Some more behind the scene details here about potential developer woes.. Seeing thr discourse elsewhere just showed to me that gamers reall don't understand how game production works. Or what goes...
Some more behind the scene details here about potential developer woes..
Seeing thr discourse elsewhere just showed to me that gamers reall don't understand how game production works. Or what goes on in "pre-production". But I digress.
As a TLDR it mostly comes down to that the game wasnt as far along as other games and was the easier cut while EA was in cutting season. The timeline of the studio founding and the great gaming contraction points to me that the studio was just massively unlucky with the timing of the state of the world. Real shame. Was really stoked for a black panther game, but 2025 continues to disappoint.
Yeah. The mention that it spent four years in pre-production regardless of the reasons for it makes the EA execs' frustration understandable. It's hard to predict how long the actual production...
Yeah. The mention that it spent four years in pre-production regardless of the reasons for it makes the EA execs' frustration understandable. It's hard to predict how long the actual production would take. Maybe it would be two years because they grew the studio/staff and they'd ironed out all the ideas in pre-production so there'd be minimal tweaking or changes, or maybe it would need another six years.
Given Cliffhanger Studios didn't seem to have any actual releases to their name yet, for once I get why EA execs would decide it wasn't worth the gamble and pull the plug early. Developing AAA games is a big gamble nowadays with how expensive development has gotten. Between the long pre-production with no way to predict a potential release date, being developed by a relatively unknown studio, and honestly the general distaste for EA in general—yeah, this one was becoming pretty risky even with the Black Panther IP. Unfortunate, but it makes sense to me compared to some of their other canceled projects.
One other bit that stuck with me though is the mention of EA cutting their remote hiring:
It didn’t help, the people said, that Cliffhanger was based in Kirkland, Washington, an expensive city that would need to pay top salaries, especially now that EA has put an end to remote hiring.
Gee, if only there was a way to NOT have to pay top salaries so your workers could afford to live in the high COL cities with all your offices...
with AAA games taking 6-7 years, 4 years of pre-production is fairly normal. So I don't think that's the issue. When you have a core system and design nailed down, AAA can ramp up into production...
The mention that it spent four years in pre-production regardless of the reasons for it makes the EA execs' frustration understandable. It's hard to predict how long the actual production would take.
with AAA games taking 6-7 years, 4 years of pre-production is fairly normal. So I don't think that's the issue. When you have a core system and design nailed down, AAA can ramp up into production very quickly. It's when you encounter stalls in full AAA production (where staff scales to thousands betwween the core studios, support studio, outsourcing, contractors, etc) when games get really expensive and potentially disastrous. 4 years of full production for anything short of GTA 6 would be the real red flag.
The timing was just bad. 2021 EA had basically "free money" to work with and threw it everywhere. 2022 had changes to tax codes that made it harder to basically write off engineer salaries as tax breaks. 2023 had the fed rates rise and make the free money go away. 2024-5 all AAA are in cut mode. Nothing really changed except the times, nothing the devs could control at least.
The only caveat I'd add is that yes: promising to deliver a legally distinct Nemesis system is a really difficult promise and balloons the scale of already ballooning games. Your enemies can't just be assets to conceptualize, produce, and add simple AI to; each enemy is now a part of the interaction system and needs enough behaviors and mannerisms to react to the player state (the most complex state in the game). And there's a lot more enemies in a game than player characters. Using multiple years to make sure a robust system can handle all that isn't unreasonable.
if only there was a way to NOT have to pay top salaries so your workers could afford to live in the high COL cities with all your offices...
Return To Office initiatives are just part of the 2024-2025 cutting mode. Make people quit and you don't have to call it a layoff. Google had to just do another round of regular layoffs when not as many people quit and instead did RTO.
Once the market bounces back, it's still going to be a difficult problem to balance. CoL is high because the companies are there. Companies are there because the talent is concentrated there. Talent is concentrated there typically due to a mix of history, culture, and education. On the worker side, it makes perfect sense to be at Berkley or Stanford for 4+ years and enjoy the area. Such talent can be snatched up by any number of other companies and industries if you don't make it as convenient for them as possible. Not to mention support networks; these grads can move to a much cheaper state remote into SF/Seattle, but they won't have any of their colleagues, friends, and family around. Even tech bros are social creatures to some degree.
Studios COULD directly lobby and try to make CoL go down in areas so an employee in Seattle doesn't need 100k salaries just to pay rent. But if there's any corporate interests I distrust the most these days (outside of governments), it's games.
