If a game is announced, takes many many years to come out, and it feels shallow/rushed/unpolished/bad nevertheless, and you're asking yourself "what did they spend all this time doing," the answer is almost always rebooting production multiple times
"mr storylets"
- he/him
- brunodias.dev/
writer (derogatory). lead designer on Fallen London.
http://twitter.com/notbrunoagain
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Bluesky
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in reply to @bruno's post:
that's definitely one of the patterns I noticed from watching a lot of "what happened?"
One thing I usually wonder about is just "why?" Is it a sunk cost fallacy thing where a poor design/concept just gets kicked down the road?
- Yes, it's often sunk cost fallacy
- Everyone underestimates how hard games are to make, even industry professionals
- Sometimes projects keep going because it's the brainchild of a Legendary Name
- Sometimes it's just nepotism
- And sometimes it's a lil bit of the ol' tax fraud
my response to that is always “well, where did you last see the fun?”
It's always a small tragedy when an exciting project gets cancelled, but there are definitely games that get released where you can look at it and say "you had to know that cancelling this would be a smaller loss than finishing it, like a year ago".
I understand why small developers get tied up finishing the flawed big-dream project, with big publisher-backed stuff it's honestly just kind of embarrassing.