Bloomberg report reveals major dysfunction at Amazon Game Studios

You may know it as the Everything Store. But there’s a part of ‘everything’ that Amazon has not cracked: video games. A new report of BloombergJason Schreier and Priya Anand shed light on why Amazon Game Studios, backed by one of the largest companies on the planet, can not make a successful video game.

The details, based on interviews with more than 30 current and former Amazon employees, paint a clear picture that we know all too well. An out-of-touch business throws money at an ambitious project. Managers refuse to listen to rank-and-file staff. Higher-end companies are introducing draconian policies that hinder rather than help workflows. You would think that these companies would get the memo now.

Today’s alleged story from Amazon, in particular, is like one big case of Yahtzee with the development of Bad Video Game:

• Initial game designs New world– in which you play as a colonist in a fictional 17th-century America – had hostile designs that had an awkward resemblance to Native Americans. Per Bloomberg, Amazon “hires a tribal consultant who has found the depiction offensive.” New world, which was initially planned for a release in August 2020, is now planned for a release in 2021.
• Developers of Amazon Game Studios were forced to use their own development tool called Lumberyard. (You may have read in a piece of this similar excellent reporting by Wired‘s Cecilia D’Anastasio from last October.) In 2018, Amazon appointed Christoph Hartmann, a veteran of Take-Two, as vice president of game studios. He facilitated the “mandate” that forced everyone to use Lumberyard.
• ‘Bro Culture’ is apparently common in Amazon’s game development studios. A woman tells Bloomberg that he, after a disagreement with a male member of senior leadership, had set up some new positions above her and appointed men to these roles.
• Developers of Amazon’s floor that worked on popular series, such as Hall and Far Cry. Of them, only one remains.
• The leader of the entire games division, Mike Frazzini, has never made a video game before. He apparently frustrated developers with basic tasks and had trouble distinguishing between gameplay and conceptual material.
• Instead of designing new concepts, Amazon insisted on tackling other popular games. A project called Nova, inspired by League of Legends, was canceled in 2017. One the call Intensity, fueled by Fortnite‘s staggering success, was penetrated in 2019. And then there is the fatal, Ear Watch-as Furnace, who was planted so hard in the face it was released and then released again last year.
• Amazon Luna, the company’s incident in the hot game-on-demand space, does not even fall under the gaming section. It’s run by David Limp, who runs Amazon’s device division (responsible for physical products such as the Kindle and Echo).

If you fancy another story of stubborn wrong direction and wrong decision making in the video game industry, Bloombergbehind-the-scenes look at Amazon Game Studios is worth reading in full.