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Rumor: Black Ops Declassified had a 5 months dev cycle

O

Oxymoron

Member
Drakeon said:
I can't believe Activision would allow such a POS would come out with the CoD title on it.
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It's absolutely shocking to me that Activision would practice bad franchise management and allow its top-tier franchises to be overexposed and devalued by bad games.
 
B

bluemax

Banned
Ollie Pooch said:
Because of this :


Sorry, I remembered wrong - obviously that doesn't mean it was a year PLUS Nihilistic's time on the game. More like a year minus their 5 months :p Still unbelivably short.
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I worked on a title published by Activision on PSP that was originally given to another developer before it was given to us. We got nothing from the other developer and made the game in about 4.5/5 months.

Mind you this wasn't a pillar franchise like Call of Duty, but this is completely normal practice for Activision on portable titles.
 
C

cyborg009

Banned
bluemax said:
I worked on a title published by Activision on PSP that was originally given to another developer before it was given to us. We got nothing from the other developer and made the game in about 4.5/5 months.

Mind you this wasn't a pillar franchise like Call of Duty, but this is completely normal practice for Activision on portable titles.
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How is it working under Activision? heard it was pretty horrible

And mind telling us what game?
 
D

DeaconKnowledge

Member
metalslimer said:
Wasn't Uncharted in development for like 2 years? We know Tearaway has been being worked for at least a year now. It seems like everyone except Sony has pretty quick schedules.
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Yeah, I would expect Sony developed games to have longer schedules. I don't know how the 5 month dev cycle for this game is really to be looked down on: Call of Duty games in general seem to have a quick turnaround.
 
M

metalslimer

Member
DeaconKnowledge said:
Yeah, I would expect Sony developed games to have longer schedules. I don't know how the 5 month dev cycle for this game is really to be looked down on: Call of Duty games in general seem to have a quick turnaround.
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Not really? There are separate teams working on new games so a new CoD game is not made in a year.

Sweet Jesus.
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It's basically what I expected when info took so long to come out about the game and Activision pretended like it didn't exist.
 
I

iammeiam

Member
Kazerei said:
Sorry, I kind of skimmed your post the first time :S

The rumor surfaced in June. See posts #211 and #260 ... and the reactions :lol

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=479117
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Thanks; I could not for the life of me remember what thread that started in.

It really does put the Gamescom footage in new light to realize that they were showing off the game only about halfway into their development timeframe.

Now I'm kind of curious what kind of game Nihilistic would have produced with a longer dev cycle. Maybe it would have been two hours! Or even three!!!
 
F

famousmortimer

Banned
The quality of the title reflects poorly on Nihilistic and on Sony but I'm not convinced either deserve the blame. The game is activision's, Sony's part of the deal is marketing and had nothing to do with game development.

Activision put out a shit game at a terrible price point, which was their prerogative, and they will move on from this just fine and so will the CoD franchise. Sony and Nihilistic, on the other hand, are taking it on the chin. I'm not a fan of any of nihilistic's games but shit... 5 months dev time is absurd.
 
A

AndyMoogle

Member
A Human Becoming said:
Game still sucked.
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No, it didn't. It had some really good stuff back then. The campaign was shit, but that's on par with any other COD game anyway.

It was really neat that you could get a second local player to join you while you were in the middle of a multiplayer game. With most games nowadays it's way too clunky to get a guest player to join you.
 
C

cuyahoga

Dudebro, My Shit is Fucked Up So I Got to Shoot/Slice You II: It's Straight-Up Dawg Time
Chris_C said:
What's all this sympathy for the developer? It's not like they couldn't have decided NOT to make the game. They should be held just as accountable as the publisher.
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Running an independent company is hard. If you aren't a Gearbox, you need to shore up whatever contracts you can get to stay afloat. CoD sounds like incredible opportunity for any dev.
 
M

metalslimer

Member
Activision put out a shit game at a terrible price point, which was their prerogative, and they will move on from this just fine and so will the CoD franchise
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Which is exactly why making a deal like this for Sony was horrendously stupid. Even if this game does sell decently (or as decently as it can on that sized userbase) the word of mouth will be horrible.
 
