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[x@3f*oo_e!]

Not just delays but quality issues. Call it a prediction if you want.:

Work from home, remote meeting etc etc. No face to face dynamic. etc etc. - those are the reasons

So far my only experience of a definite COVID product was the AWE dlc for Control. I liked the base game and the first DLC was just as good. The second DLC, which was developed under restrictions was ass (imo, excluding Alan Wake recognition points) - completely recycled environments from the base game (unlike first DLC), nothing really new. Just lame lame lame. I don't blame the devs obviously

We are working on AWE and development is going according to schedule. Working from home has been challenging for the team - AWE is the first content our studio is developing entirely from home. [reddit]

I'm expecting some products that just feel off, or half done tbh. Could be dark days ahead.

[edit - not intended to be a stealth Control thread..]

 

[Kuranghi]

This might help: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

Bunch of devs milking covid.

 

[ReBurn]

That will just be the excuse when games go bomba.

 

[DerFuggler]

What Covid doesn't compromise, woke messaging will. So relax!

 

[KyoZz]

Mostly no, just delayed games

 

[Fbh]

This is like the fourth "2021 sucks" thread in like 2 days lol.
But nah, I don't think so. I think most respectable devs and publishers will rather delay their games than release some sub par quality product.

It might affect some lower budget games as I imagine not everyone can afford an extra 6-12 months of work. But overall I think covid will be felt in delays more than anything.

 

[Keihart]

Doubt it, even more so on this type of endeavors where most people are probably savvy enough to adapt and use tech to get the most out of it.
If anything, maybe there'll be less crunch, people don't need to commute anymore, can keep working on their desk and attend meetings at the same time and probably don't have to sleep under the desk or on a couch at the office if crazy crunch is required. The ones that probably have it rougher are the management positions, they have to adapt their social skills to a new setting, but unless they are boomers or bad at it, they'll probably be just fine.

Not to mention, lot's of work was already not done in studios before covid, since there always was a lot studios that outsource things like asset production and what not.

 

[Virt McPolygon]

There will be delays, sure.

Cyberpunk is a perfect example of a game that could've benefitted from a couple more delays.

 

[Enjay]

No but like a lot of other fuck ups in the world it is going to be a convenient excuse for it.

 

[Somebody_Important]

I hope not. Covid has done enough damage already.

 

[NickFire]

I would point to Madden 21, and say yup.

 

[Soodanim]

I guess we are in the big suck right now huh?

What is the big suck? A long period of time with no new content (games), sparse gaming news, and delays caused by covid. I've noticed it with movies, tv shows and now games. The next year seems pretty bleak, and who knows how long it will take industries to recover. Just pray the few bits of...

www.neogaf.com

 

[Phase]

Nah, normal developers will do that.

 

[wordslaughter]

I'm not sure why Covid would really affect game development at all.

Sure, at first they will need some time to organize around working from home. But honestly, game development sounds like an industry that could easily still be done with developers working from home and collaborating online.

Maybe if your game requires a lot of actors and motion capture?

 

[Ten_Fold]

Of course, last year set them back since they had to change to WFH, now they should be more or less good, so of course we will see delays.

 

[GHG]

Anyone blaming anything work related on Covid at this point is a bum.

We've all had 12 months to adapt and adjust. Get on with it and stop making excuses. Yes it's different (and sometimes more difficult) but ultimately everyone has needed to find a way to be just as productive as they were prior to Covid.

Delays make sense due to the time lost during the adjustment to the new normal but drop off's in quality needn't be accepted or excused. Are they also giving us these products at discount rates to account for them not being able to pull their socks up during this pandemic?

 

[Rawdirt]

At my job everyone was given the chance to work from home, it was a clusterF and many people still haven’t adjusted. The world keeps spinning and so many deadlines and tasks have fallen behind. Just an opinion but some people cannot handle the same workload at their house.

