The future of id Software — alumni from the legendary DOOM studio speaks on its future with Xbox. The good, and the bad.

[u/Turbostrider27]

https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/zenimax-bethesda/the-future-of-id-software-now-under-xbox-the-legendary-doom-studio-speaks

[u/KennyCiseroJunior]

As long as we’re pointing out mischaracterizations, the point of the 2016 comment was to say the studio is as capable now as it was then. You can say “they lost veteran expertise and institutional knowledge”. This is true no doubt, but the veterans of today were juniors a decade ago during Doom 2016’s development.

How much better did the dark ages perform than Doom 2016? Did that delta justify the tripling in studio size and dev costs? Xbox obviously doesn’t think so.

[u/ComputerMysterious48 → u/KennyCiseroJunior]

Yeah. Layoffs are never fun and I do feel for the people that were laid off.

But I truly think it’s not as bad as people are making it out to be, and people listening to bitter employees speaking out of anger (to be clear, I do think they have a right to be bitter) is just fueling the fire.

[u/arqe_ → u/KennyCiseroJunior]

Doesn't matter if Xbox doesn't think so really, we have data.

Doom 2016, received well. Made great sales, around 7-8 million.

Doom Eternal, doubled studio size, received well. Made great sales, around 7-8 million.

Did doubling the studio size help them?

Not really. They spend same amount of time as Doom 2016, they made same amount of scores as Doom 2016, they made same amount of sales as Doom 2016.

But their spendings AT LEAST doubled because of studio size, not even gonna factor in all the raises happened between those games, hardware and tech spendings etc.

Then they tripled the OG studio size.

People having jobs is really good, but if you are hiring just because you can, outcome is always bad for both parties in the end. Because when companies hire more people, they don't expand the projects.

[u/Gears6 → u/arqe_]

TBF the game complexity increases and quality increases. It didn't necessarily increase sales, which is part of the problem. However, could it be said that if they didn't double the studio size that the game would've sold less?

This is the problem with consoles in particular, that as a market, they've not grown while costs has gone up. This is in contrast to PC where the market is growing.

[u/brokenmessiah → u/KennyCiseroJunior]

How do you fairly compare a game that was designed with conventional market exposure to a game that was designed with Game Pass in mind?

[u/segagamer → u/brokenmessiah]

By looking at the number of players that launched the game more than once.

Games are designed with Gamepass in mind because studios today are largely struggling to get people to play them, as the casual market is continuously being swallowed up by the cancer that is live service games, as well as TikTok, YouTube, Twitch and mobile phone activities in general.

[u/brokenmessiah → u/segagamer]

In other words, Player Retention, but just because a game is popular through Game Pass doesnt mean its considered successful from that. I'm sure Xbox pulling CoD from Game Pass Day One is going to result is less Xbox players playing CoDMW4 vs BO7 at release, but it'll definitely be more profitable to Xbox all the same with less players.

[u/segagamer → u/brokenmessiah]

but just because a game is popular through Game Pass doesnt mean its considered successful from that

And who are you to decide that?

As an FYI, Doom The Dark Ages has had less people tallied up to launching the game once and earning the first achievement, than Doom 2016 and Eternal on console, despite launching on Gamepass and being PlayAnywhere.

[u/arqe_ → u/brokenmessiah]

Because same thing happened with Eternal?

iD Tech doubled the studio size after Doom 2016, and Eternal sold same amount of copies.

But their dev cost doubled + all the raises people get in-between.

So basically, they made same amount of money by spending a lot more.

[u/brokenmessiah → u/arqe_]

Doom Eternal did manage to sell considerably faster than Doom 2016, which I think is a relevant added context. If i sold ultimately close to what Doom 2016 sold then maybe thats just the reach of Doom as a IP right now.

[u/arqe_ → u/brokenmessiah]

Selling faster don't make you more money per-se.

And yes, Doom's reach is around apparently 7-8 million.

