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Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

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Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#341

Post by retr0rocket »

lenerdenator wrote: post #80
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…

The thing is, every time you take a swing on one of those big IPs, you take a risk. Sure, you can do well: Skyrim was a big step up from Oblivion, for example. But you can also screw things up (see: Halo), or fall into the trap that Valve has fallen into with Half-Life 3 where the expectations of the public can never be truly met. I think what they want to do is make the next WoW. Low-risk, customer lock-in, people i…

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Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#342

Post by RajT88 »

superxpro12 wrote: post #332
Cpoll wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every game engine has a sort of "grain" to it where it tends to produce games with a certain look and feel. I think this is a bit of a myth. Unreal gets this criticism a lot, but it's usually because many studios choose to stick close to the rendering defaults, which does lead to a certain look. To that point, it's probably a lot cheaper to configure Unreal or Unity into a unique "grain" than it is to develop your…

I can pick out a creation engine game from a mile away. Engine "Grain" is a real phenomenon. Same for UE5. There's just something about the lighting and the FPS 'feel' that is a dead giveaway.

Can you pick it out of films and TV shows?

(Not being snarky - legit question)

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#343

Post by kilpikaarna »

tapoxi wrote: post #153
branon wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me this falls apart on the consumer side of things. UE5 games are manifestly lower quality than games built on custom engines. Optimization is especially worse. UE5's performance baseline _requires_ the use of upscalers (DLSS/FSR, fake/AI frames) in order to hit basic targets like 1080p@30fps. I won't buy games built on Unreal Engine. Homogeneity of this type is horrible for customers of the gaming sector.

I am not a graphics engineer so I hope someone corrects me, but my understanding is that Unreal uses a deferred rendering pipeline to handle complex lighting, and deferred renderers only work with temporal anti-aliasing. The FSR/DLSS upscalers are typically superior to TSAA and are a reasonable replacement.

Deferred rendering requires a post process type antialiasing, can be TAA but also FXAA etc. It doesn't work with traditional MSAA.

A lot of the UE tech is built around the assumption of TAA though.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#344

Post by someguynamedq »

onraglanroad wrote: post #180
moralestapia wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares about any of that? He was being paid. It was not a charity, it was work. Companies don't owe you anything. (And you don't owe them anything, either.) Work is a temporary agreement to provide services in exchange for money. That's it. Understand how the world works.

People who understand society care about it. When you employ someone you take on a certain responsibility. You can't negate that by pretending that you're in an equal power relationship. That's why we have workers' rights.

Society determines what "shoulds" turn into "musts," and currently our society does not have any "must" for general cultural or social good. Only fiduciary responsibility. That's the structural cause here and should be the focus of attention

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#346

Post by saxonww »

ptx wrote: post #242
ryandvm wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I was one of the self-taught software "engineers" from the 90s. I enjoyed making more money than I deserved for my special interest and for the duration of my career I was very much against software engineering unionization as it seemed to mostly be gatekeeping for a lucrative and enjoyable line of work. Now I'm 40+ years old and my job has morphed from designing systems and writing code to sweet-talking LLMs in…

How is unionization gatekeeping? I honestly don't understand what you mean. I can't see any disadvantage for the employees in joining a union.

> How is unionization gatekeeping?

If you are in a right-to-work state and you don't join the union, then union members know you're benefiting from the union without contributing back. Historically, this leads to an uncomfortable work situation for you.

If you are not in a right-to-work state, and the collectively-bargained contract involves a union membership requirement - which is typical? - then you have to join the union if you want the job.

This is where the gatekeeping concern comes from.

> I can't see any disadvantage for the employees in joining a union.

Unions have dues, so you're giving up part of your salary for membership in the union. If the union salary is equal or less than you would be able to negotiate on your own, it's a disadvantage for you.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#347

Post by socalgal2 »

munificent wrote: post #224
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…

All of this is true and has been true for decades in the game industry. The other side of this seesaw is: Games are fundamentally in the novelty business. Players like some amount of familiarity, but they want new experiences. Every game engine has a sort of "grain" to it where it tends to produce games with a certain look and feel. The flat-ish shading and floaty physics of Unity is a particularly visible example of…

> Every game engine has a sort of "grain" to it where it tends to produce games with a certain look and feel. The flat-ish shading and floaty physics of Unity is a particularly visible example of this.

Ridiculous and provably false.

It's like saying "every novel written with a typewriter tends to produce stories with a certain theme and dialog"

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#348

Post by ragequittah »

branon wrote: post #77
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…

For me this falls apart on the consumer side of things. UE5 games are manifestly lower quality than games built on custom engines. Optimization is especially worse. UE5's performance baseline _requires_ the use of upscalers (DLSS/FSR, fake/AI frames) in order to hit basic targets like 1080p@30fps. I won't buy games built on Unreal Engine. Homogeneity of this type is horrible for customers of the gaming sector.

>I won't buy games built on Unreal Engine.

I don't really understand making hard and fast rules like this. Clair Obscur is one of the best and most beautiful games I've ever played. The Witcher 4 has the best graphics I've seen come from a video game. Satisfactory is nuts to look at when you see an eloquent end game build.

I also don't understand why people knee-jerk hate upscaling/fake frames so much. I can understand for fast-paced competitive multiplayer games, but for something like Clair Obscur where the ideal way to play is on the couch on a 4k TV give me all the upscaling and fake frames you can muster.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#349

Post by anthonypasq »

sph wrote: post #289
anthonypasq wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so you agree then that no professional game developer should make their own engine right? because their job is to ship a product.

Craft > sales. Great craftsmanship always sells, so in the long run it is not a bad investment. If your goal is to sell a game in 3 months, sure, but not even Unreal Engine will magically turn a rushed game into a good product. 90% of the development time is making a fun game in the first place, and you’re on your own there.

the entire failure of AAA game development in recent years has been years and years of craftsmenship wasted on games that arent fun.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#350

Post by tclancy »

realo wrote: post #107
Grombobulous wrote: post #16

It’s painful to watch this because the recipe for success at Microsoft is so obvious. They’ve just been fumbling the ball for so many years that it’s catching up to them. And the thing is they’re not unprofitable. Gutting their studios and technology development isn’t going to help growth, it’s going to contract the business.

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

Why villainize her specifically? Seems like the whole division has been in limbo for a decade. Maybe there are good reasons, I am uninformed on the matter, but hesitant whenever a woman gets run over in tech fora.
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