March 2025 PCG Article Discussion

[Pifanjr]

Ain't that the case that when a company grows, the culture gets booted out the window and stomped into the ground. Play Nice, the recent book by Jason Scheier catalogued the same at Blizzard. Seen it myself at a company I worked at; it was at it's best at around 80 people when I joined, but steadily went downhill from there.

I've worked at a company that grew from about 15 people to over 30 while I was there. When I started we'd all have lunch at one big table and everyone knew what everyone else was doing, but at some point that just wasn't feasible any more. We also got middle managers and the entire thing suddenly felt a lot more like I was just a cog in the machine.

However, I don't think this was just a problem with the company growing. I'm currently working at an international company with thousands of employees, with the branch in my country having about 250 employees, though my team only has 3 people in it, plus my manager. The biggest difference however is that we get a lot of freedom in how we approach a problem. You feel a lot less like just a cog in the machine if you have more agency.

That's all rather depressing. They need to create something like a creative team (think modders) that works separate from the main team and can add all sorts of interesting things to a game.

Every team that creates something in game development is a creative team and should get the opportunity to work on their own things. Everyone should have at least one afternoon every week to work on things that aren't scheduled by someone else.

 

[ZedClampet]

Humanoid robot Neo Gamma gifts Nvidia CEO a studded leather jacket and may even be able to one day wash up a cup without dropping it

I'm not going to be asking AI for fashion advice. Ever.

www.pcgamer.com

I would buy one of these, but it would be a pain to have to keep an emergency shotgun with me all the time.

New product idea: An EMP remote.

 

[March's Ghost]

it would be a pain to have to keep an emergency shotgun with me all the time.

You don't keep one on hand just in case your printer freaks out?

 

[neogunhero]

By the time Bethesda was on Starfield, you'd 'basically get in trouble' for breaking schedule, says former dev: 'A lot of the great stuff within Skyrim came from having the freedom to do what you want'

Fus by numbers.

www.pcgamer.com

Just another example on how limited space for creativity leads to worse games.

I was really excited for this game but ended up mostly disappointed after 60 hours of gameplay. Bethesda is one of those studios that doesn't make amazing games, but their games do have a satisfying gameplay loop that keeps you playing for very long. Starfield did not have that at all. It definitely felt there was too much corporate overreach, especially since there has been a massive lack of any substantial updates to the game. The big wigs finally gave in and let them add land vehicles to a game that has seemingly infinite empty planets to explore, and they went ahead and launched their DLC while their players complained how bad the game was.

As Bethesda grows larger and larger, especially off the backs of Microsoft, this sort of thing is only going to be more apparent. For the sake of their players and their own company, they should not pull this sort of thing on TES 6 which is their main tentpole game coming up. Starfield was a weird in-between game, and though they did try to make it seem like the next huge IP from Bethesda, it really was just a poor mishmash of TES and Fallout systems under a sci-fi space aesthetic, so in a way I don't feel as let down as if they were to make a terrible Fallout game. You can only hope that they have learned some lessons from that game and apply them towards future games.

 

[ZedClampet]

You don't keep one on hand just in case your printer freaks out?

My lovely HP printer would have been blasted into the afterlife 5 minutes after I set it up for the first time.

 

[Pifanjr]

I was really excited for this game but ended up mostly disappointed after 60 hours of gameplay. Bethesda is one of those studios that doesn't make amazing games, but their games do have a satisfying gameplay loop that keeps you playing for very long. Starfield did not have that at all. It definitely felt there was too much corporate overreach, especially since there has been a massive lack of any substantial updates to the game. The big wigs finally gave in and let them add land vehicles to a game that has seemingly infinite empty planets to explore, and they went ahead and launched their DLC while their players complained how bad the game was.

As Bethesda grows larger and larger, especially off the backs of Microsoft, this sort of thing is only going to be more apparent. For the sake of their players and their own company, they should not pull this sort of thing on TES 6 which is their main tentpole game coming up. Starfield was a weird in-between game, and though they did try to make it seem like the next huge IP from Bethesda, it really was just a poor mishmash of TES and Fallout systems under a sci-fi space aesthetic, so in a way I don't feel as let down as if they were to make a terrible Fallout game. You can only hope that they have learned some lessons from that game and apply them towards future games.

I think a game that can be played for hundreds of hours is amazing even if none of the gameplay mechanics on their own are. But after Fallout 4 and Starfield I don't have high hopes for TES 6.

 

[ZedClampet]

Ubisoft and Tencent are forming a new company that will take control of its most successful franchises: Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six

Tencent will be a minority shareholder in the new venture, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2025.

www.pcgamer.com

If it smells like a duck, poops like a....that's not right. Um...anyway, sounds like this is a paperwork change that Ubisoft used to con $1.5 billion from Tencent. Congrats, I guess.

 

[Zloth]

Game Informer is back from the dead: 'The whole team has returned'

The US magazine was reopened by Gunzilla, a game developer and blockchain operation co-founded by film director Neill Blomkamp.

www.pcgamer.com

Back from the dead! Can Antic be far behind? Well, yeah, it can be.

Maybe GameTrailers? Nah, Geoff just shows a jillion of them in one night for his game awards instead.

