WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.120 As much as we love video games, it's easy to end up feeling disappointed when developers 00:00:05.120 --> 00:00:10.880 let us down in some ways, and with the Cyberpunk 2077 fiasco fresh in everyone's mind, let's 00:00:10.880 --> 00:00:16.080 have a look back at some other times when game devs infamously got egg on their faces. 00:00:17.040 --> 00:00:22.000 Starting out, Duke Nukem Forever. If you think Cyberpunk had an absurdly long development 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:28.560 cycle, Duke Nukem Forever took 15 years, or practically forever, to get to the market. 00:00:29.120 --> 00:00:34.000 So what the heck happened there? Although the original plan was to get the game out in mid-1998, 00:00:34.000 --> 00:00:38.000 about a year after development started, it quickly started running into delays. 00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:42.400 The developer, 3D Realms, licensed the Quake 2 engine, because the 00:00:42.400 --> 00:00:48.080 build engine used for the 1996 success Duke Nukem 3D was dated by this point. 00:00:48.080 --> 00:00:51.920 But after about a year of development, they switched to the Unreal engine, 00:00:51.920 --> 00:00:56.080 since the studio was unsatisfied with the Quake engine's rendering performance, 00:00:56.080 --> 00:01:01.200 meaning a huge amount of work they did, based around the Quake engine, was nuked. 00:01:01.200 --> 00:01:05.360 But this was only the start of the drama. The lead developer, George Broussard, 00:01:05.360 --> 00:01:09.920 kept wanting to make changes to the game to make it more similar to other hot titles of the day. 00:01:09.920 --> 00:01:14.560 And to be fair, it looked like this strategy might have paid off, as people were impressed with 00:01:14.560 --> 00:01:19.600 the trailer that was shown at E3 in 2001. However, with such a small development team, 00:01:19.600 --> 00:01:25.360 progress was still slow, and Broussard continued to ask for more changes to keep up with the rest 00:01:25.360 --> 00:01:30.400 of the gaming industry, which of course just set things back further. It took so long to finish 00:01:30.400 --> 00:01:36.400 that the studio ran out of money in 2009 and laid off its staff, leading to a different developer 00:01:36.400 --> 00:01:41.280 picking up the game and finally releasing it in 2011, after some of the original dev team 00:01:41.280 --> 00:01:46.800 had worked to complete the game on their own time at home. Unfortunately, the final game was 00:01:46.800 --> 00:01:51.760 disappointing in large part because ironically, despite Broussard's efforts to keep placing 00:01:51.760 --> 00:01:56.480 modern features into the title, the game felt dated by the time it was released. 00:01:56.480 --> 00:02:00.800 Let's move on to a different sort of game that was arguably just as infamous. 00:02:00.800 --> 00:02:07.040 Sonic the Hedgehog for the PS3 and Xbox 360, or as fans typically call it, Sonic 06. 00:02:07.040 --> 00:02:12.160 By the time 2006 rolled around, Sonic's foray into the world of 3D gaming had been marked 00:02:12.160 --> 00:02:16.880 by disappointment. But Sega was hoping the technological advances built into the much 00:02:16.880 --> 00:02:23.200 ballyhooed PS3 and Xbox 360 could help turn their fortunes around. The idea was relatively simple. 00:02:23.200 --> 00:02:27.280 Put Sonic in a more realistic setting, complete with actual human beings, 00:02:27.280 --> 00:02:31.840 and use cutting-edge graphics to produce a hit. Although Sonic Team used a new game 00:02:31.840 --> 00:02:36.480 engine that did look much better than older titles thanks to the console's more powerful hardware, 00:02:36.480 --> 00:02:42.800 the studio ultimately put out a game that had a now familiar problem. It was visually pleasing, 00:02:43.440 --> 00:02:48.960 but not very fun to play. During development, Yuji Naka, head of Sonic Team and one of the key 00:02:48.960 --> 00:02:54.720 forces behind the original 