* Annapurna Pictures (the parent company of Interactive) had some financial issues previously at least (see [0] from 2019) while Annapurna Interactive was doing well for itself.
* Annapurna Pictures wanted to integrate the gaming division in-house (possibly to prop up the rest of the company)
* Staff and exec at Annapurna Interactive wanted to be spin off (see [1])
* Negotiations fell through, so most exec and staff at Interactive left
Annapurna Pictures in Dec 2022 produced Nimona for Netflix which debuted at #9 globally and was as high as #3 i.e. it was a massive hit.
So they now have the Stray IP which could be extremely lucrative and are looking at how CD Project Red handled their successful Cyberpunk integration on Netflix as a model. Which is where you cross-promote a game add-on or sequel with the movie.
Which means for the gaming side they really wouldn't have any control over their direction as it would be entirely driven by the movie side. Not exactly compelling for them hence why they want to leave.
With the success of Fallout, The Last of Us, Cyberpunk Edgerunners etc there's definitely big money to be made from video game IP.
IP, content, blobs - container words - a sure-fire indicator in any conversation that , that the parties involved areunable to accurately value, evaluate, organize and produce, the valuables that should reside inside the container. So here the daily reminder, that logistics is a commodity now, but producing something of value, is not.
I've always had an intense visceral distaste for referring to podcasts, videos, and long-form writing as "content," especially when creators use the term. No matter how well-meaning or neutral its usage might be, I always involuntarily picture an old-timey cartoon farmer dumping slop into a giant trough when I hear phrases like "bringing you better content" or "being an influencer producing the type of content you want to see." I think you've just helped me solve the puzzle — hopefully, this will help me shed my negative association with the term. Many actually respectable internet personalities I follow use it, and I don't like being "that guy."
I share your distaste for "content". To me the word speaks of a lack of interest, understanding, or even respect, for what creators are making.
To some extent it does serve a useful purpose in that it makes it clear that it is in fact the ads that are the main event on these platforms, and that the "content" is merely a palatable delivery mechanism for adverts... which is a pretty depressing realisation.
in 2024 there are so many one-click-install adblockers for your browser, phone's DNS, router... anyone still seeing a sizable amount of ads these days has to be the most complacent, easily manipulated, lucrative demographic imaginable
Viewing an ad is not “giving back” in any meaningful sense. Modern adtech primarily benefits the infrastructure providers, rather than providing a service to its “clients” or a revenue stream to site owners.
Adblocking is the only meaningful objection that the consuming public can raise to the inefficient and wasteful adtech situation. Depending on how you feel about your obligations with regards to civil society, you might view it as a moral imperative.
Your other option is not consuming ad-supported content. There's no natural entitlement you should be able to view all content in a form that suits you.
In the context of certain YouTube communities - a couple of examples I'm aware of are synthtube or watchtube - "content" is also an advertising term for advertising, since this is really what many of the demo or "review" videos are.
People hawking products on Instagram, TikTok, or wherever fall into the same category. The reality is that the whole influencer industry is pretty much just hawking products and services to people.
IP has pretty clear connotation in games. I don't really think it shows what you say. Characters and worlds are IP and that IP can be used across media types. Gameplay is not IP. A game project can swap or take in IP.
In context of the discussion here - people who are talking about "content" or "IP" mark themselves out as not having a nuanced understanding of what intangible assets they hold.
I think what you mean to say is:
- writing and depictions of characters are copyrighted
- writing and depictions of worlds are copyrighted
- some of the names involved can also be registered trademarks
They are intangible rights that someone can own. The insidious term "intellectual property" is used to reframe the understanding of rights granted by copyright, patent and trademark law by comparing them to real property, which they are not.
When was the last time someone was allowed to live in your house, legally, because they're making a parody of it? When was the last time someone was allowed to take your house apart to find out how to make something compatible with your house's design? Owning a copyright is not like owning property and does not give you carte-blanche control over your intangible asset like real property law more-or-less does.
Some examples:
- I can write a book or game about a boy wizard who goes to a magical school, as long as I didn't base it on Harry Potter. JK Rowling can't stop me.
