TGO Daily | January 21, 2021 | Among Us Dev Update
January 21, 2021
In The News
Among Us Update
The Among Us development team has provided a blog post update of what’s going on with the game.
They started by reiterating some of their big announcements — a new map arriving in early 2021, the Nintendo Switch release, the upcoming Xbox console release, their Game Awards, etc.
What followed was a more interesting look at the behind-the-scenes of the game. As I’m sure you know, Among Us got extremely popular late last year, and they’re approaching that growth quite smartly. Instead of rushing things out as fast as possible, they’re taking a more methodical and long-term development process:
“…not only did we need to switch back to working on Among Us after thinking it was done, but we also needed to set ourselves up more sustainably to work on the game. We had to spend 2 months just restructuring, figuring out new processes, and getting external partners to help us manage on board.”
And in response to the people who ask why they can’t just hire more people to make it happen faster:
Adding more people doesn’t automatically make development go faster – it slows it down and can cause a ton of issues if we don’t do it properly…Hiring, training, onboarding, possible interpersonal disputes, artistic differences, code legibility, legal/privacy concerns, and an infinite number of other problems can arise.”
For an indie studio that didn’t expect to explode in growth the way they have, this is the smartest way to ensure they are set for the future. There’s no guarantee that they’ll be able to sustain themselves over the next few years, especially not off one game.
EU Fines Multiple Companies
Source: gamesindustry.biz
The European Commission has fined six different gaming companies for violating antitrust rules in the EU. More specifically, they were accused of geo-blocking around 100 games between 2010 and 2015. The six companies are Valve, Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media, and ZeniMax, who were fined a combined €7.8 million.
“Geo-blocking” is the practice of providing game keys that can only be activated in certain regions. The EU has something called Single Market which guarantees the free movement of goods between the countries that are a part of it.
Valve was hit hardest because they did not cooperate with the Commission, taking a €1.6 million fine. The rest had their fines reduced between 10-15% for cooperating.
I’m not knowledgeable enough to know the impact of this in the broader context, but I will note that the fines are relatively low to how much companies like Valve and Bandai Namco make in a year. Billion dollar companies would consider them less than a slap on the wrist.
Takaya Imamura Retires
Nintendo veteran Takaya Imamura is retiring after 32 years with the company.
According to Polygon, Imamura was “an artist who worked with Shigeru Miyamoto in the creation of iconic Nintendo games Star Fox, F-Zero, and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask” He designed the characters in Star Fox, and most famously designed Tingle from Zelda, who serves as comedic relief in a lot of Nintendo games these days.
Assassin’s Creed Gets a Manga
Popular Assassin’s Creed character Shao Jun is getting her own manga series, which will be released on February 16th. The character has previously appeared in Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China, which was a spin-off of the main series.
The manga is called “Assassin’s Creed: Blade of Shao Jun” and has already been released in Japan and France — so this is the English release.
The Grab-Bag
Hitman 3 also has a VR mode. Looks like it has its ups and downs like any VR project, but I can’t wait to actually try this one out myself once it’s no longer a PlayStation exclusive.
Fall Guys will NOT be on the Xbox Game Pass. Looks like its in the works at some point though, as the mistake originated from an official account.
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