This is a dizzying reorganization. I’m reading the article but I’m just not processing the changes. Why? Streamlining development with an MS “games studio” or just corporation being corporation?
Corpos gonna Corp.
Man. I’m going to vent and go on a nostalgia trip for a second because I had an excellent dark beer and I’m living my best life.
There’s a documentary on Netflix called “High Score” that I recommend to anyone interested in the gaming industry. The people and stories they highlight are wild. I grew up in the 80s and 90s as the video game scene was taking off and that documentary does a great job talking about those years.
My first game that I owned was X-Wing. It came on 5 or 7 3.5" disks. It was amazing. TIE-CD-Rom, Wing Commander III, Caesar II/III, anything by Westwood, Sierra, and Blizzard. All of that is gone. It’s a shame and I’m glad indy gaming is thriving right now, but something doesn’t quite hit the same. All of this innovation and awe around such a new and novel industry just evaporated in the 2000s/early 2010s as small corpos sold out. We can’t forget that. It’s not so much the a giant corp just took over, but a small studio decided to get bought or absorbed and then died. Even a MUD I played sold to Sony Online Entertainment and then get trash binned.
Don’t know where I’m going with this, but, there it is. Great brewery, Alchimiste in Quebec. Alas, I miss gluten and La Fin du Monde.
The rot is too deep, they’ll never produce decent games again. I guess it was naive of me to think that Microsoft could save WoW from Activision. (so naive omg)
Roll credits, this industry is also lost
Maybe finally Rare can make a sci-fi shooter again.