- I can write about a pirate who acts like an aging rockstar, provided I didn't copy Johnny Depp's depiction of Captain Jack Sparrow. Disney can't stop me.
- I can write about a martial force voyaging through space by analogy to a similar force on the Earth's seas, so I can call them space marines. Games Workshop® can't stop me, provided I don't implicitly or explicitly claim they are Games Workshop® Space Marines®
Assuming that “property” is always short for “real property” will lead to some interesting errors, as illustrated above.
Proprietary rights are varied. If one kind of property relates to a kind of right that doesn’t apply to another kind of property, that’s not a good reason to decide that one kind is not actually property.
While property has a number of meanings, including "intrinsic quality of a substance" and "something that can be owned", I think it tends to bring about an image of tangible objects in the listener's head.
I prefer the term "asset" to describe owned intangible things of value, such as rights, licenses, financial instruments, etc.
> Criticism of the term intellectual property ranges from discussing its vagueness and abstract overreach to direct contention to the semantic validity of using words like property and rights in fashions that contradict practice and law. Many detractors think this term specially serves the doctrinal agenda of parties opposing reform in the public interest or otherwise abusing related legislations, and that it disallows intelligent discussion about specific and often unrelated aspects of copyright, patents, trademarks, etc
If you use a catch-all term like "content" when you could've said "prose", "video", "music" and so on I'll assume you either don't know about the difference or you don't care - or indeed both.
The same goes for "IP" when you could've said trademarks, copyrights, patents, trade secrets and so on, whatever is actually relevant.
IP is the standard way of describing pre-existing content e.g. games, books that is available to turn into movies, TV shows etc.
You can go on and on about whether this is accurate or not but no one cares. Because this is the term that the entire industry has adopted because getting into the specifics of trademarks, copyrights etc is irrelevant for most parts.
I can assure you that the accountants and executives at these studios can absolutely value, evaluate, organise and produce the valuables that should reside inside the "container".
It's what the entire movie and TV industries have been about ever since the idea of sequels e.g. Aliens, Terminator and worlds e.g. Marvel took off.
? Everyone of these products, took of as a high risk venture- a risky bet, mostly guided by the assumption of the success inherited with a producer - aka the talent. The sure-fire successstory brand names they became after the risky bet paid off. Which makes them - yes, transportable, containerize-able, high-value "content", in hindsight.
And hindsight is not the same game, with all information revealed. And mass-producing them, has steadily deteriorated the value shipped in the containers. Which made more of them necessary, better organized, cheaper. Which looks like a great success until you realize that the value of anonymous goods traded in the standardized box has deteriorated and the impressive need for volume is a sign of decay.
I don't think that's true anymore, I believe Mike sold the IP to CD Project and has a stake in the company now, but I need to find a source to confirm this.
In this context is referring as Cyberpunk the role playing game, rather than just the genre. Cyberpunk 2077 has a setting based on the role playing board game (that’s where some characters come from, like Silverhand), and that setting is the original IP.
If you got a few of those motorized windows and hooked up a laptop running MS’ operating system to control them all, but only during certain times of day, there would be a window where your windows would be Windows windows.
You could set up a sweepstakes to install them with some complicated terms. Then you could explain to the local Vietnamese baker how the rules work — in other words, when does Nguyen Doughs win doze Windows windows?
// How can anyone hold IP over an abstract vibe? //
Same way somebody can hold a patent to a cartoon drawing of a mouse. It's not any individual picture of Mickey Mouse which is (solely) copywrited; even if you draw Mickey Mouse from a different angle, or upside down, or turn it into a plush toy, or a popsicle.....or if you drew Mickey's twin brother, or even his younger brother who bore a family resemblance....
...what do all those things have in common? If its not a "vibe"--a certain essence of Mickey-Mouseness.
You can't hold a patent to a cartoon drawing of a mouse (that you're implying is the character Mickey Mouse)
You can hold a design patent for the look of a tangible object - e.g. the rounded corners of an iPhone. You can also hold a design patent for particularly novel typefaces (fonts), the layout of a screen (e.g. like Norton Commander's twin directory listings on the left and right) and for computer icons, but that only covers them when they're displayed on screen.
