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For Flagging Amazon Games Unit, New World 'Has to Be Our Breakthrough' (nytimes.com) 36

Amazon has been successful in nearly every industry it has entered, from books and grocery shopping to cloud computing and movie streaming. So it has been puzzling to many that success in the lucrative video game business has eluded the tech giant. On Tuesday, Amazon gave producing its own video games another try. From a report: After more than a year of delays, it released New World, an online multiplayer game in which players join factions, fight monsters, fight one another and colonize a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The $40 computer game, which received generally positive reviews as players tested early versions over the past few months, arrives at a crucial time for the tech giant's disappointing gaming efforts.

After spending by some estimates hundreds of millions of dollars, neither of the other two big-budget games that Amazon announced it was producing in 2016 alongside New World exists today. Some of its top gaming hires have departed over the years without putting out any notable titles. Last year, the company also removed another game from storefronts after a poor reception. New World "has to be our breakthrough game -- there's no doubt about it," said Christoph Hartmann, the vice president of Amazon Games. "Just for morale of people, at some point you want to see some success." Amazon's biggest accomplishment in the gaming industry so far has been the acquisition of Twitch, the livestreaming video site, which the company bought in 2014 for about $1 billion. Amazon has also forged ahead with a new gaming subscription service, Luna, and recently announced a new development studio in Montreal.

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For Flagging Amazon Games Unit, New World 'Has to Be Our Breakthrough'

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  • by omnichad ( 1198475 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2021 @03:16PM (#61842315) Homepage

    The problem with going so big is that you already have to have buy-in by players to even get them there. Instead, they need to find a way to reduce friction to near-zero (i.e. give Prime members something for free). Having an empty store with no road to get there is not going to suddenly become popular.

  • by Ostracus ( 1354233 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2021 @03:19PM (#61842321) Journal

    After more than a year of delays, it released New World, an online multiplayer game in which players join factions, fight monsters, fight one another and colonize a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean.

    This will forever be known as Amazon HQ.

    • by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2021 @03:50PM (#61842399) Journal

      It is a lot like EVE Online in that aspect. Here is a guy who played the beta 180 hours [youtube.com]. If you don't join factions, you're going to be at a huge disadvantage and the content that is available won't be as fun. I don't enjoy that kind of game because I don't like building up a team, keeping a schedule, and grinding to help my team, when I'm just trying to relax and have fun.

      In some ways it is like WoW, in that it took a hardcore concept and made it softer and fun. Likewise, Amazon's game takes the EVE Online concept and makes it softer and more approachable. That might be a recipe for success, but not an easy recipe.

    • i knew some amazon engineers that played EVE.... they had an oncall rotation for someone to always be playing, complete with a pagerduty script somehow hooked up to the game to page their oncall if something unexpected happened to their ships or cash.
  • It just goes to show that simply throwing wads of money doesn't replace actual creativity.

    NW was weirdly formed from the start, I don't know if it was the wrong people or what. Hardcore pvp mmo is SIMPLY NOT A BIG NICHE. So the first whatever years on design were wasted, aside from models and texture assets.

    So then when it finally dawned on them that this was a stupid place to enter the genre, they were already halfway down the slide. Then bad pub, reset, and subsequent skeptical scrutiny.

    I genuinely hop

  • Amazon basically looking to buy it's way into game development. A smart choice for them though, it's a genre with a built in expectation of patches and early wonkiness. It takes advantage of their enormous existing infrastructure and it's frankly a genre that has really been on the backburner lately. Who else but Amazon could take such a long term risk investment in a genre like this against WoW and FFXIV? It would be intersting to know if they can soak up server costs with AWS compared to any other stu

    • Amazon basically looking to buy it's way into game development.

      It worked for Microsoft and the Xbox. Halo anyone?

    • It takes advantage of their enormous existing infrastructure and it's frankly a genre that has really been on the backburner lately.

      Ironically, they've had a lot of infrastructure problems in the beta.

  • From the summary:
    "...an online multiplayer game in which players join factions, fight monsters, fight one another..."

    This doesn't sound original at all, why should I join in yet another MMORPG when there are already dozens out there?

    Yes, the last part about colonization sounds unique, but maybe that too has been done before.

    • From the game description "Claim and control territories to direct the development of settlements." which sounds somewhat unique.

      I have not played an MMORPG in a long while but something I always though was a lost oppurtunity was the fact that territory remained pretty static on the main map. There was no way to coordinate and capture large swaths of the map and fight over control of it. Put some real stakes into the picture. When I did play WoW back in the way way long time ago it did happen from time t

      • You described the problem with land capture in an mmo perfectly. One side wins and unless a hard reset is soon coming, the area just ends up dominated by the larger faction.

        There are numerous games like this and they are quite fun. Dark Age of Camelot and Guild Wars 2 both had/have great pvp siege and open field battles with 3 factions. It's just hard to balance out the factions.

        I play a game called Wurm Unlimited where you spawn in with a set of tools and the world at your finger tips. You find some open l

  • by Ty ( 15982 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2021 @03:37PM (#61842373)

    Total amateur hour of a launch! Sitting at only 43% (and falling) positive reviews on Steam [steampowered.com], nearly all of the negative reviews are related to being unable to log in and lag.

    Of all things, you'd think a gaming unit with presumably deep access to the talent at AWS would have sorted this out.

    • by Halueth ( 776646 )
      Exactly this. How to botch this, as it has nothing to do with the game itself but infrastructure and capacity, it can only mean that the heart is not there to make GREAT game experience. Ruthless calculus of a bunch of suits, and voila, the "how could this happen" question is rumbling again. I bet the engineering part warned about this.
    • Infrastructure was a problem during the beta, too. I agree with your post.

    • by He Who Has No Name ( 768306 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2021 @04:28PM (#61842513)

      They're mandated from one notch below Bezos himself to use an engine that has no business being used for AAA development (Lumberyard). It's a fork of an obsolete, poorly-documented and poorly tool-supported CryEngine, stuffed to the brim with a bunch of things that are supposed to help sell AWS service tie-ins but which don't actually help make a good game.

      Amazon is so far into their own Kool-aid that they committed the cardinal sin of engine development: they made the product they wanted the customer to buy, not what the customer actually wanted or needed. When their customers are their own devs, it's basically a guaranteed disaster. Which has been proven multiple times now.

      Maybe the implosion of Crucible and the cancellation of Sculpin and Intensity were sufficient wakeup calls to get them to do things that are known to work, instead of stick to "the Amazon Way" like cultists. Maybe not. We'll see.

      Probably not.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Maybe they don't have much experience with large server loads and thousands of simultaneous connections.

      They should have considered paying for AWS, I hear it's really good for these kind of applications... :)

  • I DON'T CARE. Imma say I work at the amazon warehouse for minimum wage. Real money is QUIET.
  • Queue for an hour and a half, play an hour, crash, queue for an hour and a half... Repeat.
  • ....this title, judging from video and screenshots, seems bland and generic. Sorry Amazon, I hope you really make it next time!
  • But the rest of the link was covered by my subscription options.

    I need to get in the habit of looking for NY Times links before clicking on this stupid paywall shit that keeps getting greenlit.
  • For a "has to be a breakthrough game" they sure as fuck screwed the pooch on the launch
  • ...the more they seem to fail as of late. Big giant games, by big giant companies, are made for the lowest common denominator of the masses, they are not made for you.
  • Say, is noone worried about the thick colonialist undertones in a game world that resembles the US and is developed and published by a monopolistic company that shows anti-competitive traits?
    I'm half expecting the first DLC to be a plantation upgrade where you can put captured natives to work.

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