Actually, I've talked about people that aren't like Alex, but what about people who are? I am not diving too deep, so there won't be too many links.
Phil Fish. "But he made FEZ!" - well, I thought that too, until I checked a
Wikipedia article about it. Fish wasn't a programmer, wasn't a composer, some art is credited to him, but otherwise he was just a designer. Idea for the game actually belonged to programmer Shawn McGrath, who after some time left FIsh, because he wanted to make a puzzle game, when Fish wanted a platformer (just like Cave Story, even though he said "Japanese games suck"). Since Fish was working only on licensed games before, he had no idea how to make it, so he found another one. Yeah, he was just an idea guy, like certain someone. If you wonder how good of a team lead he was, keep in mind that it took 5 years to make FEZ and even after that game was riddled with bugs. All that time he was showing his shitty attitude by either talking about "killing himself if FEZ fails" or sperging on Twitter about targeted harassment. He probably sucked enough cocks in the indie scene, since this game was getting awards even before it was released. Years after barely anyone remembers this game, but everyone remembers how Philly sided with Blowie Zoe and quit gaming industry/canceled FEZ 2 after a long meltdown on Twitter. He is the perfect representation of a mediocre narcissistic dev, who had single somewhat good idea in his life and thought that he is the next Tim Schafer.
Derek Smart. Boy, oh, boy, if
this story is tragic and funny at the same time. Also, it is older than all of us. Back in the late 80's Derek played a game called Jetfighter and thought to himself "hey, I can make a better one". Noble beginning, but clearly Derek had no brakes, since what he wanted was basically 90's version of Star Citizen. And it went even worse since Derek spent more time hyping his game on Usenet, than actually working on it, to the point of calling it "THE GAME" i.e. the most ultimate space sim that will ever be. Back then people on the internet were much more gullible, they were glad to wait for it. And wait, and wait, and wait... Litteral years went by, but Derek was still hyping "THE GAME" and people started treating him like a bullshit artist. Instead of shutting up and concentrating his efforts on the development, Derek had done the opposite and began taking part in any flame war about himself he could ever find (it wasn't hard, since in early 90's internet wasn't nearly as massive). Even though his game was very far from even the beta stage, articles about it were showing up in magazines and he was actively looking for a publisher, but many of them were smart(pun intended) enough to ignore him, until in 1995, almost 7 years into development he signed a contract with Take Two. There was only one little problem - during that time technology was moving at the increasingly faster rate and Derek couldn't keep up and kept delaying it. First release date of Christmas 1995 came and went, then May of 1996, in the end Take Two from his own words "pressured" him to release it in October of 1996, since project went over budget multiple times at that point. As you may expect the release was a complete disaster - bugs, crashes, missing features, terrible interface, etc. To rub a bag of salt in the wound, Smart's haters now had a fuckton of ammunition against him and went on a rampage, Derek obviously joined them. To his credit though he kept releasing patches throughout the years until his game was somewhat playable, but to his discredit it was nothing like what he was describing all those years - boring empty space with nothing to do. He later released multiple games of the same qualities, but since autism is on the rise, even they got a fanbase in the end. He is also a vivid hater of Star Citizen, which is ironic as fuck. Otherwise, Derek Smart is the perfect example of a developer, who choses to make something impossibly ambitious, despite not having required experience or knowledge and instead keeps wasting his time on defending his image.
Also, there is a good video about him, part two - never.
Brianna Wu. That's right, our Johnny is not only a professional victim, but he is also a gamedeveloper! Revolution 60 was "made" our rather shat out by him just to prove a point that "women" can make games too" and it fucking shows - game is mostly stolen assets, stolen music, stolen everything. Gameplay and plot is something that you can expect from a lunatic, who spergs about launching moon rocks and crypto mining consuming all the electricity on planet Earth - nonsensical mini games among gibberish with blandest characters possible. And bugs, lots of bugs, of course. As you may expect, when the reception of this "game" was mostly negative, Wu just claimed that it was harassment campaign by trolls. Brianna Wu is the perfect example of a developer who is making games for every reason, but making games.
Miguel Carroll. Miguel was the lead in Behavior Online - studio responsible for Eternal Crusade. Since the announcement he was promising a lot of stuff, like a big open world without loading times, thousands of players on one battlefield, multiple missions for one objective, squad system, transports, etc. It wasn't just unseen before in WH40k games, but in games in general. If game wasn't unrealistic enough, fans began asking for different features and he hinted that they may add them in the future. Now take a guess what type of games Miguel and his team were making before that? That's right, fucking licensed games! That should've been the first red flag, but people were devastated by the cancellation of Dark Millennium and wanted to fill the void with something, even with absolute delusion. Shitshow continued and then Miguel said that they aren't going to do crowdfunding and immediately announced founders program - pay 80 bucks for every future feature i.e. "crowdfunding, but without Kickstarter". He kept lying his way through this by sucking up to WH40k fans and streamers, even stating that "we're making this game for
/v/ players, not the publisher or ourselves" and that they are going to make what's been promised no matter how little money they are going to get. In the end, he was forced out of his own studio, new lead realized that he had to work with a bunch of game ideas that probably aren't going to work together and overall unattainable, so he tried to play it off like "well, we are going to make battle part first and then the other stuff", but it didn't help much - after multiple delays game was met with rather mixed reviews, went F2P, never reached the promised scale and can be considered dead. Miguel Caroll is the perfect example of a gamedeveloper, who has nothing but vision, however, tries to bullshit his way through by pretending to be player's friend and hoping that somehow someday he will make what's been promised.
Watch longer version of this trashfire here, but keep in mind, that author downplays Miguel's fault in all of this and blames it all on the publisher.
James and Robert Romine a.k.a. two halves of brain that formed
Digital Homicide. None of their"games" had custom models, just piled up Unity assets, what little programming they did was on par with Alex's and their idea of gamedesign was even worse than Wu's. However, that's not not what made them infamous, that should be credited to their constant harassment of anyone who was even little critical of them to the point of filing false DMCAs and lolsuits against Steam users, who left negative reviews under their games. To this they admitted 0 of their wrongs and still try to play victims. James and Robert Romine are the perfect example of a gamedevelopers, who refuse to improve and instead chase their critics and scream about harassment.
I don't know their names, so I'll post it like a game.
StarForge. Basically, Eternal Crusade/Battlecruiser AD
and Yandere Simulator. Lots of promises, lots of vision, lots of support at the start and lots of stolen assets, lots of bugs and lots of banned users on the subreddit in the end. Basically, team of multiple Alexes tried to bullshit their way through without having any idea how to make games. The result is predictably terrible.
