What happened to abandoned?This is an uncomfortable question, an issue that has been floating in a room where we were boiling with emotion to an announcement that has never arrived.Over months, we were watching how the pomp that surrounded a game that has not yet come out has ended up deflating until the expectations around him exhausted.Blue Box, a study that dragged a worker history, had a burden on him: rumors on how Kojima is behind a work that will reinvent the horror genre and loaded with many promises without complying.The continuous button marks us in 2022, but the patience of the players was a long time ago.And it is that promises must be only the prelude to a game that is up.Today in Meristation we remember those grandiloquent marketing campaigns that ended up anticipating a disastrous launch.At least, not Man's Sky, whose launch was convicted of a poorly managed campaign, had a happy ending.
Abandoned and the abandonment of the public
The case of abandon was a cocktail of a dangerous mixture: a brief teaser and a ristra of rumors made by a thirsty community.And, above all, the shadow of a designer who is a master of creativity and eccentric and mysterious campaigns: Hideo Kojima.
Silent Hill is one of those titles that has not survived the passage of time, although it revolutionized the genre of survival terror until today as a reference.After Silent Hill 4, the saga was distorted from its origins until it fell into oblivion and this has fed the possible remake of the original title.Silent Hills, Hideo Kojima's cancel.
And among this rumor maelstrom, a teaser from a title called Abandoned, at the hands of the Blue Box study, arrived in April 2021.His only description read "Cinematic Survival Horror Shooter".Jason Schreier had analyzed in June 2021 the situation of a thick snowball.“The followers set up a Reddit community to solve the mystery.[…] Hype has fed, in part, by the mythical kojima history of perfomances and maneuvers.In the past, this living legend of the video game has created false companies and hired actors.For many, the various comments and actions of Hasan Kahraman, the director of Blue Box, contain strange discrepancies and fit the Kojima patterns ”.
Accustomed to the subtle clues that Kojima has left during other releases, the theories that circulated by Reddit were to each one more searched than the previous one.Since the initials of Hasan Kahraman agreed with those of Kojima, passing because the tweets schedules were more typical of the time spindle in Japan than in Europe, even that Kahraman himself was an actor, since it was too attractive.The same director of Blue Box had to deny in Bloomberg all the ristra of rumors and affirm that his work had nothing to do with Kojima, that he was dedicated to the video game design and that his study was formed by a group of friends.“No matter how many times try to disassemble this snowball.People don't believe it and expect something that is not.It irritates me a lot ".
Real Time Experience of Pedro and El Lobo
But how is it missing so much excessive attention?An ambiguous tweet in the Blue Box account showed a game of hanged with some acronyms that could correspond to Silent Hill, as Salva Fernández collects in Meristation: “Conscious or not, a tweet- already erased- showed that maybe his game his gameresponded to the acronym for Silent Hill.A torrent of mentions, comments and others were generated that led to the study, first, to erase the message;And second, to emphasize that they had nothing to do with Silent Hill.The snowball was making great and two profiles were marked: those who continue to think that it is another move from Kojima and those who think that a new independent study has gone hand in hand with the matter ”.
However, Abandoned's catastrophe arrived with a promise that neither the same study could comply with.After several delays - and continuous delays end up undermining user's confidence - on June 25, an application with which an innovative experience would be shown to us would arrive at PlayStation 5.Salva Fernández compiled with anger the disaster that happened later: “And when it was 4pm, another director of the director came out saying that they delayed the app for August.With more or less success you have generated attention and expectations.You have maintained a countdown.And when it ends, you place us until August.If the disappointment after the tweet erased on the acronym of Silent Hill was already great, Friday was directly a tease.The feeling is laziness to unsuspected levels, with a communication strategy that has led to absolute disappointment.View from any perspective.If they really are an independent study, the way to squander the privilege position that the PlayStation blog gave you, looking for an empty impact to study in universities, it is of traca.If in the end there is something behind size (with or without kojima), the feeling is that not everything is worth ”.
As a point and followed, the supposed real -time experience arrived, which consisted of a brief 3 seconds teaser that was not up to it, or from far, of which it was expected.Kahraman himself acknowledged in NME that his campaign had been a disaster: “It all started with the engine when the patch delay arrived and we could not solve it.We were not alone, we had other teams working with him, with what we got out of hand.Maybe it is because we use Unreal Engine 5, which is an Early Access, but I do not recommend it for such a project.But we did it because we needed its characteristics.The launch was not fine.But with due time we will add more content and more people will realize ".
Currently, after abandoned, a point has been written, with the promise that in 2022 there will be news.His social networks have gone to a more discreet attitude.But after the history history of the study and its episodes of a trains shock, little confidence remains among the public.
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— AmandaR(Filmmaker) Wed Mar 09 20:33:17 +0000 2016
Daikatana, Rockstar's dream of video games
On a red folio, in black letters he prayed in English: “John Romero will turn you into his fox.Watch up and suck ".This arrogant and aggressive slogan was Daikatana's banner, which would be the next masterpiece of one of the gods of the industry, who had consecrated with Doom, however, as Us Gamer described, this announcement ended up becoming aDamn joke: “Promote your game with rape imagery?It was probably not the best idea.And this unfortunate announcement would project a long and dark shadow on Daikatana.The game would not be released until three years later ”.
