Though you may never have heard of Darkside Games, you’ve probably heard of the games they’ve helped develop—the Florida-based studio has contributed to Gears of War: Judgment,Spec Ops: The Line, Sunset Overdrive, and various Borderlands games, handling all sorts of art, DLC, and other features.
So, they're a dev that does outsource work for shyt like DLC and other assets. That's cool. They want to make a name with their own, original project. That's cool.
“Microsoft had a list of [intellectual properties] that we might be interested in,” said one person familiar with Darkside’s pitching process, adding that the list included the sci-fi shooting series Perfect Dark, the action-card game hybrid Phantom Dust, and a handful of other Microsoft-owned properties. At one point Darkside pushed for Battletoads, according to that source, but Microsoft told them it was off the table.
Nothing too interesting here other than the fact that Microsoft is looking for people to make the bolded titles. Battletoads was already a known, but Perfect Dark was quoted to be put on the backburner. From what /I/ know, at least. The fact that Battletoads was off the table means that there must already be a developer working on the project.
After some heavy-duty conversations in the spring of 2014, the two companies walked away with a deal: Darkside would get a $5 million budget to build a multiplayer-only reboot ofPhantom Dust, complete with a spectator mode, tournaments, and a complicated replay system allowing players to share files, according to one person familiar with the original pitch. The initial plan was to make it a competitive online sport, along the lines of Hearthstone andLeague of Legends. They gave it the codename Babel.
This was the plan, then. A pretty sound and solid plan that honestly, as a fan of the OG would be perfectly satisfied with. (and I'm a Hearthstone head so that's a double bonus
)
No more than a week after they’d signed the contract, according to several ex-Darkside employees, Microsoft’s team came back to the studio with a new request: they wanted a single-player campaign. “They decided that fans were gonna want a single-player game,” said a person who worked on the project. “But they weren’t going to change the budget or the timeframe.”
So....this developer, Darkside, knew this information beforehand and didn't make a push for more funding then and there? Or like, back out of the project so they could at least cut their losses at the point of not letting the developer close altogether?? I mean, fukk, you wouldn't build another floor on a house if that floor doesn't fit your budget. You don't have to be a game developer to know this--that's just common sense.
Still, employees say they were committed to pulling it off. This was their first solo project. They wanted to prove they were good enough to do it. According to one Darkside source, their tentative plan was to build a fun vertical slice—a playable and demonstrable chunk of the game—and use it to persuade Microsoft into giving them more money.
What? So you're gonna risk the ENTIRETY of your company and the people who work their--their livelihood and how they make bread--on fukking ambition? Making a blind jump that (in the end) won't work??? That's fukking stupid especially if you knew beforehand that Microsoft wasn't budging in regards to more funding.
Darkside was put on a gag order; though the game had been announced, they still couldn’t tell people they were making it. “It was very sad,” said one person on the project. “It showed a lack of confidence in us.”
One former Darkside employee says some at the studio were caught off-guard by the announcement. “We didn’t even know if they were going to show it,” the employee said. “We were basically told, ‘Hey check out the E3 presentation.’ The whole studio’s in the living room, we have a TV going with an Xbox watching the presentation, and then all of a sudden there’s that two-minute CG trailer. And we were like, ‘That’s amazing.’ But at the same time, they didn’t use any of our assets, they didn’t use any of our card packs, nothing. Basically what they showed had nothing to do with the game whatsoever. We had no idea that was even happening… It was like, ‘Holy crap, now fans are expecting characters to look like that, and that’s not what we’re making.’”
This is an L on Microsoft's part. You don't do that to a developer along with making a pre-rendered trailer that they didn't make. This is a sour move that honestly pisses me off about how Microsoft handles their developer relationships. Still haven't learned.
Darkside soldiered on, and full development started around August of last year. As the months went on, things got shakier. Microsoft’s demands for the game increased, and the pressure got worse and worse as Redmond kept asking for new things, Darkside sources say. Microsoft wanted a longer single-player campaign; they wanted various features added and changed; they wanted Darkside to help contribute card art to the accompanying mobile game Microsoft had planned. “This kind of focus change happened on a nearly monthly basis,” said a person who worked on the game.
So as they added more content time after time and you KNEW your team couldn't handle it, why continue development? Why not quit then and there? You're a team of ~60 people, not fukking Remedy or 343.
“They asked for things pretty quickly,” said a second person close to the studio. “We kept telling them, ‘We cannot make this game for the budget you want.’”
In the fall of last year, another obstacle popped up: one of Microsoft’s creative directors, who Darkside sources described as integral to Phantom Dust’s success, left the company. His role was never re-filled, which hurt Darkside a lot.... “He was a huge fan who really understood the game,” one source said, “so when some of the producers would make some really stupid requests, he would be able to say, ‘This was a really stupid request.’”
And again, another L on Microsoft. They're not listening and the one dude that DID listen bounced. So it gives me the idea that Microsoft doesn't
care about the project anymore. Shame.
Reading more and more of this just irks me a lot. The developer, young and ambitious couldn't keep it's realities and check and that cost a lot of people their jobs. Microsoft just shat on these guys and Phantom Dust (as much as it kills me inside.) is Canceled. Poor decisions from both aspects but...eh. That's game development for you.
Microsoft is the WOAT