 

[GHG]

At my job everyone was given the chance to work from home, it was a clusterF and many people still haven’t adjusted. The world keeps spinning and so many deadlines and tasks have fallen behind. Just an opinion but some people cannot handle the same workload at their house.

I think the failure to adapt in a lot of cases (whether that be individuals or whole companies) is down to the falsehoods and overoptimism that was prevalent in the first few months of the pandemic. "Oh this will only be for a few weeks" quickly became "oh it's just for a few months" and finally "it will just be until the end of the year". Fast forward 12 months and we are well into the new year and last time I checked this pandemic is still very much an ongoing situation.

When you allow people to fall into the mindset that a challenging situation is just temporary it greatly reduces their capacity and drive to adapt to their new reality. Even to this day there are still a lot of people in the "it's temporary" mindset and those people are "waiting" for the pandemic to be over before doing certain things that could actually be done now, just that it would involve more effort on their part.

 

[KungFucius]

At my job everyone was given the chance to work from home, it was a clusterF and many people still haven’t adjusted. The world keeps spinning and so many deadlines and tasks have fallen behind. Just an opinion but some people cannot handle the same workload at their house.

What kind of work is it? My work seems to be more efficient. I gained weight and that sucks, but I get a lot of solid hours just working that I wouldn't have got working onsite. I used to have a lot of meetings spread out across a largish campus. The transit time would eat up a lot of productive time. Now meeting transit is putting on / taking off a headset and there is no commute.

There have been a lot of stories about people working better from home. I think it depends on the role and what you have for a workspace.

 

[PleaseWaitStation4]

Prepare to sift through thousands of indie titles with their awful artwork. Each title is an example of what you get with no imagination and no budget for a marketing team. Then you get the game and realize "lame" is not a strong enough word. This was going to happen without Covid. Be sure to thank a "journalist"!

 

[Stooky]

I think the failure to adapt in a lot of cases (whether that be individuals or whole companies) is down to the falsehoods and overoptimism that was prevalent in the first few months of the pandemic. "Oh this will only be for a few weeks" quickly became "oh it's just for a few months" and finally "it will just be until the end of the year". Fast forward 12 months and we are well into the new year and last time I checked this pandemic is still very much an ongoing situation.

When you allow people to fall into the mindset that a challenging situation is just temporary it greatly reduces their capacity and drive to adapt to their new reality. Even to this day there are still a lot of people in the "it's temporary" mindset and those people are "waiting" for the pandemic to be over before doing certain things that could actually be done now, just that it would involve more effort on their part.

You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re not informed at all. Pipelines/ Software, that did not exist before have be built up to support for large teams 250+ , large amounts of data management etc for devs to work for home. Also to coordinate with other ‘off site’ assets sound, mocap, other outsourced art including hiring. If I’m having problems with a game build I can’t just grab it/programming that pre covid would be sitting next to me to take a look, it just takes a little longer. These are huge hurdles unless I’m making puzzle fighter. Granted I think most devs have it worked out by now, but losing a few months work trying to figure it out, which everybody had to do is not a small task. It effects the schedule, it effects momentum. Parents that have to take care of their kids etc there are many unseen levels that are effected. A lot of it depends on what stage of development the dev is in. Have they shot all their mocap? Can the outsourcing that you previously used turn over the work, because their city is locked down? So many levels that can effect the outcome.

 

[BusierDonkey]

If you think Covid has fucked things up, just wait until they release the perfected ver. 2.0.

 

[Strider311]

Bunch of devs milking covid.

Just like shitty teachers and other garbage employees, using it as an excuse to not fucking work.

 

[Corgi1985]

AAA has been shitty since before covid and it will be shit long after.

 

[Derktron]

Mostly no, just delayed games

A lot of them or games that will end up like Cyberpunk.

 

[Airbus Jr]

I noticed that too ever since covid...movie and games are becoming shit...

Take it i spent houndred hours browsing movie last year.. and most of them are really garbage....