Arrogance is usually badly received among the public, and such a provocative announcement, devised by Mike Wilson, was not going to be exempt.In order to understand the context, it is necessaryvideo game?For fear of fear, John Romero was proof that anyone could belong to a world that was only destined for the gorgeous extroverts who did not distinguish a line of code from a coca line, despite the fact that John Romero looked and looks like a splendidmane".
Thus, the mentality of treating the developer as a rock star resulted in the ion storm management itself."The new business suffered from the problems that are expected when you have very young people with very big egos and a lot of money," studies Us Gamer."And work on a project with the ambition and approach of Daikatana, production only has one fate: to get burning".
Daikatana would be a time travel adventure along the planet, with fellow controlled artificial intelligence and more weapons and enemies that had never been seen in an SPF.And Ion Storm was convinced that the game would be released for the 1997 Christmas campaign.In Time magazine, Carmack himself, former romero partner, disdained the possibility that a title of such magnitude would be completed in 7 months.
The storm between glamorous walls
Ion Storm presented the philosophy of opulence, and open -door days were organized so that players knew the study and wonders before the deployment of media: the best computer and furniture equipment in the market, recreation rooms with pool and guitars, etc..However, the beauty of Ion Storm hid a disastrous administration, as it narrates extra life: “Artists came from drawing comics in the Marvel and barely knew how to model, texturing or how to start working with a graphic engine like‘ Quake ’.The programmers saw them and desired to integrate Romero's delusional plan into a ancient graphic engine that had already been in the market for a couple of years and that was not intended for that, gameplay designers and scenarios were good maps creatorsFor the online community of Quake but they were not efficient and much less trained workers ”.
Indeed, complying with the delivery date of Daikatana implied marathon days that, in addition, would not be able to give the promised result.During the E3 of 1997, John Romero received the first slap: Quake II (Software ID) was presented with Tech II, a new graphic engine that left Daikatana outdated.To offer a work at the height, the development of the game had to be prolonged and its initial launch for the Christmas campaign had.The atmosphere within Ion Storm was far from the glamorous image that had sold to the world: the tensions between John Romero and Todd Porter were constant.Us Gamer, in addition, documents: “Ion Storm had run out of half of its 85 employees, between dismissals and renunciation letters.And, according to the reports of former employees, Romero dealt with stress absent from the office ”.
The creative process continued to clear between demos with technical failures that made it unfair.Finally, Daikatana left in 2000 and had not reached the brilliance of Quake II.Without becoming a bad game, he offered a mediocre result compared to other titles of the moment.Chris Divine, screenwriter of the game, explains how Daikatana finished putting the last nail in the cofawards.Both got money for eidos, but the disruptions of employees, dismissals, complaints and quarrel sealed the fate of Ion Storm.After the launch of Anachronox, Eidos pulled the cable.End of the game".
Curiosity: What’s Inside The Cube?, The covered curiosity
They say that curiosity killed the cat, and that saying is the one that summarizes the grandiloquent social experiment of Curiosity: What’s Inside The Cube?by Peter Molyneaux together with the 22cans studio.In it, we were shown an austere room governed by a gigantic cube that, in turn, was formed from many other small cubes.Each layer was accompanied by mysterious messages and the objective was simple: to reach the cube core.The players had to press the small cubes to disappear layers and layers until they found the goal and, in each layer, there was a clue about what awaited us inside.Destroy each small cube was a small amount of coins as a reward, which would later be used to improve the player's skills and thus enhance their progress.
Wired documented the social phenomenon that was generated around the enigmatic cube.The expectations were fed by the same figure of Peter Molyneux, who had earned a reputation to hyperbolize promises on games that would not live up to it later.About Curiosity, it was not sparse: “There is something we have not told about the cube.When you play, you are doing something else.You don't realize, but yes.You are not just doing things in the cube.You are not aware, but you are doing one thing elsewhere at the same time ”.For more inri, the trophy that awaited those who arrived at the nucleus sounded sweet: it would not be money, but a secret that "would change your life".
Curiosity: What’s Inside The Cube?It was a free application with possible microtransactions that ended up attracting 5 million players over 6 months.His simple mechanics, his accessibility and the incentive of an award that could "change your life" were enough to hook the public."Some players aspire to greater efficacy: pressing fast to get combos and more coins," recalls Wired."Others limit themselves to writing messages or making obscene drawings on the cube, being aware that the size of the canvas will allow another player to see it after a good time".
Finally, on May 26, 2013, Bryan Henderson, a eighteen -year -old Scotsman, destroyed the last cube.In his interview for Wired, he confessed: "People are going to hate me, but I just got into the game this early morning and after an hour I won".
But how did the young man change the life?Upon arriving at the center of the cube, he revealed his reward: Molyneaux, in a video, explained that he would be the god of his next game, Godus.Henderson would work side by side with 22cans to design the rules and ethics on which the new title would be built.Bryan would also receive a more substantial reward: a percentage of the money earnings that players spent in Godus.
It was to be a virtual God what the explorers of the cube expected?However, Curiosity was an impact on industry and the reaffirmation of a figure as controversial as Molyneaux.And it is that the game's own experience is, finally, the best proof that a promise is at the height of our desires.