D

DeaconKnowledge

Member
metalslimer said:
Not really? There are separate teams working on new games so a new CoD game is not made in a year.
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Do you really think it takes Treyarch 2 full years to make Blops 2 after Blops? All of the principal information is done. The groundwork for the series is complete - Activision will assuredly expect a turnkey operation with COD releases now.

metalslimer said:
Which is exactly why making a deal like this for Sony was horrendously stupid. Even if this game does sell decently (or as decently as it can on that sized userbase) the word of mouth will be horrible.
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Word of mouth probably will be horrible - for Vita. This will do nothing to the popularity of COD overall.
 
F

famousmortimer

Banned
metalslimer said:
Which is exactly why making a deal like this for Sony was horrendously stupid. Even if this game does sell decently (or as decently as it can on that sized userbase) the word of mouth will be horrible.
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I think the idea for sony was to move hardware with pack ins. Time will tell if this was a bad move. I tend to agree that it probably is.


Also, I'm part of the Vita Defense Force™ but even I can't defend this game. I will say though that some people are trying. I mean it's rating on the PS Store and user reviews on metacritic are both surprisingly high. I think that this is bad in the long run, as roping gamers in with shit games isn't exactly a sound strategy. But it does seem like there are people out there who enjoy it. I am not one of them though and I think the $50 price tag is one of the most offensive things this gen (a generation filled with pretty offensive shit from publishers...).

Shit, i'd rather pay $2.99 for a color palette swap in SF3.
 
R

rouken

Member
i thought that declassified was an alright game based on the post in its OT thread? which means that nihilistic did a good job and a dev hero by vita owners. do what you can with what your given as they say.
 
A

alfredofroylan

Member
rouken said:
i thought that declassified was an alright game based on the post in its OT thread? which means that nihilistic did a good job and a dev hero by vita owners. do what you can with what your given as they say.
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Yeah but honestly don't ask people to pay $50 for that. The price is a killing point for this game
 
O

OldJadedGamer

Banned
rouken said:
i thought that declassified was an alright game based on the post in its OT thread? which means that nihilistic did a good job and a dev hero by vita owners. do what you can with what your given as they say.
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The vast majority of posts in any OT are positive.
 
B

BladeoftheImmortal

Member
Ridley327 said:
The number of Vita-savvy developers that could feasibly work on a COD title is very small; Zipper would have been the only other choice, and that obviously wasn't going to happen once Sony shuttered them. Enter Nihilistic, who not only have experience working on the hardware, but they already had an engine in place that would suit the needs of a first person shooter.
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Oh man, an 18 month Zipper developed COD title would have been AMAZING!
 
A

Atomski

Member
Honestly feels like Sony and Activision are committing highway robbery with this game. I feel bad for whatever sucker buys it at 50 dollars. :/
 
Haunted

Haunted

Member
benny_a said:
At least they spend a bit of their development budget on the Metacritic user review positive feedback campaign.

46 of the 85 written user reviews are reviews done by accounts that were specifically created for COD Blops Declassified.
(Just for context, other games hover around 10% single-review-accounts.)

Earlier I compiled a few of those. (There are more now. The positive one-review accounts accounted for more than 67% of all reviews at that point.)

These ONLY wrote user reviews for for Declassified on Metacritic:
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CoD Vita brings new people into gaming confirmed.

*salutes*
 
staticneuron

staticneuron

Member
rouken said:
i thought that declassified was an alright game based on the post in its OT thread? which means that nihilistic did a good job and a dev hero by vita owners. do what you can with what your given as they say.
Click to expand...

Looking at the Videos, made it look more playable and interesting than Resistance, at least as far as MP goes. A gamer, like me, who loves a good campaign basically wrote this one off when the length was verified.
 
M

mujun

Member
metalslimer said:
Wasn't Uncharted in development for like 2 years? We know Tearaway has been being worked for at least a year now. It seems like everyone except Sony has pretty quick schedules.
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Their schedules are probably in line with how much return they expect to see on their time investment.
 
