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Insomniac Games Swells To Over 520 Employees

nowhat

Member
I know. Who gives a shit about the opinion of gaffers on gaf. We should poll reddit, twitter or times square instead.
We should, and the results would be just as valid!

An open online poll, despite the target audience and its size, means fuck all. While there certainly are issues with official polling and sample sizes (or sample selection, rather), open online polls only get one to say "gotcha!". Or alternatively, "too few votes, doesn't count!". But neither means anything, statistically speaking.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
We should, and the results would be just as valid!

An open online poll, despite the target audience and its size, means fuck all. While there certainly are issues with official polling and sample sizes (or sample selection, rather), open online polls only get one to say "gotcha!". Or alternatively, "too few votes, doesn't count!". But neither means anything, statistically speaking.
We are literally talking about opinions here. IMO, getting spiderman 2 a year or two early instead of ratchet and miles is a good deal. I have pointed out why. Even gave sales figures. Which everyone seems to conveniently ignore and just label my opinion a bad take or trolling. Fine, lets ask everyone else on this board and see if they agree. Hardly needs to be scientific if we all agree that its just for people on this forum. So you guys look at 11 million vs 30 million and say nah, it makes good business sense, and then when asked to poll other gaffers, you are like nah, pass.
 

nowhat

Member
We are literally talking about opinions here. IMO, getting spiderman 2 a year or two early instead of ratchet and miles is a good deal. I have pointed out why. Even gave sales figures. Which everyone seems to conveniently ignore and just label my opinion a bad take or trolling. Fine, lets ask everyone else on this board and see if they agree. Hardly needs to be scientific if we all agree that its just for people on this forum. So you guys look at 11 million vs 30 million and say nah, it makes good business sense, and then when asked to poll other gaffers, you are like nah, pass.
I am so confused who "you guys" are in this instance. I'm looking forward to Spider-man (respect the hyphen!) 2, and whatever Insomniac puts out next. Hopefully Wolverine will be more violent (because it would fit the character).

But that doesn't change the fact that "do a poll on it!" is just weak, at best.
 

jm89

Member
We are literally talking about opinions here. IMO, getting spiderman 2 a year or two early instead of ratchet and miles is a good deal.
But those games would have to come out eventually? So release Spiderman 2 and then release miles and ratchet?

I mean one way or another those dev resources are gonna get used if those games are coming out.
 
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Lupin25

Member
Sigh. my entire point is that if they hadnt wasted two years on miles and another two years on ratchet, spiderman 2 wouldve been out earlier than 3 years after this gen started.

I love ratchet but lets face it, you and I both would prefer a true next Spiderman over it. You, me and 29 million other spiderman buyers who skipped Ratchet.

That would’ve been nice, but Insomniac is ultimately Sony’s most efficient studio, so developing a partial sequel for the launch of the ps5 (and ps4) just made sense. And there was no way Sony was going to pump out a full ps5 only sequel at launch to a low install.

Face it, most devs delay their next-gen only cycles because of it just to take advantage. You were never in a million years getting a Spider Man 2 one year after launch. And that decision was intentional. 🤣🤣🤣
 
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This is the worst news article I have ever seen. It’s literally one snippet of info on a company, pulled from LinkedIn. That’s it. Just, “we saw on LinkedIn this company has 520 employees.” Like, want to give any more information? Like, maybe how many employees they had last year? And how many the year before, as a point of comparison? What’s their rate of increasing staff? Maybe contact them to see if they want to provide a statement on their increasing team size? Instead, just… nothing.

It’s just breathtaking
 
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gow3isben

Member
Lets be real the new Ratchet game was actually a Rivet game with Ratchet on the side. Focus on your main duo and it will sell better. Ratchet and Clank is still a big name.
 

