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Former Gearbox dev: "We only did MP-portion of Aliens!". SEGA: "NOPE"

Z

Zuhzuhzombie!!

Member
DaBoss said:
SEGA can't seem to catch a break with retail games. It seems they have it really bad.
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Passing the single player along? Pretending Gearbox was the only studio on it?

SEGA can only blame themselves.


You know... maybe Borderlands was a fluke and Gearbox just don't have what it takes.
 
Raptomex

Raptomex

Member
This sounds like the second time they're blaming or naming some other company for their faults. Didn't they do something like this with DNF?
 
D

Dysun

Member
Besides from the pretty colors and loot Borderlands is pretty bad as well. I'm surprised at the fanfare it gets, anything with capable leveling up and shooting can find an audience I suppose.
Not a fan of their games whatsoever, even if they outsourced the campaign and just built on what they got from other places.
 
Z

Zuhzuhzombie!!

Member
Dysun said:
Besides from the pretty colors and loot Borderlands is pretty bad as well. I'm surprised at the fanfare it gets, anything with capable leveling up and shooting can find an audience I suppose.
Not a fan of their games whatsoever, even if they outsourced the campaign and just built on what they got from other places.
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The first one was a fun, mindless, loot fest. The second one was just more of the same.
 
C

Catchpenny

Member
Dysun said:
Besides from the pretty colors and loot Borderlands is pretty bad as well. I'm surprised at the fanfare it gets, anything with capable leveling up and shooting can find an audience I suppose.
Not a fan of their games whatsoever, even if they outsourced the campaign and just built on what they got from other places.
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Shoot shit + competent online + mechanic to reward players for additional play + one or two standout gimmicks = a successful shooter.
 
D

Dream17

Neo Member
Aliens is a BIG , BIG, franchise
it's a masterpiece of fantastic (SF) Movies

WTF ? gearbox give the solo part of this game to an avarage studio .

should be sued by SEGA for this! SEGA asked GEARBOX to make this game not TIME GATE STUDIOS!
 
M

Mesoian

Member
Dream17 said:
Aliens is a BIG , BIG, franchise
it's a masterpiece of fantastic (SF) Movies

WTF ? gearbox give the solo part of this game to an avarage studio .

should be sued by SEGA for this! SEGA asked GEARBOX to make this game not TIME GATE STUDIOS!
Click to expand...

Well....two of them are masterpieces...

And you...don't know how game development works, do you?
 
O

Orca

Member
It's like there's a big turd on the carpet and everyone is running away pointing fingers at everyone else.
 
C

cuyahoga

Dudebro, My Shit is Fucked Up So I Got to Shoot/Slice You II: It's Straight-Up Dawg Time
After seeing this, I'm beginning to think it might be a good thing Gearbox never made that Heat game.
 
D

dreamfall

Member
It really is no excuse. If their company name is on the box, represent your game- whether it is shit, or the best thing ever.

I'm disappointed in Gearbox. I don't like the finger pointing, and distancing of the company from this product. Duke Nukem was utter shit, and they stood by it. This looks absolutely horrible, and that Alien.gif is shameful.

I'd say Borderlands looks like their main priority, but whatever they are working on, they should have allotted some time to try and do something with this franchise. It sounds like they jumped ship early, let other teams handle development, and now are trying to avoid answering for a terrible game.
 
B

Bad7667

Member
Glass Rebel said:
A new team at Creative Assembly is still working on an Alien (without the S) game.
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Is there any info on what this game is going to be? I love the Total War games and rts is what these guys do but I can't imagine an Alien game being good as an RTS.

Would be interesting to see Creative do something outside the RTS genre.
 
TaroYamada

TaroYamada

Member
Bad7667 said:
Is there any info on what this game is going to be? I love the Total War games and rts is what these guys do but I can't imagine an Alien game being good as an RTS.

Would be interesting to see Creative do something outside the RTS genre.
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It's a action game for next-gen consoles/pc as far as we know, supposedly the graphics are very nice and they are aiming for a MetaCritic in the 90's.
 
B

Brerlappin

Member
It doesn't matter if they only did the MP, the SP, or made the fucking tea for Demiurge.
The point is, Gearbox saw Aliens CM godawful SP portion, and said "fuck it, good enough" and allowed their name to be put on it. It's as much their fault as anyone who it was outsourced to.
 
pants

pants

Member
TWITTER|IGN --> GAF --> INTERNET --> GAF

http://www.nowgamer.com/news/1806263/aliens_colonial_marines_development_was_total_train_wreck.html

Following the mediocre review scores flooding in for Aliens: Colonial Marines - we scored it 5.0 in our Aliens: Colonial Marines review - comes a report suggesting Gearbox didn't even have that much involvement with development.

