Development Hell - For those games that are/were in the thin line on getting scrapped or getting a release date.

[Colon capital V]

What's going on with Deltarune? For a game with such a rabid and autistic fanbase I'm almost convinced it's never coming out. It's been what, 6 years already? The demos were nice but Toby Fox seems to be staying radio silent, there's no sign of any release date even being announced let alone reached, and the project seems to be suffering from scope creep given how many people I've heard are working on it now.

There was a newsletter recently that said 3 and 4 are done and 5 is being worked on right now, they're finalizing translations and console releases so maybe those will come out before the year ends. In terms of the whole game being complete, yeah I'm thinking 2035 is when all chapters will be finally finished.

 

[augment]

My favorite bioware/Anthem story is how the devs had literally no idea of the game they were making until a year and half before release, and they only found out because of an E3 presentation. It boggles my mind that you can run a business this poorly and still have balls to charge a premium on release day.

 

[Vetus]

Beyond Good and Evil 2 is another infamous example of development hell game with no updates about the progress of the game's development (if there is any), with it being in development for over 15 years (surpassing even Duke Nukem Forever) and with the creative director, Emile Morel, "suddenly dying" at the age of 40.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Good_and_Evil_2

 

[Arthur Morgan]

Well, I guess the most famous would be Gabe Newell's insane fear of the number three.

Half Life episode 3, Portal 3, Team Fortress 3, Left 4 Dead 3, and of course Half Life 3. All talked about at some point, none of them are ever going to see the light of day. Sure, at this point Gabe doesn't have to do anything to make money, Steam earns him cash just by existing for people to put their games on. But it still sucks. I have a lot of good memories associated with those franchises.

 

[Joe Swanson]

Elder Scrolls 6, it was announced 6 years ago and we all know it's not going to be out till the next console generation and it's certainly not going to be good

 

[herefortheactualthreads]

Well, I guess the most famous would be Gabe Newell's insane fear of the number three.

Half Life episode 3, Portal 3, Team Fortress 3, Left 4 Dead 3, and of course Half Life 3. All talked about at some point, none of them are ever going to see the light of day. Sure, at this point Gabe doesn't have to do anything to make money, Steam earns him cash just by existing for people to put their games on. But it still sucks. I have a lot of good memories associated with those franchises.

gaben mostly made games to define a new genre, people have too high expectations and he wont be able to satisfy them. he made a small rewind with half life alyx to maybe get some fresh ideas for the next half life games, but i am not too sure about it if and when it will happen, since theyre busy with the new dead on arrival hero shooter.

 

[Cat tit bingo]

Beyond Good and Evil 2 is another infamous example of development hell game with no updates about the progress of the game's development (if there is any), with it being in development for over 15 years (surpassing even Duke Nukem Forever) and with the creative director, Emile Morel, "suddenly dying" at the age of 40.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Good_and_Evil_2

The first one got a 20th anniversary remaster in the time twos been in development hell. To be honest I'm a little glad since I love the first one and the adventures of nappy haired black lady and monkey and the battle against suddenly evil jade looks like shit. Maybe if you didn't kill the original great artstyle for hyper realistic slop decades away from being feasible you could actually make the game. All beyond good and evil 2 is right now is hyper detailed renders of some of the worst character design ever made and nice location concept art

 

[Product Placement]

WiLD. shown over 8 years ago, new ip by Michel Ancel, it did finally get a update this year to say it is no longer being worked on. Michel Ancel has since left gaming in 2020, but he did say this and Beyond Good and Evil 2 would still be worked on with out him, guess he was wrong.

Little Devil Inside, the big indie game shown before the PS5 came out, and just meaningless kickstarter updates since.

Pragmata, Capcom big new ip for ps5/xbox sx, was due in 2022, then in 2023 was delayed indefinitely. Last trailer.

The Last Night, game shown by MS in 2017 and people loved the look of it, apart from restera who got mad at the game dev talking about gamergate in the past. Still meant to be in the works, but the game was first announce in in 2014, so over 10 year dev time now.

