So I guess $27B in _profit_ in Q1 alone this year isn't enough for MSFT.
Need to fire 3000 people to make ends meet.
Tough.
Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software
501–510 of 628 posts
Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software
#502Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone in the industry, I have not seen this across studios. If you farm out art, you end up with a confused set of props / designs. If you farm out code, you end up with a mess of different assumptions and patterns. If you’re designing and considering everything, then you’re essentially running a studio but now remotely from another country.
I don’t disagree with the problems you mention, but US and European wages are high, and margins keep getting tighter and tighter. A lead studio with a small headcount can outsource work internationally for often much cheaper than the same job done locally, but also not have to pay those workers in stages of development where there’s not enough work for them.
Typically game/media studios run on contractors because of this. You'll be hired for maybe 3-6 months on a repeating contract, so that you can be let go at a moments notice.
For businesses the labour entry point is crowded, wages therefore are low. We find it more common to hire students and pay minimally, use exposure as the negotiating tool.
I know multiple publishers who advocate for that model; outsourcing, not so much. Unless they have a trusted partner, but at that point, they're essentially acting as an arm of the publisher.
Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software
#503makes zero sense, that's some top tier human capital
Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software
#504Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)
Is UE5 used in many without post processing or other VFX on top?
As far as I know, the heaviest use of it is driving lighting volumes which by their nature are hard to notice fine details in.
Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software
#505Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just to play devils advocate, was all of that worth it? There are equally fun or more fun indie games that don't have great graphics, but the gameplay is astounding. DUSK is an example of this. I love that these teams are pushing boundaries of technology, but it also points to an issue with modern game AAA development. It's expensive to make these beautiful games and it's not like they are more enjoyable than games m…
Why compare to indie games? MS family game studios aren't making indie games, they're churning out faceless UE malaise. You should be comparing id tech games to UE games.
The point is that MS is spending a crap ton of money to produce a product that is marginally better gameplay wise than a game like DUSK, which was made by a few people (I actually liked DUSK more but this isn't a game review thread). Not every game should be made on the cheap, but these game studios do cost a lot of money and suffer from diminishing returns. For how expensive these games are to make, they should be churning out ES sized games all the time. Instead the new DOOM is some 20ish hour campaign that costs MS a lot and the consumer a lot. I don't even think many people liked it compared to the last ones due to the slower movement.
It's not fair to these people that they lost their jobs but also they work in a risky low margin business and as you go for more and more advanced graphics and tech, the lower the margins.
Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software
#506Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you pick it out of films and TV shows? (Not being snarky - legit question)
Sometimes yes absolutely. Netflix shows often have a "house look" to them, because they enforce specific camera requirements and have a standardized / commonly-reused lighting setup - https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/360... https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a61878509/netflix-s... --- Marvel movies often reuse a particular pattern of color grading, that can give them a sort of 'similar g…
yeah Netflix easy to tell & some documentaries.
hell most of these you can even guess the type of camera used even if you're a non pro.
Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software
#507Earlier 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 tell you that the fact that id tech 6 engine games look as good as they do and pump out 200+ fps is pretty novel in a way that the massive epic games and their flagship UE5 (and no painstakingly optimized case studies one may conjure) come close to matching even a decade on. The reward for lapping the entire industry? Early retirement.
I think the big reason they get such good framerates is their conservatism with shader counts. A staff member mentions that in an interview with DigitalFoundry for Doom: The Dark Ages. I wonder if their in-house technology made such restraint easier.
Compared to other engines, making a new material asset is easy for someone less technical to do willy-nilly.
Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software
#508Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. 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…
If anyone wants a concrete example of this, Pikmin 4 uses Unreal!
Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software
#509Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience, once organizations have enough history and size, they can't just pivot. Whatever happens within MS the organization makes it impossible for them to become anything other than what they've always been. Their MO will always be EEE and they'll always (attempt to) abuse their monopoly power, while giving corpos and consumers just a glimmer of hope to keep them strung along... Also any company they acqui…
>Also any company they acquire will be gutted until it looks like the rest of the org. I'm trying to think of a Microsoft acquisition which has been a success. Nothing comes to mind.
GitHub and LinkedIn both appear to be pretty successful businesses.
Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software
#510RIP to the end of an era. Was IdTech used outside of Id? Or was it just a Doom series thing as of recently?
Every single Call of Duty disc since at least CoD 3 has had "This product contains software technology licensed
from Id Software ("Id Technology"). Id Technology © 1999-20* Id Software, Inc." printed on it.