Playground Development on Fable Has Slowed Due to Lack of Experience With Action RPGs - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 23 March 2022 / 5,259 Views
Xbox Game Studios' Playground Games has two teams with one focused on the Forza Horizon series and the other working on a new entry in the popular Xbox series, Fable, for the Xbox Series X|S and PC.
Game designer Juan Fernandez who worked at Playground on Fable in an interview with Vandal translated by Wccftech said that development on the game has slowed down as open-world action RPGs are more complicated than racing games.
"Playground is [...] very organized and production-driven," said Fernandez. "Every two years they put out a Forza Horizon, which has more than 90 on Metacritic, with incredible quality. They have taken racing games and they've dominated them these last few years.
"They're very smart and they know what they're doing. They wanted to branch out with something different and they thought that what they do well is open world racing games, [but] they lacked people with the knowledge of how gameplay is done.
"In an open world, how you control a character and the actions are very different from what you have in a racing game. At the technology level, you have to develop animation, scripting, a quest system. Moving in a car at 300 kmh has very different requirements than walking through the countryside."
He added, "Action RPG open worlds are incredibly complicated to do, they take a lot of time. A lot of people and in Playground they have the mentality of doing more with less, that if Assassin's Creed is done by 5000 people they will have 150 or 200, and if they do [Assassin's Creed] in 7 years, they'd do Fable in 5.
"It is good to be ambitious but you also have to be realistic and what I saw is that [development] was getting longer and longer."
Fable has been in development since 2017 and just last month former Lionhead Studios hired Amie Loake as a Senior Producer. She worked as a software test engineer on Fable Anniversary and worked on Fable Legends from 2013 to 2016.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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In this day and age consumers are more prepared to wait for a better quality product. As long as they take the time to ensure that the game is the best it can be then I'm happy to wait. Although, it would be nice to see something, if anything at all.
Another game that got anounced way to soon.
Yeah, it seems Xbox really wanted everyone to know how many games they were working on. Which is good to an extent, but then you get back to back E3 presentations of primarily cgi trailers for upcoming first party games.
This years E3 showcase, Xbox needs to have a lot of gameplay ready to be shown off. And at least some release dates.
Wait what? When? It till now we still have zero gameplay of any single game coming from xbox. Not even what was shown of hellblade is confirmed to be gameplay. We have games suposed to come out this year that have zero gameplay showed. When did this start to change?
Keyword was started.
Go watch that hellblade trailer again.
They'll love the compliment.
Not confirmed gameplay. Just captured in engine. Not even confirmed captured on Xbox.
Literally called gameplay reveal trailer. I don't know how you can possibly misinterpret that.
Hellblade 2 trailer was gameplay. It was confirmed by Ninja Theory. They haven't shown anything this year because they are waiting for their E3 event or whatever they are calling it.
No it wasent. The most you can find is the official MS site that says its captured in engine. Nothing else.
Xbox events have been pretty good for the last several years. They will only get better.
MS continues to struggle to manage studios and projects. For the sake of fable fans let's hope this turns out well in the end.
This article has nothing to do with mismanagement and only talks about the size of the team and lack of experience with making RPG's(obviously) so the game is taking some time to make. Similar to how Guerrilla Games went from Killzone to Horizon and it took awhile to make the game. There is nothing wrong with the games development.
Yeah that was my first thought of comparison. It took Guerrilla 7 years to make Horizon.
And you don't think it is poor management that makes a team make something they have no experience and don't give the tools to have that solved before hand? Or they discovered now that they didn't had what was needed? Team size and experience of people can be solved with hiring right people, which is part of management.
But they have been hiring people with this kind of experience. Games take a long time to make, and the pandemic certainly hasn't helped.
You mean long after right? A long time since announcement and barely anything show. And I don't remember AC taking 5000 full time employees to make, and if that was true how they expected to make Fable with 200 and be a competent product. Doesn't seems like what he is saying helps much Playground case.
No, throughout the development. But when the majority of the team doesn't have that kind of experience it takes some time to learn and there is nothing wrong with that.