Yoboman

Member
Thought it would be interesting to see how they stack up to other first party. Insomniac is one of the biggest now

  • Naughty Dog is at 798
  • Insomniac is 522
  • Bungie is getting huge with 1,545 employees
  • Guerrilla has 418 employees
  • Santa Monica has 342 employees
  • Firesprite has 237 employees
  • Sucker Punch with 185 could grow a bit I feel
  • Firewalk has 133 employees
  • Haven also has 133 employees
  • Bend Studio 118 employees
  • London Studio 103 employees
  • Media Molecule has 100 employees
  • Bluepoint has 74 people
  • Housemarque surprisingly growing fast with 104 employees
  • Polyphony has 74
  • Team Asobi has 11 with these two I'm not sure if LinkedIn is much used in Japan though
  • Savage Game Studios is 30 employees
  • Nixxes is 72 employees
  • Valkyrie is 43 employees
  • San Diego Studios hasnt got a LinkedIn page for some reason
  • PixelOpus only has 1 employee? Maybe it's new page looks like the employees there link their profile to Playstation same as San Diego
  • Deviation (not bought yet) is at 131 employees

For interest if we look at Xbox

  • Mojang 965 employees
  • Zenimax Online 527 employees
  • Bethesda Game Studios 446 employees
  • Bethesda Softworks 1,112 employees
  • 343 has 422 employees
  • Playground Games has 375 employees
  • id Software has 293 employees
  • Rare has 289 employees
  • Arkane 265 employees
  • Obsidian has 263 employees
  • Turn 10 203 employees
  • Coalition has 182 employees
  • Machine Games 150 employees
  • Ninja Theory 137 employees
  • Undead Labs 135 employees
  • inXile 119 employees
  • Compulsion Games 82 employees
  • Double fine 79 employees
  • The Initiative has 49 employees
  • Alpha Dog 22 employees
  • Worlds Edge 11 employees
  • TangoGameworks 13 employees - same as Sony Japanese company LinkedIn presence
With Activision

  • Blizzard 5,808 employees (obviously multiple studios under them)
  • King 3,163 employees
  • Infinity Ward 658 employees
  • Sledgehammer Games 563 employees
  • Treyarch 592 employees
  • Beenox 492 employees
  • Raven Software 364 employees
  • High Moon Studios 260 employees
  • Toys for Bob 146 employees
  • Digital Legends 103 employees
 
Its good to see. They are the most productive of Sony's studios, so give them more resources to be even more productive.
Do we know how many teams they run? Most teams are around 150-200 per game, so it makes me think they may have three games in production at the moment.
Spiderman 2
Wolverine
???
 
Finally, enough people to make Fuse 2

FuseInsomniacGames.jpg
 
Thought it would be interesting to see how they stack up to other first party. Insomniac is one of the biggest now

  • Naughty Dog is at 798
  • Insomniac is 522
  • Bungie is getting huge with 1,545 employees
  • Guerrilla has 418 employees
  • Santa Monica has 342 employees
  • Firesprite has 237 employees
  • Sucker Punch with 185 could grow a bit I feel
  • Firewalk has 133 employees
  • Haven also has 133 employees
  • Bend Studio 118 employees
  • London Studio 103 employees
  • Media Molecule has 100 employees
  • Bluepoint has 74 people
  • Housemarque surprisingly growing fast with 104 employees
  • Polyphony has 74
  • Team Asobi has 11 with these two I'm not sure if LinkedIn is much used in Japan though
  • Savage Game Studios is 30 employees
  • Nixxes is 72 employees
  • Valkyrie is 43 employees
  • San Diego Studios hasnt got a LinkedIn page for some reason
  • PixelOpus only has 1 employee? Maybe it's new page looks like the employees there link their profile to Playstation same as San Diego
  • Deviation (not bought yet) is at 131 employees

