I don't consider Visceral Games to be a failure on there own part. I feel they were the victim of yet another Greedy Publisher wanting money over quality or Strong IP's
The problem is that EA is never content to make any amount of money that is less than ALL YOUR MONEY RIGHT NOW. They want to turn everything into gigantic multimedia empires, and horror themed media (games and film) were never meant to be such. They have a specialized audience who knows what they want, so a small studio can make a low budget offering guaranteed to make its money back and some profit which it can then use to fund other mainstream offerings. This is why there was so much slasher VHS movies in the 80's, that's what got studios bankrolled. Now EA didn't get the memo and tried to make Dead Space more bland to please more people, but this faces the same problem as Midway turning Mortal Kombat VS DC into a T-rated game: It's too bland for hardcore fans and it's STILL too horrible for parents of teenagers who rely on the reputation of the previous R-rated installments as a reason to not buy it for their kids. The result is inevitable failure.
They fell prey to their own personal necromorph whom had been looming behind them the entire time, waiting to exert its target for all it was worth before swiftly and brutally destroying it in cold blood.
Another goofy old guy who doesn't understand the difference between AAA titles and Indie style development. You don't spend $$ on superbowl ads as an indie title. You don't throw away everything that attracted people to your indie game for lootboxes and flavor of the month mechanics. They tried to take indie game success to AAA development, and it didn't work, it didn't translate.
Some things you can't upscale. And some genres throwing more money at won't attract more consumers to. And every game at a major publisher like EA is overshadowed by games like FIFA, etc. where the suits ask you "why isn't your game making a billion dollars? Where are your shark cards?".
There are more ways to make a profit than increasing revenue, like say... not blowing a shitload of money on marketing for a game with a niche audience. Cutting costs on frivolous spending could have helped make Dead Space not seem like a waste of money to EA. But, EA is gonna EA. =/
EA has got to have a monopoly on unselfaware management. The first two Dead Space did amazing. They got involved with Dead Space 3 and it flopped. So they decided it was a good idea to keep getting involved then blaming Visceral for EA management mistakes.
Bout to watch this after watching all of your other Death of A Games today. This is the most bingeworthy series I’ve found that never gets old. Thank you for the awesome and detailed content!
Visceral didn't have to evolve, it was the attempt to evolve into something that they weren't that killed them. Being a niche business isn't a bad thing if you are making money, a good product, and all your people are making a good living. That's not good enough for EA though, if you aren't making 300% profit, you aren't worth keeping around.
Dante's Inferno was really memorable 3/4 of the way through, great enemy design, good soundtrack, Then there is a level that is just a white room, literally. No new enemy types passed that point, and the last hour and a half is grinding room after room of enemies that don't thematically fit that level of hell and that you have killed thousands of times before (don't even mention the last boss). Everyone suspects EA rushed that game out, cuz' it was a solid 8-9/10 and then shit the bed.
I remember the days when people called Devil May Cry a God of War clone despite the fact 1, 2 and 3 came out before the first GoW. But apart from that random little tidbit of people being dumb, Dante's Inferno really is a God of War clone and that's totally fine because it's a damn good one, heck better than the franchise it borrowed from imo.
dont most hack and slash games do that ? put ALL enemies you fought the whole game into last few levels to test all the skill and knowledge you have accumulated ?
Everyone talks about how bad the DS3 co-op was, and how it didn't belong there. No one seems to talk about how the co-op facilitated some great storytelling and memorable moments. How many co-op games show different cutscenes to each player at the same time? I will never forget the great moment of my first co-op playthrough of DS3, and after a cutscene my friend said: "Let's go help that women, she looks hurt." "...What woman?" "The woman we just saw! In that cutscene!" "Dude...there was no woman in that cutscene...wtf are you talking about?" It was brilliant.
They took people off from Visceral for the Battlefront 2 Campaign. That's funny, but also sad and painful. That campaign wasn't even finished. It just seems that Viscerals failures largely stem from EA and its actions and what they forced the studio to do before shutting them down. I wasn't a fan of the Co-Op in Dead Space 3 but in terms of how they implemented it, Iliked it in that regard. Most Co-op games, like RE5 and 6 for example force you to have a companion whether or not you have a player with you. They're just replaced by AI and it kills some of the mood for the game as whole. Dead Space 3, if you were playing Solo, treated the game as a solo game, the companion stuck with the other NPC's and you spent most of the game on your own as Isaac. Co-Op included Carver, gave some additional cutscenes and changed some of them as well. I thought the way they implemented the co-op was really interesting and neat. But it does show that additional work went into this when it probably shouldn't have... Considering how that game ended and the fact it had an ending DLC to expand on it...
The sad thing is that, from the point of view of the current publisher ethos, the players of games are a liability and an enemy. In our opinion, as well as by the logic of it, games should be made to "serve" their players and the players reward the developers (or, these days, predominantly publishers) for bringing them the experience. In their opinion, however, games should serve the publishers alone, and the players are an annoying obstacle between them and the money. The business side of the industry fell into wholesale moneygrubbing overdrive; they basically ended up doing what they liked to accuse players of being once - feeling entitled to the "reward" by default and desiring to skip the process of working to get it. Hence the viciously negative, derisive and exploitative outlook at their own playerbases - as cattle to be milked and shorn for money that is rightfully theirs, not as a human audience they're building a rapport and appreciation with and get rewarded with money for it. All this, I feel, shines through quite a bit with Visceral's story after EA homed in on their initial standalone success with Dead Space - they dropped in with a purely money-milking mindset outlined above, and from that point on I can't blame "the creatives" one bit because "the suits" were completely deranged.
