Okay, so I've reconstructed as much of the AMA as I can. You can add this to to the OP if you like.
(deleted)
yes I am. I'm terrified. This is a throwaway. However this game was a complete lie to the public and people should know what happnened.
Did it's quality increase or decrease from when you tested it to the final product?
Hard to say. They removed some promising stuff. For example the game starts with a cutscene. It used to be that youa ctually moved through the ship with your leader and kind of experienced it yourself. This worked much better. There were also more cutscenes planned, like explaining the marine from the movies origin better etc.
did they even worry about what the final outcome would be?
"They?"
Just want to say, as a developer, if you legitimately broke your NDA for fake internet points you deserve to lose your job.
Had gearbox and sega not so knowingly lied to the public I would have no interest in doing this. Companies should know they cant do this.
What did you tell the Gearbox/Sega employees regarding the quality of the game? What did they say to you regarding your feedback?
it was clear we hated it. Everyone did. We all preferred our game AVP from 2010. That wasnt great, but it was better than what we got with acm. We had little contact with gearbox. much less than we've ever had. Everything was through senior staff, the higher ups. we had strict rules about what we could post to them.
Can you say anything about the new consoles? Any info on the anti used games rumours?
I can't, I've seen them and played the PC version of one of the games, but did not get told this. When I played the ps4 I had not heard this rumor.
Why was so many development studios were involved in the making of this game that been in production for a long while now? Were they trying to get it out before the deadline?
Gearbox was busy with other games. they took this on before borderlands success so rushed intot he sequel, putting other companies on the game to help. demiurge did the entire wiiU version.
Was it ever like the press demo?
As Ive said no. not that I saw. what you got was basically what we had from early last year.
Can you confirm the rumored specs?
Not really, I work with the 360 everyday and couldnt tell you anything about the specs of that too though.
Would you consider the DLC to be something that can save the game?
if it had been in the game from the start maybe. It was really fun, and very hard. big levels full of increasingly tough waves of xeons.
Are you serious? Sega never came over and looked upon the progress?
maybe they did over the years, but they've been desperate for a hit and trsuted gearbox after seeing the borderlands success.
Do you like the game?
I hate it Have you played it?
Can you give any info on the new consoles?
we are making the new alien game with creative asembly who make total war. That game looks amazing. Very dark, very slow paced (in a good way). The textures and lighting look really really good. I've seen it running on a PC. The PS4 devkit looks like a computer. It looks as good rif not better running as any super high end pc. We did not have those controllers, but they look like what was promised.
Yeah, you've just got to understand that this subreddit is pretty edgy as we have had A LOT of fakes over the years. Maybe you are real maybe you aren't, I have no way of knowing. One way game testers have proven it in in the past is taking a picture of their ID card with their picture/number obscured or of a payment stub with the obvious things obscured. Just a thought.
I dont have my id right now, but i have payslips. I cant post those on here, so Im waiting for the mods to get back to me.
Like I said, just a paystub with all the obvious information obscured and then write your username on it. Shouldn't be hard, but okay.
I want to work in games. If i post a payslip, and somehow they found out it was me, I will never work again. As i said im waiting for the mods to tell me how to send it to them privatly.
Awesome! Thanks. Small followup if you will: Who is, "They" in regards to the people who made the story worse? Timegate? Gearbox?
The minute Hicks was revealed I was kinda over it...from the beginning I thought that was a stupid idea.
Gearbox. Timegate didn't do as much as gearbox. They were involved, but everything we said we said to gearbox. Timegate may have done it in the past, but when we had it gearbox were in charge.
Hey, post this to /r/games and contact a mod there.
how do I cross post?
You'll be downvoted until you can provide proof to the mods, we've had plenty of hoaxes around here. I hope this is real though as the information is interesting, especially how bad the Wii U version is.
I've contacted them, but have had no reply. I want to get it sorted as I feel the public have been screwed over by the game. There is a cool thing coming called bug hunt, basically gears of war like horde mode. Its the best bit of the game, hopefully it might help those burnt by the game get some fun out of it.
Is it true they outsourced some parts of the game
Yes
To who? The Indians? China? The Esurance people?
demiurge timegate and others. its been all over the news recently.
stop fucking downvoting him until he gets verification. Jesus Christ you pitchfork wielding dickholes need to relax.
http://i.imgur.com/wg9fRbk.jpg
In the meantime:
Do you have any idea why the writer decide to just fuck with the canon in such a distasteful and unjustified way?
Also, was the game at any point good when you play tested it? Did you see potential or was it just a hot piece of garbage the minute it was handed to you?
The original story had some shit stuff too, but they made it worse. They were going to have stuff where you would free aliens, like empty the cages. They got rid of that. You also had control over your squads etc, and one of your squad would at somepoint come out as working for the enemy and try to fuck you over.
The game came in super buggy, with lots of placeholder stuff saying what would come in. There was originally a cool opening where you go through the ship and actually take part in prep to go nto the sulaco. They changed that to a cutscene rather than bother polishing it. Numerous cutscenes were dropped too. We were shocked at how bad it was, but we thought it would get better, I mean how could they release it like they did?
