“ reportedly enforcing uncompensated overtime, allegedly trying to pay staff below minimum wage, and a toxic work environment cultivated by an alleged abusive leadership.”
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this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
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not only is it tragic that these devs were so mistreated, but it sucks even more that they went through all that bullshit to produce such a WET TURD
Nacon demanded AAA performance from a $16M budget game. This was a massive leadership failure. It's a miracle it launched at all.
A most cursed miracle.
Perhaps it would have been a better miracle to have never launched at all...
I think it's a wet turd at least in part because they went through so much bullshit.
Explains why the game was so bad
The idea that only having a €15M budget is what caused this game's issues is ridiculous. It's not a game that had good ideas and just failed to execute them properly; it's fundamentally bad on a conceptual level.
The setting and story concept are bad. When the game was first announced, I don't think I heard or saw a single discussion where someone was excited to experience playing through the story of Gollum in that time period in the story. Or even playing as Gollum at all - he's a great secondary character in the books and films, but he's hardly a character you want to play as in a video game. There's no room for character development either.
The game design is bad. It's just bad. No amount of time, money or polish is going to fix the terrible basic design principles the game is built on. And even if they had 10x the budget and hired a world-class lead game designer from the start, it still would have the issues with the story and character.
The whole project is one that shouldn't have left the brainstorming session it was conceived in.
I could have seen it as a Stardew valley-esque Hobbit farming Sim, you start with simple farming, interacting with lore accurate villagers, fishing, cave gathering as Smeagol.
Then after a certain point of the game in a quest you find the Ring and your memories start getting hazy and your farming skill starts deteriorating and your cave gathering skills improve and the Ring blanks out part of your days and suddenly you find Deagols body and get flashbacks to what happened.
In the epilogue you start your usual day in the cave 'bed' instead of your Hobbit hole bed and you go gathering and meet Bilbo. Then cut to black
The first time I heard about the game, not long before it was released, I thought it was a joke.
What was released was a disaster that hadn't had anywhere near enough thought and consideration put into it. However, frankly if you don't think a gollum game couldn't be good I'd have to blame it on a lack of imagination.
This is revisionist. There were a lot of people excited to play as gollum and people being concerned.
people excited to play as gollum
Source?
I have no better source than the person I replied to. I was on Reddit when the game was announced and it was clear that the game was about being gollum. Plenty of people were excited.
You can go back on reddit and look. Calling it revisionist is a bit of a stretch. The temperature on this game was very much mid to uninterested. Sure there were people who were excited, but it wasn't a majority at all.
I was excited when it was first announced. I was hoping for a stealth game with gameplay like souls games or the shadow of mordor games. Sadly the game wasn't even close to that so I didn't buy it.
Those were your go-tos for gameplay expectations for sneaking around as a pretty weak little goblin man? I would've gone for Styx instead, a game about sneaking around as a little goblin man. (Which I think actually belongs to the same publisher)
Obviously combat would have to be balanced for Gollums powers. 1v1 an orc could have been fine but anything else would overpower him. I didn't play Styx so I can't compare it. I played the Splinter Cell Series and Dishonored, but both offered technology and weapons with range to help with sneaking. So I opted for games with a high fantasy setting. A game with controls like Souls, balanced for sneaking and ambushes as a focus, using the environment as your asset? Feels to me like it could work. Well, nothing like Souls, Shadow or Styx happened and we got whatever the Gollum game was.
I only played one for maybe like 2 hours, but they seem like pretty good games, you could probably pick one up for cheap on sale.
Also when I think of Soulslike Gollum, all I see in my mind is this gormless little creature wielding a 6 foot axe or something and that just makes me laugh.
Anyway, yeah, Nacon/Daedelic had several studios that had more experience making stealth-action games. I mean, besides the guys that made Styx, they also have the Shadow Tactics guys. Isometric tactical stealth could've been another option.
It's honestly like they just made the absolute wrong decision for all things during development.
I was for sure And I know quite a few people who thought the concept was good
I for one am shocked that this game was a disaster of a production. I don't think anyone could have seen this coming to light.
alleges publisher Nacon used AI tool ChatGPT to write the apology statement issued after Gollum’s failings became public
What? No way dude, totally fooled us, we absolutely couldn't tell!
Why even attempt AAA game with such a small budget/team size ratio?
It would have been a good game if they had cut the amount of developers and the scope of the game to fit the budget. I've recently tried smaller games like Dysmantle and they're great, why not even pixel/FF style Lord of the rings game? That would be awesome and cost less
Maybe having licensed such a big IP they aimed for the stars.
Probably the least important of all these problems, but really, the publisher issuing a blanket chatGPT-generated apology, in the name of the studio without their knowledge, not even getting the name of the fucking game right.
Dude, maybe try to take your job a bit seriously?
Why start at exactly that point though?
All this abuse to ship public haired Gollum.