Report: Transmission Games ceases communications with more than 20 staff

And out of the ashes of everyone seems to come two new studios. I haven't been keeping a tally but I'd bet more have been created than dissolved.

Me too. In the game development community, much too high an emphasis is placed on high Metacritic scores. It is one of the things that will kill the industry unless something is done about it.

Don't be so dramatic. The industry will be just fine.

No, I'm serious. It's a big problem and it has really been stifling creativity in the industry the last several years. Development companies are afraid to take risks and add new features to their games because their publishers/investors force them to hit a certain Metacritic score. When they add a new feature to their game, they have to ask questions like "How will the implementation of this new feature affect our game? Is it worth it to try something new and get a lower score?" Unfortunately, unless the studio already has a ton of money from previous high-selling games, it often is not.

It's not just Metacritic either. It is review scores in general. While these things can help consumers, they can be really bad for developers.

And I'm not saying that Metacritic is going to single-handedly kill the video game industry. The video game industry will probably never go away. But there are many types of death. I would rather the video game industry outright die than suffer creative death.

Well considering that in the last several years we've seen some really great games, I'm fine with that. I don't think anyone has stopped being creative or not willing to try new things either. Guitar Hero and Rock Band have both created new ways to play and people have gone out and bought $200+ instrument sets for them. Lots of Wii games have come out with different ways to play and done fine. There are quite a few Wii games that have done horrible on Metacritic yet gone on to sell millions.

Yeah, that was... kind of a shitty joke, really.

No one remembers that movie anymore,great times.

I remember. In fact I stole something too, call it a going-away present.

i love your avatar lol

Yeah, I recently found STURMOVIK on steam for $10. Great game...once I figured out how to actually get off the ground (I don't have any peddles!). Wish I'd heard of it sooner. Not too sure about the new one though...

There's a reason IL-2 was a commercial success while none of the lightweight games seem to amount to much.

Flight sims are HARD to do well. However, there's a big community of older flight-sim buffs, so the few high-fidelity sims that actually get released tend to sell lots of copies.

The trouble is, there's a really large lead time and up front development cost on good sims, and most of the big publishers aren't interested in anything but quick turn arounds anymore unless it's a top tier game (Halo, GTA, etc). The only reason Blackshark got made is that Eagle Dynamics was able to adapt the game from the mil-spec version that Kamov had already paid them to develop. 1c:Maddox has basically been co-opted by Ubisoft into doing other shorter term projects, so who knows when Battle of Britain is going to be finished. Microsoft laid off the entire Aces team last year too, so I'd suspect there's not going to be an FS11 in the near future...

Here's hoping some of the smaller devs will be able to sneak a couple of decent Sims through in the next few years and keep my rudder pedals moving.

I loooove helicopter sims, but BlackShark really isn't a very good game. As a simulator it's good, but as a game it's very weak.

Makes me wish they'd handed the simulator over to an actual game studio.