World of Darkness Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 from Hardsuit Labs

[Storyfag]

Here's something from Dusk Golem (from a ResetEra thread lol) that doesn't really say much but IDK kinda sayS something:

"I have so much I want to say, but shouldn't. I don't really think things not working was Hardsuit's or Paradox's fault for the record, they just had VERY different visions of what was important to focus on for the game (and I'll just say I tend to agree with one side more than the other as a fan of the first game)"

This is very similar to what the German producer told me: The game HSL originally pitched to Paradox and which they started to create was not the game that Paradox wanted years later. Why that was the case is anyone's guess though...

Paradox's politics are confirmed woke, aren't they? So perhaps the game pitched was not woke enough in the end

IDK man, HSL is, after all, based in Seattle...

 

[copebot]

Paradox's politics are confirmed woke, aren't they? So perhaps the game pitched was not woke enough in the end, when they decided it needed to be more woke with the most current themes, BLM and whatnot. Mitsoda going soft infuriatingly complicates the interpretations a bit, makes things less black & white...

A game getting cancelled after 5 years of development (and over 20 million dollars, given what they wrote off at the end of 2021) would have nothing to do with the writing. It was unfixable (as determined by the Ubisoft Finisher they hired) gameplay and functionality.

20 million seems like a very low estimate given the team size, Seattle location, and the development time. The company was supposed to be larger than 50 people. Though indeed, if the writing was the problem, that could be fixed relatively quickly compared to almost anything else.

 

[Roguey]

20 million seems like a very low estimate given the team size, Seattle location, and the development time. The company was supposed to be larger than 50 people. Though indeed, if the writing was the problem, that could be fixed relatively quickly compared to almost anything else.

Hard to say, but I wouldn't describe Bloodlines 2 as AAA, it certainly didn't look it. The Glass Door reviews of Hardsuit mentioned that they paid less than every other dev in Seattle (which contributed to their inability to acquire good talent), 20 seems fair for what it was. Divinity 2 back in 2009 cost Larian 6.5 million and three years. Ten years later, Greedfall cost Spiders 5 million and three years. 20 million is three-four times those numbers and they just had an additional two years (Swen has also griped about how much it costs to make games in Belgium so I wouldn't say it's extremely more expensive to make a game in Seattle, especially given what I mentioned about Glass Door).

 

[Wesp5]

Though indeed, if the writing was the problem, that could be fixed relatively quickly compared to almost anything else.

Which might explain why Mitsoda was surprised to be fired in the first place. On the other hand most of the memorable characters in Bloodlines are not political correct anymore today, so if he wrote something similar, Paradox might have asked him to rewrite most of the cast which might have affected the rest of the story and the voice-overs and at one point he might have tried to resist.

 

[copebot]

20 million seems like a very low estimate given the team size, Seattle location, and the development time. The company was supposed to be larger than 50 people. Though indeed, if the writing was the problem, that could be fixed relatively quickly compared to almost anything else.

Hard to say, but I wouldn't describe Bloodlines 2 as AAA, it certainly didn't look it. The Glass Door reviews of Hardsuit mentioned that they paid less than every other dev in Seattle (which contributed to their inability to acquire good talent), 20 seems fair for what it was. Divinity 2 back in 2009 cost Larian 6.5 million and three years. Ten years later, Greedfall cost Spiders 5 million and three years. 20 million is three-four times those numbers and they just had an additional two years (Swen has also griped about how much it costs to make games in Belgium so I wouldn't say it's extremely more expensive to make a game in Seattle, especially given what I mentioned about Glass Door).

When I worked in mobile non-game software at a ~40-70 (depending on what year you're looking at) person startup in the Bay Area with about 20 of those being developers, our burn rate was a lot higher than that. If it WAS that low, maybe it helps to explain why it was screwed up.

European numbers are going to look different because any European developer who wants to make money immigrates to the US. It would also make sense if Paradox, being Swedish, might not have fully understood the cost differential between what developers cost in Sweden vs. what they cost in Seattle. In Seattle fresh students can make quite a lot at MS or Amazon. Paradox may have misunderstood how far their money was going in that region even considering the money penalty that comes from working in gaming: they thought they were getting the equivalent of premium Swedes, but they were getting the equivalent of the graduates of the HOMELESS PEOPLE CAN CODE combination drug recovery center and code bootcamp in the Pacific Northwest.

