Days Gone devs are getting back in the saddle and hiring someone with live service experience

Days Gone is that zombie x motorbike open world game (except they were at pains to point out that Freakers weren't zombies) that Sony did for PS4 in 2019, and ported to PC in 2021 - both years after people were done with Sons Of Anarchy as a thing. As alluded to in The Maw this week, there hasn't been much news out of Bend Studios since then, but they're now hiring for a lead project manager for "crafting our next high-profile AAA title." Another clue? The successful applicant must have experience "with an emphasis on live operations" and "in leadership roles shipping AAA live service games". Hmmm.

Days Gone was a single-player sort-of-RPG action adventure in a big map, starring a former MC outlaw called, against all probability, Deacon St. John. I was very disappointed it's not prounced Sinjun, but you can't have everything in life. As Deacon you roared about on your cool motorbike and did missions, while searching for your missing-presumed-dead wife. You know these games, you've played these games. The pivot to live service would be a pretty big change for the studio, therefore (though they did do an Uncharted card game for the Vita that had asynchronous multiplayer).

It looks Bend are switching workflow styles as well, since the job listing emphasises, a lot, that the applicant should be experienced in agile workflows, and switching from waterfall to agile. Waterfall, from my hasty Googling, is the kind of development approach where you work in sequential order, and each stage more or less relies on the previous stage being done, while agile is a flexible approach with less planning where you test and iterate over a lot of short stretches. Personally I think agile sounds fucking diabolical to do, but I'm not in the business of making AAA live service games. Whatever the case, big changes could be afoot at Bend, which will no doubt be conducive to a trouble-free development cycle.

It's sort of a shame, I think, that in response to everyone getting a bit tired of live service games, big publishers keep going "but if we make the best live service game, then we'll make all the money!". Maybe development on this potential live service game from Bend started back when we all still liked them, or maybe Bend just started and by the time it's out the public opinion worm will have turned again. It's possible to make live service games people love, either way. Just look at Helldivers 2! Edders wrote about how it's broken from the live service mould.

In complete fairness, Days Gone's director Jeff Ross did say that the pitched sequel to Day's Gone included a "shared universe with co-op play", which does sound quite live-service-y, but Ross left the studio in 2022. The creative director John Garvin, who also left Bend, made Bend basically disavow him with an all-timer Tweet in 2022 blaming the game's mixed reviews on, yes, sure, some technical bugs, and "woke reviewers who couldn't handle a gruff white biker looking at his date's ass", which is extremely funny given how milquetoast Deacon Sinjun actually is if you play the game.

Maybe this job will be filled by one of the 900 people Sony layed off in February.