+Cat Trucker Dead space 2 was a failiure from the business side. So if they wanted to make a dead space 3, they would need to adapt to that. Either they would have needed to make a smaller/cheaper game, which the gamer comunity would hate as something "worse than part 2" or increase their income from the game. There is just no good solution to that. Can you real blame "the suits" if the game "the creatives" want just doesnt make a profit? It seems the market that dead space aimed for was too small for the game's budget.
@@matthiase3287 It´s true, you can´t fault EA for not wanting to make a game that will end up losing them money. But I think we can all agree that EAs way of dealing with such things only makes matters worse in most cases. Point in case being them demanding Dead Space 3 to be watered down and stuffed with microtransactions in order to increase profits. They should have known this would not work: 1. Removing Isaacs Dementia and generally reducing the horror elements alienated the fanbase, aka your existing audience who are most likely to buy the game. After playing the first two, I had little to no desire to play the third, knowing that it was so different. I only picked it up when a friend wanted to play it with me 2. These changes will not end up making the game more appealing to a mainstream audience. People who didn´t play the first two games would end up not understanding most of the story, and on the surface, it´s still pretty much the same type of game. If the promotional material of the first two games didn´t get you interested, that of the third one probably won´t either 3. Co-op shooters seem very safe to make since there is always an audience for that, yes. But that also means that the market is pretty saturated with games which are just plain better at the Co-op-shooter-part. If you are looking for a fun game to play with a bunch of friends, chances are you pick something like Left 4 dead, Killing Floor or Borderlands 4. Microtransactions. Microtransactions in a linear, primarily single-player game. And I know, the game is perfectly playable without them, yet it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth In my opinion, EAs decisions surrounding Dead Space 3 ended up severely harming the games financial potential, and it damaged the franchise to a point where another sequel, unless the first two games, just wouldn´t have been worth the risk for them.
Let's hope that Microsoft buys them. But at the same time, I don't trust a huge company buying too many studios, as great as Microsoft is at the moment. The good thing is that EA would cease to exist if a big publisher buys them though, just like Bethesda Softworks and Zenimax will soon.
I feel poorly for Amy Henning at the Visceral Games, she's been working her ass off for literally 3 years trying to deliver an awesome story driven singleplayer Star Wars game. As a gamer and a fan of Uncharted series I know Amy Henning will deliver a very good singleplayer game experience where the foundation of telling a story, building characters and creating a story arch as expression of art in entertainment which is clearly her talent and main goal and to see that goes away really breaks my heart. Are there any petition to bring back Amy Henning and Visceral Games on her development of Star Wars game? This is the true Star Wars game I really wanna see and play, not that mediocre unpolished short story singleplayer we got from Battlefront II. #FuckEA
Technically they scrapped it since it was closer to a space western than a Star Wars game (it didn't have a force main character). I do think JFO came from that in some way, just not sure how much yet.
two things you missed: the dante's inferno "protesters" turned to be a marketing stunt, and a sizable part of hardline's failure was how tone-deaf it seemed in the wake of mass protests against police brutality going on at the time
Very well done! The intersection between multiple games is a great way of breaking down a studios work. It's dope you show the main game and games made before/during/after.. great for keeping a timeline of our favorite dead franchises!
I love how your analysis involves a perspective that we, consumers, barely glimpses, which is the business frame of the game industry and companies' decisions in game development. Great work!
God I wish Hennig had taken the assets and ideas of Ragtag when she left Visceral, unbranded it from SW and just launched it as a sci fi RPG, imagine how epic it would have been.
I was a huge fan too. Bought it on launch and put at least 100 or so hours in before I quit. Sadly they killed a great game by ruining solo play. The game was based almost entirely around hardcore world PvP, and that's what I loved about it. They made it literally impossible to participate in PvP without mobbing around in huge groups of 20+ players and gangbanging people. Even then the game was laggy, unstable, and unplayable most of the time. It was a running joke for chat to spam "Albion Offline" when the servers were fucked, which was A LOT of the time.
Hold the phone for a bit, you mean that the guys who made the Dead Space franchise made Future Cop LAPD as their first game ? The demo of this game was, along with the demo of Ghost in the Shell, my first contact with mechas in general. The CD demo (euro demo 26 for reference) also included a demo of Spyro The Dragon, talk about coincidence. No wonder why many years later, I liked the Dead Space franchise as a whole. A bummer that I learned they're dead the day of my birthday, tho.
The Lord of the Rings Games were okay, but the 3rd age sorry I didn't feel like I was having fun with Not Frodo and Not Borimer and Not Arwen. For Dante's Inferno I wouldn't call it a complete game, it seems like it was 3/4 finished and they ran out of time when they were finishing up the last two levels. Fraud was the most uninspiring circle and the last circle was too short. Also the marketing did overstep some bounds, Also EA hired phoney protesters to make up fake controversy. However they generated enough with "Sin2win" which apparently caused some convention workers to feel like they were in danger.
