The Marketing Campaign That Destroyed A Franchise
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
- I don't think Dead Cells is a franchise but it makes the title sound cooler
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so this is like the opposite of terraria where the devs keep saying its the last update but then big new update.
Or "it's just gonna be a small update" but then it ain't so small.
Terraria's been dropping new final updates for the last 4 years now lmaoo
@@Willified more than that. 1.3.5 was meant to be final too, and I even think the ones before as well. At one point in time mechs were meant to be the last boss and wings were a postgame item, isn't that crazy
Bro, I'm pretty sure 1.0 was originally gonna be the final version.
@@caseyclement9548 The first "final update" was 1.1.
"There's a tendency among the press to attribute the creation of a game to a single person," says Warren Spector, creator of Thief and Deus Ex.
"Fate is not without a sense of irony"
_but many mortal men are_
because his surname is specter
- Hbomber "Harris" "Harry" "Brewis" guy
Yeah you really should only attribute that kind of credit to auteurs like Kojima or Sam Lake because the game would literally not be how it is without then. Even then, it takes a whole team to make their visions a thing.
No, it was made by Ion Storm, John Romero's de studio!
Devolver Digital has a new game called "Tenjitsu" which has it's marketing as "By the Designer of Dead Cells"
This trailer actually came out after I recorded this video which is why it doesn't get a mention, but yeah I noticed that (it's by Sebastian Bernard, who I mentioned in the video. Funny how that all works out haha)
You said the same thing twice
Tenjutzu is legit. it was made by Sabastian Bernard for a game jam and now he's developing it into a full game
Imo, that one is legit. It's made by the original designer (Sebastian Bernard, mentioned above) of dead cells who left to spin up his own thing. I played his other game nuclear blaze (also marketed similarly) and it was decent enough.
If they wanted to prop up Windblown, I'm fairly certain that "introducing it" in some way into Dead Cells would have been just about perfect...
And honestly, yeah, I feel like the split decision-making and the very "distant" relation between the current team of MotionTwin and the one that made Dead Cells makes me think they probably grew jealous and greedy of their previous project's success and decided to cannibalize it to try to prop up their own.
Sadly, that to me indicates Windblown has good chances to end up a fairly "meh" experience, for that wouldn't have been the actions of a confident company...
Really good video! We definitely have to be more aware of the fact that employees in a studio change over time. Also, I noticed a drastic leap in editing quality on this one! I can't believe how much effort you put into the animation and effects for this video. Keep doing good work!
I decided to post a video a month from now on since it gets a little hectic during school. That means a little extra time for edits and extra time to take a break and come back with fresh eyes. I think both those things are gonna lead to better final products moving forward, glad people liked the changes in this one
@@AsadAnjum Studying System and Plant Mechanic. School is a bitch.
The best analogy I heard for this is a football team. They wear the same shirts, but they are not the same team
Great video! This reminds me a lot of the whole Back 4 Blood/Turtle Rock situation with Left 4 Dead and Valve, and how to actually account for the effort that goes into making a video game (or anything collaborative for that matter), on an individual level and a studio/developer/publisher level, too.
I feel like here linguistically and marketing wise we could have easily differentiated the "creators" of Dead Cells as Motion Twin and the "developers" (or co-developers if MT wanted to be petty) as Evil Empire. But everything got royally messed up, seemingly by something so dumb as ego, making Motion Twin lose a lot of the good favor it built up among players.
Windblown looks cool, but it always feels wrong to support crappy companies. BUT, but... it also feels bad to not support talented individual artists and designers who aren't even complicit in or aware of stupid marketing choices or bad blood between the business people.
It all just kinda sucks now unless you don't think about it too much.
To be honest, I think it's not fair to label Motion Twin as a crappy company for this (although I recognise you weren't necessarily saying that).
Due to the amount of work and love put into most games by many people, and the fact that we are not privvy to the inner workings of issues like this, I believe it's only fair/necessary to boycott a game you may potentially like if they have done something unforgivable, like covering up some serious allegations against it's members or not paying for artist's work etc.
"names hold a lot of power, but you should never ler a company fool you into thinking that name is interchangeable with personell, identity or quality"
The homeworld series would greatly agree with you
i miss when good successful games got sequels and support
I much prefer it when developers move on to new projects in order to innovate. Many sequels struggle to capture what made the original special anyway.
@@HomingAsatoMass A sequel's best for a game that still has a lot of potential but just needs to iron out some issues. Monster Hunter is a great example, as the first game, while really, REALLY rough, has such a solid formula that just needed to be refined, and each game has refined it more and more (with the potential exception of Sunbreak, as I feel like it got a little lost in the sauce).
That "developer's dad worked on Dead Cells and his mom was Hispanic" line really got me! 😆
The Theseus' ship paradox is interesting though. From what I've heard, every cell in our body is replaced within a 7 year timeframe, does that make us a different person? I'd argue no, because there's a contiguity of consciousness that defines a large portion of who we are. Even physically, as new cells are created, they become part of our body, so there is a rolling contiguity of physicality even if none of the cells have existed as long as the body has. It's a little different with inanimate objects like a ship, or organizations like game developers.
