Bungie told Naughty Dog not to go all in on a live service game
- Thread starter John Elden Ring
- Start date
We dodged a bullet with ND not going gaas im telling yall. Leave it do the devs that specialize in it.
Actually that was a wise advise.
ND was indeed going all in with the Faction Live Service game and you can see that that they barely worked in anything since they decided to focus in Factions (don't come say that remaster / rereleased are the same thing as they use just a part of the resources of a Studio and they key resources is not even needed because you already have everything created... art work, story, design, gameplay, etc etc etc... the game is already done you just need a small team, compared with a team to create a game).
Live Services games are a hit and miss.
And Bungie knows that... in fact the industry knows that... EA, Ubisoft, Activison, etc etc all wants to create a new Destiny but they all failed... some had success in others genres (like Activision with Hero Shooter) but if you count you see it is way more failures than success.
The point... what could happen if ND continue focusing everything in Factions and it failed.
It is a huge risc.
Just the fact they focused some years already made their pipeline in SP games to be put on hold for years.
I don't expect any new game from ND before 2026 and that is being optimistic.
So taking that they were right to give that advise.
ND was indeed going all in with the Faction Live Service game and you can see that that they barely worked in anything since they decided to focus in Factions (don't come say that remaster / rereleased are the same thing as they use just a part of the resources of a Studio and they key resources is not even needed because you already have everything created... art work, story, design, gameplay, etc etc etc... the game is already done you just need a small team, compared with a team to create a game).
Live Services games are a hit and miss.
And Bungie knows that... in fact the industry knows that... EA, Ubisoft, Activison, etc etc all wants to create a new Destiny but they all failed... some had success in others genres (like Activision with Hero Shooter) but if you count you see it is way more failures than success.
The point... what could happen if ND continue focusing everything in Factions and it failed.
It is a huge risc.
Just the fact they focused some years already made their pipeline in SP games to be put on hold for years.
I don't expect any new game from ND before 2026 and that is being optimistic.
So taking that they were right to give that advise.
I wouldnt want them to go all in with all there studios.
But I was hoping Sony would of expanded one of the best studios in the world to see what they can cook. Give them enough staff to make a MP game, PVE/PVP like they were planning.
We all know they can do great PVP and action with TLOU and Uncharted and probably one of the best at story tellers in the industry.
Its a shame it didnt happen
Bungie suffered because they had 4+ games developing (Destiny DLC, Marahon, Mobile game + another game. While only having the income of 1 game ( Destiny 2 ).
That wouldn’t have been the case in ND made TLOU Factions and Insomniac made Spiderverse MP etc. And both are high quality studios compared to 90% of video gaming studios
But I was hoping Sony would of expanded one of the best studios in the world to see what they can cook. Give them enough staff to make a MP game, PVE/PVP like they were planning.
We all know they can do great PVP and action with TLOU and Uncharted and probably one of the best at story tellers in the industry.
Its a shame it didnt happen
Bungie suffered because they had 4+ games developing (Destiny DLC, Marahon, Mobile game + another game. While only having the income of 1 game ( Destiny 2 ).
That wouldn’t have been the case in ND made TLOU Factions and Insomniac made Spiderverse MP etc. And both are high quality studios compared to 90% of video gaming studios
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But were they? It was supposedly being develooped by the team that was working on TLOU2 Factions PVP. Then got seperated during developement of TLOU2 and expanded. But I dont believe all of ND was working on it.
I dont understand how Sony expected there studios to give there best efforts at MP games while not giving them a new team to each of those studios or so to do it. While saying there studios are all making single player games too. Of course they are gonna need separate or bigger teams.
And I believe the circumstances would be different with ND having 1 studio support Factions while making other games, then Bungie making 4 games supported by Destiny 2 DLC Profits.
So where are the ND games?
Like I said... remaster, remakes, rereleases don't take most of company resources.
New games do.
For me I guess most of ND resources were indeed working on Factions before it got cancelled.
And that means from 2020 until the cancel.
Edit - When I say remaster / remakes doesn't take most resource is because most of the work is done.
Story, Dialogue, Narrative, Art design, Sound design, Character design/animation, Motion Capture, etc etc are all big part of the developer team that doesn't need to work actively in a remaster / remake... they work more as consultants in key points.
In fact a more technical team... 3D designs, coders, etc can do the job.
Most of creative teams (that is the bigger part of workload in a game) doesn't need to active work in a remaster / remake.
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Yeah true, they dont take much resources either. I dont know what happened, but obviously something happened with the studios. But then again, Sucker Punch has been even more quiet.
ND did say when they showed those Factions pictures, that they are working on something else. That was some time ago.
Outside of Insomniac, everyone else has also been slow releasing there main AAA games. Sucker Punch released GOT the same year and TLOU2. No sign of GOT2 yet. Horizon 1 to Horizon 2 took 5 years. Spiderman 1-2 took 5 years but there other insomniac studios been working organised it seems lol.
