Just 2 weeks before the release of its next game, another studio falls victim to the relentless drive to be 'agile'
After 14 years of operation, Studio Fizin's next game will also be its last.
just fyi to folks the word agile here is in a business context like pivot or out of the box thinking and not agile methodology.
Synonymous with "fluid" or "flexible" or, "shifting the goal posts"
Well; I was one of the people that bought Minute Of Islands when it came out. Nice game - mournful tone, but beautiful in places. Bit of a "walking simulator" disguised as a platform game, though - not much replay value, I don't think.
What does surprise me is that Fizbin had hundreds of employees to lose, however. MoI had a really "art school indie" feel to it - I'd have guessed at more like ten employees having played through it. Gris (by Nomada) is the kind of *art platformer" that I'd draw as a comparison - Gris has much more action - and they look to be about forty people.
Obviously this is bad for everyone involved, but I suspect that the mismanagement that got them here might have been "dreaming too big" rather than purely "screwed by the publisher".
I don't understand: what's going on with the gaming industry? Is it suddenly not profitable anymore?
It's profitable, the problem is it's not profitable enough.
The problem is copyright that benefits only a tiny group of giant companies known as "les ayants-droits" in french. Copyrights as of today are not made to benefits the artisans, the workers but the black-suit men. The whole culture has been walled like that... The music industry, cinema industry and now game-industry...
The issue lies with these publishers.
See the problem is that they don't want to just make money, they want all the money and if your game you're proposing isn't based on a existing known IP and doesn't include psychological manipulation to make all the money, preferably through a live service, well these executives don't want none.
The bottom is kinda falling out of the market and investors have dried up, largely because AAA has had too many extremely costly fuck-ups recently. Now the whole sector is looking bad, and it's been trickling down into impacting the ability for AA studios and indie teams to find funding for their projects.
Is it suddenly not profitable anymore?
The answer is in the question..
it Is suddenly not profitable anymore
Plus, maybe the bunch of bigbuck$ games that recently bombed made investors slightly panicky.