It's amazing to see how many genres Visceral games has made games for. 3rd person horror/action, GTA style open world, Large FPS shooter, whatever genre that Simsons game is, etc.
Daaaamn, I didn't even knew Visceral made Future Cop, I played that game so much on my PS1, we had a thing where me and my friend would gather at my house on weekends and we would make mini tournaments on 1v1 skirmish mode. Now i feel even more sorry for Visceral and fans of their games...
Always love the videos and share them around. But my hatred of bad grammar is going to shine through now. It is never could of been. It is could have been. Thanks for the content! Love it!
Deadspace hat so many ways of becoming a greater franchise, they should have created a live action movie that is connected to the story of the game to get some horror movie people into the gaming market.
Woah hold on, I almost bought dead space 3 because it was co-op and I wanted nothing more than to experience it with my buddies. However the fact it had micro transactions it clearly lost its way so I gave it no attention
Micro transactions, for weapons... Uhg, yuck. And you know that was EA's idea, the co-op was probably there's as well, they've been saying "people don't want single player games anymore"for as long as memory serves. Honestly I've wished for some kind of co-op in many single player only games, but the way EA forces it into everything is sickening.
Dante's Inferno was fun. It has a lot of flaws but the enemies were interesting (although lacking in variety) and boss battles epic. I never understood the hate the game received.
Dante’s inferno was actually amazing I feel. One of the best action games I played and gave me a god of war that wasn’t god of war and I loved the world they made and enemy designs
Visceral didn't fail. EA failed Visceral. I dearly hope someone buys the Dead Space IP from them, headhunt the original developers and get a true, proper Dead Space 4 out there to finish the series once and for all. Sadly EA is like a dragon sleeping on top of its treasure, nobody can touch despite doing fuck all with it. It's stuff like that which has made me despise the current AAA scene.
This one hurt the realist because dead space is my favorite horror franchise ever and I was so so close to getting a small marker tattoo on my ankle lol
the thing with Futurecop LAPD was that it came out of the Strike series, at the end of Nuclear Strike they had a teaser for Future Strike, that game became Futurecop, the real reason Futurecop failed was cus EA didn't connect the 2 games in marketing, they expected people to just jump on and sadly with no obvious connection people were skeptical.....
Thank you for being so thorough in your analysis of these interesting topics without using your most monotonous, sleep inducing tone you could possibly take, I've heard too much of that shit, you are refreshing, man.
Shorten this to "EA wants to make money so they changed the projects direction to go Grand Theft Auto route to make more micro transactions" amazing how I just summed up half this video.
Everyone hates on dead space 3 and the multiplayer but I played it through with my friend and we both had a lot of fun with it! I mean there were definitely negatives such as some of the atmosphere , but the missions where your coop partner is hallucinating was so crazy to me I want to see more games do multiplayer like that! It was such a cool idea! I just remember playing and then having my friend freak out or start punching thi Nd s that I couldn’t see and it was Earnie and jarring when he was trying to explain things to me! Awesome idea !
Dead Space 1 and 2 was great, Dante's Inferno, The Simpsons Game, Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel... all great games, imo. Such a shame they went under. :(
Thanks for the history lesson. WoW. I superficially recognized names like Amy Hennig and Jade Raymond but had no idea that they had parts in this story.
hey man I love your videos, I was so let down because i got laid off from the game company i work for but I just got hired back again!!!! (I am a contractor) watching your videos cheered me up ( Richard Garriot interview was awesome) and then I got a call from my lead!!! to go back to work
Visceral looks like another case of no self-control. Unlike Telltale Games who grew too quickly, Visceral and EA had trouble budgeting their time, talent, and money. Unrealistic expectations were also involved as well.
COULD HAVE COULD HAVE COULD HAVE I hope you guys enjoy this video, it's certainly Star Wars themed...but no where near as Star Wars themed as the next DOAG...most if not all of you can guess what it is going to be...I'll give you a hint... 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. You guys can vote for what my next Star Wars game to play on Stream is, here is the poll. www.strawpoll.me/14578201/r . It will be streamed on Twitch.tv/nerdslayerrr
Good on you for stickying this. Did an ctlr+f to make sure someone else didn't say it... Really enjoy your content! With how big of an audience EA wanted, wouldn't it have been better for a smaller studio to do Deadspace? Or smaller marketing? 1 and 2 were fabulous. 3... was only good for co-op. Finding a good cop-op game is so hard these days. I want me and my friend to play the same game that we could solo. No extra side-missions, just full story co-op. That's why we love the Saints Row games. So for Deadspace 3, I liked the co-op, but besides the opening and the butt hole in the sky ending, I don't remember a thing. I knew micro-transactions were worthless, but on a whole, Dead space 3 leaves the impression on me of "good co-op game" and that's it. I din't remember anything else that happened. I'm also replaying KOTO2, so I'm going to have to check out your videos on that again. Take care and than you for putting these videos out, I always check them out as soon as I notice them.
Visceral's death: Drawn and quartered while the executive turning the crank yells at it for not making anything that sells enough copies 'while' its limbs are slowly torn off.
Dude futur cop LAPD was amazing ! I played it all the time with my cousin ! It was like a tower defense where you played a meca and you had to built a lot of tanks and planes to capture the enemy base
Didn't know they were responsible for Future Cop, that was one of my first video games I owned period! Dead Space was one of the first games I ended up owning on my PS3.
