Article is not detailed like that old Anthem one. Still, it was everything you expect. Zenimax pushing for live service games during the late 2010's so it could find a buyer (thank that for Fallout 76 and possibly killing the new Wolfenstein trilogy with Youngblood). Management trying to trend chase mediocre slop like Far Cry and Borderlands (it's fine if you like those, I like garbage too). It was also supposed to be filled with microtransactions until they pivoted in 2021. But the nail in the coffin was probably this:
Arkane was also perpetually understaffed, said people familiar with its production. The studio’s Austin office employed less than 100 people— sufficient for a relatively small, single-player game like Prey but not enough to compete with multiplayer behemoths like Fortnite and Destiny, which are developed by teams of hundreds. Even additional support from ZeniMax’s Wisconsin-based Roundhouse Studios and other outsourcing houses couldn’t fill the gaps, they say.
Yeah just make one of those smash hits in a genre outside your niche, in a saturated genre, with one tenth of the budget and none of the staff. Come on I've seen my kid play Fortnite it shouldn't be that hard.
Morale at Arkane suffered. Veteran workers who weren’t interested in developing a multiplayer game left in droves. By the end of Redfall’s development, roughly 70% of the Austin staff who had worked on Prey would no longer be at the company, according to people familiar as well as a Bloomberg analysis of LinkedIn and Prey’s credits.
R.I.P. Hope they got to work on cool shit after this. And fled T*xas.
Filling vacancies became a challenge. Within the industry, ZeniMax had a reputation for paying lower than average salaries, and convincing some progressive or moderate video game developers to move to Texas could be difficult due to the state’s conservative social policies. Since Redfall wasn’t yet announced, the studio couldn’t describe its details to prospective employees — a predicament that exacerbated the staffing issues, sources familiar with the process said. Arkane wanted to hire recruits with experience on multiplayer shooters, but the people who applied were by and large looking to work on single-player immersive sims.
:surprised-pika:
When people told me they hated Hillary Clinton or (far worse) that they were “not fans,” I wish I had said in no uncertain terms: “I love Hillary Clinton. I am in awe of her. I am set free by her. She will be the finest world leader our galaxy has ever seen.”
I wish, in those exchanges, I had not asked gentle, tolerant questions about a hater’s ridiculous allergy to her, or Clinton’s fictional misdeeds and imagined character flaws. More deeply still, I wish I had not reasoned with anyone, patiently countered their ludicrous emotionalism and psychologically disturbed theories. I wish I had said, flatly, “I love her.” As if I had been asked about my mother or daughter. No defensiveness or polemics; not dignifying the crazy allegations with so much as a Snopes link.
Maybe “I love her” seemed too womany, too sentimental, too un-pragmatic. Not coalition-building, kind of culty. But people say with impunity they love Obama, the state of Israel, their churches, Kurt Cobain. In the end, I wish I’d said it because it’s true.
And I’m not alone in my commitment. Millions of Clinton’s supporters — we were thanked by Clinton as the “secret, private Facebook sites” — expressed it among themselves, all the time, in raptures or happy tears with each new display of our heroine’s ferocious intelligence, depth, and courage. We were frankly bewildered by the idea that anyone would hedge their commitment to her (“You don’t have to be her friend”; “Yes, she’s made mistakes”; “lesser of two evils”). We didn’t remember anyone turning to this stock ambivalence when discussing Obama, Babe Ruth, FDR. If only one reporter — they knew about us — could have published a headline like “Clinton Inspires Historic Levels of Adoration From Her Supporters” about the people who have had their lives transformed by the power of her brilliant campaign, unrivaled effectiveness, and extraordinary career. Just one headline like that, like the ones Bill Clinton got.
Usually a legend is made by men and media — the legend of Kennedy, say, or Jim Morrison — and then, much later, a biopic, pretending to evenhandedness, reveals the legend’s shortcomings, his “human” side. The shortcomings are almost always something exactly no one actually believes compromises his heroism. His problem drinking. His mistreatment of women. Well, takedowns of Hillary were always already written. She has somehow made the time to hear out each dead-end line of reasoning about her fake mortal sins, and often she has also thanked everyone for sparing her further moral lashings, as if that were a kindness. Under cover of “humanizing” the intimidating valedictorian, reports and investigations and media clichés vilified her. But the feminist hero never got to be a legend first. And yet she is one, easily surpassing Ben Franklin, Henry Ford, Steve Jobs.
I want to reverse the usual schedule of things, then. We don’t have to wait until she dies to act. Hillary Clinton’s name belongs on ships, and airports, and tattoos. She deserves straight-up hagiographies and a sold-out Broadway show called RODHAM. Yes, this cultural canonization is going to come after the chronic, constant, nonstop “On the other hand” sexist hedging around her legacy. But such is the courage of Hillary Clinton and her supporters; we reverse patriarchal orders. Maybe she is more than a president. Maybe she is an idea, a world-historical heroine, light itself. The presidency is too small for her. She belongs to a much more elite class of Americans, the more-than-presidents. Neil Armstrong, Martin Luther King Jr., Alexander Fucking Hamilton.
Hillary Clinton did everything right in this campaign, and she won more votes than her opponent did. She won. She cannot be faulted, criticized, or analyzed for even one more second. Instead, she will be decorated as an epochal heroine far too extraordinary to be contained by the mere White House. Let that revolting president-elect be Millard Fillmore or Herbert Hoover or whatever. Hillary is Athena.