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They made a lot of bad moves after a while but the saints row series and their other games were pretty baller. Sad. Hope the team all find good stable positions after.
To what extent were the og Saintâs Row games and the remake made by the same people? I know Volitionâs name was on both games, but I wonder if a lot of the experienced leaders left Volition after Saints Row 4? Seems like thatâs always the explanation whenever a studioâs games take a sudden dip in quality.
You know itâs pretty likely the most experienced people left long ago. It would explain a whoooooooole lot.
Disappointing, but not surprising given how poorly received the last Saints Row game was and how Embracer made it clear they were going to be closing studios once their Saudi deal fell through. Hopefully, some of the studio can land on their feet, but still, thirty years in the industry just to get shut down like that.
30 years, wow! Pretty big shame to see another studio shut down
Embracer group is terrible. It came with big promises of reviving dormant franchises but itâs just closing studios with not a single game announcement to show for it.
A shame, but the writing has been on the wall for a long time. Volition was never quite the same after the THQ bankruptcy, and that was still several years before Embracer took over.
Descent doesnât get mentioned enough, along with the true gem, Descent: Freespace. Long and storied history there.
Some of the original developers made a modern version with Overload.
There is also Miner Wars 2081, a criminal underrated Descent-like game from the makers of Space Engineers, has great story campaign, destructible environments and a lot of other really nice touches. Failed however on the mulitplayer aspects that were promised in the EarlyAccess thus lots of negative reviews.
I doubt any of the guys that worked on Decent or the Freespace games are part of Volition at this point.
But damn are those games good.
If any game deserves a remake/remaster, itâs Freespace. Doesnât need much, just bring it up to par with Freespace 2 mechanics wise and polish the graphics a bit.
No reason to change anything else.
Not sure if anybody of the original team is left, but Red Faction Armageddon had a little Descent tribute level, though that was already 12 years ago.
Some of the original devs made Overload.
Have you tried FreeSpaceOpen?
A looong ass time ago, I did. I donât think I ever got it working right.
Freespace 2 with a force feedback joystick. When you got a bit too close to a capital shipâs beam weapon and the whole joystick started to shake. One of my most immersive experiences in a game.
I honestly did not know Volition was Parallax.
Wtf, this is the 3rd game studio shutting down this month.
Yep, itâs been a trend all year. My studio got canned back at the end of January. Publisher called us into a studio-wide meeting scheduled during lunch with 1 hour of notice, only to say âThe game you spent 6 years on is canceled and all 150 of you are fired. The media will know in 30 minutes, donât say anything until then if you want to keep a severance package.â (I have since landed on my feet elsewhere.)
These studios are owned by big publishers and generally work for years at a loss. With the costs to borrow increasing, weâre seeing cuts on long-term investments that might not make their money back (like movies and games).
Volition was owned by Embracer, which is now struggling with funding. So anything that isnât a sure bet is effectively canned - and in turn you see these studios shut down left and right, plus big layoffs from studios that are still open.
Thereâs your problem. Hiring an entire team for 6+ years and then cancelling the project. Thatâs hundreds of thousands, if not millions, down the drain.
The current AA / AAA gamedev industry isnât sustainable
Thatâs all game development.
Baldurâs Gate took 6 years to make. Starfield has been in development since 2015 - thatâs 8 years. As gamers demand more, games have grown in scope. The ones that stayed behind have gotten punished.
If a AAA game doesnât have at least 8 hours of story and realistic graphics in the modern era, it gets panned by reviewers. Peopleâs expectations have been raised - and are continuing to be raised - and in turn, that inflates how long it takes to make a game. People will say âWhy should I spend $60 on this game when I can spend $60 on this game that gives me more stuff?â (See: Immortals of Aveum, which itself has been in development for 4-5 years.)
The games that donât take that long are the stale yearly franchises - the FIFAs and CODs of the world. Even COD alternates between studios, with each installment taking 1-3 years. Some franchises (like Pokemon) have multiple teams within a studio that operate independently of one another; Arceus was made by the Letâs Go team, while Scarlet/Violet was made by the Sword/Shield team.
If studios stop betting on long-term projects, youâre going to wind up with stale yearly iterations - or half-baked games rushed out the door to meet a deadline. If itâs true that you say AAA (and even AA!) dev isnât sustainable, then thatâs effectively calling for stale franchises pushing out cheap content for quick cash grabs (see also: Hollywood movies over the last decade).