Advise that most knowledgeable players could have given. ND probably refused this but surprised it wasnt given to a different live service team to finish and put content for with maybe a project leader from ND.
I mean this isn't new news, it's what we expected from Jason's report that said that within their review Bungie highlighted the player retention issue(with the current content that was available).
From that point on, ND really had two choices, delay the launch of the game from its projected release date and bulk up even more to have a more robust pipeline. This would delay production timelines on the SP projects in the work(the new IP) as well as further push TLoU Part III.
The second option, was to can the game to put talent back on the two projects they're currently on(and that's what they did).
Not all of Naughty Dog was working on The Last of Us Online, but between 2020 and 2022 I personally witnessed something along the lines of 100-120 MP positions being filled via their jobs page and I might've missed a couple more(I'm a diehard factions fan, yes I did scour their hiring page every couple of weeks).
This is without counting the MP team that was there initially as well as talent agnostic positions(artists, and so on that were already on board) that would've already been working during conceptual phase/pre-production.
I would not be surprised, if at the peak of the game's production back in 2023, the game had something like 250-300 people working on it. This is almost as big as TLoU's Part II 300~ employees at the time. I don't believe Neil Druckmann was lying when he said this was their most ambitious game yet.
Naughty Dog did expand to 400~ those numbers would mean that Naughty Dog.
At the time of the project's cancellation, a majority(over 50% of the headcount) would've probably been working on factions, with another larger group working on pre-production for the next SP game, and a very small team working on TLoU Part II PS5.
There's also the issue that once TLoU Online, it's not like a SP game where people from the project can be moved to another one. You have to maintain a relatively high employee count to push out content(as a matter of fact, sometime your team grows post-launch to meet player demands).
The project's scope was simply too big, especially at the time where PS was already looking around at costs.
Is there another timeline where SIE/ND feels like they can grow even bigger to something like 500-600 employees to manage both the MP game and work on another big triple A game at the same time concurrently without issues?
Sure, but that's not the one we live in.
Honestly that headcount sounds like a lot of dollaridoos, especially in Santa Monica. Those salaries are ridiculous.
They didn't refuse the advice since they cancelled something they had invested a shitload of money already.
From that point on, ND really had two choices, delay the launch of the game from its projected release date and bulk up even more to have a more robust pipeline. This would delay production timelines on the SP projects in the work(the new IP) as well as further push TLoU Part III.
The second option, was to can the game to put talent back on the two projects they're currently on(and that's what they did).
Not all of Naughty Dog was working on The Last of Us Online, but between 2020 and 2022 I personally witnessed something along the lines of 100-120 MP positions being filled via their jobs page and I might've missed a couple more(I'm a diehard factions fan, yes I did scour their hiring page every couple of weeks).
This is without counting the MP team that was there initially as well as talent agnostic positions(artists, and so on that were already on board) that would've already been working during conceptual phase/pre-production.
I would not be surprised, if at the peak of the game's production back in 2023, the game had something like 250-300 people working on it. This is almost as big as TLoU's Part II 300~ employees at the time. I don't believe Neil Druckmann was lying when he said this was their most ambitious game yet.
Naughty Dog did expand to 400~ those numbers would mean that Naughty Dog.
At the time of the project's cancellation, a majority(over 50% of the headcount) would've probably been working on factions, with another larger group working on pre-production for the next SP game, and a very small team working on TLoU Part II PS5.
There's also the issue that once TLoU Online, it's not like a SP game where people from the project can be moved to another one. You have to maintain a relatively high employee count to push out content(as a matter of fact, sometime your team grows post-launch to meet player demands).
The project's scope was simply too big, especially at the time where PS was already looking around at costs.
Is there another timeline where SIE/ND feels like they can grow even bigger to something like 500-600 employees to manage both the MP game and work on another big triple A game at the same time concurrently without issues?
Sure, but that's not the one we live in.
Honestly that headcount sounds like a lot of dollaridoos, especially in Santa Monica. Those salaries are ridiculous.
They didn't refuse the advice since they cancelled something they had invested a shitload of money already.
The thing with ND is ND & Sony should’ve made them create a side multiplayer team & bolster development by hiring or getting a support studio maybe partner w Bandai Namco to use one of there studios that isn’t doing anything to support TLOU online.
Poor leadership & even worse management
genuine question here, was the multiplayer from the first game good? i never had the chance to play, a friend of mine used to say it was very fun to play, couldnt they just re-do this with new assets, maps and gunplay from the second game? instead of trying to go all in with the gaas mindset
It was decent. Not as fun as Uncharted. It's basically a matter of who gets to more supply boxes at the start. Game uses the same crafting system as the single player. You have a few supply boxes around the map that drop random stuff and them fill up over time. You then use that that to craft one hit melee weapons and molotovs. Killing enemies gets you "parts" you use to instantly buy ammo or armor.
The game is definitely slow paced and requires a bit of planning. But it also sold OP weapons for real money. Weapons that you could get access to for free but in preset loadouts, that usually come with a bunch of stuff you never use.
