Game Science achieved several notable milestones with the success of Black Myth: WuKong:
1. The game elevated the standards for Chinese animation, with its cutscenes being praised by foreign players.
2. In contrast to companies like Tencent and Netease, Game Science developed the game with a small, entirely local team, avoiding the use of overseas studios or foreign talent.
I like the focus on management of production here. Video games is a collaborative art work, moreso than film and thus it actually requires much more scrutinize management of production to achieve anything. The problem with many Western game studios, the big ones esp, is that there are just way too often manpower bloat as I see it. To make things worse, constant lay off so investor can gain bigger dividend means a lot of gained live-experience from developing games just got lost and the studio basically reset itself. There's no continuity in Western cultural production these days and it just turned into self-swallowing Ouroboros of constant production of rehash and remakes.
Yes, and there's a lot in that when you break it down. There's a huge focus with big studios for revenue targets over player or user experience, much of that due to private equity. Profit has to be a goal, but it needs to balanced with user needs. Manpower bloat often happens because of internal politics (your power can depend on team size), and the belief that bigger teams = better products, which isn't the case. Revenue target thinking tends to see processes, creative development, and R&D research as a cost center - rather than a product or revenue driver.
I followed you on X (formerly Twitter) and I found that your experience on personel management to be valuable in the context of production like this. That point about personel bloat correlates directly to a team negotiating power explains a LOT of observable internal dynamics that happened in Western devs even from the outside (which yes, i also think why DEI in particular also plays into this).
Game Science achieved several notable milestones with the success of Black Myth: WuKong:
1. The game elevated the standards for Chinese animation, with its cutscenes being praised by foreign players.
2. In contrast to companies like Tencent and Netease, Game Science developed the game with a small, entirely local team, avoiding the use of overseas studios or foreign talent.
I like the focus on management of production here. Video games is a collaborative art work, moreso than film and thus it actually requires much more scrutinize management of production to achieve anything. The problem with many Western game studios, the big ones esp, is that there are just way too often manpower bloat as I see it. To make things worse, constant lay off so investor can gain bigger dividend means a lot of gained live-experience from developing games just got lost and the studio basically reset itself. There's no continuity in Western cultural production these days and it just turned into self-swallowing Ouroboros of constant production of rehash and remakes.
Yes, and there's a lot in that when you break it down. There's a huge focus with big studios for revenue targets over player or user experience, much of that due to private equity. Profit has to be a goal, but it needs to balanced with user needs. Manpower bloat often happens because of internal politics (your power can depend on team size), and the belief that bigger teams = better products, which isn't the case. Revenue target thinking tends to see processes, creative development, and R&D research as a cost center - rather than a product or revenue driver.
I followed you on X (formerly Twitter) and I found that your experience on personel management to be valuable in the context of production like this. That point about personel bloat correlates directly to a team negotiating power explains a LOT of observable internal dynamics that happened in Western devs even from the outside (which yes, i also think why DEI in particular also plays into this).