Itâs also not just games this is happening to. Disney recently canned a 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea show that was ready to go. Thereâs the Scooby-Doo stuff that Max recently pulled before release as well. That stuff isnât my industry; I donât know how long it takes to make those things⌠but I know it costs about as much to make as a AAA game does.
Thereâs probably a reckoning to be had for both industries, but I donât think the correction should be that drastic - and I think it will be bad for people who consume that content.
I wish studios like Bethesda would adopt a more stylistic art style and games that were smaller in scope. I donât need to explore 10 000 planets with realistic graphics. I just want a tight RPG with good world building.
I think this is the crux of the issue. Thereâs been a trend for AAA to push for bigger and more ambitious games, which leads to long, expensive development cycles. But pretty much everyone who is passionate about gaming can point to a game that stuck with them not because it was huge and ambitious, but because it did one thing really well. Games donât have to be huge to be amazing.
With TV/movies that are made for streaming this seems to be some classic Hollywood accounting. They are taking the write-offs in the cancelled content, while keeping subscribers strung along with the promise of new projects. The question is how long until consumers stop buying it.
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Thatâs very sad. I enjoyed Saints Row 4 a lot. Very rare to find such a good meme game. I hope they make a comeback.
Sad, because I was a fan of them and bought all their games from Saintâs Row 1 all the way to Gat out of Hell (although not in chronological order) and got Agents of Mayhem for free somewhere, but think theyâve made some bad moves lately.
I think it all started going downhill from Agents of Mayhem, and them screwing up with the reboot of Saintâs Row was probably the nail in the coffin. I wish theyâd just made Saintâs Row 5 instead, with wacky time travel shenanigans and a more polished set of superpowers.
At the point where they decided to ârebootâ to something old school and grittier (TOO old school, imo) they really didnât get what their fanbase wanted, and what new players whoâd only heard of and experienced Saintâs Row 4 would get excited about.
They couldâve probably taken Saintâs Row up to 6 entries if theyâd just iterated on the formula from 4 and possibly Gat out of Hell (I wouldnât know, I got distracted and didnât play it after I bought it, ironically). Similar to how United Front Games (the developer of Sleeping Dogs) couldâve probably stayed in business if theyâd just made Sleeping Dogs 2 instead of that horrible âfree to playâ multiplayer asset flip of some of the least interesting elements of Sleeping Dogs 1.
Thatâs what happened to Sleeping Dogs? Lame. I loved that game!
I agree with Saints Row. I didnât think new younger audiences would take to a restart of the formula, or that old fans would want to start from scratch so to speak. Meanwhile ramping up from 4 would sate the old fans by somehow getting even more bonkers, and younger gamers would have this insane shit show of a sandbox even if they arenât familiar with the brand (and would probably boost sales of the old ones too.)
Iâve never really understood the hate for Agents of Mayhem. It really captures âplayable action movieâ perfectly. Iâd say my biggest complaint is that it is very poorly balanced such that most characters are unusable at the highest difficulties.
Descent was my jam! Talk about memories from this article.
PlayStation Plus is dropping the recent Saintâs Row reboot on their free games for September.
âDroppingâ as in discontinuing, or âdroppingâ as in releasing?
Releasing.
đ¤ Iâm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
âThe Volition team has proudly created world-class entertainment for fans around the globe for 30 years,â the statement reads, in part.
After that deal fell apart, Embracer warned that it would be forced to undergo a major restructuring program that would impact an unforeseen number of the companyâs then-17,000 employees through March 2024.
Started in 1993 under the name Parallax Software, the studio that would later become Volition first made a name for itself with Descent, a 3D space shooter that innovated by allowing free movement in all directions.
The company was acquired by THQ in 2000, which oversaw the publishing of the destruction-based Red Faction FPS franchise and the start of gonzo crime simulator Saints Row.
When THQ dissolved in 2013, Volition was purchased by Koch Mediaâs Deep Silver publishing arm, which was itself acquired by a quickly growing Embracer in 2018.
The Saints Row and Red Faction franchises will remain as part of Embracerâs Plaion division, according to a statement provided to PC Gamer.
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