 

[Infinitron]

European numbers are going to look different because any European developer who wants to make money immigrates to the US. It would also make sense if Paradox, being Swedish, might not have fully understood the cost differential between what developers cost in Sweden vs. what they cost in Seattle. In Seattle fresh students can make quite a lot at MS or Amazon. Paradox may have misunderstood how far their money was going in that region even considering the money penalty that comes from working in gaming: they thought they were getting the equivalent of premium Swedes, but they were getting the equivalent of the graduates of the HOMELESS PEOPLE CAN CODE combination drug recovery center and code bootcamp in the Pacific Northwest.

Conversely, Larian's capabilities as a developer (including the ability to create and maintain their own sophisticated proprietary RPG engine) have been aided by them being the biggest fish in a small pond. Having different countries is good!

 

[Roguey]

When I worked in mobile non-game software at a ~40-70 (depending on what year you're looking at) person startup in the Bay Area with about 20 of those being developers, our burn rate was a lot higher than that. If it WAS that low, maybe it helps to explain why it was screwed up.

European numbers are going to look different because any European developer who wants to make money immigrates to the US. It would also make sense if Paradox, being Swedish, might not have fully understood the cost differential between what developers cost in Sweden vs. what they cost in Seattle. In Seattle fresh students can make quite a lot at MS or Amazon. Paradox may have misunderstood how far their money was going in that region even considering the money penalty that comes from working in gaming: they thought they were getting the equivalent of premium Swedes, but they were getting the equivalent of the graduates of the HOMELESS PEOPLE CAN CODE combination drug recovery center and code bootcamp in the Pacific Northwest.

Comparing Americans to Americans, Pillars of Eternity from SoCal cost 5-6 million (let's round up to 6) for a core team of about 30 devs for about 29 months ($206,896/month). The Bloodlines 2 team was confirmed to be around 60, so one would expect it to cost twice as much as PoE for the same amount of time which would ultimately be 25 million (rounding up) after five years. Paradox have experience with funding American devs thanks to Tyranny, I imagine they'd balk if Seattle really did cost that much more than Irvine.

 

[Jenkem]

lmao the narrative you fags are constructing...

"fingerless glove man is not woke no siree i bet paradox told him to be woke and he was like NUH UH and then they fired him because he is just too much of a chud... I mean look at the characters he made before they are decidedly not woke and if you think a Seattleite like fingerless glove guy is woke or would become woke after decades well you are crazy lol. PDX came in and pushed all this pozzed shit on fingerless glove man and he stood up and WOULD. NOT. COMPLY. so they fired him. fucking PDX I'm so sick of their shit and I'll stop supporting them once they stop making EU4 DLCs..."

 

[Infinitron]

lmao the narrative you fags are constructing...

"fingerless glove man is not woke no siree i bet paradox told him to be woke and he was like NUH UH and then they fired him because he is just too much of a chud... I mean look at the characters he made before they are decidedly not woke and if you think a Seattleite like fingerless glove guy is woke or would become woke after decades well you are crazy lol. PDX came in and pushed all this pozzed shit on fingerless glove man and he stood up and WOULD. NOT. COMPLY. so they fired him. fucking PDX I'm so sick of their shit and I'll stop supporting them once they stop making EU4 DLCs..."

Yeah, you may not like either one but I'm 100% sure that between the two parties, Paradox - the publicly traded corporation that earns most of its money selling DLCs for various Deus Vult imperialism simulations - was the less woke one.

 

[copebot]

When I worked in mobile non-game software at a ~40-70 (depending on what year you're looking at) person startup in the Bay Area with about 20 of those being developers, our burn rate was a lot higher than that. If it WAS that low, maybe it helps to explain why it was screwed up.

European numbers are going to look different because any European developer who wants to make money immigrates to the US. It would also make sense if Paradox, being Swedish, might not have fully understood the cost differential between what developers cost in Sweden vs. what they cost in Seattle. In Seattle fresh students can make quite a lot at MS or Amazon. Paradox may have misunderstood how far their money was going in that region even considering the money penalty that comes from working in gaming: they thought they were getting the equivalent of premium Swedes, but they were getting the equivalent of the graduates of the HOMELESS PEOPLE CAN CODE combination drug recovery center and code bootcamp in the Pacific Northwest.

