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> Games are made by people and people join and leave studios. I came to this conclusion years ago when I was interested in the 'spiritual successor' thing. The
by theandrewbailey 8y ago
> Games are made by people and people join and leave studios.
I came to this conclusion years ago when I was interested in the 'spiritual successor' thing. The same person/people make vaguely similar games that would have been sequels, but aren't due to IP laws. Examples:
1. Chris Taylor (made Total Annihilation, then Supreme Commander)
2. Chris Roberts (made Wing Commander, then Starlancer/Freelancer, now Star Citizen)
3. Ken Levine (made System Shock, then BioShock)
(I'm not clear on the exact names, but when companies break up, the same thing happens):
4. Former Blizzard North people made Hellgate London and Torchlight
5. Former Lucas Arts people founded Double Fine and Telltale
6. Former Interplay people founded Inexile and Obsidian
7. Former Rare people made Yooka Laylee
It's kind of like watching several mutations and species compete and die out, then resurrect. It's a shame that people often lose jobs in the process, but I think it helps make better games in the end.
- manfredo 8y agoThe analogy of mutations and species I think is really good. The best games aren't just made, they are evolved. The best games are often built by teams leveraging past experience, and probably also extending the technology they built previously to support newer features. It's probably while sequels and series are so prevalent in games. It's often much better to evolve past work than to create stuff from scratch. I think this is why Anthem fell flat. The team was making something they've never done before, a genuinely open-world looter-shooter, using tech they hadn't mastered (Frostbite engine). While there are stories of teams launching great games in genres they've never touched (e.g. Minecraft, GoldenEye 007) such endeavors probably fail more often than they succeed.