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26 Feb, 4 tweets, 1 min read
NEW from me on the failure of Google Stadia:

- Missed initial sales targets by hundreds of thousands
- Tried to take on consoles rather than starting small
- To bring in games like Red Dead, Google spent astronomical sums (tens of millions *each*)

Story: bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Just to reiterate the absurdity of this thing: Sources say Google spent tens of millions of dollars -- the budgets of some major games -- PER Stadia port.

Publishers like Ubisoft and Take-Two were raking it in
Pay $20 million to Ubisoft to port Assassin's Creed and The Division

or

Pay $1 million to 20 small developers to each build something cool, betting that at least one of them will be a hit like Stardew Valley or Valheim

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Stadia had a lot of issues, but its fatal flaw was marketing. If it had started with a muted launch and grown from there rather than promising to be the "future of gaming" and trying to take on Xbox/PlayStation right away, we might be telling a different story right now.

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More from @jasonschreier

Jason Schreier Profile picture
29 Jan
Why has Amazon failed to break into video games? Interviews with 30+ current and former employees point to one root problem: the guy in charge had never made a game before. He'd hire veteran devs... then ignore them.

New investigation with @Priyasideas: bloomberg.com/news/features/…
Amazon Game Studios boss Mike Frazzini, an Amazon lifer, would tell staff that their games had to be "billion-dollar franchises." They had to all be the size of Call of Duty... yet they also had to be innovative and unlike anything anyone had played before.
Under Frazzini, Amazon's Seattle office also cultivated a "bro culture" that made women feel ostracized and unwelcome, according to four female developers who worked there (and backed up by many men). Women said the sexist culture at AGS was worse than any other game studio
Read 6 tweets
Jason Schreier Profile picture
16 Jan
- Last year, when CDPR explained that it shares 10% of profits with staff, gamers and pundits assumed the devs would get rich. Adrian Jakubiak said he made around $400/month when he started as a tester in 2015. In 2018, as a junior programmer, he said he was making ~$700/month
- If you're wondering just how much Cyberpunk 2077 changed over the past decade: well, up until 2016, it was a third-person game. Features that were originally envisioned (wall-running, flying cars, car ambushes) were cut along the way (not atypical in game development)
- And if you're wondering why the police system in Cyberpunk 2077 is so janky: well, it was all done at the last minute. As is evident by the final product, it was unclear to some of the team why they were trying to make both an RPG and a GTA with a fraction of Rockstar's staff
Read 5 tweets
Jason Schreier Profile picture
16 Jan
What went wrong with Cyberpunk 2077? Interviews with more than 20 current and former CD Projekt staff paint a complex picture. Unchecked ambition, technical woes, unrealistic deadlines, and above all, one belief: "We made The Witcher 3 -- it'll work out." bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Devs at CD Projekt said despite promises that crunch would not be mandatory, they felt pressured to work overtime on and off for years. I can't share all the stories, but here's one on the record that may help explain why it's been infuriating to see people downplay CDPR's crunch Image
Anthem's developers talked about "BioWare magic" -- an unwavering belief that with enough hard work and crunch, their games would come together. CD Projekt was similar. When asked about unrealistic deadlines, directors would say they'd be fine. They made The Witcher 3, after all
Read 10 tweets
Jason Schreier Profile picture
20 Dec 20
Journalismism thread: Often, people who want to confidentially share their stories ask: how do you protect my identity? How do you ensure I stay anonymous? I have this conversation a lot with people, so I figured I'd share a few thoughts and techniques publicly.
In an ideal world, no article would rely on unnamed sources, but in reality, NDAs and press-averse employers make it essential to offer anonymity if you want to get at the truth. One of a journalist's top priorities is protecting those sources. So how do you do that?
First off, if someone requests anonymity, I won't tell anyone (aside from my editor as necessary) that I talked to them. Even other sources, even their friends, even their spouse! I also encourage sources not to tell anyone that they talked to me. Err on the side of paranoia!
Read 7 tweets
Jason Schreier Profile picture
18 Dec 20
Holy shit - Cyberpunk 2077 on PS4 is so busted that Sony is offering full refunds and even removing it from the PlayStation Store (!!) playstation.com/en-us/cyberpun…
Pretty stoked for Cyberpunk 2077: A Realm Reborn
You have to wonder: How many programmers/testers/other devs at CD Projekt Red tried to raise the alarm that the game was just not ready, only to be rebuffed or ignored by the studio's management?
Read 4 tweets
Jason Schreier Profile picture
29 Oct 20
Imagine working so many hours that in June your studio head sent out an email apologizing to everyone’s spouses/partners because it “often means [the devs] cannot participate on the home front” and then seeing quotes like this from an executive who owns $70 million in stock
Wow, CD Projekt Red's Adam Kiciński just sent out an email to staff (passed to me) apologizing for these comments. "I had not wanted to comment on crunch, yet I still did, and I did it in a demeaning and harmful way... What I said was not even unfortunate, it was utterly bad."
Something surreal about the fact that fans and pundits continue to insist that the crunch wasn't so bad when the company's co-CEO felt obliged to apologize to his staff for saying the crunch wasn't so bad
Read 4 tweets

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