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The Verge: “Skull Island: Rise of Kong” only had 1 year of development time and 2-20 devs

Draugoth

Gold Member
Screen_Shot_2023_10_20_at_11.08.06_AM.png


The critically panned Skull Island: Rise of Kong, which released this week, was only given a year of development time. The games publisher, GameMill Entertainment, is notorious for contracting indie developers to work on licensed games and giving them a short timeline for development. In the case of Skull Island, IguanaBee (the developers of the game) started work on the game in June 2022 and were aiming to finish it by June 2, 2023. There would be anywhere from 2-20 people working on the game at any given time. That’s because the inadequate funding provided by GameMill made retaining devs difficult.
 
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64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
Shu Takumi with limited budget and small team made iconic game like..
MV5BMjRhNmM4ZmYtZjk4MC00NGQ1LTk1M2ItMzY1OThjOTI1MDBkXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTA0MTM5NjI2._V1_.jpg


Good devs can make great games even on limited budget.
to be fair phoenix wright isn't exactly the most ambitious game. Doesn't make it bad but the vice city comparisons earlier made more sense. This game was clearly trying to be an action adventure of some sort
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
to be fair phoenix wright isn't exactly the most ambitious game. Doesn't make it bad but the vice city comparisons earlier made more sense. This game was clearly trying to be an action adventure of some sort
For its time it actually was, especially how made the limited animation look good.

 

justiceiro

Marlboro: Other M
They described it as a vicious cycle. Though the studio wants to make original games, it needs money to fund those projects. But the only money coming in is from publishers like GameMill to make licensed games. Then, with predominantly licensed games in its portfolio, the studios are only approached by publishers who want to make even more licensed games.
So, they basically are trying to get money for games they actually want to make using this to money grab from less than smart consumers?

Look, I can even get why you would do that, but saying that your are proud of that is kinda pathetic.
 
long ago I was in charge for developing a well know game worldwide , with multiple release in many consoles.

The team was basically me and some time one or two more guys for a week (programmers).

I program and graphic. So this huge aaa company paid the company I worked to finish the game . One day my manager forgot to turn his pc off for lunch break and I saw the contract , 4 engineers (each salary 9.800 us monthly etc). Well, I was paid less than 3.000 us 😂 .

I quit after that, now I work at that aaa company 🫡

Pretty sure similar thing happened here, some one just took a bunch of money.
 
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Shut0wen

Banned
Tbf i cant really blame gamemill and other publishers that do this, the devs underestimated the sheer scope of the game they were making and it shows but at the end end of the day the devs accepted it, should have made some shitty 2d pixel game
 

PSYGN

Member
The bigger question is why this game and the Gollum came went as far as they did. Who buys this? Is there some movie coming out?
 

Doomtrain

Member
The Vice City comparison is a bad one. Vice City recycled the engine, tons of assets, AI behaviors, etc. from GTA 3. On top of that, it had a much larger team, and backing and resources from Rockstar, a massive studio.

One year to make a game totally from scratch with a small, fluctuating team (which means key members with knowledge of the project were likely leaving partway through) is nothing. Blame on this one goes to management, not the individual devs.
 
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yamaci17

Member
The bigger question is why this game and the Gollum came went as far as they did. Who buys this? Is there some movie coming out?
no idea but i miss the times when movie games were at least decent platformers / adventure games

like shrek madagascar etc.

shuffleboard in madagascar has more care put into it



 

kiphalfton

Member
long ago I was in charge for developing a well know game worldwide , with multiple release in many consoles.

The team was basically me and some time one or two more guys for a week (programmers).

I program and graphic. So this huge aaa company paid the company I worked to finish the game . One day my manager forgot to turn his pc off for lunch break and I saw the contract , 4 engineers (each salary 9.800 us monthly etc). Well, I was paid less than 3.000 us 😂 .

I quit after that, now I work at that aaa company 🫡

Pretty sure similar thing happened here, some one just took a bunch of money.

Billable rate is different than pay rate though...
 

CamHostage

Member
Tbf i cant really blame gamemill and other publishers that do this, the devs underestimated the sheer scope of the game they were making and it shows but at the end end of the day the devs accepted it, should have made some shitty 2d pixel game

Eh, more often than not, you should blame the publishers, particularly if they have a long line of these same instant-garbage releases. There are cases where a developer over-promises on a bid or gets in over its head or just cannot deliver, so somebody in publishing probably has a different side of these types of stories, but the publisher sets the rates, sets the calendar, finds the developers in whatever corner of the world they are in, tosses them the brand and tells them the terms they must work under. And it's not like a Kong game needed to be rushed out for October, the publisher has the power to assess the product and assign more time or budget.

A developer who takes those kinds of jobs may look foolish for biting on a bad lead, but look around, who else is paying developers to make games these days? The busy days of "second party" development and franchise-based games is mostly over outside of mobile. Many publishers used to have an offshoot label (sometimes a budget line, like Activision Value or 2K's Global Star Software,) but those are mostly gone and publishers have greatly curtailed the number of games they actually publish. And the alternative is to go it alone as an inde, which this developer IguanaBee had done in the past (they even did a game published by Sony for Vita back in the day,) but that's an incredibly fraught field to play in (especially, oddly, for working studios with active payrolls and a business model which used to work before publishing contracts dried up) and it could all end there very easily. A guaranteed paycheck may sometimes be your only choice if you don't want to close the doors, even though the project may stink so bad that it'll lead to closure anyway.

This is a bad sign for IguanaBee if they took this job out of desperation (and even though GameMill has a shovelware rep, them shitting this out makes one wonder if they're on a precipice as well,) and not many people will cry if this kills either one. However, both had better products in the past, even with each other. Their previous title was the 2020 GI Joe Operation Blackout PvP shooter, which isn't good either but is clearly more ambitious and accomplished.

 
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