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Perfect Dark is Years Away - IGN (comments from Initiative devs)

Poltz

Member
At the time the trailer – created by an external CG house – was shown, it was “very obviously way far ahead of anywhere the game was at,” according to one developer who was working at The Initiative at the time. “We hadn’t even figured out any of our core game mechanics. We didn’t even really know what type of game we were making.”

Among even more former employees we spoke to was a sense that the people in charge were unable to communicate a clear vision for the game they had so enthusiastically signed up to make. Or, some said, when they did manage to communicate that vision, leadership ignored or dismissed feedback from the experienced team they had put together. These repeated struggles over creative vision resulted, sources said, in build after build being thrown out, and internal frustration growing with each new reset.

“It was not that we didn’t know what we wanted, it was that we kept making things that weren’t what we wanted,” said one The Initiative developer. “We’d do it over and over again. The…levels we had when I left weren’t the same ones we’d had three months prior, or three months prior [to that]. I don’t know why people just kept hitting the reset button. That was definitely contributing to that feeling that we weren’t making any progress. People kept starting over.”

Which is how in 2022, nearly four years after the studio was formed, Perfect Dark was essentially started over from scratch in Unreal 5. And while the two studios did broadly seem to get along better than in the previous partnership, after a year of high attrition at The Initiative, it was hardly in a state to lead development on a massive project. Crystal Dynamics, well-staffed, began to step into missing leadership roles and take more and more ownership of the project. This once again resulted in disagreements and infighting in departments that had established leaders on The Initiative side.



TLDR -

Certain Affinity were planned to be the co dev before Crystal Dynamics.
The CG trailer was shown before any concept of the game was greed.
Drew Murray going back to Insomniac was seen as the first major exit.
Moving to Unreal 5 added more workload for Crystal Dynamics.
Xbox is "remarkably" hands off with the project.
Game still in pre production.
 
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Gudji

Member
Adam Schiff GIF by GIPHY News
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Absolutely insane. this studio was formed in 2018, right? WTF have they been doing for the last 5 years?

And then they say dont call devs lazy or untalented. this is pathetic.

Phil needs to hire some actual producer and a person who actually does his job and oversees these studios. Devs cant be left unchecked. They dont know everything. its why Hollywood has producers oversee even the best directors to ensure movies are made in 2-3 years.
 

Poltz

Member
Absolutely insane. this studio was formed in 2018, right? WTF have they been doing for the last 5 years?

And then they say dont call devs lazy or untalented. this is pathetic.

Phil needs to hire some actual producer and a person who actually does his job and oversees these studios. Devs cant be left unchecked. They dont know everything. its why Hollywood has producers oversee even the best directors to ensure movies are made in 2-3 years.
They started the game from scratch in in Unreal 5 in 2022.
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
Absolutely insane. this studio was formed in 2018, right? WTF have they been doing for the last 5 years?

And then they say dont call devs lazy or untalented. this is pathetic.

Phil needs to hire some actual producer and a person who actually does his job and oversees these studios. Devs cant be left unchecked. They dont know everything. its why Hollywood has producers oversee even the best directors to ensure movies are made in 2-3 years.
Alejandro Jodorowsky Fun GIF by Endless Poetry
 

Ozriel

M$FT
This is why I don’t understand people celebrating MS buying all these developers. Most of them are worse off and will close within a decade…

They bought up The Initiative?

Microsoft probably asked them to provide a trailer, no matter how early in development, just to have something to show and keep people excited.

That’s pretty much how many games are announced.
 
Taking a hands-off approach with all these new studios has obviously not been working out for the Xbox team. I believe a hands-off system only works when the team in question is very tight-nit and has shipped multiple high-quality games under a competent studio leader, similar to Bethesda and Todd Howard. I think Microsoft and Phil Spencer thought getting a handful of proven industry veterans working together and letting them do their thing would be conductive to creating a great new game, but as we know from people like Drew Murray leaving so quickly, not all of these people were really committed to the project. For a new group like the Initiative, sometimes a more forceful hand is needed to at least get the ball rolling.
 

Nydius

Member
Would anyone be surprised if we heard the same story about Indiana Jones? That’s another game that feels like it was revealed WAY too early.

If they’re able to get Avowed, Hellblade 2 and Fable out in 2024, they’ll be okay-ish. But after that, 2025 looks like another waiting year. Wait for Perfect Dark. Wait for Indiana Jones. Wait for Gears 6. Wait for Forza Horizon 6. Wait for Elder Scrolls 6.
 
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Hugare

Member
Man, imagine being a developer at Initiative and not shipping a game for 5 years of your life.

Some work was probably done, but not shipping is the same as nothing for your résumé. Soulcrushing.

Game development aint easy, but the incompetence at display here is something else. Microsoft is investing hundreds of millions in these games, so they should be more aware about whats happening.
 

