Sony’s blockbuster gaming culture is fostering a hostile environment for small developers within the company, according to a story reported by news agency Bloomberg . According to the text, a small group of developers tried to create a kind of “smaller studio” at the service of the company, but as Sony never even acknowledged the existence of the group, many of these people have even resigned.
Explaining: Sony has a subsidiary called the Visual Arts Service Group, whose job is basically to make the final artwork for games produced by other studios, having participated in the polishing of titles like ‘Marvel’s Spider-Man’ and ‘ Uncharted ‘. The group’s former director, Michael Mumbauer, had recruited about 30 developers in order to ask Sony for more creative control and autonomy in order to expand the company’s familiar franchises: the new unit even began development of a remake of ‘The Last of Us’, from 2013.
read more
- ‘Last of Us’ series will adapt first game, but will have “major deviations”, says director
- Review of ‘The Last of Us 2’: the closure the generation needed
- PlayStation 5: everything you need to know about the console
However, the fact that Sony never recognizes the new development unit (which implies it has neither a proper name nor funds to work with) and the supposed remake of the game being passed on to the original studio — Naughty Dog — ended up creating an environment hostile of discontent among those involved. According to Jason Schreier, author of the Bloomberg story, interviews with sources involved in the case revealed that the situation caused Mumbaer, who ran the Visual Arts Service Group since 2007, to resign from Sony — he himself declined to comment on the case and asked that his name was not mentioned in private discussions.
The article also details Sony’s strategy of having only a few studios, responsible for its greatest successes, even though it owns approximately a dozen development companies around the world. Names like “Sony Santa Monica” (‘ God of War ‘), the aforementioned Naughty Dog (‘Uncharted’ and ‘The Last of Us’) and Guerrilla Games (‘ Horizon Zero Dawn ‘) routinely receive the lion’s share of the targeted budget to the creation of Sony. rival Microsoft, for example, does the opposite, providing a low-cost monthly subscription service to its users — the Game Pass — while it bets on the acquisition of smaller studios, but with games that have successfully debuted, see the purchase of Ninja Theory (‘Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice’), for example.
“Sony’s focus on exclusive blockbusters cost it studios and niche teams within the ‘PlayStation’ organization, leading to higher turnover and less choice for players,” says excerpts from the story, referring to the term used in the corporate means to refer to a high rate of dismissals. “Last week, Sony reorganized a development studio in Japan, resulting in the departure of people who had worked on lesser-known but very successful productions like ‘Gravity Rush’ and ‘Everybody’s Golf.’ The company informed developers that it would no longer seek to produce smaller games that they only sell in Japan.”
The situation ended up bringing unhappiness to more recognized divisions: Sony Bend, which signs the production of ‘ Days Gone ‘, even suggested creating a sequel to the 2019 game. Reception at launch was average, with expert critics highlighting its many bugs — Sony eventually scrapped the idea, choosing instead to assign a Sony Bend team to assist Naughty Dog on an as-yet-undisclosed multiplayer project, while a second group of the division would be responsible for a new game in the series ‘Uncharted’ under the supervision of the same Naughty Dog,
This didn’t sit well with some people, who feared that Bend would be absorbed into the larger studio and asked for the team to be removed from this project. The wish was granted last week, and now Bend is working on an unannounced project of its own.
“The emphasis on big hits can also be counterproductive because, in some cases, games that start small can become massive hits,” notes the Bloomberg article. “In 2020, Sony made no effort to market ‘Dreams’, a game creation tool from Media Molecule [‘LittleBigPlanet’]. As a result, PlayStation may have missed the chance to have its own version of ‘Roblox’, a similar tool. The owner, Roblox Corp., went public earlier this year and now has a market valuation of around US$ 45 billion [R$ 254.18 billion, in direct conversion]”.
At this point, the team Mumbauer brought together thought of creating a division that specializes in something Sony could easily approve: remakes of old PlayStation 5 games , as they are cheaper to create compared to brand new intellectual property. Initially, the group wanted to remake the first ‘Uncharted’ from 2007, but as it was one of the first PlayStation 3 games , even for a remake, the additional artwork would make the product too expensive, so the team changed their strategy to the ‘ Original Last of Us’ — around the same time that Naughty Dog themselves was developing ‘The Last of Us 2’. The plan was to offer both titles as a bundle.
The operation seemed risky for Sony, so the company would have allowed the creation of the remake in a kind of “probationary state”, keeping the existence of Mumbauer’s division a secret from the other teams, not offering them a budget for more signings. In 2019, despite everything, the team completed a portion of the remake to introduce it to management — specifically, Hermen Hulst, former Guerilla Games and current leader of PlayStation Worldwide Studios — who said the entire project was too expensive, according to Bloomberg, questioning why the cost is considerably higher than other remakes. Even after Mumbauer explained to him that the remake of “The Last of Us” would be for the PlayStation 5 — that is, a different, more advanced graphics engine and, consequently, with more people needed to work with —, Hulst was not convinced.
Eventually, development of “The Last of Us 2” was delayed and Naughty Dog enlisted the Visual Arts Service Group to polish the product, delaying the remake project. Post-release, Sony positioned people who worked on both “The Last of Us” giving them greater creative control (and a more hostile environment for “smaller” developers) as well as moving the remake to Naughty Dog’s internal budget. . The autonomy of Mumbauer’s group had thus just been removed. For Sony, it made perfect sense: Naughty Dog is what the market calls a “needle move” — a technical term applied to companies or people whose mere presence on a project ensures success.
But for a group of developers who wanted to assert their ability without interference and, who knows, start making their own creations, Sony’s move was a blow: by the end of 2020, most of the group directed the remake of “The Last of Us” left the project and Sony — including Mumbauer and project director David Hall. Today, the remake is under development by Naughty Dog, with support from the Visual Arts Service Group.
Source: Bloomberg