Death of a Game: Crucible

#DOAG . Death of a Game is a series dedicated to uncovering the mysteries surrounding the death of a game or company. nerdSlayer defines the term "death" in the context of the show as either... 1. Literally dead. 2. Had a mass exodus of players and never recovered (expectations etc). 3. The company ceased to exist. We follow a timeline of events, to uncover clues concerning why a game or company doesn't do well, and attempt to put it all together at the end for a deduction explaining how or why the game failed based on the evidence gathered.

[TheDoctorThrax]

Oh no, the next one is gonna be Anthem, this is gonna be a fun one.

[akba]

When you underbake a cake and put it back into the oven. Then you check on it 30 min later and find that it had turn back into whole eggs and flour.

[Musically_Declined]

“But it’s weird that everyone seems to forget about Breakaway”

I can’t forget something I never knew existed

[MelancholySky]

Crucible feels like a collection of devs all with widely varying ideas and development strategies all being bundled together and told to make a game with little/lacking direction. Each higher notoriety dev most likely tried to pull the game in the direction they saw fit thus leaving it scattered and in the state it ended up in.

[AceDreamer]

>company wants to make a new hip moba shooter
>flawlessly repeats the same mistakes previous companies made on the genre
>predictably bleeds players and everyone returns to Overwatch/Paladins

>company wants to make a new hip moba shooter
>flawlessly repeats the same mistakes previous companies made on the genre
>predictably bleeds players and everyone returns to Overwatch/Paladins

>company wants to make a new hip moba shooter
>flawlessly repeats the same mistakes previous companies made on the genre
>predictably bleeds players and everyone returns to Overwatch/Paladins

>company wants to make a new hip moba shooter
>flawlessly repeats the same mistakes previous companies made on the genre
>predictably bleeds players and everyone returns to Overwatch/Paladins

*"did i ever tell you the definition of insanity?"*

[SangoProductions]

Want my hypothesis? Amazon had no idea what they wanted.
They just said "We want to also be into gaming. Make us a game that'll be a continuous income stream. Here's the AWS money. You have a year."
It worked for them for basically every market they tried to get into, so why not games? EA does it.
Well, EA knows that they don't need more than a single unpaid intern to make their cash cows in the yearly sports rereleases. Anything else is gravy, and outsourced to sub-studios with actual game ideas.
I don't know if I'm comparing Amazon positively or negatively to EA. I guess I'll let you decide.

[MatthewCobalt]

God, this feels like a "How not to make a multiplayer game" DOAG's greatest hits Album.

[asecondcycle]

This game was just chasing fads that had long since faded out of relevance, this is conjecture in a way but even Overwatch has fallen out of the "mainstream" (as compared to indie games like Fall Guys, Phasmophobia and Among Us if we're gonna use recent examples) so the team-based hero shooter genre has definitely seen better days.

[pocketheart]

"Flash in the pan" does not refer to cooking, it's a reference to old style muzzle-loaded firearms, like flintlocks. Near the back of the gun, near the touch hole was the flash pan, which held priming powder. The idea is that you would ignite this, which should cause a brief flash of flame that *should* go through the touch hole, ignite the powder, and fire the weapon. Sometimes, this would not go as planned, the flash would not ignite the gunpowder and fire the gun. This was referred to as "a flash in the pan". The expression later transformed to refer to a short, spectacular start ultimately leading to failure.

[yomejjuan]

I think part of Amazon's issue was that they should've just acquired a studio instead of building something from the ground up. It would've reduced risk of having their first products being flops. If new worlds ends up being a flop I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon guts its game development sector.

[Genghis_Pro]

So Lumberyard wasn't designed for multiplayer games, but every game I've heard of using it (including Star Citizen) is a multiplayer game. Brilliant.

[selfsch]

As somebody who isn't a developer and never worked on a single project for years, I can't even imagine how it must feel for your game to get cancelled so shortly after a premature release and basically no marketing. Sure the devs still get paid but damn, it's gotta feel like years of your life wasted for nothing.

[mcgamerson]

I've played a lot of Crucible post closed-beta-reversion and have recently talked to Jon Peters about Crucible. His take on the game's death was that it launched with many lacking or missing features expected from their game and even after implementing many of those features and changes in the closed beta, they could never recover from the negative perception impressed on consumers who had already tried the game and never garner enough new players to facilitate decent queue times.

[SurikatMeerkat]

Regarding Internal Testers: Internal QA will look into the stability and integration of a client. And some other things like performance, compatibility and such. But rarely will they be as invested into the fun / immersion factor as the actual end users. This is always the fundamental issue with using only internal testers IMO. I've done it for over 10 years now, it's never clear cut.

[soulflame]

As someone who has worked at amazon for 8+ years. I saw this coming the DAY they announced the 3 games lmao. If you think these games are unfinished af i wish you could experience ANY new program they roll out that the employees are forced to use to ACTUALLY DO THEIR JOB which end up broken for months and shittier in everyway than the third party programs they used. Also ofc the programs aren't tested at all before they launch "They use them in other buildings" is generally the response and we get about a week notice before they make drastic changes like this if we are lucky.

[Rhaz]

I'm waiting for Death of a game: Marvel Avenger.

I don't know why, but the first time I saw the gameplay, I just felt like this game reeked of mediocrity. Something about the bland, messy UI and the unfocused world and art direction. Like I could feel my blood-pressure dropping just looking at it...

[Genguidanos]

These were the people who saw an overcrowded marketplace and said, “Me too!”

[MhnFive]

Sometimes I wonder how it must feel as a developer to know your project is more known for it's failures than the actual project.

Even with all the bull they had to deal with, it must just hurt hearing the height of their relevancy is coverages like this. Guess that's just another day in the industry.

[swglrd]

I'm very interested to see you visitng TERA. I loved that game when i was able to play it after it became f2p. Booted it up again at the beginning of this fall just for old time's sake. Oh boy... it was a shadow of it's former self!!