TheRetroArcade
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Joined: Feb 2026
It's like "setting fire to millions of dollars of property and equipment"
Breaking up established game development teams in favour of "AAA veteran" start-ups and "magic bean" technologies is like "setting fire to millions of dollars of property and equipment", in the words of Star Trek Online executive producer Thomas Marrone. He thinks it's "wildly irresponsible and self-sabotaging", and that videogame company shareholders should be absolutely furious about it.
Marrone's comments come in response to EA closing BioWare yesterday, but he takes aim at closures and layoffs across the industry. He notes that many of the most successful teams owe their accomplishments to lessons learned from screw-ups, and suggests that if big game publishers just want "number to go up", they should get out of the game-making trade and pour all their cash into investment funds.
"One of the most insightful comments about game development came from a former boss," Marrone wrote on Bluesky this morning. "He said 'Making a game is like starting a band. You can’t throw money at a new studio with random AAA veterans and expect it to crank out a hit.' A good game needs a vision. A good game needs a good team to build it. A good team needs chemistry to work well together. Team chemistry needs years of collaboration to gel. There are certainly 'rockstars' and leaders who are anchors for their team, but they need to have that chemistry and trust with everyone around them to be truly effective.
"The AAA philosophy seems to be to hire four random musicians and expect them to become the Beatles overnight," Marrone went on. "When it does happen: well, we have the songs now, we can just hire different musicians to record new songs when we want another album. It’s truly insane and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the collaborative creative process at the heart of making games.
"Most studios that generate an overnight hit are actually on the 3rd or 4th title," he said. "Blizzard, Larian, Arrowhead, these places had several games under their belts before their first true blockbuster. Like George RR Martin they had been grinding XP for years before becoming a household name. The current AAA Publisher practice of disbanding studios, even if they ship a game successfully, is so counterintuitive to their own financial future it boggles my mind.
"Like if I were a major shareholder I would be livid," Marrone observed. "This is wanton destruction of these publishers’ most precious assets. It’s like literally setting fire to millions of dollars of property and equipment. It’s wildly irresponsible and self-sabotaging. If big game publishers just want number to go up, fire everyone and just invest it all in mutual funds or something. If you don’t want to actually make a product, and you don’t want to build a business around making a product, just liquidate your assets and stop pretending you want to make anything."
Marrone has been at Cryptic Studios for 16 years, starting out as an associate graphics designer. "I've worked on one game through that whole career, which means I've seen lots of leaders come and go, and lots of versions of the company and the game as it grew, shrunk, and changed," he noted.
Cryptic themselves were founded in 2000, and are also known for Champions Online, City of Heroes and Neverwinter. They've been through a lot of upheaval lately. Cryptic were acquired by (*dread bell tolls*) publishing conglomerate Embracer in 2021, during the latter's early-Covid-era campaign to absorb half the industry. When Embracer belatedly acknowledged that all of their acquisitions had left them up shit creek without a paddle, Cryptic Studios were among the many subsidiaries who had to lay off staff. Then, Embracer sold them to Project Golden Arc, a new company formed by former Star Trek Online publishers Arc and XD Inc, publishers of Torchlight: Infinite and Heartopia.
I'm not sure how many of Cryptic's founding staff are still there, but Marrone makes ...Read more: Full article on www.rockpapershotgun.com
What do you think about this?
Breaking up established game development teams in favour of "AAA veteran" start-ups and "magic bean" technologies is like "setting fire to millions of dollars of property and equipment", in the words of Star Trek Online executive producer Thomas Marrone. He thinks it's "wildly irresponsible and self-sabotaging", and that videogame company shareholders should be absolutely furious about it.
Marrone's comments come in response to EA closing BioWare yesterday, but he takes aim at closures and layoffs across the industry. He notes that many of the most successful teams owe their accomplishments to lessons learned from screw-ups, and suggests that if big game publishers just want "number to go up", they should get out of the game-making trade and pour all their cash into investment funds.
"One of the most insightful comments about game development came from a former boss," Marrone wrote on Bluesky this morning. "He said 'Making a game is like starting a band. You can’t throw money at a new studio with random AAA veterans and expect it to crank out a hit.' A good game needs a vision. A good game needs a good team to build it. A good team needs chemistry to work well together. Team chemistry needs years of collaboration to gel. There are certainly 'rockstars' and leaders who are anchors for their team, but they need to have that chemistry and trust with everyone around them to be truly effective.
"The AAA philosophy seems to be to hire four random musicians and expect them to become the Beatles overnight," Marrone went on. "When it does happen: well, we have the songs now, we can just hire different musicians to record new songs when we want another album. It’s truly insane and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the collaborative creative process at the heart of making games.
"Most studios that generate an overnight hit are actually on the 3rd or 4th title," he said. "Blizzard, Larian, Arrowhead, these places had several games under their belts before their first true blockbuster. Like George RR Martin they had been grinding XP for years before becoming a household name. The current AAA Publisher practice of disbanding studios, even if they ship a game successfully, is so counterintuitive to their own financial future it boggles my mind.
"Like if I were a major shareholder I would be livid," Marrone observed. "This is wanton destruction of these publishers’ most precious assets. It’s like literally setting fire to millions of dollars of property and equipment. It’s wildly irresponsible and self-sabotaging. If big game publishers just want number to go up, fire everyone and just invest it all in mutual funds or something. If you don’t want to actually make a product, and you don’t want to build a business around making a product, just liquidate your assets and stop pretending you want to make anything."
Marrone has been at Cryptic Studios for 16 years, starting out as an associate graphics designer. "I've worked on one game through that whole career, which means I've seen lots of leaders come and go, and lots of versions of the company and the game as it grew, shrunk, and changed," he noted.
Cryptic themselves were founded in 2000, and are also known for Champions Online, City of Heroes and Neverwinter. They've been through a lot of upheaval lately. Cryptic were acquired by (*dread bell tolls*) publishing conglomerate Embracer in 2021, during the latter's early-Covid-era campaign to absorb half the industry. When Embracer belatedly acknowledged that all of their acquisitions had left them up shit creek without a paddle, Cryptic Studios were among the many subsidiaries who had to lay off staff. Then, Embracer sold them to Project Golden Arc, a new company formed by former Star Trek Online publishers Arc and XD Inc, publishers of Torchlight: Infinite and Heartopia.
I'm not sure how many of Cryptic's founding staff are still there, but Marrone makes ...Read more: Full article on www.rockpapershotgun.com
What do you think about this?