"Collapse of creativity" in the industry according to Shawn Layden - via Eurogamer

akira__

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You do realize GAAS is long term profit right? Working on games longer, benefitting from long tails?

Shawn Layden is championing AA games with short dev cycles and no tails.
I did quite like Returnal, lately many large games are missing the most important element called fun. Hell divers 2 is hybrid in that sense, smaller game still GAAS. And before it's novelty wore off it was allot of fun. But your acting as if I'm pro Layden, I'm not. Playstation is a large company and they have already had success before him. Don't forget we are consumers we play games, not executives.

@Yurinka Shawn didn't buy the studio, that was the issue. Not working with the studio. PS has worked with many other studios and if they didn't deliver the cooperation ended.
They didn't buy arrowhead but did
buy a unproven studio.
They killed last of us GaaS game but did released concord.
 

Yurinka

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People didn't buy his pet peeves projects like Concrete Genie & Dreams.
To be fair, Dreams was greenlighted before Shawn became chairman of what today is PS Studios, he was in charge of the SCEA subsidiary (in charge of sales and marketing, not development). And was released after he left Sony, under Jim Ryan and Hermen Hulst.

The smaller projects he backed flopped, that's just the market speaking not the execs.

The difference with Ryan is that these smaller (creative) titles are outsourced under Yoshida and in my opinion delivered much better results like Kena, Stray, Sifu, Humanity etc. there is quite a list of these with more obscure stuff no one played like Season's A letter to the Future. And these are often released on Extra which ironically shows that people ask for these but don't even play them when even ''free'' cause those same people simply don't mention it like it doesn't exist!
Yes. But well, most of these games aren't expected to be supersellers. They have a role of catalog fillers to appeal certain specific niches.

I like Layden but let's not act the 220 million budget for LoU2 wasn't greenlit under him, or the PC ports or the California centric management that has started under him. I will say what I do agree with him not every project needs to make insane amount of money and more artistic projects like Last Guardian for your portfolio & prestige is worth beyond spreadsheet financials.
Another one greenlighted under Shawn was the TLOUP1 remake, which when promoted Hermen saw it, didn't like it and thought they were spending a too high budget for it.

The only difference is in this era it's often a wrap for the studio cause you don't get another 4-5 years with a budget from publishers if it bombs, basically I call it the THQ level of game publishing has disappeared in the industry but IMO that's more on the devs for abysmal products.
Well, THQ continues there publishing games under Embracer. There are many AA games today, I think Embracer is a good example of them because they release many AA games.

I did quite like Returnal, lately many large games are missing the most important element called fun. Hell divers 2 is hybrid in that sense, smaller game still GAAS. And before it's novelty wore off it was allot of fun. But your acting as if I'm pro Layden, I'm not. Playstation is a large company and they have already had success before him. Don't forget we are consumers we play games, not executives.

@Yurinka Shawn didn't buy the studio, that was the issue. Not working with the studio. PS has worked with many other studios and if they didn't deliver the cooperation ended.
They didn't buy arrowhead but did
buy a unproven studio.
They killed last of us GaaS game but did released concord.
It was a good idea to buy Firewalk because they have a ton of top tier talent who worked on games like Destiny, CoD and several other top tier shooters or AAA games.

A Sony hero shooter from Destiny and CoD devs was a good pitch specially when greenlighted back in 2016 or 2018. Back then nobody could expect it was going to tank as hard as they did.

They are a way more proven team by far than Arrowhead is, and specially as Arrowhead were back then. At some point Sony said they decided to pause acquisitions for the mid term (meaning, they may resume it late next year or in 2026, which is around when they'll get the cash from selling their banks division). So maybe they didn't acquire Arrowhead because of that. Or maybe because Arrowhead didn't want to sell.

And well, Shawn was only chairman of WWS (PS Studios) for a year and a half. The president of WWS at his time, the one who took the important decisions for first and second party games, was Shuhei Yoshida. Plus the SIE CEO, the one signing the contracts, deals and acquisitions were House and Kodera, and more recently Jim Ryan.

I think you guys overstimate Shawn, because the was the public face / salesman in the E3 shows when he was in charge of the sales & marketing subsidiary of SIE for America.

They killed last of us GaaS game but did released concord.
Naughty Dog decided to kill TLOU Online, not the PS Studios head or SIE CEO.

Yes, they decided to release Concord, yes. And to kill it a few days later.
 
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akira__

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It was a good idea to buy Firewalk because they have a ton of top tier talent who worked on games like Destiny, CoD and several other top tier shooters or AAA games.
The old PS strategy was to nuture relationship and grow the studio without ownership. That strategy has been quite successful.
 
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Boswollox

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No one killed AA, the devs themselves did it. They make assburger AA games like banishers and upcoming flop unknown 9. Eurojank doesnt give license to make buggy games with dumb as a dodo AI
adam sandler comedy GIF


Eh I would gladly take 10 London studios being sacrificed for Jim Ryan messing up xbox's timeline and in hindsight its business with a lengthy arbitration case, the guy delivered something shawn, house or kodera couldn't
Stop It Michael Jordan GIF


>Supports Sony
>Would happily see 10 Sony studios close to own the xbots
>Totally not an insane fanboy.
Lol, lmao even.
 

Men_in_Boxes

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The old PS strategy was to nuture relationship and grow the studio without ownership. That strategy has been quite successful.
No time for that anymore.

