Forum - View topicNEWS: 41% Developers in 2025 GDC Survey Impacted by Layoffs, 11% Experienced Layoffs
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funkfoot
Posts: 94 |
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Unfortunately I think a lot of game developers and studios just have really big egos they can't let go of. No matter how many times their course is proven wrong, they would rather go down with the ship than admit to being wrong or misguided. And they will blame everyone and everything else for their woes. |
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Nekbone
Posts: 68 |
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I like how you tried to sneak "using AI" in there as if games using GenAI like Liar's Bar haven't found massive success and praise in the industry. Seems like gamers are just fine with AI in their games. Maybe the only narrative that needs to be left behind in the past is the anti-AI boogeyman people are still trying to bring into 2025.
To be fair a number of those games like Lost Ark were heavily censored and altered in the west so I'm not surprised people were upset and did not support those releases. I know didn't. No thank you to censorship. I do think China and Korea are on the rise though. And for good reason. I love Japanese games but it feels like they're self censoring themselves a lot lately to pander to the American market. China and Korea seem like they're putting out games Japan would have made 10+ years ago. iI's pretty cool to see Marvel Rivals have sexy character designs which is something I never thought I'd see out of a modern superhero game. I'm a bit surprised Marvel was okay with it given how much they love to avoid that stuff these days but I guess even they have enough sense to let Chinese devs cook. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6477 |
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I like how you think that use of AI in various fields hasn’t gotten considerable and legitimate blowback. Just because you have one success doesn’t mitigate the controversy over use of AI particularly when it comes to potentially replacing human labor. That aside you read way too much into that. Point was there’s a lot of issues plaguing the video game industry that is of far more consequence than the manufactured nontroversy of DEI initiatives.
Are the developers (clear no if you look at the poll in the article) & voice actors okay with it? It’s not the gamer’s work that’s at risk of being cheapened or devalued.
If you’re going to complain about Asian produced games being censored in the west because of “pandering” don’t do so while mentioning China of all places. A country with a well documented history of getting foreign media edited for or outright banned from their market over content, especially anything that portrays the country’s legitimate history in a perceived negative light (it’s nobodies fault but your own you invaded and occupied Tibet). And who for a time banned the sales of foreign produced gaming consoles. Even Japanese media exported to Korea has been censored https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Japanese_media_in_South_Korea
That means you haven’t played a lot of modern superhero games such as the Batman Arkham Trilogy, Marvel vs Capcom 3, Marvel Rivals. That or weirdly expecting them to have something that was never integral to their existence.
None of the female character designs come close to the level of extreme tackiness that 90’s and early 00’s Marvel was infamous for. Of course if Rivals adapts that infamous outfit Invisible Woman wore in the 90’s as is. I’ll rescind this comment Last edited by BadNewsBlues on Fri Jan 24, 2025 2:39 am; edited 2 times in total |
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CrazyIdiots
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I can assure you censorship is not the problem for lost ark. that game in itself is a full time job. Look past the pretty skins and the dynamic gameplay and you realize the game does not respect your time like most live service games.
There's a huge nuance with censorship in games that western gamers do not understand, overanalyze, or overgeneralize. A lot has to do with simultaneous global releases and ensuring the audience gets a "consistent experience" (AKA: the lowest denominator). And other times you have delayed releases where everyone notices differences from one region to another. As BadNewsBlues mentioned, you have overly vocal watchdogs agencies coming from China, Russia (before they canceled themselves), the west, and even the Japanese themselves regulating the content in our games. Any small bit of unfavorable thing and it's back to the drawing board or you miss a huge chunk of sales due to an underserved M/+17 rating or even the threat of having your game pulled from that market. |
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funkfoot
Posts: 94 |
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Your examples of "modern" games are over 15 years old at this point. Harley Quinn in Arkham Asylum looked way different than how she looks in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Modern superhero games are Midnight Sun, Suicide Squad, and the Spider-Man games. Marvel Rivals is an extreme outlier when it comes to character design which is no surprise why it took off so much compared to those entries. The people are hungry for this stuff.
