Commandos-Like Mimimi Games shutting down

[negator2vc]

at the end of the day the people buying your 2D hardcore stealth game are straight male autists.

all their games were 3D by the way.

 

[Tavar]

I never played any of their games, but the more I learn about the company, the happier I am that they're gone. I recently learned that they almost went out of business after Shadow Tactics because they didn't have a follow up project lined up. They only survived because THQ Nordic quickly gave them the task to build Desperados 3. It seems that they learned nothing from this near miss as they decided to gamble everything on Shadow Gambit's success without any follow up projects. Also, they refused to work together with one of Germany's more well-known game journalists because he had put pictures of game-show-babes on his website in this past and they felt that he didn't do enough penance for this heinous act. Don't get me wrong, I hate journalists, but I hate this kind of virtue signaling more. If you want to know more, here's a translation of the journalist's rant on the topic:

Spoiler

The most annoying rejection, however, was that of Mimimi: During the triggersensitive, ideologically-correct preliminary research, this lighthouse studio for inclusion had noticed our babes galleries. I summarize below reading between the lines, but halfway making sense. Mimimi: "If you dumb Neanderthals don't do this woman-discriminating criminal filth any more, we'll be happy to work with you, because we really appreciate your work, hihi, we'll just write that down now, then it sounds friendlier." Me: "We haven't done Babes galleries in four years, so the documentary works out then?" Mimimi: "Uh, well, but no, you haven't distanced yourselves from the galleries or deleted them or publicly whipped yourselves or best of all all three, so we still don't want to work with you, and that we appreciate your work very much, we already wrote, even if we didn't mean it that way."

As evidence Z then still the following link was pasted reproachfully. If you follow this link and click the "Next" arrow three times, you might realize that the imputed misogyny behind the Babes galleries may not be as clear-cut as the self-important missionary mind wants to make it feel.What annoyed me even more: From the multitude of controversial user comments arguing for and against the Babes galleries, the Munich know-it-alls picked out two very unpalatable ones indeed. Two from, I don't know, 2000, over the years of the Babes galleries. But not as outliers, of course, but exemplary.

What I found most pulse-pounding, however, was the schoolmasterly from-up-down tone in communications, here as an example:

"We lack a clear statement on ending the galleries or at least cleaning up the offensive content. We couldn't really tell that you communicated your changed attitude to the outside world."

This is the self-aggrandizing intolerance of the know-it-all, who accepts nothing but an unconditional surrender of the other person, who doesn't care about nuance or explanation, and who, precisely by doing so, does a disservice to the very cause of equality (which I support!). And no, we don't delete comment threads with hundreds of expressions of opinion (because that would be a consequence of "cleaning up" the galleries after the fact). And we generally stand by our content, even if we wouldn't publish it today.

 

[mediocrepoet]

If you ever need a case study of why you shouldn't bring politics into business... ^^

 

[Great Deceiver]

Not kowtowing to the SJW outrage du jour means you don't get any loans or working capital, because it's all tied up to ESG credit lines.

But I don't sympathize with people who fostered this climate anyway. They don't get to walk back from the shitshow they created. In fact, my sense of Schadenfreude would be greatly satisfied if they lived long enough to be sent to mine rocks in some gulag saltmine as payment for their years of service as useful idiots in this age of protracted fifth generation warfare.

They think they'd live out their years as some inspiring community bard teaching ladies how to sew handbags, or giving poetry workshops.

 

[Tacgnol]

In their case, it appears they went above and beyond appearances and were true believers.

It's still a shame as their games were good, but it does feel very self-inflicted.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

I never played any of their games, but the more I learn about the company, the happier I am that they're gone. I recently learned that they almost went out of business after Shadow Tactics because they didn't have a follow up project lined up. They only survived because THQ Nordic quickly gave them the task to build Desperados 3. It seems that they learned nothing from this near miss as they decided to gamble everything on Shadow Gambit's success without any follow up projects. Also, they refused to work together with one of Germany's more well-known game journalists because he had put pictures of game-show-babes on his website in this past and they felt that he didn't do enough penance for this heinous act. Don't get me wrong, I hate journalists, but I hate this kind of virtue signaling more. If you want to know more, here's a translation of the journalist's rant on the topic:

Spoiler

The most annoying rejection, however, was that of Mimimi: During the triggersensitive, ideologically-correct preliminary research, this lighthouse studio for inclusion had noticed our babes galleries. I summarize below reading between the lines, but halfway making sense. Mimimi: "If you dumb Neanderthals don't do this woman-discriminating criminal filth any more, we'll be happy to work with you, because we really appreciate your work, hihi, we'll just write that down now, then it sounds friendlier." Me: "We haven't done Babes galleries in four years, so the documentary works out then?" Mimimi: "Uh, well, but no, you haven't distanced yourselves from the galleries or deleted them or publicly whipped yourselves or best of all all three, so we still don't want to work with you, and that we appreciate your work very much, we already wrote, even if we didn't mean it that way."