The industry is going through an explosive growth period. You can't take it slow while all your competitors are being hyper aggressive.
 

quest4441

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adam sandler comedy GIF



Stop It Michael Jordan GIF


>Supports Sony
>Would happily see 10 Sony studios close to own the xbots
>Totally not an insane fanboy.
Lol, lmao even.
London studios have been a net negative value for the last 2 decades, the games they make dont sell, they dont even do any tech innovation/support like ND's ICE team or xdev. A deadweight got shut down
 

CrackmanNL

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And that is what I take issue with, the short-sighted strategy of profit now, and GAAS as main focus.

Edit: ah yes, big brain move calling me console warrior in a thread where I criticise the hell out of Playstation current strategy.
I've posted it before multiple times on the interview with WUPS but Layden said the GAAS strategy as something to pursue as a publisher was inevitable based on metrics
Think you got me mixed up with someone else cause I didn't call you that. I'm just saying people sugar coat certain aspects in that era.

To be fair, Dreams was greenlighted before Shawn became chairman of what today is PS Studio
Dreams started in 2012 and was rebooted twice in development. It was a project close to him, MM working 10 years on it is a different convo especially at the end with a sunk cost fallacy. I would speculate under Yoshida it would have been cancelled long time ago.


Well, THQ continues there publishing games under Embracer. There are many AA games today, I think Embracer is a good example of them because they release many AA games.
Embracer scalped THQ when it went down indeed but they have announced recently they going to reform into 3 different entities each of them with a specific focus on AAA, Indies and mobile. Which reinforces Layden's point of AA going away, I mean to give credit to EA they tried under the Originals label with Wild Hearts and Immortals of Aveum not that long ago and they both bombed financially.
 

akira__

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No time for that anymore.

The industry is going through an explosive growth period. You can't take it slow while all your competitors are being hyper aggressive.

We are in 2024 now, we have seen the results, layoffs throughout the industry and Concord failed.

Japanese studios didn't follow the trend and didn't have layoffs.
 
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Men_in_Boxes

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We are in 2024 now, we have seen the results, layoffs throughout the industry and Concord failed.
Industries always go through growth / shrink cycles every 10 years. It's the sign of a natural, healthy ecosystem. Don't let fake news types sell you the apocalypse. You don't have to buy the BS.

Japanese studios didn't follow the trend and didn't have layoffs.
And that is why Japan continues to be irrelevant in the gaming space.
 
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Kokoloko

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What was classed as AA and AAA during the 90’s and 2000’s?

I always think these kind of statements are only half real. Graphics got better, they cost more, what can be done about it.

N64 games cost more than Snes games, should they have stuck with Snes games. Or Nes even?
Same as PS2 games over PS1 games

Greedy CEO’s are destroying the industry, not AAA games
 

MrAss

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AA aren't gone. They just became more expensive and more riskier. He pretends only AAA games became more expensive to make but that is true for AA as well.
 

Yurinka

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Dreams started in 2012 and was rebooted twice in development. It was a project close to him, MM working 10 years on it is a different convo especially at the end with a sunk cost fallacy. I would speculate under Yoshida it would have been cancelled long time ago.

Yoshida was the president/head of PS Studios (back then Worldwide Studios from 2008 to 2019, until he moved to create and manage PS Indies months before Dreams was released early 2020. Yoshida was their head during most of their development and was replaced by Hermen, not by Layden.

When Dreams was greenlighted, Shawn Layden was an executive salesman of Sony Network Entertainment International (so wasn't in Worldwide Studios) and later became the head salesman of the sales and marketing subsidiary of SIE for America (known as SCEA back then). So again, not related with game development. Shawn was chairman of WWS (now PS Studios) from March 2018 to September 2019, barely a year and a half during Dreams development. So he was an executive of PS Studios during a small portion of the period Yoshida was running the place and also a short period of the development of Dreams.

Late 2019 Hermen replaced Yoshida and a paperbin replaced Layden.
 
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CrackmanNL

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Yoshida was the president/head of PS Studios (back then Worldwide Studios from 2008 to 2019, until he moved to create and manage PS Indies months before Dreams was released early 2020. Yoshida was their head during most of their development and was replaced by Hermen, not by Layden.
None of my comments claimed he was head of WWS during the entire tenure just that the project was close to him based on the tweet when he was long gone. And the speculation is on the 2nd time it got rebooted during development. Hence:
MM working 10 years on it is a different convo especially at the end with a sunk cost fallacy.
 

quest4441

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Now do concord.
If it was in my hands I would have closed Firewalk after the open beta, I would never have acquired them in the first place. If london studios signifies malaise and incompetence then Firewalk is pure distilled humiliation
 
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Vertigo

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I’ve completely given up on western games. It’s all boring pieces of open world garbage that don’t challenge gamers and just offers a bunch of shit on a map to check out. Absolute shit tier game design.

I’m enjoying watching these products fail just for this reason.

Am I optimistic? Yes. The old guard is dying and they earned it with their SBI garbage. Thankfully Japan is turning to corner and other Asian devs embarrassing the big pubs.
 
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More like inflated DEI and other BS costs that aren't necessary. Taking major money while most of the job is outsourced overseas. Why even pay the inept devs in these Californian studios when most of their jobs are outsourcing to competent Asian devs?