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Amazon's first three PC games unveiled: New World, Breakaway, and Crucible

Maddrical

Member
This is the most gaf thread I've ever read haha. New World sounds crazy ambitious, the other 2 sound like they could be good but it really depends on the execution and as others have said, how their respective communities hold up. Definitely going to keep my eyes peeled for more info on New World.
 

KooopaKid

Banned
For their first breakthrough in the game industry, Amazon really seem to have the pulse on what multiplayer gamers want. Those 3 concepts are all interesting with each a new twist. Good job!
 

Stiler

Member
This is also troubling.

Maybe I missed something at some point, but do we know the DRM for Amazon's games? Will these be available on Steam?


Oh, I know that. I just thought it was funny is all. I mean, there's even experienced devs like Carbine who ended up with the flop that was WildStar. It's a crazy difficult genre to get into, because it's incredibly expensive to do right, and Amazon's going for it right out of the gate.


I haven't actually been following this close enough. Who'd they manage to get onto the dev team for this MMO?


Yeah I understand. MMO's have long been the death knell of many upcoming studios (especially the likes of the Amalur mmo).

Though I do think The New World is off to the right start, going for a sandbox style world that allows players to play different styles of play, rather then trying (yet again) to chase the tired and old WoW style themepark style of mmo that most of the failed mmo's have been made after.
 

Speely

Banned
Yeah I understand. MMO's have long been the death knell of many upcoming studios (especially the likes of the Amalur mmo).

Though I do think The New World is off to the right start, going for a sandbox style world that allows players to play different styles of play, rather then trying (yet again) to chase the tired and old WoW style themepark style of mmo that most of the failed mmo's have been made after.

Agreed. My only real concern is whether or not Amazon lets them finish the game before pushing for release. A big, well-funded sandbox MMO with a cool theme done by devs who know their stuff could be huge.
 

Durante

Member
Essentially it's an open world sandbox MMO where you colonize 17th century North America, but the twist here is that all the supernatural stuff people from the era believed is actually true.
Taken at face value that's an amazing premise. Let's see what they do with it.

I was expecting a Hero Shooter, not a Hero Rocket League!
Me too. Hero Rocket League is more interesting though.
 

Detox

Member
They will get all their twitch partners to play these games for a while. If the games are not dogshit they will get big.
 

Keasar

Member
I wanna try all of them, interesting concepts all around and I do hope they succeed. A sandbox MMO that invokes EVE Online but with a fantasy setting instead has been a long wish of mine.
 
The games were basically what I expected from them when I heard they were making PC exclusives.

No big budget SP/RPG but focus on games that can get them an audience through Twitch
 
The New World pitch is far and away my favourite of the three. Though I think it needs to give players access to supernatural elements. Like, become the werewolf that terrorises the lands, hiding in the day.


That'd be so cool.
 
Good question. Unfortunate lack of a Prime app on my Apple TV leads me to believe they're confident enough to launch these games exclusively through Amazon. Which would be unfortunate.

Unfortunate...? That would be financial suicide!
Surely they can't be that stupid!
 

MGrant

Member
Unfortunate...? That would be financial suicide!
Surely they can't be that stupid!

I think if anyone could pull it off, it would be Amazon. They want that Steam money, and they're probably going to get a chunk of it.

Breakaway looks fun, but Hero games live and die on art and addictiveness. I don't see the charm of its characters; they look like League rejects. I still want to try it, though.

I need to see more of Crucible and New World. Could be intereresting.
 

danmaku

Member
New World sounds interesting. The setting is great, finally an RPG with an historical setting. We need more games like this, AC doesn't hold the exclusive on human history, you know. Mechanics are a big question mark but they have my attention.
 
The games were basically what I expected from them when I heard they were making PC exclusives.

Jup, not my type of games, but it seems that the big majority of developers (certainly new ones) are now only making multiplayer/co-op focused games.
Offtopic, but this almost makes me wonder how saturated the market is going to be in a few years. How many F2P / games as a service can the gaming market sustain? Games like Hearthstone, Overwatch and almost any MOBA are very time consuming and with new content every few months, also not going away anytime soon.
SP focused games get a spotlight for a short time and then almost everyone forgets about it, until a sale and makes room for new SP games.

Is there a MOBA bubble coming or is the MOBA/co-op market just so big that most good games, in that genre, can be profitable?
 
Interested how all 3 will pan out. Breakaway having a sport angle makes it more interesting compared to what people were thinking it would end up being. Not fond of the character designs though.

They will get all their twitch partners to play these games for a while. If the games are not dogshit they will get big.

This.
 
So, did Double Helix get renamed into Amazon Games Orange County and Breakaway is their game? Patrick Gilmore's linkeding lists him as head of DH, but on the stage he was introduced as the head of OC and he said how the team that is the the kernel of this game made KI. Or OC is an umbrella including DH and others.

edit: this tweet from March makes me think OC is DH+Lumberyard

https://twitter.com/MrEpilog/status/708811653886771200

Awesome multiplayer room at the new Double Helix/Lumberyard studio. Raised floor for crazy amounts of cabling.
 

Mdk7

Member
Absolutely not my kind of games, only Crucible might be vaguely interesting for me.
Breakaway looks pretty bad though, honestly.
 
