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Netflix is Working on 'Brand-New AAA PC Game' (techcrunch.com) 38

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
Netflix has put up more than a dozen job listings on its website for Netflix Games Studio's Los Angeles office. From a report: These listings give us a few hints about the company's plans for the new studio. In particular, Netflix is hiring a game director to work on "a brand-new AAA PC game." Last month at TechCrunch Disrupt, Netflix VP of Gaming Mike Verdu originally announced that his company was opening a new studio in Southern California. Verdu also said that Chacko Sonny would be leading the studio. Sonny is the former executive producer on Overwatch.

Sonny left Blizzard Entertainment, the company behind Overwatch, while the company was dealing with a California lawsuit for sexual harassment and discrimination as well as an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. He was also in charge of the development of Overwatch 2. And now it seems like Netflix wants to put together the core team for the initial project of Netflix Games Studio in Los Angeles. The game director will be in charge of a AAA PC game. That would be the company's first PC game as Netflix currently only offers games for smartphones and tablets. In the video game industry, AAA projects are major games with very large budgets and development teams.
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Netflix is Working on 'Brand-New AAA PC Game' More

Netflix is Working on 'Brand-New AAA PC Game'

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  • AAA ? (Score:5, Funny)

    by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Friday November 25, 2022 @03:06PM (#63079470)

    So it runs on batteries?

  • They're gonna get clobbered... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by AmazingRuss ( 555076 ) on Friday November 25, 2022 @03:21PM (#63079506)
    ... and in a year they'll really wish they hadn't pissed away all that money on a business they didn't understand.

    • Re:They're gonna get clobbered... (Score:4, Funny)

      by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Friday November 25, 2022 @03:35PM (#63079538)

      ... and in a year they'll really wish they hadn't pissed away all that money on a business they didn't understand.

      But then they're realize it could have been much worse; they could have bought Twitter. :-)

    • Meh you never know. Apex Legends is one of the biggest games in the industry and it literally started as a little demo game made all the studio was trying to get real work. Something to just make sure the programmers didn't get rusty.

      Blizzard clearly dropped the ball on OverWatch 2. So there's definitely an opening.

      That said video games are hard to make so the odds aren't in their favor anymore than they're in the odds of anyone's favor trying to make a good video game.

      • That studio had experience with titles like Titanfall 2. Plus there's a significant difference between a passion project on the side and "Triple-A PC game" that likely has a budget and an earnings goal but no creative direction.

    • Maybe, maybe not. The only thing really stupid is to not try anything and just sit on investor dollars doing nothing.

  • So, we can look forward to another soulless MMORPG with no players?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

      So, we can look forward to another soulless MMORPG with no players?

      I believe these days that is referred to as "the metaverse."

      (But it is amusing how MMOs have pretty much died as a genre with World of Warcraft. There has never been a successful MMO since, and the whole idea of a "shared world" between many players has pretty much died. Instead of "massively multiplayer" you just have "multiplayer but with global algorithmic matchmaking.")

    • After Bethsoft lost a ton of money up front on ESO, that isn't likely. Big budget MMOs don't bring in the money like mobile games. Not anymore.

  • Does that mean finally a game that isn't just a Call of Battlefield or Metroidvania clone? Or does it just mean "we don't have games along the lines of "Call of Battlefield: $subtitle $running_number" and "EA $sportsfranchise $year" yet, but bear with us, if our FPS/RTS clone is a success, rest assured you'll see every kind of sequel".

    There is nothing new in AAA gaming. There cannot be. If you're dropping a couple millions on developing a game, you can't risk that by making it something that really is "bran

    • Re:"Brand new"? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by _xeno_ ( 155264 ) on Friday November 25, 2022 @03:39PM (#63079542) Homepage Journal

      It's going to be a tie-in to some existing Netflix property. They would be insane not to. Although, the only thing I can think of that would make sense is Stranger Things, and that's going to have a final season "soon" - although it may be far enough out that a AAA game could be made to launch alongside it.

      There is nothing new in AAA gaming.

      Personally, I wish we'd just drop the concept of "AAA gaming" because for the most part, other than the expense, it's nothing special. It tends to be "more assets" but less content. A AAA game will run maybe 5-10 hours, and then have no replayability beyond whatever online modes it has. Then you'll have small indie titles with graphics that sometimes are as good as AAA titles were a few years ago, but that you can spend hundreds of hours in, finding new things to do.

      The only thing these days that makes a game "AAA" seems to be that they spent a lot of money on it. It'll have way more graphical assets, spread out over an entirely linear pathway. They'll hire big-name Hollywood actors to do motion capture and voice work. You'll end up with a game that takes 100GBs but takes less time to play than an indie that's less than 1GB.

      When Netflix announces "we're making a AAA game!" all I can assume is that it'll be an FPS in a Netflix franchise - and I'm still guessing "Stranger Things" - that they intend to burn a lot of money making, and that will end up with maybe 5 hours of real content.

      • Indie and small-studio games are actually on the rise, with is mostly due to much of what you already said, but there's a lot more. Making a "good" game, with decent graphics, controls and gameplay is no longer dependent on being able to license or make a top of the line engine. Unreal Engine and Unity offer a very versatile toolbox for graphics, gameplay, sound and even packaging and distribution, with zero up-front cost. You basically start to pay for it when you get paid because they take a cut of your i

      • Personally, I wish we'd just drop the concept of "AAA gaming" because for the most part, other than the expense, it's nothing special. It tends to be "more assets" but less content. A AAA game will run maybe 5-10 hours, and then have no replayability beyond whatever online modes it has. Then you'll have small indie titles with graphics that sometimes are as good as AAA titles were a few years ago, but that you can spend hundreds of hours in, finding new things to do.