That said, the cells in a body thing has some parallels with game development. If a new developer joins a company, they're usually chosen at least in part because they're considered a good "fit" for the company (or of similar creative "DNA" so to speak). Also they will often learn many of the skills and philosophies that shaped that studio's games. In some sense, you could argue that given sufficient time, they could be considered to have further adopted the "DNA" of that developer.
That said, the reality is that some developers are more responsible for aspects of a game than others, and some skills are more transferrable than others. I'm sure you could identify franchises that continued with the same company after pivotal developers had left, with a notable decline in some aspect of latter games (quality, vision, art direction, game feel, etc.) marking their departure.
But on the other hand, unless you're talking about a solo developer, the realization of a creative director's vision is almost entirely reliant on the talents of their team. So those seemingly monolithic figures that get their name attached to particular games, crucial as they may have been, really can't take all the credit. Nor can they reliably assert they'll be able to capture lighting a subsequent time on a new project with a different team.
At the end of the day, it can go either way (or both ways at the same time); so the only way to assess how things have shaken down is by checking out the new games/updates that developers make to try to parse how much if any of the magic sauce of their previous projects is present in the new one.
Enjoyed the video as always! 👍
Interesting way of looking at it. I also agree it depends on the context. I wouldn't necessarily relate game dev to the cell example, even though I like the attempt, because frankly speaking some people are more responsible for a games creative vision and success than others, and even if you replace a bright, creative person with another bright, creative person who's a good fit eith the company, there will be some major fundamental differences no matter what. It feels less like subbing cells out 1 at a time, and more like replacing your entire brain with a similar brain that has all kinds of different memories and experiences attached to it. No way are you the same person still after that
You could honestly go pretty deep into the argument. I kinda wish I dove into it a little further actually, but I still think it's a fun thought experiment regardless. Liked hearing your perspective
@@AsadAnjum Yeah there's definitely some people on teams where swapping them out is more like a brain or heart transplant than a cell being replaced (or maybe a bowel transplant if the game they're making is SHIT lol). It's a fun thought experiment for sure.
Heh, imagine
"From the minds behind Stardew Valley"
"All but ONE developer from Stardew Valley are working on this project"
This whole situation heavily reminds me of Battlefront 2s unceremonious end to make way for Battlefield 2042
This is my first time coming across your channel and I really loved your insight and perspective while keeping track of all the facts too. I noticed Evil Empire being attached to Dead Cells, but I had never made the connection between the development teams switching and branching off and everything. The game definitely had a good run and it's still fun and has a lot of surprisingly good content, so I can't be mad, but it is weird the way everything just kind of stopped when it felt like it had so much momentum still
EE and MT, just hug each other and make amazing stuff, MT invented dead cells, EE made dead cells
Don't trust claims by devs about who really made what. Was burnt on Back 4 Blood, and now I'm more skeptical.
Those rhombuses behind you look like dead by daylight perk loadouts
Wow I feel like I'm on the ground floor with your subscriber count.
It's okay bro, the game is still perfect...
I'm coping so hard rn
I love dead cells, I should play it again, been a bit! Still haven't beaten the queen or gotten return to castlevania either
The idea that we got so close to ending this thing normally is what makes me sad. They very clearly had a plan with the current (maybe forever) beta.
This reminds me very much how Dungeon Defenders suddenly stopped getting FAN MADE updates when yet another remake was announced and put into early access. Officially things can be said to be one way but things like that always send a message to me akin to 'we want people to focus on this thing now, we can't have something else even remotely overshadow it'. Its always just sad. I'd hope they'd let evil empire finish their stuff first, maybe just let them make a send off update with all the stuff they had planned for the future instead of things being so abrupt. It's bizarre to me.
I think Sebastian is right.. with how much work those lads from EE put into the game, the Ship of Theseus analogy is the right one and after being absent for so long from this game, I don't know exactly how they can bring such a revelation that will change what we know so far and it feels kinda shitty that it seems like they're being snubbed at the last stretch.. For example, even if Blizzard pulled such a move back then when they used to be beloved, they would get some harsh reactions or hate their way, I think we've seen that with Diablo 3 and how trashing the original developers of Diablo 1 and 2 from Blizzard North have brought out the ire of the Blizzard fans against the new team that was handling Diablo 3.
In the end there may be some more to this and I agree with your overall sentiment at the end, that is how we should proceed about this whole thing, even though I don't see how the story could change as there doesn't seem to be that much ambiguity here, we should always stay rational, level headed, because we can always strike hard with a protest with our wallets, without attacking people with verbal offense or accusations.. That last part should always be reserved for things that are without a shadow of a doubt proven correct and the ambiguity here is mostly out of respect for how EE is taking this and have chosen to present themselves, that's at least how I see it, I wish to respect them most of all, Motion Twin could be respected for making the game initially that started it all and I'm not going to take that away from them for sure, but y'know, there's also a bit of a difference in years between then and now.
Either way, I hope for the best for Evil Empire and that is a sentence that I didn't think I would be saying today.. ^^
I didn't even realize that EE was working on Dead Cells, but I also haven't played since the first DLC. I was honestly surprised that we got Castlevania because I thought that they said they were going to work on other new projects in the same universe.
I dunno how, but I totally forgot that Motion Twin originally developed Dead Cells. So strange. Regardless I'm hoping that Dead Cells inspires Konami to pull their heads from their backsides and make a new Castlevania.