For interest if we look at Xbox

  • Mojang 965 employees
  • Zenimax Online 527 employees
  • Bethesda Game Studios 446 employees
  • Bethesda Softworks 1,112 employees
  • 343 has 422 employees
  • Playground Games has 375 employees
  • id Software has 293 employees
  • Rare has 289 employees
  • Arkane 265 employees
  • Obsidian has 263 employees
  • Turn 10 203 employees
  • Coalition has 182 employees
  • Machine Games 150 employees
  • Ninja Theory 137 employees
  • Undead Labs 135 employees
  • inXile 119 employees
  • Compulsion Games 82 employees
  • Double fine 79 employees
  • The Initiative has 49 employees
  • Alpha Dog 22 employees
  • Worlds Edge 11 employees
  • TangoGameworks 13 employees - same as Sony Japanese company LinkedIn presence
With Activision

  • Blizzard 5,808 employees (obviously multiple studios under them)
  • King 3,163 employees
  • Infinity Ward 658 employees
  • Sledgehammer Games 563 employees
  • Treyarch 592 employees
  • Beenox 492 employees
  • Raven Software 364 employees
  • High Moon Studios 260 employees
  • Toys for Bob 146 employees
  • Digital Legends 103 employees
After ABK Sony will have around 5,500 devs and Microsoft will have around 16,500 devs.
 

sono

Member
This studio has not put a foot wrong for me. I hope bigger numbers does not affect that
 
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Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
How is this possible by the way? Do they now have three teams?
They do. When Sony acquired Insomniac, they bumped them up from 2 teams to 3 teams.

Previously, they had 2 teams:
  • Brian Intihar's team (Spider-Man PS4)
  • Marcus Smith's team (Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart)
Sony brought in more devs and promoted Brian Horton to lead his own team (promoted from Design Director to Creative Director). That team created Miles Morales.

The current state is now:
  1. Brian Intihar's (Spider-Man 2)
  2. Brian Horton's (Wolverine)
  3. Marcus Smith's (the new Multiplayer IP)
 
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CamHostage

Member
If these 500 devs didnt waste their time on Miles DLC and Ratchet, Spiderman 2 wouldve come out by holiday 2021 or spring 2022 at best. serving the same purpose.

If Spider-Man 2 had released two years ago, it would not have been the Spider-Man 2 we'll be getting in 2023.

All that intermediate work is feeding into the next project; tech and approaches to tech and experience/failures with tech developed for Rift Apart and Miles Morales is what's going into making Spider-Man 2.
 
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CamHostage

Member
And it’s not a simple case of throwing more devs game comes out faster either. You have to iterate, test new ideas, rewrite. They are not building stacks over there, shits not a database update.

Plus, we've all heard the phrase, "If you want something done, ask a busy person"?

Maintaining a rapid release schedule has pushed Insomniac to be among the most prolific and technology advanced studios at the same time. Most of the questions about how to use emerging tech a different developer might have, Insomniac has already tested it and worked with it (and failed with it in some ways that we maybe didn't notice or know about, ) and now they have control over it and understanding to take full advantage of it. They go to work, they ship product, they assess the project, and they get back to work.

If Insomniac was still puttering and murmuring in the lab with their first project going, "Hmm, raytracing, raytracing... what's the perfect way to use raytracing....?" , they might still be on the drawing board today.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
If Spider-Man 2 had released two years ago, it would not have been the Spider-Man 2 we'll be getting in 2023.

All that intermediate work is feeding into the next project; tech and approaches to tech and experience/failures with tech developed for Rift Apart and Miles Morales is what's gong into making Spider-Man 2.
Sorry but working on a last gen game for 2 years is not going to feed into their next project. I could see you make that case for Ratchet, but fucking Miles? Come on. It's a gigantic waste of everyone's time.
 
I wonder if their next game after Wolverine will be a new IP, Ratchet or something else
I'm sure they've already pitched it to Sony. If Sony approved, they might even be in prepre-production, just right now it's all hands on deck for Spider-Man 2. Then onto Wolverine, which is likely using the same engine as Spider-Man 2 so that should help speed things up. 520 is a pretty big number, that can be broken up into 2, maybe even 3 with one being a smaller one.