 

[Colif]

Ubisoft and Tencent are forming a new company that will take control of its most successful franchises: Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six

Tencent will be a minority shareholder in the new venture, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2025.

www.pcgamer.com

If it smells like a duck, poops like a....that's not right. Um...anyway, sounds like this is a paperwork change that Ubisoft used to con $1.5 billion from Tencent. Congrats, I guess.

1,5 billion guaranteed profit. Better than can be said for most of their products last year.

Could be only thing left of Ubisoft by end of the year. Why split off all your profit making assets from company otherwise?

Guess that saves them from Elon, he wouldn't be the remaining 75% as the main series are gone now.

 

[Zloth]

Marvel Rivals technical designer says a future patch will reduce the shooter's insatiable hunger for RAM: 'It's a very big problem'

A new option should help players with less than 32GB of RAM.

www.pcgamer.com

Funny thing about this... I had to look up how much memory my PC has! How long has it been since anyone was unable to play a game because they didn't have enough main memory?? I do see the limits in 4X games when it allows you to pick how many stars to include by how much memory you have, but I don't think I've been close to blocked from playing completely in a very long time.

 

[Colif]

How long has it been since anyone was unable to play a game because they didn't have enough main memory??

10+ years ago would have been last time that could happen for me. When I only had 32bit windows and 3.6gb of ram available. Since then had 16gb minimum and its only now games are starting to want more. None actually require 32gb yet but its becoming more likely on recommended page.

I am sure there are games out there that desire more... Star Citizen eats ram too. A shooter (that I can't think name of) from the last few years also eats ram. Cyberpunk is named as one as well.

its mostly 4x games with massive worlds that benefit from more ram & more processing power. I remember civ used to slow down a lot once game was running too long when played on a quad core CPU.

 

[ZedClampet]

Marvel Rivals technical designer says a future patch will reduce the shooter's insatiable hunger for RAM: 'It's a very big problem'

A new option should help players with less than 32GB of RAM.

www.pcgamer.com

Funny thing about this... I had to look up how much memory my PC has! How long has it been since anyone was unable to play a game because they didn't have enough main memory?? I do see the limits in 4X games when it allows you to pick how many stars to include by how much memory you have, but I don't think I've been close to blocked from playing completely in a very long time.

Not a game, but I can't really do my AI stuff on my laptop that only has 16 GB. The whole computer locks up over and over. So I'm guessing if developers start putting client side AI into games that everyone with 16 GB is screwed unless it's just an SLM (small language model) like Inzoi has. I'm sure their image and model generation is done on their servers.

 

[BeardyHat]

The newer Spider-Man had some issues when i had 16gb. It would pause frequently to load new bits of city.

Other than that, 2004, WoW. Upgrading from (If i remember right) 512Mb to 1Gb made a massive difference.

 

[Pifanjr]

https://www.pcgamer.com/software/ai/anthropic-has-developed-an-ai-brain-scanner-to-understand-how-llms-work-and-it-turns-out-the-reason-why-chatbots-are-terrible-at-simple-math-and-hallucinate-is-weirder-than-you-thought/

Fascinating stuff. Letting computers do pattern matching might not always produce accurate results, but it does make for interesting processes.

 

[ZedClampet]

The 37-year-old studio behind Myst and Riven laid off 'roughly half' of its staff: 'Our sincere hope is to continue to be around'

Cyan Worlds is one of oldest indie studios around, but in a statement said the layoffs were "not a surprise."

www.pcgamer.com

Based on the average of 4 estimates, Firmament sold about 55k copies on Steam, and the Riven remake was about 75k

 

[ZedClampet]

https://www.pcgamer.com/software/ai/anthropic-has-developed-an-ai-brain-scanner-to-understand-how-llms-work-and-it-turns-out-the-reason-why-chatbots-are-terrible-at-simple-math-and-hallucinate-is-weirder-than-you-thought/

Fascinating stuff. Letting computers do pattern matching might not always produce accurate results, but it does make for interesting processes.

It actually appears to have developed its own way of thinking an of logic, and that is a little disturbing

 

[Pifanjr]

It actually appears to have developed its own way of thinking an of logic, and that is a little disturbing

It's only disturbing if anyone tries to use it for anything where you need to be able to understand how it came to its answer.

 

[BeardyHat]

I've worked at a company that grew from about 15 people to over 30 while I was there. When I started we'd all have lunch at one big table and everyone knew what everyone else was doing, but at some point that just wasn't feasible any more. We also got middle managers and the entire thing suddenly felt a lot more like I was just a cog in the machine.

However, I don't think this was just a problem with the company growing. I'm currently working at an international company with thousands of employees, with the branch in my country having about 250 employees, though my team only has 3 people in it, plus my manager. The biggest difference however is that we get a lot of freedom in how we approach a problem. You feel a lot less like just a cog in the machine if you have more agency.

Our company culture definitely changed, but it was also an issue because the manager my colleague and I picked and hired for ourselves also started micro managing us and gave us less agency overall. This was upsetting, given we'd both whipped the IT infrastructure into shape with considerably less oversight in the preceding years we didn't have this manager.

 

[ZedClampet]

It's only disturbing if anyone tries to use it for anything where you need to be able to understand how it came to its answer.

It's much more disturbing to me than "predicts the next word".