Analytic Dreamz: Notorious Mass Effect - "MINDSEYE DEVELOPER UNDERGOING LAYOFFS LESS THAN A MONTH AFTER LAUNCH"

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

Linktree: ⁠https://linktr.ee/Analytic⁠Become A Patron Of The Notorious Mass Effect Podcast For Additional Bonus Audio And Visual Content For All Things Nme! Join Our Patreon Here: ⁠https://ow.ly/oPsc50VBOuH⁠On Notorious Mass Effect, Analytic Dreamz examines the fallout from Build A Rocket Boy’s MindsEye, launched June 10, 2025, and the subsequent layoffs impacting over 100 employees. With a “Mostly Negative” Steam rating and Sony issuing refunds due to bugs and poor performance, the studio, founded by ex-Rockstar president Leslie Benzies, faces uncertainty. Analytic Dreamz explores the 45-day UK redundancy consultation, C-suite exits, and the shaky future of the Everywhere platform and MindsEye 2, contextualizing this within 2025’s broader gaming industry layoffs. Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Now, I just want to start off by saying, you know, when it comes to game review and sales roundup that I do frequently for every single video, but not every single one, but you know, the big video games, you're probably wondering, why in the world is this one of the games you're doing a review of? Well, because it is definitely one of the more pivotal changes in the gaming industry. As whenever you say you're an ex-president of a certain company. And then your next installment or your next offering to the gaming community is something that's abysmal to the point where everybody has to speak on it being trash. You know that you probably was an ex-president for a reason. Shepard, just look at the state of gaming. Like, what is going on? Sometimes I think to myself, what is going on with the game we're covering today?

That is mine's eye. because currently on PC, because you know when it comes to this game, it's currently out on PS5, Xbox Series X and PC, of course. But it initially released June 10th of this year. And let's just say there's exactly 57 people playing this game on Steam. I mean, I get the point as far as looking at the analytics and not saying, well, and thinking to yourself, well, just because something doesn't sell well, does not mean it's absolutely garbage right i say that frequently throughout my podcast if you sell a lot

does not mean you make the highest quality but if you don't sell at all it doesn't mean you make it absolute garbage maybe the consumption just isn't there you know the two don't correlate but for this it is very indicative of the quality because let me just tell you there is not one single review that scored this higher than a five so when it comes to a review of course you're probably wondering what is wrong with this game well everything now just play we're going to specifically get into what's wrong because of course we don't want to just dog pile on a game without getting objective facts so as far as objectively speaking the game is crashing there's low frame rates those bugs as far as the review roundup everybody has came out to

say or came out to say that the missions are poorly designed is basically very very very atrocious combat and when it comes to the whole cyberpunk being brought into GTA type of mashup it was not executed properly at all and then of course when you bundle that with the fact that now there's been a lot of internal turmoil and management departures to the point where sea suit exits as far as the chief legal officer and chief financial officer both was left one week before launch they basically looked at this game and said to themselves what is going on in the state of minds life because when it comes to the studio which at this point build a rocket boy do not want to be attached to this game but we have to do it because they are objectively speaking

the studio behind this game so build a rocket board made this game of course it was founded by leslie bensie bensie leslie bensies i'm not going to put up the picture because you know we ain't try to do all that I'm just letting you know the people behind this atrocity so this is the X rock star rock star games president and then when it comes to the reviews already said is mostly negative but of course me getting into review roundups and sales roundups i just got to let you know this game's not selling well at all i looked at the playstation the Xbox analytics obviously is not there at all when it comes to the steam there's 57 people playing the game right now and let's just say that's not a great message that's not a great message

So when it comes to layoffs, it was a huge deal because of course a lot of people was talking about how there was redundancies and it was described as a painful process within this studio. And then the focus started to shift to post launch support long term performance optimization and rebuilding community trust because of the ultimate perception that is now negative towards this game. as when this game initially was founded right and they was basically proposing this game to a lot of people not a lot of people wanted to pick it up because of the uncertainty of it being able to work especially with their main claim to fame being an ex rock star president so now we kind of see why everybody was hesitant to pick the game up because not only were there only a lot of layoffs but it's very indicative of the gaming industry as people who've put out a good game have been getting laid off. I mean, we're talking about Key Studios affected like free jams, splash damage, Piranha games,

Ubisoft. The list goes on and on. People are getting let go left and right in just the workforce, but more specifically the gaming industry, even if you do put out a good game. So with Monzae being complete garbage can as far as quality, people are expeditiously being left off or let go so mine's eye was intended to rival gt a but now it's seemingly not going to be a for any future installments into this particular game because a lot of people don't like it i mean so many scores have came out and everybody just talks about how the overall atmosphere is just straight boring highlighting a lot of the flashy graphics and cinematics but then you realize it's a buggy mess and lack substance because of course if you're running this game

and it's is glitching throughout the map is it's freezing on you if you have one of the more optimized PC and the land as far as a gaming PC and it's still not working and you come to realize that not only is this game breaking down on consoles but even on PCs when you come to look at the performance issue whether it's the the trouble launch of course you know a lot of people talked about that compared to to cyberpunk, which I do think is fair as far as cyberpunk being compared to this game on the objectively buggy level because we all know the abysmal launch that cyberpunk had. But of course, they came back and completely renovated the game to the point where, in my opinion, it's one of the greatest games ever made.

