Self-criticism is big at Obsidian, unlike certain other peer studios that seem to be governed more by ego and hubris.
I would be careful with making definite statement like that. Personally I love developers doing Post Mortem on games - I just find it fascinating to hear dev's viewpoint as well as additional insight into the development. Obsidian has been pretty open with those - or at least Josh Sawyer was. I think his presentations are well put together and insightful. In Deadfire one, he even didn't hold from expressing his frustration with whoever in management forced his hand to add ship combat during fig campaign - that's something that surprised me.
But I think it is less likely that other devs aren't thinking or analyzing failings of their titles, but that they will not be willing (or allowed) to criticise their product publicly. I do wonder, if under Microsoft we will see brutal post-mortems like Josh's Deadfire one - partially, because other leads might not be into public speaking the way Josh is, and because Microsoft might not be happy to see their bought studios posting videos criticising their own product. I would be shocked if majority of devs didn't have plenty of things they weren't happy about. It's just they won't do it publically.
I can accept that not all developers may have the freedom to be self-critical in public, but I would at least expect to see their self-criticism reflected in subsequent games they make.
Originally Posted by Saito Hikari
That was after PoE2 bombed so hard that everyone knew, and they obviously couldn't hide it under any ambiguity either.
"Bombed so hard" is a blatant exaggeration unsupported by the facts.
Originally Posted by Tuco
In all fairness Swen VIncke in his DOS 2 post-mortem made a lot of self-criticizing as well.
