Topic: Games Industry Death Watch 2010-present

[Stratos]

I view it as a chance for some of the little guys to shine and gain some ground.

[Shaymin]

At this point, the only reason I go to 1up.com is for the Active Time Babble podcast and the occasional review.  I hope the podcast gets to stick around at least, since IGN doesn't have an equivalent show.

Neither does 1up. The ATB staff are all over at GamePro doing "RolePlayer's Realm", a successor in spirit show.

[broodwars]

At this point, the only reason I go to 1up.com is for the Active Time Babble podcast and the occasional review.  I hope the podcast gets to stick around at least, since IGN doesn't have an equivalent show.

Neither does 1up. The ATB staff are all over at GamePro doing "RolePlayer's Realm", a successor in spirit show.

Ah, I'd wondered what happened to ATB.  I guess I'll check out this new show now.

[broodwars]

Well, add one more studio closure to the pile, as Disney has announced that they are closing critically-acclaimed developer Black Rock Studios.  God damn it, Disney, Black Rock did everything right last year with Split/Second.  The game was a quality game very well-received by critics, but was screwed over by you when you released it against two other big racing games in the same week.

Yeah, I'm just a tad bit bitter over this.  Split/Second is one of the most fun games I've played this generation (and I usually dislike racing games), and the game failed through little fault of its own.  It was simply one of the many casualties of a racing game scheduling cluster**** and Red Dead Redemption.  Had it been pushed up or back a month, I think we would have seen a very different result.  I hope that the former employees managed to somehow wrangle the Split/Second license away from Disney, so when they eventually form their own studio they can do a proper sequel...or at least make a game in that same vein and spirit.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Apparently THQ has cancelled their Warhammer 40k MMO and all projects slated for 2014 and later.
Supposedly trying to sell themselves off to the highest any bidder and even returned IP to Disney after paying the advance.
https://twitter.com/TheKevinDent

[Kytim89]

Apparently THQ has cancelled their Warhammer 40k MMO and all projects slated for 2014 and later.
Supposedly trying to sell themselves off to the highest any bidder and even returned IP to Disney after paying the advance.
https://twitter.com/TheKevinDent

EA or Activision might buy them out. Whichever one wants access to THQ's wrestling and sports contracts.

[Chozo Ghost]

I'm not sad to see them go; their recent WWE 12 game was absolute garbage.

[Kytim89]

I'm not sad to see them go; their recent WWE 12 game was absolute garbage.

I feel sorry for the people behind the Saints Row games. I hope that series and its developers go to a good home.

It appears as though the poor reception of Homefront is what drove them over the financial edge. I wonder if Nintendo and Retro Studios could hire some developers from THQ? Perhaps for a new western company?

[broodwars]

Homefront sold very well.  If anything, I think it's the double failure of Saints Row 3 and Red Faction Armageddon that really hurt this year.  A fair amount of money got dumped into both, and IIRC neither sold well.  Armageddon even sold so poorly that THQ discontinued the entire franchise.

[Kairon]

Oh geez, if only Nintendo could work out a way to bankroll a second Retro...

[Kytim89]

Homefront sold very well.  If anything, I think it's the double failure of Saints Row 3 and Red Faction Armageddon that really hurt this year.  A fair amount of money got dumped into both, and IIRC neither sold well.  Armageddon even sold so poorly that THQ discontinued the entire franchise.

Correction: THQ's stock dropped by 26% during the Homefront launch. I belive that Crytek took over the Homefront series. That games was not bad, but it suffered because the industry is suffering from FPS fatigue. 

[broodwars]

Homefront sold very well.  If anything, I think it's the double failure of Saints Row 3 and Red Faction Armageddon that really hurt this year.  A fair amount of money got dumped into both, and IIRC neither sold well.  Armageddon even sold so poorly that THQ discontinued the entire franchise.

Correction: THQ's stock dropped by 26% during the Homefront launch. I belive that Crytek took over the Homefront series. That games was not bad, but it suffered because the industry is suffering from FPS fatigue.

Geez, Kytim, you make this too easy...

Link: Homefront sales exceed 1,000,000 copies.

That took me a whopping 2 minutes on Google, and only that long because I stopped to read something else.  Homefront sold exceedingly well, just not to the level of something like a Call of Duty or Battlefield.  Most developers would kill to have a million-seller, so that's pretty good for a new IP.  THQ brought in Crytec to make a better game with the sequel.  As the article explains, THQ's stock dropped because investors expected the game to flop after the review scores started coming out.

