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Arkane Austin (Prey, Dishonored 1) hiring "Online Game Engineer"

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
This was probably super obvious to people given the direction Bethesda has been going and the performance of Prey, but here it is.

Online Game Engineer
Division: Arkane Studios Texas
| Department: Programming | Location: Austin , TX, US

Arkane Studios is looking for an Online Game Engineer to join our team in developing AAA games for PC and consoles. The successful candidate will have expert knowledge of and experience in the design, implementation and continuing support of large scale client/server applications using primarily C++. Extensive experience developing online games is required. The ideal candidate will be passionate about technology, have excellent problem solving skills and a desire to work in a creative and collaborative environment.

Responsibilities
· Works with other engineers to architect and refine game systems and online features related to online games (client-server networking optimization, integration with backend services, data authority management, game persistence, etc…)
· Works with designers, artists and other personnel involved in the development of products as required
· Test and refine code and systems throughout the development cycle of the project
· Diagnose and fix live service issues

Requirements
· Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, or equivalent experience
· Excellent C++ knowledge
· 5+ years professional software development experience writing client-server game applications
· At least one AAA title shipped as a contributing online engineer

· Experience with multithreaded programming
· Expertise with network programming and optimization
· Excellent analytical and mathematical skills
· Strong interpersonal skills and problem solving ability
· Writes clear, maintainable, portable code
· Accurately estimates his/her schedules and delivers high quality work products to that schedule
· Must be a self-motivated and energetic team player with a very strong work ethic and cooperative attitude

Desired Skills
· A passion for gaming and a working knowledge of online products
· Experience developing for an online environment

· Experience with testing frameworks
· Experience optimizing code for memory and CPU utilization
· Experience in a “Live” environment (ongoing support of a product after launch)
Source: https://jobs.zenimax.com/requisitions/view/1447
 
The language makes it sound like a game as a service type thing. That's very sad if they're moving onto something more generic because no one wanted to buy their games.

I guess I can't really blame them though. It's more the consumers' fault.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
The language makes it sound like a game as a service type thing. That's very sad if they're moving onto something more generic because no one wanted to buy their games.

I guess I can't really blame them though. It's more the consumers' fault.

I would think so, yes.

Bethesda in general has been going that way:
- id has a service game with Quake Champions and an attempted service component for Doom
- Bethesda Game Studios has Fallout Shelter as a service game and is hiring for both a AAA service game (as one of their two major titles) and another mobile service game
- ZeniMax Online has The Elder Scrolls Online as a service game and is making mobile service games
- The Elder Scrolls Legends is a service game
- Battlecry is making a service game
- And now Arkane Austin is hiring for something that is at minimum an online game that needs live support. It's possible it's an online component and not a service game, but I agree with your assessment that the likelihood is high.

I imagine the main reason that Wolfenstein 2 and The Evil Within 2 have no online components is that they were greenlit in 2012.

I know prey kinda bombed but dishonored 2 didn't really do that great too right?
Not tremendously, but it did do better than Prey by a good margin. They said they were interested in making a third after the Dishonored 2 standalone expansion pack, but that it would be a fresh start for the universe. I guess it's not impossible they add online components there, but we probably won't find that out until after the expansion comes out and they start hiring for Dishonored 3 (assuming they still decide to make it).
 

Alexious

Member
This is bad news. I'm generally all for online games, but Arkane's titles are unique and should remain focused on single player. I don't see them working as well with multiplayer.
 
Arkane has had a great run of games, and as long as Bethesda gives them the time, I have faith in their ability to continue developing great games. It's still sad to see such a great developer struggle to find the success I believe they deserve. Prey is legitimately the best game I've played in a long time.
 

Corpsepyre

Banned
Your game bombs or underperforms, what do you do? Look for an online engineer to save the day, of course. Current day gaming industry, ugh.
 

Kazuhira

Member
Time will tell if it's for the best or not,at least they are not disbanding Arkane and sending all the staff to other internal dev teams.
Arkane hasn't dissapointed me yet,D1&2 and Prey are top-notch games so i'll keep supporting them as long as i can.
Edit:I think most of us are overreacting about this info though,myself included.
 

CHC

Member
I'll reserve judgement for now, especially since it seems to be only one person they're after (?). But at first glance it does seem disappointing.
 

Uzzy

Member
Dishonored Online, Assassin vs Assassin death matches.

It makes me sad that it always seems to end up this way.
 
Man, fuck this dumbass industry.

And I better hope the people who didn't buy Dishonored 2/Prey have a damn good reason because Arkane deserves better than this bullshit
 

FHIZ

Member
They should hire someone to fix the PS4 version of Prey they actively made worse from a technical standpoint. I'd like to play it at some point...
 
