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Comment by k__ | Hacker News Reader

I'm always baffled by the randomness in such productions.

I mean, what is even happening there from a business perspective?!

Okay, people want to make a game that gets big and sells merch, but then the whole thing gets crazy, like nobody even thought about that they needed a game that was SO good that everybody wants to buy merch for it.

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The problem tends to stem from misplaced feedback, not intentional badness. In this case the scenario is set by copy-pasting the dev cycle of previous games onto a new one. The game gets designed from the surface(marketing, and specifically marketing artifacts like the Gex character and a pitch that dictates the design) inwards and so ends up with huge gaps in what it wants to do versus what it actually does, and tons of stuff that gets thrown out as unusable. And then new technology gets in the way.

I am actually finishing up a project that went very similarly, just at a smaller scope.

A lot of game studios are also not ran by professional management (especially at the time, it's been slowly getting better in the intervening 20 years). I've worked for many different companies & a lot of stuff is really just decided/made up as they go without much process.

Even succesful studios like Rockstar are not necessarily well managed, often success/money just papers over a lot of issues (plus burning out their staff with insane working hours to compensate for lack of planning).

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