There were parts i disagree about dead space 3, namely the coop. Coop isnt inherently detrimental to the horror genre, while this video is 3 years old, we can look to Phas with its recent success. In DS3, one of my favorite moments is when you go into one of the side areas, as you explore it, carter is seeing a birthday party as he is going through the early stages of the marker dementia. Meanwhile isaac is seeing whats really there, which is the hellscape of an abandoned area. It really adds this WTF moment when the person you're playing with is seeing somethinh very different from you. Its one of the few good moments in the game, and a coop horror game does help people get into the genre as it is easier for some people to have that extra bit of support in a game they'd otherwise really enjoy. I think if EA could just have a little trust in its developers and studios, they might be able to put out a good game. DS3 could of been amazing even with coop, but the publisher micromanagement killed any chance it had.
I still can't get over the fact that we will never get the conclusion to what happened to Isaac and over all closure for the series, it just ended up on shitmountains cliffhanger
i just rewatched this and its really sad,I think this was the type of studio that would of been great as a 2nd Party xbox dev or PS dev, Creating Single player content that does well on consoles.Always sad to see studios destroyed by corporate meddling
Future Cop LAPD was not generic at all. Mecha, Transformations, great selection of weapons, and an actual competitive multiplayer (local or internet), together with AI bot teammates makes it a timeless classic. Im still waiting for the remake.
Ea shuts down game studio responsible for one of the best horror games ever.... then later on announces remake of one of the best horror games ever.... 🤔
A grand Theft millennium falcon would have been worth a try 10 or 15 years ago. Now the business expectations of a star wars game will force creations to lean on the familiar. "What no wookies?" "Yeah it's a hut but it's not jabba. How are players supposed to know who it is?" And in the end in an attempt to please everybody it will please no one. It seems like from now on it will be almost impossible for a big time studio to release a "groundbreaking" game. This will be limited to smaller studios who take the right chances and will be rewarded with being bought out by the larger safer studios who will run it into the ground and move on to the next big thing.
I don't consider Visceral Games to be a failure on there own part. I feel they were the victim of yet another Greedy Publisher wanting money over quality or Strong IP's
The problem is that EA is never content to make any amount of money that is less than ALL YOUR MONEY RIGHT NOW. They want to turn everything into gigantic multimedia empires, and horror themed media (games and film) were never meant to be such. They have a specialized audience who knows what they want, so a small studio can make a low budget offering guaranteed to make its money back and some profit which it can then use to fund other mainstream offerings. This is why there was so much slasher VHS movies in the 80's, that's what got studios bankrolled. Now EA didn't get the memo and tried to make Dead Space more bland to please more people, but this faces the same problem as Midway turning Mortal Kombat VS DC into a T-rated game: It's too bland for hardcore fans and it's STILL too horrible for parents of teenagers who rely on the reputation of the previous R-rated installments as a reason to not buy it for their kids. The result is inevitable failure.
They fell prey to their own personal necromorph whom had been looming behind them the entire time, waiting to exert its target for all it was worth before swiftly and brutally destroying it in cold blood.
Another goofy old guy who doesn't understand the difference between AAA titles and Indie style development. You don't spend $$ on superbowl ads as an indie title. You don't throw away everything that attracted people to your indie game for lootboxes and flavor of the month mechanics. They tried to take indie game success to AAA development, and it didn't work, it didn't translate.
Some things you can't upscale. And some genres throwing more money at won't attract more consumers to. And every game at a major publisher like EA is overshadowed by games like FIFA, etc. where the suits ask you "why isn't your game making a billion dollars? Where are your shark cards?".
There are more ways to make a profit than increasing revenue, like say... not blowing a shitload of money on marketing for a game with a niche audience. Cutting costs on frivolous spending could have helped make Dead Space not seem like a waste of money to EA. But, EA is gonna EA. =/
"Gee I wonder what game NerdSlayer is covering for death of a game?"
AN ENTIRE COMPANY.
"Ohh"
EA's old school motto: "EA, its in the game"
EA's modern motto: "EA, its a game?"
It's not a game it's a playable microtrasaction
Jordick 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
i want a game....that's not a game
"EA, its in the Season Pass"
Jordick. Nah its "EA, its in the game for only $4.99"
EA has got to have a monopoly on unselfaware management. The first two Dead Space did amazing. They got involved with Dead Space 3 and it flopped. So they decided it was a good idea to keep getting involved then blaming Visceral for EA management mistakes.
This broke my heart because visceral games was such a great developer
They had their + , but great developer were not . They had alot to work on quality ...
Dead Space was an awesome franchise. But beyond that I don't rate Visceral at all.
@@BobAg_ i can agree with that and honestly i blame more EA for killing this franchise.
Bout to watch this after watching all of your other Death of A Games today. This is the most bingeworthy series I’ve found that never gets old. Thank you for the awesome and detailed content!
It reminds me of the old "All your history are belong to us" series, that was really cool as well.
Visceral didn't have to evolve, it was the attempt to evolve into something that they weren't that killed them. Being a niche business isn't a bad thing if you are making money, a good product, and all your people are making a good living. That's not good enough for EA though, if you aren't making 300% profit, you aren't worth keeping around.