Discord links (including the one on your video from two weeks ago) are all invalid.
@Peace_And_Love42 might be a browser problem, the links should still be valid and I've had users join recently (the links were made like a year ago)
can anyone explain what "supporting a game" actually means? i mean the game's finished, it's done, it'a a good game, anyone can play it from now up until the heat death of the universe, what more do people want? what's the point of constant updates if the the product is already good?
Fr finally a good opinion on this
@@Hi45999 i'm genuinely asking what i'm missing here, as i hail from a distant, pre-internet age, when "supporting a game" wasn't a thing and developers were releasing finished products
@@dextro808 oh
@@dextro808 I think it's a grey area between a live service game and a classic game. It's cost effective to continually develop a single game over a span of in this case 7 years than to develop say a sequel or two sequels. I think that's the major reason why we don't get sequels as often
@@karthikeyanv661 ok but what's live servicey about Dead Cells?
MT gave birth to Dead Cells and EE raised it to be what it is now. Its just that monmy and daddy are having a fight😅
Great video, young man. I'm going to give you a subscribe. Keep doing what you're doing!
If back 4 blood can market itself as ‘by the creators of left 4 dead’ then motion twin can certainly market themselves as the creators of dead cells
As someone who has played dead cells sense RotG, 100% the game and watched the community, this hurts, because dead cells isn't complete I still find a shit ton of bugs, console and mobile are a few updates behind and the public beta for "the end is near" isn't completable (a 3rd of the heads can't be gotten). Like I feel abandoned when it comes to this game
Also on a side note evil empire was censored in the credits of the first episode of dead cells immortals, adding more fuel to the idea that MT and EE have bad blood
Idk I think dead cells has already gotten enough content and wind blown deserves a chance. Plus it’s their property, motion twin can do whatever they want
it's ironic Bethesda is shown during the talk about turn over when Bethesda has the lowest turn over in the entire industry.
I also read that a French article or more reported on Evil Empire having some workplace discrimination and employee mistreatment problems...I'm kind of hesitant to sympathize with either group now
Anyone who has a wealth of experience playing dead cells would know that the game is far from finished from a technical standpoint. Something is fishy about this whole situation.
That thumbnail is CRISP
Really? This is the drama?
Most development teams go through some membership shakeup between games, due to people just dropping out and moving on to other projects or (if you're from the AAA space) most of your workers just being contractors whose contracts expire as soon as the game is finished so the billion dollar company can save on labor expenses. Creative leads mostly stay the same, but that's mostly marketing to keep them on and the people under them change massively over time. Most commonly this is seen with MMOs, where leads and teams are cycled every few years just to avoid burnout and give other people a chance. More than likely your favorite game franchises, even in their heydays, have had their dev teams Ship of Theseus-ed throughout their entire lifespans.
If you have a modicum of what the game dev environment is like, you should be more pissed that the industry encourages such massive turnover rates, making sticking on one team an unstable job prospect, rather than being pissed your favorite game dev team in 2024 techinally isn't the same as it was in 2018.
Pretty sure that was only the first part of the video and not the drama
Mans didn't watch even 80% of the video.
Well, a lot of games were axed because of marketing. And it's normal, if you don't have market you might as well throw your product away. If Windblown performs well they will try to supersede Dead Cells completely. But it probably won't, at least not as big, because you usually can't catch a lightning twice. In that case I can easily see more updates to Dead Cells in the future by... someone.
Random,but wasn't dead cells going to get a series adaption this summer?
The series is already out and it's an absolute piece of trash.
It's a Teen Titans Go esque type of cartoon
Games have been defined by confusing and unidentified authorship forever.
It's one of the reasons games are such a train wreck in consistency and outcomes.
I'm sure someone clever could map out the heritage of games. Actually connect the dots to see what's under the hood and what worked and why. And from who.
But so many gamers just live for the highs and crashes of hype and the wild excitement of the unknown and limitless promise of the next high. And so many companies live to buy and burn down brands and their devoted fan followers for profit. I don't think either of them want gamers to know what's real.
honestly deadcells had more game then i ever expected i dont judge anyone for discontinuing it for new games
Guess i wont be seeing deadcells pirate update based on hold the last story dlc update
Hey hey hey, 1 BC was enough for me too, no judgement
im just waiting for the last update on deadcells mobile
If this is considered drama y’all need to touch way more grass
Eh. I will never buy another Motion Twin game. Basically, if this is what they did with Dead Cells, what's to stop the same from happening with Windblown, any future MT game?
No hate to anyone who is going to buy Windblown, or future MT games, but it's gonna be a pass for me.
I watched first 8 minutes of the video and you basically say nothing about the topic. People in game companies, especially decentralised, leave after working on projects. Duh. Game marketing is scummy. Duh. You even say it yourself - a game is a game. Nobody cares for who particulary "made" Dead Cells, both teams and developers contributed enough to be considered creators, even if only thing they did was one 1 KB push request.
If you farm engagement, at least talk about something other than basic knowledge of 2-minute google research. It just looks lazy and scammy.