EDIT: Interesting...if you believe VGChartz data (I don't), Saints Row 3 has actually done very well for itself.  Red Faction alone couldn't have brought THQ to this, so I wonder what else has been flopping.

[Kairon]

Well, if I recall U Draw 2 flopped pretty hard. And I think I've read that THQ HAS been having a lot of difficulty continuously over these past years, due to both flops and underperformances.

[Chozo Ghost]

The premise of Homefront is incredibly stupid. North Korea becomes a super power overnight and invades the United States? WTF?! The country is poor and practically starving to death, and its military, although large in numbers, is largely equipped with vintage obsolete WW2 era weaponry. The whole concept of the game is just a joke.

[Kytim89]

The premise of Homefront is incredibly stupid. North Korea becomes a super power overnight and invades the United States? WTF?!

The villian of the game was originally China. The recent remake of Red Dawn had China as the villian too and MGM had to go back and change the Chinese flags to those of North Korea in order to appease our new masters. Honestly, I wish that Call of Duty would do a new world war series centered around China trying to dominate the world.

[Chozo Ghost]

The premise of Homefront is incredibly stupid. North Korea becomes a super power overnight and invades the United States? WTF?!

The villian of the game was originally China. The recent remake of Red Dawn had China as the villian too and MGM had to go back and change the Chinese flags to those of North Korea in order to appease our new masters. Honestly, I wish that Call of Duty would do a new world war series centered around China trying to dominate the world.

Of all the countries in the world, I think China is the most plausible to be able to invade the USA, but even they aren't quite there just yet.

That said, if the game was altered to not offend them I think that's pretty sad. Its not like COD was ever too afraid of offending Russia by having them as the antagonists.

[Kytim89]

The premise of Homefront is incredibly stupid. North Korea becomes a super power overnight and invades the United States? WTF?!

The villian of the game was originally China. The recent remake of Red Dawn had China as the villian too and MGM had to go back and change the Chinese flags to those of North Korea in order to appease our new masters. Honestly, I wish that Call of Duty would do a new world war series centered around China trying to dominate the world.

Of all the countries in the world, I think China is the most plausible to be able to invade the USA, but even they aren't quite there just yet.

Here is an alarming video on Homefront:
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH5pqGx80Ok

[TJ Spyke]

The premise of Homefront is incredibly stupid. North Korea becomes a super power overnight and invades the United States? WTF?! The country is poor and practically starving to death, and its military, although large in numbers, is largely equipped with vintage obsolete WW2 era weaponry. The whole concept of the game is just a joke.

Actually, it was North and South Korea unifying and taking over other countries before going after the US. Besides, I could name hundreds of games with more stupid premises. The premise of a game has nothing to do with how it plays. The game is also set in the future, not the present.

[broodwars]

The premise of Homefront is incredibly stupid. North Korea becomes a super power overnight and invades the United States? WTF?! The country is poor and practically starving to death, and its military, although large in numbers, is largely equipped with vintage obsolete WW2 era weaponry. The whole concept of the game is just a joke.

Just one correction here: in the game, North Korea doesn't become a super power overnight.  The game lays out a timeline of events taking place over the course of the (then) 16 years until the year 2027 (which is when the game begins).  I've seen speculation that if the events in that timeline actually occurred in that order exactly as written, the events depicted in Homefront could occur.  The problem is that those events rely on an incredible amount of stupidity on the part of just about every other nation in the world (particularly in the U.S. not responding to any of North Korea's aggression against our allies), so the chances of that invasion being plausible are extremely unlikely if not impossible.  So yeah, the idea of a North Korean invasion is absurd, but it is a theoretical possibility contingent on extremely unlikely events occurring in a very specific order.

Frankly, I find the idea of a North Korean invasion in the future just about as absurd as the Russians invading America because a single American gunman was found dead in the aftermath of a Russian airport shooting. *cough*ModernWarfare2*cough*  And yet that game doesn't get as much scrutiny.

[Kytim89]

The premise of Homefront is incredibly stupid. North Korea becomes a super power overnight and invades the United States? WTF?! The country is poor and practically starving to death, and its military, although large in numbers, is largely equipped with vintage obsolete WW2 era weaponry. The whole concept of the game is just a joke.

