Development Stories

Before a game can be played it obviously needs to be made. To make a game it usually requires a developers team to work on it. A development cycle itself can be either straightforward or with a lot of ups and downs and decisions that are made and maybe revoked later on. Sometimes those processes almost seem like a story in a game, themselves.

Was there ever a game that you liked or disliked so much, that you wanted to learn more about how it was made? What interesting stuff did you find out?

Huh, interesting.

Yeah, actually, and for the interested I highly recommend you go over and check Gamasutra if you're interested in the industry and development stories in particular. Post-mortems in particular are very informative reads as far as getting to know the process of creating a specific game and the problems the developers faced straight from a first-party interviewee.

Anyways,

Yeah, mostly from games where the developers are mum about the game after the fact or merely look at their success but not their creation. A popular example of this would be Scott Cawthon, who's a guy that has a greater sense of humility than you'd expect and manages to create these games with pretty wonderful environmental storytelling and large, winding narratives...but never talks about the process of creating the games themselves- likely to avoid the risk of spilling info he doesn't want spilled and being able to troll as he pleases, but he's a guy whose mind I can only get into as far as what I can see in his games- which is all well and good since that's how I go about understanding a lot of devs, but I want to know more about him and his games and...well, a lot more than I do.

And who knows, in time he'll probably open up once the series is done with for good (which I'd give about a year or two for), and when that day does come I'm sure the post-mortem will be...

...Interesting.

Anything from that Gearbox Software has doesn't necessary involve the Borderlands series, which is basically the game series that has given them relevance.

But titles such as Aliens Colonial Marines, a game that some people have alluded the ill fated No Man's Sky with when it comes to false advertising and overhype. Of course, once cannot forget Duke Nukem Forever, the game that should have made Duke Nukem, an iconic figure from an old generation of FPS gaming but ended up not only ruining the character but also killing the franchise from the modern eyes for a time being.

Its really interesting how these aforementioned Gearbox games ended up being the way they are. Aliens Colonial Marines was an interesting example of a game that was thought to be heavily worked on by Gearbox until the actual development of said game was then outsourced to a third party, many have speculated that Gearbox needed some manpower and resources for Borderlands instead. And while Aliens Colonial Marines to a lot of people is still a piece of poo for many people, I've defended or at least have been quite fair in judging the game for what it is, despite it feeling like a generic Call of Dudes clone and not the thrilling squad based First person shooter/Survival Horror that people yondered for.

And then there's Duke Nukem Forever. A game that i honestly followed through and through until its eventual release to disappointment and salty tears. DNF is a legendary story in the games' industry on how such a title can end up taking YEARS of development only for it to come out being disappointing with lots of problematic gameplay flaws and very few redeeming factors to make it a reasonable game to play. Heck, I can even say that I would prefer to play Aliens Colonial Marines for pleasure rather than DNF if i were paid.


There's also many many more games that ended up being terrible that I'm really interested in the narrative of "What the f**k happened!?" or "What the f**k were they thinking!". This game among the many more games that I'd want to know its development cycle is the PS3 Exclusive First Person Shooter Haze.

There are plenty of games in my mind that I really want to know the "What the f**k man!" narrative but I'll reserve that for the meantime.

And in the positive note, there are also a LOT OF GREAT VIDEO GAMES that I want to know more about in their development cycle and how unlike whatever was mentioned previously in the previous statements, ended up being MUCH BETTER games. I'd mention a few but again I'll reserve those stories for the mean time.