Superannuation tweeted a link to a forum post suggesting Gearbox was only responsible for the multiplayer side of Aliens: Colonial Marines.

"Hate to say it but I wouldn't get your hopes up too high for Aliens: Colonial Marines," says mugwurt on TexAgs."I used to work at Gearbox, and the development of that game has been a total train wreck going on what, 6 years now? Gearbox isn't even making the game, except for the multiplayer. Primary development was outsourced to TimeGate Studios, which has a less than steller past."

The post was made in May last year and attributed to an ex-Retro Studio employee who went on to form Armature Studio - so it's either art director Todd Keller, design director Mark Pacini or principal technology engineer Jack Matthews, although it's not clear who.

TimeGate Studios is best known for its FPS Section 8.

Talking to IGN recently, Randy Pitchford explained the role of the other two studios in the development of Colonial Marines, who appear in the intro credits - Demiurge Studios and Nerve Software. "We're not contractually obligated to put anybody's credits there, but we value talent and respect talent," he said.

- Demiurge Studios (Shoot Many Robots, Rock Band DLC, Mass Effect Pinnacle Station): "[They were] with us at the very beginning, helping us to explore networking and multiplayer."

- Nerve Software (Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Tides of War, Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil): "We wanted more multiplayer stuff, more content and more features for the game that we shipped with rather than parcelling it all out for downloadable content. Nerve had some time and those guys are badass. They're right down the street. That just made sense. Some of my favourite multiplayer maps came out of that group."

It's not the first time Gearbox has outsourced work or not been responsible for the bulk of development. Duke Nukem Forever is the most famous example but the DLC for Borderlands 2 has also been outsourced - The Workshop Entertainment made Mr Torgue's Campaign Of Carnage, for example.
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R

RazielCuts

Member
Why is GearBox all over the marketing and on the box if all they did was the MP? I know GearBox is known now due to the success of Borderlands but I feel likt they're tarnishing their name and good will, first Duke Nukem Forever now this. If you're going to put your name on something get behind it and don't just shit it out, I'm sceptical if GearBox can even make a truly 'great' game anymore.
 
Wiktor

Wiktor

Member
Looking at what Pitchford said at DICE, Gearbox did work heavily on campaign. Even leaving the pre-production they did as much as TimeGate. Plus Nerve created plenty of MP maps and Demiurge handled networking, so there isn't a huge ammount of stuff they could do in MP.

But damn..why won't Timegate return to what they do well: Kohan games.
 
I

Ingueferroque

Banned
Dream17 said:
Aliens is a BIG , BIG, franchise
it's a masterpiece of fantastic (SF) Movies

WTF ? gearbox give the solo part of this game to an avarage studio .

should be sued by SEGA for this! SEGA asked GEARBOX to make this game not TIME GATE STUDIOS!
Click to expand...

What is your avatar from?
 
J

Jac_Solar

Member
Zarx said:
This kind of outsourcing isn't really that uncommon. Just look at Tose for example http://www.1up.com/features/gaming-dirty-secret. And on the topic of outsourcing since I stumbled upon Glass Egg I have been amazed by the fact that they seem to make half the car models in games http://glassegg.com/portfolio.php I mean all the cars in Most Wanted 2012 and over a 100 cars+ DLC of Forza 4, and all 138 car models in Driver 3...
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Wow.

The games industry continues to baffle. I mean, what do the actual studios do? I was under the impression that they did everything unless something else was specified.

The point of outsourcing is to save money, and it seems like most companies do it to some degree, yet the cost of making games continues to rise while the actual quality and content of games decrease.

I was already highly skeptical of the game budgets, to the point where I was wondering where the money actually went, but this just takes it over the top.
 
Clear

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Jac_Solar said:
The point of outsourcing is to save money
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No its not, this is a common misconception.

Outsourcing is most commonly used to expedite delivery dates, because staffing up takes time and has an uncertain outcome.
 
D

Dream17

Neo Member
Ingueferroque said:
What is your avatar from?
Click to expand...


this avatar

227641Sanstitrejhggh.png


come frome that

262046Sega16LogoSuperMonacoGPAni.gif


It's from the game Super Monaco GP on Sega Megadrive/Genesis



why?
 
