Why do people keep saying Bungie helped out Arrowhead with Helldivers 2 when we have like zero proof?
All Sony's GAAS games went through their Live Service Centre of Excellence
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We don't know exactly what it all entails
But everyone is prepared to conclude that it resulted in negative results for Factions 2 and other canned projects. It's equally likely their processes helped successful projects
Here with the following image (and related speech in the related fiscal report) Sony explained it:
Before they had separatedly
Bungie, SIE Publishing, PS Studios Live Service Hub, PS Studios Tech & Services and the studios themselves of PS Studios (not only Bungie). They made a plan to integrate their GaaS specific stuff related teams into a Sony Live Services Center of Excellence.
In the 6 monhs after they completed the acquisition (mid Jul 22-mid Jan 23),
Bungie and PS Studios shared and learned from each other GaaS process inmmersion, philosophy & principles.
Then in the next 6 years (mid Jan 23-mid Jun 23) they
built wider SIE expertise AND assisted in-development GaaS projects regarding their Live Service Capability and Individual title reviews.
Around mid June 2023, the Sony Live Services Center of Excellence was fully established fully integratting Bungie expertise into all (GaaS related) SIE -including PS Studios- processes:
- Design / concept reviews (overall GaaS integration)
- Monetization & data reviews (monetization strategy, big data and game metrics tracking & analysis)
- Pre-production pipeline review (to make sure the GaaS related design, budgets, teams, servers, etc are considered since the start of a GaaS)
- Launch readiness & post-launch reviews (to double check their post launch roadmap, monetization strategy, server tech, early metrics tracked & estimattions, and other GaaS related stuff is ready and looks good enough)
Some people misunderstood this thinking Bungie now was cancelling or delaying games from PS Studios or even shutting down studios, or deciding what games they do next, when isn't the case. Basically merged the GaaS SIE+PS Studios+Bungie knowledge and expertise and created an unified team to overview, support and review the GaaS areas of all SIE (PS Studios + Bungie) titles under development.
Which in some case may have helped to identify some areas with room for improvement in some GaaS related topic and maybe change some budget or tweak some plans, maybe causing some delay. But not a big deal other than decide if stuff gets unlocked or bought with this or that currency that can be only unlocked, bought or both, if the price is this or that, if adding or modifying this or that makes the game more likely to have a better retention, if the budgets and post launch roadmap are the correct ones, if they have this or that tech to track in-game progression, retention, monetization metrics plus server issues and things like that.
Having all this, then each dev team has creative freedom, they handle their games themselves and address with their publisher editorial team (PS Studios for ones, Bungie for others) if the game is ok to achieve their related miletones when it's the time. Not only considering these things, but also the many other areas specific for non-GaaS or common between GaaS and non-GaaS.
This Live Service Center of Excellence applies to all SIE GaaS, from both Bungie and PS Studios, under development. This means, not only unreleased games as was the case of Helldivers 2, but also to already released GaaS titles such as MLB, Gran Turismo 7 or Firewall Ultra.