So you could get a patent for the stylised depiction of a mouse as an icon, but only in that context.
If you wanted to flex ownership of a fictional character design, you get that by copyright, not patent. And the copyright law on derivative works is what protects that fiction character design from being copied or evolved by others. But it can't stop them parodying your design in order to ridicule it (specifically), so you don't have absolute control over it.
This is why I don't like the use of the term "IP" or "intellecual property", as it completely muddies the waters as to what your actual rights are, and what limitations of "ownership" there are.
// You can't hold a patent to a cartoon drawing of a mouse //
No, cartoons are protected by copyright, not by patents. And if I'm not mistaken, the original comment which wondered if a general vibe could be intellectual property was talking about something which would be protected by copyright as well.
But the same principle holds for patents. E.g. patenting an algorithm. It doesn't matter what language the algorithm is implemented in, whether you are running it on a binary computer or on some kind of a Chinese room set up, etc etc.
Think about how different two turing machines can be which implement the same algorithm. They don't even have to use the same symbols or states. They could print their outputs in English, French or any other natural language. The only thing that all Turing machines which implement the same algorithm have in common is a "vibe". Same kind of general vibe which the original commenter was talking about.
You definitely can't patent or copyright "a general vibe". You can copyright a specific expression; "Harry Potter" is copyrightable but not "boy wizards".
You can patent the novel parts of an invention (and in the US, business processes), but most things are not novel, and fictional things are not patentable.
The "Harry Potter Universe" is a collection of specific characters and specific locations. That is what's protected by copyright. You can totally make your own original story about a boy wizard, a school for magical people somewhere in the Scottish Highlands, and so on. You can totally repeat the "vibe" if you like, provided you don't base it on the specifics of Harry Potter.
To give some concrete examples:
Sherlock Holmes (and the "Sherlock Holmes Universe" if you like) used to be protected by copyright. While it was, there were thousands of competing books about detectives, including Maigret (with his distinctive pipe and overcoat, really rather a lot like Holmes), Miss Marple, Poirot, Lord Peter Wimsey, and so on. "The vibe" of detective fiction was very much not copyrightable.
Furthemore, Dracula was a specific book, and certain works like Nosferatu did copy it. However the "vibe" of Dracula is vampires, and vampires are ancient folklore. There have been countless works of vampire fiction not infringing on Dracula's copyright. They just didn't copy Dracula. It's not that hard to do.
Musicians can copyright the melody and lyrics of their music, but they can't copyright the harmony, rhythm, and arrangement. If they could, we just wouldn't have music. An entire genre - blues - uses the same chord progression to produce hundreds of thousands of unique songs, but all within the basic structure. They are not copying each other, they're following the rules of a genre -- a "vibe". You can't copyright a vibe.
Patents only last 20 years in most countries. Design patents for 15 years in US (I think 25 years in EU.) Mickey Mouse has be around for a lot longer than that.
I was going to say. Patents expire. Copyright effectively extends beyond human lifespan and doesn't, making them forever. Patents are more useful because the public gets access once they expire.
This seems like the same way to look at it. The only disagreement between these two comments is if the potential integration is motivated by a lack of success, or the outlook of even greater success. Those are is, at least economically, identical motivations.
I agree. They are like the A24 for games. They don't make the product themselves but invest and promote some really good games. Outer Wilds being one of my favourites of all time.
There really is nothing out there like Outer Wilds. It’s an extraordinary masterpiece of a game.
I’m trying very hard to make myself wait a full 5 years before I replay it, I want to experience it all over again, and I’m really really hopeful that I can find someone new to the game to play through it with me, because I am HUNGRY to feel those feelings again!
I didn't enjoy the DLC as much as the base game, but I did appreciate what they did with it. I missed flying to different planets rather than being confined to one of them. The story was really good
In their nascent years I played two of their early games, both mobile games - Florence and Gorogoa. Both beautiful. I still play Florence once in a while and it really evokes emotions. Gorogoa is a great puzzle game that the HN crowd would love. Highly recommend both if you haven't tried them!