Edit: After watching whole video - this is basically all talks, no deeds. The main source is a biased developer who doesn't work in the studio for *four* years. If Evil Empire shutted Dead Cells because of "competitors" in Motion Twin(I kinda don't understand, are these two companies under one lead or two separate companies?), did they do that becuase Twin's directly ordered them to? I don't think so. Supporting Dead Cells, a 6 year old game, wouldn't bring financial profit, and frankly, if there's another game in the genre, as you say, "by the og creators", it will just be worthless. Indie companies constantly change plans, all their 2025 support is just plans, not concrete decisions. So I think they just scrapped their plans, and move on to the new project. Not like it's killed a studio.
The FAQ review is cringe. "Corporate talk", allegations of lying. My brother, have you read FAQs before? They all are written like that. And after reading that - yeah, that's just normal. Do you think developers in Twins knowingly made other team stop? From my perspective, after finishing dead cells they just wanted to create something better, and move on to the new game. Considering it's an indie, they probably didn't even know if they'll gonna release it and didn't tell Evils about that. A communication problem, not a decision by company to screw their partners. And that's why Evils changed their plans so hastily - because Twins didn't tell them about new game.
Why was the fact that Evil Empire also have a new game out not mentioned either? It was flashed up on screen but there was no discussion around it. Maybe they are slowing down Dead Cells to work on their new game like they said.
In summary, nothing is simple.
We should all stop following companies, and start following creatives.
And then you get a daikatana John Romero situation 💀
Did you make dead cells because you created it or did you make dead cells because you worked on its meaningful updates?
theyu didnt even bother to put the end is near update on switch which is what a play on
Dead cells cause my headeache just at looking it
They should have road Dead Cells until the wheels fell off, there were still plenty of more years they could have supported the game….Their next game will most likely bomb and all these guys will be drinking in bar somewhere muttering “What was that stupid game with the title sounds like a fart, wind blown, what were we thinking” haha “ We had a golden goose and we killed it”
Damn, that's sad!
Kinda unfortunate how often i just find games i like, that i know had went out with not a bang, but a whimper. Especially given how i find the Castlevania dlc to be awful. Especially given the sheer irresponsible treatment Dead Cells suddenly getsz which makes me very concerned about if the game will become awful to play after it.
How is the Castlevania dlc awful? It's not all great, but I wouldn't say it's all bad.
@@sharkastic2633 this dlc is totally pointless
@@sickwaffle Every dlc can be seen as pointless.
I just started playing it so I guess I got a way to go so whatever
Cool vid I started playing it again cause games suck rn
its not confusing. motion twin invented/created dead cells. period, and then passed it to evil empire to augment. EE would have nothing in their hands if they werent given the intellectual property to play with like lego. they can take full credit for being responsible for what they were responsible for, which was developing great DLC's. it sounds like buddy lost touch with the original team and there were expectations and perhaps (mis)understandings, but not legal contracts involved. often we only discover our true character and our friends and family's true character, when there is life changing money on the line. i think the issue is a bit more complex here, and almost resembles parents and step parents fighting over who a child, the dead cells IP, actually belongs to. IMO, the legitimate inventors have every right to take back whats theirs, even if their 'right' is a wrong, and wrongly done, by all. dead cells should only have been ended by natural failure, disinterest, not being cut off from support. the love for it was alive and well. any step taken to eliminate perceptions of competition, if that was what happened, is foolish. the world is vast, and there is room enough for all of us to succeed.
Dead Cells had a good run, and the developer who handled the support, Evil Empire, did a great job. I hope they give the same love to their next game, The Rogue Prince of Persia. I'm also looking forward to Windblown.
Marketers really go to college for years just to come out writing stuff that sounds like they're in The Truman Show 😭
Rogue PoP is out and has a pretty solid foundation. Hope they keep it up for a while, there's a lot of ways I could see that game improving
@@AsadAnjumis this the latest POP game where speaking of? The lost crown? That game is absolute gas.
@@bonzaibill9965 nah we talking about "The Rogue Prince of persia" it came out in may
The best motion twin rogulike to date is still Hammerfest in my heart
apparently Evil Empire were excluded from the credits of the animated dead cells show, which is absolutely absurd to me
Yeah, also never knew you followed dead cells
Pretty neat
They also aren't on the Steam Page, though I don't know for certain if they ever were tbh.
@@BandannaBreadthey are listed on the DLC steam pages
Haha that's why I'm a pirate
@@robinrunaway5468na, you’re a “pirate” because of shady morals.
did you know? the game has a build of a "final farewell" update that's been stuck in beta since before the announcement of them ending updates? You can still access it and fully completes the feature set by adding a few new routes so that players can finally take both parts of the castlevania dlc in a single run, even if they're going for late game dracula's castle instead of early game. I wish this update could be finished off and finally come to console but that's not likely at this point lol
Huh I actually didn't know about that. Yeah there's definitely some stuff that was scrapped late and left on the table which is part of what makes all of this so weird to begin with
@@AsadAnjum The original comment is just talking about "The End is Near," those routing changes are part of the update. There has been a statement issued that the update will fully release, but nobody is optimistic at this point. It's been in beta for around 8 months now.
am i going crazy or did they have a steam page and everything for the final farewell dlc because i swear i remember them announcing it and saying it will be the last major dlc
Just the other day I was wondering if they actually released that "End is Near" update. It seemed very controversial because of the curse mobs that follow you around, and all the curse weapons that seem useless. But wow, it seems like forever since I've saw any info on that, I really thought it was in the game already.
