Epic failure: Tim Sweeney's selfishness was costly
If Tim Sweeney wants Fortnite to thrive, he has to focus on the people.
People, not profits. A simple but evocative slogan that’s deservedly turned into its own confident campaign. It’s easy to get behind. I like it.
But I’d like to offer a slight variation: People equals profits. Take care of your people, and the profits will come. Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, should think about that advice.
Epic Games (Fortnite, Unreal Engine) laid off 1,000 people. The reason for the layoffs: Epic is spending more than its earning because Fortnite is making less money.
These vacuous layoffs clearly fall on Tim Sweeney. He wanted to poke all the bears. He launched the now-struggling Epic Game Store to compete with Steam. He wanted to take down Apple and Google’s cut of sales in their app stores. He’s now pursuing Roblox’s user-generated content model within Fortnite. No better time to pursue these self-righteous battles than when the Fortnite cash is rolling in, right?
I wonder what it would be like if Epic used the oodles of Fortnite money to take care of the people who made it successful. I don’t mean adding things like ping-pong tables, swimming pools, or a Taco Bell. I mean more laborers to shoulder the burden of keeping Fortnite relevant well past the time it should have.
The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon has 25 writers and 24 producers for an almost nightly hour-long show. It’s probably still not enough writers and producers. Fortnite is a live-service game; it’s open 24/7. You need as many brains as possible to keep the ideas fresh, guide the game forward, and then you need the hands to put it into action.
Tim Sweeney says “What we now need to do is clear: build awesome Fortnite experiences with fresh seasonal content, gameplay, story, and live events; accelerate developer tools with greater stability and capability as we evolve from Unreal Engine 5 and UEFN to Unreal Engine 6. And we’ll be kicking off the next generation of Epic with huge launch plans towards the end of the year.”
Translation: Make the same number of bricks, without straw—and fewer people.
Somewhere along the way, the Fortnite team developed ideas to connect seasons through a story, map changes, live events, and more. That doesn’t happen if it weren’t for the brains already working that operation.
If Fortnite’s going to do that, for an even bigger audience once mobile comes back, wouldn’t one think you need more people, not less?
Tim said they’re spending more money than they’re making.
Companies and services like Netflix, Uber, Xbox Game Pass, Zillow, and Amazon take losses all the time before earning any profits—some still aren’t.
Tim wrote in his layoff letter: “Despite Fortnite remaining one of the most successful games in the world we’ve had challenges delivering consistent Fortnite magic with every season; we’re only in the early stages of returning to mobile and optimizing Fortnite for the world’s billions of smartphones; and in being the industry’s vanguard we have taken a lot of bullets in a battle which is only in the early days of paying off for ourselves and all developers.”
Sweeney couldn’t wait a few more years for the mobile money to kick in, apparently. He just now figured out the magic couldn’t be consistent; it’s ridiculous he thought it ever could be. He started his pet projects on the defective thought that Fortnite money would keep rolling in—seemingly funded only by Fortnite’s bizarre amounts of cash. He built houses on sand, now they’re trembling, so he punished the ones who brilliantly earned that cash despite his carelessness.
We don’t know who was laid off; we don’t know their significance.
It doesn’t matter. It could’ve been QA, producers, modelers, janitors, PR, etc. If a company ever felt the need to hire someone for a job, there’s a need. Now someone else has a greater burden. We’ve repeatedly seen studios do this: layoffs, then a reduced team has to carry the load of the once sufficient team, and eventually those games collapse or have to negotiate significant changes to maintain the foundation. Yes, we humans are capable of carrying a lot. That doesn’t mean we should.
If Tim wants Fortnite to maintain its industry-leading, money-making dominance, he needs to take care of his people. Fortnite is the most blatant example of a game where its success is only because of the people running it. But as is often the case with CEOs, Tim is focused on what Tim wants, not what’s good for his people or his money-maker.
Tim’s messing with the money. Maybe he should go.
I think I have content ideas that would allow me to post more often. I mentioned in a previous entry how even I can forget this newsletter exists since its only once a month. I don’t want that to be the case.
One of my passions is dissecting gameplay, but I’ve never been able to do it for any particular publication. Based on what most outlets publish, it seems like gameplay analysis is not the type of content that fits anywhere. So, I’m just going to do it here. Maybe I find out why it’s not a big thing. Maybe it’s great. Consider it an experiment. I hope you like it.
The newsletter will remain monthly, but additional content will post directly to the Substack page without an email. I’ll include those posts in the newsletter.
I’m thankful you read and have subscribed (and pledged!) while I continue to work out this publication. If this is your first time here and you like it, please subscribe. I’d like to surprise you. And if you really like it, a pledge goes a long way for this brotha! Either way, I’m so very appreciative. Writing, just like video games, is much more fun with people.
Enjoy the issue!
What I Wrote
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Playing Pokémon with my kid made me reconsider its youthful design
Big AAA games are dead. Smaller games are the future.
