The Bloomberg report reveals a major dysfunction at Amazon Game Studios

You may know it as Everything Store. But there’s one piece of “everything” that Amazon hasn’t been able 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, can’t make a successful video game.

The details, based on interviews with more than 30 current and former Amazon employees, draw an apparent picture that we know all too well. An out-of-contact company throws money into an ambitious project. Executives refuse to listen to grassroots staff. Older ones put in place draconian policies that hinder the workflow instead of helping it. You would think that these companies would already get the grade.

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

• Initial designs for the game New World—In which you play as a colonist in a fictitious seventeenth-century America — enemy designs appeared that seemed uncomfortable with Native Americans. Per Bloomberg, Amazon “hired a tribal consultant who found the interpretation to be really offensive.” New World, which was initially slated for an August 2020 release, is now slated for a spring 2021 release.
• The developers of Amazon Game Studios were forced to use a proprietary development tool called Lumberyard. (You may have read about it in a piece of excellent reports in the same way per With cableCecilia D’Anastasio last October.) In 2018, Amazon brought in Christoph Hartmann, a veteran of Take-Two, as vice president of gaming studios. He facilitated the “mandate” that forced everyone to use Lumberyard.
• According to reports, “Bro Culture” is widespread in Amazon’s game development studios. A woman said so Bloomberg who, after a disagreement with a male member of the senior management, held some new positions above her and hired men for these roles.
• Amazon incorporated large-scale developers who worked on popular series such as Portal i Far Cry. Of these, only one remains.
• The leader of the entire gaming division, Mike Frazzini, had never made a video game. It had reportedly frustrated developers with basic prey and had trouble differentiating between the game and concept images.
• Instead of designing new concepts, Amazon tried to create other popular games. A project called New, inspired by League of Legends, was canceled in 2017. One was called Intensity, caused by Fortnitethe amazing success retired in 2019. And then there’s the loser, Overwatch-I like Crucible, who planted their face so hard he was released and then not released last year.
• Amazon Luna, the company’s foray into the a la carte gaming space, does not even fall into the gaming division. It is led by David Limp, who heads Amazon’s device division (responsible for physical products like the Kindle and Echo).

If you’re bad for another story of stubborn diversion and making the wrong decisions in the video game industry, Bloombergthe backstage look of Amazon Game Studios worth reading it completely.