It is not a "final farewell" update. The update was made before EE got removed from development. It was in no way meant to be the final update as there still was a full year of content planned. Please edit the comment in some way, as it's currently misinformation.
As far as the theseus paradox, ive always made sure not to trust a "from the creators of" tagline since its one of the most overused taglines especially in cinema, and when they say that 9/10 times its JUST the director.
Never the screenplay writer, or dialog writers
good example of this was Back 4 Blood trailer, it had the tagline "From creators of Left 4 Dead 2" but in the official credits you can find inside the game, only 4 people out of like a hundered were from Turtlerock Studios and worked on L4D2
@nu_kercat1 Modern Bioware is another example. Barely anyone who worked there during the Golden Age of Baldur's Gate II to Dragon Age Origins still works there.
So, while the new Dragon Age game is technically developed by the same studio, it has only a handful of people that worked on the original game.
Yeah, after The Outer Worlds came out and was incredibly mediocre I feel the same way about seeing taglines like that.
@BiggestGal Funnily enough, The Outer Wilds did have a large amount of the team that worked on New Vegas. I'm not sure if the team just didn't have enough time or they simply failed to meet expectations.
Either way, it serves a different lesson. Expecting one masterpiece after another is unrealistic.
@@Pan_Z you mean Outer Worlds?
Hey there, I've been pretty involved in the Dead Cells community for several years and have been very much in the weeds of all this drama. The veteran community all hates Motion Twin now and most people I know will be boycotting Windblown. Here's a few bits of more "insider" info that you didn't catch (by no fault of your own).
I can tell you with 100% certainty that there were more updates planned. The next update after u35 (The End is Near), was supposed to overhaul the experience for new players. This directly goes against the "The game is finished, adding more will bloat it" narrative that MT is trying to push.
There was an entire new DLC planned by EE that MT forced them to can because of the development cancellation. It was still in early development stages but would mean at least one more major update to the game.
A very recent point that came up involves the animated show. That's its own can of worms so I'll just refer to what's relevant here. Evil Empire is entirely absent from the credits on the ADN release (French website) and, more damning, has their company name hastily blurred out of the credits for the UA-cam release of the first episode. This lends even more credence to the idea that MT is trying to quietly shuffle EE out of the way so they can retain the title of "creators of DC."
Edit: Forgot to mention that the community manager/ marketing person was changed from "Matt" to someone who goes by "XYZ" on the official Dead Cells discord right before update 35/3.5 hit beta. It doesn't seem very logical to have someone else take over that role just to announce the release of the u35 beta. This also suggests that a lot more was planned.
None of that besides the show credits thing is really widely known and that happened a few days ago, so this video covers basically everything possible.
Overall, this was an amazingly well-researched video that I will be sharing around the DC community as much as possible.
I could have really used that overhauled experience update; I bought the game way back and just had a hell of a time getting into it; so I shelved it and never looked back.
As for MT, and having been interested in WindBlown; I'll be boycotting Windblown.
"What do we owe our communities? Nothing."
Then they don't deserve our money, period.
@@ShevaiAsan I did forget to mention that line, it's probably the worst look for MT out of all of this.
Was thinking of buying Dead Cells while it's on sale, but now I'm not sure
@@kimballbelliston5925it's still a great game, tho I'd recommend boycotting windblown
I was really wondering why dead cell’s life support just got severed so suddenly. it really blows this is how it has to go, i was really looking forward to whatever evil empire had in mind
I think it's reasonable to say both EvilE and MotionT are the creators behind deadcells.
1000%, should be mentioned
MotionTwin started it first, Evil Empire continued it second
Motion Twin should be entirely discredited for what they did
Technically Sebastien Bénard made Dead Cells. But MT doesn't want people knowing that (He was an ex-MT dev)
@@Florjb0rjTheFloorboard No
Let me say as someone that played the DLCs and paid close attention to the game during its full lifetime, Evil Empire did such a good job (atualization, balance, DLC, and collabs). To me they do deserve credit too as creators they did a lot for the game and put their heart and love into it (if you have the DLCs the game basicaly triple in content, and has some of the best content in my opinion, so they did a lot...). I bleeds me to see the resentifullness
Yeah man, I still can't get over it. At least it had a good and long run. I used to play it on switch (the worst possible console to play it on) and it was optimized so well (after that console fps update) that I didn't feel the need to change to another console. Plus the dlcs were so cheap (especially with the bundles and everything being on sale most of the time). I alr had my ten bucks saved for that last dlc 🥲
I used to be a giant dead cells fan, I put over 900 hours in the game. I 100%ed it every update, at some point even had two save files that were 100%ed. I got all achivments, I beat the game on the hardest difficulty hitless. Went through the tens of hours of grinding the hardest things possible in the game such as the boss rush. It used to be my favorite game of all time, I played I since 2020 and this was Soul crushing. Motion twin made dead cells but evil empire MADE dead cells, the game would be nowhere near how good it is without them. Every single update better and better, weapons being cooler and even more fun and satisfying to use. When I saw windblown was "made by the team behind dead cells" I got justifyingly, very excited and I thought I would buy it day one but after all of this, more and more coming out about MT I think I won't get it. I was already thinking of buying the price of Persia game but I'm definitely getting it to support EE, they don't deserve this and it is a shame what MT did to them. Let alone a shame that MT made dead cells instead of them, literally putting away an incredible game that could be even better, served on a silver platter away from their hands. And the fact that the EE logo and name is blurred out of the credits of the dead cells animated show is a disgrace and whoever was behind it should be ashamed. (the show sucks btw and does not have the essence or lore of dead cells)
Wait the show is out?
