Happening At STFUandPLAY
• STFUandPLAY pays respect to Giant Bomb’s Ryan Davis.
• Grand Theft Auto V gameplay trailer
• Tony’s editorial about gamer’s pack mentality
• Last Of Us day at STFUandPLAY
Gaming News
• Phil Fish puts MS on blast for not supporting Fez
• Don Mattrick leaves Microsoft, is replaced by Julie Larson-Green
• People petition MS to bring back DRM
• League Of Legends player jailed after making comments on Facebook
• Broken Age gets delayed
• Kingdom Hearts creator wants Marvel and Star Wars characters in KH3
• Nintendo yanks Smash Bros. from EVO then does a 180
• Hideo Kojima depressed by Grand Theft Auto V
Listener Questions
• Why is it that you guys didn’t touch on the Playstation 3 update that bricked consoles?
• Where do you think gaming would be without Microsoft?
The story in part 3 of Sony Interactive Entertainment and Naughty Dog's The Last of Us series may explore a "congregation of immune people."
Former Naughty Dog artist Gabriel Betancourt explains why the "sweet spot" for game teams is under 200 people and how AAA "factories" kill creativity.
There’s definitely some truth to this. When teams get too large, coordination starts to outweigh creativity—layers of approval, risk aversion, and tight deadlines can turn bold ideas into “safe” ones. Keeping a team under ~200 people sounds ideal for maintaining clear communication and a shared vision. That said, massive AAA projects also come with huge technical demands and expectations, so scaling up isn’t always avoidable. The real challenge is figuring out how to keep that small-team creativity alive inside big studio structures.
More than that, it's logistically untenable. Inevitably, when teams get too large, how do you keep tabs on accountability? I suspect this massive team size is a consequence of the perfectionism streak Naughty Dog has.
I wish we could have so many people working on something and it turns out great because I'm all for collaboration in spirit - the problem is too many people as part of the larger team and smaller units. Suppose for example that you have too many people in the art department; you will very often come up against fiercely competing visions for how things should look. That competitive vision will cause friction between team members, team doesn't work as a unit, the back and forth can further delay parts that the other departments are waiting for, etc etc.
A 200-person team says, to me, that we need to scale back game development. Even if it means we go back to PS2 era costs and scale, why not? Those games are still great fun, the budgets were in check, and you could literally break the 200-man team into like 10 20-man teams working on different projects.
Starting Patch 26.5, severe toxicity gets you removed from games, not just muted. Riot says DMs will count next. League of Legends Patch 26.5 bans will get a level up. Riot Games has revealed plans to punish people who are abusive in chat with huge bans. Starting in Patch 26.5, gameplay bans will be given for players who are “severely disruptive” in comms, rather than just chat bans.
