Abu Antar
Turn-based Poster
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2014
- Messages
- 14,194
All this post accomplishes, is that it makes me feel old.
In 20 years, what games of 2017 will be remembered?
In 20 years, what games of 2017 will be remembered?
Impossible to say.What about... "still played"?
https://www.kickstarter.com/project...hers-cookbook-an-earthbound-inspired-cookbook
Quite original kickstarter.
Wut da zog.
[It] Started at 2K Australia using the Freedom Force engine, which was then scrapped for the SWAT 4 engine, which was then scrapped for Unreal 2.5 (what we called our frankenstein version of the engine).
Around 2008 it turned into a survival horror game inspired by Fatal Frame. You play an FBI agent in the 1950s southern california investigating weird reports of aliens. Then it turns out you are no match for them, so the game is about taking pictures of them, researching them with strong narrative decision-making and then trying to ultmately capture them. Was meant to be radically different from XCOM to see if the series could go another direction.
After BioShock 2 failed to make enough money and 2K Australia still hadn't finished the game after about 6 years of on and off development, they called 2K Marin in to work on it. It was a first person mission-based game similar to the original concept but now a shooter where you fight back. This didn't last long and then it became third-person where the aliens were actually humans from the future. That also got reworked, to a third-person squad game where aliens are terraforming Earth.
Then with so many people leaving the studio and dwindling internal support, 2K Aus was axed and moved to Marin, the game settled on what it was today, and the emphasis shifted to a linear storyline so as not to compete with Enemy Unknown. It sold so abysmally the company shut down - I had left about 5 months prior to release.
It was originally called XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Firaxis stole it because the way 2K works is every studio is given complete autonomy so long as they keep the product development team at corporate happy. The EP at Firaxis knew they had a better game and wanted the better title, so they greased the right palms. The original idea for The Bureau fit way better with the name Enemy Unknown, but after the re-re-re-re-designs they just settled on the random bullshit it is now. Honestly it just kind of got dropped on the team one day, didn't seem like a lot of thought went into it.
There was a time when I worked at Toys For Bob (oddly enough it was just two office buildings away from 2K Marin, and near Nihilistic Software too) on Skylanders when the team was practically begging to make Star Control 3. Activision held a company wide conference that said "everyone works on Call of Duty because we have no idea when this model will stop making money. Except for you Toys For Bob. You just do Skylanders. Forever". Paul and Fred seemed fine with it though, they're totally happy with their day to day and even decorated the whole office in a Tiki style just because they love Hawaii. Probably one of the more friendly teams I've worked with, no real problems aside from Activision corporate.
Loot boxes and other forms of microtransactions are not an unwelcome part of gaming for many people. For every 23 year old working a dead end part time retail job without a living wage who complains about predatory game design, there are several more family and career men and women who work 60-80 hour weeks and enjoy the ability to spend a little extra to reduce their grind time. What is predatory, deceitful or shady to many people here is a welcome addition to others. What exactly is wrong about that, as a designer and as a consumer?
Classic Kirkbride