anyway, thats honestly on them. They were under WB, they gotta follow their rules. If you want to.make your own thing, dont be owned by a parent company. Leave and make your own studio. Don’t waste your time for years just to leave in the end, thats stupid.
The article didn’t speculate, but that may have been the point. “We’re miserable only making games out of WB movie properties, so you’ll let this next one through, or we’re gone, and someone else will surely have us instead.”
Problem with that is that WB likely owns the IP that they were working on and creating while they were owned or working under a studio owned by WB. WB owns all that work that these developers could have kept for their new studio if they had formed one. Now they have to start over again, meaning all that time they worked on it was wasted. They can’t use it, and WB sure isn’t going to.
I can tell you that no professional (non indie) gamedev cares about that. We know damn well we have no rights over the stuff we make for our overlords.
Creatives absolutely care about art they spend years making, professional or not. They definitely don’t feel happy about wasting all that time for something they can no longer work on.
Care might not have been the right word. I care about my code too, but we know our work belongs to the company so we don’t get too attached. The thing that hurts the most with these layoffs is stopping working with the people (or entire teams) you had a good work relationship with, and, of course, suddenly being out of work.
Thats true, but art and code are almost completely different. Nobody puts in their personal emotions into the code they write. Nobody feels personally attached to that code, as there is no personal connection to it other than “I wrote it.”
That’s not true of art. The parts of a game that are not mechanical (mechanical being code, gameplay design, the “ugly” stuff, if you will) are often created by people that put their own personal emotions, feelings, and other such things into the art. It has a part of them, often deeply personal that perhaps nobody else could understand except for them, and thus having to let that go can be incredibly challenging. Though a professional artist accepts that this may happen someday with their work, when push comes to shove it is generally not easy for them to completely walk away from it. It becomes effectively, from an emotional standpoint, like their child.
I am not saying it hurts more or less than no longer working with someone else, only that the artists that created the art are definitely not feeling good about having to walk away from it and never being able to work on it again.
It’s the same with code. It involves more basic logic than art but it’s still creative work imo. Hell, there’s even artistic forms of coding.
So why didn’t the guys get back together. Make their own studio and release the game they were working on by themselves?
And how does a subdivision of a developer not know what their company is doing? I find it hard to believe honestly.
According to Jason Schreier, most did go on to form a new studio at EA.