There was a show?
@@jakestaheli8532 there is currently an ongoing show with two episodes out
I dont agree with the show being bad,(while i do wish it was about the plot of the actual game) but the rest are certainly true, will support ee
@@qwp1884 no no there is more episode, i dont like the artstyle so im not watching that
kinda suprised you didnt cover the new Tenjutsu trailer. in the trailer it says "made by the designer of dead cells", which is Sébastien Benard.
This video was recorded a solid month ago and I was sitting on it because I didn't have access to editing software for a few weeks 😅 but that game does look slick as hell
it true
Aka the REAL lead for the game before MT shuffled him off
One of the first gaming experiences my second cousin has was sitting on my lap "playing" Dead Cells. As in I found the giant hammer weapon and he mashed attack whilst I desperately tried to dodge so we didn't die. Years later he still remembers playing that game with me.
Video games are art and art has real power over people. It's so disgusting to see MT treat the game like this.
Personally for me I always thought EE was the creators of dead cells because of how The Rouge PoP looks basically like dead cells as opposed to windblown which totally looks like a whole new thing
I guess the essence of dead cells really stuck with evil empire. ( It was literally their first project so it makes sense )
Evil Empire are responsible for all my favorite updates to dead cells. Yeah motion twin made the base game but best content in the gsme out of evil empire
While I'm still absolutely LIVID that Microsoft closed down Arkane Austin, the team that made Prey, the best immersive sim, stealth, cosmic horror experience ever... well fect of the matter is MOST of the team that ACTUALLY developed Prey left BECAUSE of the development of Redfall. Even if Microsoft lifted their finger, delayed the game, reorganized and saved that sinking ship, if it turned out to be a BANGER title, that team would still be gone.
Prey is mid
Prey is pretty good but it’s definitely not the best immersive sim ever. Maybe the best of the past decade (not that there’s much competition), but it definitely pales compared to OG Deus Ex
@@cdm966 it's all subjective. i definitely liked prey more than deus ex
@@cdm966OG Deus Ex still holds up with Prey 2017, but Prey 2017 took imsim to the next level.
They left because they didn't want to make Redfall. If management just worked on Dishonoured 3 or the next Prey, they would have been back
The gaming community tends to put a lot of stock in company names when we should be paying more attention to the actual people attached to these projects. People have wondered why games like Suicide Squad and Redfall came out in the state they were in when they are made by such prolific studios, but one look at the list of major staff involved with these projects and comparing it to that of those older, better games reveals exactly what happened.
But by that same token, just because one big name changes studios doesn't mean their new game is gonna be like their previous work. Kojima fans followed him to his new studio and many love Death Stranding and attribute it to him being freed from Konami, but some seem to forget it wasn't just him, a huge chunk of his studio is also former Konami staff.
I think kojima is also a good example of taking it too far the other way, as I’ve seen people saying konami can’t do metal gear without kojima
@@whyamihere5835i mean, they're right, konami proved them right also
redfall doesn't apply here, it was the same arkane austin team but they got forced to make it by one of the seventy companies that own them.. and they all just left
While stupid, Sebastian's calling it an educated guess is a legal jardon - to avoid cases from MT itself
Theseus's Ship as it relates to video games reminds me of Metroid Prime 4. It was exciting to hear that Retro Studios was working on the series again, but it's been so long since Prime 3 that there's a high likelihood that the studio has turned over its whole staff by now. I'd guess that few, if any, people working on 4 are the same ones who worked on the Trilogy, and that has me worried.
The remaster had a lot of respect for the og material and the trailer looks great, when the new team respects the old team it really pays off
@@pedrol5004 Yeah, that's definitely good. But no matter what, the new team will have a different vision for the game than old Retro would. And that does bring a ton of benefits with it, but at the same time, it has a risk of not feeling cohesive with the others, like it's not the "real" Metroid Prime that I'm guessing a lot of fans are expecting.
@@NoshuHyenaMetroid Prime grew and changed a lot as it went on. Plenty of people don’t think 3 is congruous with 1 or 2, and for others 2 went too far off 1’s script. Ultimately Metroid Prime 4 will be what it is, and I personally think it’ll be very good.
So, somehow I, a Hotline Miami fan, did not know you can play as Jacket in Dead Cells until watching this video
Ong, I love Hotline Miami so how did I miss this? I mean tbf I don't even follow the Miami creators that well sooo
@@De_La_Evoit was a pretty recent update iirc. they also added the knight and some other indie characters that i can't remember right now
spoiler: the baseball bat is overpowered that even the hand of the king didnt stand a chance (if partnered with Wolf trap and root grenade thing)
The discussion surrounding this is a cesspool due to the amount of people who love to call other gamers "entitled". That word is a red flag for anti-consumer NPCs who stan for corpos (especially in matters of consumer rights, although this isn't that).
EE wants to develop new content. Fans want to buy new content. MT kills upcoming new content to promote their new game.
I ask, how is it entitled to complain about this? We aren't ENTITLED to new content, but is sure feels like MT is screwing their fans over.
