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[TheSpaceBetween]

EA continuing to show why they were voted worst company in America multiple times.

 

[SketchTheArtist]

To be fair if they really thought that the game wasn't good they could have ended up with another Andromeda situation. With that thought process might as well cut your losses and cancel it.

I was working for two years on a big AAA title a few years ago. I was so invested in it and saw how much potential it had and when it was cancelled, I was so sad and angry at such a lost opportunity. But with a bit of time that passed, the project was actually going nowhere and it was the best decision to kill it before wasting any more time, energy and money on it

You work on those games giving it everything you got and dreaming about the end product but sometimes there's a ton of factors that can side-blind you and cause the project so spiral out of control. Especially in AAA development.

 

[ElBoxyBrown]

Nah, at the time it was very specifically chasing Uncharted right down to having a cocky brunette white dude as the protagonist in that build. Pursuing the Uncharted fan base more and more is also what sorta killed Dead Space, and devs were really transparent about whether it was uncharted or gears they were aping:

It still feels like too few examples.

 

[Orthogonal]

Amy Henning a year ago:

https://t.co/V9SRwdXkDq

Poor Amy, she must feel devsatated.


I cant believe how poorly EA and Disney have handled the Star Wars license for gaming. With a mountain of resources and talent behind them, all they have to show is 2 Battlefront games. The 10 year license will expire with shockibgly little to show.

 

[codecow]

True. So glad that's over.


Nah, at the time it was very specifically chasing Uncharted right down to having a cocky brunette white dude as the protagonist in that build. Pursuing the Uncharted fan base more and more is also what sorta killed Dead Space, and devs were really transparent about whether it was uncharted or gears they were aping:

The unofficial big idea for DS2 was Dead Space x Uncharted 2 and then we took some elements from Gears and even CoD in terms of the aim tuning.

The first game was more like RE4 in space, but then we added elements from System Shock (no pause), Half-Life 2 (TK), etc...

As for dismemberment the original demos we made on 360 were made in the Havok sample app that I modified to have audio and a basic particle and decal system. Adam Gousetis (now at Google) worked on the ragdoll, gravity control, and cutting. The first demo was in that sad "engine" and had a version of the Leaper that you could shoot and cut up in 1st person with controllable gravity.

Pretty much everyone who saw it liked it. Bing Gordon saw it and suggested we make it a primary mechanic that would define the game.

At this point my inspiration was Soldier of Fortune where it was cosmetic but awesome. Bret Robbins and Glen Schofield came up with enemies and weapons that made sense with the mechanic and that was it.

 

[SomedayTheFire]

EA continuing to show why they were voted worst company in America multiple times.

Because gamers are reactionary children?

 

[TheSpaceBetween]

The unofficial big idea for DS2 was Dead Space x Uncharted 2 and then we took some elements from Gears and even CoD in terms of the aim tuning.

The first game was more like RE4 in space, but then we added elements from System Shock (no pause), Half-Life 2 (TK), etc...

As for dismemberment the original demos we made on 360 were made in the Havok sample app that I modified to have audio and a basic particle and decal system. Adam Gousetis (now at Google) worked on the ragdoll, gravity control, and cutting. The first demo was in that sad "engine" and had a version of the Leaper that you could shoot and cut up in 1st person with controllable gravity.

Pretty much everyone who saw it liked it. Bing Gordon saw it and suggested we make it a primary mechanic that would define the game.

At this point my inspiration was Soldier of Fortune where it was cosmetic but awesome. Bret Robbins and Glen Schofield came up with enemies and weapons that made sense with the mechanic and that was it.

Very cool info! Any comments on Dead Space 3?

 

[Korigama]

It still feels like too few examples.

Team Ninja admitted to Uncharted being an influence on development for Dead or Alive 5 as well, specifically in regards to stage interaction/destruction and the introduction of the Cliffhanger mechanic.

 

[Crossing Eden]

It still feels like too few examples.

One in particular that I always remember is dark void. That one game with the jet packs. Think it was because that one

Spoiler

came out on my birthday the year it released.

so I always remember it despite never having played more than the demo.

The unofficial big idea for DS2 was Dead Space x Uncharted 2 and then we took some elements from Gears and even CoD in terms of the aim tuning.

The first game was more like RE4 in space, but then we added elements from System Shock (no pause), Half-Life 2 (TK), etc...

As for dismemberment the original demos we made on 360 were made in the Havok sample app that I modified to have audio and a basic particle and decal system. Adam Gousetis (now at Google) worked on the ragdoll, gravity control, and cutting. The first demo was in that sad "engine" and had a version of the Leaper that you could shoot and cut up in 1st person with controllable gravity.

Pretty much everyone who saw it liked it. Bing Gordon saw it and suggested we make it a primary mechanic that would define the game.