By garbage i mean really..really..shit...with terible special effects acting and directing...

The only decent movie last year i can remember is..tenet...wonder women 84...and mulan....and..thats it...these movie would be average by my usual standard but now i have to settle with that....the rest are really..really terible even when i already lower my standard....

Games are the same... game developer took alot of hit....and getting delays everywhere...

Heres hoping RE8 not getting delayed...

 

[MatrixReloaded101]

You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re not informed at all. Pipelines/ Software, that did not exist before have be built up to support for large teams 250+ , large amounts of data management etc for devs to work for home. Also to coordinate with other ‘off site’ assets sound, mocap, other outsourced art including hiring. If I’m having problems with a game build I can’t just grab it/programming that pre covid would be sitting next to me to take a look, it just takes a little longer. These are huge hurdles unless I’m making puzzle fighter. Granted I think most devs have it worked out by now, but losing a few months work trying to figure it out, which everybody had to do is not a small task. It effects the schedule, it effects momentum. Parents that have to take care of their kids etc there are many unseen levels that are effected. A lot of it depends on what stage of development the dev is in. Have they shot all their mocap? Can the outsourcing that you previously used turn over the work, because their city is locked down? So many levels that can effect the outcome.

^

It’s so insane to see the lack of empathy that some people have. These developers are people not robots, some of them had to battle covid personally or had people close to them die from covid.

On top of that, some developers have to now work from home with a house/apartment full of kids and a spouse that are all grabbing for their attention while they are trying to work.

Its completely understandable for a lot of games to get delayed due to the madness that happened last year and is still going on. It’s amazing that we even got three new consoles last year and the hand full of new games and updates that we did.

Most big games and announcements don’t get made until May (E3) and most big titles don’t come out until Fall so I don’t get why so many people keep making these threads bashing the lack of news, game updates and game releases.

I don’t think the quality of games as a whole has gone down, excluding cyberpunk. I think people are just bored and impatient more than ever due to being at home more. But we all just have to tough it out and be more patient.

 

[lughnasadh123]

Short term delays for sure for possibly longer than we'd assume.

Beyond that we'll get games where a lot of devs, particularly indie devs, doing a lot of cathartic story telling with the pandemic's toll at the heart of it. We've a massive ball of emotional shit to work through when this is all over.

 

[Schorschi]

Corona or the Corona Activities .....

 

[TonyK]

You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re not informed at all. Pipelines/ Software, that did not exist before have be built up to support for large teams 250+ , large amounts of data management etc for devs to work for home. Also to coordinate with other ‘off site’ assets sound, mocap, other outsourced art including hiring. If I’m having problems with a game build I can’t just grab it/programming that pre covid would be sitting next to me to take a look, it just takes a little longer. These are huge hurdles unless I’m making puzzle fighter. Granted I think most devs have it worked out by now, but losing a few months work trying to figure it out, which everybody had to do is not a small task. It effects the schedule, it effects momentum. Parents that have to take care of their kids etc there are many unseen levels that are effected. A lot of it depends on what stage of development the dev is in. Have they shot all their mocap? Can the outsourcing that you previously used turn over the work, because their city is locked down? So many levels that can effect the outcome.

I work in the industry as concept artist and it's exactly this.

 

[ZywyPL]

Quite the opposite - the small indie devs/teams where all the innovation and creativity is won't have much of an issue with releasing their games, while the AA/AAA games, the lame ones, will be delayed.

 

[Rawdirt]

What kind of work is it? My work seems to be more efficient. I gained weight and that sucks, but I get a lot of solid hours just working that I wouldn't have got working onsite. I used to have a lot of meetings spread out across a largish campus. The transit time would eat up a lot of productive time. Now meeting transit is putting on / taking off a headset and there is no commute.

There have been a lot of stories about people working better from home. I think it depends on the role and what you have for a workspace.

