I keep thinking about this dream I had of me and @lejade running to catch a bus and me asking “no seriously, what the fuck happened at That Game Company?”
The co-founder left right after Journey came out. Lead producer left too. That was so weird, no one asked anything in the industry like why are you leaving a studio that just released a masterpiece, a critically acclaimed game? That doesn’t make sense.
We learned this week that a lot of people in the team didn’t get paid for six months at the end of the long, six years of development. Sony paid two budget extensions and it wasn’t enough, the team had to use their savings too. That’s madness.
It shouldn’t happened. I feel like when it happens in the movie industry, it makes sense. Shooting on the other side of the country/world, paying actors, building props etc. It can be hard to follow a budget (and yet they mostly do).
To build a very linear game with very few interactions cannot take six years to make, as great as it is. I mean, we need to get much better and faster at that.
Because we’re the slowest creative production process ever and it’s really frustrating.