Dante's Inferno was really memorable 3/4 of the way through, great enemy design, good soundtrack, Then there is a level that is just a white room, literally. No new enemy types passed that point, and the last hour and a half is grinding room after room of enemies that don't thematically fit that level of hell and that you have killed thousands of times before (don't even mention the last boss). Everyone suspects EA rushed that game out, cuz' it was a solid 8-9/10 and then shit the bed.
I still cannot believe what they got away with on the final boss. That was probably the most memorable moment of the game.
I remember the days when people called Devil May Cry a God of War clone despite the fact 1, 2 and 3 came out before the first GoW. But apart from that random little tidbit of people being dumb, Dante's Inferno really is a God of War clone and that's totally fine because it's a damn good one, heck better than the franchise it borrowed from imo.
That they do - demons have always been badass.
The vagina lassos were hilarious. I really did like the atmosphere oppressive and disturbing, as hell should be.
dont most hack and slash games do that ? put ALL enemies you fought the whole game into last few levels to test all the skill and knowledge you have accumulated ?
Everyone talks about how bad the DS3 co-op was, and how it didn't belong there. No one seems to talk about how the co-op facilitated some great storytelling and memorable moments. How many co-op games show different cutscenes to each player at the same time? I will never forget the great moment of my first co-op playthrough of DS3, and after a cutscene my friend said:
"Let's go help that women, she looks hurt."
"...What woman?"
"The woman we just saw! In that cutscene!"
"Dude...there was no woman in that cutscene...wtf are you talking about?"
It was brilliant.
"What could of been" 18:40 :( Its have not of :((((
That must be how they say it in San Matty-O.
They took people off from Visceral for the Battlefront 2 Campaign. That's funny, but also sad and painful. That campaign wasn't even finished.
It just seems that Viscerals failures largely stem from EA and its actions and what they forced the studio to do before shutting them down.
I wasn't a fan of the Co-Op in Dead Space 3 but in terms of how they implemented it, Iliked it in that regard. Most Co-op games, like RE5 and 6 for example force you to have a companion whether or not you have a player with you. They're just replaced by AI and it kills some of the mood for the game as whole.
Dead Space 3, if you were playing Solo, treated the game as a solo game, the companion stuck with the other NPC's and you spent most of the game on your own as Isaac. Co-Op included Carver, gave some additional cutscenes and changed some of them as well. I thought the way they implemented the co-op was really interesting and neat. But it does show that additional work went into this when it probably shouldn't have... Considering how that game ended and the fact it had an ending DLC to expand on it...
The sad thing is that, from the point of view of the current publisher ethos, the players of games are a liability and an enemy. In our opinion, as well as by the logic of it, games should be made to "serve" their players and the players reward the developers (or, these days, predominantly publishers) for bringing them the experience. In their opinion, however, games should serve the publishers alone, and the players are an annoying obstacle between them and the money. The business side of the industry fell into wholesale moneygrubbing overdrive; they basically ended up doing what they liked to accuse players of being once - feeling entitled to the "reward" by default and desiring to skip the process of working to get it. Hence the viciously negative, derisive and exploitative outlook at their own playerbases - as cattle to be milked and shorn for money that is rightfully theirs, not as a human audience they're building a rapport and appreciation with and get rewarded with money for it. All this, I feel, shines through quite a bit with Visceral's story after EA homed in on their initial standalone success with Dead Space - they dropped in with a purely money-milking mindset outlined above, and from that point on I can't blame "the creatives" one bit because "the suits" were completely deranged.
+Cat Trucker Dead space 2 was a failiure from the business side. So if they wanted to make a dead space 3, they would need to adapt to that. Either they would have needed to make a smaller/cheaper game, which the gamer comunity would hate as something "worse than part 2" or increase their income from the game. There is just no good solution to that.
Can you real blame "the suits" if the game "the creatives" want just doesnt make a profit? It seems the market that dead space aimed for was too small for the game's budget.
I can, I'd simply blame both.
@@matthiase3287 It´s true, you can´t fault EA for not wanting to make a game that will end up losing them money. But I think we can all agree that EAs way of dealing with such things only makes matters worse in most cases. Point in case being them demanding Dead Space 3 to be watered down and stuffed with microtransactions in order to increase profits. They should have known this would not work:
1. Removing Isaacs Dementia and generally reducing the horror elements alienated the fanbase, aka your existing audience who are most likely to buy the game. After playing the first two, I had little to no desire to play the third, knowing that it was so different. I only picked it up when a friend wanted to play it with me
2. These changes will not end up making the game more appealing to a mainstream audience. People who didn´t play the first two games would end up not understanding most of the story, and on the surface, it´s still pretty much the same type of game. If the promotional material of the first two games didn´t get you interested, that of the third one probably won´t either
3. Co-op shooters seem very safe to make since there is always an audience for that, yes. But that also means that the market is pretty saturated with games which are just plain better at the Co-op-shooter-part. If you are looking for a fun game to play with a bunch of friends, chances are you pick something like Left 4 dead, Killing Floor or Borderlands
4. Microtransactions. Microtransactions in a linear, primarily single-player game. And I know, the game is perfectly playable without them, yet it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth
In my opinion, EAs decisions surrounding Dead Space 3 ended up severely harming the games financial potential, and it damaged the franchise to a point where another sequel, unless the first two games, just wouldn´t have been worth the risk for them.