At this point my inspiration was Soldier of Fortune where it was cosmetic but awesome. Bret Robbins and Glen Schofield came up with enemies and weapons that made sense with the mechanic and that was it.

Nice.

 

[ElBoxyBrown]

Team Ninja admitted to Uncharted being an influence on development for Dead or Alive 5 as well, specifically in regards to stage interaction/destruction and the introduction of the Cliffhanger mechanic.

Now we're thinking outside a genre.

One in particular that I always remember is dark void. That one game with the jet packs. Think it was because that one

Spoiler

came out on my birthday the year it released.

so I always remember it despite never having played more than the demo.

Dark Void tried to make a Nathan Drake. Key word: Tried.

 

[Glass Rebel]

Wow, that is one pissed Tycho. Not surprised considering Amy was the featured speaker at one of the PAXs

His commentary on the strip fwiw

https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2017/10/20/second-opinion

Not even defending EA here but this just comes off as self-important posturing. Did he react the same when she was taken off UC4? PA has become such a waste of bandwidth outside of PAX.

 

[codecow]

Very cool info! Any comments on Dead Space 3?

Coming off DS2 the team had a few ideas:

1. Change multiplayer to co-op.

The idea we had was somewhat influenced by RE Outbreak series where the player could become T cell infected. Another game we looked at was The Thing where trust was a game mechanic. Patrick Lipo was the designer for it at that time and we wanted to have a randomly selected player become a Unitologist. They had their own win condition which was to smuggle out some type of marker artifact without being discovered by the other players.

We wanted to use procedurally generated maps with no cut scenes.

Due to the success of RE5/business reasons this later became full campaign co-op instead of a separate mode.

2. AI stuff

At the start of the prepro for the title I did a couple of AI projects. One was to have NPCs be able to react to lights. Initially this "feeder" enemy was designed to be used for puzzles involving dynamic lights, I basically wanted them to one shot you. The idea was to use them for light-based stealth gameplay. It's a common scene type in horror movies. I can't tell you why these weren't used properly but it's probably along the lines of not being mass market.

Since we wanted procedural maps we needed procedural spawning. I worked on a baby version of a spawn AI like the L4D director system. This became more and more corrupted over time by production requests. I'm not even sure if it's on in the space beta path stuff in the final product.

3. Snow planet

The team's original vision for this was to have "blizzard" wasteland between small map sites. Originally the goal was to be able to go to these map sites in any order going on the surface the whole way.

There was supposed to be an abandoned training or missile silo type thing with hundreds of procedural maps in it and an insane computer.

4. Weapon crafting.

I disliked the "glue two guns together" design the designers made. I wrote a lengthy design based more along the lines of higher realism, unfortunately some of the classic guns would have gone away. It relied on found weapons much more and had a melee emphasis in the early game.

Some other stuff about the game:

The weapon crafting tuning and progression basically broke the main game mechanic (dismemberment).

Some of the cool stuff that the AI did:

Human NPCs reacting to Necromophs
Human NPCs reacting to Necromophs killing their friends
Human NPCs using stasis grenades
Necros attacking Human NPCs
Feeder light AI
Auto spawn
Divider head AI with pulse rifle

were barely used in the game due to a lack of floor space and, the level design process, and in some case a lack of good assets. For example if a NPC reacts to a Necro cutting his friend's head off by saying "Ah." then you might as well not do it.

 

[Stygr]

Coming off DS2 the team had a few ideas:

1. Change multiplayer to co-op.

The idea we had was somewhat influenced by RE Outbreak series where the player could become T cell infected. Another game we looked at was The Thing where trust was a game mechanic. Patrick Lipo was the designer for it at that time and we wanted to have a randomly selected player become a Unitologist. They had their own win condition which was to smuggle out some type of marker artifact without being discovered by the other players.

We wanted to use procedurally generated maps with no cut scenes.

Due to the success of RE5/business reasons this later became full campaign co-op instead of a separate mode.

2. AI stuff

At the start of the prepro for the title I did a couple of AI projects. One was to have NPCs be able to react to lights. Initially this "feeder" enemy was designed to be used for puzzles involving dynamic lights, I basically wanted them to one shot you. The idea was to use them for light-based stealth gameplay. It's a common scene type in horror movies. I can't tell you why these weren't used properly but it's probably along the lines of not being mass market.

Since we wanted procedural maps we needed procedural spawning. I worked on a baby version of a spawn AI like the L4D director system. This became more and more corrupted over time by production requests. I'm not even sure if it's on in the space beta path stuff in the final product.

3. Snow planet

The team's original vision for this was to have "blizzard" wasteland between small map sites. Originally the goal was to be able to go to these map sites in any order going on the surface the whole way.