I’d rather not say but there are a variety of sectors, some workloads require computer access almost exclusively while others must be in person. I think your right about online meetings being fairly effective and 100x better time wise.
A benefit is my department adopted remote access, new technologies and even a prototype program using Hololens to remote view certain things. I’m happy we are forced to become more computer literate and learn programs that streamline operations. All that said my main issues are that besides the initial learning curve and the ongoing this is temporary/will end soon, people seem to have an excuse for missing deadlines, not answering or simply being ineffective because there is minimal accountability and like the new normal and abuse it. There has to be a better way to hold people accountable in this new era but maybe that’s an issue with my workplace.

 

[Stooky]

Quite the opposite - the small indie devs/teams where all the innovation and creativity is won't have much of an issue with releasing their games, while the AA/AAA games, the lame ones, will be delayed.

This is isn’t true either it depends on the scope the project and pipeline tools

 

[GHG]

You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re not informed at all. Pipelines/ Software, that did not exist before have be built up to support for large teams 250+ , large amounts of data management etc for devs to work for home. Also to coordinate with other ‘off site’ assets sound, mocap, other outsourced art including hiring. If I’m having problems with a game build I can’t just grab it/programming that pre covid would be sitting next to me to take a look, it just takes a little longer. These are huge hurdles unless I’m making puzzle fighter. Granted I think most devs have it worked out by now, but losing a few months work trying to figure it out, which everybody had to do is not a small task. It effects the schedule, it effects momentum. Parents that have to take care of their kids etc there are many unseen levels that are effected. A lot of it depends on what stage of development the dev is in. Have they shot all their mocap? Can the outsourcing that you previously used turn over the work, because their city is locked down? So many levels that can effect the outcome.

I work in software, I'm a developer. Thankfully I work with businesses which are full of people who want to get on with things rather than make excuses. Even most businesses that require in person attendance (such as mocap studios) have found solutions to working within the current framework which is a much bigger task than a bunch of people who can simply continue to do what they usually do 100% from the comfort of their own home.

Everyone's had 12 months to figure things out, both on an individual and organisation level. If you haven't figured it out by now either you don't want to or don't care enough (or you're simply incompetent).

Like I said, delays are understandable but still using covid as an excuse and drop offs in quality are not.

 

[M1chl]

For the record Moon Studios is "work at home" studios since it's inception and yet...

 

[Iceternal]

It started in 2020. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla‘s Q&A was butchered by Covid and work from home.

Resulting in the buggiest, least polished AC since Unity even though the game was released two years after Odyssey.

 

[HaveButOneLife]

It's literally the same exact work but at home, they possibly even get to bring their company PC's.

 

[HotPocket69]

All these newer members and their stupid fucking threads

Laaame videogames maaaaaaannnn

 

[Umbasaborne]

I mean, its gonna be a shit year for new releases. No doubt about that, and i expect the games that
Do make it to be buggy af, hopefully not as bad as something like cyberpunk. But the lack of
Lip syncing in ac valhalla is a good example of pretty basic bugs that will make it through the cracks. Also expect most big titles to be delayed to next year and 2023. We will get cod, battlefield, and far cry this year in terms of “safe”
Big releases, everything else is probably still at risk of a major delay.

 

[x@3f*oo_e!]

Quite the opposite - the small indie devs/teams where all the innovation and creativity is won't have much of an issue with releasing their games, while the AA/AAA games, the lame ones, will be delayed.

This is what I expect, small teams with little formal management probably not affected half as much

I think the public perception of "indie dev" is pretty similar to "work from home" anyway, and there's probably a lot of truth in that

 

[namekuseijin]

those who survive covid will be playing a hard rogue-like

 

[TheContact]

a lot of studios are reporting that covid has limited their progress. so we'll either get games that are rushed out to meet a deadline or something, or experience delays.