Just one correction here: in the game, North Korea doesn't become a super power overnight.  The game lays out a timeline of events taking place over the course of the (then) 16 years until the year 2027 (which is when the game begins).  I've seen speculation that if the events in that timeline actually occurred in that order exactly as written, the events depicted in Homefront could occur.  The problem is that those events rely on an incredible amount of stupidity on the part of just about every other nation in the world (particularly in the U.S. not responding to any of North Korea's aggression against our allies), so the chances of that invasion being plausible are extremely unlikely if not impossible.  So yeah, the idea of a North Korean invasion is absurd, but it is a theoretical possibility contingent on extremely unlikely events occurring in a very specific order.

Frankly, I find the idea of a North Korean invasion in the future just about as absurd as the Russians invading America because a single American gunman was found dead in the aftermath of a Russian airport shooting. *cough*ModernWarfare2*cough*  And yet that game doesn't get as much scrutiny.

What if a future FPS game like Call of Duty dealt with China marching on the world?

[broodwars]

What if a future FPS game like Call of Duty dealt with China marching on the world?

Sure, why not?  If it takes place in the future (thus allowing us newer and more interesting weapons and scenarios than "modern warfare"), I'd be all for it.

[Chozo Ghost]

Just one correction here: in the game, North Korea doesn't become a super power overnight.

I knew its something like that, but that's still way too short of a time for a 3rd world backwater to rise up to a position where it could conquer not only South Korea and Japan, but also the USA. That is kinda as stupid as the notion of the USA becoming a global power 16 years after its independence and then invading Great Britain. Sure the USA is powerful enough to do that now, but a mere 16 years after independence? So I didn't mean overnight literally, but 16 years is still a very small amount of time as far as history is concerned.

Not to mention that the Japanese aren't exactly a people who are known to surrender easily, so I think that game's notion that Japan folds and gets annexed without a fight is absurd.

[Kytim89]

Just one correction here: in the game, North Korea doesn't become a super power overnight.

I knew its something like that, but that's still way too short of a time for a 3rd world backwater to rise up to a position where it could conquer not only South Korea and Japan, but also the USA. That is kinda as stupid as the notion of the USA becoming a global power 16 years after its independence and then invading Great Britain. Sure the USA is powerful enough to do that now, but a mere 16 years after independence? So I didn't mean overnight literally, but 16 years is still a very small amount of time as far as history is concerned.

Not to mention that the Japanese aren't exactly a people who are known to surrender easily, so I think that game's notion that Japan folds and gets annexed without a fight is absurd.

It has taken China about thirty years to go from a country pretty much in the stone age to an economic juggernaut that is nipping at the heels of the US. Who knows where they will be in two more decades?

[Chozo Ghost]

Just one correction here: in the game, North Korea doesn't become a super power overnight.

I knew its something like that, but that's still way too short of a time for a 3rd world backwater to rise up to a position where it could conquer not only South Korea and Japan, but also the USA. That is kinda as stupid as the notion of the USA becoming a global power 16 years after its independence and then invading Great Britain. Sure the USA is powerful enough to do that now, but a mere 16 years after independence? So I didn't mean overnight literally, but 16 years is still a very small amount of time as far as history is concerned.

Not to mention that the Japanese aren't exactly a people who are known to surrender easily, so I think that game's notion that Japan folds and gets annexed without a fight is absurd.

It has taken China about thirty years to go from a country pretty much in the stone age to an economic juggernaut that is nipping at the heels of the US. Who knows where they will be in two more decades?

The stone age? Did you know China is the country which invented paper, the compass, and gunpowder? Heck, if anything they were one of the very first countries to emerge OUT OF the stone age.

[Lithium]

I think he just means china getting out of the hole Mao/colonialism dug them in. Anyways as far as the plot of home front goes i very rarely take video game plots seriously because when i actually think about the plot as I'm playing it usually ruins it for me since i can probably count all the videogames with plots that are actually good (and not just by the low bar of "for a videogame") with my fingers on one hand.


anyways as Kytim said eariler I feel sorry for the saints row team, at first it was kind of a poormans GTA but the 3rd one looked like a fun game that embraced it's sillyness. Too bad i dont have an HD system to play it on.