Let me tell you what happened at CA.

[WE REQUIRE MORE VESPENE GAS]

If you work in the gaming industry, you already know.

But for everyone else, here's the play by play of what happened -

Sega does a review of each studio and acquisition and notes CA's critical success in not only its own niche market - that being total war - but also holds a handful of successful projects elsewhere. Lots of talent, good revenue, but after doing some financial modelling, decides CA is underperforming.

Not by revenue - mind you - but the type of revenue. CA's revenue model is product based, rather than recurring. Numbers are good, but lack scalable growth. See, right now, in the gaming industry, the buzzword is "recurring revenue", and that comes about in various ways - mostly from the various games as a service models.

If you can go recurring, even if the income is literally 50% of what you're getting now, your model is far more attractive from a valuation and investment standpoint. So there's probably a bit of pressure from Sega to get Creative Assembly to at least have *some* recurring revenue in their balance sheets.

So CA execs get together and start thinking about the best way to do this. They test the waters with various mobile offerings like Arena, but find the space too cramped. They tried to broaden out their core product line via episodic content, like sagas, but the money simply doesn't come fast and hard enough to hit that recurring benchmark.

So - some dude pitched Hyenas. CA execs do a risk/reward analysis on it, and given the success of Alien Isolation - CA's other foray outside of theri comfort zone - green lights it.

Problem is CA massively, MASSIVELY underestimated the complexity of designing and developing something like Hyenas - and most certainly lacks both the experience and market size to make it work. Worst of all, this project almost certainly has zero synergy with CA's existing customer base, forcing CA's business development team to basically work from scratch.

They keep at it, likely as far as pitching Hyenas as *THE* project that's going to turn CA's balance sheet (which, again, I have to stress, is PERFECTLY HEALTHY as is) around. There was probably an internal demo made to Sega at the half-way point. Sega may have been onboard. Sega may have greenlit a budget extension.

Clearly, it wasn't enough, so around the time of WH3 release, there was likely an internal call made for CA as a company to buy Hyena time. All or nothing - on this one magic, killer product.

Total War's dev team is cannibalized. All upcoming DLCs and products were re-repriced to sustain Hyenas development. Developers and QA are haphazardly re-allocated to Hyena's development, all meet an internal deadline when their burn rate would catch up to their cash reserves. The deadline hits, they do the best they can, and show Sega execs what they have, in a last bid for more investment, and more budget.

Sega devs, though probably have never played a single ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game of total war in their lives, *have* played, or at least did serious research, into the likes of Warframe and Destiny. They took one look at Hyena, and said, "this is ♥♥♥♥."

Canned.

No more money.

CA throws in the towel, stops development on Hyenas, and lays off the team.

But guys, here's the thing - during their investment into Hyenas, they've already cannablized their core team. There are scant devs, QA, and devops who are familiar with the Total War engine. There's no coming back from that.

There was a point of no-return, and CA jumped past it already. There is a MASSIVE, MASSIVE talent and infrastructure hole now left in their mainline product, which they will need to rely on to survive. I think CA Sofia is relatively in one piece, because despite the horrendous, horrendous ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ by the BD side of things, Pharoah is... kinda solid as a game.

So this is where we are. It's not looking good. Sega is not going to forgive Hyenas. They're not likely to greenlight any more projects which can accelerate CA's growth. They're going to just put CA on life support, and it's really going to be up to CA to figure out where to go from here.

Honestly - best scenario - Sega cuts their losses and puts CA up for sale.

You don't have to agree - but I'm telling you - this is exactly what happened, and why we're where we are today.

And as a total war fan since OG Shogun - I am ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ gutted.

[Brohan Creates]

Either they put it up for sale or they dissolve them and then ask someone else to take the TW license and still do the publishing.

EDIT: I can see the latter happening more than the former.

[ArchAnge1LT]

Relic has not been performing well either, and Sega has not sold them for years. Don't think they will try to sell CA asap, considering they were at peak just recently with WH2.

Sega will probably reorganize a lot though and see how it goes.

[WE REQUIRE MORE VESPENE GAS]

Originally posted by ArchAnge1LT:

Relic has not been performing well either, and Sega has not sold them for years. Don't think they will try to sell CA asap, considering they were at peak just recently with WH2.

Sega will probably reorganize a lot though and see how it goes.

Honestly - I think Relic Entertainment would be better off if sold to a smaller and more niche-oriented publisher, like Microprose.