I'm with you tho, I would like to see what kind of new IP they could come up with. I think most game studios have overlapping projects, my fingers are crossed it's a new IP!
 

JaksGhost

Member
Sorry but working on a last gen game for 2 years is not going to feed into their next project. I could see you make that case for Ratchet, but fucking Miles? Come on. It's a gigantic waste of everyone's time.
Yet it sold millions upon million of copies and helped create this firestorm for Spider-Man 2. You're just out of touch because time is money and that game made plenty of it which helped fuel the hiring surge too at Insomniac.
 
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CamHostage

Member
Sorry but working on a last gen game for 2 years is not going to feed into their next project. I could see you make that case for Ratchet, but fucking Miles? Come on. It's a gigantic waste of everyone's time.

Talk with any developer and they will tell you that past projects on different platforms absolutely do feed into the next work even on more advanced hardware. (Also, none of these are simply "last gen games" that were built for PS4 and then rezzed up, Insomniac did tons of work specifically with PS5 on the 2 Spideys and Ratchet.)

Heck, listen to Insomniac talk about its own experience...

" I would even say some stuff that is essential to the Spider-Man game turned out to be cool for Ratchet, and then has some awesome quality effect on that game that we maybe wouldn’t have put in if we’d only been making Ratchet"
Mike Fitzgerald, core technology director at developer Insomniac Games
 
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SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
If these 500 devs didnt waste their time on Miles DLC and Ratchet, Spiderman 2 wouldve come out by holiday 2021 or spring 2022 at best. serving the same purpose.
Game development isn't like that, not everyone works on the same thing at the same time.

Expansions and DLC are often a way for companies to give art and level creators something to do when a new project isn't ready for them yet.

In this cases, it's not even people from the same team.
 

Varteras

Gold Member
I saw this thread pop back up and I thought it said "Insomniac Games sells over 520 employees". I thought, "Jesus CHRIST! Who the fuck does Ted Price owe money to that he's openly bringing back the slave trade"?!
 

CamHostage

Member
Game development isn't like that, not everyone works on the same thing at the same time.

Expansions and DLC are often a way for companies to give art and level creators something to do when a new project isn't ready for them yet.

In this cases, it's not even people from the same team.

Right, it's not like all those 500 people are there writing special-sauce PS5 code. Most are building car models, or animating swing cycles, or writing dialog trees, or formulating and mixing sound effects. They're busy doing just plain "work"

...Conceptually, sure, Insomniac could have done what some other studios have done and work only on "next-gen" technology from the day the PS5 dev kits arrived, and not put any work out until 2022/2023/202X, mastering it and making sure it was mature for production use.

They could have waited for the winds to be perfect...

However, waiting for the tech to be perfect has not sped up any other developer in putting out their "real next-gen games." (Hellblade 2, still waiting...) It hasn't yet produced a current-gen-only game that is unquestionably superior to cross-gen work. (Ratchet and Flight Sim look pretty great, but then so do Horizon and Fz Horizon; all those UE5 demos look sweet, but there's nothing still to play.) And although it has been painful for us gamers to wait for dev tools to mature (in a way that we haven't been so prolonged in past generations,) it hasn't proven to be the best way for any game developer of any level to work with this generation's technology advancements. (Maybe in 2024 we'll look back and see what it was worth to spend the time heads-down in tech, but it's unimaginable that we'll regret having had new games to play for 3 years in the meantime.)

Also, it's just not Insomniac's work style.
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
It pushed PS5s and sold millions

How is it a waste of time?
Why is it always sales to you? Are you a stock holder? Do you make money when sony sells consoles and ships millions?

I could give two shits about how much miles sold. It was a safe sequel that featured the same city and barely did anything to change the formula or push the PS5's capabilities. I am a gamer first and Miles is not what I expect from PS5 first party exclusives.

Talk with any developer and they will tell you that past projects on different platforms absolutely do feed into the next work even on more advanced hardware. (Also, none of these are simply "last gen games" that were built for PS4 and then rezzed up, Insomniac did tons of work specifically with PS5 on the 2 Spideys and Ratchet.)

