TGO Daily | February 1, 2021 | Bloomberg on Amazon Game Studios
February 1, 2021
Today is dedicated to just one story: Amazon Game Studios. Not just because there is a lot to say about it, but because there wasn’t much else that happened this weekend.
February looks like it’s going to be a great month for gaming! We’ve got a bunch of Nioh remasters on the 5th. I’m excited for Little Nightmares 2 on the 11th — if it’s anything like the first game it will be lots of fun. Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury on the 12th. The English release of Persona 5 Strikers on the 23rd. And then Bravely Default 2 on the 26th! Woohoo!
See you tomorrow :)
Adrian
In The News
Amazon Game Studios Report
Bloomberg has released an article provide an inside look at Amazon Game Studios, and why it has gone so poorly. (The article is quite long and I won’t be able to cover it all, feel free to give it a read yourself if it you want the full thing).
Despite spending half a billion dollars per year on developing video games, Amazon has largely been a failure. They’ve released a few flops, they’ve cancelled tons of games that never saw the light of day, and they churn an incredible number of high profile employees.
The Bloomberg article puts most of the blame on one man: Mike Frazzini, who is the head of gaming at Amazon. He was given the orders by Bezos himself to establish the most ambitious games ever created, with the hopes of establishing multi-billion dollar franchises like Call of Duty. It would also serve as another attraction for people to purchase Amazon Prime.
Frazzini hired dozens of veteran game developers to lead these projects, who were offered lucrative contracts and flexible deadlines (a rarity for the industry). Almost all of them have left the company. One reason was because of the all too common “bro culture” which was established:
…women often weren’t given the same opportunities as men, former employees say. Four female game developers say their worst experiences of sexism in the industry were at Amazon.
Frazzini also just isn’t suited to run a game studio. He is inexperienced, which showed during project reviews and his obsession with chasing trends. He demanded that Amazon’s games were built in a custom engine, which turned out to be a huge pitfall of development. Most of his decisions are data driven, when game development relies heavily on the creative process. It’s been made clear by employees that he’s not the right person for the job.
Bloomberg makes a good point about Amazon though: they’re doing lots of things and seeing what sticks. Some of the games they have in development apparently have the chance to live up to their ambition, unlike some of the other games they’ve attempted. They have Twitch. Now they’ve added Luna — the game streaming service that rivals Stadia and xCloud.
In many ways, the approach to games mirrors the one that eventually led Amazon to some success in Hollywood. It tried a bunch of different things—develop a streaming service, set up a studio, produce TVs and films, build a set-top box—and selected an Amazon insider…to run it.
[They] cemented Amazon Prime Video as an important part of the company’s business strategy. People sign up for Prime to watch The Boys, and they buy more stuff on Amazon.
Amazon plans on releasing their game New World this spring, which is an MMO that is apparently at the Bezos scale that Crucible could not meet before it shut down. Apparently employees and streamers are more excited about this game than many of the other projects, but we’ll see how it turns out.
The Grab-Bag
The Steam Game Festival begins on February 3rd. Lots of demos and livestreams, these are always fun!
Destiny 2 “3-peeking” is being addressed. It’s a tough problem to fix, so they’ll need to be creative with a solution.
The Medium recoups development costs in less than a week. Happy for Bloober Team — horror fans tend to enjoy their games even if they aren’t critically super well received.
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