Have a laugh
Remember your gaming good ol’ days
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Latest Pokémon ripoff, Pickmon, indicates what people want Nintendo to do
Overwatch’s Stadium should be reworked or removed
Maybe Overwatch PvE still has a chance
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Screamer review
Games, Games, Games
Bililitz
Bililitz feels like a Commodore 64 game—very simple. Get a high score.
It’s a procedurally generated platforming game where you navigate randomized obstacles, stomp on or avoid enemies, and collect golden squares for points while the screen auto-scrolls vertically. It’s very simple but gets quite complicated.
What holds Bililitz back is what counts as death. Most times spikes killed me instantly, sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes enemies took one of my three hearts, sometimes they killed me instantly.
I’d rather Bililitz choose to be a one-hit KO game or you get three hits. Or clearly communicate which objects are one-hit KOs.
The Melty Way
The Melty Way seems to take inspiration from the goopy physics of World of Goo and the precision platforming of Super Meat Boy. It’s a clever platformer that iterates on Meat Boy’s trail of blood concept, but this green goo character loses itself as it leaves its trail of goopiness. It creates opportunities for clever puzzles involving managing your size.
The smaller you are, the faster you move, the higher you jump, and you fit comfortably through small crevices. If you’re bigger, you’re heavier, you move slower, but you can take a little bit more damage.
My only gripe is that you get a special power that lets you launch yourself in any direction. But it feels like the power only uses eight directions instead of 16 or more, reducing accuracy. You also can’t consistently see exactly where you’re aiming because there’s no arrow except when you first receive the power. Thankfully, I imagine that’s something that can be easily fixed. This one’s on my radar.
Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors
Clearly piggy-backing off the wild success of Vampire Survivors (rightfully so), Vampire Crawlers takes the simplistic addictive formula and somehow successfully turns it into a dungeon-crawling card game. Successfully meaning proof-of-concept. I had to force myself to stop playing the demo. Its lengthy demo says everything that needs to be said about how this game works.
As typified by other dungeon crawlers, you move one space at a time through a maze of enemies and collectibles. To fight, you must use cards that cost mana points. Some cards attack, some give armor, and everything references Vampire Survivors.
Each fight gives you experience points that makes you stronger and gives you more cards. Gem slots allow you to permanently upgrade your cards and there are other methods to buff your cards. Your strategy comes from understanding which cards to focus on in the moment.
Another challenge is using different crawlers who come with different starter cards. I had more success with certain characters, as I learned quickly that I can’t reuse the same strategies with different characters. I have to adapt in the moment.
I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a roguelike as I think it’s pretty easy compared to Vampire Survivors, but I also didn’t care. I had fun creating an overpowered deck and wanted to see how far I could take it.
Voidling Bound
Imagine Pokemon, but you control the creatures, and they evolve far more often. It’s not a perfect parallel, but I hope that paints somewhat of a picture.
Voidling Bound is, essentially, a shooter where the creatures you collect are the guns; and the guns gain new skills and abilities. Despite that reductive description, the intrigue comes from constantly evolving the creature adds power and changes attributes, forcing you to constantly adapt how you play with them. It’s like raising a child. You thought you had them figured out only to realize they’ve changed again.
Voidling Bound has been one of the more interesting demos I’ve played, and I’ve had to stop myself from playing it so I can try other games. I certainly advocate wishlisting this one.
SpeedRunners: King of Speed
The first SpeedRunners launched in 2016 according to everywhere I can find its original release date. I mention this because Steam says I last played it in 2013. I vividly remember that because I was on my first ever gaming PC, writing for my first outlet. I don’t remember having early access to it. I also don’t remember playing much of it. Probably because I only played it for 70 minutes.
It wasn’t bad, it’s just very easy to understand, and I had so many other games to play. So, here comes the next iteration of SpeedRunners, and it’s a riot, for sure.
You choose a runner who’s dressed up like a superhero or supervillain and race around a platforming course trying to get so far ahead of the competition that they violently disappear when hitting the end of the screen. It’s fun. And it would be more fun if I didn’t try the demo when only the masters of SpeedRunners remained.
If I had time to get better at it, I know I would enjoy it. But that’s the cost of making a competitive multiplayer game with an established audience. People like me don’t have time or patience to master it.
I still think it’s a fun a little platformer and concept, but it’s lost its novelty.
Last Flag
Last Flag is the playground version of Capture the Flag—the one where you have to actually hide the flag before searching. I love the concept and the mechanics feel fine, but it’s missing essential sound design to make this game good and accessible.
There are times I can’t tell I’m getting hit because I didn’t have any impact sounds. Guns barely make any noise. I want to hear the characters make silly sounds and noises that reflect the whimsical profiles and personality the developers gave them. I’m not saying sound design will rocket this game to the top, but it will certainly help connect players to what they’re doing and who they’re playing with. Imagine Overwatch without its sound design. You can’t. It feels baked in.
I’m going to keep an eye on this one because I want to see how it turns out next month. I hope it’s better than what’s here because should be more fun than the demo.
Thanks for reading! See you in April! Or you can check out my Substack page to read any content you like as it posts.
Ta-ta for now!