 

[Diesel Boogaloo]

I think that any mention of indie games should be banned in this thread , because if that doesnt happen the thread will quickly turn to shit because of retarded tranny slop no one gives a fuck about, aaa only, please.
Now back to the main subject of the thread, you cannot go any further without mentioning this absolute classic. View attachment 6424167
Was it too much hype? team too small? fake promises? lack of funding? not enough time? who knows...
But its clear that they thought they could bite more off than they could chew, turns out that adding a gorillion different planets each with their own species, plants, gimmicks and full on multiplayer with lots of customization and space fights is not something that can be achieved by such a small team (who never ever made anything like that before) in such a small time.
The game soon premiered and was quickly overriden with bad reviews.
no cool mechs, no gorillion planets, no spaceship wars, not even a functional multiplayer, and of course , glitches , lots of them. oh yeah and cant forget the delays, delay, after delay, after delay.
it eventually got to the point where the developers just decided to completely disappear off the face of the earth.
The story keeps going but if you want to see a much better explanation and to find out what lies ahead you can watch this video from the internet historian.

Nah, No Man's Sky is the exact opposite of development hell. It was released after about 4 years of development, and it's even kinda rushed. Sony prevented development hell by forcing Hello Games to release.

gaben mostly made games to define a new genre, people have too high expectations and he wont be able to satisfy them. he made a small rewind with half life alyx to maybe get some fresh ideas for the next half life games, but i am not too sure about it if and when it will happen, since theyre busy with the new dead on arrival hero shooter.

I guess if your strategy is "innovate in part 1, perfect in part 2", there's not much room for part 3.
_______

For another case of development hell, it's obligatory to mention this infamous lolcow:

https://kiwifarms.st/threads/evaxephon-yanderedev-alex-mahan-alexander-stuart-mahan-cannotgoogleme.19311

10 years and counting, for a shitty Hitman clone.

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

But it still sucks. I have a lot of good memories associated with those franchises.

Leaving everyone wanting more is probably WHY you have good memories associated with those franchises. No one reminisces fondly about what could've been when they think about Assassin's Creed or Far Cry or Call of Duty.

There's an alternate universe where there have been 15 years of online-only Half-Life games with loot boxes and season passes and Gordon Freeman replaced with a sassy black woman.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

I have absolutely no hope for TES VI being any good. Fallout 4 was a big step back from both New Vegas and 3, but Todd at least put forth a lot of really good tech and the GECK was nifty. Similarly Skyrim had a lot of things dumbed down but at the same time it had a lot of good advancements such as the real time NPC talking and fixing the graphics to look more in line with Morrowind than the goofy ah Oblivion stuff.

Starfield however had literally NOTHING advance. It was in every way a inferior game to Fallout 4 which is absolutely insane given how much time and work went into it. Even the most basic things couldn't improve, like the graphics which look almost the same or the gunplay which is inferior to Fallout 4 and gun design being even worse. Even the gore was totally undone from 4 going back to Skyrim levels when it is good and worse in a lot of ways.

At this point I accept we will never get a Morrowind sequel people want, unless some rich autist comissions a studio to make it or something.

In a different note, the Deus Ex series is currently in hiatus. I quite like the modern ones from Eidos despite them being inferior to the OG, especially the art direction (even with the piss filter on HR, though that was fixed on the Director's cut) and Jensen is a pretty decent MC.

I will never forgive Square Enix fucking them over durinf Mankind Divided and cutting the development to focus on that Marvel live service game. You can clearly tell that the game ends at the end of the 2nd act and the story isn't done. Eidos probably realized they would have no hope to finish it and went "ok better make a flawed game that finishes than a broken mess that fucks the story".

I actually worry about the series becoming a victim of shifting standards similar to what happened to Duke Nukem. When Nukem was big that sort of machismo and over the top action was understood as a joke but by the time Forever released it was being criticized as "mysognistic" and shit, and a few years later even the concept of Duke Nukem became verbotten to AAA and even floating the idea of making a new game is now impossible. With Deus Ex the whole conspiracy thriller angle might be getting too close for confort for people given the rise of shit like the WEF and Blackrock. It has made such plots inherently political and as such might cause problems for devs to properly do it with "journalists" and such complaining about how it is "normalizing" and "empowering" it.

 

[herefortheactualthreads]

Gordon Freeman replaced with a sassy black woman.

dont we have alyx for that now? lol

 

[Back me up!]

My favorite bioware/Anthem story is how the devs had literally no idea of the game they were making until a year and half before release, and they only found out because of an E3 presentation. It boggles my mind that you can run a business this poorly and still have balls to charge a premium on release day.