They should hire someone to fix the PS4 version of Prey they actively made worse from a technical standpoint. I'd like to play it at some point...

+1. Still waiting and starting to think I'll have to pick it up as-is at some point and settle for the clearly inferior version, great stuff.
 

StereoVsn

Member
Well, on one hand it makes sense since last two of their games didnt do well. On the other hand it is unfortunate since everything is going online generally has shallower gameplay/systems/storyline/etc.

Oh well, I guess I am part of the problem since I skipped Dishonored 2 due to too many games coming out at that time and shoddy PC Port and Prey I didn't have much interest in. This is after loving Dishonored 1 and buying all DLC for it.

Edit: At least Bethesda didn't shut the Studio down.
 

aravuus

Member
Not like I was ever expecting Prey 2 to happen, but this still kind of sort of bums me out for some reason

Man. Maybe I should double-dip on PS4 to show there are definitely at least dozens of us who want more immersive sims. Kinda feel like replaying it, actually.
 
I just want to curl up into a ball and cry. Why can't there just be solid single player games without multiplayer attachments? Though maybe they can balance it as well as Naughty Dog does. Where it isn't intrusive and actually decent.

Arkane has become my favorite developer, even besting Atlus for me.

Note to self: buy Prey after finishing Dishonored 2.

Bought Dishonored 2 before Prey, but didn't finish it until last week. Was so fun, now I'm just waiting for Prey's new game +. Just a note, the ps4 version of Prey is the worst. It's not horrible, but it has performance issues. So far they are looking into patching it. Seems fixing the input lag, messed with the originally smooth 30fps.
 
The language makes it sound like a game as a service type thing. That's very sad if they're moving onto something more generic because no one wanted to buy their games.

I guess I can't really blame them though. It's more the consumers' fault.

No, it wasn't the consumers fault. The PS4 version of Dishonored 2 had a lot of input lag and the PS4 version of Prey is a mess.

Add to that Bethesda did shit all marketing the games.

I sure as shit would never in a million years buy the garbage PS4 version of Prey if I didn't have a PC. That'd be an easy skip, especially after the ridiculously poor demo.
 

Sotha_Sil

Member
Hold your horses, folks. They just announced three new games at E3, and all three were AAA and single-player only. If you own a X1 or PS4, here's all the games from Beth Soft you can play:

SP-only
-Dishonored DE
-Dishonored 2
-Dishonored DOTO
-Prey
-Skyrim SE
-Fallout 4
-Fallout Shelter
-Wolfenstein TNO
-Wolfenstein TNC
-The Evil Within
-The Evil Within 2

SP-focused with MP component
-DOOM

MP-only
-TESO (though it's now designed to be a solo game as well)

MP-only, PC/mobile-only
-Quake Legends
-TES Legends

Since acquiring all those studios, they've had a lot of growth, and it's been almost entirely through SP games. Hiring one online engineer at a studio that's never released a game with MP gameplay in it doesn't change everything. As I recall, Arkane has had a multiplayer proof of concept floating around since they were indie and begging for work. Maybe they want to hire someone to look into it while they continue on their merry way. I doubt Harvey Smith is moving from Lyon to Austin to direct a MP game.

They are doing some MP experimenting, but they seem to be opening new teams up to do it, not converting existing staff from SP to MP-focuses. The BGS team making multiplayer games is new and based out of Montreal. Zenimax Online started from the ground up. They purchased Escalation to assist with other studios. Another possibility is Arkane Austin growing and adding a second team. I believe they took in some people from Battlecry when they canned their self-titled game.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Shared world immersive sim could be cool.

I think if they were going that route, I think it would be more likely that they would just ship Arkane Lyon's Dishonored 3 with campaign co-op a la Ghost Recon Wildlands, and then make something more online service focused at Arkane Austin.
 

Zukkoyaki

Member
New IP service game from Austin
Dishonored 3 with co-op from Lyon

I'm down with that. It isn't like they pulled the plug on their single player games.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Hold your horses, folks. They just announced three new games at E3, and all three were AAA and single-player only.

The thing worth remembering though is that two of those games were greenlit back in 2014, and the other is basically the replacement for having DLC for Dishonored 2.

When predicting publisher behavior, we want to look more at leading indicators (very recent behavior, job postings, strategic statements) as opposed to historic indicators.

For example, Assassin's Creed: Origins started development right after Black Flag came out, and it being a singleplayer only title doesn't really reflect on the rest of Ubisoft's line-up, which is very heavily online enabled. South Park is similarly a game started a very long time ago.
 
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