It'll be a great day when EA themselves gets bought by someone like Disney and promptly gets shut down.
Let's hope that Microsoft buys them. But at the same time, I don't trust a huge company buying too many studios, as great as Microsoft is at the moment.
The good thing is that EA would cease to exist if a big publisher buys them though, just like Bethesda Softworks and Zenimax will soon.
I feel poorly for Amy Henning at the Visceral Games, she's been working her ass off for literally 3 years trying to deliver an awesome story driven singleplayer Star Wars game. As a gamer and a fan of Uncharted series I know Amy Henning will deliver a very good singleplayer game experience where the foundation of telling a story, building characters and creating a story arch as expression of art in entertainment which is clearly her talent and main goal and to see that goes away really breaks my heart. Are there any petition to bring back Amy Henning and Visceral Games on her development of Star Wars game? This is the true Star Wars game I really wanna see and play, not that mediocre unpolished short story singleplayer we got from Battlefront II. #FuckEA
She made Uncharted 2 and look how that turned out to be at the time.
Did "rag tag" evolve into Jedi Fallen Order? As that seemed to come out of nowhere, and now EA want a sequel to that...
Technically they scrapped it since it was closer to a space western than a Star Wars game (it didn't have a force main character). I do think JFO came from that in some way, just not sure how much yet.
I was just about to comment this question
two things you missed: the dante's inferno "protesters" turned to be a marketing stunt, and a sizable part of hardline's failure was how tone-deaf it seemed in the wake of mass protests against police brutality going on at the time
Very well done! The intersection between multiple games is a great way of breaking down a studios work. It's dope you show the main game and games made before/during/after.. great for keeping a timeline of our favorite dead franchises!
I love how your analysis involves a perspective that we, consumers, barely glimpses, which is the business frame of the game industry and companies' decisions in game development. Great work!
"Could of been "
Morro Men hnggg
Moritz CP Menzel that made me very upset
I came here to comment this 3 years later.
6:29 Actually I heard EA hired those people to stage fake protests for the game to get the hype up for Dante's inferno.
God I wish Hennig had taken the assets and ideas of Ragtag when she left Visceral, unbranded it from SW and just launched it as a sci fi RPG, imagine how epic it would have been.
Also, that fucking nursery rhyme! Was so creepy first time i heard it.
Could you look into Albion Online? I'd happily give my input on the subject, having been one of its most fervent fans.
Trygve Plaustrum it's not dead though, it was released literally 4 months ago. Sure it's dying, but certainly not dead yet.
I was a huge fan too. Bought it on launch and put at least 100 or so hours in before I quit. Sadly they killed a great game by ruining solo play. The game was based almost entirely around hardcore world PvP, and that's what I loved about it. They made it literally impossible to participate in PvP without mobbing around in huge groups of 20+ players and gangbanging people. Even then the game was laggy, unstable, and unplayable most of the time. It was a running joke for chat to spam "Albion Offline" when the servers were fucked, which was A LOT of the time.
The Dantes Inferno protest was staged
Future Cop: LAPD... now that's a blast from the past.
Future Cops multiplayer mode was so fucking badass. I'm surprised it's never been copied.
Hold the phone for a bit, you mean that the guys who made the Dead Space franchise made Future Cop LAPD as their first game ?
The demo of this game was, along with the demo of Ghost in the Shell, my first contact with mechas in general.
The CD demo (euro demo 26 for reference) also included a demo of Spyro The Dragon, talk about coincidence.
No wonder why many years later, I liked the Dead Space franchise as a whole.
A bummer that I learned they're dead the day of my birthday, tho.
Since you mentioned them already, you should consider covering LucasArts
Now that would be a long video, since they opened in 1982.
that blood dust or whatever game from the melbourne sorta looks like nosgoth
lightningandcloud yeah i mean the vampires etc. Huh... I'm still sad that Nosgoth was cancelled
The Lord of the Rings Games were okay, but the 3rd age sorry I didn't feel like I was having fun with Not Frodo and Not Borimer and Not Arwen.
For Dante's Inferno I wouldn't call it a complete game, it seems like it was 3/4 finished and they ran out of time when they were finishing up the last two levels. Fraud was the most uninspiring circle and the last circle was too short. Also the marketing did overstep some bounds, Also EA hired phoney protesters to make up fake controversy. However they generated enough with "Sin2win" which apparently caused some convention workers to feel like they were in danger.
It's amazing to see how many genres Visceral games has made games for. 3rd person horror/action, GTA style open world, Large FPS shooter, whatever genre that Simsons game is, etc.
That's still really fucking narrow lol
It really suck that they left dead space 3 ended with cliffhanger (if you count the DLC ending)
Daaaamn, I didn't even knew Visceral made Future Cop, I played that game so much on my PS1, we had a thing where me and my friend would gather at my house on weekends and we would make mini tournaments on 1v1 skirmish mode. Now i feel even more sorry for Visceral and fans of their games...
Man how dare you throw the Force Unleashed Theme at me like this... the FEEEELS
The first time I've ever watched this series and felt the cold pang of remorse for a great developer studio.
Always love the videos and share them around. But my hatred of bad grammar is going to shine through now. It is never could of been. It is could have been. Thanks for the content! Love it!
