A new report has released which digs deep into why Amazon can't replicate its industrial successes in the video game market. The report from Bloomberg makes note of high ambitions, underused industry veterans, and much more which have resulted in failures like Crucible.
Amazon has been making a killing over the last two decades with its hands in just about every industry. Movies, books, groceries, and much more have helped Amazon quickly become one of the biggest companies in the world. Over the last few years, the company has been trying to make a name for itself with gaming by greenlighting several projects that have failed to materialize or make a splash. The industry giant has nearly infinite funds but it only begs the question of how long Amazon is willing to bleed money on games that don't generate any meaningful sums of money for them.
In a new report from Bloomberg, a lot of the blame for this diminishing division of Amazon is placed on Amazon Game Studios founder Mike Frazzini. The long-time Amazon employee had never made a video game before founding the studio but shepherded an impressive roster of industry veterans from Valve, EA, and many more big names. Unfortunately, Frazzini largely ignored many of these senior players, doesn't understand how game development works, and much more. Many developers reportedly claimed that they were a bit baffled by the company's data-first approach to game development, rather than traditional game development means of using emotion to figure out what makes something fun.
Employees noted that Amazon wanted to develop content that was as big as Call of Duty, fun to play solo, and innovative like no other developer could manage. This led to Amazon not releasing much and employees weren't really rewarded based on releasing games; their stock value was only ever rising, which allowed them to live quite comfortably without doing much at all. The company is reportedly dumping half a billion dollars into the studio each year, which was apparently an initiative created by CEO Jeff Bezos. The infamous CEO was ok with putting large amounts of cash in the studio and giving developers as much time as they needed so long as they could produce billion dollar franchises, which is a pretty tall order. Bezos also saw this as a way to continue to sell subscriptions in the Amazon ecosystem, such as Amazon Prime.
Amazon Game Studios developed their own in-house engine instead of using Unreal or Unity, leading to all sorts of chaos in addition to long development times. Employees would end up slacking off, watching movies as the tech tried to do its magic. On top of that, Amazon's continued focus on using data and trying to tie things like Twitch into the games led to bombs like the aforementioned Crucible. Players weren't watching it and they certainly weren't playing it. A Lord of the Rings game that ties in with the new Prime series is set to be one of the company's next efforts.
In short, Amazon Game Studios is plagued by bad, inexperienced leadership. Amazon is trying to dump money and data-first strategies that lead to consistent failures and lack of output. Amazon has spent billions on gaming but has yet to make a single game that players can recognize as the "billion dollar franchise" that they seek. It seems that it will continue this way if the company doesn't shake up leadership.
Source: Bloomberg
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