Digital Nightfall on 2/11/2010 at 21:35
I haven't read this yet (I'm at work right now), but it should be of interest to us. It's the story of how the game with names like Dough Church, Randy Smith, Arkane Studios, and Steven Spielberg attached to it... was canceled.
(
http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3182177)
Quote:
When EA signed its deal with Spielberg in 2005, some of the specifics were intentionally left unclear. The deal committed him to create three franchises for EA, but initially, LMNO was the only one locked in, and there was no team in place to make it. Project two, "PQRS," went on to become Boom Blox, while project three hasn't been mentioned publicly since the deal was announced.
EA's answer was to hire designer Doug Church (pictured with Spielberg, below) and build a small team around him in their Los Angeles studio. Through 2007, they put together a group of 25-30 people who worked under Young's EA Blueprint group -- a quiet experimental label designed to build new intellectual property while outsourcing much of its production (such as some of LMNO's level design that went to Arkane in France late in the project's life) -- to prototype ideas
ZylonBane on 2/11/2010 at 22:34
So they took the corpse of LMNO Mk I and turned it into Bioshock Infinite.
Shadowcat on 3/11/2010 at 02:19
Would that be "Laughing My Nuts Off"?
*adds article to my to-read queue*
twisty on 3/11/2010 at 11:45
That looks like it would have turned out to be a really interesting game if they had managed to implement a game based on some of the original design goals. I particularly liked the ability of the AI to communicate her emotional state by affecting what the player sees in front of him or herself.
demagogue on 3/11/2010 at 15:10
On the other hand, when you see a game spinning its wheels as much as this apparently was, it is admittedly worrying. It seems it just wasn't crystallizing into a tight vision that could be built and was just hovering in a cloud of interesting, half-built ideas. It makes you worry that they just throw a lot of things in and it's a nebulous mess (somebody mentioned the movie A.I. in the comments as an example).
It's hard not to agree that it probably played a role in inspiring Bioshock Infinite. I wonder how well the side-kick AI gameplay will really work out, but I guess we'll see.
nicked on 3/11/2010 at 19:25
What a sad story.
Interesting game concept lingers for too long, gets cancelled, gets reinvented as derivative shit, then gets cancelled again, and basically everyone who was ever involved with it is now making iphone or social network games. :tsktsk:
Kuuso on 3/11/2010 at 20:01
You failed to notice that those Iphone/mobile games makers seem to doing bloody well.
nicked on 3/11/2010 at 20:29
I was thinking more in the general decline in game quality over the years, than personal success for those involved. Good on them, making money in those fields, it's just a shame for us "hardcore gamers" (and I hate that term, but what can you do) that that sort of shit is profitable.
ZylonBane on 3/11/2010 at 20:42
Quote Posted by Kuuso
You failed to notice that those Iphone/mobile games makers seem to doing bloody well.
So does are McDonald's.
Kuuso on 3/11/2010 at 20:48
Well, yeah it's a bad thing for "quality games", but I'd say gimme them a break from making great games that don't sell and settling for making nice money. There'll be new pioneers.
