The entertainment industry is facing a future where projects are either low-cost indie endeavors or high-budget mega-productions, squeezing out medium-sized projects.
Layoffs in the industry, exemplified by the struggles of “Immortals of Aveum” developer Ascendant Studios, highlight the challenges faced by studios.
The game’s failure was attributed to overscoping, lack of market appeal, and a missing multiplayer component.
About 50% of the top 20 best selling games in NPD last year were single player.
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“At a high level, Immortals was massively overscoped for a studio’s debut project,” a former Ascendant employee said.
“The development cost was around $85 million, and I think EA kicked in $40 million for marketing and distribution.”
“Sure, there was some serious talent on the development team, but trying to make a AAA single-player shooter in today’s market was a truly awful idea, especially since it was a new IP that was also trying to leverage Unreal Engine 5,” they said.
“What ended up launching was a bloated, repetitive campaign that was far too long.”
The shift towards extremes in project sizes threatens the diversity and sustainability of the industry, impacting both consumers and workers.
“No one bought it,” another employee said.
“It’s not a sequel or a remake, it doesn’t take 400 hours to beat, has zero microtransactions, no pointless open world grinding,” the employee added. “Although not everyone loved it, it reviewed pretty well, currently sitting at a 74 on Open Critic and a Mostly Positive on Steam. No one bought it.”
“There’s plenty of layoffs due to gross mismanagement and greed (looking at you Embracer), but there’s also plenty that happen because this is a stupidly volatile market that requires mountains of capital to participate in at a professional studio level,” another employee said.
“For all the things Ascendant did right (paying people well, an entirely remote studio, little overtime until the end, chill environment with lots of freedom to grow, respecting QA, hiring juniors, etc.), it did not work out.”
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