It’s great they want to be transparent, but them communicating is also something that is measured in quality. The quality of communication is poor. What is this, bugs from the patch? All the bugs they know of? They’re not specifying, they’ve never specified.
They lay vague information to their Community Managers who take the brunt of it, they’re not giving detailed info, not because they don’t want to, but because …they really don’t know how to.
They are in a really, really bad spot, and the only way this can be fixed is through more funding, more bodies, and Amazon the parent, getting out of the way of AGS so they can build their own creative culture.
Sure but they are improving as we go along fairly fast. This has been way more communication than we have seen in the first couple of months. Each time they drop a patch its gotten a little better.
You mean they keep adding to the known issues list?
I am a software developer and I have also been working from home for the last two years. Trust me - it is FAR more productive than sitting in an office. All the BS companies are trying to sell people by saying “Sob, sob, it’s harder because we’re working from home” is simply not true. You don’t have people walking past you every 2 seconds, you don’t have phones ringing, you don’t have several hour long meetings, you don’t have any of the usual distractions.
Yeah they do add bugs. Every patch for every game does. They have more bugs than most thats for sure but we shall see how February pans out. I for one am positive about it.
I admire your enthusiasm but so far I’ve not seen anything from AGS that would make me think like you. Just because they post “We’re listening” more often than they used to doesn’t mean they have changed the way they work or the way their game designers think.
Oh I get where you’re coming from, and I’m actually defending the Devs themselves. The core issue, and the reason they’ve had 4 cancelled games(in-house), is because of how they’re managed by Amazon themselves.
Amazon has to invest further, otherwise we’re looking at what happened to Google Gaming Studios(it got canned).
I’m not sure if the team needs to get bigger (Have no idea the size of the group) but usually in software development more people shoved on a problem doesn’t help.
I think management (lower level and creative design) need to stabilize and get the ship on a good course. Kinda like being in the first round of a boxing match and you got jabbed twice and clipped with a heavy hand once. Your still in the fight and have energy just need to get your feet squared away and get moving again ^-^
They ARE Amazon. You think there’s this one magic entity called “Amazon” that manages every single employee? Of course not. Each division has some über clever “manager” that sets the general target (usually based on profitability and making Jeff and his shareholders happy), then they have less important VPs below them who are the ones making the grand decisions and then you have heads of departments who those VPs manage.
Here’s a good article about their structure. Thank Mike Frazzini for where this game is heading.
Yes, the ARE Amazon, but their structure is that of a contracted company rather than an aggressive investment campaign that Twitch, Whole Foods, and Amazon Studios was.
They basically dropped a 500 million penny and requested Frazzini(whose experience is questionable and they have John freaking Smedley onboardEQ) and expected Xbox Studios to poof out of the blue.