As evidence Z then still the following link was pasted reproachfully. If you follow this link and click the "Next" arrow three times, you might realize that the imputed misogyny behind the Babes galleries may not be as clear-cut as the self-important missionary mind wants to make it feel.What annoyed me even more: From the multitude of controversial user comments arguing for and against the Babes galleries, the Munich know-it-alls picked out two very unpalatable ones indeed. Two from, I don't know, 2000, over the years of the Babes galleries. But not as outliers, of course, but exemplary.

What I found most pulse-pounding, however, was the schoolmasterly from-up-down tone in communications, here as an example:

"We lack a clear statement on ending the galleries or at least cleaning up the offensive content. We couldn't really tell that you communicated your changed attitude to the outside world."

This is the self-aggrandizing intolerance of the know-it-all, who accepts nothing but an unconditional surrender of the other person, who doesn't care about nuance or explanation, and who, precisely by doing so, does a disservice to the very cause of equality (which I support!). And no, we don't delete comment threads with hundreds of expressions of opinion (because that would be a consequence of "cleaning up" the galleries after the fact). And we generally stand by our content, even if we wouldn't publish it today.

Wtf, I love Jörg Langer now?

Thanks for digging that up. Sadly, not very surprising, basically this describes almost all higher educated Germans from the millennial generation or later. The country is filled to the brim with this kind of emasculated, preachy, self-important cucks and male feminists.

Ah well, fuck those losers. Good riddance.

 

[Elttharion]

Lmao, they used an external 'consulting' studio to wokefy the game.

We are saddened to learn that Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is Mimimi’s last game.

We're incredibly proud to have helped bring this final voyage to shore by collaborating on the game’s protagonist, Afia, with Matthias Kraut, Moritz Wagner, and the rest of the crew at Mimimi Games GmbH. Our collaboration helped make the world of the Cursed Caribbean feel more inclusive and representative. Very happy to see that players have resonated the game, as evidenced by its incredible reception.

The Mimimi team is amazing and deserves to land on their feet. We would be happy to connect folks in our network who are looking for talented developers with the studio - send us a DM if you are interested.

Remember how they changed the protagonist from a redhead to a black woman? These were the people telling them to do it. The devs went full retard, they were a small studio in a niche genre with a small budget and they decided to spend part of it on 'diversity consultations'.

 

[cretin]

The consultant was probably sleeping with/related to someone at the studio and/or publisher. Thats how these retarded things usually happen, imagine being in charge of the budget and being forced to hire a consultant to tell you how to make your game more "diverse" when you and everyone else already knows that just means you dont have enough black women in your game.

 

[Talby]

Maybe they should have made something fans of the genre actually wanted like a Commandos sequel/spiritual sequel, rather than some woke tumblresque faggot pirate game with strong wombyn protagonist. Good riddance.

 

[Reinhardt]

archetypes exist for a reason. ninja, geisha, samurai, sake, fujiyama. cowboys, banditos, injun braves. and then suddenly ugly dead negro wommyn pirates... who would be interested in this shit?

 

[Fedora Master]

Not black women that's for sure

 

[catfood]

archetypes exist for a reason. ninja, geisha, samurai, sake, fujiyama. cowboys, banditos, injun braves. and then suddenly ugly dead negro wommyn pirates... who would be interested in this shit?

They could have went with something like Belit from Queen of the Black Coast, but of course they had to pick and ugly she-boon for esg points.

 

[Reinhardt]

archetypes exist for a reason. ninja, geisha, samurai, sake, fujiyama. cowboys, banditos, injun braves. and then suddenly ugly dead negro wommyn pirates... who would be interested in this shit?

They could have went with something like Belit from Queen of the Black Coast, but of course they had to pick and ugly she-boon for esg points.

and that's actually could be pretty cool stealth game. conan was a thief half of the time after all.

 

[Cyberarmy]

archetypes exist for a reason. ninja, geisha, samurai, sake, fujiyama. cowboys, banditos, injun braves. and then suddenly ugly dead negro wommyn pirates... who would be interested in this shit?

They could have went with something like Belit from Queen of the Black Coast, but of course they had to pick and ugly she-boon for esg points.

Or Sinbad or Al Quadim. All these are more exotic and not overused like Pirates of the Carribean setting.

 

[Üstad]

archetypes exist for a reason. ninja, geisha, samurai, sake, fujiyama. cowboys, banditos, injun braves. and then suddenly ugly dead negro wommyn pirates... who would be interested in this shit?

They could have went with something like Belit from Queen of the Black Coast, but of course they had to pick and ugly she-boon for esg points.

Or Sinbad or Al Quadim. All these are more exotic and not overused like Pirates of the Carribean setting.

To be honest, with that mentality they would butcher it.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

If they went with that, it would only be logical to hire some Memri TV sensitivity, cultural and diversity consultants which would do wonders for the end product, I imagine.