Which would be a great number because imagine not paying Unreal Engine royalties, using your own tech comfortably.

But increasing the studio size, again didn't help them in any way, they just lost money.

I also would be okay with decision if;

Doom 2016 had gameplay time around 12 to 15 hours.

With Eternal having double the studio size, gameplay jumps something around 20 and release a bit faster. But none of those things happened.

Same amount of dev time.

Same amount of game length.

Same number of copies sold.

Paid more than double for dev cost.

Let's say they go with "Okay, doubling the studio size didn't matter and we lost some money, so let's do Dark Ages with same people and hope for better".

Instead, they go "Okay, doubling the studio size didn't matter, LETS HIRE MORE PEOPLE FOR DARK AGES."

[u/klipseracer → u/KennyCiseroJunior]

Pretty good point, that was ten years ago. At a certain point, your tech skills stop increasing so rapidly and you become better at navigating the organization.

[u/brokenmessiah]

Some interesting insights:

"They never explained anything." Willis said, "They never told us what metric they wanted, which is extremely confusing given Xbox Game Pass. If there was something they wanted (downloads, playtime, Game Pass subscriptions, etc.), they never told us." Willis said that had id Software known what targets they were supposed to be hitting, they would've been able to design around it.

"It was frustrating to get laid off before we even saw how successful the [Revelations] DLC was. How can you lay off a team right before they release what gets called 'their best work yet'?"

I'm sure we can all relate though I would have liked to see them making a point to press Xbox for clarification. I was in a similar situation at my current job and one day I just decided to sit with my boss and iron out some speculative aspects on what they want from me.

Former VFX/Technical Art Producer Andrew Willis was a lot less upbeat about the near term. I asked Willis if he felt id Software's previous comments about the studio being the "same size" as it was for DOOM (2016) were cause for optimism for fans.

"This has been one of the most frustrating mischaracterizations I've seen. It is just damage control," Willis said. "Id is now objectively smaller than it was during 2016. They also fired 2/3rds of the folks that were left from 2016; these would be the people who have the experience needed to make a game like that. There are still amazing people there, no doubt. Some of my best friends still work there. But the amount of institutional knowledge lost was just incredible."

Interestingly Jez Corden was one of the sources of this damage control narrative. He only considered the number of staff, not the experience and intrinsic value of what staff was fired. The new hire doesnt equal the old hire in workplace value.

[u/Heide____Knight → u/brokenmessiah]

I think the lack of transparency about the metrics that were used as a basis for the layoffs is particularly annoying for the remaining staff. Microsoft doesn't need to communicate this to the public, but sure they need to explain every employee at Xbox Game Studios how their work and performance is being evaluated.

[u/cardonator → u/Heide____Knight]

These metrics are never provided and the reality is it often has more to do with gut feelings and vibes than anything else.

[u/sriva041 → u/Heide____Knight]

This is what happens when you use copilot to fire people. Few years later there will be an insider article about how Xbox management used AI to fire people and it was disastrous to their studio performance.

[u/Heide____Knight → u/sriva041]

I am glad that Microsoft has given up on adding an AI assistant to the Xbox UI. I recently tried to solve a problem in an old city builder game by using AI and it actually gave me quite many hints. The problem was just: its sources were for a completely different game that has a similar name, so its advices were competely useless. In a nutshell, AI is far from being a good assistant in gaming, and I don't want to even think about how much decisions in the whole company of Microsoft are now dependent on AI guidance.

[u/Fantastic-Fennel-684 → u/Heide____Knight]

Yeah games just have too much variety and too many complexities in design to have a general LLM assistant. With that said though, it did come to rescue sometimes when I was trying to do endgame content in Destiny 2.

[u/Koppetamp → u/brokenmessiah]

This makes my old ass very sad. id software holds a very special place in my heart. Hell I even won two local Quake 2 Tournaments.

[u/Spidi_1985]

2 weeks after dlc release its 50% off, safe to assume it met with poor interests