I mean you see it - right? These are niche developers who work on a cadence of mainline, sequel, dlc, sequel, dlc, dlc, rhythm. And when their cadence gets broken, the studio DIES. It rarely comes back.

A lot of times these are studios with a rediculously talented and motivated product team but an absolutely awful management team. For a big publisher like Sega, they really can't see the problems from the ground up. It takes a smaller scale - someone willing to see the niche side of things - to analyze things from the ground up - to really help bring the talent out of these studios that have lost their cadence.

[bearfieldlee]

Where does all this leave the WH3 roadmap?

[WE REQUIRE MORE VESPENE GAS]

Originally posted by bearfieldlee:

Where does all this leave the WH3 roadmap?

Depends highly on whether CA/Sega wants to keep digging for more revenue to either sustain the studio or reinvest to stablize the core product - that being the total war franchise.

I can honestly see CA going "Hey, look, Hyena - our bad. But check it out - Total War: Arena II. - Electric Boogaloo."

Honestly, look, if I were in charge of CA, which I'm not - I'd choose to reinvest and stablize the product.

Call for a brake on any new products in the pipeline. Look at the sales figures. Figure out what works - get the PMs together to focus on WH3 and Pharoah DLC. Put out a year's worth of really solid, really well made DLCs, and once the team stablizes, and you get all the talent back on to the total war platform, THEN you figure out how to expand further. From step one.

Like... not even joking. I know this industry. This is what CA needs to do. This is really, really -hand on my heart - the only way forward for CA.

Honestly - CA - i don't know how many BAs are left in your team. Get them all into one room, and seriously look at your revenue figures. Tick by tick. All the way back from 2012. Look at it. Figure it out. See what works. Why it works. And replicate it. It really is that simple.

I don't know how you ended up with Hyenas - I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and maybe think it's probably pressure from Sega. Okay. Bad mistake. It's over now - gotta move on, man. Get your cadence back.

I'll tell you one thing though - if my own company had HALF the loyalty (rabid or otherwise) of the guys in this forum - I'd be a rich man.

Seriously.

If my company tanked tomorrow because our C suite made stupid ass decisions, nobody would even BOTHER to show up to call for a boycott.

You've got that going for you CA. So quit ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ banning people and get to work.

[ArchAnge1LT]

Originally posted by WE REQUIRE MORE VESPENE GAS:

Originally posted by ArchAnge1LT:

Relic has not been performing well either, and Sega has not sold them for years. Don't think they will try to sell CA asap, considering they were at peak just recently with WH2.

Sega will probably reorganize a lot though and see how it goes.

Honestly - I think Relic Entertainment would be better off if sold to a smaller and more niche-oriented publisher, like Microprose.

I mean you see it - right? These are niche developers who work on a cadence of mainline, sequel, dlc, sequel, dlc, dlc, rhythm. And when their cadence gets broken, the studio DIES. It rarely comes back.

A lot of times these are studios with a rediculously talented and motivated product team but an absolutely awful management team. For a big publisher like Sega, they really can't see the problems from the ground up. It takes a smaller scale - someone willing to see the niche side of things - to analyze things from the ground up - to really help bring the talent out of these studios that have lost their cadence.

Agreed.
Although i still have some hope for CA. Their management made absolutely terrible decisions, turning from their main games in order to pursue the new industry niches, while keeping main games on skeleton crew.

And it did not pay off. When Sega cuts all those teams off which did not deliver, and keep the TW mainline reorganized, perhaps there is small hope things can change for the better.

However, this is not in the near future probably. It will take time.

[AkumulatoR]

You seem to have failed to explain why they went above and beyond with Hyenas to make absolutely worst game they could have, with utterly revolting and unlikeable characters, boring as hell gameplay and setting that makes Bethesda writers look like Shakespeare incarnates.

[Brohan Creates]

Originally posted by AkumulatoR:

You seem to have failed to explain why they went above and beyond with Hyenas to make absolutely worst game they could have, with utterly revolting and unlikeable characters, boring as hell gameplay and setting that makes Bethesda writers look like Shakespeare incarnates.

Your giving bethesda too much praise. XD Pretty sure both are bad at this point.

[bofan]

Plausible, but I reserve to press X to doubt because "I'm telling you - this is exactly what happened".

[WE REQUIRE MORE VESPENE GAS]

Originally posted by AkumulatoR:

You seem to have failed to explain why they went above and beyond with Hyenas to make absolutely worst game they could have, with utterly revolting and unlikeable characters, boring as hell gameplay and setting that makes Bethesda writers look like Shakespeare incarnates.

