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Epic Mickey developer Junction Point closes
- Thread starter VanWinkle
- Start date
Hopefully this guy lands on his feet:
He earned it...
I think that guy will be just fine.
Hell, that guy is single handedly responsible for anyone being interested in Epic Mickey at all.
Hopefully this guy lands on his feet:
He earned it...
He is the only one that did. Retro hire this man!
Sir_Crocodile
Member
Well for I don't know about that, very few people even try anymore since the genre's gone so far out of vogue. Back when it was in, Spyro & Crash made big money, though I never really played any of them. Banjo Kazooie was fantastic. Sonic was only so spotty due to the speed factor during the move to 3D(Loooooads of studios knocked out good 2D plats) and sega hyper-mismanagement.
Hopefully this guy lands on his feet:
He earned it...
Does anyone know who "that guy" was?
TheBaronOfNA
Banned
Mismanagement tends to do that. Dunno what will happen with Star Wars and Marvel stuff.
Look Warner Bros for the opposite side of things.
MikeE21286
Member
yeah, same here. Sorry for all those affected.
redmetal86
Member
what were some of the bad points of the two epic mickey games? i ask having never played either game
Hero of Legend
Member
Paul Weaver needs to head to Retro, he was a really high-up at Rare in the four years he was there, and he worked on DKC2, DKC3, DKL, and KI.
ThisWreckage
Banned
The first game should have been on the PS3 and 360 and the final game did not reflect the art or ideas they were kicking around whatsoever. It seems like it was completely gimped from the start.
Do you like bad cameras and controls in your games? Bland level designs? Boring story? If yes, check them out.
Spirit of Jazz
Banned
I'm pretty sure Spector was the main reason people were interested in Epic Mickey. It's such a shame that I can't trust the man who made one of my favourite games to make a competent title any more.
Visualante2
Member
12 new iOS developers start up.
RedQueensAce
Member
I have a friend who worked at JPS. I'll find out if he knows anything more about the closing.
Sir_Crocodile
Member
I've only played the first one. The biggest issue is getting the camera to play nice, which is absolutely essential in 3D platformers.
TheBaronOfNA
Banned
-Shallow "choice your own adventure" mechanics
-Mediocre platforming
-Mediocre artistic direction compared to the concept art
-Overhyped by a famous developer
-Gamebreaking bugs
axisofweevils
Holy crap! Today's real megaton is that more than two people can have the same first name.
In Epic Mickey 1, it was too many fetch quests at the beginning, plus the dodgy camera. I'm one of the few that actually liked the game in spite of those issues, but it could be the Disney Park fan in me speaking - even I never bought the sequel.
I'm guessing the fact that the sequel coincided with the Wii U launch couldn't have helped either. Nintendo owners had the choice of a shoddily ported Wii U version, or playing the original Wii version on their brand new machine.
Basically, it's the De Blob story all over again. Original game on Wii leads to great success. Sequel on multiplatform is worse, and despite the expanded audience, ends up selling far worse too.
Shame, because the basic Epic Mickey story idea was brilliant and it had potential.
Vire
Member
Epic Mickey is a game that felt like a bad knockoff platformer from the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox gen.
I can't help but feel like this series could have been so much more with a little bit more leeway from Disney.
goldenpp72
Member
Honestly whenever someone post a rumor about a developer being shut down they might as well not bother putting it as a rumor :/ Sad for the developers but the games were pretty awful.
LonelyGreyWolf
Banned
Hardly surprising, but of course always sad. You need to be top of the class in this industry, and Junction Point simply wasn't. They didn't have the skill and competence that's required.
Working with Warren must have been amazing though. He seems like a nice guy :3
CheesecakeRecipe
Stormy Grey
Can't say I'm surprised, Epic Mickey 2 was just trash all around and was a huge letdown for everyone hoping they'd improve upon the original's formula.
Best of luck to all involved.
Best of luck to all involved.
The guy who did this stuff is at 343 I believe.
