The Lies Of P Devs Getting Bonuses Is Not An East Versus West Issue

In a rare piece of particularly feel-good news last week, it turns out that and its Overture expansion did so well financially that everyone on its development team was rewarded with an extr🀅a two weeks of paid vacation, 10 🃏million South Korean won, and a Nintendo Switch 2. Considering that games media is usually reporting 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:studio closures and layoffs, it’s quite nice t🍃o imagine that somewhere in the world, there are developers using their well-earned days off to play instead of having to see their holding corporation eat all the profits.

The Stellar Blade developers, also Korean, likewise 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:received PS5 Pros aꦑnd a bonus last year.

However, because the internet is a vile and sad place, there are people in a specific corner of the gaming world trying to position this as an East versus West iꦡssue. The argument goes that developers in Asia are thriving because they’re ‘rejecting woke culture’, while developers in the West are getting laid off because their games are ‘embracing wokeness’ and failing to make as much money.

Eve from Stellar Blade on a blue background.

Stellar ꦕBlade Could Actually Have Been Great If It Knew How To Tell A Decent Story

If Stel🐭lar Blade 2 has a stronger narrative, I might actually play it all the way through.

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I Promise You It’s Got Nothing To Do With Woke

P dressed all in white sitting in the snow in Lies Of P Overture.

There are many very obvious refutations to this argument. Firstly, there’s the obvious problem of equivocating Asian games with being anti-woke. Looking at every game through a lens of woke or not-woke is a pointless eဣxercise and even the thought of doing so rots one's brain cells, but for the sake of this counterargument, we have to do just that.

Can anybody really argue that , which deals heavily with helping former yakuza members find legitimate work and heavily emphasises prওincipl♍es of kindness and forgiveness, is anti-woke? Are the and games 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:not often explicitly political?

There’s also another obvious flaw in the argument: Asian developers are struggling with layoffs just as much as Western developers are. Sony (a Japanese company, lest we forget) has closed multiple studios (168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Firewalk Studios and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:London Studio) and laid off developers at others, including Bungie, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ballistic Moon, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Bend Studio. restructured in 2024 .

I can already hear you saying, ‘But those were all Western developers!’ Fine, let’s look at Korea s൲pecifically, since that’s where Lies of P developer Round8 (and its holding company Neowiz) is headquartered. NCSoft, which developed , , laying off an unknown number of employees. Netmarble, the developer of Demis Re:Born, reportedly , about 25 percent of its workforce, in January this year, after .

Collage image with Lies of P: Overture and Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree.

Lies O𝓀f P: Overture Sh꧋ows That Huge Expansions Are The New Sequels

Game-sized DLC, like Overture ꦜand Shadow of the Erdtree, are taking the place🦹 of sequels.

Posts 168澳洲幸运5开奖网: 𝔉

Behold – Economics

a-key-frame-from-lies-of-p-showing-the-protagonist-preparing-to-scale-a-ruined-building.jpg

There are a lot of possible reasons why Lies of P did well enough to get all its employees bonuses and a Switch 2, and none of them have anything to do wit🐷h wokeness. For one, development costs are lower in many parts of Asia. Outside of major cities, there are lower costs of living than in many♏ parts of Europe and the U.S., meaning salary costs are lower, and currency conversions mean that revenues gained from foreign purchases can be stretched further.

And in Korea and China specifically, where live-service gacha games reign, the fact is that single-player, narrative-heavy games are a growing industry. There’s far less saturation in the genre for local audiences, and these players are excited to see experiences of this kind 🦩come out of their home grounds, which ups the likelihood of them buying the g🧸ame.

So yes, I’m very hapꦇpy for these developers. They deserve to be rewarded for their hard work, but so does every other developer, Western, Eastern, or otherwise. Let’s just remember that it’s got nothing t🔜o do with wokeness, and more to do with basic economics.