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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.
I blame Pickle. I friggin hate that guy.
When you censor out so much potential subject material for use in a game, you think you're going to have as viable of a market base?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
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.
This is a real shame for those laid off, not least because there are so few other employers in that sector in Australia.
But it's not unexpected. Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel (BL:TPS) was a commercial flop. Borderlands 2 has done around 10 million sales across all platforms. Prior to the release of the heavily discounted "Handsome Collection" for PS4 and Xbox-One, BL:TPS hadn't even managed a million.
That's partly because the game wasn't as good as Borderlands 2. Reviews and word of mouth were both pretty harsh on it. I've completed it twice. It actually has some decent (if unoriginal) content, but the first 6 hours or so are a miserable trudge.
But it's also because 2k made a big gamble on the PS4 and Xbox-One being commercial failures, and hence the game launched on PS3, 360 and PC. Their gamble was wrong; both of those consoles managed strong sales. Worse, the early-adopters had a huge overlap with "people who buy a lot of games". While the installed base for the PS3 and 360 remains huge, sales for them have largely dried up, outside of Call of Duty and FIFA.
Console transitions are scary for publishers. 2k's bet wasn't entirely unreasonable. The 3DS had a difficult launch, while the Vita and Wii-U basically flopped. The industry saw Ubisoft invest heavily in the Wii-U launch and get burned by it. But of all the major houses, 2k bet most heavily against the PS4 and Xbox-One and their first major release after those consoles launched paid the price.
It was clear that 2k had largely given up on the game. While Borderlands 2 was supported for years post-launch with well-crafted and extensive DLC, BL:TPS was funded to deliver precisely enough DLC to satisfy the contractual requirements of the Season Pass; not an ounce more. Its inclusion so soon after launch in a cut-price compilation was another sure sign that 2k were in damage-limitation mode.
WTF is AAA?
It means "overpriced."
Actually I'm honestly curious how the hell "AAA studio" became a meme. It implies that there are at the very least AA and A studios as well. I assume it's based on bond credit ratings but I don't think anyone honestly ranks game studios like that.
Except a studio is either "AAA" or it isn't. What's the difference between a AAA studio and one that isn't? The amount of money they spend, as far as I can tell.
It certainly isn't based on game quality or anything like that.
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.
WTF? How much does it really matter for a somewhat independent game studio to be on the same time zone? This isn't finance or news. And the significantly higher cost of transportation? Really? That hasn't held back China from shipping to the US (shipping prices are miniscule), and anyway of course this is all being sent over the internet.
Australia has a small population (23 million, less than metropolitan Shanghai) and higher education is lacking, of course it would be more difficult to have a competitive software company there.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
It's like Kokatu, but it's region-locked, censored and only available six months after the real Kokatu. Plus it costs twice as much.
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
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".
Meh, most AAA publishers and studios stayed as far away from that whole shitstorm as they possibly could; it was a hysterical debate (out of which nobody on either side came out well) that came out of the indie gaming scene and mostly stayed in the indie gaming scene.
I doubt most people who buy and play games even noticed it. And I doubt a single AAA publisher changed their strategy as a result of it. It got a lot of blogs and gaming news sites very upset, generated a handful of fairly well-buried articles in the mainstream press and then the world moved on.
But most people involved on both sides were full-blown narcissists, so they didn't really see things that way.
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.
Anytime an article acknowledges an "AAA title", this is all anyone asks. AAA ain't an acronym. Actually, it alludes to an academic grading arrangement (as adminstered in the U.S. of A.). For games, an "A" applies to advertising allotment, another "A" to amazing game play, as well as an "A" for fanancial succass. At farst, at was davalopers usang tha term, but than vidao jaurnalists, game raviewars and saftware campanaes startad ta call tham AAA gamas. Aftar a faw yaars, pablashars startad cansadaraaa gaaas ta ba AAA bafara ralaasa, whaah than jaatafaad larga aavalapaant and maraatang baaaaaa. Asaaaaaaaaaaa, an aaa aaaaa aaa aaaaaaa.
Well, you grab a Foster's, throw a shrimp on the barbie, and say to your mates "well strewth, that went to the shithouse".
Then you grab your missus and 9 week old, and go camping at Ayres Rock for a holiday.
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.