12-18-2024, 10:15 PM
Former Dauntless Associate Producer Criticizes 'Awakening' Update for "Gutting" Core
We recently reported on the overwhelmingly negative response from the Dauntless community after the game's latest Awakening update and Steam launch. Now, Jessie Leigh Gagnon, a former Phoenix Labs developer and the former associate producer for Dauntless, has also weighed in on the current state of the game and the changes introduced by the indie developer. According to Gagnon's post on LinkedIn, the creative team that birthed Dauntless and maintained it before Phoenix Labs's dark times "never would have made decisions that are so blatantly not player focused." She seemingly attributes the disastrous Steam launch and poor decision-making that led to the maligned update to the studio's new ownership.
According to Gagnon's description, when Dauntless was first launched, Phoenix Labs was an indie studio in the true sense. It was a group of passionate developers who simply wanted to create something fun. In this case a Monster Hunter-like game that wasn't locked to the Nintendo DS and didn't force its players to deal with "aching hands, cumbersome inventory management, and a lore that wasn't super approachable." Since then, though, Phoenix Labs has been through the wringer and lost much of its original creative talent and many of its former executives, supposedly all culminating in a game that seems to have put monetization before all else. Read full story
https://www.techpowerup.com/329756/forme...-mechanics
We recently reported on the overwhelmingly negative response from the Dauntless community after the game's latest Awakening update and Steam launch. Now, Jessie Leigh Gagnon, a former Phoenix Labs developer and the former associate producer for Dauntless, has also weighed in on the current state of the game and the changes introduced by the indie developer. According to Gagnon's post on LinkedIn, the creative team that birthed Dauntless and maintained it before Phoenix Labs's dark times "never would have made decisions that are so blatantly not player focused." She seemingly attributes the disastrous Steam launch and poor decision-making that led to the maligned update to the studio's new ownership.
According to Gagnon's description, when Dauntless was first launched, Phoenix Labs was an indie studio in the true sense. It was a group of passionate developers who simply wanted to create something fun. In this case a Monster Hunter-like game that wasn't locked to the Nintendo DS and didn't force its players to deal with "aching hands, cumbersome inventory management, and a lore that wasn't super approachable." Since then, though, Phoenix Labs has been through the wringer and lost much of its original creative talent and many of its former executives, supposedly all culminating in a game that seems to have put monetization before all else. Read full story
https://www.techpowerup.com/329756/forme...-mechanics