        I think you've got things a bit backwards.

        What indie titles are great at is finding a fun game mechanic that may have a lot of replayability. But the content itself tends to be fairly sparse because you only have a handful of artists.

        AAA games can have hundreds of hours of content because they can afford to hire ridiculous numbers of artists to create additional environments, quests, characters, etc. The thing is they still need to nail the underlying game mechanics for it to be fun (and trying to make sure

        • AAA games can have hundreds of hours of content because they can afford to hire ridiculous numbers of artists

          But they don't, at least, not on average. Most AAA games have 15-30 hours of content, and with few exceptions the full range is something like 10-40 hours depending on the genre. They might have replay value for one or more reasons, but in terms of a straight playthrough without spending a lot of time dilly dallying: 15-25 hours is common for non-RPGs, 20-40 is common for RPGs (less for action, more for turns based, although there are exceptions to both) and only a few have 60+ hours of play even with grind

      • It's going to be a tie-in to some existing Netflix property. They would be insane not to. Although, the only thing I can think of that would make sense is Stranger Things, and that's going to have a final season "soon" - although it may be far enough out that a AAA game could be made to launch alongside it.

        There is nothing new in AAA gaming.

        Personally, I wish we'd just drop the concept of "AAA gaming" because for the most part, other than the expense, it's nothing special. It tends to be "more assets" but less content. A AAA game will run maybe 5-10 hours, and then have no replayability beyond whatever online modes it has. Then you'll have small indie titles with graphics that sometimes are as good as AAA titles were a few years ago, but that you can spend hundreds of hours in, finding new things to do.

        The only thing these days that makes a game "AAA" seems to be that they spent a lot of money on it. It'll have way more graphical assets, spread out over an entirely linear pathway. They'll hire big-name Hollywood actors to do motion capture and voice work. You'll end up with a game that takes 100GBs but takes less time to play than an indie that's less than 1GB.

        When Netflix announces "we're making a AAA game!" all I can assume is that it'll be an FPS in a Netflix franchise - and I'm still guessing "Stranger Things" - that they intend to burn a lot of money making, and that will end up with maybe 5 hours of real content.

        AAA games are more polished, for better or worse. Halo was never my favorite FPS, but I did admire how in the Halo games I played, the environments were well polished, there were strategies for each room to come out on top (on the highest difficulty setting). In short, when you entered a combat area for Halo 3, there were was a well-thought-out layout. There were good options. The spawn points were well thought out. There were a million details I saw in that game vs budget shooters I liked a lot more.

      • Re:"Brand new"? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ljw1004 ( 764174 ) on Friday November 25, 2022 @05:43PM (#63079750)

        Personally, I wish we'd just drop the concept of "AAA gaming" because for the most part, other than the expense, it's nothing special. It tends to be "more assets" but less content. A AAA game will run maybe 5-10 hours, and then have no replayability beyond whatever online modes it has.

        Honestly, that's exactly what I want. 10-15 hours of storyline gameplay, and then I'm never going to touch the game again. I'm never going to play online, I'm never going to replay. At $60 for 10hrs of gameplay I think I'm getting a fairly good deal for my entertainment.

        The quality of the writing, voice-acting and story can all vary wildly and still leave me happy! I've loved Bioshock, Modern Warfare II, Fable, Dragon Age, Planescape: Torment, Halo, Psychonauts, Thief, (indie) Spiderweb Software, In Other Waters. There just has to be some kind of hook, any, on which to hang my suspension of disbelief.

        What I do insist upon though is NOVELTY. As the game progresses I want to see new content, or levels, or new gameplay mechanics, or new story developments, or new anything. For AAA games, I bet a large chunk of their budget goes just into the huge numbers of talented creators needed to produce all the new content as the story progresses. For indie games, the novelty I guess normally ends up being new story, since new gameplay or assets are too expensive.

        I don't think I've seen any game, indie or AAA, that can keep delivering new stuff after 15 hours. They all just sort of run out of ideas. "Oh look! there's a monster here that's colored red and has twice the hitpoints!" "Hey after you've completed it once, you can complete it a second time but this time when you pick your nose you can only use your pinky." No thanks. More than 15hrs isn't a selling point for me. (exception: Ultima VII was a pinnacle with a good 40 hours of novel content).

        Probably the difference is that now I'm older, with kids, more affluent and with less time to spend on computer games.

      • It tends to be "more assets" but less content.

        Not sure I agree with this statement. Sure there are some bad actors out there, but there are a great many games with just a shitload of content. For every FIFA 2022 asset flip (though I'm not sure FIFA qualifies as AAA), there's an Elden ring with literally hundreds of hours of great content to work through.

        And even among the flops of AAA titles (e.g. Cyberpunk 2077), the game itself was in no way short on content and grandeur. AAA games certainly dominate the names of any "content heavy lists". Think Red

      • "We spent all that money and all we got was this lousy track shooter."

          Yeah, all flash and no substance a great game does not make. Might as well just watch a movie.

    • With RPG/FPS I come for the story. Unraveling the world, what happened, why I should do what the quests tell me to.
      That can be more or less new.

      In the RTS world you can do a lot of interesting things in the details of gaming mechanics.

      I say let them try , but don't fall for the hype.

  • You can't just decide to make a AAA game (Score:3)

    by Sarusa ( 104047 ) on Friday November 25, 2022 @04:53PM (#63079658)

    Well okay, you can, but it will end in tears. Just look at Amazon and Google. For a real shot at AAA you need to start with an experienced studio - and you're not an experienced studio just because all the people you hired are experienced (see Disintegration).

    A new studio needs to start with a AA game (at most), or even better a couple small simultaneous games just so everyone gets used to each other and to the process.

  • Next: "McDonalds is now offering tire checks and oil changes"

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