Deadspace hat so many ways of becoming a greater franchise, they should have created a live action movie that is connected to the story of the game to get some horror movie people into the gaming market.
Woah hold on, I almost bought dead space 3 because it was co-op and I wanted nothing more than to experience it with my buddies. However the fact it had micro transactions it clearly lost its way so I gave it no attention
Micro transactions, for weapons... Uhg, yuck.
And you know that was EA's idea, the co-op was probably there's as well, they've been saying "people don't want single player games anymore"for as long as memory serves.
Honestly I've wished for some kind of co-op in many single player only games, but the way EA forces it into everything is sickening.
Dante's Inferno was fun. It has a lot of flaws but the enemies were interesting (although lacking in variety) and boss battles epic. I never understood the hate the game received.
Dante’s inferno was actually amazing I feel. One of the best action games I played and gave me a god of war that wasn’t god of war and I loved the world they made and enemy designs
I just want to say thank you for these videos. I can't even imagine how much effort and time they take to make.
Visceral didn't fail. EA failed Visceral. I dearly hope someone buys the Dead Space IP from them, headhunt the original developers and get a true, proper Dead Space 4 out there to finish the series once and for all. Sadly EA is like a dragon sleeping on top of its treasure, nobody can touch despite doing fuck all with it. It's stuff like that which has made me despise the current AAA scene.
I find it hilarious that EA keeps saying that making games is expensive, yet their COs get 50-100 million bonusses......
This one hurt the realist because dead space is my favorite horror franchise ever and I was so so close to getting a small marker tattoo on my ankle lol
still not at 50k subs wtf? this is one of THE most entertaining channels I found in a long time :)
the thing with Futurecop LAPD was that it came out of the Strike series, at the end of Nuclear Strike they had a teaser for Future Strike, that game became Futurecop, the real reason Futurecop failed was cus EA didn't connect the 2 games in marketing, they expected people to just jump on and sadly with no obvious connection people were skeptical.....
Once again, great in-depth analysis nerdSlayer. Keep up the great work!
"What could of been"
Really?
Thank you for being so thorough in your analysis of these interesting topics without using your most monotonous, sleep inducing tone you could possibly take, I've heard too much of that shit, you are refreshing, man.
I'm salty because of the cliffhanger at the end of DS3. I want to know what happens next. Dead Space's story was great.
This video could be been 5 seconds long with a back screen saying EA
Shorten this to "EA wants to make money so they changed the projects direction to go Grand Theft Auto route to make more micro transactions" amazing how I just summed up half this video.
Dead Space was such a memorable Game! It Really Changed how I looked into Horror Scifi Games
Everyone hates on dead space 3 and the multiplayer but I played it through with my friend and we both had a lot of fun with it! I mean there were definitely negatives such as some of the atmosphere , but the missions where your coop partner is hallucinating was so crazy to me I want to see more games do multiplayer like that! It was such a cool idea! I just remember playing and then having my friend freak out or start punching thi Nd s that I couldn’t see and it was Earnie and jarring when he was trying to explain things to me! Awesome idea !
When EA closed Visceral games and canceled the continuation of Dead Space 3 cliffhanger, that's when I knew Battlefield was the next.
Dead Space 1 and 2 was great, Dante's Inferno, The Simpsons Game, Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel... all great games, imo. Such a shame they went under. :(
i am SO glad you got footage of future cop Lapd its highly overlooked
The protests in the article you showed were another example of Visceral's unorthodox marketing. There was a link at the top of the article.
Thanks for the history lesson. WoW. I superficially recognized names like Amy Hennig and Jade Raymond but had no idea that they had parts in this story.
great video...great video...great video......"COULD OF BEEN" ....... WUT??
is there a full version of 6:42 - 6:56?
18:42
COULD HAVE, NOT COULD OF, GODDAMN IT
hey man I love your videos, I was so let down because i got laid off from the game company i work for but I just got hired back again!!!! (I am a contractor)
watching your videos cheered me up ( Richard Garriot interview was awesome) and then I got a call from my lead!!! to go back to work
I was so sad when this was announced. I loved Dante's Inferno and the Dead Space series.
Visceral looks like another case of no self-control. Unlike Telltale Games who grew too quickly, Visceral and EA had trouble budgeting their time, talent, and money. Unrealistic expectations were also involved as well.
COULD HAVE COULD HAVE COULD HAVE
I hope you guys enjoy this video, it's certainly Star Wars themed...but no where near as Star Wars themed as the next DOAG...most if not all of you can guess what it is going to be...I'll give you a hint... 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. You guys can vote for what my next Star Wars game to play on Stream is, here is the poll. www.strawpoll.me/14578201/r . It will be streamed on Twitch.tv/nerdslayerrr
is it star wars battlefront by pandemic? 😭 im still butthurt and sad asf about that.. fuck EA... they ruin everything they touch
Good on you for stickying this. Did an ctlr+f to make sure someone else didn't say it... Really enjoy your content! With how big of an audience EA wanted, wouldn't it have been better for a smaller studio to do Deadspace? Or smaller marketing? 1 and 2 were fabulous. 3... was only good for co-op. Finding a good cop-op game is so hard these days. I want me and my friend to play the same game that we could solo. No extra side-missions, just full story co-op. That's why we love the Saints Row games. So for Deadspace 3, I liked the co-op, but besides the opening and the butt hole in the sky ending, I don't remember a thing. I knew micro-transactions were worthless, but on a whole, Dead space 3 leaves the impression on me of "good co-op game" and that's it. I din't remember anything else that happened.