Both games are incredible but Gorogoa is a masterpiece. It attempted to communicate something about humanity that couldn't have been expressed in any other form.
I agree. Seeing the Annapurna logo in a game has become a signal to me that I will really enjoy that game and that it has a unique, fresh perspective to offer.
I don't know either, but it seems like approximately 100% of the reason game studios opt not to self-publish in this day and age is that lift. Annapurna's name alone carried a lot of clout.
(Side note: continue to be disappointed that they didn't brand themselves as "Annapurrna" on the Stray opening screen.)
I would add a couple games that moved me (Hindsight, A Memoir Blue). but I also have to mention not all of their titles are smash hits IMO -- I disliked Florence, Last Stop, If Found, and Open Roads.
That said, I agree that their good games have made me a fan, and I hope the original staff keeps going in some form.
Absolutely. "Annapurna Interactive" essentially made anything an instant buy for me. Very disappointed to see what sort of undead monster the label will become.
There's a lot to be said about certain large publishers but this publisher's list of games includes some very good titles. Just knowing they worked with the developers to release certain titles makes me very interested to see who they'll work with next. They seem like a group who will become a household name with a little luck in their marketing.
I understand why Annapurna would not want to spin off such a successful division but it sounds like the only leverage they had was existing IP, which the employees probably understand as a sunk cost. I'm glad they were all able to realize they could just do what they do under a different name; I get the feeling the developers they've worked with will remember them and they know it.
> “The report, which IGN can confirm based on conversations with our own sources, states that Annapurna Interactive president Nathan Gary had recently been in negotiations with Annapurna founder and billionaire Megan Ellison to spin the gaming segment off as its own company. However, Ellison eventually pulled out of negotiations, at which point Gary resigned. Almost 30 other individuals, including division co-heads Deborah Mars and Nathan Vella, as well as the entire remaining staff of Annapurna Interactive, joined him.”
I don’t blame them. I’d rather negotiate my arm out of a shark’s mouth than the cost of a hot dog with Larry Ellison, or his daughter. You don’t get that awful rich by ever believing you’re awful rich enough.
This is what people with talents should do if they don't agree with the super riches who don't do anything substantial but inherit a shit ton of money.
I only found out recently that animated film company Laika was created after Nike founder Phil Knight bought his son a new career after he failed at being a rapper.
He bought into Will Vinton studios and then forced Oscar winning animation pioneer Will Vinton out of his own company.
If I recall, it turns out that his "failed rapper" son had some sort of natural talent for this and has got nothing but accolades even from other animators ever since. Although I do get your point.
Wow, I didn't make the last name connection until reading this thread. The Wikipedia page[1] for Annapurna Pictures doesn't even mention that the founder is the child of a billionaire. It just kind of implies the founder dabbled in film school for two semesters, went off to travel the world, and then -poof- a media production company is conjured into existence. Pretty rosy depiction of nepotism.
Until she got bored, anyway. You know, I also feel I have "grown secluded" from my day job.
> After a series of underperforming productions, in 2019 Ellison had grown secluded from Hollywood, leaving Annapurna to be mostly ran by Nathan Gary, who led Annapurna Interactive before being promoted to president. She left to Lanai, a Hawaiian island owned by her father, and remained there as the COVID-19 pandemic forced people to remain isolated.
It's just as weird that it happens twice in Hollywood today. Another of Larry Ellison's nepo baby heirs runs Skydance, which has had a bit more success in "blockbuster" terms (and has recently been flirting with buying CBS Viacom aka Paramount).
I suspect a lot of it has to do with who you surround yourself with, and how much agency you give them.
One word that rich people almost never hear, is “no.” Even really nice ones don't hear it often.
That means that almost any rectally-sourced, harebrained idea they squeeze out, is treated as genius, by their entourage.
I know a number of fairly wealthy people, and some of them won’t have anything to do with me, because I say the “N” word. Others, actually ask me what I think.
People rapidly learn that asking me for my input means getting an answer that is honest, but not one they might want to hear (and that answer might be "I don't know.").
