He also lead the absolutely massive success that MS has had with Minecraft, Spencer said himself that the reason he was chosen was because at Midway when it was closing he always put his team first being the last one to leave. Not to mention putting the downfall of Midway games on Booty is silly, it would have been gone sooner without him going by his contributions to the company.
Nope. His last game was Middle-earth™: Shadow of War™ (related to story). But when he did for Rockstar Games with Red Dead Redemption he got IAA award for Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction.
T10, 343 and Coalition have all worked out fine, clearly they know how to do it well at this point. Darrel Gallagher is also a very experienced studio head just like Rod Fergusson or Bonnie Ross was for 343 and Coalition, T10 was built from the ground up, as was 343 which is now massive and Coalition which only has a handful of Epic employees. So I think it's clear they are at least good at setting up studios, while on the third party end Bungie was often a complete mess in development with MS often stepping in. I also wouldn't call this hiring fast, the team must still be really small and they would still be hiring for pre-production.
Yup the forum here's optimism is nice but also misplaced
Yet there are so many dev teams out there that prove otherwise even MS own studios. It's funny how a thread about talented devs joining an MS studio has turned into this "You can't build Rome in a day"
Poaching existing talent instead of nurturing and raising up new talent leaves a bad taste. Plus it always sucks as employees to see outside hires come in and people not get promoted from within.
You know this studio is complety new right? There isnt a team yet.. Difficult to promote then.
What are you even on about? Are you new here? This is the norm in this industry heck it's the norm in any industry were there is a lot of competition. All this concern about hiring. Is it only an issue when MS does it? Cos there are numerous threads about devs crossing over to other studios and I don't see the same people complaining here showing the same concern in those threads... You know what? I'm actually really glad MS is doing this. I hope they keep investing in new studios and talent while acquiring a couple more. They have been criticized for a lack of studios and talent for many years and now they are fixing those issues and people are whining about it? I guess you guys aren't been truthful about how you really feel cos i honestly don't believe this concern of yours is genuine. Lol
This is not how the industry works....there's a constant flux of people going in and out... in videogame studios dosnt matter if those are owned by Ms Sony or ninty
Well they already offer larger salaries than the rest of the industry, I would guess it's due to them wanting to be part of a studio as it's being built and having a lead role in it. Being in early as part of the pre-pro team and getting to shape a completely new franchise, but also the most obvious one being a upgrade in position.
I mean I guess it's just weird to see a studio being built for the express purpose of making AAA games when in the past (and present mostly) the big studios that make the best games have been growing and evolving for years and years starting from middleware and by college grads and rising up. Studios like Bungie, Naughty Dog, Epic, Bethesda, Rockstar, Bioware, etc.
Yep, but if I look that list some of the new members have been con CD for some time, I guess Gallagher is hiring people he knows well. Of course The Initiative can be bigger than CD, but I don't know why I think they're gonna try to have a succesful adventure ip.
Yes, but Red Dead Redemption is the biggest game around this five anothers. Still some people would like to see remaster for PS4, still some people were excited about X Enhancement. That's a awesome game with great story which still looks great, plays very well to this day :)
It's a new studio located in a dense area for the videogame development scene, what were you expecting? That they'd recruit newbies straight from university for a AAA game..
Only Mordor, while War which he didn't work on was a significant drop in the quality of the writing. He was also the lead designer on RDR, so maybe when he is also shaping the world as well as writing it he has better results. With Mordor he would be working with existing lore, while also fitting it into the nemesis system.