So you could come back to it if you have a strong foundation except when it comes to Monzaa, they, it's far from a solid foundation. Um, the main story as far as people who want to play this game for themselves, because of course, at the end of the day, I just give you to review roundup and sales round up and let you do of that information, which you will. So if you did want to play the game, just know the main story is estimated to be 14 to 18 hours if you just play the main story, um, exclusively. But if you wanted to do the side content as well, it's going to be 18 to 30 hours as far as

how much you can get out of this game. But it definitely depends on how much you're willing to tolerate as far as the low quality that you will be playing. So of course, there's been no future announcements regarding console as far as additional DOC for this game. And when it comes to the technical issues already went over that as far as the community, they've already came out with hopes of a significant post-launch improvement because people who purchase this game are not trying to hear.

hear all of these layoffs. They're trying to hear, are you going to fix the game that I pay $70 for? Because when it comes to this, this is actually one of the worst launches we've ever seen in the gaming industry. And when it comes to the overall people in the game and still playing it, the 24 hour peak was 82. The all-time peak was 14 days ago at 3,000. I mean, at this point, I'm actively giving them premium promotion, even though we're, trash in the game because you know some people say all promotion is good promotion and i wasn't even going to cover this game but the way that they just lay people off as soon as the game came out kind of just showed you how the inner turmoil was ultimately um elevating to a point where we just couldn't

ignore it anymore because of course when it comes to the layoffs in the scope of the layoffs they there's been a hundred plus employees at risk and of course it's not officially going to be confirmed by the studio because who wants to say oh yeah we just it's just uh uh inner uh storm going on and it's just all bad like what studio is going to come out and be like you know what y'all are exactly right as far as us just not knowing what we're doing and firing people left and right because if you if you have a certain number of people working on a game and it's already bad and then you let those people go and now it doesn't seem like you're gonna have more people joining your team so now you have less people and it's already a buggy mess seemingly this game has no type of savior that's going to come

through and save this game so when i'm talking about certain games as far as in the gaming landscape just remember for every split fiction for every expedition 33 there are a ton of monzies out here just completely showcasing why it is good to focus on the high quality games because if you Don't then you get stuff like this, right? So I didn't want to just completely trash this game. I wanted to give objective reasons for why this game is getting bad scores throughout the gaming industry, but I also wanted to let you know that when it comes to the studio, because that's the main thing.

People need to start putting names to these video games when it comes to developers and presidents because when it comes to build a Rocket Boy, the next time they're attached to a game, you can always, remember that they made Monsai so when it comes to a good game I mean ultimately Expedition 33 is out there Eldon ring night rain there was another game that just dropped not too long ago death stranding to just drop there's a lot of games out there that you could play besides this so unless you just want to suffer as a gamer I would not play this game I would not even I wouldn't even

offer to play the game it feels for free so it's like even if the game's free you don't want to put yourself through this because of course when it comes to an objectively buggy game that means that you could be playing a mission it could crash on you whenever it wants to and now you have to start all the way over so i don't think you want to go through that so um the cyberpunk is a launch is something that you could definitely compare this to as far as it having a lot of similarities um with that being said just ultimately one of the worst performing games of 2025. Overall, I did watch a lot of gameplay as far as this particular game.

And you could see where they're going as far as the story and wanting to make a GTA type of, no, no, make a cyberpunk type of game set in the GTA landscape as far as more modern, less of people just being completely like redone with robot parts, right? So you can kind of see what they're coming from as far as a story aspect. but overall the execution is just abysmal. It's nothing short of an atrocity. And as far as build a rocket boy in the impact that's going to have on that studio,

we've already seen it. As with Monsai 2, setting to have a focus on multiplayer, seemingly it's not going to happen for quite some time because now with the original Monsai doing horrendously on the charts and and people living rooms and wherever you play the game at it's just not performing well so um it's a lot of these future installments are going to be shelved as far as multi-player being to focus um after the fact because now nobody's playing the game and that's what happens when you

release a buggy mess and the whole world has the internet to let you know how much of a buggy mess it is so it was worth of nothing else i was wanting to get into um i just want to let you know that they laid off a bunch of people like I said 100 plus employees obviously they got they're not going to come out and confirm those numbers but it's a lot of employees not even talking about the UK staff total the global head count being 500 so when you're looking to let off 100 plus employees safe to say that over one third of their workforce is going to be affected if we're not counting the global head count so as far as that If you want to play one of the most talked about games for all the wrong reasons, then have at it.

But as far as the review Roundup, IGN came out, gave us a 4 out of 10 talking about how it lacked substance, boring missions, poor enemy AI, and major performance issues on high-end PCs. That's a whole other tidbit that you have to add. A high-end PC having trouble running in game probably means the game is. unoptimized and then you get into games by giving this game a three out of ten i didn't even know scores could get that low they basically said that mine's eye is a stringent and a relentlessly dull game well goodness games radar gave this a two at a five approximately four out of ten and they said it's uninspired and forgettable sci-fi action adventure and when it comes to digital trends i think this is the lowest score i've seen

They gave it a, no, actually the lowest score is from Eurogamer. They gave it a one out of five. That's insane. Saying that Minesai is a unmitigated disaster with a ridiculous story, inconsistent writing, poorly designed missions in atrocious combat, failing to live up to his GTA clone promise. So that being said, click my link to you in my bio. Let me know one of my social medias.

What do you think about Monsai letting go of a lot of the employees following the botched launch of the game that we've come to known as Monsi? And at the end of day, you think they're being too hard of them or if they're telling it exactly like it is. And if you play the game, what is something that you actually like about the game? And also what is something that you believe that they could improve on in the foreseeable future?