I'm also replaying KOTO2, so I'm going to have to check out your videos on that again. Take care and than you for putting these videos out, I always check them out as soon as I notice them.
didn't mean to nag you about the "could of" hehehe
If I can request, please, pronounce it Mel-burn, not Mel-born. I cringed every time you emphasised the end of the word instead of the start.
After the death of a game Star Wars video that you're doing can you please do Spiral Knights or defiance
"Could of been" ouch, my eyes and ears hurt.
Visceral's death: Drawn and quartered while the executive turning the crank yells at it for not making anything that sells enough copies 'while' its limbs are slowly torn off.
The only reason the Rick Roll meme has survived so long is that it's a good song.
Small critique: that mob outside E3 that called EA the anti-Christ was fake and paid off by EA and Visceral’s marketing team
press f to pay respect
Dude futur cop LAPD was amazing ! I played it all the time with my cousin ! It was like a tower defense where you played a meca and you had to built a lot of tanks and planes to capture the enemy base
Is Ragtag what ultimately become Jedi: Fallen Order? Because that game slaps.
Ragtag became Jedi : Fallen Order👌I know because I've worked at EA in the past.
18:41 "What *could of* been"
*kills myself*
*revives* You're our tank, buddy. Support can't fight this war alone! Even if we can spell better...
nerdSlayer it’s okay buddy, great video. Just don’t let it happen again.
Dead space is amazing and I love dead space 2 it’s so awesome and badass
Didn't know they were responsible for Future Cop, that was one of my first video games I owned period! Dead Space was one of the first games I ended up owning on my PS3.
One thing you missed the Protesters at the E3 conference for Dantes Inferno were found to be plants and not real protesters.
There were parts i disagree about dead space 3, namely the coop. Coop isnt inherently detrimental to the horror genre, while this video is 3 years old, we can look to Phas with its recent success. In DS3, one of my favorite moments is when you go into one of the side areas, as you explore it, carter is seeing a birthday party as he is going through the early stages of the marker dementia. Meanwhile isaac is seeing whats really there, which is the hellscape of an abandoned area. It really adds this WTF moment when the person you're playing with is seeing somethinh very different from you. Its one of the few good moments in the game, and a coop horror game does help people get into the genre as it is easier for some people to have that extra bit of support in a game they'd otherwise really enjoy. I think if EA could just have a little trust in its developers and studios, they might be able to put out a good game. DS3 could of been amazing even with coop, but the publisher micromanagement killed any chance it had.
The protesters of Dantes Inferno were also a marketing stunt.
This death hurts the most
Dead space games were my favourite
and is why I’ll never buy an ea game and always hate them
“Thank you EA for creating such wonderful games as Dead Space” - Rami Ismail
Having watched Josh Strife Hayes's review for Future Cop LAPD I'd add "established the foundation of the MOBA genre" as one of their achievements.
I think if hardline was a new ip or something that wasn't battlefield it may have been received better
Love your videos been watching them all in a row
Dead Space series never die,i play Dead Space 1 right now...again
I still can't get over the fact that we will never get the conclusion to what happened to Isaac and over all closure for the series, it just ended up on shitmountains cliffhanger
the real reason dead space died: because ea threw over half the budget into marketing instead of the game...
i just rewatched this and its really sad,I think this was the type of studio that would of been great as a 2nd Party xbox dev or PS dev, Creating Single player content that does well on consoles.Always sad to see studios destroyed by corporate meddling
San Mah TAY Oh, not San Mattie-o
Ragtag sounds like it could have been a GTA5 set in the Star Wars universe. Could have been great for EA if they would have left things alone.
Ahem, Mel-Burn, not Mel-Born. Please and thank you. By the way great video.
That's the way it's pronounced in America. Just like y'all say alu min nee um instead of aluminum
Its because of EA that we will NEVER see another decent singleplayer Star Wars game
Comments that didn't age well
This series has gotten a lot better, good job!
gum ball I think they "could of been" better :3
Sedatus why would you do this
Future Cop LAPD was not generic at all. Mecha, Transformations, great selection of weapons, and an actual competitive multiplayer (local or internet), together with AI bot teammates makes it a timeless classic. Im still waiting for the remake.
san ma-TAY-o, not san matty-o
Ea shuts down game studio responsible for one of the best horror games ever.... then later on announces remake of one of the best horror games ever.... 🤔
Future Cop two player mode was so fricken fun! Oh, the good old days.
A grand Theft millennium falcon would have been worth a try 10 or 15 years ago. Now the business expectations of a star wars game will force creations to lean on the familiar. "What no wookies?" "Yeah it's a hut but it's not jabba. How are players supposed to know who it is?" And in the end in an attempt to please everybody it will please no one. It seems like from now on it will be almost impossible for a big time studio to release a "groundbreaking" game. This will be limited to smaller studios who take the right chances and will be rewarded with being bought out by the larger safer studios who will run it into the ground and move on to the next big thing.
I'd still love to see you do Blacklight: Retribution in this series
It sounds like ea realised amy was turning a Star Wars game into a Space Raiders game.