I’d also say that the PS Vita would make a good topic to discuss why that handheld did very poorly outside Japan.
I know why it was most successful in Japan though. Because Japan is very skewed towards handhelds and mobile devices for gaming as not only Japanese homes really small and have only one TV, but also people in Japan are out of the house more often so portable devices work better than consoles or PC.
AAAAUUUUGGGHHHH!!!!A game that I unironically like that is still notoriously flawed and had Troubled Production? Crash Twinsanity comes to mind, though that game does have more than me who are fond of it despite how rough it is in some parts.
My musician pageHe has a few times done Wha Happuns on cancelled games, which is what Metroid Dread was assumed to be for years. Of course even then it wouldn't have made good Wha Happun material because of the lack of information. Honestly there still isn't that much info about the earlier versions, but now we at least know what the original concept was and why it was shelved the first time.
Dread is weird, because it certainly feels like we know a lot. It first entered development for the DS around late 2004/early 2005, there may have been a prototype shown behind closed doors in 2008, got scrapped twice, and was then shelved until 2018, with MercurySteam reviving it with the core gameplay and story ideas mostly intact.
But the actual specifics of any of that early stuff that would make a good Wha Happun? Nothing at the moment. You could make a good video about the history of leaks and rumours surrounding it, though. (Found this one
last night, and its super through.)
Edited by RacattackForce on Jul 16th 2021 at 3:27:26 PM
This week's episode is brought to you by a Kickstarter for a documentary on the First-Person Shooter genre of video games- and hey, Matt's gonna be in it! If you're interested check the link out in the description, if you want a kickass montage watch the first few minutes of this episode, and if not skip to around the 3:45 mark.
Anyways, Matt takes a shot at Prey 2! An ambitious sequel to a beloved, critically-acclaimed, and wholly unique shooter where everything seemed to be going right for a while... until eventually it was cancelled. Where did it go wrong?
Bethesda, of course!
Initially they took a (seemingly) benign interest in Human Head Studios and footed some of the bills for Prey 2, but after a while tried to stage a hostile takeover of that studio. They did so by using clauses in their contract to strongarm Human Head into working with them- Prey 2 was the only game they were contractually allowed to develop at that point, so the options were pretty much either accept Bethesda's takeover or refuse it and be bled dry with no other ways to fund themselves. (They tried to get around it by working as support on titles like Bioshock Infinite, but those jobs didn't make too much money.) Thus several years went on without any updates from the once-hyped Prey 2, causing rumors to fly about it being cancelled or having its development handed off to Arkane Studios, which was a subsidiary of Bethesda at that point. Bethesda's Pete Hines denied these rumors.
Then emails from within Arkane leaked showing they were indeed handling a new Prey game and had scrapped pretty much everything Human Head did. Arkane's not really at fault here, mind- this was all upper company politics from Bethesda proper.
(And also notably, reporting on these email leaks is the entire reason why gaming news site Kotaku is now blacklisted by Bethesda. Such is life.)
Anyways, those years of silence from Human Head turned out to be them stalling out until their contract with Bethesda expired. They lost the Prey IP in the process, but at least managed to retain their freedom... for a time. The studio never quite found success after that, eventually filing for bankruptcy in 2019. Employees from Human Head would, ironically enough, then form a new studio under Bethesda's wing.
🏳️⚧️she/her | Vio Rhyse Alberia![]()
Nowadays it's more of a hot potato that keeps getting tossed around between AAA game publishers.
Heck, CDPR held it too given their really shady Cyberpunk 2077 bullshit. Not to mention pulling Devotion off of GOG, proving they'll cave to CCP pressure like a lot of corporations.
What makes this notable is that Bethesda's rep was still decent when they pulled this crap. In other words, they were always kind of shit even before Fallout 76 revealed that the Emperor was nude.
Edited by M84 on Jul 20th 2021 at 12:36:33 AM
Disgusted, but not surprisedAnd the moral of this story? If a big game studio offers to help your smaller company, even if it's just a small amount of money, DON'T TAKE IT!
I remember people actually being glad that Bethesda was bought out by Microsoft since they might be able to reign in some of their bad tendencies, whether they can (or will) remains to be seen.
It also varies depending on how you define "worst". Is one talking about the quality of their games, their treatment of customers, their treatment of employees, their treatment of smaller studios, their treatment of fan content...
For example, I'd say Blizzard currently has the "honor" of being the worst in terms of how it treats female employees.
Edited by M84 on Jul 23rd 2021 at 12:22:52 AM
Disgusted, but not surprisedYeah like M84 said, it's like all these companies are scrambling and stumbling over themselves for the title of the worst of the lot. Depends on the day and what bits of news and revelations are out there on the public's minds.
Self-serious autistic trans gal who loves rock/metal and animation with all her heart. (she/her)Relevant to Wha Happun, one of the main ways to define a game publisher as the "worst" is by how often they kill games, just like how Bethesda killed Prey 2.
This is one of the reasons EA is garbage (among many) — their predatory business practices lead to the deaths of many a game IP, usually followed by resurrecting them as some shambling zombie version of their former glory.
Edited by M84 on Jul 23rd 2021 at 12:49:40 AM
Disgusted, but not surprised

I mentioned it before, but my top pick for an episode is the
ColecoChameleon. It was pitched as a "retro-style video game console" and even got funding and branding from Coleco, but all the prototypes showed at conventions turned out to be reshelled SNES boards. The way the project heads defended those sorts of Blatant Lies against a community of retro game enthusiasts calling foul was quite the spectacle to follow.I also wouldn't mind seeing FusionFall at some point, given I grew up with it. From a bizarre concept (anime-style Cartoon Network MMO about an alien invasion from a Genius Loci) to the game outliving its original company's bankruptcy before shutting down a few years later... I feel like there's a lot to talk about there.
🏳️⚧️she/her | Vio Rhyse Alberia