First of all, vast majority of games don't have 5000 developers working on a single game, which I'm sure most are temp hires or support studios during the last year or so to get the game out. Most AAA studios are within the same team size of what Playground has for Fable.
So... Are you saying Guerrilla is mismanaged?
I really hope this turns out good. One of my more anticipated titles.
No need to rush it. Plenty on the cooking plate
With all the studios now; games like Fables and Perfect Dark can take their time to get it right. I hope they can deliver on fun and unique experience.
The fact the team doesn't have enough experience in RPG's gives me a load of red flags, that and there's been nothing to show for this game in nearly 2 yrs.
An IP like Fable doesn't deserve to be a testing ground for grad students with no exp in the field. I've no idea how and why MS hired people to work on a game they didn't have any expertise in.
Because Playground and Turn10 can be said to be the only studios that had consistent good work among all MS studios.
I'm actually surprised to see comments along the lines of "this isn't bad mismanagement", and then the general manager in charge of recruiting and hiring staff goes on to hire people that don't have much clue on how to make a good RPG, let alone the mechanics.
That to be is bad management in general, especially with letting this go on for nearly 2 yrs now. If there was a problem with staff not being able to do stuff since day 1, I would move them to another dept and go onto hiring new staff that do know and have the proper qualifications.
Unlike you, some of us are not jumping to conclusions based off of a click-bait article that unsurprisingly highlights pieces of the interview that makes it seem way worse than it actual is.
This part is from the original interview. Which is not being mentioned from most of the articles popping up. Probably because it's not click-baity enough.
"It was three super great years and I think Fable is a super, super interesting IP, the game has incredible potential and there is a very good team inside. The best thing playground has done in the years I saw is the people it has gotten for the team, there is a lot of talent. I wish them all the luck in the world and I'm really looking forward to playing it."
Here is part of the original interview which is missing from Wccftech article, of course.
"With the arrival of the pandemic, the need for a change of work became more acute. Fernández had already laid the technical foundations, he says, "which is the important thing. The change to working remotely in a game as big as Fable, which has a lot to talk to people, bureaucracy, meetings... there were many factors and I needed a change. It was three super great years and I think Fable is a super, super interesting IP, the game has incredible potential and there is a very good team inside. The best thing playground has done in the years I saw is the people it has gotten for the team, there is a lot of talent. I wish them all the luck in the world and I'm really looking forward to playing it."
Shocked this isn’t downvoted into oblivion.
not the news anyone wanted to hear.
They didn't say anything about the game being in a bad spot or in "development hell". It's taking some time to make with the lack of RPG experience and developers. Nothing wrong with that.
I'm an electrician but im working on the plumbing so the job is going slower than it should due to my lack of experience in plumbing.
Not the same at all but okay. Nobody is going to send a handyman with zero experience with plumbing on their own. A person new to plumbing would have someone there to assist them in learning the skill just like what happens in game development until they are ready to be on their own.
They Have Recently Hired a Former Lionhead Producer
Haven’t they hired several or was it only one? Either way, it is good to have original developers that were there from the beginning.
This isn’t saying much. Every game has had development affected.
Predictably, a lot of people here are playing it negatively, but what here is negative? It would be one thing if he said MS was interjecting and affecting development with deadlines and forced concepts.
So the game might take longer. But the important thing is will it be better because of it.
The team developing the next entry in a renounced franchise publicly admitted their lack of experience.
Actually, most of the comments here are apologists on your side who somehow see no problem with this glaring issue. It would take a miracle for this game to be both actually good as well as not littered with bugs. Set your expectations accordingly and hope to be pleasantly surprised.
Actually an ex-employee gave an interview. The actual developer isn’t being quoted here. Unless you’re referencing something else, in which case feel free to share.
This isn’t a “glaring issue” unless the game turns out to be bad.
Don't know if more complex, but certainly different so a learning curve is expected. Reason why studios specializes themselves.
That's a shame, well it's a good MS already some of the biggest studios in that genre.
How hard can it be to make an open world action RPG racer in the world of Fable?
why not
