The Bloomberg report reveals a major dysfunction in Amazon Game studios

You may know it as Everything Store But there’s a piece of “everything” Amazon failed to break: video games. A new report from BloombergJason Schreier and Priya Anand shed light on why Amazon Game Studios, backed by one of the largest companies on the planet, doesn’t seem to be making a successful video game.

The details, based on interviews with more than 30 current and former Amazon employees, present an apparent image that we know all too well. A company that is not in touch achieves an ambitious project. Executives refuse to listen to core staff. Older people put in place draconian policies that impede workflow rather than help it. You would think that these companies will receive the grade from now on.

Today Amazon’s alleged story, in particular, is like an important case of Yahtzee Bad Video Game Development:

• Initial projects for the game New world“In which you play as a colonist in a fictional seventeenth-century America,” he presented enemy drawings that bore an awkward resemblance to Native Americans. On BloombergAmazon “hired a tribal consultant who found the portrayal really offensive.” New world, which was originally scheduled for an August 2020 release, is now planned for a spring 2021 release.
• The developers at Amazon Game Studios had to use their own development tool called Lumberyard. (You may have read about it in one piece equally excellent reporting of WiredCecilia D’Anastasio last October.) In 2018, Amazon brought in Christoph Hartmann, a veteran of Take-Two, as vice president of game studios. He eased the “mandate” that forced everyone to use Lumberyard.
• “Bro Culture” would be ubiquitous in Amazon game development studios. Said a woman Bloomberg that, following a disagreement with a male member of the senior management, he occupied several new positions above her and hired men in these roles.
• Amazon has incorporated upstairs developers who have worked on popular series as well Portal and Far cry. Of them, only one remains.
• The leader of the entire gaming division, Mike Frazzini, had never played a video game before. It seems that it would have frustrated the developers with basic downloads and would have had problems with the differentiation between gameplay and conceptual images.
• Instead of designing new concepts, Amazon pressed to create other popular games. A project called New, inspired by League of Legends, was canceled in 2017. One called Intensity, caused by Fortnitethe amazing success was eliminated in 2019. And then there is the unfortunate, Overwatch-that Crucible, who planted themselves with such a hard face he was released and then released last year.
• Amazon Luna, the company’s foray into the hot gaming space on demand, does not even fall into the gaming division. It is led by David Limp, who heads the Amazon devices division (responsible for physical products such as the Kindle and Echo).

If you feel bad about another story about stubborn misdirection and making the wrong decisions in the video game industry, BloombergHe looks backstage at Amazon Game Studios worth reading in full.