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2K, Australia's Last AAA Studio, Closes Its Doors
beaverdownunder writes 2K Australia, the Canberra studio that most recently developed Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, is closing its doors. The entire studio is closing, and all staff members will lose their jobs. "All hands are gone," said a source for Kotaku Australia. 2K Canberra was the last major AAA-style studio operating out of Australia. The costs of operating in Australia are apparently to blame for the decision. This raises questions as to the viability of developing major video games in Australia.
That would be a very well known term meaning a blockbuster game. AAA games are games that cost hundreds of millions to produce, and hope to make those hundreds of millions back based on stunning quality levels.
2K Games is the publisher of Borderlands while the developer is Gearbox Software, which is based in Texas, US.
2K has several studios all over, the one from the article was 2K Australia.
2K Games is the publisher of Borderlands while the developer is Gearbox Software, which is based in Texas, US.
That's not entirely true. Gearbox developed Borderlands and Borderlands 2 and 2K Games published both. Borderlands the Pre-sequel was developed by 2K Australia "with assistance from Gearbox".
The thing is, BL2 was beautifully written. So much was gotten right at the story level in BL2 that the sequel was fine as a stand alone game, but not nearly as good.
Let me give an example: the hub of the story takes place at Sanctuary. It's where you get instructions from some of the major NPCs and get upgrades. However, you aren't there until the first quarter of the game and when you do, you approach its high walls on foot and have a job defending them. A few chapters later, you're pitched out of Sanctuary and can't get back there.
For a while at least. You can see it, it's always present but off in the distance but it's 'you can't they there from here'. Later, after (no spoilers) changes involving two major characters, the terrain changes and colour scheme becomes really dark.
In contrast, the Presquel's story hub literally has no purpose in the plot. Sure you can buy gear there like at Sanctuary but you have no emotional investment in Concordia, and you don't even know what it looks like from the outside. Finally, there's zero, nada, third act twist. As the game takes place before BL2 we know the NPCs will fall out with Jack. Okay, but the 'reason' when it happened not only idiotic, but had no story function. Jack murders someone who gives gives him excellent advice about reducing the risk of being betrayed. Okay, no only does that make no sense but there are multiple prison cells on that very map!
Moreover, Tassiter had no story. If the story had been that Tassiter alerts the vault hunters about what's happening to Angel, and Jack's wife is killed in the rescue while trying to get Angel to New Haven (destroyed for unknown reason after BL1) then you'd have a story.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Fair enough, never played the Pre-sequel and just assumed. And that's always a bad idea :)
WTF is AAA?
It's a grading system, based on three grading criteria, each of which can score up to an 'A':
Game success among critics/reviewers
"Innovative gameplay"
Financial success
Given the major reviewers comments on "Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel", the fact that it's "Yet Another First Person Shoot", and the company being unable to afford to remain in business, rather than "AAA Studio", it'd probably be better to describe 2K as a "BCF" studio.
They definitely get an F on their financial success, and YAFPS is hardly innovative game play, so they get a grudging C there, and the reviews at the top sites give them generally in the neighborhood of an 80% approval by reviewers (only GameStop rates them higher than 80%), so that's a B.
I really hate that people hype studios themselves as "AAA", as if that means they are going to get A's in all three categories, just because of who they are, or because of the marketing hype behind their games contributing to a likelihood of good reviews or financial success.
In reality, you are only as good as your last release in all three categories. 2K blew it in at least two of the categories, and turned in B grade work in the third, so it's no surprise they failed.
The article doesn't contain any evidence that the cost of operating in Australia was a significant part of the problem, but it does contain evidence that the management pissed off a significant part of the company's talent.
They are higher but don't be absurd. The low end of the salary range for a developer is around the $70k mark. ($65k for a JAVA developer). The high end is around $125k. The most well paid developer I know gets around $135k, is near retirement, and is a guru that would make neckbeards go weak at the knees. The most well paid IT professional I know gets around $170k and is the CIO for a company with 380 employees.
The people I know is anecdotal. The salary ranges were from the AITP 2014 review.
All dollars are Australian Dollars. Multiply by 0.8 to get US Dollars.
WTF is AAA?
It's a grading system, based on three grading criteria, each of which can score up to an 'A':
Game success among critics/reviewers
"Innovative gameplay"
Financial success
This is absolute bollocks.
AAA only defines the amount of money they can throw at a project.
Quoteth Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_%28game_industry%29
In the video game industry, AAA (pronounced "triple A") is a classification term used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion
So a AAA studio is a studio with an immense bucket of money behind it. That is no indication of quality and realistically never has been.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.