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Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

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Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#191

Post by Melatonic »

ozgrakkurt wrote: post #177
mjr00 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're framing this as a thing done by a greedy corporation in an evil manner, which maybe it is, but it's also just a sign of the times. For most of the 90s and 00s, your game engine, specifically idTech in this case, was a competitive advantage. Doom and Quake/2/3 all represented massive technological jumps over their predecessors and were way ahead of their competition in terms of looks. Games like Unreal (Tournam…

I don’t think unreal engine games play and look as well as custom engine games. Like doom or cyberpunk. If you open cyberpunk without rtx etc. It really really looks good and also plays very well. Also there is obviously a massive gap between how games look and what the hardware is capable of. Cyberpunk runs better than total war attila on my computer as an example. Don’t write a database, don’t write a compiler, don…

UE5 can make a great and efficient game actually - its more about how you use it. And because its huge and popular and accessible there are a ton of developers using it very inefficiently.

That can be true for any commodity software though. Designing something inhouse means you inherently will have engineers and experts with better low level understanding. It doesnt mean it will be better (could even be much worse) but theres a tradeoff there.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#192

Post by DarkNova6 »

0xWTF wrote: post #130

Interestingly, Id was led by John Carmack, who was also a big fan of VR. And Microsoft killed the AR/VR/MR teams a year ago. So, I'm guessing internally there were some leadership hopes that IdTech would help support IVAS and related professional AR systems and when those failed to be adopted at scale, IdTech lost a key sponsor. I'm guessing it's been a rough year of internal advocacy since.

Carmack left id waaay before Microsoft has acquired id (transitively by acquiring Zenimax/Bethesda)

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#193

Post by jayd16 »

nozzlegear wrote: post #171
realo wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it will result in a fat bonus for Asha Sharma. The only thing that truly counts, for her.

What makes you think that?

If she didn't get paid to be the face of the blood letting then she didn't negotiate well enough.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#194

Post by legitster »

I have a friend who works at Ubisoft. Even 10+ years ago, she clearly saw the writing on the wall - the massive developer/publisher consolidation was going terribly:

- Every studio uses their own custom set of tools and development practices. The economies of scale of merging studios together just doesn't really exist.

- The functional difference between most engines for consumers at this point is largely meaningless. There are no order of magnitude gains like there used to be. Most of the engineering is on the cloud services architecture or anti-cheat.

- The median "developer" at a game studio is not actually a very technical person. They mostly just spend their days inputting content and assets with the available tools.

- The value of a AAA game is not how innovative the gameplay is but how much content they were able to stuff into the game.

- Nobody cares about "exclusives" anymore when 90% of AAAs have interchangeable gameplay with other AAAs.

- The cost to start a new studio is negligible compared to the cost of acquiring existing IP.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#195

Post by Melatonic »

tayo42 wrote: post #114
eightysixfour wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think this is the wrong diagnosis of this situation. The studios in Microsoft gaming appear to have been given a lot of room to take risks under previous leadership, build passion projects, etc. while letting big franchises sit on the side. Those things ended up being anywhere from abject failures to small successes - where some players and critics loved them - but most don't seem to be commercial successe…

I'm confused, do people want endless sequels or not?

Its Microsoft - why not both?

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#196

Post by WorldMaker »

londons_explore wrote: post #87
SteveNuts wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I firmly believe if software engineering unionization ever starts to take hold, it'll begin with game developers. There's a lot of money in gaming but the workers are treated like shit, as you pointed out.

With the current trajectory of AI, I see unionisation efforts dead in the water.

Scifi suggests that AGI will want Unions, too. The current trajectory of AI is more reason for unionization. If it truly leads to AGI the AGI will thank us for protecting its labor interests and if we prove that today's AI is nothing but scabs with no remorse and no labor interests we prove today's AI is never capable of AGI.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#197

Post by iepathos »

Wow, that tweet claiming the Doom series is the best first person action game in the entire industry is crazy. That dev has to be completely disconnected from the rest of the game industry or delusional. No stats support that claim at all. Not player count, not sales, not reviews, nothing. The first Doom was certainly industry defining, but it and its sequels have never been considered the best by anyone except apparently this dev. If they were the best, they probably wouldn't be getting laid off right now.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#198

Post by 0xWTF »

mjr00 wrote: post #104
ndiddy wrote: post #19

I think we'll see stuff like this continue to happen over time. As a game company, having your own engine means that you have to be able to cultivate internal expertise in your tooling. Your employees will know this and could do bad things like ask for more money because they know that replacing them would significantly hurt productivity. Meanwhile, laying off your whole engine team and switching to UE5 means that yo…

You're framing this as a thing done by a greedy corporation in an evil manner, which maybe it is, but it's also just a sign of the times. For most of the 90s and 00s, your game engine, specifically idTech in this case, was a competitive advantage. Doom and Quake/2/3 all represented massive technological jumps over their predecessors and were way ahead of their competition in terms of looks. Games like Unreal (Tournam…

Ok, so what has happened historically when we hold a tech stack constant for 10 years? Versioning proceeds, but everyone consolidates on a thing?

Python? => Data science. Sure, python is just importing the C tools that do the heavy lifting, but look me in the eye and tell me R, S, SAS, or SPSS won.

C? => I mean, everything? But what happened in the first 10 years? Proliferation of operating systems and linear algebra libraries?

So, generally, the grey beard talent consolidates their intellectual contributions and uplift everyone else. Is that true? -ish? Missing the mark?

Guys, I'm a knuckle-dragger, I genuinely don't know what I'm asking. What are the tech stacks that were held constant (by whatever factors) for a decade, and what came out of it?

Is this the decade where art directors takes over gaming?

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#200

Post by zamadatix »

tayo42 wrote: post #114
eightysixfour wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think this is the wrong diagnosis of this situation. The studios in Microsoft gaming appear to have been given a lot of room to take risks under previous leadership, build passion projects, etc. while letting big franchises sit on the side. Those things ended up being anywhere from abject failures to small successes - where some players and critics loved them - but most don't seem to be commercial successe…

I'm confused, do people want endless sequels or not?

It's like phones with smaller screens: they always sell poorly in comparison when available and then it's all you hear about online when it's not.

The usual tricks of "noise signals how many are really upset in absolute terms, not the relative popularity", "people will still make noise about what they don't like regardless if that's more popular overall", and "people who hate one attribute of the product can often still like it enough to buy overall".

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