 

[DemonKing]

You can kind of imagine a Pirates of the Caribbean stealth game could work, but they really butchered the execution here with the decision to wokefy their roster of undead pirates and then take a dump on top by making you play the same levels over and over again.

 

[3 others]

The margins are thin for a small game studio with self-published games. Looking Glass also shut down a few weeks after the release of Thief 2, which was a commercial success, but their earlier deficits probably had sealed the deal by then. And judging from this thread, Mimimi weren't exactly blessed with a competent CFO / financial leadership to begin with.

I think there's also an inherent difficulty in stringing together successful game releases within a niche genre. The effect is most pronounced when there is a genuine genre-defining (or reviving) boom with the initial hit, after which subsequent releases never seem to match up, at least when commercial success is used as the measuring stick. In addition to Shadow Tactics->Desperados->Shadow Gambit slide towards irrelevancy, two other quick examples are La Mulana and Legend of Grimrock, both of which were trailblazing releases in a unique genre (2D puzzle adventure & blobber revival RPG, respectively) that were followed by superior sequels with lesser sales. Blasphemous 2 seems to be going through a similar cycle.

The freshness of the initial title generates a lot of buzz, which results in a lot of people buying the game, but a significant portion of them find out that even though interesting on paper, they don't really enjoy the gameplay that much. These players are no longer the market for the next game, no matter how much of incline it might be. Usually you can get a sense of this effect from global Steam achievements. I think it was that only something like 30% of players even managed to reach the 1st proper dungeon in La Mulana 1, whereas for La Mulana 2, a similar share of players have finished the (very long, very difficult) game. Only those who knew what they were getting into, and liked it, bought the second game.

I have bought Shadow Tactics, played it about halfway, decided to drop it, and was no longer truly interested in their subsequent releases. It's hard to see where the fresh sales for Shadow Gambit would have come from outside their core following. And now they've managed to turn off a significant portion of that core audience with their DEI obsessions and an odd shovelware mobile game aesthetics.

 

[negator2vc]

And now they've managed to turn off a significant portion of that core audience with their DEI obsessions and an odd shovelware mobile game aesthetics.

That's the main reason beside the introduction of those stupid "open world" like mechanics.
for ex. I bought and enjoyed both Shadow Tactics & Desperados games but I lost any interest in the last game when they started to reveal stuff about it.
I would have enjoyed a pirate themed game with Shadow Tactics mechanics just not this one.

 

[:Flash:]

You can kind of imagine a Pirates of the Caribbean stealth game could work

Even that is kind of debatable. Is "stealth" really what one would associate with pirates, let alone Pirates of the Carribean?

 

[negator2vc]

You can kind of imagine a Pirates of the Caribbean stealth game could work

Even that is kind of debatable. Is "stealth" really what one would associate with pirates, let alone Pirates of the Carribean?

Same thing one can say about a Western game with those mechanics but it works great in Desperados

 

[:Flash:]

You can kind of imagine a Pirates of the Caribbean stealth game could work

Even that is kind of debatable. Is "stealth" really what one would associate with pirates, let alone Pirates of the Carribean?

Same thing one can say about a Western game with those mechanics but it works great in Desperados

Hmm, for me as a German having read Karl May as a kid, there was always a connection between the Wild West setting and stealth. I even remember reading a critique of one of the later Karl May movies, in which it said that the series had drifted into too much shooting and explosions and too little stealth.
So perhaps it not a coincidence that all the Desperados games came out of Germany?

 

[Parsimonious cook]

You can kind of imagine a Pirates of the Caribbean stealth game could work

Even that is kind of debatable. Is "stealth" really what one would associate with pirates, let alone Pirates of the Carribean?

Yes, tbh fam. Classic pirate fiction such as Sandokan has tons of stealth and does emphasize the sneaky/cunning dimension of piracy a whole lot. And as for Pirates of the Carribean? You be the judge:

 

[spectre]

Nice to see Karl May mentioned, one thing that struck me odd in Desperados (I managed to get a full playthrough recently) was that there were no Indians (were there even any?). I mean the redskin variety, not pajeets.
Instead they opted for a magic negress, which was a missed opportunity as far as I'm concerned as well as a real nosedive in difficulty - those abilities really stood out
and trivialized a lot of encounters, instead letting you kill two guys immediately and at the same time. Quite telling that a whole lot of challenges revolve around not using her at all.

And as for Pirates of the Carribean?

I recall plenty of stories about sneaking on a ship or fort to set fire to the powder storage.
Just looking at the more recent popculture, Black Sails had this plot about sneaking on a Spanish galeon with two guys, killing the guards and locking the crew up as they sleep.
It was a desperate attempt and didn't quite work out, but there's quite a few instances where backstabbing and killing people in their sleep would be a possibility.

 

[SixDead]

Fuck Mimimi, fuck cowboys, fuck pirates - I wanted Shadow Tactics 2!