They don’t always give it much weight, but at least they ask.
Those folks are not always the ones you might consider “nice,” though.
Just anectdata, though, and the community we share has some traits that reward Honesty and seeking counsel from others.
Do yourself a favour and read the Tom Bower biographies of him, e.g. Branson: Behind The Mask
In fact, you can a get a good understanding of him indirectly through the testimony in Tubular Bells: the Mike Oldfield storyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?t=877&v=UQLDGpcgNTM e.g. John Giddings says of Branson "He was a chancer. He was prepared to gamble and go for it. He was percieved as a visionary, putting it all together, but really he was importing records illegally and flogging them, right? He was a second-hand car salesman."
Fun Fact: Richard Branson had such an antagonistic relationship with Mike Oldfield, that Oldfield included a segment in one of his albums where he plays a guitar with staccato notes that spelled out "Fuck Off R.B." in morse code[1], recording under Branson's own label.
That doesn't necessarily mean he was a not-nice person.
He's actually fairly well-known for treating his employees well. One of the reasons his TV show wasn't so popular, was because he wasn't into pitting the contestants against each other, and firing the losers.
The comment did not make clear she bought the position. It almost seemed more like it was implying anyone who is family of some rich guy can't accomplish anything themselves.
That rant is famous, but I always wonder at the naivety of Cantrill and friends. Ellison was already known for being a shameless shark since the '80s, 20 years before the SUN acquisition. Believing he would leave your little blade of grass untouched was always going to be fanciful - particularly when they were a loss-making part of the company with no-future already.
I think there's plenty of people who the internet or gossip circles hate where that hate is unjustified. At the same time, a lot of the worst people are initially quite personally charming and keep that face even as they screw you over. And I think when people come into contact that they've only heard about in gossip in person, there's quite often an attempt to be like "well that's the caricature of Larry Ellison, maybe he's not actually that bad". Face to face contact can weight quite heavily compared to "people on the internet".
Combine the two of them and you get a recipe for people to give Larry Ellison the benefit of the doubt, taking a "well we're adults, let's handle this more maturely than immediately doubting our counter party" stance, even as people who by their own accounts had heard otherwise. Ultimately in this case, Cantrill's experience proved "the internet" right, but I think even that might not prevent someone else repeating the same situation in the future.
This is extremely well articulated, and is exactly true in my experience.
People take gossip as "gossip"- an unrealiable approximation and gross-oversimplification of an individual. Thus give people with poor reputations the benefit of the doubt, believing themselves to be open minded. (which is true).
When they are shown just how 1-dimensional some people can actually be, and that the gossip depicts people precisely, it can be jarring. Especially as, like you mention, many people are very personable, charismatic, charming etc;
Just think about the exceptionally gifted "10x" engineers we all meet from time to time. There are people equally gifted in charisma and manipulation, they can predict what people are feeling and steer them where they want them with high success rates. This is what I think of whenever I see a politician on video or meet one in person.
I joke that Larry is from that evil Star Trek universe and somewhere in the multiverse a clean-shaven, teddy bear of a man is trapped in a universe full of assholes because he was tricked into swapping with this Larry.
It's a funny joke, but I think it downplays how much of our world is led, run, and inhabited by assholes. It's more likely that we are living in the Asshole Universe and there is a parallel universe out there where being the asshole is an outlier.
From murders to politicians to CEOs, nearly every impactful predator has a lot of positive qualities as well.
You don't rise to the top of the food chain without having some really sociopathic/narcisisstic traits.
But, you also don't rise to the top of the food chain solely by being terrible all of the time. And IMO/IME lot of those "good traits in bad people" honestly are genuine, not just facades.
This is not to excuse the bad people of the world. It's just... honestly, as a middle-aged person myself... it has been the hardest thing for me to wrap my head around as an adult. The rest of the stuff, I was prepared for, on some level.
Yah.. it was well known but when it happens to you it's hard to really not try to be open minded. That is why his rant is so famous.
I was rolled up into Oracle through a series of acquisitions a few years before Sun.. it all went down the same way. You know what's going to happen but it's still a shock when a manager you knew before you joined Oracle and wouldn't have behaved the Oracle way instructs you to lie to a customer cause "that's how it's done here and we're going to have to go along with it."