Thats because Bioware got wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy to up their own ass thinking that their "magic" would solve it at the last second (same thing happened to Mass Effect: Andromeda), EA actually went with the hand off approach and payed dearly for it which is why devs need a strict, money man third party to reign in their worst impulses and keep the art-hoes on track.

 

[Anonitolia]

Witchbrook has been in dev for over 8 years now, with multiple dev teams having worked on it, and it barely even has solid screenshots of the game up on its shitty Steam Page. It was announced the same year Stardew Valley came out and has been so radio-silent since that whatever wind it had in its sails has been promptly deflated. Last Twitter post was over a year ago. One of the earliest examples of development hell indie games that I can think of which hasn't been mentioned here yet.

NEVER EVER

 

[Focken Kiwi]

I keep hearing that, but is it still a grind where you farm rocks for fuel to go to another planet to farm rocks for fuel, until you reach the centre of the universe where nothing happens? I remember that being the main criticism, and still seems to be the case for the game.

Not really a problem these days. There's an easy to obtain class of ship that's fueled by a material that's easily farmed on the same worlds those ships spawn on. 1 material = 100% recharge on warp drives or pulse drives. With the right upgrades, I think you can warp 20-25 times without having to refuel. The amount of materials that a person has to manually acquire is drastically smaller than when the game first released.

 

[WTBOnlineFather]

When Nukem was big that sort of machismo and over the top action was understood as a joke but by the time Forever released it was being criticized as "mysognistic" and shit, and a few years later even the concept of Duke Nukem became verbotten to AAA and even floating the idea of making a new game is now impossible.

I'm extra pissed off about this because it's not even due to Duke as a concept but specifically because of Randy Bitchford being a fucking retard misunderstanding what the character is about and writing Duke to actually be a misogynist and all around cunt.

"I love a good joke, for fuck's sake, I own the Duke Nukem franchise" --Retard Bitchturd

90s Duke saved babes and killed aliens because they hurt babes. 2011 Duke laughs at the idea of saving babes and only kills aliens because he's expected to, being the "King of the world". This is made very clear by the games and the overall shift in mood in Forever is what really killed Duke as a franchise in the eyes of the public. Other than the fact that it was a boring shitty game of course.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

dont we have alyx for that now? lol

Alyx is competent and speaks english instead of ebonics, so no.

I'm extra pissed off about this because it's not even due to Duke as a concept but specifically because of Randy Bitchford being a fucking retard misunderstanding what the character is about and writing Duke to actually be a misogynist and all around cunt.

True true. People can call DK humour immature but Forever was much worse about it than any of the other games.

DK3D was like a 17yo kid joking around and making a super macho plot. Forever was more like a 12yo copying the work without understanding it and playing up the edgy content without care.

 

[augment]

Thats because Bioware got wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy to up their own ass thinking that their "magic" would solve it at the last second (same thing happened to Mass Effect: Andromeda), EA actually went with the hand off approach and payed dearly for it which is why devs need a strict, money man third party to reign in their worst impulses and keep the art-hoes on track.

If you really think that "art hoes" are the ones running a development cycle on a studio then you know less about game production than I do, and I do know little to begin with.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Would Dwarf Fortress, Project Zombiod, and 7 Days To Die count as development hell? They were released in early access, but are still unfinished all these years later.

The Last Night, game shown by MS in 2017 and people loved the look of it, apart from restera who got mad at the game dev talking about gamergate in the past. Still meant to be in the works, but the game was first announce in in 2014, so over 10 year dev time now.

I know it's been denied/debooked, but I still believe the dev being cancelled got the funding pulled and that's why it's been years with basically no progress.

Not really a problem these days. There's an easy to obtain class of ship that's fueled by a material that's easily farmed on the same worlds those ships spawn on. 1 material = 100% recharge on warp drives or pulse drives. With the right upgrades, I think you can warp 20-25 times without having to refuel. The amount of materials that a person has to manually acquire is drastically smaller than when the game first released.

Did they add anything to the centre of the universe?

 

[Nicholas II of Russia]

Would Dwarf Fortress, Project Zombiod, and 7 Days To Die count as development hell? They were released in early access, but are still unfinished all these years later.

Eh, not really. They're technically early access and in development, but the main difference is that people CAN play it and see for themselves the gameplay.