Since the dawn of privatised information, there have been a few select, privileged members of the outside world whom are permitted glimpses and whispers of unfinished products within a much larger company. Or in the video game industry's case, not so few. These people are known as 'insiders'. And they need to get out.
The recent cases of IGN's "The Last Guardian" debacle and insider Thuway's E3 dethroning, it's apparent now more than ever that insiders do more harm than good to the gaming industry.
In this day and age, it’s rare we experience a warm fuzzy feeling when we boot up X (formerly known as Twitter, of course).
But the past few days have been lovely: our feed is full of people talking about DriveClub again.
The discussion started when someone posted a clip of the game and its infamous rain effects. The caption reads: “Still can’t believe this is a 12 year old game.”
This was one I was hoping would have some kind of boost from the PS5. The devs locked that sucker so tight...
I play the PSVR one even though it doesn't look as good, because that one is 60fps.
I interviewed them twice back in my gaming journalist days... Once at E3 2006 and again on a podcast about a year later. Really nice folks.
The guy we interviewed both times' name was Simon, I can't remember his last name, it was 20 years ago, but he was a really nice guy, and was very passionate about his job. It broke my heart when I saw Sony shuttered Evolution. I do hope they bring some of those folks back, but I remember another studio ended up hiring most of them back in those days, and they've been releasing new games since under that studio... Codemasters, maybe? I forgot which....
But the amount of talent that Sony has shut down over the years, it's disturbing. Psygnosis, Evolution, Zipper... just those three studios produced some of the most innovative games that PlayStation has ever seen... and those games need to be brought back.
If they were to release that game on the PlayStation 5, there would be absolutely no need for a remaster or a remake. The whole appeal of the original game was that it consistently exceeded people's expectations.
Higher rendering res and textures, higher framerate, maybe toss in some global illumination/ray tracing, but other than that, they could keep every polygon the same and it would still look absolutely incredible as a current gen title.
Sony should reassemble the team and make Driveclub 2. Driveclub was so ahead of its time it’s crazy.
This is what I hate about gamers sometimes
There is a segment of gaming communities that always want an old game to come back. But when the game(s) were in their prime, nobody supported them or not enough people supported them. Driveclub, Killzone, Resistance, etc all fit that profile.
I want Driveclub, Killzone, Resistence, and etc all back too. But I say that as someone that bought into, played, and own those games.
Too many people like to talk but not put up the money to support when it's needed. I even lump two of my own personal friends into that. I remember how one of them constantly said "I always wanted to play the Resistance games", yet never made an effort to buy any of them. No way that's an isolated event.
There are certainly games that fit that description, but I'm not sure these are a good fit:
- Driveclub infamously launched in a truly terrible state. It had a central focus on online & social features, and those were broken for about 6+ months before people could reliably play it as intended. It was so bad that the PS Plus Edition was delayed, along with its companion app. It also released less than a year after the PS4 launch, so it had to deal with a smaller total of launch PS4 owners to sell to, and Driveclub's rough launch certainly did it no favors.
- Resistance got 3 main console entries, and one handheld title for the PSP and PS Vita. Killzone got 5 main console entries across 3 generations, and one handheld title for PSP and PS Vita. This was also the era of millions of shooters, especially of the First Person variety, & genre fatigue was getting heavier by the year. So I feel these did pretty good at 5 and 7 titles respectively, pointing to enough people showing up for at least a while.
I'm not saying people don't exist who fit that criteria for these games, but I also don't think they were the primary issue. I think after a solid break from the IPs, as well as a lessening of shooter oversaturation, these titles could find healthy audiences if they came out with new entries at this point.
Killzone on the PS4 had the graphics, but the gameplay was tragic, I only rated Killzone 3, although the first game on the PS2 was decent. The Getaway was another game Sony canned, the sequel was so bad. Plenty of games need a sequel, the likes of Ridge Racer, Wipeout, Project Gotham, Wave Race and F-Zero have been retired. The racing genre these days, I'm sick of Turismo and Forza due to the same tracks and any other clones.
I think the original Motorstorm was the game that convinced me to buy a ps3. Way ahead of its time.
Surprised Sony didn't release a collectio, but all they seem to do these days is release God of War and Uncharted collections. It kills me that I no longer have a PS3, so a collection would be awesome.
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Amazing news! Digital Foundry has parted ways with IGN and bought their shareholding in the business. What this means is that from now on, all aspects of DF are decided upon by DF.
Replies(2)Would love to see more DF Retros from John now that they can come up with their own ideas.
I just watched a DF video from John featuring the new Gradius collection. Gradius is one my favorite NES games ! And now at QuakeCon 2025 they just released a remastered Heretic and Hexxen bundle by Nightdive and ID Software. So DF featuring John released a video today talking about the Hexxen and Heretic bundle . Good times.
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I love DF-crew, they are experts at what they do and I'm so happy for this!
I believe in these guys more than anyone else!
I overall don't like podcasts either but these guys make it fun for me at least! :D
Xbox Series X best place to play 3rd party. Oh it must be a glitch or tools because Series X is worse.
I don’t understand why this keeps happening.
Doesn’t sound like an expert to me.
Doesn't make any sense what you are saying. They are experts in their field in my opinion, we don't have to share it. That's ok.
But something doesn't always have to have an explanation as well. If they can't understand why it's happening they aren't lying about it. They honestly can admit that they do nut understand something, usually they reach out to that specific company etc. then to try and get a better understanding.
If you don't like em, don't watch em.
thats great that u enjoy them, but you shouldnt just believe everything these guys say either.
I didn't say I believe everything they are saying. I believe in them more than anyone else in this business because I feel they do not shy away from getting into specifics. Lot's of ppl just try to say something and then there's no source or no explanation as to why. Just saying it for reactions, clicks you name it.
These guys love the field they work in and I can feel that when I listen to them. That might be just for me but I enjoy them a lot.
Good article and I'm inclined to agree with most of the points. One thing I will say is MS E3 conference was criticised for a lack of surprises...well that's because it pretty much all got leaked before hand by insiders. Also, that recent bitch slap that Thuway got from Naughty Dog pretty much confirms he/his "sources" are incredibly unreliable and he should not be listened to. It does need to stop but I've said it before, Gamers are so hungry for information on their favourite/latest games it kind of breeds this need for insiders. Whether they are right or wrong.
Agreed. All they actually do is ruin the surprises.
It is clickbait. Which is why 9 times out of 10 the "insider" is a bad source of information as anything these days tends to get posted with little effort being made to validate the source.
Should they go though? No (it is still news and we are not children; we don't need to be surprised just impressed with what they show which can be done through leaks) but the websites should bother to check the validity of their sources. At the end of the day your own credibility is at stake (look at IGN, they made a huge blunder).
The other question is how to get rid of insiders ?
They're wrong a lot but it never gets posted. Literally Thuway, Tidux, and especially that idiot Mistermediax were wrong about 70 percent of the time on their E3 predictions. The problem I have is when people quote these guys when all they make is educated guesses mixed in with a lot of wrong predictions and a lot of obvious predictions.