Of course we can’t really know what goes on behind the scenes. But obviously these kinds of games are designed by committee (namely board members). So every single detail is going to be dictated from above, and as new games are released by other publishers with new succesful features these dictates changes mid-production. I can’t but imagine that the development of live service games are a complete shitshow from start to finish.
So perhaps at some point they decide to get rid of the entire mess and start afresh, only for the process to beging again of course.
Also worth noting that getting a live service game with enough infrastructure going to immediately make them millions is a significant startup cost on its own. picking the best project of them and then putting it in its own studio seems like a very smart way to do it.
Of course we can’t really know what goes on behind the scenes. But obviously these kinds of games are designed by committee (namely board members). So every single detail is going to be dictated from above, and as new games are released by other publishers with new succesful features these dictates changes mid-production. I can’t but imagine that the development of live service games are a complete shitshow from start to finish.
So perhaps at some point they decide to get rid of the entire mess and start afresh, only for the process to beging again of course.
Also worth noting that getting a live service game with enough infrastructure going to immediately make them millions is a significant startup cost on its own. picking the best project of them and then putting it in its own studio seems like a very smart way to do it.
I’ve seen project managment in industrial fields go in circles in similar ways, and now that you put it this way I can totally see it.