Tone is too aggressive, but that's a great point. If you want the content, are willing to pay for content, and the devs could just MAKE it and take our money, then there's not much of a good reason to kill the content that we know about.
MT isn't a corpo. Coops cannot be corpos! They can still be bad but not corporations.
@@Americanbadashhit's people working together to dilute individual responsibility. It's basically a corporation.
What i consider entitled is when people come to a franchise like dark souls/er then demand features added/removed cause they dont like that the game doesnt cater to them. THAT is entitlement, what you described is not. I fully agree with ya.
omg preach you're so right
This is absolutely not the theseus ship paradox.
The paradox requires replacing it with equivalent parts. But replacing a team with new members is not equivalent, they are not the same people in the way that two planks of the same wood are the same.
So Evil Empire isn't evil (yet), but MotionTwin is?
bruh.
Its kind of like bands that are completely different than what it used to be. Equilibrium is one of my favorite bands, but now they are a bunch of people who had nothing to do with the original band, dont sing about the same subjects, are a different genre and dont even sing in the same language. Modern day Equilibrium has no business being called Equalibrium
That's so on point, kinda sad what happend with that band...
Bro Deadcells is hella hard after 0bc. I'm with you in the 0bc boss kill only club! I've beaten risk of rain 2 multiple times on monsoon and 100%ed noita but deadcells was too much for me =P
It's way easier now tho
I’m hard stuck on 4 bc .. so close yet so far
The feeling of beating 5bc is worth it tho
i can't get anything done in noita
Yeah, when I left it, it kind of felt like a bunch of ways to enforce "just reset if you get hit once" Got to BS3 and just got tired of it. One of the things about roguelikes and other highly repetitive difficult games is any tiny flaws shine like headlights when the game demands perfection from you.
The graphics you use in your video makes everything so much more enjoyable and easy to understand
Physically breaking the logo and placing a beard on it lowkey helped me wrap my head around it so much more
Im kinda pissed off a little. We were basically promised at least one or two more updates after the one currently in developement. It was named The End Is Near for a reason, we expected the end to be around a corner that we would eventually turn, but it was more like a cannonball to the face that had a sticky note attached saying "goodbye". I was ready to have the game settle and age after a proper goodbye and maybe in a few years see a modding community rise up, like Gungeon. The current situation just feels unjust not only for Evil Empire but the players as well and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth about a game that I literally grew up with.
Same
Dead cells modding needed to at least exist if they were canning future content
It's a small thing, but your editing and transitions is spot-on.
That's what we like to hear 😎
I remember hearing the ship of Theseus paradox a lot and always though it was a neat idea, but not really leaning one way or another towards it. Then I heard someone mention the ship of Theseus idea in relation to 'is the Disney of today the same company that made your childhood classics?', and my intuition imminently slid to them being two different ships.
i dont think the ship of theseus idea can be compared to the disney situation. the ship is replaced with identical wooden parts, but on disney...how do you find an identical human being with the same level of talent and passion? you cant.
The comparison is flawed. Human talent and passion cannot be replaced the same way a part of a structure can.
@@GoogleAccount-jn5qbor can it?
Fun fact: Your body has replaced every single cell in your body multiple times! (Takes around 7 years for every cell)
Honestly I'm gonna say personally this situation seems fairly obvious to me. Indie studios usually have less reason to be so corporate and lack transparency so the fact that that's the case seems to me like it's because they're trying to hide something. From your video (correct me if I'm wrong) it seems that Motion Twin were literally the ones who made the decision to shut down development and "the game felt complete" is obviously a terrible excuse for such a sudden decision that cancelled so many ideas that were in the middle of being developed. A terrible lie. I choose to believe the accusations. A shame since Windblown looks really nice, but all of this really taints its image. Though I don't necessarily think the whole team was on board with shutting down Dead Cells for these petty and greedy reasons, but still, it's a cooperative, so...
Well edited, well presented, and with an all around great energy from you!
Great job Asad!!
Good video again. Also I liked the edits (and holy shit I didn't see 14:10 coming, it got me good)
I definitely don't trust Motion Twin anymore, but I don't really trust Evil Empire either at this point (pretty sure there was some stuff about them recently about unlawful firings or something like that). But yeah the ship of Theseus thing is an important thing to keep in mind with games. And generally, asking "who made this" is still a good question. Like even recently, Nintendo is being Nintendo and refuses to announce who's making the games they publish, but it's made even worse by one of those games being Mario & Luigi, a series originally developped by AlphaDream, who doesn't even exist anymore.
Generally we just tend to rely on names we recognize and think "oh yeah the first one was good, surely the new one will be too", and even for those who look further, knowing the studio doesn't mean you know who's not there anymore. ZA/UM who made Disco Elysium basically fired everyone but whatever they make next will still use DE for marketing. Rocksteady had expectations recently too, but who knows how many of those devs actually made the games people liked.
It's a mess and that's why it's just easier to follow tiny devs 🤠
Yeah I was initially gonna cover some of the claims against EEs firings, I did stumble across that, but it kind of felt irrelevant to the central topic here so I shelfed it. Definitely a tough (and sometimes uncomfortable) rabbit hole digging into ANY company. Also, didn't know about that Mario&Luigi thing, really interesting
my general thought process is that i focus more about the lead director of a title than the individual developers in terms of "what should i compare this to?" Because often times you can see similarities between titles who have the same LD even if the actual development team is different. Not to say that those differences dont matter, but they are less obvious on an initial playthrough.