RIPN2022

Member
This has got to be a joke right? They announced this right around the start of this gen. By the rate they are going it could release towards the end of it, or at the very least be a launch title for the next Xbox platform.
 

Sethbacca

Member
I thought they had pretty much said this publicly already (if not in this exact wording): Microsoft doesn't believe in managing studios and IP, they believe in acquisitions.
While I understand what you're saying, the fact that they still haven't taken an active hand in managing the studios at this point is itself a form of mismanagement. There's clearly a massive disconnect occurring and it's obvious it's a failure of leadership to anyone who's worked in corporations for any period of time.
 
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They started the game from scratch in in Unreal 5 in 2022.
they restarted the game in 2022. Small difference but pretty significant. Not the same thing but we got GOW in 2018 and Ragnarok in 2023. But Perfect Dark is far from completion. Not judging, but the fact is that creating a new studio is hard. I find it a little weird, but this article hyped me a little about Perfect Dark. The ambition presented in the first part of it described a game that I would like to play. I didn't care about it before. But I do now. The thing is, making a game is hard. Doing it at the level of excellence that can be compared with the best in the industry(Sony, Nintendo,Rockstar...) is even harder. It is clear that Perfect Dark had been revealed way too soon.

I do not think that we can talk about mismanagement in this case. But to explain it better I will try to compare it with Hideo Kojima "new" studio Kojima productions. At a first glance it would be easy to say that just because Kojima created Death Stranding in just 4 years, then Perfect Dark should have done the same, right? But the core team that made the game was there for a long time at Konami. And the studio was created by Konami in April. It got independent in December with Kojima, and got to create Death Stranding with all the help that Sony could give him. Thge most important was that they made the choice to make a game fast, not to try for the moon immediatly. They did not create their own game engine or changed it midway, but took one offered by Sony. They did not iterate a lot, but got a good enough idea and pushed from it. In comparison the ambition of Perfect Dark is to be a blockbuster, a AAAA game, and that is not easy to make. In that regard, we can't complain that Microsoft does not have GOTY, and when they try to create one/ create a studio that want to make a game that can be GOTY, complain that it takes time. As a Sony fan, I have been accoustumed after years of the Cerny method being used in most of their studios as having games with a clear formula, for all the good and bad that it gives them. Doing it differently means loosing time, and that is normal. We can laugh all we want about Microsoft PR being self destructive, but at least they are trying. They really should wait to have a game with solid foundations before showing it off, but I hope that they learned their lesson. And that Perfect Dark is good when it launch.
 

nowhat

Member
While I understand what you're saying
I think you don't - what I meant is that they keep throwing $$$ at acquiring studios and publishers, and then don't manage them at all. Which is a complete failure. Like, I was being sarcastic.
 

Sethbacca

Member
I think you don't - what I meant is that they keep throwing $$$ at acquiring studios and publishers, and then don't manage them at all. Which is a complete failure. Like, I was being sarcastic.
Ahh then you're right, I totally misread that :D My b.
 

tmlDan

Member
they restarted the game in 2022. Small difference but pretty significant. Not the same thing but we got GOW in 2018 and Ragnarok in 2023. But Perfect Dark is far from completion. Not judging, but the fact is that creating a new studio is hard. I find it a little weird, but this article hyped me a little about Perfect Dark. The ambition presented in the first part of it described a game that I would like to play. I didn't care about it before. But I do now. The thing is, making a game is hard. Doing it at the level of excellence that can be compared with the best in the industry(Sony, Nintendo,Rockstar...) is even harder. It is clear that Perfect Dark had been revealed way too soon.

I do not think that we can talk about mismanagement in this case. But to explain it better I will try to compare it with Hideo Kojima "new" studio Kojima productions. At a first glance it would be easy to say that just because Kojima created Death Stranding in just 4 years, then Perfect Dark should have done the same, right? But the core team that made the game was there for a long time at Konami. And the studio was created by Konami in April. It got independent in December with Kojima, and got to create Death Stranding with all the help that Sony could give him. Thge most important was that they made the choice to make a game fast, not to try for the moon immediatly. They did not create their own game engine or changed it midway, but took one offered by Sony. They did not iterate a lot, but got a good enough idea and pushed from it. In comparison the ambition of Perfect Dark is to be a blockbuster, a AAAA game, and that is not easy to make. In that regard, we can't complain that Microsoft does not have GOTY, and when they try to create one/ create a studio that want to make a game that can be GOTY, complain that it takes time. As a Sony fan, I have been accoustumed after years of the Cerny method being used in most of their studios as having games with a clear formula, for all the good and bad that it gives them. Doing it differently means loosing time, and that is normal. We can laugh all we want about Microsoft PR being self destructive, but at least they are trying. They really should wait to have a game with solid foundations before showing it off, but I hope that they learned their lesson. And that Perfect Dark is good when it launch.
They hyped Redfall and Halo like a AAAA game, so maybe we shouldn't trust anything they say until they prove it
 
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