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Days Gone Game Director Live Stream Interview Tomorrow

davidjaffe

The Fucking MAN.
Playstation Legend Jeff Ross Game Director/Game Designer of Days Gone (and designer on numerous Syphon Filters, Uncharted Golden Abyss, Darkwatch!,etc.)- will be on my GABBIN+GAMES stream tomorrow (Sunday) at 11am PST.

mHZY5SX.jpg


We'll talk his games and game design philosophies in part 2 (in the next few weeks). But TOMORROW we chat all about the biz, Playstation, and the Schreier article.

Discord is also open and Jeff will be taking some 'calls' from people who wanna call in and chat.

Here's a link to the discord.

And here's a link for tomorrow's stream.

Thx! Hope to see some of y'all live.

Jaffe


EDIT: If there are any specific questions you would like ME to ask, hit me up here or on twitter and I'll see if they make sense in the context of the chat. Thx!

Summary notes of what Jeff Ross said:

- he left for personal reasons, age, future ideas, not because of anything in that article
- there was an idea for a Days Gone 2, there was some early work on it
- never say never about a Days Gone 2 not happening
- Days Gone sold well, more than all other Bend games combined
- its a good game they're proud of, but it has flaws
- the metacritic 70 and the critical reviews did hurt

- they had ideas for a Days Gone shared world online multiplayer game (along with more singleplayer)
- Days Gone started with idea for extra 2 player co-op mode
- Days Gone development was rough and the studio changed a lot over time, new people, new structure
- team and budget basically doubled over the years while making Days Gone

- PS5 games will cost even more to make than PS4 games
- even using outsourcing studios is getting more expensive cuz of bidding wars and limited devs
- he understands the business & PR approach that Sony is taking

- putting games on subscription services later on is cool, can help more people play it
- he likes Game Pass, but has doubts about the longterm business strategy, debt, converting users to profits, etc
- not sure if doing day 1 release on service would work (hasn't done it yet)
- he's happy that Days Gone is going to PC so more people can play it
- putting Uncharted Golden Abyss on PS Plus directly benefited Bend Studio financially

- Sony are very hands off with their studios, don't just chase money
- Shawn Layden, Scott Rohde, Shu Yoshida are all great to work with and love games
- he met Jim Ryan once at a PR thing in London and Jim Ryan threatened to fire anyone who leaked anything
- Herman Hulst did a good job leading Guerrila, he'll be fine

- he loves The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part 2 (he liked the bold story and ideas in 2)
- he likes Neil Druckmann and had fun meeting Troy Baker, did a Joel impression
- they've had a good relationship with Naughty Dog, just a few normal creative issues

- Bend was not becoming a support studio
- he said that rumor is false
- he said that Bend was helping Naughty Dog in a limited way, collaboration he called it
- it was to give some devs at Bend something to do while they had nothing else going on early in pre-pro

- new younger millennial game devs bitch and moan a lot, about everything
- getting to zero crunch is probably impossible but it does need to be managed better and fixed
- he respects Jason and has read his book, likes serious games journalism, devs should be held accountable

- a new Syphon Filter game would not work today, not modern enough, he has no new game design ideas for that
- open world game design needs to improve with better NPCs and better systems
- too many open world games are just a map full of icons for generic quests to do
 
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Saber

Gold Member
Does he gonna still make/direct games? Does his team still in one piece or does he have missing members? Does he gonna have any weight in future game making decisions(creation libertity)?
 
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Fake

Member
davidjaffe davidjaffe
Is true that most of Sony Studios have limited to low bugdet about making games while ND have unlimited or far more than the others little Sony Studios? At least in comparison with ND.

If is true, do your team at Bend Studios feel stressed or unfair about how limited the Days Gone come at the end? Do you guys take this plus review critics well?

'BTW, I love Days Gone, please don't take this question in the wrong way. Can't wait for your next work.'
 
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Iced Arcade

Member
I'll definitely tune in.

He won't be able to say much besides touting the company line in regards to the studio shift or anything like that (which is understandable)
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
davidjaffe davidjaffe Id like to know what he thought of the gamespot review which was full of inaccurate information and how the game sold. Did it make a profit?

And one question to you, how did gow sold in comparison. And how long did Sony take to greenlight gow 2 after the success of the first game.
 

Hugare

Member
Is true that most of Sony Studios have limited to low bugdet about making games while ND have unlimited or far more than the others little Sony Studios?