2D Sonic games, left Sega altogether, reportedly unhappy with his 00:02:54.720 --> 00:03:01.040 managerial responsibilities, which suddenly left the dev team a rudderless ship. After Naka left, 00:03:01.040 --> 00:03:06.080 Sega split the dev team in two so that they could push out a separate title for the Nintendo Wii. 00:03:06.080 --> 00:03:11.040 So now, a much smaller team, without the programmer responsible for much of Sonic's 00:03:11.040 --> 00:03:15.200 greatness in the first place, had to rush out a game in time to hit store shelves by, 00:03:15.200 --> 00:03:20.320 you guessed it, the Christmas season, and the result was an unminigated disaster. 00:03:20.320 --> 00:03:24.640 There seemed to be a consensus that Sonic was just dropped into a role-playing game 00:03:24.640 --> 00:03:29.760 that didn't suit the play style gamers were used to, and the sequences that did feel more 00:03:29.760 --> 00:03:35.520 like classic Sonic games were hopelessly broken and unfairly difficult. Combined with a convoluted 00:03:35.600 --> 00:03:42.240 storyline and an incredibly uncomfortable human on hedgehog kiss, the game went down as probably 00:03:42.240 --> 00:03:47.920 the worst in Sonic's history. Oops. Let's wrap this episode up by talking about admittedly a 00:03:47.920 --> 00:03:53.920 piece of low-hanging fruit. 2017's Star Wars Battlefront 2. Like the aforementioned Sonic 06, 00:03:53.920 --> 00:03:59.200 the developers set out to make a good looking game, and that's exactly what they did. And the 00:03:59.200 --> 00:04:03.760 multiplayer was received as being actually pretty fun too. Gamers might have been able to forgive 00:04:03.760 --> 00:04:08.880 a short and disjointed single-player campaign as the focus was mostly on multiplayer, but what 00:04:08.880 --> 00:04:14.080 they couldn't forgive was the horrendous progression system that required an absolutely 00:04:14.080 --> 00:04:18.480 insane amount of gameplay in order to unlock playable characters like Luke Skywalker and 00:04:18.480 --> 00:04:24.960 Darth Vader that EA had heavily marketed. In fact, it would take 40 whole hours of grinding 00:04:24.960 --> 00:04:31.040 just to unlock one underpowered hero if you saved your credits, or over 100 times that amount to 00:04:31.040 --> 00:04:36.080 unlock everything in the game. Unsurprisingly, players were also given the option of buying 00:04:37.520 --> 00:04:43.600 loot boxes with real money in order to unlock characters and items more quickly. But EA asking 00:04:43.600 --> 00:04:48.800 players to sink large amounts of money into an already expensive game did not sit well with the 00:04:48.800 --> 00:04:53.840 community, leading to the now notorious post from an EA employee about how the system was designed 00:04:53.840 --> 00:04:59.920 to give players a sense of pride and accomplishment that became the most downvoted comment in the 00:04:59.920 --> 00:05:05.120 history of Reddit. At the time we shot this video, that record still stands without a close 00:05:05.120 --> 00:05:10.800 second at all. The situation became so egregious that it attracted mainstream attention outside 00:05:10.800 --> 00:05:15.920 of the gaming world and led to government efforts to restrict loot boxes as a form of gambling. 00:05:15.920 --> 00:05:20.000 Ultimately, EA admitted that they botched the situation, but Battlefront 2 was left for the 00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:26.400 ignominious title of possibly having the worst launch of any game of all time. But do you think 00:05:26.480 --> 00:05:30.800 there's an even worse example of developers making us mad? Let us know down in the comments if you'd 00:05:30.800 --> 00:05:34.880 like to see another episode in this series and which games we should feature. So thanks for 00:05:34.880 --> 00:05:38.080 watching guys, if you liked this video give it a like, hit subscribe, and hit us up in the comments 00:05:38.080 --> 00:05:41.440 sections with your suggestions for topics that we should cover in the future.