Comparing Americans to Americans, Pillars of Eternity from SoCal cost 5-6 million (let's round up to 6) for a core team of about 30 devs for about 29 months ($206,896/month). The Bloodlines 2 team was confirmed to be around 60, so one would expect it to cost twice as much as PoE for the same amount of time which would ultimately be 25 million (rounding up) after five years. Paradox have experience with funding American devs thanks to Tyranny, I imagine they'd balk if Seattle really did cost that much more than Irvine.

Wow, that's like slavery with no bullwhips! I think I'm starting to understand why gaming attracts the kinds of investors and business people that it does.

 

[Zombra]

Though indeed, if the writing was the problem, that could be fixed relatively quickly compared to almost anything else.

Which might explain why Mitsoda was surprised to be fired in the first place. On the other hand most of the memorable characters in Bloodlines are not political correct anymore today, so if he wrote something similar, Paradox might have asked him to rewrite most of the cast which might have affected the rest of the story and the voice-overs and at one point he might have tried to resist.

Which would lead us down a very depressing chain of events:

* Mitsoda writes Bloodlines, which is awesome and raunchy and full of ideas that wouldn't fly today
* Mitsoda marries
* Mitsoda's writing, still good, evolves towards the more socially acceptable (cf. Dead State)
* Mitsoda divorces
* Mitsoda's writing (de)volves back towards socially unacceptable, awesome and raunchy and full of ideas
Sidebar: I got a little of this impression from Ellison in her support of him. Maybe I was looking for something that wasn't there but the impression was there.
* Mitsoda writes a bunch of this stuff and gets laid off from Paradox because it's unusable in current day

Which would all fit with my theory that marriage inhibited his natural sexy writing tendencies.
If true (and of course this is all total speculation) the depressing thing is this would mean that something of the "old" Mitsoda is back but once again we're not going to get to see his work.

 

[Wesp5]

lmao the narrative you fags are constructing...

Yes, we might be mistaken, but remember the last thing the old team created, which was the Christmas teaser with the dead family strung up. Was this politically correct? I don't think so...

 

[Jenkem]

It was a pretty "normal" depiction of a crazy murderer, what exactly did you find politically incorrect?

 

[Storyfag]

Having different countries is good!

Who are you, and what have you done with Infinitron?

 

[Wesp5]

It was a pretty "normal" depiction of a crazy murderer, what exactly did you find politically incorrect?

A white male killing females for fun, can you still show that in a video game nowadays?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

lmao the narrative you fags are constructing...

Yes, we might be mistaken, but remember the last thing the old team created, which was the Christmas teaser with the dead family strung up. Was this politically correct? I don't think so...

it wasn't politically anything

 

[Harthwain]

A white male killing females for fun, can you still show that in a video game nowadays?

Dexter?

 

[Jenkem]

damn a murderous, crazed white person? totally taboo in these trying times...

 

[Fargus]

Yeah it's not like modern western entertainment is littered with whitemanbad.

 

[Cricket McBangle]

On the subject of the "Come Dance" trailer, maybe somewhat interesting :

Hardsuit was forced to cobble that together because the Xbox third-party marketing event mandated they needed something as they were originally supposed to be a game showing off their Smart Delivery system for the cross-gen Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. The team never really had a marketing person on the team so no one was there to guide them on how it should have look.

Which makes me wonder about the status of their other partnerships such as Nvidia and Corsair. I really bet UE5 marketing gives it some relevance and Paradox puts it on GamePass day one or something.

 

[Grunker]

Wait, people are actually starting to construct copium narratives where evil woke Paradox suddenly and inexplicably demand that Game Which Was Coming Along Fine not only be re-written - but changed from the ground up - despite the massive costs incurred for a company operating successfully in an ultracompetitive space by pushing out games, many in a dubious state of completion, because it was not pozzed enough? Are you mentally stuck in 2013 where Brian Fargo is still able to convince people that Bad Games happen due to Evil Publishers, or did you just fall in the pot full of copium as kids like some Current Year neckbeard version of Obelix?

People. If a profit-hungry, capable and experienced corporation throws 20 million down the trash chute and fires everyone it’s not because the publisher of Empire of Sin, Crusader Kings and Imperator thought the game had too few transsexual toreadors.

