2y ago

After 3 years of 'hands-off' management, Microsoft is making Bethesda and ZeniMax report directly to an Xbox bigwig, Matt Booty

www.pcgamer.com

After 3 years of 'hands-off' management, Microsoft is making Bethesda and ZeniMax report directly to an Xbox bigwig

Xbox @lemmy.world

stereogram @lemmy.world

2y ago

After 3 years of 'hands-off' management, Microsoft is making Bethesda and ZeniMax report directly to Matt Booty.

www.pcgamer.com /after-3-years-of-hands-off-management-microsoft-is-making-bethesda-and-zenimax-report-directly-to-an-xbox-bigwig/

Games @sh.itjust.works

nanoUFO @sh.itjust.works

2y ago

After 3 years of 'hands-off' management, Microsoft is making Bethesda and ZeniMax report directly to an Xbox bigwig

www.pcgamer.com /after-3-years-of-hands-off-management-microsoft-is-making-bethesda-and-zenimax-report-directly-to-an-xbox-bigwig/

16 comments

He should change his first name to Max.
- You don't like Booty?
  
  His first name. It's a pretty weird name, Matt Booty, so I think he might as well really go for it and be called Max Booty.
- Matt Booty sounds like something a German would say.
If I was the head of one of these developers, I would call him Big Booty
- Big-booTAY, TAY!!
  
  At least someone got my reference!
Judging by the coverage of Starfield, Bethesda should not be allowed to do ‘hands-off’ development. They release a broken buggy and incomplete mess, then let the modding community finish it for free. I mean maybe from a business perspective that was a good move, can afford to drop some devs and reduce dev time I guess.
But even though Starfield roughly combines the genres I am most interested in, there is no way I am buying it until (if) it goes on a sale for around 10 bucks.
- Pulls out a drawer full of eyepatches
  
  I don’t sail the high seas much these says, I did when I was a broke college student unable to afford full priced titles. Now my time is limited, my funds less so, so I rather just give the little spare time and money to projects I actually can get behind. Also I don’t think I want to fuck around with running pirated versions in linux, might be a PITA.
  Observing Starfields failures have rekindled my interest in Elite:Dangerous and No Mans Sky.
I skimmed this post and came back for the booty. Wonder what do they call him in office?
XBooty
Boss Booty
Mad Booty
- BoontyBox
Firstly, yes, lol Booty.
But I found the comments around Redfall interesting/concerning. Even if a studio gets promised independence in one of these giant mergers, they only have to fuck up once to get that taken away.
I'm not going to defend Redfall in any way, it actually does sound like a case of mismanagement. But I worry about the stifling of creativity that occurs when every studio is trying to play it safe to avoid becoming the next Bioware
- The sense that I got from Redfall was slightly different. Was some of the project mismanaged? Yes but that’s typical of almost any project. In fact, a lot of what Bethesda does that is successful also has mismanagement.
  However, I believe that a big problem with Redfall was just that their ideas didn’t work. It spent awhile undergoing rewrites and redesigns trying desperately to find something that works. In the end, it got pushed out because they needed to be done with it and move on. They knew it wouldn’t make much money but they needed it to no longer be in production anymore.
  This happens all the time. If you ever wonder why games get released and say “surely they knew this was broken before launch right?” The answer is almost certainly yes. They push it out because it’s stuck in development hell or it’s costing too much or can make some money back before dying internally.
  So that’s what Redfall is. It’s a failure of a game that the studio pushed out to recoup whatever meager funds they could from development.
- When did bioware ever played it unsafe?
Booty booty booty booty rockin’ everywhere!

16 comments