You also don't realize how shocking it's going to be to see the office re-decorated until they come in and rip everything down and put up pictures of Larry's boats and airplanes and other toys.
When we were acquired Larry Ellison got on a big conference call we were all allowed to join and we could raise a virtual hand and ask questions. To his credit he answered everything 100% truthfully and transparently, and the questions were answered exactly the way the Internet expects he would answer.
It would have made so much more sense to sell to IBM though, and I don’t even like IBM. I respected their R&D at the time, but their global services division is a blight on society.
IBM was only interested in Java and lowballed the price.
Oracle was interested in hardware too, and offered more money.
IIRC, reports were that IBM negotiated the price down with a stinky "who else is ever going to buy you" attitude, and were blindsided once Ellison came into the picture offering more cash.
I thought Sun was just a little misguided and naive and then they sold to Ellison and I realized they were a bunch of fucking morons. WHY? WHY DID YOU DO THIS??
Cantrill and friends just worked there, but the board presumably knew what they were doing.
There was a Wired article that told me everything I needed to know about Larry, the way your blind date being mean to the waiter tells you not to make a second date. It was about the best smart homes. It came out during the DotCom boom, before Sun folded. Larry had one of the smartest homes in America. It had a remote control. One Saturday evening, the article reports, he got furious with the system because it wasn’t working, so he threw the remote and smashed it.
Then he called the company and demanded a new one. Someone had to drive, 45 minutes if memory serves, to his house to deliver a new remote, on their Saturday night, because some petulant man-child had a temper tantrum and couldn’t wait until Monday.
Fuck that guy.
How much of a pain in the ass you have to be in the interview process for a writer to drop that anecdote into the article? You know we are only getting part of that story.
> I thought Sun was just a little misguided and naive and then they sold to Ellison and I realized they were a bunch of fucking morons. WHY? WHY DID YOU DO THIS??
Whatever you think of Oracle and the One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison, IBM as a company are likely worse. Sun had a "west coast wheeler-dealer" vibe, as did Oracle. IBM had an "east coast button-down shirt" vibe. IBM had first dibs and Sun said "no, I may be desperate but I'm not that desperate"
If Sun had to be sold (which it did because it was consistently losing money hand over fist) and there was a choice of IBM, HP and Oracle to sell it to, and only those three, which would you pick?
I wonder if Dell’s story arc would have been different if they bought Sun. And I wonder how different the Cloud would be if they had. Did they even have the cash then?
Oracle needed two things from SUN: Java and hardware.
Nobody else had the money or the inclination to buy the company. Going with Ellison was the least-worst option.
I just find it funny how people who very obviously had it coming (i.e. Solaris, various opensource projects, etc - stuff that very obviously wasn't making money and would likely never make money), didn't see it coming.
PSA: it’s a link to Bryan Cantrill ranting about the Sun / Oracle acquisition. I couldn’t make it through 5 minutes of his ranting to get to an accurate summary of the joke though.
> You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle.
> "Oh they wanted to kill OpenSolaris!" No, the lawnmower doesn't care about OpenSolaris, the lawnmower doesn't think about OpenSolaris, the lawnmower _can't_ care about OpenSolaris. The lawnmower can't have empathy.
You grow up an Ellison, I figure you either end up just like daddy, a social justice warrior with means, or like Mary Trump, a psychologist. Just so you can unpack your fucked up family and help others.
I agree with you about IGN's quality, but I think it's not necessarily your opinion that's generating the downvotes, but the tone.
IGN being disconnected from the tastes and preferences of gamers? Almost inarguable. Letting political opinions of the journalists have huge sway over game reviews and scores? I'd say that is inarguable.
But you'll get downvoted when you type a post on HN that seems like you're getting excited while typing.
I agree with your take but also let's not pretend that SW Outlaws and Concord are worth even 4/10. Worst games I've seen in a while. Concord seems to have a good-ish engine and it would be a shame if that's trashed but outside of that, yikes.