It’s because Mitsoda was once again directing an unfinished, unstable, unsustainable and unsalvageable production pipeline which frankly should surprise literally fucking no one given that’s exactly what happened with every single project of his so far - be it Bloodlines, New Jersey, Deadstate or Alpha Protocol (where he, incidentally, was also given the boot and all his content scrapped - according to himself:

...for good or ill, I have nothing to do with Alpha Protocol as it is being developed currently. I was working on the creative direction, story, and dialogue for previous iterations of the game, but outside of a dialogue system I created (before Mass Effect was announced) for an earlier version of the game, my (and Annie Carlson’s) original dialogue and plot – again, for good or ill – are not being used for the game. Any characters I’m attributed with creating bear only a superficial resemblance to the ones in my original story.

).

This circumstantial theory seems to fit quite well with the empirical fact that, oh, the team was showing close to 0 progress deep into development.

This man isn’t worthy of your apologism in 2022 just because he had a hand in making a masterpiece 20 years ago. If anything, he deserves your contempt for screwing up the chance to make another, like the inept cocksucker he obviously is.

 

[Semiurge]

Wait, people are actually starting to construct copium narratives where evil woke Paradox suddenly and inexplicably demand that Game Which Was Coming Along Fine not only be re-written - but changed from the ground up - despite the massive costs incurred for a company operating successfully in an ultracompetitive space by pushing out games, many in a dubious state of completion, because it was not pozzed enough? Are you mentally stuck in 2013 where Brian Fargo is still able to convince people that Bad Games happen due to Evil Publishers, or did you just fall in the pot full of copium as kids like some Current Year neckbeard version of Obelix?

People. If a profit-hungry, capable and experienced corporation throws 20 million down the trash chute and fires everyone it’s not because the publisher of Empire of Sin, Crusader Kings and Imperator thought the game had too few transsexual toreadors.

It’s because Mitsoda was once again directing an unfinished, unstable, unsustainable and unsalvageable production pipeline which frankly should surprise literally fucking no one given that’s exactly what happened with every single project of his so far - be it Bloodlines, New Jersey, Deadstate or Alpha Protocol (where he, incidentally, was also given the boot and all his content scrapped - according to himself:

...for good or ill, I have nothing to do with Alpha Protocol as it is being developed currently. I was working on the creative direction, story, and dialogue for previous iterations of the game, but outside of a dialogue system I created (before Mass Effect was announced) for an earlier version of the game, my (and Annie Carlson’s) original dialogue and plot – again, for good or ill – are not being used for the game. Any characters I’m attributed with creating bear only a superficial resemblance to the ones in my original story.

).

This circumstantial theory seems to fit quite well with the empirical fact that, oh, the team was showing close to 0 progress deep into development.

This man isn’t worthy of your apologism in 2022 just because he had a hand in making a masterpiece 20 years ago. If anything, he deserves your contempt for screwing up the chance to make another, like the inept cocksucker he obviously is.

For a moment there was life in the old thread yet.

 

[Delterius]

you rpg nerds may not know this but this is actually the fourth+ time that paradox was scammed out of millions of dollars by a modder tier development team. twice with actual modders of their games, one of which turned out to be a portuguese schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur, once with feargus 'he who de-owners' urukheart, and now with a seattle no-name team whose only achievement is making an fps nobody knows about.

so what i'm trying to say is that paradox is actually a money laundering operation.

 

[Roguey]

Are you mentally stuck in 2013 where Brian Fargo is still able to convince people that Bad Games happen due to Evil Publishers, or did you just fall in the pot full of copium as kids like some Current Year neckbeard version of Obelix?

Paradox do in fact share some of the blame, since Ebba Ljungerud did the stereotypical new-asshole-ceo move of putting her stamp on the title by changing the parameters mid-development (which Mitsoda and Pal ignored until Paradox grew angry and fed up enough to fire them for insubordination). The good news is that Ebba eventually got fired for causing this mess too, everyone got what they deserved.

 

[Wesp5]

Paradox do in fact share some of the blame, since Ebba Ljungerud did the stereotypical new-asshole-ceo move of putting her stamp on the title by changing the parameters mid-development (which Mitsoda and Pal ignored until Paradox grew angry and fed up enough to fire them for insubordination). The good news is that Ebba eventually got fired for causing this mess too, everyone got what they deserved.

That is the best summary of what probably happened that I have read yet! About it not being Paradox's fault, I have heard details to the contrary that I'm not allowed to talk about though...