With the PlayStation 4 set to be released tomorrow in North America, VGU has decided to list the top 10 PlayStation IPs.
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.
VGChartz's Mark Nielsen: "This is a collection of short Late Looks picking up on some of the games I meant to write a full article for but was too busy to do at the time. This time the games in question are the original Diablo, Balatro, and Kingdom Hearts III - a perfectly natural combination of games that you definitely expected to see grouped together. Not quite review and not quite rant, it’s more a casual assessment of what I – the gamer of the future – consider to be each game’s strengths and weaknesses in retrospect."
i get the “weird combo” angle, but i’m curious what you think holds up best: diablo’s atmosphere, balatro’s loop, or kh3’s combat. i bounced off kh3 hard after seeing casino junk shoved into a fan discord, including https://monopolybigballerli... and it soured my mood for anything with flashy “chance” mechanics. balatro still feels clever to me since the randomness is the point and you’re making real decisions around it. also had a similar spam wave on a retro forum with https://red-baron.org/ and https://dream-catcher-game.... and it’s annoying how it derails game talk.
Well it's clear that the author has never played a videogame before 2007
No Gran Turismo and Metal Gear Solid in the list.... this list is so wrong...
That picture of jak made me shed a manly tear !
Some of these like Kingdom hearts arent comepletely playstation exclusive franchises so it makes you wonder why Final fantasies pre 13 isn't on the list along with xengogames pre Monolith?
I vote for Tidus and Solid Snake.