Games have the advantage on movies with sequels because new hardware can still enable significant changes in the experience. Even with XB1/PS4 we can see some of these changes already, and the upcoming games seem to put a much heavier focus on persistent online worlds and always connected gameplay. That's something Gears has yet to do as well, giving it a new life on a nextgen system.
MS acquires rights to Gears of War franchise; Black Tusk Studios to take over series
- Thread starter AlNom
- Start date
That's true, if Horde Mode on Xbox One can make you feel like you're actually fighting a horde, that might find traction. I think the biggest challenge is the aesthetic of the series has not aged well, and the lore behind the series has always felt so inconsequential and built around the gameplay systems that I can't imagine how they expand the world to accommodate meaningful new narratives.
D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
Swell.
Almost as if they simply couldn't convince Epic to do a sequel and MS panicked. Oh well.
And now they have a whole dev team working against their will on a dying IP.
Well, I guess Microsoft must find places where to spend that $1B they promised they would spend..
Well, we don't know if the folks there are wholly against it as they are taking on a previously popular IP. I can see how the folks higher up the chain would care more though (the folks in charge of what the studio is doing). It also depends on how much freedom they have and what exactly their own IP was supposed to be.
After Gears 3, they could do pretty much anything tbh. A prequel might be safer, although somewhat restricting - and hopefully they recognize that after how Judgment turned out.
After Gears 3, they could do pretty much anything tbh. A prequel might be safer, although somewhat restricting - and hopefully they recognize that after how Judgment turned out.
I think that they were conscious Epic wasn't interested in Gears anymore, that's why Cliffy B. decided to leave Epic -his own words-.
According to Phil Spencer, new IPs are critical for Xbox One's success. And compared some of the new, "secret" games they are working on, to Halo and its scale, influence and potential.
http://www.totalxbox.com/70267/cert...me-scale-and-potential-as-halo-hints-spencer/
Sure. On the other hand, the lateness of it all kind of looks like MS got caught with their pants down and didn't know who else to put to work on Gears. It looks different from say... MS staffing up 343i specifically for Halo when they knew Bungie was done with them (circa 2007, well in advance of Bungie's last contractual Halo title).
Unless there's some other details we don't know about surrounding BT's formation: "oh btw, you might be told to make something else at last second, but work on something before we finalize something that's hush hush." *cough*
*shrug*
edit:
Of course, BT formation has been going on for a while (2012), but they originally mentioned, "working on a new franchise that it hopes will become "the next Halo."" Not quite a studio you'd join thinking to be working on an existing franchise, although I suppose it might be debatable whether it rivals Halo per se ($1B vs $3.4B, 22M vs 50M, cartoons/series/film shorts etc.), but I digress.
I'd be pretty pissed. You've been working on your own IP, which you'll be 100% excited about as it'll be exactly what you want. You're working on the style and setting, which wasn't space marines, and then you're handed a game that's pretty shallow - archetypal macho space marines swearin' and shootin'. Even if given artistic freedom to adapt the franchise to their own tastes/interests, it'll be a huge step back from doing their own thing. And if they are instructed to churn out more brainless space-marine shooting without artistic liberties, it'd be stifling.
Not that I'm against brainless space marine shooting, but if that's not what floats Black Tusk's boat, and their preview was definitely looking more sophisticated than that, it has to be a kick in the teeth.
steveOrino
Regular
It definitely hurts when trying to retain the higher end talent within the company. Creatively, people will get burned out churning the same thing over and over again especially if you are forced to by your employer.
On the other hand there's the opportunity to turn this into something else and making it your own. 343 certainly didn't shy away from bringing their own interpretation of both the visuals and the storyline (they did keep most of the gameplay though).
Then again I never really had a chance to put significant effort into an IP of our own, it's always been well established franchises and their compromises, so who knows...
Then again I never really had a chance to put significant effort into an IP of our own, it's always been well established franchises and their compromises, so who knows...
Bigus Dickus
Regular
I swear, MS could hand out gold coins, free consoles, and announce there are actually 24CU and twice the bandwidth in the Xb1 now enabled by a new firmware having worked out some bugs... and certain people here would still be talking about how bad it makes MS look and how it would contribute to their doom. Lol!
I suppose BT might have a few people with perhaps temporarily bent egos, but honestly... MS has handed them a lock moneymaker, which will give them resources they wouldn't have had. It isn't as if their own IP is suddenly dead, low level deleted for all eternity. They have the chance to build their name and gain recognition on a far larger scale with gamers, which could only help with any future new IP release.
I'm having a hard time seeing how this can be bad for either BT or MS. But please, don't let me interrupt the latest round of fashionable MS bashing and doom predicting.
