Well this came out of nowhere. I haven't been following all this "toys-to-life" stuff too closely, but I thought Infinity was doing pretty well, I guess not.
I don't know if this necessarily means it wasn't doing well, it sounds like Disney just didn't see this as a growing market going forward. It seems like it was fairly profitable for them, but a corporate juggernaut like Disney probably compared the relative merit of producing Infinity themselves versus licensing stuff out on a game-by-game basis and decided it wasn't worth it.
(Licensed movie games, y'all! They're coming back!)
This game seems great, even in the sense of making rollercoasters to trick your senses. Watching this full-screened on a tablet messed my vertigo up a little, so I have high aspirations for the future of VR vomiting.
Very glad to have contributed to our weekly check-in of Bernie's terrible comments (I'm the twitter user mentioned in-episode). Here's the story if people wanted to get the full low-down on the least-restrained mouth in sports.
From my perspective if a St. John-like recruiter gave me an offer at any studio saying that I could at least pay my bills, have decent job security for maybe a whole year, but I would have to work insane crunch, I'd take it without a second thought. I don't want want to sound like I don't support other developers or I want to drag the industry down by supporting this system, but that an offer like that would be the best opportunity I could hope for right now. And it's still a pipedream to get that. If I could leverage a willingness to crunch hard as an advantage over my competition to make that possible, I would do it. Btw I am still doing the contract/volunteer work thing.
Maybe I have the wrong perspective on this, but I don't feel that this is uncommon and it's an important part of this story. Everyone has to work and, as you said, CS degrees aren't a one-way ticket to employment (and the idea that they are just helps to flood that degree and erode job security there). When employers have a lot of options for who they hire, it becomes a buyers' market where they can set the terms and someone'll fit them. If not you, there's likely dozens of others who will take a crunching job.
If you're aware of these issues, that's good! I'm not sure if a few individual entry-level people turning down the few jobs they can get can bring about the change the industry needs, but, then again, I'm not sure what would.
Definitely welcome to hear pushback on this from other folks, though.
I'm glad that, if nothing else, Alex St. John is at least pushing the issue and alerting people to the nature of video game production and the mindsets behind it. It isn't near far enough, of course.
It's a shame that this isn't living up to fan desires, but I can't say I'm surprised. While some of Lylat Wars' decisions were out of step in 1997, I feel like the industry has come around to shorter game lengths as a valid model. Simultaneously, Star Fox's model of a 'wide' game rather than a long one doesn't fit modern sensibilities either. I wonder if it'd be more palatable as a linear experience.
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