Heck, listen to Insomniac talk about its own experience...

" I would even say some stuff that is essential to the Spider-Man game turned out to be cool for Ratchet, and then has some awesome quality effect on that game that we maybe wouldn’t have put in if we’d only been making Ratchet"
Mike Fitzgerald, core technology director at developer Insomniac Games
Are you seriously arguing that the two years they could've spent developing Spiderman 2 on PS5 were better spent on Miles? That is beyond insane. The REAL dev needs to be done on Spiderman 2. All FIVE years should be spent prototyping new systems, creating NEW levels, assets and cities, boss fights taking full advantage of the PS5 IO, SSD and CPU. They will learn nothing from making the same boss fights, using the same cities, creating the same assets on the same engine because the last gen game will limit how much they can push the IO and CPU. The only real next gen upgrade we got was ray traced reflections. So they learned one thing that they couldve learned while making ratchet. And thats just the next gen stuff. The cutscene directors, the actors, the level designers, all had to make stuff for Miles in those two years instead of working on Spiderman 2. Unless of course, they made Miles on their spare time on the side as a pet project.

Lastly, telling me that Miles is not a last gen game that was built for PS4 and rezzed up makes me question everything you say. It is the definition of a game built for PS4 and ressed up. I must be living in the twilight zone.
 
Why is it always sales to you? Are you a stock holder? Do you make money when sony sells consoles and ships millions?

When you say things like “it’s a waste of everyone’s time” you are speaking for everyone

If you had your way there’d be no launch titles for PS5 and it would have been a wasteland until 2022

Clearly Sony made the right business decision and consumers loved it as well
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
When you say things like “it’s a waste of everyone’s time” you are speaking for everyone

If you had your way there’d be no launch titles for PS5 and it would have been a wasteland until 2022

Clearly Sony made the right business decision and consumers loved it as well
I only speak for myself. Its an expression. My main point was that the time spent making what is essentially a $40 expansion selling for $50 with a next gen tax would've better spending developing a full $70 game that wouldve come out a lot faster had 100-200 devs not been forced to work on something else for 2 years.

If these 500 devs didnt waste their time on Miles DLC and Ratchet, Spiderman 2 wouldve come out by holiday 2021 or spring 2022 at best. serving the same purpose.
This was my original statement. It's fairly accurate to say that if they had begun work on spiderman 2 right away, it wouldve come out a year or 2 earlier.
 

Dr. Claus

Vincit qui se vincit
I only speak for myself. Its an expression. My main point was that the time spent making what is essentially a $40 expansion selling for $50 with a next gen tax would've better spending developing a full $70 game that wouldve come out a lot faster had 100-200 devs not been forced to work on something else for 2 years.


This was my original statement. It's fairly accurate to say that if they had begun work on spiderman 2 right away, it wouldve come out a year or 2 earlier.

You are absolutely right. And given that Miles felt... anemic and heavy handed in its writing and Ratchet was easily the worst in the franchise - I don't think their time was spent wisely.

Just let me play as Black Suit Spidey and kick people off bridges.
 
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My main point was that the time spent making what is essentially a $40 expansion selling for $50 with a next gen tax would've better spending developing a full $70 game that wouldve come out a lot faster had 100-200 devs not been forced to work on something else for 2 years.

We’d be optimistically looking at fall 2022 release

All big AAA games are taking at least 4 years now, let alone those “re tooled for next gen” which we haven’t really seen yet

Clearly Song made the better business decision
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
We’d be optimistically looking at fall 2022 release

All big AAA games are taking at least 4 years now, let alone those “re tooled for next gen” which we haven’t really seen yet

Clearly Song made the better business decision
If games are taking 4 years to make then why take away those precious resources away from these games and delaying them by a full year?