There was supposed to be an abandoned training or missile silo type thing with hundreds of procedural maps in it and an insane computer.

4. Weapon crafting.

I disliked the "glue two guns together" design the designers made. I wrote a lengthy design based more along the lines of higher realism, unfortunately some of the classic guns would have gone away. It relied on found weapons much more and had a melee emphasis in the early game.

Some other stuff about the game:

The weapon crafting tuning and progression basically broke the main game mechanic (dismemberment).

Some of the cool stuff that the AI did:

Human NPCs reacting to Necromophs
Human NPCs reacting to Necromophs killing their friends
Human NPCs using stasis grenades
Necros attacking Human NPCs
Feeder light AI
Auto spawn
Divider head AI with pulse rifle

were barely used in the game due to a lack of floor space and, the level design process, and in some case a lack of good assets. For example if a NPC reacts to a Necro cutting his friend's head off by saying "Ah." then you might as well not do it.

Can you tell us, the development cost of Dead Space 3 and the sales?
A sequel of Dante's Inferno, was as an idea to EA or the series died after the first one and they didn't want to greenlight another one?

 

[codecow]

Can you tell us, the development cost of Dead Space 3 and the sales?
A sequel of Dante's Inferno, was as an idea to EA or the series died after the first one and they didn't want to greenlight another one?

I'm not sure on the cost but I'd assume it was similar to DS2.

For Dante's there was a sequel being worked on and it looked pretty cool.

 

[Harmen]

The unofficial big idea for DS2 was Dead Space x Uncharted 2 and then we took some elements from Gears and even CoD in terms of the aim tuning.

The first game was more like RE4 in space, but then we added elements from System Shock (no pause), Half-Life 2 (TK), etc...

As for dismemberment the original demos we made on 360 were made in the Havok sample app that I modified to have audio and a basic particle and decal system. Adam Gousetis (now at Google) worked on the ragdoll, gravity control, and cutting. The first demo was in that sad "engine" and had a version of the Leaper that you could shoot and cut up in 1st person with controllable gravity.

Pretty much everyone who saw it liked it. Bing Gordon saw it and suggested we make it a primary mechanic that would define the game.

At this point my inspiration was Soldier of Fortune where it was cosmetic but awesome. Bret Robbins and Glen Schofield came up with enemies and weapons that made sense with the mechanic and that was it.

Thanks for the info. For me personally it made for one of the best games of all time, up there with it's inspirations.

Sad to see the studio go, I also really enjoyed the games that followed after DS2.

 

[Machina]

I know people have been saying that we shouldn't jump to the most cynical conclusion surrounding why this happened, but I'm not even doing that because we're talking about EA. That's partially why, but the main reason I am cynical about it is the statement itself.

It plays it off as if EA are making some sort of brave decision for the good of all, but read between the lines and it reeks of that entitled EA stench.

 

[ArkhamFantasy]

I know people have been saying that we shouldn't jump to the most cynical conclusion surrounding why this happened, but I'm not even doing that because we're talking about EA. That's partially why, but the main reason I am cynical about it is the statement itself.

It plays it off as if EA are making some sort of brave decision for the good of all, but read between the lines and it reeks of that entitled EA stench.

The statement is salt in the wound for sure.

 

[Stygr]

I'm not sure on the cost but I'd assume it was similar to DS2.

For Dante's there was a sequel being worked on and it looked pretty cool.

And what happened to this sequel?
This makes me so sad

 

[codecow]

And what happened to this sequel?
This makes me so sad

It got killed.

There is a video of it somewhere on Vimeo or vidme, lol.

 

[Syriel]

Man if this is the direction EA wants to move toward, fuck their games

https://twitter.com/psdavies/status/921676653176160256

There is no "progression ban." You can play as much arcade as you like.

https://twitter.com/edstub207/status/921728995720417280

It got killed.

There is a video of it somewhere on Vimeo or vidme, lol.

SOOOO many games get killed in various states of development.

My big disappointment over the years (as far as looking cool and getting canned) was 3DO's Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse game.

Folks outside the industry don't realize that a project getting canned is not a super rare thing.

 

[Stygr]

It got killed.

There is a video of it somewhere on Vimeo or vidme, lol.

Oh i understand, thanks for the answers.

Are you still in one of EA's studios or did you left the company?

 

[codecow]

Oh i understand, thanks for the answers.

Are you still in one of EA's studios or did you left the company?

I left a few months ago. Need to get a mod to fix my tag and such. I'm still working in games but not AAA.

 

[Razgriz-Specter]

I'm not sure on the cost but I'd assume it was similar to DS2.

For Dante's there was a sequel being worked on and it looked pretty cool.

Thank you for your insight.

