Hideo Kojima has revealed on Twitter that he selected the cast for Death Stranding 2 himself rather than employing the use of casting agencies.
While the Metal Gear creator does go to agencies to draft contacts, the actual talent is chosen by himself, describing the process as selecting “special partners with whom I can fight together.” In addition, he also revealed that the Japanese cast has yet be decided.
After laying off numerous employees, Tim Sweeney, the company’s founder and CEO, sent an email about the situation. The 52-year-old businessman clarified why the layoffs happened and even shed some light on the future of Fortnite.
Good on them doing this at least.
“we’re offering a severance package that includes six months base pay and in the US/Canada/Brazil six months of Epic-paid healthcare. We’re offering to accelerate people’s stock option vesting schedule through the end of 2024 and are giving two additional years from today to exercise the options. In the US we’re also offering to vest any unearned profit sharing from their 401k. And we’ll provide benefits including career transition services and visa support where we can.”
Would be "too much" for us, but probably it's "not enough" for the greedy bastard...
Epic makes way too much money to have to lay people off of the spent that money smartly. Tim wasted money on exclusives for their store when it could have gone to paychecks for people.
Epic put all their eggs in one basket with fortnite, they should have continued with the development of unreal tournament and got that game going as an arena shooter that's free to play with a huge cosmetic cash shop.
But your CEO knows what their doing.... laying off people so the board doesn't see exactly how much you stuck. The usual playbook.
Jim Ryan oversaw the successful launch of the PlayStation 5. His four-year tenure was also marred by several flubs.
I understand why Sony is trying to develop gaas titles as even if only 1 or 2 are a hit that means a nice stream of revenue for them and a foundation for further gaas games to build on. Their single player games sell great but with gaming budgets getting bigger and bigger the more the games need to sell. So if they develop gaas games and get a hit that will help migrate some of the cost.
Bye Jim. You won’t be missed.
“But over the last two years, Ryan has overseen a PlayStation shift toward “games as a service,” a popular industry buzzword referring to video games, usually multiplayer, that can be monetized over long periods of time. It’s been an uncomfortable pivot for some of Sony’s studios, which have spent the last decade building out teams of experienced developers to make big, cinematic adventure games that are played solo."
If anyone has an idea what's going on atmosphere wise within gaming studios it's Jason Schreier
It's clear some of these studios just don't want to do it but are probably being forced
Look at NaughtyDog, a full on multiplayer game of Factions, I mean really? I highly doubt ND wanted to do that when it was probably going to be bundled in with TLOU2 or released a few months after like what Sucker Punch did with their co-op mode.
If you have two teams within a studio where they'd cycle between franchises then now one of them is most likely stuck doing a shitty GaaS game. We won't cycle, we'll be relying on the same team to do a single player game and it means we'll probably get more fatigued with a franchise as both teams will be working on something within that Universe like GG Horizon, their second team is apparently working on a multiplayer styled GaaS game when they could have most likely been working on a new IP. Cycling between franchises kept things fresh where the other team could probably afford to spend a bit longer on their game while the other releases theres but now we won't get that as they might feel more pressured to get a single player game out to feed an audience who's growing hungry for something they haven't had in a while.
It's messing with the flow of their studios and it's more annoying people who defend GaaS games don't see that.
It's different with people like Bungie being brought in as they were always doing GaaS games with Destiny but forcing your already first party studios to do it? That's just bullshit.
What developers are being made to make multiplayer modes for games now that weren't before Jim Ryan?
They made naughty dog make multiplayer modes since Uncharted 2. Socom team made MAG, guerilla was making Killzones, ghost of tsushima was made to have a multiplayer mode and was before his time...i just don't see the Jim Ryan era as the making single player developers make multiplayer games era.
Let's remember he became CEO in 2019. So let me know what developers he forced to make multiplayer games that hadn't been doing them before.
@Foxtrot
What evidence do you have to even suggest Sony is forcing Naughty Dog to work on Factions?
Seriously, I get that you have to make up lies to fit whatever narrative you have cooked up in your, but reality isn't for you. Is Naughty Dog also being forced to work on their New IP, rumored to be a single-player gamer, as well as the recent news of them moving forward with TLOU part 3? Were they forced to add online to the 1st game? To uncharted 2, 3 or 4? Plus, Factions is actually loved by many fans, so again, what evidence do you have to even suggest they are forced to work on it? Most of their major old studios are rumored to be working on single-player games, from Sucker Punch, Insomniac, Santa Monica, Naughty Dog to guerilla games. The new studios they purchased from Bungie to Haven Studios are the ones working on online games.
These are misinformation by articles that jumped the gun upon hearing “live service”. If Ryan was guilty of anything was that he wasn’t careful with choice of words at times, and didn’t explain where an explanation was necessary.
Here is what Sony has said when the question of live service focus was brought up:
“We will continue to publish the games that have served us so well over the years. These single player, graphically beautiful, narrative rich games will continue to be the bedrock of our first party publishing business”
Why is making live-service on top of wjat they were already doing an issue, when MS is only doing live service at the moment?
Starfield is live service,
Lol. hand picks people that don’t know any better.
uh… his avenues for casting have always been “hand picked” and not typical (at all) casting.
I'll day 1 this game when it releases.
Never played part 1 is it really just a chore delivering game like others say ? I been slick wanting to play
Death Stranding cast is phenomenal all around. It's like a dream team of creative rebels.
Having a hard time seeing Elle Fanning doing any fighting. She is even more petite than Margaret Qualley.