B

bluemax

Banned
cyborg009 said:
How is it working under Activision? heard it was pretty horrible

And mind telling us what game?
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The worst thing they ever did was telling us we had X number of days to finish and then when we got to that day after killing ourselves we find out that we still had more time.

Other than that it wasn't too bad, they paid off Sony to get our game through submission so it would be on shelves in time for the movie release. And they paid for our whole studio to see the movie which was nice.

In my short industry experience I certainly experienced worse treatment from other Publishers who weren't Activision.
 
G

Gomu Gomu

Member
Takao said:
Shocking news.

Amazing what Treyarch accomplished with CoD3 if that's true.
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Yeah. I loved the game back when it came out. I thought Treyarch were brave to try something new with the franchise. Although to be fair at the time, COD wasn't nearly as popular as it is today, and there wasn't a fixed identity for it.
 
J

Joni

Member
Amazing. Finishing up a game like CoD in 5 months is really nice, even if the quality isn't there. Finishing up a software project like that remains impressive, as they also had to make sure it got through certification.
 
A

A Human Becoming

More than a Member
AndyMoogle said:
No, it didn't. It had some really good stuff back then. The campaign was shit, but that's on par with any other COD game anyway.

It was really neat that you could get a second local player to join you while you were in the middle of a multiplayer game. With most games nowadays it's way too clunky to get a guest player to join you.
Click to expand...
The campaign was far inferior to Call of Duty 2. Can't comment on the MP, but SP is what matters to me.
 
T

test_account

XP-39C²
If this rumor is true, i'm very impressed of what they were able to make in just 5 months.

EDIT: I know that they game isnt made from scratch in 5 months, they most likely worked further on the Resistance Burning Skies engine for example. But still, 5 months isnt much time when we talk about game developement.
 
M

mclem

Member
benny_a said:
At least they spend a bit of their development budget on the Metacritic user review positive feedback campaign.

46 of the 85 written user reviews are reviews done by accounts that were specifically created for COD Blops Declassified.
(Just for context, other games hover around 10% single-review-accounts.)

Earlier I compiled a few of those. (There are more now. The positive one-review accounts accounted for more than 67% of all reviews at that point.)
Click to expand...

Of those reviews, which were actually written at a point where they could realistically have *played* the game?
 
legacyzero

legacyzero

Banned
Takao said:
Shocking news.

Amazing what Treyarch accomplished with CoD3 if that's true.
Click to expand...



I might get a lot of hate for this, but the COD3 multiplayer was so awesome.

Mainly because I was pretty good at it. I even think it's better than Black Ops 2. All in my opinion of course.

It sounds weird, yes, but there was just something about it.
 
F

Foliorum Viridum

Banned
Drakeon said:
I can't believe Activision would allow such a POS would come out with the CoD title on it.
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How many copies of this are going to sell? About half a dozen? There's only so many Vita owners in the world.

It's becoming infamous in gaming circles, but it's not going to ruin the brand at all with the wider audience... because the wider audience don't even have Vitas.

5 months is mental. No wonder it's utter crap.
 
M

mclem

Member
DeaconKnowledge said:
How long are the dev cycles for an average Vita (or portable) game? Is 5 months out of the ordinary?
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I've worked on sub-6-month PSP titles (and had a small influence over a 4-month one!), but a year was more realistic.

If I remember right - and it's been a while, so I apologise if I'm off on it - our version of James Bond: From Russia With Love for the PSP was a six month dev cycle. We did have the console assets to help us, however.
 
Haunted

Haunted

Member
Do I praise the devs for delivering a funtionally working product in that ridiculous timeframe even if what came out of it is completely panned? Especially for something that should've been one of Vita's major flagship titles this holiday.


Fucking publishers.
 
X

Xater

Member
Everything about this game just seems to be awful.

And wasn't this game announced last year at E3? Why was this not given to another dev which has more than a year of time to do it?

Dark Ninja said:
This game is $50! That's insane for a handheld game
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I have played iPhone games for a few bucks which have more content...
 
B

Baconsammy

Banned
The Metacritic score seems accurate then. About 10 points for every month in development.

*edit* whoops, my math is way off. It's much lower than that.
 
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