The Game's Development Story Discussion

[ikarop]

Found the actual post that Ikarop made about this...and it doesn't work anymore...all you can get is the image that Ikarop posted along with the link which no longer works.



http://www.avpgalaxy.net/forum/index.php?topic=34412.msg1599951#msg1599951




Regardless of what he designed, that final line saying that he wished they'd focused on the game rather than the license is completely true from we have seen in the last couple of days.

Bear in mind that this was the portfolio of a developer from Timegate Studios not GBX. Kinda early now but I may elaborate on this a bit more at some point after launch.

[Esoteric_Voyage]

whatever the problem was, it sure stopped it from turning out looking as great as it did here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG4opj3dMxc#ws


i only hope the pc looks similar and no where near as mediocre as the consoles.

[WinterActual]

It might hurt DLC sales....

The Elder Scrolls and the Fallout games can prove the opposite. If you know what you are doing as a dev, you can get pretty good money from DLCs and to have a modding tools in the same time.

[jahickson]

believe me or not, but from what I have heard, I know the game was reworked and scrapped many times...

in fact at one point it was outsourced to a completely different company... gearbox got it near the end of its development and what you see is what you get... alot of you are right, GBX focused ALOT on the license... so much so that there was never really an actual "game" for a long time...

i think the thing that dissapoints me most is the lackluster console port and the horrid story line and dialogue... I haven't heard such tasteless and uninspired dialogue in a longggg time.

oh well, back to dead space 3!

[WinterActual]

in fact at one point it was outsourced to a completely different company... gearbox got it near the end of its development

Not really.

[jahickson]

sorry, let me rephrase that:

gearbox got it 'back' near the end of its development 'cycle'...

the outsourcing company really messed it up big time, then gbx was left to put it together to satisfy sega's demands of a release

[WinterActual]

Its nothing like that. The game was initially developed by other company back in 2000 but since 2006 its in GBX' hands and it never changed its owner since then. You are mistaken.

[Salt The Fries]

Multiplayer was outsorced to a different company. Only that!

[jahickson]

like i said before, believe what you want. 

not everything that happens in game development winds up in wikipedia or in a developer interview...

and the information i am telling you is stuff you wont find in those sources..

anyways, ask yourself the simple question how did borderlands 2 attain such a nice high quality while aliens: cm  is far inferior to that standard ? the simple answer is this game has gone through the hands of many many people... many redo's, scraps, and in many ways kit-bashing their way to make something out of what is really nothing gameplay wise...

measuring exactly where bishop's blood falls in the sulaco does not equal a great game...

anyways, believe what you want but there are very clear reasons why this game ended up why it did.. whether those become public remains to be seen.

[Salt The Fries]

No, I'm not theorizing to make myself feel better, don't misunderstand me...

[jahickson]

Multiplayer was outsorced to a different company. Only that!

trust me. there was more than multiplayer outsourced.

http://www.qj.net/xbox-360/news/gearbox-gets-help-from-timegate-for-aliens-colonial-marines.html

these guys handled the game for about a year.

[OpenMaw]

It might hurt DLC sales....

The Elder Scrolls and the Fallout games can prove the opposite. If you know what you are doing as a dev, you can get pretty good money from DLCs and to have a modding tools in the same time.

Like I said before "it might hurt DLC sales..." short term. Why buy some DLC when you can get free mods? Bare in mind, that's not my mentality, that's their mentality.

[ikarop]

in fact at one point it was outsourced to a completely different company... gearbox got it near the end of its development

Not really.

Actually it's something that has been discussed for a long time. For anyone out there, I'm just posting this for clarification.

They began the game back in 2006, then took a break to finish Borderlands. After Borderlands, GBX went back to A:CM and started updating the material as the game looked dated. Somewhere in 2010 the game was handled to Timegate so GBX could give BL2 the main focus. From what I understand Timegate was basically hired to do the legwork that GBX started which isn't that uncommon nowadays. One could say that they did the bulk of the game. Then in 2012 GBX started juggling things around and polishing the work Timegate did. I remember being told this last bit around July but I recall GBX already working on A:CM stuff earlier than that. Accurate time frames are always tricky.

In short, a lot of people and companies worked on this game as you can tell by the credits. Whether or not this kind of treatment is a recipe for disaster it's only up to you. Some people will love this game and others won't regardless of who worked on it. As said before, outsourcing things is pretty common nowadays and by no means unique to this game. Many great games wouldn't had been finished without the extra help.

[Darkness]

Why didn't Sega just use a bigger developer in the first place if GBX was too busy?

[VonPelz]

When GBX went back to A:CM after BL and realized that the material was dated, they should've just scrapped it all and started from scratch (like Diablo 3 and TF2 for example) instead of trying to "update" it. Actually, at this point they probably should've just let the game go to another developer seeing as they were more keen on developing BL2.

Handing a dated game temporarily to another small developer (with mediocre track record) for completing and "updating" is just wrong from many standpoints.