Crypto News: Mighty small

Hi everyone, it's Vlad here from Tokyo this week. Today we're talking about how bigger isn't always better, but first...

This week's top gaming news:

Saudi Arabia plans to invest $38 billion to turn the kingdom into a hub for e-sports by 2030
Google is winding down its Stadia video game streaming service after it proved unpopular with gamers
Ubisoft pushed back the release of its highly anticipated pirate action game Skull & Bones to March 9

A couple of newsletters ago, Jason suggested playing Cult of the Lamb as a nice way to while away a weekend, and I promptly obliged. He was right, of course, as it has a little of everything good and right about gaming: challenge, charm, humor and a lingering itch to return when you walk away from it. It's also a great example of something I've seen across industries: the advantage of small, resource-constrained teams.

Instagram became the world's favorite photo-sharing app at a time when Google and Facebook were investing much larger resources trying to do the same. When you're the tiny underdog, necessity demands focus and inventiveness. In gaming, that's led the small contenders to focus on gameplay, the essential make-or-break element, since they can't rely on some established big-name franchise or legions of overworked coders.

Smaller-Scale Video Games Make Up for Big Delays: Game On

"We are still small enough that each department is pretty much one person," Cult of the Lamb design director Jay Armstrong said in an interview with Game World Observer in August. The indie developer team that he's part of, Massive Monster, came together in 2016 and earned accolades and awards before COTL, but this game is by far its biggest hit. It raked in 1 million sales in just one week.

Cult of the Lamb, from studio Massive Monster, is part dungeon-crawler, part Animal Crossing. Source: Devolver Digital

This zombie lamb title (just play it, don't ask me to explain it) is far from alone in delivering big success from a small team. Hades, my favorite game of recent times, is the product of a core team of about a dozen people at Supergiant Games who have worked together for more than a decade. It's the absence of decision-making layers and the familiarity among these teams that enables them to iterate at speed.

Take a simple example: Your cult followers in COTL can take the form of various animals, and if you choose a dog, one of the interaction options is to pet it. You get a small loyalty bonus, as the doggo likes being petted. Technically, it's a game imbalance and an obsessive player might opt for a cult full of canines. But so what? This is a game about demonic chaos, it probably should be unfair.

At one of the grand companies of the tech industry, say Amazon.com Inc. and its often-fruitless game ventures, a decision like that probably isn't in the hands of the game's coder. Whereas in a small team, the doer and the decider are the same person. There's immense power in that. Think of all the times you've spotted something awry at your job and despaired at your lack of authority to fix it or the circles of bureaucracy hell required to do so.

There's another quirk of lean development that I love. In Hades, the voice of the lead character, Zagreus, is provided by Supergiant's audio director, Darren Korb. Korb had initially recorded the voice lines as a placeholder until the team found a suitable actor. But his colleagues enjoyed his delivery and decided to just use him. Can you fathom an Amazon or Google studio doing such frivolous things?

Someone from Alphabet Inc.'s sprawling business empire might rightly retort that when a company has a billion users of every service, the multiplicity of decision-making checks is essential. An antiquated feature or even a bug that users are already used to is preferable to some freelancing developer accidentally screwing up Gmail or Google Maps for the entire world in the pursuit of improvement.

And yet, I come back to gaming, which as much as we love it, simply has lower stakes and to my mind ought to take more risks. The common thing I see in the companies that make the games I enjoy and admire is trust. Trust that the player will understand and enjoy your idea. And trust in your teammates and collaborators.

Outside of the small indie studios I'm lauding here, Nintendo Co. is the best at this. Its Splatoon 3 (a Cecilia recommendation from a recent newsletter) racked up 3.45 million copies in its opening three days in Japan, a record for any game launch in a country that loves its games. Splatoon is dorky, cartoony and childish. I can see a lot of game publishers thinking it unserious, but its success completely dispels any notions about a particular right way to make a hit game, even on a big platform like the Switch.

Companies should be savvy about where to indulge their creative people's instincts and impulses. Small studios benefit by not having any other choice but to invest a lot of trust in every team member. The big ones still have a way to go. But seeing the success of Splatoon and Cult of the Lamb will hopefully trigger some introspection.

Cyberpunk 2077. This game by Poland's CD Projekt SA is on a full-on redemption tour. Rushed out the door in December 2020 after several high-profile delays and the pandemic's disruption, it fell flat on its face. I had a dalliance with it then and quickly ran into the various bugs and issues that had players underwhelmed and disappointed. But months of polishing and improvement now have gamers raving about Cyberpunk, the 2022 edition. I'm ready to take a fresh dive into Night City and give this game the chance to wow me for real. You should, too! It has Keanu "you're breathtaking" Reeves in it.

Cyberpunk 2077 starring Keanu Reeves

The New York Times asked real trombone players what they thought of the hit new game Trombone Champ. They like it.
Microsoft's $69 billion planned takeover of Activision Blizzard faces a European Union merger review deadline of Nov. 8 after the deal was formally notified to regulators.
Brendan Greene, the creator of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, has embarked on a metaverse project called Artemis, that will be owned and shared by everyone.