If is true, do your team at Bend Studios feel stressed or unfair about how limited the Days Gone come at the end?

'BTW, I love Days Gone, please don't take this question wrong.'
Wut?

Days Gone started production at around 2014. So they had 5 years to develop the game. Sony presented the game at E3 '16 giving it a huge spotlight. Spent millions with marketing.

Does any of this sounds like Sony didnt support Bend? C'mon

Does Insomniac also complains about lack of budget? Santa Monica? Sucker Punch?

The game sold a lot, but having a 71 MC score after being developed for 5 years probably raised some Sony execs eyebrowns.

Telling them that they should support other studios instead of developing Days Gone 2 after the first game lukewarm reception is totally understandable on Sony's part.
 
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Sleepwalker

Gold Member
Omg I loved darkwatch back in the day, funnily enough a few days ago I was trying to remember what that game was but kept drawing blanks. Might need to find a way to replay it.
 

Unknown?

Member
I’d love to hear what he and his teams thoughts were when Days Gone was publicly attacked through reviews by activists.

How did the team handle having so much targeted and undeserved hate thrown at them.

*Big image below*

jurn-daysgonedlkjx.jpg
Yeah without that targeted activism it would have been higher on metacritic. I don't think it would have made it to 80 but definitely 75 or 76.
 

ToadMan

Member
I’d love to hear what he and his teams thoughts were when Days Gone was publicly attacked through reviews by activists.

How did the team handle having so much targeted and undeserved hate thrown at them.

*Big image below*

jurn-daysgonedlkjx.jpg


Just read through a few of these and I completed (well except some hordes to still clear) Days Gone literally yesterday.


Yep - these comments you posted are right.

It’s a plodding story that stays well too long for what’s in it, the implied morals of the character are ridiculous - at one point St John accuses a leader of one group of being a murderous nutcase (seems they were hoping for a Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now vibe) completely ignoring that the player as St John has murdered his way around the place without so much as a thought. Literally after being told by one very close acquaintance that the zombies are “sick people” and perhaps they should try to cure them and not exterminate them (and this acts as the set up for what follows in the main story), we are sent on a mission to kill more kiddy ones.

There’s the arbitrary support for a slave camp as mentioned in one of the articles posted, while the most organised and militarised faction is apparently evil because it exerts a kind of tribal justice.

This is like SoA meets the walking dead as a spin off of TLOU. It’s derivative, falls for all the hackneyed video game story tropes, open world tropes and biker guy tropes.

And I say all this having never seen any of those negative reviews until this last few days when the DG2 stuff has been raging - I had the game since day one but took me several attempts and now our own COViD pandemic to actually plow through it.


Now that’s not to say the gameplay is awful - it’s solid enough. I’d recommend people give it a go because there is fun to be had and the environment to play in is great.

It’s not as focused as TLOU but then again it’s an open world. It’s not as ground breaking as Ghost but this is an older game just plowing the same furrow many others have.

It tries to offer a sandbox like experience with the hordes (the gameplay mechanic they relied on selling it) but the sandbox is never as creative as something like Dead Rising (which I also found to be a boring game beyond the first).

The gameplay in DG is serviceable if uninspired but the story is so long it outstays its welcome.

These reviews aren’t wrong. People are trying to blame the negativity on woke politics - it’s nothing to do with that. These reviews are accurate - DG has average gameplay with an average story in a well developed world. It doesn’t deserve to be thrown under a bus - this description fits every Halo, Assassins Creed, Dead Rising, Gears of War and many other games - but equally it’s not a game that needs a sequel (something those other games failed to recognised and slipped into obscurity as a result).

I’d rather see bend work on something else. Either revisit syphon filter, work on a new SOCOM or do a completely new IP.

DG2 - if there were to be one, should probably wait until PS6 at the very least.
 
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MacReady13

Member
I’d love to hear what he and his teams thoughts were when Days Gone was publicly attacked through reviews by activists.

How did the team handle having so much targeted and undeserved hate thrown at them.

*Big image below*

jurn-daysgonedlkjx.jpg
The thing I noted at the time and re-reading all of these hot games is no one mentions the game in regards to gameplay, and if they do, why is that not taken into consideration? Games are NOT movies! It’s ALL about gameplay. Full stop!
 

bitbydeath

Member
Just read through a few of these and I completed (well except some hordes to still clear) Days Gone literally yesterday.


