- cross-posted to:
- games@sh.itjust.works
- cross-posted to:
- games@sh.itjust.works
The closure of Monolith Productions, an innovative video game developer, shows what’s wrong with an industry in which game publishers have the ultimate power to shut down projects and fire workers.
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No One Lives Forever, F. E. A. R. and Shogo Mobile Armor Division are some of my favorite games ever.
RIP Monolith. Thanks for the experiences.
Alien vs Predator 2 was peak Monolith for me.
Tron and AvP too
As a fan of all those games, Monoliths only really good legacy game is FEAR. While NOLF and Shogo are fun, they’re extremely buggy, and the jank is not easy to ignore.
FEAR is still buggy, but its got way less than their other legacy titles.
I don’t recall the jankiness, just that they were fun.
WB Interactive was always such a missed opportunity. Monolith shut down because the studio lost its best talent when they weren’t allowed to work on a new IP, where their creativity took them. Even back during the MOBA fad era (Remember that one? It was after MMOs and before hero shooters and battle royales.), during the development and promotional period for DC’s Infinite Crisis, I spoke to one of the developers from Turbine, asking what the pitch process was under WB. Even back then, this guy told me, “Well, it’s WB, so whatever your idea is, they’ll say, ‘Cool, now make it Batman,’ or ‘Cool, now make it Lord of the Rings.’”
If it doesn’t naturally fit with that IP, that’s all backwards. Even in the most capitalistic view I can take on it, the best way forward sounds a lot like keeping an eye on a budding new idea and steering it toward a direction where it can become a good movie or an HBO show, in the event that the game is successful. Because what was obviously always going to happen when WB tried to sell its Interactive component is that their video game division is worthless when their games are all tied to WB intellectual property. It would be like Disney buying Marvel Comics and Lucasfilm so that they could only make Mickey Mouse comics and Pirates of the Caribbean sequels.
OR. Hear me out. They haven’t released any game for 8 years. And the last game they made did really well. (Shadow of war)
Reports were they took 8 years because they spent almost 3 of them making a game in a new IP, knowing that WB wouldn’t be happy about it, but it’s what they wanted to make. When that got shut down and forcibly changed into Wonder Woman, most of the talent that had been there the longest decided to just leave.
If they knew that WB wouldn’t like it but still did it anyway, thats honestly on them. They were under WB, they gotta follow their rules. If you want to.make your own thing, dont be owned by a parent company. Leave and make your own studio. Don’t waste your time for years just to leave in the end, thats stupid.
The article didn’t speculate, but that may have been the point. “We’re miserable only making games out of WB movie properties, so you’ll let this next one through, or we’re gone, and someone else will surely have us instead.”
So why didn’t the guys get back together. Make their own studio and release the game they were working on by themselves?
And how does a subdivision of a developer not know what their company is doing? I find it hard to believe honestly.