SolidSnakex
Member
It looks like Avalanche and Wideload are the last two Disney Interactive studios that aren't focused on mobile gaming.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Epic Mickey 1:
- The combat is not great, doesn't really feel all that great, no real depth
- Vertical component of jumping is skewed. Mickey jumps too high and falls too fast, double jump timing feels terrible. Platforming is rarely difficult conceptually, but very difficult to pull off.
- Camera, being a Wii game, is mostly an untamed beast that you need to fight with.
- Mapping a 2D pointer cursor onto a 3d world sometimes made targeting particular areas of geometry with paint/thinner frustrating.
- Level designs incorporate what amounts to "lava"--platforming errors result in very frequent deaths. Jumping is just a complete and utter mess, it never ever feels good traversing a level.
- Quest design is generally fetchy, "choices" are exceedingly shallow, and ultimately the game never really explains why thinner is the "evil" or "easy" choice, while paint is the "good" or "harder" choice. I mean, the theme is basically that "sometimes being good is harder than being evil", but the game doesn't really do things that way.
- Personally, I found the game more tiring than most Wii games because it required constant pointer contact and use. Not as exhausting as something like Trauma Center, but far more than I would have liked.
- The between-level 2D segments are pretty shallow
- Resource management issues; you are constantly getting more paint and thinner and constantly using what you have--it's not clear why either is scarce to begin with, because it's never a key component of game design.
- Tons of low-impact collectibles, very little of interest.
- Level designs are not particularly strong, don't really do a lot to take advantage of alternate paths.
- Who or what is the target audience? The games are basically fan love letters to Disney's pre-feature film short animations, with a little bit of Disneyworld/land thrown in. I think most Disney fans would not really see characters, worlds, ideas, or themes that they actually enjoy.
- Some people didn't like the silent, hand-animated cutscenes, which I understand were themselves a throwback to some previous Disney era none of the target audience had heard of. Personally, I liked them.
I think by far the biggest issues stemmed from the fact that the game was on the Wii. The paint mechanic was built around the Wii remote and never works all that great. The Wii remote's lack of analog stick resulted in the automatic camera, which is the worst design element. Since the Wii couldn't handle patching, it was impossible to deal with bugs or improve the camera post-release. And the presentational elements could never really live up to expectations, given the system's hardware constraints.
With Epic Mickey 2, very little of the above is fixed or improved (based on what I've played so far). They've added voice acting for cutscenes, and musical scenes, but neither are great. The non-Wii ports do look cleaner, but the Wii was clearly the lead platform. The paint mechanic is TERRIBLE on a dual-analog controller, because it's analog-as-mouse-cursor. I'm only near the beginning of the game though.
Wideload hasn't made a console game since Guilty Party, and their most recent game was mobile. I wouldn't count unhatched chickens
Spieler Eins
Member
The first one might have been bad, but it sold quite a lot of copies. (In the US, at least)
He will vanish from the public eye and play nothing but Deus Ex, Thief, and System Shock. He will then return 3 years from now when gaming is at its absolute lowest point to lead us back to the promised land.
jacob armitage
Banned
Not surprising, i actually bought Epic Mickey 2 as i enjoyed the first one, despite being flawed, and was willing to except an equally flawed experience. Only to find it quite a bit worse.
One of my biggest annoyances with the game was that the ability backtrack, or the lack thereof, wasn't made clear. Before I made it to the hub town, I assumed it would be possible to backtrack through the interstitial Classic Mickey levels, but much to my chagrin that wasn't the case, and of course when you travel to the levels the hub leads to, you're free to travel back. I don't know why backtracking wasn't made a general feature, but a little warning before venturing to the hub would have been nice.
Well reception was pretty good for Black Rock's games, Split/Second was just sent to die if I remember.
Brainiac 8
Member
The first game sold really well, so there would have been no reason to close the studio then.
blizzardjesus
Banned
If only the games carried the spirit of the concept art.
davepoobond
you can't put a price on sparks
isnt this the guy who was anti-violence in games or whatever?
Ooooo.
SolidSnakex
Member
Wideload hasn't made a console game since Guilty Party, and their most recent game was mobile. I wouldn't count unhatched chickens
Ahh, I just checked their Wiki profile and that only listed their work on Guilty Party. I guess they may be down to just one console-focused studio. They're killed off Propaganda, JP and Black Rock.