Fair points. I'd looked up pre-production times, and most estimates were around one to two years for AAA games. I think the current economic uncertainty is also a factor. Like I said, AAA games...
Fair points. I'd looked up pre-production times, and most estimates were around one to two years for AAA games.
I think the current economic uncertainty is also a factor. Like I said, AAA games are like gambles these days, and there is no predicting what state the economy will be in when it releases. I feel like a lot of companies are trying to stick to "safer" options right now.
As for the return to office, yeah I know it's more an excuse to get people to quit and cut costs. Just kinda rolled my eyes at the part I quoted.
Companies are there because the talent is concentrated there. Talent is concentrated there typically due to a mix of history, culture, and education.
Talent is also concentrated there because the big companies are there, and there aren't really many opportunities to break into the industry outside of those big cities. Then smaller companies start up there because the founders were already there working for those bigger companies, or moved to where all the talent is clustered so they could recruit more easily. And then talent who studied in other parts of the country move out there because there aren't any options nearby beyond starting a totally independent studio of their own...
It's kind of a self-feeding cycle, really. And irritating since the industry doesn't need to be exclusively located in high CoL cities primarily on the west coast. The skills needed for game development aren't really region-locked, so a company could theoretically start a new office in a place that isn't hyper-expensive and thus not require quite as high salaries. But like you said, they go where the talent is, and the talent has clustered where the companies already are.
Yeah, as you said it's s a feedback loop. Ultimately, people came for the gold rush, and stayed for the nice weather (among other advantages like being a coastline and pockets of rural land)....
Talent is also concentrated there because the big companies are there, and there aren't really many opportunities to break into the industry outside of those big cities.
Yeah, as you said it's s a feedback loop. Ultimately, people came for the gold rush, and stayed for the nice weather (among other advantages like being a coastline and pockets of rural land). Everything else built up around that. You can't import good geography.
And irritating since the industry doesn't need to be exclusively located in high CoL cities primarily on the west coast. The skills needed for game development aren't really region-locked, so a company could theoretically start a new office in a place that isn't hyper-expensive and thus not require quite as high salaries.
On one hand, you're right and that any company that cares about the truly best talent should give plenty of remote work opportunities. The big companies are fumbling, but pretty much all small startups aren't limiting themselves to the west coast anymore.
On the other hand, this is the exact rationale those fumbling companies instead use to try and hire non-Americans who they can pay what's likely under minimum wage for skilled work. As usual, these large companies took the wrong lessons out of the shifts from the pandemic and try to cheap out as much as possible for anyone they don't directly control in some office. There's definitely a lot of structural, economic, and societal norms of last decade that need to change to properly accept the shift that is coming for most white collar work.
it's definitely an awkward situation for me as a Californian (and one who's secured a house to boot). I've definitely had more than one opportunity end early because even my lowest asks for salary are way outside of some of these smaller team's budgets, and I completely get it. But this is also my home and I'd rather continue living here if possible. Moving so I can get paid less for potential remote work doesn't make sense for my specific situation.
Some more behind the scene details here about potential developer woes..
Seeing thr discourse elsewhere just showed to me that gamers reall don't understand how game production works. Or what goes on in "pre-production". But I digress.
As a TLDR it mostly comes down to that the game wasnt as far along as other games and was the easier cut while EA was in cutting season. The timeline of the studio founding and the great gaming contraction points to me that the studio was just massively unlucky with the timing of the state of the world. Real shame. Was really stoked for a black panther game, but 2025 continues to disappoint.
Yeah. The mention that it spent four years in pre-production regardless of the reasons for it makes the EA execs' frustration understandable. It's hard to predict how long the actual production would take. Maybe it would be two years because they grew the studio/staff and they'd ironed out all the ideas in pre-production so there'd be minimal tweaking or changes, or maybe it would need another six years.
Given Cliffhanger Studios didn't seem to have any actual releases to their name yet, for once I get why EA execs would decide it wasn't worth the gamble and pull the plug early. Developing AAA games is a big gamble nowadays with how expensive development has gotten. Between the long pre-production with no way to predict a potential release date, being developed by a relatively unknown studio, and honestly the general distaste for EA in general—yeah, this one was becoming pretty risky even with the Black Panther IP. Unfortunate, but it makes sense to me compared to some of their other canceled projects.
