BennyBlanco
aka IMurRIVAL69
I doubt this is true.
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Call of Duty Games will be made by outside contractors moving foward says leaker
WitchHunter
Banned
There are other "factors"... just look what happens to everything under X/MS.
twilo99
Member
Just talking about the quality, otherwise yes the current CoD teams are extremely good at pushing out games on a yearly basis.
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
Heh, you're probably right now that I think about it. I was more thinking about how the agreements and the antitrust focus was so much on COD that I forgot that Candy Crush destroys most things revenue wise.
bender
What time is it?
What's that? becoming the biggest publicly traded company in the world? Yeah when will they learn
All thanks to their gaming division!
clarky
Gold Member
Thats why i dont get the layoffs. They get these out by the skin of their teeth some years. if they are dropping to just MW and BO with expansions in-between then these moves would make more sense but it doesn't seem to be the case.
I know you play COD like me, im worried about the future all of a sudden.
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The big names
chromhound
Member
SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
Worse. 343i.
Bry0
Member
Is there a 343i or is it like 5 managers and a rotating team of contractors?
Saber
Gold Member
If true that means they just wanted all IPs. The rest is probably dispensable for them.
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Famipan
Member
Wouldn’t surprise me if moving forward ATVI lets Chinese TiMi (who made they great success COD Mobile) or other Chinese devs who make fortunes on F2P games and doesn’t fray from using AI, gets to make COD games.
China is cheaper, good enough, can add a fresh new style to a stagnated series.
China is cheaper, good enough, can add a fresh new style to a stagnated series.
diffusionx
Gold Member
Gamers finally realizing that Microsoft bought A-B for their IP, primarily Call of Duty but also Diablo and Warcraft, and not to make them a new Spyro and Hexen.
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ChoosableOne
ChoosableAll
Who owns it now?
ChorizoPicozo
Member
bright, bright future
twilo99
Member
I think they will slow down the release cadence unfortunately and the only hope is that the quality will go up... but I have doubts. I really don't mind the yearly cycle, and all things considered, the games are actually not that buggy..
No need to worry, ultimately not much will change (besides what I mentioned above), unless of course they change course completely.
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soulbait
Member
If this is how I think it is, what this really means is they will hire contract workers over Full Time Employees (FTE) when they need to ramp up production. The contract workers will still go to the office and be part of the "team" but will be replaced when their contracts are up. There will still be a set number of FTEs, mostly being their senior developers and such. I am not defending this, because I actually think this approach can add a lot of technical debt, but with the way the cycle of game development can go, it makes sense. You don't need a full sized team working all the time. By having a good portion of the team as contractors, it makes it easier to scale up and down your workforce.
Where I work at, we have a similar approach (one of the main things we build are large-scale, enterprise ecommerce solutions). We have a good combination of FTEs and contract workers. When a large project comes is, we will hire mostly contractors to help work on the project, with our senior FTE developers, architects, and project managers leading the project. When the project is up, if there is not another project in the waiting, the contractors are lowered in size.
I personally would never want to be a contractor again, but many people like it. They do get paid more, but they usually do not have full blown benefits. We could not afford to keep all of them as fulltime employees. This approach works for us due to how we are dependent on sales coming in for projects, but it can cause issues like I mentioned before with tech debt.
One thing that does not make sense for this though, is the cycle of COD games that there has been. It really seems like a developer could roll off of one COD game and continue work on another, minimizing the amount of downtime between development at a single studio. However, maybe due to the number of developers, it is still too many for that approach so some FTE developers need to be transitioned into contract roles? Or maybe MS' goal is to lower the overall number of COD games in the future?
Of course this is all speculation, and only MS truly knows the strategy behind this. At the end of the day is about capitalism and making money. It really sucks for those who lost their jobs.
Where I work at, we have a similar approach (one of the main things we build are large-scale, enterprise ecommerce solutions). We have a good combination of FTEs and contract workers. When a large project comes is, we will hire mostly contractors to help work on the project, with our senior FTE developers, architects, and project managers leading the project. When the project is up, if there is not another project in the waiting, the contractors are lowered in size.
I personally would never want to be a contractor again, but many people like it. They do get paid more, but they usually do not have full blown benefits. We could not afford to keep all of them as fulltime employees. This approach works for us due to how we are dependent on sales coming in for projects, but it can cause issues like I mentioned before with tech debt.
One thing that does not make sense for this though, is the cycle of COD games that there has been. It really seems like a developer could roll off of one COD game and continue work on another, minimizing the amount of downtime between development at a single studio. However, maybe due to the number of developers, it is still too many for that approach so some FTE developers need to be transitioned into contract roles? Or maybe MS' goal is to lower the overall number of COD games in the future?
Of course this is all speculation, and only MS truly knows the strategy behind this. At the end of the day is about capitalism and making money. It really sucks for those who lost their jobs.
twilo99
Member
Is it ded now?
diffusionx
Gold Member
You're talking about the same company that set up 343 lmao.
That said, COD needs a shot in the arm. Activision has been a COD studio primarily for a while now and like, the games suck. MW2019 and BOCW were terrific but since then they've been terrible. I don't think that this cadence of releasing this massive full featured $250M+ game every single year is doable anymore... And I also think it's not good for us. Like, why do we have to start at level 1 with none of our unlocks every year (I realize this year broke that trend, but for a worse reason, because they charged $70 for a DLC pack), why do we have to abandon games we like for ones we don't (I loved BOCW and they dropped it for... Vanguard), it just makes no sense.
Tiago Rodrigues
Member
Ah yes...doing what they did with Halo Infinite has everything to go right for sure.
Moriarty1889
Member
MS doing what they do best…….ruining companies and IP’s. What an outright shitshow. Now maybe people will realize why so many have called them out for the utter shite practices they continue to do in regards to studios and games. COD is dead as we know it now more than ever. What a bunch of MORONS over at MS. The Xbox brand has truly become a laughing stock and totally irrelevant more and more with each day that passes.
TheInfamousKira
Reseterror Resettler
Ahhh, the ResetEra Operation strategy.
mayham2199
Member
Pretty obvious this is there move. They did the same thing with 343 and we know how great their games are.
Horseganador
Member
If there is a company that can sink COD quickly, it is MS.
The Pleasure
Member
FrankWza
Gold Member
From always owned. Activision I think just published in the US
HerjansEagleFeeder
Member
You know this old soviet joke about the farmers and their sheep?
Crew511A
Member
If it didn't die after Vanguard, nothing will kill it.
Are you afraid we won't have more genius ideas like taking MW2 2011 maps, turning them into DLC for MW2 2022, and them just turning it into a whole new game called MW3?
This franchise should have died around 2019. At this point, nothing Microsoft does will do anything to hurt the quality of the franchise.
digoutyoursoul
Member
Why are they like this?
ChorizoPicozo
Member
Yep, I agree. Microsoft doesn't have a track record of doing this, and it's very clear that they have learned from their past mistakes
The_Observer
Member
I hate all corporations, but MS is a really unique loser and sucks a lot, doesn’t it?
graywolf323
Member
basically if true this proves Microsoft haven’t learned a damn thing from all their screwups in the gaming industry
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
Fake News spreads 5x faster than the truth.