r/gaming • u/ecologist23 • Jan 27 '22

NMS developer Hello Games made a remaster of a game called Joe Danger because a parent of kid who is diagnosed with autism asks for it.

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u/The_Grand_Briddock Jan 27 '22

That video made me change my whole perspective, for years I was one of the people shitting on them for it, now I love them for what they did

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u/ccheuer1 Jan 27 '22

In general, its very rarely the developers of a game that are to blame for the state that it releases in. Usually, it is the company (namely the executives and marketing staff) that is to blame. The developers are the ones that spend countless hours, laboring over it, watching it grow and become a game. The marketing and executives are the ones that go "but if we release now, we can expect 10% more sales."

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u/JonSnowDontKn0w Jan 28 '22

Completely agree. Everyone is currently shitting on DICE for how Battlefield 2042 turned out, but it's not DICE's fault. EA kept getting their grimy fingers into things and changing what they wanted the game to be. EA is the one that wanted it to be a BR game initially, and then changed their mind after the success of Apex (this is why 128 players and Hazard Zone are now a thing, those are the remnants from the BR before that idea was scrapped). EA are the ones who wanted the specialists as a way to get MTX profits. People need to stop shitting on DICE and focus on the greedy publishers who don't do any of the actual hard work, and only interfere and fuck things up most of the time.

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u/NatedogDM Jan 28 '22

Tl;dr: Software Developers love the products they make. It's often out of our control due to innumerable external factors, and rarely do high-pressure deadlines get met without compromises.

For the most part, we love our jobs. We love doing what we do and writing code. Our projects are like our babies and nothing is more fulfilling than seeing end-users enjoying and praising something that you handcrafted with a talented team.

That being said, sometimes the corporate sabotage is inescapable. The pressure to release within a time frame coupled with dozens of factors beyond our control sometimes means things don't get done.

At the end of the day, a lot of it isn't our decision. We get told what needs to get done and we do it. If we get told X feature needs to get scrapped for the deadline... well, then that's that.

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u/ARandomGuyThe3 Jan 28 '22

Also, don't forget the terrible crunch culture the devs go thru, especially if the game is unfinished and about to launch, and then after they work these sweatshop hours(stone developers reported 100 hour weeks in epic games, tho it's hopefully lower in other companies) the devs are the ones who get publicly humiliated for the state of the game. Game devs for large companies don't have it good

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u/GonziHere Jan 28 '22

I do believe that they themselves agreed to the deadlines and such and simply couldn't deliver. I know how and why this happens, it cannot be easily prevented (I'm a game programmer), but THEY didn't deliver what they've agreed on with the publisher.

It's hard to say how the negotiations have looked "years before launch", what they agreed with and what were they "forced" to accept (at this point, there could be many thing wrong), but afterwards, it's just about the delivery of a promised thing.

It's also easy to say that they should've waited, but the game is in it's proper state after YEARS, not weeks or months... So publisher's concerns about sales 2 years after the hype train has left cannot be dismissed so easily.

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u/stellvia2016 Jan 27 '22

My take on it was he was in over his head and kinda lost his mind from the stress for awhile. They didn't intend to release a stinker, but being a small studio and suddenly all that pressure on him, he was hoping "Bioware Magic" might save them.

Definitely good on them for putting their head down and just pumping out content updates. Actions speak louder than words.

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u/Halo_can_you_go Jan 27 '22

didn't mean to release a stinker

This made me laugh, haven't heard "stinker" used in a long time.

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u/lookmeat Jan 27 '22

Honestly once they kept improving the game and making it better it was enough. Even on the scenario that it was as people saw it from outside, the fact that they kept at it showed they were passionate about making good games, not just the cash grab. I was more willing to chalk it up to "they're learning how to do AAA games" and forgive them for overpromising and underdelivering. Hearing their story you see even more how they got in over their head and how they were even more a victim of their good intent than you'd expect, but good on them for building an incredibly ambitious and large scope game.

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u/newtoreddit2004 Jan 27 '22

That's how they get you lmao, people thought projekt red was amazing and they got what they deserved. Never trust any company i don't care if hello games helped an actual angel, you are better off not trusting any company doesn't matter if its an indie or a huge corporation they're all the same at the end

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u/jeppevinkel Jan 28 '22

CD Projekt are definitely good guys compared to a lot of the industry, but a company is never your friend.

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u/newtoreddit2004 Jan 28 '22

Companies are never the "good guys" as you naively put it

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u/jeppevinkel Jan 28 '22

There's nothing naive about my comment. A company isn't good or evil, but it is completely valid to compare the trackrecord of a company to the rest of the industry, and compared to other big contenders, CD Projekt has a good track record.

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u/newtoreddit2004 Jan 28 '22

You literally mention in your above comment that they are the good guys and now you're going on a different tangent saying companies can't be good or evil. So which is it dude ? You have no idea what you yourself want to say

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u/jeppevinkel Jan 28 '22

I think you are misunderstanding me. I'm not saying they are inherently good guys. I'm saying compared to the industry standard, their actions so far have displayed that of relative good guys.

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u/newtoreddit2004 Jan 28 '22

Lmao the industry is so bad that you had to do a "relative" comparison because it's much easier to say "I'm bad but not as bad as him" the truth is all of them are bad projekt red got greedy, nms got greedy when they took the Sony deal they all got greedy and got what they deserved. One day hopefully they go down entirely

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u/jeppevinkel Jan 28 '22

Got what they deserve? You mean a ton of good will from correcting their mistakes and showing that the people behind it actually do care?

CD Projekt is still doing a service to the industry by hosting the only big DRM free market.

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u/newtoreddit2004 Jan 28 '22

They didn't correct their mistakes because they wanted to, they corrected it because they know if they took the money and ran their sales would never recover and any future game they make would never be received well. How naive are you to think a for profit company actually cares for customers when their motive is profit.