Ah, I am not saying it was you, I really just wanted to highlight how out of touch the gaming "journalists" can be. But as you said, it's all about money.
It sounds like a good decision by the team tbh. Blurring the lines by 'integrating' functioning teams into a bigger entity which does completely unrelated things (TV, film and theater) never goes well. The team will most likely found their independent 'spin-off' company as they had planned already, no talent or knowledge is lost, only risk is financing for new projects.
It doesn't. It's the people who actually did all the work who are benefiting, not the corporate entity. The coordinated mass resignations make it obvious that the former management is ready to immediately start up their own company in the office next door and hire on everyone who just quit Annapurna.
Not the parent company, but the game team that resigned is in a better position. They can continue focus on building games, instead of being 'integrated' with the TV, film and theater people (I bet most of that 'integration' is about 'outsourcing' CGI work to the 3D artists in the game team - e.g. a distraction from making games).
You're not quite there. Annapurna does not make games, it publishes them. There's no significant number of 3D artist working there. Even on the movie side, they don't directly make the movies.
Probably through "line must always go up" mentality.
Creative business, especially games, should really not be publicly traded or thought of as having major returns on investments.
It might work on start, but sooner or later the "current hit game" will fade out of popularity and then people will get fired and crunch will become the norm etc... in order to satisfy the "line must go up" mentality, but since game dev is a hit driven business that clashes with the "Line must go up" concept at its core since, being a hit driven business, means that it's totaly unpredictable.
The video game business is very similar to the film or literary publishing business. You need to publish ten novels for one to do well enough financially to pay off the others. Nobody really knows why that one worked. It's possible to do a few sequels, but the formula quickly becomes boring.
No one can guarantee the commercial success of a novel, film or video game.
Is this not the legally obligated line of thinking for american companies? You have some leeway to argue with only providing value to shareholders in some specific manner, but not much.
In the case of a public company that is assumed to be profit, because the shareholders are a vast and ever changing group. Annapurna isn't public, so it serves whatever the private owners want.
Even in a publicly traded stock, the company charter can specify something other than profit. The shareholders know that when they buy stock.
In other words there is more leeway than we commonly give credit. The notion of a fiduciary duty to be greedy is pushed by psychopathic CEOs but isn't really what the law says.
Most companies try to operate at a profit and actually increase those profits over time. That said, reasoning that Annapurna failed only because of that requires some impressive mental gymnastics
Most company personnel changes are not particularly interesting (in the sense of there's not much 'intellectually curious' conversation to be had about them) and are also extensively covered and discussed elsewhere.
This story is clearly interesting to the community, or the original wouldn't have gotten 40 points in an hour at night time. There was absolutely nothing toxic going on in the comments either.
Calling it a "personnel change" is also reading as brazenly disingenuous.
Everything is interesting to someone and HN doesn't really work strictly by points, you can find explanations of this in lots of the moderator commentary and in the site faq under 'how are stories ranked'.
Calling it a "personnel change" is also reading as brazenly disingenuous.
216 points on this post with 89 comments is pretty conclusive
Lots of things with piles of points and comments are poor HN submissions. Happens all the time and is not in any way conclusive. That's basically the explanation, for there to be some kind of conclusion you'd have to make an argument that isn't about points and comments of a thing that's on the fp. Everything on the fp gets points and comments.
I didn't want to "quote the old magic" to you, but this story is squarely within the HN guidelines. It's interesting, stimulating, important, tech related, true, timely etc.
The argument that a games company losing their entire staff to resignations isn't 'suitable' because "most company personnel changes are not particularly interesting" is false equivalence.
This thread is full of comments describing what people are finding interesting about this. Dismissing that with 'every fp story has comments' is a really odd and (dare I say) out-of-character move.
HN mods are just as biased/arbitrary (and terrible) as the worst Reddit mods. The two companies are basically one-in-the-same as they are both deeply backed by MIT and thus the CIA/military intelligence apparatus.
Both HackerNews and Reddit are interested in shutting down conversation/information.