I suppose BT might have a few people with perhaps temporarily bent egos, but honestly... MS has handed them a lock moneymaker, which will give them resources they wouldn't have had. It isn't as if their own IP is suddenly dead, low level deleted for all eternity. They have the chance to build their name and gain recognition on a far larger scale with gamers, which could only help with any future new IP release.
I'm having a hard time seeing how this can be bad for either BT or MS. But please, don't let me interrupt the latest round of fashionable MS bashing and doom predicting.
shredenvain
Regular
Amen
steveOrino
Regular
Bring your tin foil hat conspiracies to some other discussion board. Not everyone is going to say nice things about your favorite corporation all the time.
A lot of people on GAF actually did attack the GPU upclock as a bad thing. In the thread that announced it, many were saying all sorts of negative things including mostly that it showed MS was in total disarray to be changing the clocks so late in the game. As well as lots of "well, RROD 2.0 on the way" type trolls.
So yes, free additional performance was indeed attacked as bad
Are you a creative person? Pretty much every artist or artistic type I know wants to create their own work rather than create someone else's - it's not about the money. Now within that you'll have artists happy to work around a design remit and bring their own touch to it, but in a developer of 100 artists and creative types who were already busy on their own project (and depending on company structure, even the lowliest member may have contributions being made), being offered to do something that's not theirs for money probably doesn't interest them anywhere near as much. It'd go against why these indies are set up in the first place (established dev has an idea for a game he can't create in his existing company so branches out)
That's nothing to do with MS's PR or current attitudes towards them or XB1; it's just an observation about the creative industries and what people in them are really wanting.
The MS PR bit comes in when they say this isn't anything unexpected and BT were only working on a tech demo. That appears to be untrue given the evidence presented. Here's another piece...
So, your protestations are falling on deaf ears where I'm concerned. Either argue* that BT weren't particularly involved in their own project and would much rather milk a cash cow, or just accept a different, independent view to yours. And similarly, explain how the former details and interviews about BT's project point to it being an irrelevant side-project as they were waiting to be handed something big to work on rather than using the comfortable, undebatable catch-all 'all criticism of MS is void because it's just social momentum without justification'.
*Another possible argument is that what Black Tusk was doing was a bit crap and MS shelved it to put them onto a known franchise with a chance to make some money from the studio. Or maybe too grandiose to get decent returns within a reasonable timeline - MS may be unlike Sony in letting studios have unlimited time to create something and just burn money.
We've been making a living for a decade from working on other people's IP.
This is a necessity to build up the studio to a level where we can actually take on a project of our own, like an animated feature. No-one's gonna hand us the money to buy hundreds of workstations and software and furniture and hire the people and develop the tools; but we were able to grow to 10 times the size on making these game trailers and cinematics. We've been pretty content with this choice.
Also, if we're to do our own IP, we'll then own the rights and actually have a percentage of the profit, instead of a fixed price. So your own IP is actually also about the money
BT's advantage in this situation is that it's much harder to flop on your first title if you already have an established fan base. It's not all bad and I doubt too many people would quit because of this. But I've already seen FB friends living in Vancouver (not working at BT though) expressing happiness about the news.
Let me just remind you here about how Ryse was simply taken from Crytek Budapest (which lead to them scaling back to mobile games and firing half the crew) and then mostly re-started at the main studio.
Not that I have any actual info on what BT was doing and what it was like, so I'm not trying to suggest that there were any problems! Only pointing out that MS is a strict boss.
BT are owned by MS. They already had investment to work on their own title. They already had enough to support 55 employees (as per article) and were looking to expand prior to the Gears announcement. Money wasn't an issue for them, nor was reputation to try and attract investment.We've been making a living for a decade from working on other people's IP.
This is a necessity to build up the studio to a level where we can actually take on a project of our own, like an animated feature. No-one's gonna hand us the money to buy hundreds of workstations and software and furniture and hire the people and develop the tools; but we were able to grow to 10 times the size on making these game trailers and cinematics. We've been pretty content with this choice.
Also, if we're to do our own IP, we'll then own the rights and actually have a percentage of the profit, instead of a fixed price. So your own IP is actually also about the money
I doubt anyone would quit outright because their livelihoods depend on it! That'd be crazy. But I doubt many are happy, unless what they were working on sucked. It could be that the original vision wasn't great, people were working there just for the employment, and a change to Gears will be seen as a welcome relief from the monster they were making. I don't know how common it is for artists in a developer to adopt full artistic responsibility for their work rather than just work on it dispassionately to pay the bills; perhaps that's way more common than I appreciate, and the folk at BT don't give a rat's arse what they're working on as long as it pays the bills and can meet public approval?
Similar threads