Do you think the Watch Dogs demo is as fake as the ACM presentation?
I have no idea. I hope not. I doubt it. acm is an anomaly. We do have the new consoles in too. At head office. Dey sexy...
How much money did Sega waste on this games development?
And when did Sega realise there was a point of no return and the game wasn't going to get any better? I would have thought, they'd have realised this sooner given it's announcement in 2008.
PS: Will sega sue gearbox?
Many tens of millions. Including marketing. Think over forty, nearer sixty. Sega only got it for test mid last year. The seniors really fucked it up, they saw gearbx as being an amzing company and thought they had borderlans with aliens. They didnt think to check on it.
Yes, there will be legal ramiffications.
What were you thinking when you let this pass? Didn't any of you band together to say 'yo wtf man?'
Sega were well aware the game sucks. No amount of money would fix it. It would have to be a day one start.
Do you happen to know if the Wii U version is still coming out? Because there are rumors floating around that it's been cancelled. (I asked this question)
Oh wow. Yes okay. I was hoping someone would ask this. I have played the WiiU version. The one that is supposedly the best of all of them? It is not. It is the worst. It is a bit of a joke. The WiiU is basically the same game as the console version but with framerate issues, worse texture loading, and horrendously misguided minigames thrown in. You get a 'scanner' to scan enemies and get bonus points that aid your harming them. When you cut open doors (which happens a lot in the game) you have a game where you have to keep the heat 'optimal'. They just add frustration, and take away even more from the fun. We don't know if it will come out, Sega are conisdering canceling it, but right now its still going.
This is the second time gearbox pumped out a franchise game that was less than stellar (DNF). Is gearbox planning to keep doing this on the cheap?
I doubt we will work with gearbox again but to be honest acm is segas fault too. they allowed it to happen.
Is that really a surprise? Gearbox are a bunch of lying snakes. So many lies in DNF, so many lies in this game. I hope people will realize who they are now.
I think the issue is they took on aliens, only to then bcome successful with borderlands, but were contracted to aliens. If they hadnt done borderlands 2 they would have spent mroe time on aliens. I like borderlands and the sequel, its just a shame this had so many fans waiting.
What happened that the Demo and the live-version of the same area are so fundamentally different and outright crippled to a degree that the demo could be labled as false advertising?
We never received anything like that. We always had the Unreal engine version of it, and have done for a long time. The demo was 100% false advertising based on the final thing, but I think gearbox expected better of what they had planned.
At what point did you notice the game go into decline?
Maybe when we all watched the trailers and stuff, when the marketing went proper. then we saw what we had and what was being advertised. Everyone knew, we just didnt know how badly it would be recieved.
Did you tell them that NOBODY buys a aliens game to fight humans
The game was too far done, but it was clear everyone hated the direction. The weyyu sections were actually weirdly better to test as they were harder. In the game you can run through the alien sections but the humans will always shoot you, especially since they can shoot through cover...
What happened that made it suck so bad?
Gearbox didnt care about the game, they spent the money from acm on the borderlands games. Look at the release dates of borderlands and when aliens was anounced, they had the other companies like timegate do the work. When they got the game back timegate had done a terrible job. When it came into sega it was shit basicaly. Gearbox only cared about fixing 'progression blockers' (things that stop a player from getting through a level) or crashes.
ouch. thats such a bummer, thanks for the information very much though. It is a true shame as I love aliens.
Yeah, it was promising. They actually have the original story stuff in the office, and that sounded much better, you can see the cut and paste job gearbox/timegate did with the story. I will say though that gearbox did much more of the game than timegate.
What were you thinking when you let this pass? Didn't any of you band together to say 'yo wtf man?'
What can we do? We are testers, we test the game to find bugs. If you've played the game you know we had our work cut out. Everyone who played it said how horrible it was, but sega were not going to spend any more money on it to delay it again.
was the demo shown at E3 ever actually in the game? and if so how did it get cut out?
Never in the game. Maybe in 06 that was the plan, but in terms of 'the game' that never existed. That certainly isn't unreal 3 for example, which the game is built in. That area is kind of in the game, in a later mission called hope for hadleys. You go and save some marines, but it is nowhere near as exciting as that demo.
So you are basically saying that Gearbox used money meant for A:CM to fun Borderlands 2 instead ...
Indeed I am, though more that it helped fund the first game.
So far the only answer I've seen anyone could have made from what that developer posted in his semi AMA on launch day.
I have contacted the mods, will email them verification when they respond.
What were you thinking when you let this pass? Didn't any of you band together to say 'yo wtf man?'
What can we do? We are testers, we test the game to find bugs. If you've played the game you know we had our work cut out. Everyone who played it said how horrible it was, but sega were not going to spend any more money on it to delay it again.
Make a biiiiiig banner. Big banners always work. Didn't think of that one, eh! Eh!
Sega were well aware the game sucks. No amount of money would fix it. It would have to be a day one start.