One other bit that stuck with me though is the mention of EA cutting their remote hiring:
Gee, if only there was a way to NOT have to pay top salaries so your workers could afford to live in the high COL cities with all your offices...
with AAA games taking 6-7 years, 4 years of pre-production is fairly normal. So I don't think that's the issue. When you have a core system and design nailed down, AAA can ramp up into production very quickly. It's when you encounter stalls in full AAA production (where staff scales to thousands betwween the core studios, support studio, outsourcing, contractors, etc) when games get really expensive and potentially disastrous. 4 years of full production for anything short of GTA 6 would be the real red flag.
The timing was just bad. 2021 EA had basically "free money" to work with and threw it everywhere. 2022 had changes to tax codes that made it harder to basically write off engineer salaries as tax breaks. 2023 had the fed rates rise and make the free money go away. 2024-5 all AAA are in cut mode. Nothing really changed except the times, nothing the devs could control at least.
The only caveat I'd add is that yes: promising to deliver a legally distinct Nemesis system is a really difficult promise and balloons the scale of already ballooning games. Your enemies can't just be assets to conceptualize, produce, and add simple AI to; each enemy is now a part of the interaction system and needs enough behaviors and mannerisms to react to the player state (the most complex state in the game). And there's a lot more enemies in a game than player characters. Using multiple years to make sure a robust system can handle all that isn't unreasonable.
Return To Office initiatives are just part of the 2024-2025 cutting mode. Make people quit and you don't have to call it a layoff. Google had to just do another round of regular layoffs when not as many people quit and instead did RTO.
Once the market bounces back, it's still going to be a difficult problem to balance. CoL is high because the companies are there. Companies are there because the talent is concentrated there. Talent is concentrated there typically due to a mix of history, culture, and education. On the worker side, it makes perfect sense to be at Berkley or Stanford for 4+ years and enjoy the area. Such talent can be snatched up by any number of other companies and industries if you don't make it as convenient for them as possible. Not to mention support networks; these grads can move to a much cheaper state remote into SF/Seattle, but they won't have any of their colleagues, friends, and family around. Even tech bros are social creatures to some degree.
Studios COULD directly lobby and try to make CoL go down in areas so an employee in Seattle doesn't need 100k salaries just to pay rent. But if there's any corporate interests I distrust the most these days (outside of governments), it's games.
Fair points. I'd looked up pre-production times, and most estimates were around one to two years for AAA games.
I think the current economic uncertainty is also a factor. Like I said, AAA games are like gambles these days, and there is no predicting what state the economy will be in when it releases. I feel like a lot of companies are trying to stick to "safer" options right now.
As for the return to office, yeah I know it's more an excuse to get people to quit and cut costs. Just kinda rolled my eyes at the part I quoted.
Talent is also concentrated there because the big companies are there, and there aren't really many opportunities to break into the industry outside of those big cities. Then smaller companies start up there because the founders were already there working for those bigger companies, or moved to where all the talent is clustered so they could recruit more easily. And then talent who studied in other parts of the country move out there because there aren't any options nearby beyond starting a totally independent studio of their own...
It's kind of a self-feeding cycle, really. And irritating since the industry doesn't need to be exclusively located in high CoL cities primarily on the west coast. The skills needed for game development aren't really region-locked, so a company could theoretically start a new office in a place that isn't hyper-expensive and thus not require quite as high salaries. But like you said, they go where the talent is, and the talent has clustered where the companies already are.
Yeah, as you said it's s a feedback loop. Ultimately, people came for the gold rush, and stayed for the nice weather (among other advantages like being a coastline and pockets of rural land). Everything else built up around that. You can't import good geography.
On one hand, you're right and that any company that cares about the truly best talent should give plenty of remote work opportunities. The big companies are fumbling, but pretty much all small startups aren't limiting themselves to the west coast anymore.
On the other hand, this is the exact rationale those fumbling companies instead use to try and hire non-Americans who they can pay what's likely under minimum wage for skilled work. As usual, these large companies took the wrong lessons out of the shifts from the pandemic and try to cheap out as much as possible for anyone they don't directly control in some office. There's definitely a lot of structural, economic, and societal norms of last decade that need to change to properly accept the shift that is coming for most white collar work.
it's definitely an awkward situation for me as a Californian (and one who's secured a house to boot). I've definitely had more than one opportunity end early because even my lowest asks for salary are way outside of some of these smaller team's budgets, and I completely get it. But this is also my home and I'd rather continue living here if possible. Moving so I can get paid less for potential remote work doesn't make sense for my specific situation.