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Entire staff of game publisher Annapurna Interactive has reportedly resigned

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Re: Entire staff of game publisher Annapurna Interactive has reportedly resigned

#41

Post by toyg »

robjwells wrote: post #29
hinkley wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another lawnmower is born.

For those who don’t get the lawnmower reference, take 5 minutes and have a hearty laugh: https://youtube.com/watch?t=1980&v=-zRN7XLCRhc (Start at the 33 minute mark if it doesn’t jump you there.)

That rant is famous, but I always wonder at the naivety of Cantrill and friends. Ellison was already known for being a shameless shark since the '80s, 20 years before the SUN acquisition. Believing he would leave your little blade of grass untouched was always going to be fanciful - particularly when they were a loss-making part of the company with no-future already.

Re: Entire staff of game publisher Annapurna Interactive has reportedly resigned

#42

Post by yungporko »

Torkel wrote: post #28
eleveriven wrote: post #25

I am a big fan of Stray! The atmosphere was both haunting and beautiful, and the emotional connection you feel as you guide the cat through puzzles, etc. Hearing about the uncertainty at Annapurna Interactive feels personal a little

I have feelings about Stray... What an awesome game it could have been! I played it with one of my daughers. Lovely father/daughter playing session. Guiding the cat through the maze/puzzles. Cat can't fall, it's just calm and nice. And then, out of nowhere - blinking screaming wildly stressful and awful rats come chase us. My daughter dropped the controller, I played it through. But after that the game lost its charm…

stray has a pretty dark and foreboding atmosphere, the rats fit right in imo. seconding the other commenter who recommended little kitty big city though, i didn't expect to enjoy it as much as i did.

Re: Entire staff of game publisher Annapurna Interactive has reportedly resigned

#43

Post by rowanG077 »

stefan_ wrote: post #37
sonofhans wrote: post #5

> “The report, which IGN can confirm based on conversations with our own sources, states that Annapurna Interactive president Nathan Gary had recently been in negotiations with Annapurna founder and billionaire Megan Ellison to spin the gaming segment off as its own company. However, Ellison eventually pulled out of negotiations, at which point Gary resigned. Almost 30 other individuals, including division co-heads D…

Imagine having to negotiate with Larry Ellisons nepo daughter, how can you even keep a straight face. "It says here you are a film producer?"

I don't follow? Why is that funny? Why wouldn't she be able to be a film producer?

Re: Entire staff of game publisher Annapurna Interactive has reportedly resigned

#44

Post by Macha »

toyg wrote: post #41
robjwells wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who don’t get the lawnmower reference, take 5 minutes and have a hearty laugh: https://youtube.com/watch?t=1980&v=-zRN7XLCRhc (Start at the 33 minute mark if it doesn’t jump you there.)

That rant is famous, but I always wonder at the naivety of Cantrill and friends. Ellison was already known for being a shameless shark since the '80s, 20 years before the SUN acquisition. Believing he would leave your little blade of grass untouched was always going to be fanciful - particularly when they were a loss-making part of the company with no-future already.

I think there's plenty of people who the internet or gossip circles hate where that hate is unjustified. At the same time, a lot of the worst people are initially quite personally charming and keep that face even as they screw you over. And I think when people come into contact that they've only heard about in gossip in person, there's quite often an attempt to be like "well that's the caricature of Larry Ellison, maybe he's not actually that bad". Face to face contact can weight quite heavily compared to "people on the internet".

Combine the two of them and you get a recipe for people to give Larry Ellison the benefit of the doubt, taking a "well we're adults, let's handle this more maturely than immediately doubting our counter party" stance, even as people who by their own accounts had heard otherwise. Ultimately in this case, Cantrill's experience proved "the internet" right, but I think even that might not prevent someone else repeating the same situation in the future.

Re: Entire staff of game publisher Annapurna Interactive has reportedly resigned

#45

Post by Beretta_Vexee »

NotGMan wrote: post #3
darby_nine wrote: post #2

This is hilarious and rather sad. How did Annapurna fumble such famous talent so bad?

Probably through "line must always go up" mentality. Creative business, especially games, should really not be publicly traded or thought of as having major returns on investments. It might work on start, but sooner or later the "current hit game" will fade out of popularity and then people will get fired and crunch will become the norm etc... in order to satisfy the "line must go up" mentality, but since game dev is…

The video game business is very similar to the film or literary publishing business. You need to publish ten novels for one to do well enough financially to pay off the others. Nobody really knows why that one worked. It's possible to do a few sequels, but the formula quickly becomes boring.

No one can guarantee the commercial success of a novel, film or video game.

Re: Entire staff of game publisher Annapurna Interactive has reportedly resigned

#46

Post by robjwells »

stavros wrote: post #36
pcl wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PSA: it’s a link to Bryan Cantrill ranting about the Sun / Oracle acquisition. I couldn’t make it through 5 minutes of his ranting to get to an accurate summary of the joke though.

> You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle.

> "Oh they wanted to kill OpenSolaris!" No, the lawnmower doesn't care about OpenSolaris, the lawnmower doesn't think about OpenSolaris, the lawnmower _can't_ care about OpenSolaris. The lawnmower can't have empathy.

Re: Entire staff of game publisher Annapurna Interactive has reportedly resigned

#48

Post by dijit »

Macha wrote: post #44
toyg wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That rant is famous, but I always wonder at the naivety of Cantrill and friends. Ellison was already known for being a shameless shark since the '80s, 20 years before the SUN acquisition. Believing he would leave your little blade of grass untouched was always going to be fanciful - particularly when they were a loss-making part of the company with no-future already.

I think there's plenty of people who the internet or gossip circles hate where that hate is unjustified. At the same time, a lot of the worst people are initially quite personally charming and keep that face even as they screw you over. And I think when people come into contact that they've only heard about in gossip in person, there's quite often an attempt to be like "well that's the caricature of Larry Ellison, ma…

This is extremely well articulated, and is exactly true in my experience.

People take gossip as "gossip"- an unrealiable approximation and gross-oversimplification of an individual. Thus give people with poor reputations the benefit of the doubt, believing themselves to be open minded. (which is true).

When they are shown just how 1-dimensional some people can actually be, and that the gossip depicts people precisely, it can be jarring. Especially as, like you mention, many people are very personable, charismatic, charming etc;

Re: Entire staff of game publisher Annapurna Interactive has reportedly resigned

#49

Post by mhuffman »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #39
stefan_ wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine having to negotiate with Larry Ellisons nepo daughter, how can you even keep a straight face. "It says here you are a film producer?"

I only found out recently that animated film company Laika was created after Nike founder Phil Knight bought his son a new career after he failed at being a rapper. He bought into Will Vinton studios and then forced Oscar winning animation pioneer Will Vinton out of his own company. There's a whole documentary, sad and interesting.

If I recall, it turns out that his "failed rapper" son had some sort of natural talent for this and has got nothing but accolades even from other animators ever since. Although I do get your point.
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