Thats a bummer, I actually liked the two Epic Mickey games, but not surprising. I hope the people working there find more work.
Epic Mickey 2 has obtuse, poorly explained sidequests and objectives. For example theres a sidequest with Horace where you can either pick a pirate or Clarabelle to be his new assistant, but in order to make him pick Clarabelle you have to additionally do all the steps in the Pirate line of the quest first which is never explained and counter intuitive. IIRC depending a choice you make you can blow both choices outright without realizing it until afterwards. Oswalds AI can be bad in combat, and can seem bad in the puzzles if youre not doing them correctly (which often involves missing something far less than obvious). Levels are generally smaller feeling than EM1 and the new co-op puzzles are largely simplistic. Controls in the HD versions are awkward and awful to control (the camera and brush are inexplicably both tied to the right stick) and the Wii U version has frequent framerate drops and terrible button mapping. The game is built around taking a savefile and replaying it to get every pin ala EM1, but this feature isnt included in the game. I talked with Disney support and the answer I got out of them on that was it was additional playthroughs were too buggy and they couldnt fix it in time to ship, so they just left it out without rebalancing the game's extra collectibles. Also ignoring the optional sidequests completely leaves you with a game thats 2-3 hours long.
First game has bad fetch quests in between the main worlds, and a lot of people hated the camera.
Epic Mickey 2 has obtuse, poorly explained sidequests and objectives. For example theres a sidequest with Horace where you can either pick a pirate or Clarabelle to be his new assistant, but in order to make him pick Clarabelle you have to additionally do all the steps in the Pirate line of the quest first which is never explained and counter intuitive. IIRC depending a choice you make you can blow both choices outright without realizing it until afterwards. Oswalds AI can be bad in combat, and can seem bad in the puzzles if youre not doing them correctly (which often involves missing something far less than obvious). Levels are generally smaller feeling than EM1 and the new co-op puzzles are largely simplistic. Controls in the HD versions are awkward and awful to control (the camera and brush are inexplicably both tied to the right stick) and the Wii U version has frequent framerate drops and terrible button mapping. The game is built around taking a savefile and replaying it to get every pin ala EM1, but this feature isnt included in the game. I talked with Disney support and the answer I got out of them on that was it was additional playthroughs were too buggy and they couldnt fix it in time to ship, so they just left it out without rebalancing the game's extra collectibles. Also ignoring the optional sidequests completely leaves you with a game thats 2-3 hours long.
Philthy
Member
Still finding it absolutely insane that a studio will have 160 people on staff. The cost associated with that many people makes it almost impossible to survive unless they're shitting out AAA titles every single year. It's never going to happen! It's hard enough to pay 10 people with a solid release, but 160? Jesus.
Shalashaska161
Member
Both games were flawed, but they were still a good time, even if they didn't live up to the initial concept art. Hope those who lost their job are able to land back on there feet.
CheesecakeRecipe
Stormy Grey
So, good ones?
tiggerkiddo
Member
Shame about the studio but with those games it released, it's not hard to see why. Shame it still happens.
redmetal86
Member
ah, i see. that's a real shame. still might have a go at the first one sometime in the future. thanks for the input everyone.
I'm not so sure; the game took seven months to reach 2m on an install base of almost 100m, and we never got any further data. I doubt that was enough to cover ~3.5 years of development and any marketing costs. My guess is that Disney was hoping for the sequel, having a shorter development period and being on an additional two platforms, to offset the slack.
Disney Interactive bought and killed
-Propaganda Games
-Black Rock Studio
-Fall Line Studios
-Junction Point Studios
all in the past four years,and if Disney Infinity bombed, Avalanche will be next.
Not sure why they even bother buying these studio in the first place.
-Propaganda Games
-Black Rock Studio
-Fall Line Studios
-Junction Point Studios
all in the past four years,and if Disney Infinity bombed, Avalanche will be next.
Not sure why they even bother buying these studio in the first place.
Aquamarine
Member
They remind me of EA (shuttered Westwood, Origin, Bullfrog, Pandemic, etc.)
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