Yep - these comments you posted are right.

It’s a plodding story that stays well too long for what’s in it, the implied morals of the character are ridiculous - at one point St John accuses a leader of one group of being a murderous nutcase (seems they were hoping for a Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now vibe) completely ignoring that the player as St John has murdered his way around the place without so much as a thought. Literally after being told by one very close acquaintance that the zombies are “sick people” and perhaps they should try to cure them and not exterminate them (and this acts as the set up for what follows in the main story), we are sent on a mission to kill more kiddy ones.

There’s the arbitrary support for a slave camp as mentioned in one of the articles posted, while the most organised and militarised faction is apparently evil because it exerts a kind of tribal justice.

This is like SoA meets the walking dead as a spin off of TLOU. It’s derivative, falls for all the hackneyed video game story tropes, open world tropes and biker guy tropes.

And I say all this having never seen any of those negative reviews until this last few days when the DG2 stuff has been raging - I had the game since day one but took me several attempts and now our own COViD pandemic to actually plow through it.


Now that’s not to say the gameplay is awful - it’s solid enough. I’d recommend people give it a go because there is fun to be had and the environment to play in is great.

It’s not as focused as TLOU but then again it’s an open world. It’s not as ground breaking as Ghost but this is an older game just plowing the same furrow many others have.

It tries to offer a sandbox like experience with the hordes (the gameplay mechanic they relied on selling it) but the sandbox is never as creative as something like Dead Rising (which I also found to be a boring game beyond the first).

The gameplay in DG is serviceable if uninspired but the story is so long it outstays its welcome.

These reviews aren’t wrong. People are trying to blame the negativity on woke politics - it’s nothing to do with that. These reviews are accurate - DG has average gameplay with an average story in a well developed world. It doesn’t deserve to be thrown under a bus - this description fits every Halo, Assassins Creed, Dead Rising, Gears of War and many other games - but equally it’s not a game that needs a sequel (something those other games failed to recognised and slipped into obscurity as a result).

I’d rather see bend work on something else. Either revisit syphon filter, work on a new SOCOM or do a completely new IP.

DG2 - if there were to be one, should probably wait until PS6 at the very least.
I feel like you either quoted the wrong person or didn’t read the text in the large image since what you wrote covered none of it.
 
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Wut?

Days Gone started production at around 2014. So they had 5 years to develop the game. Sony presented the game at E3 '16 giving it a huge spotlight. Spent millions with marketing.

Does any of this sounds like Sony didnt support Bend? C'mon

Does Insomniac also complains about lack of budget? Santa Monica? Sucker Punch?

The game sold a lot, but having a 71 MC score after being developed for 5 years probably raised some Sony execs eyebrowns.

Telling them that they should support other studios instead of developing Days Gone 2 after the first game lukewarm reception is totally understandable on Sony's part.

The game sold well and made Sony boat loads of money but but cuck journalists didn't like it. Please just don't type anything ever again. You make yourself look unintelligent.
 
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Keihart

Member
Retribution was pretty fucking fun, i had no idea it was bend too.
Not a fan of golden abyss or days gone tho, i'm curious, will listen.
 

DJTaurus

Member
The game sold well and made Sony boat loads of money but but cuck journalists didn't like it. Please just don't type anything ever again. You make yourself look unintelligent.
It didn’t have enough diversity that’s why they didn’t like it. I am looking for lifetime sales but I can’t found sth.
 

Hugare

Member
The game sold well and made Sony boat loads of money but but cuck journalists didn't like it. Please just don't type anything ever again. You make yourself look unintelligent.
There's a lot of cuck journalists then, huh? To give it a 71 MC.

Guess I'm one of them, because I thought the game was mediocre. Certainly not worth of 5 years of development for that shit.

There were some idiots reviewers pointing the lack of representation or whatever, but they werent the majority. You guys focus on them in order to fit your narrative.

Same shit with Cyberpunk. There were like 2 reviewers mentioning "transphobia". The others didnt give a shit.

Insomniac made a way better game with Spiderman in almost half of this time.

It sold well, but MC score also matters to Sony. Not to mention the long dev time.

"Please just don't type anything ever again."

Sorry snowflake, but you are on a gaming forum. Be prepared to read some different opinions once in a while.
 
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turtlepowa

Banned
I don't need a second Days Gone. But some smaller game focused on Hordes only would be nice. They were a lot of fun.
 
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