 

[MatrixReloaded101]

Hopefully we have a great fall 2021

 

[MagiusNecros]

Outside of a few genuinely interesting releases it's mostly indies and ports that carry the game scene.

Costs of development as well as Covid complications lead to rushed out bad games or games that are inevitably delayed to the point lots may not care as much as they did anymore.

I'm sure the timed exclusivity PC deals between Epic and other platforms doesn't help either.

 

[deriks]

A lot of them or games that will end up like Cyberpunk.

Doesn't really count. Witcher III was launched not that great either, and only six months (or more) later we got a nice update with some fixes.

CDPR bitten off more than he could chew once again

 

[Kuranghi]

They will be what they will be. Maybe working from home will help some people do a better job on their own personal task even if the communication is goosed up.

I don't see the point in priming yourself to look for problems, you'd probably just mistakenly interpret what you find anyway because you don't have all the facts.

Its a recent thing for people to say devs "fucked up" when they gave their game a certain look or cut content from a remake/reimagining, its wasting your own time imo, they know what they are doing, they are professionals (presumably some of the best in the industry given their positions) they made what they wanted to make, sorry you don't like it. Budgets were a factor when they made the OG game and they will have cut out content, the same happens on a remake.

Why worry about what you could've had rather than enjoy what you get.

Is that now going to extend to "This could've been so much better if it wasn't made during Covid"? with no evidence to back it up at all. You'll be a happier person if you just accept that there are millions of factors that go into whether art is given its fullest chance or not and a lot of them are boring and logistical, thats just life.

Sorry if I sound grumpy but I get frustrated when I see people hurting themselves for no reason. Seems to be a trend in the modern era, punching yourself in the nuts.

 

[Porcile]

Yes almost definitely. I think morale and motivation are going to drop after the novelty wears off. Making stuff as part of a big team is an inherently social thing.

 

[eyesabitdull]

I mean, look, I work in the business of filmmaking, tv shows, digital shows and etc.

I can tell you right now that covid has fucked my industry left and right beyond words.

Sure, we can try and adapt and work from home and do all the necessities to facilitate the situation through video calls, directing from the comfort of your home with minimal crew on set, and trying to move away from original concepts (for digital centric platforms) and start doing Google meets to conduct a show and/or video concept for the state of the current climate where in.

But the truth is, working from home sucks ass.

And the creative direction you want to take takes a huge nose dive when everyone is stuck onto the this stupid world climate that you have to adapt in.

Sure, its doable.

But if you're in the creative industry, its amazing how face to face brainstorm sessions and just shutting everyone into a room for hours to hash out a creative solution to a problem is actually necessary.

Creative people need to bang each others head back and forth. You need to have that sense of raw and brash expression of emotions that appears melodramatic when you explain something.

So, to me, if a developer is struggling through covid and forced to work from home and can't feel that sense of creative head butting in a writers room, or literally anything synonymous, I can somewhat relate.

Do I excuse it? No.

But theres something in me, as a person who is balls deep in the creative industry, that can sympathize with it.

Shit sucks ass.

Truly.

I fucking hate this shit so much that it actually made me hate being in this industry because of how little I can actually fully achieve a particular vision for a concept.

So honestly, whatever.

If 2021 is a shit year for gaming, then so be it.

It's a shit year for the creative industry in general. Who am I to sit and wag my feet and go "well, so what? Just put your creative juices while at home you weak ass bitch."

Because honestly, the creative industry needs us to be together to fuck each other up through grueling and painful brainstorming sessions.

I doubt anything worth a damn in the creative industry has ever been created without a bunch of people in a room smashing their heads together to boil things down into something worth doing.

And fucking covid made us all complacent and too comfortable in our own safe spaces.

We need to butt heads. You wont have the same effect working from home.

I'm probably rambling, but maybe someone who works in the industry can shine a light and maybe their perspective as well on how their work has been affected.

 

[Andrew Evenstar]

covid is never ending. lame games till 4ever.