An Arkane Studios has spoken up in light of the fallout of the mixed release of their latest game, Redfall.
Sadie Boyd is a veteran of the industry, spending over a decade within Bethesda’s structure. Her LinkedIn indicates she got her start as an intern for Bethesda all the way back in 2013, and was briefly a tester in the company, before making her way up from associate environmental artist, to now being a senior 2D artist. She also spent a spell in BattleCry before they got acquired by Bethesda.
With all this under her belt, you can tell that Sadie has been through the ups and downs of a game career, and has also seen the highs and lows of working in the industry.
While fans may have expected Sadie to have been upset with some of the feedback that comes from gamers, particularly Sony fans playing up the company’s rivalry with Microsoft, that isn’t actually what she was talking about.
In a series of tweets, Sadie said this, mere days after Redfall’s release:
“I did not anticipate my own peers, friends, or colleagues openly mocking and being gleeful of a difficult launch.
Delighting in the failure of others, no matter how you feel towards a company, seems mean spirited.
I feel sad, confused, and disappointed.
I try to keep things positive, I really do. But I am human, I have feelings.
Seeing people I looked up to saying things like ‘They deserved this’ ‘Now their resumes are tainted lol’ ‘what fucking idiots’ etc have, truthfully, been the only things to bother me.”
On the day of Redfall’s release, Sadie had a more positive message:
“Five years of blood, sweat, and more blood have culminated in the release of Redfall.
It’s exciting to see folks dive into the game, share their thoughts, both positive and negative, and having feedback!
Thank you for playing
(now I’m gonna sleep for five years)”
Of course, it stands to reason that anyone would be relieved to just ship a project after five years.
Unfortunately, Redfall didn’t get the critical reception that any game developer would want to see, but I get the feeling Sadie and Arkane’s staff already expected to get some of that.
We don’t really know who, or perhaps more accurately, which people, she was referring to who were gloating about their game’s reception. It’s obviously disappointing to see that there’s no solidarity in the industry if this is the case. The last thing we want to hear is that people in the game industry themselves bought into the console wars.
