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Sometimes it is easy to see why a game is the way it is.
Maybe the developers were in a time-crunch, or they weren't skilled enough, or they simply weren't handed the resources needed to polish and iron out their true artistic vision. Stuff like that would happen in an industry known for demanding results as fast as possible and hellbent on "fixing it later" whenever something ends up coming out in an inevitably broken state.
That's fine, that's part of the game... not a good part, but a part nonetheless.
However... I have found that sometimes there's more than meets the eye there, and that we can benefit enormously from taking a look at what was happening behind the scenes.
I have already mentioned how the programming team behind the PC port of Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners Of The Earth finished the game out of sheer love, because the studio had gone bankrupt and was unable to pay them for their hard work. And, of course, you could write an entire novel on how hellish Daikatana's development was.
My favorite story, though? That has to be the one about StarCraft, and how it was changed from --according to the devs themselves-- "a poorly-made Warcraft in space" to the absolute, genre-definining juggernaut it ended up being.
It's actually amazing, looking back... but what happened was that Blizzard felt threatened by Ion Storm's proposal on that year's E3, as they took a look as the upcoming "Dominion" and it looked like it could blow StarCraft right out of the water, with its next-gen graphics and amazing gameplay. Indeed, Ion Storm's maiden voyage into the RTS genre spelled trouble for Blizzard with a capital entire alphabet.
But here's the thing: you probably never even heard about Dominion, whilst StarCraft is a household name. So, what happened? It turns out that StarCraft had to be reworked from the ground up because the developers had fallen from a trick, a mirage. Indeed, Dominion looked amazing, but because it wasn't actually what they said it was. The people showing it off weren't actually playing any build of the game, but a pre-rendered video that they just pretended to be operating whilst the final product was still being developed back in Texas, and with a tech and approach that wasn't anything to write home about (and, indeed, was quite dated). Knowing that they had to show SOMETHING for all their grandiose and antagonistic speeches about changing gaming forever, Ion Storm just went a made a pretty video, basically concept art for a game that was still in development and that they had acquired from a rival studio just to have something to their name. And it's amazing to me how that simple trick forced someone else to adapt and come up with a game that could destroy this phantom rival. Blizzard rose up to a non-existent challenge and we were all better off for it.
Do you have any other good development stories to share?
Maybe the developers were in a time-crunch, or they weren't skilled enough, or they simply weren't handed the resources needed to polish and iron out their true artistic vision. Stuff like that would happen in an industry known for demanding results as fast as possible and hellbent on "fixing it later" whenever something ends up coming out in an inevitably broken state.
That's fine, that's part of the game... not a good part, but a part nonetheless.
However... I have found that sometimes there's more than meets the eye there, and that we can benefit enormously from taking a look at what was happening behind the scenes.
I have already mentioned how the programming team behind the PC port of Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners Of The Earth finished the game out of sheer love, because the studio had gone bankrupt and was unable to pay them for their hard work. And, of course, you could write an entire novel on how hellish Daikatana's development was.
My favorite story, though? That has to be the one about StarCraft, and how it was changed from --according to the devs themselves-- "a poorly-made Warcraft in space" to the absolute, genre-definining juggernaut it ended up being.
It's actually amazing, looking back... but what happened was that Blizzard felt threatened by Ion Storm's proposal on that year's E3, as they took a look as the upcoming "Dominion" and it looked like it could blow StarCraft right out of the water, with its next-gen graphics and amazing gameplay. Indeed, Ion Storm's maiden voyage into the RTS genre spelled trouble for Blizzard with a capital entire alphabet.
But here's the thing: you probably never even heard about Dominion, whilst StarCraft is a household name. So, what happened? It turns out that StarCraft had to be reworked from the ground up because the developers had fallen from a trick, a mirage. Indeed, Dominion looked amazing, but because it wasn't actually what they said it was. The people showing it off weren't actually playing any build of the game, but a pre-rendered video that they just pretended to be operating whilst the final product was still being developed back in Texas, and with a tech and approach that wasn't anything to write home about (and, indeed, was quite dated). Knowing that they had to show SOMETHING for all their grandiose and antagonistic speeches about changing gaming forever, Ion Storm just went a made a pretty video, basically concept art for a game that was still in development and that they had acquired from a rival studio just to have something to their name. And it's amazing to me how that simple trick forced someone else to adapt and come up with a game that could destroy this phantom rival. Blizzard rose up to a non-existent challenge and we were all better off for it.
Do you have any other good development stories to share?