I don't mean to diminish their work and I don't know much about the matter but the company founder is some billionaire's daughter. I fear ever having a boss like that just because of the fundamental difference in perspective and life experiences. I'm sure I won't be able to communicate with them.
"but the company founder is some billionaire's daughter. I fear ever having a boss like that just because of the fundamental difference in perspective and life experiences. I'm sure I won't be able to communicate with them."
Imagine invalidating a person as a potential colleague and declaring your incompatibility with that person remotely based on a quarter inch deep evaluation of their background. I think this kind of take is in really bad taste.
I was looking forward to Blade Runner 2033. It's nice to have moody adventure games in this era. I imagine that this will delay it at the very least, but likely worse.
I am a big fan of Stray! The atmosphere was both haunting and beautiful, and the emotional connection you feel as you guide the cat through puzzles, etc. Hearing about the uncertainty at Annapurna Interactive feels personal a little
I have feelings about Stray... What an awesome game it could have been!
I played it with one of my daughers. Lovely father/daughter playing session. Guiding the cat through the maze/puzzles. Cat can't fall, it's just calm and nice.
And then, out of nowhere - blinking screaming wildly stressful and awful rats come chase us.
My daughter dropped the controller, I played it through. But after that the game lost its charm. The second time the rats came, she left. We never played it again.
I checked if there was some "please don't ever give me rats" setting, but nope. I checked with a friend and they said the rats appear throughout the game.
So I'm really sorry, but stray is a 1/10 game for me. Remove the rats and its 9/10.
What is the purpose of the rats? It's an arcade moment in a game that was nice, calm, cute and relaxing. Totally breaks the contract that I felt was established with us as players.
To expand a bit, there's not that many _good_ games where you can explore, follow the story, enjoy a beautiful world and don't need good reflexes or emergency reactions skills.
In particular, gamers with decent skills will praise and give exposure to truly beautiful and well detailed games, and people with little to no action skills won't get past the tutorial.
We can look at it as a fact of life, and expecting all games to be accessible at any skill level is just impossible, but there's a sad part to it when it's so close.
I got my family to play Monument Valley and it was magical. Journey ? they got stuck on the more finicky paths and gave up the controller, while still enjoying the bit they could clear and watched the rest as I played.
Stray was on the same path, where they could probably deal with everything except the few time limited sections. If there was a "no action sequences" switch, it would be truly wonderful.
Also it probably would sting less if there was more games with a path for very low gaming skills.
A better mental model could be "can a retired housewife play it ?"
Violence is less of an issue than the tighter action sequence. I got stuck on the elevator bit for a good 15~30 min, and didn't feel much fulfilment from clearing it at the end TBH.
Not every game needs to be accessible, but Stray has so few action sequences, they feel quite unneeded (it would actually be excellent if they could be avoided through sheer cleverness). It reminded me of the random bed scenes in 90s movies.
Played through with my 7yo daughter. She loved the game, but would freak out when chased by the "rats". It was a good opportunity to show her how to try to keep playing when you're stressed! She found it exciting after a couple of goes. You didn't mention how old your daughter is, but that is surely the key factor.
I'm still hopeful for a "Stray 2" - or whatever they can do now the devs lost the IP. My daughter cried when at the game's ending (no spoiler)
stray has a pretty dark and foreboding atmosphere, the rats fit right in imo. seconding the other commenter who recommended little kitty big city though, i didn't expect to enjoy it as much as i did.
I think the purpose of the rats was probably to introduce a sense of danger and urgency, adding some challenge. Yet are there any other games you and your daughter enjoyed together?
Sad to see, Outer Wilds is probably the best game I've ever played. But I'm sure the staff will continue doing great work in whatever they decide to do next.
* Annapurna Pictures (the parent company of Interactive) had some financial issues previously at least (see [0] from 2019) while Annapurna Interactive was doing well for itself.
* Annapurna Pictures wanted to integrate the gaming division in-house (possibly to prop up the rest of the company)
* Staff and exec at Annapurna Interactive wanted to be spin off (see [1])
* Negotiations fell through, so most exec and staff at Interactive left
[0] https://variety.com/2019/film/news/annapurna-resolves-more-t...
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-12/annapurna...