Are you sure? Amazon has a lot of customers, and Twitch has a massive reach.

I don't think they need any third party distribution platform.

More hopeful than sure.
I'm guessing some of these games have above average graphical requirements, more than your average user of Amazon user would have.
And people who already have medium to high level PCs, I imagine would be less than enthusiastic about another client to download from.
Steam has already established itself (and to a much lesser extent even Origin)
It doesn't seem clear what audience they are trying to attract if they only decide to keep them as Amazon store exclusives!
 

KJRS_1993

Member
These actually all sound pretty cool. Very interested on how they end up, New World especially sounds like it could be great.
 

Aostia

El Capitan Todd
Ok, I cak skip on Amazon games. Thank you Amazon for making your direction clear from the very beginning. Clearly not my cup of tea.
 
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...disrupt-industry-locked-into-sequel-mentality

"Prior to the acquisition when we were independent, the kernel of this team was the team that built Killer Instinct for Microsoft for Xbox One, and when we released that game it was surreal to send the build off and have it be posted and literally within hours people online are broadcasting the game, talking about the game, talking about what they loved about it, what they didn't like about it, where they hoped it went and their love of the Killer Instinct franchise. And that just made a gigantic impression on this team because it's like everything you got into game development for but times a hundred because the satisfaction is so immediate and the feedback loop is so immediate," he said.

"So we actually came into Amazon with this deep passion for broadcasting, with multiple broadcasters on the team, deep passion for community, deep passion for that type of engagement with customers - and that community-driven strategy was really shaped at Amazon partially based on the passion that studio members from Double Helix had for that type of development. It's hard to develop with those types of communities - they're hardcore gamers and they're the most passionate fans, but when you get it right it's just incredibly satisfying.

Gilmore noted that Amazon's community-driven approach means that players will get access to games much, much earlier than is typical with AAA titles. "The plan for Breakaway is immediately following TwitchCon we're going to go into our alpha and we're going to be very deliberate about that, letting people in as we know the game will support them - make sure we know they're having a great experience," he noted.

"You can expect that we'll release our games to customers earlier than most developers would but then we have this long tail commitment to continue to refine them. Whether that fits the specific definition of AAA or not, I think from a quality standpoint absolutely we stand toe-to-toe with the absolute best games out there in every respect. But in terms of how you might associate a specific rollout plan or release strategy with the definition of AAA I think we're trying to be disruptive and do something different that involves customers earlier in the process."

"As you look at the progress of great, big AAA games, whether it's a Battlefield or GTA or Call of Duty, as those games scale and become businesses in and of themselves, innovation becomes a bigger and bigger risk because your customers are demanding in a lot of ways more of the same and it becomes really, really hard to create something that's genuinely new, and that's part of our mandate to make things that don't exist in a familiar template," he said.

"And we see that as a huge opportunity, and it's a big part of the reason why we're focused on what we call community-driven games for the lifestyle gamer or core gamer - it is leaning into those communities and making big investments to do things that are disruptive and new where we see a lot of people in the industry kind of locked into this sequel mentality or this franchise service oriented mentality. We are trying to do brand new things. You're right that the investment always has to be appropriate, and there's a dimension to that but I feel that Amazon is making the biggest bets on the new of anyone in the games space."

The fact that Amazon's newest titles are built for the PC isn't necessarily a retreat from mobile. Gilmore said it's partially due to the DNA of his original Double Helix team, but "we're building businesses with these games and where they go from there, I think the sky is the limit."

Amazon Game Studios seems to be just getting started. One look at the company's jobs page shows that it's hiring aggressively, and Gilmore confirmed, "We are growing really, really rapidly. We're about 120 developers just on the studio side right now, spread across those two teams but then connected to well over 200 people on the Lumberyard team and a swathe of developers on the AGS Live and platform services team. There's a ton of people invested in games here."
 
Not really my thing, but New World and Crucible look sound interesting. I guess this means if these games are all for PC they've given up any kind of gaming ventures on their own platforms then? (Fire TV and their phone?)
 
I'm disappointed in OP for not being able to incorporate"however, the twist is" into the description of the third game.


All of these games sound surprisingly good and more than what I was expecting from Amazon. Ones I'll definitely keep am eye out for in the future.
 
I'll give Amazon credit for entering the games industry in a big way. I'll then take the credit away, because in my opinion all three of these products looks like they're all going to be dead on arrival.
 

Boney

Banned
At the very least all 3 sound relatively novel spin on things instead of complete rehashed so I'm satisfied.
 

Yukinari

Member
Crucible seems like its gonna be the most popular, especially if you can fuck with the players like in DungeonLand.

Still wish Amazon didnt buy Double Helix because i doubt theyre gonna produce a hit.
 

Rellik

Member
New World is definitely something I'm going to keep an eye on.

The other 2 don't catch my attention at all.
 

jono51

Banned
New World sounds cool, but fuck I wish it was a cyberpunk/sci-fi setting instead. Would be pretty much what I've always wanted then.
 
Crucible seems like its gonna be the most popular, especially if you can fuck with the players like in DungeonLand.

Still wish Amazon didnt buy Double Helix because i doubt theyre gonna produce a hit.

That's a good point actually - do we know who's developing these games? Is Double Helix behind any of them?
 
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