Oh that's easy. They don't know what a game like Hyenas looks like. These guys have never developed something like Hyenas in their lives.

Okay here's the thing, okay? There are no lions in China. There are LOTS of lions in Africa. You are an african. You have been around lions your whole life. You have joined a Chinese company to develop a... taxidermy lion.

Soon after you joined, you find out literally nobody - not a single SOUL in your new team has ever seen a lion. They know a lion has 4 legs. Maybe a fuzzy head. They've seen pictures, right? You've shown them pictures. But then they ask really strange questions, like "Do lions drink water? Do lions sleep standing up?" Like to you, these are stupid questions, and you wonder why they ask them - until you figure out in NONE of the pictures that they have seen, is there a picture of a lion drinking water or sleeping.

So you do your best. You try to help them figure it out. At the end of the day, you show THIS product to your customers:

https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/i5i2e9/went_to_the_shanghai_natural_history_museum_today/

And all your African friends are like, what the ♥♥♥♥ is that? Have you guys NEVER seen a Lion before?

And yeah, actually, yeah... that's it. They've never seen a lion before. And this is the best they could do.

[AkumulatoR]

Originally posted by WE REQUIRE MORE VESPENE GAS:

Originally posted by AkumulatoR:

You seem to have failed to explain why they went above and beyond with Hyenas to make absolutely worst game they could have, with utterly revolting and unlikeable characters, boring as hell gameplay and setting that makes Bethesda writers look like Shakespeare incarnates.

Oh that's easy. They don't know what a game like Hyenas looks like. These guys have never developed something like Hyenas in their lives.

Okay here's the thing, okay? There are no lions in China. There are LOTS of lions in Africa. You are an african. You have been around lions your whole life. You have joined a Chinese company to develop a... taxidermy lion.

Soon after you joined, you find out literally nobody - not a single SOUL in your new team has ever seen a lion. They know a lion has 4 legs. Maybe a fuzzy head. They've seen pictures, right? You've shown them pictures. But then they ask really strange questions, like "Do lions drink water? Do lions sleep standing up?" Like to you, these are stupid questions, and you wonder why they ask them - until you figure out in NONE of the pictures that they have seen, is there a picture of a lion drinking water or sleeping.

So you do your best. You try to help them figure it out. At the end of the day, you show THIS product to your customers:

https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/i5i2e9/went_to_the_shanghai_natural_history_museum_today/

And all your African friends are like, what the ♥♥♥♥ is that? Have you guys NEVER seen a Lion before?

And yeah, actually, yeah... that's it. They've never seen a lion before. And this is the best they could do.

Yeah I don't buy it. You can only screw things up with basic incompetence so much, this was deliberately made that way. And it's not like they are all inept interns or something. They made that Alien game, also totally out of their expertise, a Lion in China as you say, and it turned out very well and was generally praised by everyone.

[Art]

SEGA aren't going to want to release the Total War franchise to another company. It's too popular and has too much potential for revenue.

I see the most likely outcome will be a complete restructure of CA, effectively getting rid of the CA we knew of/know of today and making a "new CA" while retaining the original name and branding. This way they keep the reputation CA has earned over the years while in reality it's a completely different company behind the scenes.

[Jámez Bondo]

I don't believe incompetence alone explains it. They clearly went overboard with their "mission" and failed to realize that this kind of media is already well on the decline, so it would look like parody once it would hit the shelves.

[Brohan Creates]

Originally posted by Art:

SEGA aren't going to want to release the Total War franchise to another company. It's too popular and has too much potential for revenue.

I see the most likely outcome will be a complete restructure of CA, effectively getting rid of the CA we knew of/know of today and making a "new CA" while retaining the original name and branding. This way they keep the reputation CA has earned over the years while in reality it's a completely different company behind the scenes.

They can actually give the license to someone. Technically SEGA owns TW. CA is like saying 343 develops Halo but MS OWNS halo. Same with SEGA and TW. I think CA is going to get dissolved and they will ask a new company to be their TW developer.

[raynay]

Not sure if Hyena was started as an idea by ca or sega, but what i heard in GBOG video it was first based on the engine of alien isolation (said to be recieved good, guess must have been a asian/indian lion^^) but was to labor intensive to wrap hyenas around and midway they switched to unreal engine(?) and had to redo lots of steps and with the sunken cost fallacy they did it with lo(s)t time&money despite at that time devs and the the market would call for a stop asap...hope lesson learned and they can gather all thats needed to make wh3 the final part of the triology we all (well most when looking that forum) deserve.