 

[Drencrom]

The unofficial big idea for DS2 was Dead Space x Uncharted 2 and then we took some elements from Gears and even CoD in terms of the aim tuning.

The first game was more like RE4 in space, but then we added elements from System Shock (no pause), Half-Life 2 (TK), etc...

As for dismemberment the original demos we made on 360 were made in the Havok sample app that I modified to have audio and a basic particle and decal system. Adam Gousetis (now at Google) worked on the ragdoll, gravity control, and cutting. The first demo was in that sad "engine" and had a version of the Leaper that you could shoot and cut up in 1st person with controllable gravity.

Pretty much everyone who saw it liked it. Bing Gordon saw it and suggested we make it a primary mechanic that would define the game.

At this point my inspiration was Soldier of Fortune where it was cosmetic but awesome. Bret Robbins and Glen Schofield came up with enemies and weapons that made sense with the mechanic and that was it.

Coming off DS2 the team had a few ideas:

1. Change multiplayer to co-op.

The idea we had was somewhat influenced by RE Outbreak series where the player could become T cell infected. Another game we looked at was The Thing where trust was a game mechanic. Patrick Lipo was the designer for it at that time and we wanted to have a randomly selected player become a Unitologist. They had their own win condition which was to smuggle out some type of marker artifact without being discovered by the other players.

We wanted to use procedurally generated maps with no cut scenes.

Due to the success of RE5/business reasons this later became full campaign co-op instead of a separate mode.

2. AI stuff

At the start of the prepro for the title I did a couple of AI projects. One was to have NPCs be able to react to lights. Initially this "feeder" enemy was designed to be used for puzzles involving dynamic lights, I basically wanted them to one shot you. The idea was to use them for light-based stealth gameplay. It's a common scene type in horror movies. I can't tell you why these weren't used properly but it's probably along the lines of not being mass market.

Since we wanted procedural maps we needed procedural spawning. I worked on a baby version of a spawn AI like the L4D director system. This became more and more corrupted over time by production requests. I'm not even sure if it's on in the space beta path stuff in the final product.

3. Snow planet

The team's original vision for this was to have "blizzard" wasteland between small map sites. Originally the goal was to be able to go to these map sites in any order going on the surface the whole way.

There was supposed to be an abandoned training or missile silo type thing with hundreds of procedural maps in it and an insane computer.

4. Weapon crafting.

I disliked the "glue two guns together" design the designers made. I wrote a lengthy design based more along the lines of higher realism, unfortunately some of the classic guns would have gone away. It relied on found weapons much more and had a melee emphasis in the early game.

Some other stuff about the game:

The weapon crafting tuning and progression basically broke the main game mechanic (dismemberment).

Some of the cool stuff that the AI did:

Human NPCs reacting to Necromophs
Human NPCs reacting to Necromophs killing their friends
Human NPCs using stasis grenades
Necros attacking Human NPCs
Feeder light AI
Auto spawn
Divider head AI with pulse rifle

were barely used in the game due to a lack of floor space and, the level design process, and in some case a lack of good assets. For example if a NPC reacts to a Necro cutting his friend's head off by saying "Ah." then you might as well not do it.

This is really intresting, thanks for sharing!

 

[Kinyou]

I mean they did make a full demo.

I remember being absolutely mind blown by those visuals.

Man, this also makes me miss LucasArts.

Unfortunately did Lucas run the whole studio a bit like a mad man

The project moved on slowly until George Lucas became heavily involved with its direction, much to the initial delight and eventual ire of the team. They embraced his idea to make the protagonist a new bounty hunter, but often had their work derailed by Lucas suddenly changing his mind or demanding significant alterations to the script and the game's tone.

One of Lucas' most crushing curveballs came weeks before the game was announced. He didn't want the protagonist to be a fresh face; he wanted it to be Boba Fett. Without any working Boba Fett assets ready for the announcement, the team members who unveiled the project to the press during 2012's Electronic Entertainment Expo, had to play dumb. They lied when asked directly about it, unable to mention anything about the iconic bounty hunter being the lead.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/featu...-down-a-legendary-studio.aspx?PostPageIndex=7

But in the end it was Disney who pulled the plug. We're just never going to get a Star Wars Uncharted.

 

[Lime]

Man, this also makes me miss LucasArts.

Unfortunately did Lucas run the whole studio a bit like a mad man

I don’t, they withheld Grim fandango, Full Throttle, and Day of the Tentacle for no reason. Although I feel bad for all the people who lost work, they were horribly mismanaged by delusional executives and they hadn’t made an interesting Games in years if not a whole decade.

 

[spookytapes]

RIP

 

[Nikana]

Interesting to see the dev say the glued together gun mechanic broke parts of the systems. I honestly liked that mechanic the least. It felt so out of place.