They already added in Sue Storm's Malice skin and a lot of the usual suspects have been complaining about it being too objectifying in addition to Psylocke's Vengeance skin so I'd love to see how that one would go down personally. I hope al those 'tacky' and 'infamous' costumes get inserted in the game at some point since they were some of the most iconic and beloved looks for the characters. I'm guessing you're not a fan of those outfits though given your tone. As for me I'll keep my fingers crossed for Ms. Marvel's Warbird outfit. |
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Bertram
 Posts: 64 |
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Going to be 100% completely honest here: I'm perfectly fine with not being able to type "Tiananmen Square", "Free Tibet" , or "Winnie the Pooh" in a video game chat box if in exchange the character are actually hot and the game is fun. I find that to be a completely acceptable trade to make. I mean, I don't know why I'd be talking about any of that in a video game in the first place so it literally doesn't affect me at all so it's not so much a trade on my part and I'm basically getting stuff for free in this exchange but I digress. I'm not sure if Korea has any hang ups like that but I enjoyed Stellar Blade as well. I'm looking forward to more Chinese and Korean games in the future. I'm not the biggest fan of gacha but stuff like Genshin and Star Rail are great and you can play them F2P anyway if you just want to do the story. I only see China and Korea becoming more and more dominate in the industry as time goes forward and I am perfectly fine with that. I've been impressed so far these past few years. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6477 |
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That’s all well in good the problem is getting into a discussion about censorship in media and then lauding two countries (three if we count North Korea) and possibly more who aren’t above either getting media censored for their market or outright censoring media themselves. Don’t criticize what happens here if you’re not going to keep that same energy for what happens elsewhere, it’s a disingenuous narrative. Not to mention China as mentioned has a habit of throwing their weight around to get stuff censored or banned they don’t like. You might not see the significance of people bringing up things like Tiananmen Square….or like a few years ago some esports players at an Activision/Blizzard competition protesting against China’s influence on Hong Kong law but these things do serve a purpose and like in the latter case it can lead to foreign companies that do business with China punishing people for these protests under very questionable circumstances. Which of course is dumb when the companies doing this constantly talk about how much they support freedom of expression and civil rights and what not and do something that clearly contradicts those stances.
SSKTJL is not a game worth playing though hence why I didn’t count it. But otherwise the Arkham games would still count as modern with Arkham Knight only being 9 years old to City’s 13 and Asylum’s 15.
The sexy character designs are not the thing that drew people to Rivals though. As evidenced by all the “Overwatch Killer” discourse. It’s more of an added bonus from a certain perspective. It’s also funny in light of all the initial apathy that existed towards the game and Hero Shooters which ratcheted up when Concord went out like a punk last year.
I’m mostly indifferent to them don’t love them, don’t violently hate them. But I do agree with general sentiment to a point that the 90’s was a period where DC & Marvel did get carried away with the hypersexualization of their female characters. |
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WoodDude
 Posts: 86 |
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I feel like the comparisons between Marvel Rivals and Concord only highlight how disingenuous people were with Concord's failure. All the industry analysists insisted Concord's failure was due to hero shooter fatigue and nothing to do with the character designs or other elements. Then comes Marvel Rivals and blows up and breaks records and suddenly the idea of people being tired of hero shooters jettisoned out the window. It turns out it was just Concord itself people didn't want. It's very naive to think character designs don't play a part in appeal. It's not always the only factor but even Overwatch learned this a long time ago. I occasionally see some fans complain why the ugly characters in that game get so few skins compared to the usual glut of Mercy, D'va and other attractive characters. But the simple fact is more people are willing to drop money to buy a Legendary Mercy skin than they are for a character like Zarya and Venture so they get very few skins by comparison. Whether people want to admit it or not a character looking appealing is almost certainly a factor for at least certain types of games. |
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Souther
 Posts: 608 |
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While the designs and visuals might've been a factor, I think it's overblown by people on one side because they want it to fit their narrative of "sexy sells" and how attempting to be inclusive is a waste of time because "those sort of people don't buy the games anyway, they're just tourists or complaining". The reasons why Rivals succeeded where Concord didn't was because 1) it's Marvel, 2) the game's free to play straight out of the gate and 3) Concord didn't do enough to distinguish itself not only mechanically, but in narrative and setting in an already overcrowded market. Why would people play an Overwatch clone they'd have to pay for when the original's right there and free to play?
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6477 |
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So we can hope for a sequel to Midnight Suns need that cliffhanger to resolve. With hopefully improved writing and less cheap bullshit.
With a bunch of changes and some broken promises a fraction of the fanbase didn’t want (I’m not in this camp) But yeah |
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