I love a long read about how things went wrong in one video game, and Amazon Game Studios went wrong in several now. The most recent report of dysfunction in the creators (and cancellers) of Breakaway and Crucible ended up at Bloomberg and reflects much of what was reported previously, including that the responsible executives do not understand the games, and the games designed to meet corporate objectives without pay close attention to what people want to play.
If you haven’t been paying attention, Amazon Games Studios made several eye-catching signings in 2014, including developers like Kim Swift and Clint Hocking, but then spent several years lost in the development hell. When the studio finally started advertising and releasing games, those games were received with little enthusiasm and were canceled.
The general features of this report are similar to what Wired wrote last year. Amazon wants to make games as a way of directing people to Amazon Prime and its other services, but experienced game developers within the company have often been ignored in favor of slogan executives who have proven successful in other parts of Amazon’s business. , such as book publishing.
The Bloomberg report focuses largely on Mike Frazzini, the executive who helped start Amazon Game Studios. He supposedly didn’t understand games. For example:
Frazzini’s lack of experience in video games showed up during the project review sessions, an industry standard ritual when the boss plays the first prototypes and offers feedback. His comments were of the focus group type, recalls a former Amazon developer: “Why is this color?” and “It looks like fun. When will this be ready? “On a different occasion, says another developer, the team cringed as Frazzini struggled to differentiate between hyperpolished conceptual footage and live gameplay, a sign that he didn’t understand the technology.
The article also claims that it would require developers to “pursue a new trend” that he had just read about, and that this led to the company’s attempt to replicate other already successful games. Several examples are given, including a League of Legends-inspired game called Nova that was canceled in 2017, and a game called Fortnite-inspired Intensity and canceled in 2019.
It seems that this was also the starting point for Crucible, the Amazon hero shooting game inspired by Overwatch. The crucible was launched in May 2020, removed from the June launch for redesign and then canceled immediately in October.
There are some positive points between the stories told by the team. For example, they were often paid well above the market rate and rewarded with valuable Amazon stock, and employees were rarely asked to work overtime. Unfortunately, there are also more familiar game development tropes:
Studios have cultivated a “brother culture” in which women often did not have the same opportunities as men, say former employees. Four female game developers say their worst experiences of sexism in the industry were on Amazon. They shared stories of being ignored and harmed by male executives and say they ended up being expelled from the company. A former employee says that male colleagues have completely ignored his comments at meetings. Another says that a senior leadership member impeded his career growth after she disagreed with him and that he created new management positions above her and filled them with men.
You can read the full story on Bloomberg, assuming you haven’t yet reached the month’s free articles limit.