Spiderman will do GOW and Zelda like numbers. $700 million in 3 days. A billion in a couple of months. Not getting it out last year cost them an extra billion for the fiscal year. If they dont make ratchet which only sold 1 million and didnt even make the NPD top 20 that year, you get Spiderman 2 out a year earlier in 2021. You then release Spiderman 3 in 2024 3 years later and make another billion in the first two months. I am struggling to see why releasing a game that tops out at 1-2 million plus $40-50 dlc that sells 1/3 of the actual game is a good move over direct sequels.
 
Spiderman will do GOW and Zelda like numbers. $700 million in 3 days. A billion in a couple of months. Not getting it out last year cost them an extra billion for the fiscal year. I

They didn’t need that money for last year, they had GowR

And they got hundreds of millions for miles in 2020 they wouldn’t otherwise have
 
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I am struggling to see why releasing a game that tops out at 1-2 million plus $40-50 dlc that sells 1/3 of the actual game is a good move over direct sequels.

Because otherwise you go two years with no big exclusives for your new system?

You need something to push ps5 sales

This is basic stuff man
 
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WildBoy

Member
They're a comic book game studio now, which is quite sad to see.

Ratchet on PS5 was outstanding. They could either do more with that or make some changes to the formula and shake it up a bit, or they could do something new with the Resistance franchise that people have been asking to come back for many years.
Outstanding? Lol
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Because most of those folks would be spinning their wheels waiting for the game to enter full production
This isnt sonys first rodeo. This is their 5th console. They have 20 studios who have gone through this. By 2018, we had the gonzalo chips and their internal studios shouldve had a good idea on what the specs were going to be. We had 10 tflops GPUs, SSDs and 8 core 16 thread CPUs in 2016. I'd argue Sony should've had their devs begin pre-production before Spiderman finished dev in 2018.

This stuff used to be pretty standard just a gen ago. Nobody at GG was spinning their wheels waiting for anything while they made KZSF. While sucker punch made Infamous and Evolution made driveclub.
 
This isnt sonys first rodeo. This is their 5th console. They have 20 studios who have gone through this. By 2018, we had the gonzalo chips and their internal studios shouldve had a good idea on what the specs were going to be. We had 10 tflops GPUs, SSDs and 8 core 16 thread CPUs in 2016. I'd argue Sony should've had their devs begin pre-production before Spiderman finished dev in 2018.

This stuff used to be pretty standard just a gen ago. Nobody at GG was spinning their wheels waiting for anything while they made KZSF. While sucker punch made Infamous and Evolution made driveclub.

Miles is the equivalent of Shadowfall, a 6 hour game with some next gen bells and whistles
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Because otherwise you go two years with no big exclusives for your new system?

You need something to push ps5 sales

This is basic stuff man
well, whose fault is that? You had GG ship their last game in Februarry 2017. Have them work on next gen game instead of wasting their time on a cross gen game. SSM shipped their game in April 2018. Have them work on a next gen game. Greenlight Days Gone 2 right away in April 2019 instead of having them waste 6 months pitching days gone 2 then another year and a half pitching uncharted, and maybe its out by holiday 2022. This is a self inflicted wound.

Sony was in the perfect place to ship a bunch of year 1 and year 2 games having shipped games 2-3 years before 2020. They went to insomniac to bail them out at the very end and its a shame because ratchet and miles both prove Insmoniac is very productive and very talented, but they shouldnt have had to pick up the slack of other devs who chose to make last gen games.

Miles is the equivalent of Shadowfall, a 6 hour game with some next gen bells and whistles
Oh come on.

KZSF's original reveal level looks better than Miles with RT reflections.

We have all seen this gif.

0f2916f739da048e14adddb0fdb97f2a_w200.gif


Obviously we all know KZSF sucked ass as a game, but as a techincal showpiece it had a lot more next gen bells and whistles than Miles.
 
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Pelta88

Member
How many employees did insom have when they shipped Spidey 2018?

I think that would make an interesting comparison.
 
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