BREAKING: Warner Bros. Games is shutting down Monolith Productions, Player First Games, and WB San Diego, sources tell Bloomberg News.
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There was a Blood 2 and it sucked, you have a good point
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They were contracted to design the API for our new Internet-enabled touchscreen gaming network kiosks (world first at the time) and they were fucking useless. And then had the gall to present the piece of shit at the CGDG 1997, as a half-finished completely non-functional, but presented it like it was their own product and not a massive NDA violation. Presented like their own product which could be generically extended to other platforms. Fuck you Matt. Fuck you Monolith you fucking cunts.
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I'm still not getting why the level of hate here?
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Ubisoft is french and... ugh no
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You pay someone to do X with a contract; they
- take your money
- not do X
- instead show the idea of X, which is yours, as THEIR product, which doesn't even work
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- voliating non-disclosure agreements in your contract
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- doing untold damage to your business plans
Yeah, I don't know about anything else, but fuck Matt with a cactus.
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It sounds like your company could have sued them into oblivion. It's a violated a non-disclosure agreement that should be the end of their company.
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Big money first bloated up the industry and is now scooping it out from the inside until it collapses. Well, AAA and AA gaming anyways. I‘ve noticed I‘ve been playing smaller indie games for the most part in the last decade and I know why. It‘s not so much a deliberate choice but simply where quality has been shifting.
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Stories like these sound wild to most people but sadly they happen all the time. It‘s literally how Google got this big. Still makes me mad how they robbed and trolled Terravision out of their code now known as Google Earth. Not like it‘s a flagship for Google or money maker but they still literally stole the code via hard drive like they stole from so many others. The tech world is full of absolute asshats leeching off of the most talented. It‘s very evident in today‘s tech culture full of crypto, AI and whatnot.
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Such naïvety
Sorry bro -
I'll tell you a secret. And this is coming from somebody that was at the top-top Top of the gaming world for 2 decades... 95% of tech people are complete frauds and charlatans. Its a miracle anything ever gets made. Look at today's coders... they don't even know what a computer does, they just download other people's modules, cobble them together and pray. The vast majority of people who self-identify as being in "comp sci" don't even understand the very basics.
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There were some AAA standouts, like Baulder Gate 3 and Hogworts Legacy, that did very well. It is possible if the company focuses on producing a fun user experience.
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The Problem is... I Love The fucking Gameplay, this together with the Nemesis System was super addictive to me.
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Success in indie development tends to be very uncertain though. Unless you end up at an established indie studio with a good track record but it's not like indie studios hire in droves.
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Seems like if you're publicly traded you can't also be profitable in the videogame industry.
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Can I subscribe to more of your experiences and insights?
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Replace mega corp with ‘a publicly traded entity’ and you’re spot-on the money.
There are a very few studios that aren’t beholden to the whims of vulture capitalist investors, and they’re the only ones still putting out absolute bangers (Larian), upholding their promises (Hello Games) or keeping the entire gaming industry from consuming itself in a blaze of pure shitfuckery (Valve).
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Yeah, I'll see if I can help make that happen. Decent enough movies to come out.
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But the story beat is static, it always gives you the same enemy in the same situation. The nemesis system turns that story beat dynamic. Every time you hit that story beat you get a different enemy in a different situation. It doesn't give everyone the same story, it gives everyone their story. It's innovation is how the system sets up stories and ties them into the gameplay. The system is designed to draw you into an encounter with a nemesis, there are multiple outcomes to that encounter. Those encounters become callbacks in the next encounter and so on and on until you've create a storyarc against that enemy.
For example I remember having a nemesis I couldn't kill with a sneak attack (which was very much my preferred way of getting rid of nemesis I wanted to get rid of). So I had to fight him head on and I set him on fire. He managed to escape while I was being overrun by grunts. One of the grunts slayed me and became a new nemesis. Meanwhile the one that got away gained a new weaknesses to fire. One storyline branched into two storylines. Not only did my individual story born from the nemesis system branch out, the gameplay encounters with those nemesis also changed from the previous encounter. The next time I fought my old nemesis I had a new trick up my sleeve, I could use fire against them. As for the new nemesis, well get to him.
That's the innovation of the nemesis system. It's a story generator that gives you your story and each encounter alters the gameplay for the next encounter. But that's only the foundation of the nemesis system. The Nemesis hierarchy and relations between them is an extra layer of storytelling. For example that grunt who killed me turned out to become a really annoying nemesis, I really struggled killing him and every encounter only made him stronger. So I devised a different strategy. I ended up turning other orks that surrounded him in the hierarchy and started using them to do my dirty work. In the end I wasn't the one to slay my new nemesis, it was a different ork (under my control) who challenged him and killed him.
And final note on what really makes all of it work is the presentation. The orks aren't just a randomized collection of traits, they're voiced and somewhat visually unique and whatever randomized outcome they get to at the end of the encounter gets properly presented in the next encounter. The presentation is the glue that ties all those encounters together into one story. You're presented with an actual nemesis and not just some generic mute and they "remember" the things you did to them before. They feel like a nemesis and not just some randomly generated grunt.
If you tried it and didn't see the appeal I'm guessing the game was too easy. I wasn't impressed by the nemesis system until the orks had a chance to escape or I was forced to retreat or I got killed. The system really opens up and gets interesting when the game gets so challenging that you're no longer certain what will happen in any encounter.
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If you have a blog or memoir, I would love to peruse it
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I can finally give up on a sequel to Shogo Mobile Armor Division. What a sad day but Monolith also hadn't released a game in 8 years. If Rocksteady hadn't made the Arkham asylum series they would be gone too.