I

IdreamofHIME

Member
:/
I read this crap after I install the game?

Well that's great, that's just fucking great. Now what the fuck am I supposed to do? I'm in some real pretty shit now man...
 
Lactose_Intolerant

Lactose_Intolerant

Member
Yep, this is just gearbox covering themselves, though timegate is pretty horrible:

http://forums.timegate.com/showpost.php?p=285152&postcount=23

I'm not really sure how much I'm allowed to say here.

I thought TG worked on the MP component, but I was wrong. Messaged a few people in TG and found out that TG basically had a hand in everything.

They are responsible for the weapons, the characters, some of the story, a fair amount of the aliens, and I don't mean conceptualization, they did the actual work of making said weapons and so on.

Technically they did work on the MP component, just not in the way I initially thought.

This said, the game underwent a lot of changes so TG doesn't actually know how much of their content is left. Some had the estimate that 50% of what you see in the campaign is their work, others wanted to see for themselves and would get back to me after playing the game themselves.

One has to remember that you can't really "blame" TG for this. They were outsourced to do parts of ACM, and it does not represent current TG design philosophy. ACM is still mostly a Gearbox production and it was they who made the final call on all content.
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Refreshment.01

Refreshment.01

Member
zugzug said:
]All the interviews I saw of this game was Randy Pitchford gushing and luving how the movies were the fiber of his life and this was his dream project and the entire team(Randy and his mulitiple personalities imo) That they were going to do the game justice.[/B]

But if your outsourcing the game are you really doing the game justice Randy?

Whats the quality of your company.
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This i wanted to post. All the prre release hype was spearheaded by Pitchfork, no way it would cross my head it wasn't internally developed by Gearbox.
 
G

Geoff9920

Member
Even if Gearbox outsourced most of the game, they're still responsible for the design and determining what is and isn't in the final product. If the final product is garbage the fault still lies with Gearbox. As the other studios are just doing as Gearbox have asked.
 
E

Effect

Member
Dream17 said:
Aliens is a BIG , BIG, franchise
it's a masterpiece of fantastic (SF) Movies

WTF ? gearbox give the solo part of this game to an avarage studio .

should be sued by SEGA for this! SEGA asked GEARBOX to make this game not TIME GATE STUDIOS!
Click to expand...

I am curious if this is possible. If Sega indeed contracted Gearbox to make the game and they don't but have someone else make it and the quality isn't what was reasonably expected (after you have an expectation about what a developer can do and that is why you choose tem) can they sue? Even if Gearbox did everything and the quality was just as bad could they still sue for not delivering a product that was agreed upon?

Sure Gearbox can put blame on Timegate but until now they were the ones taking any and all credit for the game leading up to release.
 
F

fenners

Member
Effect said:
I am curious if this is possible. If Sega indeed contracted Gearbox to make the game and they don't but have someone else make it and the quality isn't what was reasonably expected (after you have an expectation about what a developer can do and that is why you choose tem) can they sue? Even if Gearbox did everything and the quality was just as bad could they still sue for not delivering a product that was agreed upon?

Sure Gearbox can put blame on Timegate but until now they were the ones taking any and all credit for the game leading up to release.
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Come on, you think Sega didn't know exactly what Gearbox was doing in-house & outsourcing? :-/
 
M

Munin

Member
Poor TimeGate, made one of the greatest strategy games of all time and in the past couple years they've been relegated to making mediocre games for other people's shooter franchises, which they're obviously not very good at, or doing thankless contract work. :/
 
G

GuitarAtomik

Member
.hacked said:
Nothing but promising previews and such, preorder it off of greenmangaming now everyone says the game is shit.

Fell for the hype train again :/
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You should listen to more gaming podcasts. I've only heard negative buzz for this game since last E3 so this does not come as a surprise.
 
J

Jac_Solar

Member
Clear said:
No its not, this is a common misconception.

Outsourcing is most commonly used to expedite delivery dates, because staffing up takes time and has an uncertain outcome.
Click to expand...

Oh, ok, that makes more sense (I hadn't really questioned it..). However, that's still quite bad since this just makes it seem/appear like anyone who has outsourced a game didn't properly plan. Of course, there are exceptions where it's totally understandable, but I've rarely heard of developers speak about how organized the games industry is.
 
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