As part of the sonic fanbase (another... very controversial group unfortunately) we have gone through 4 or 5 different game directors in our franchise, but its VERY easy to know who directed what, or who at least had the most influence, based on the style of story telling, game design, general tone, and game feel.
Not every company works this way though, MTs style makes this MUCH harder because there isnt any one "lead director" or anything, which means that the individuals influence on a title is a lot tougher to get a grasp on.
Overall, i dont think the ship is ever the same past the half way point, but as long as the Keel remains the same then the ship has the same heart. It has the same ideals. This isnt a perfect analogy but you get what i mean.
Reminds me of how B4B marketed itself as "from the creators of L4D" when in reality Turtle Rock had only a dozen devs work on it while the overwhelming majority was Valve. TR may have created L4D but Valve made it the household name it is today.
they should change the "from the creators of dead cells" to "from some of the creators of dead cells"
Absolutely love Dead Cells, my GOTY of 2018 without a doubt. However, I have been saying for the last 2 years that I wish they'd stop with the updates and put all their ideas into a proper sequel!
Just because you acknowledge the clickbait doesn’t mean that it makes it any less shitty
The "from the creators of" or the "behind the minds from" is just a marketing sham. Realistically, most of the time you guy one maybe two guys from the original creation with the other 99% of the team being new devs or creators. Communicating creation crediting is a big issue when it comes to the industry in general. Like Arkane for example, most don't even know after Dishonored the team split to two separate teams but people and even execs over them only refer to them as just "Arkane" even though it's practically different people designing the games. Don't even get me started on the Japanese development scene, eastern devs crediting is soo secretive, you can rarely find who made what when it comes differentiating the teams unless you look through online individually who was apart of the creation.
I think their definitely is some underlying thintb going on between Motion Twin and Evil Empire, the marketing team is never going to tell us or make it clear but the way they been moving, it seems to me some guys at MT aren't too keen on their creation being more associated with Evil Empire as you were implying, and why would they right, they made the game and it was a hit. Good vid Asad.
The Ship of Theseus thought process can be applied to many studios. Bioware, for example. Only ~20% of the staff that worked on Mass Effect 3 worked on Mass Effect 1.
The death metal band "Job for a Cowboy" replaced every original member throughout their existence. So at a certain point, an entirely different band was bearing the name and playing their songs. But it happened gradually enough that every new member should rightfully be acknowledged as part of the band imo. After all, they were doing all the work. They took the time to learn the songs and harmonize with the rest of the group, while all the original members were working on other projects.
Take an old company with good will from their customers. Say, Swiss. Swiss has been around long enough that the original employees are probably dead. Does that mean the company doesn't have the right to their reputation and profits? They're still making products, and their products are considered good quality.
What about a country? Most countries don't have a single founding father or mother alive within them. Does that mean they're not the same country?
The Olympics were started in ancient Greece. Every pioneer Olympic athlete has been dead for centuries. So is it no longer the Olympics?
Having an all new cast is a sign of success in my opinion. It means your team outlived all of its original members.
I know you never said otherwise, this is just a thought experiment.
this is a cool thought but motiontwin has been hands off from dead cells for a while so even though the team outlived the founders the team hasn't done anything good in a while either. Death metal group example you gave is fine if they do get themselves used to the band and doesn't lose their identity, motion twin did not do that. Motion twin gave all the dead cells responsibilities to evil empire and made windblown instead. Evil empire in this case is actually more resembling your example, they were the new developers of dead cells that respected the game and they bringed the game to new heights. Motion twin just shat on it
@@beegyoshi1685 Fair enough. In that case, I’d say both companies and their teams have the right to market their games as “from the creators of dead cells”, at least in principle. As far as the legality of copyright and trademark go on a corporate level, I just don’t know enough to make that call. But Evil Empire are definitely qualified as creators of dead cell, even if they didn’t come up with the idea, because they made meaningful additions to it and kept it alive and evolving. That being said, Motion Twin are also morally right to call themselves the creators of dead cells.
Personally, I don’t think they’re trying to mislead potential customers by using it in their marketing. I don’t think they’re trying to screw Evil Empire out of their credit either. I think they’re just capitalizing on the good will of gamers who enjoyed dead cells, and target a similar audience. In principle, Evil Empire should have the right to use that in their marketing too, if they wanted. But who knows what would happen legally.
What the fuck? Where did all that gameplay come from? In all the years of playing dead cells I've never seen any of those maps or enemies!
4:58 Basically, Communism.
Nothing goes well in communism.
Dead Cells had the potential to grow even bigger and have more crossovers like the Castlevania dlc. Although the game is good as it is, it's a shame we'll never get to see it reach its full potential. My brother wanted to see a Demon Slayer dlc in the same vein as the Castlevania dlc. And I think it could have been great (although improbable to happen).
They should have just worded it as "From the studio that made Dead Cells"
so.... clickbait, what a guy this one is
This just makes me sad, man. The gaming industry is going downhill, and not even Indie/AA games are safe anymore.
EVIL EMPIRE. LAUGHING ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK