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@@Cha4k except gamers can't make direct demands in that way outside of standard supply & demand, and we NEVER demand crunch coz it's bad for everybody and often guarantees a worse product. Customers have expectations and they're publicly known, your goal is to make a satisfying/attractive product that meets or exceeds them and the only constraints on how that's achieved is determined by the company. At best you can rephrase it to _"Make us a good, complete game..."_ followed by *_crunch to ship an incomplete game_* . Plenty of successful games around to reference.
Replace A with any. Leveraged buyouts also says hi. Pay nothing buy a company, debt for buying company transfers to said company bankers bank the interest company has to operate a shady business model to even hope to pay the debt off
more like any companies. the consumers change from pleasing commonfolk with good product to making as much as money to investors. this is why stuff getting worse
I don't think Callisto Protocol went out too early. Game is garbage on a fundamental, core level. They would need another 4 years and redo it from scratch.
My friend is a project manager at a major game development studio, the devs to director are passionate about the game. The issue is that almost always that it is the execs, VPs who dont even play games are the ones who ruin everything, these people demand that draft sections or working versions of the early game are submitted to them and their analytics team to identify "monetisation opportunities", or concept designs need committee approval from people who only care about ticking boxes etc, there are people who can go above the director of the game and change things based on how they feel the game should be
To be fair, this sounds like vertical slice analysis. They could have a demo where the devs perfectly implement something with different mechanics, monsters and weapons that is really flashy and fun but not be able to make it work live in game on the timeline. Sure they could get 80-85% of it in but without the whole package its just not the same. There's a reasonable devil's advocate argument to be had.
Imagine my suprise that the publisher going public forced a bunch of bad decisions to happen in order to give the appearance of being profitable. I keep seeing an ongoging trend of publishers and developers going public KILLS ALL QUALITY AND FUN IN A GAME! You'd figure that an executive would figure it out at some point. Oh well, let's keep seeing the collapse of large public publishers and devs, and the gaming industry should correct itself.
its all a gamble at the end of the day. You go public and you could rake in millions and millions and be set forever and make so much more money, or you can fail and loose everything, but usually that means the top of management leave with lots of money, and everyone else in the company suffers.
Not accounting for the ego and narcissism. Why should I care about something not relevant to me? Why should I care about anything past very short term gains? Why why are notions they don't care about. Plus then there is the I can do better. It won't happen to me nonsense if they just so happened to be aware
Cause there's big money to be made in going public, if you can avoid crashing and burning (or can cash out and bail before the crash.) If you're in a leadership position, at least. There's basically no benefit for the actual workers.
There's a reason why artists aren't publicly tradeable on the stock market. You aren't going to get art if you have to answer and change your art for the whims of people in suits.
I watched my buddy get absolutly destroyed by a robot in that game then it just casually said ‘have a united day.’ And sauntered off with his guts on its foot. Metal as fuck
And then bringing it back to the pizza development team, hysterically screaming "THIS ISN"T GOOD!! FIX IT! PUT 20 PEOPLE ON THE JOB OF PUSHING THE "ON" BUTTON!!!" Pizza still not well-cooked. Execs screaming: STILL NOT GOOD! PUT 24-HOUR SHIFT ON SETTING THE TEMPERATURE!! Still a bad pizza. (Shareholders sell out at IPO price.) "Ship it." "But we've got the pepperoni fix to implement! "Ship it." "We've got the cheese ratio perfected..." "Ship it."
My uncle worked on this. He was excitedly sharing his process for years then just clammed up when this dropped and won't talk about it. I know he's peeved. He helped design the engine and skins. His work and the amount of effort put in by the entire team cannot be understated. I was so sad when they had to speed it up, my cousins started complaining about never seeing him. I frankly haven't seen him in person in years. Would have been nice if they'd set reasonable dev time.
Man that makes me so sad, you can tell a lot of passion was put into the game despite its shortcomings. I love the skins, and the visuals are incredible, so thank your uncle for me. :)
@@sleepysartorialist this game is actually amazing and I enjoyed it better than dead space the story intrigued me more and I had more fun with the combat and the graphics were better the only thing that I disliked was the ending
@@Drunkpunch33 I mean that's great but I'm not gonna tell him that. As I stated, I haven't heard from him in years. Dev crunch impacts people in the real world. This comment does nothing to alleviate that, I'm afraid.
The managers also screwed the shareholders. The game made less profit than it should have, with long-term negative consequences. The problem isn't "shareholder capitalism", it's "corrupt middle management". The devs, players, and shareholders all want to see a great game that does well. The middle managers want to advance their own career by the shortest, easiest path, with 0 concern for anyone else (and once the founder of a company leaves, the execs are just the most evil middle managers).
@@Maelstromme Sure, which is why it matters so much whether the founder is still leading the company. Founders usually have a long-term view of profit, or they fail before going public. But once they leave, it's "middle managers" all the way down.
I enjoyed too. Not the best game but i liked the performances. The combat gameplay not much. I hate the expansion because the twist end. I suppose that closed any chance to Josh Duhamel appear in a sequel. If this even happen
there was absolute nothing to be enjoyed for. I just fought through because i wanted to know how more bad it could get..and just 2 enemy types...or you could say just one, a zombie....wow😂🎉...
@@yabitoits pro......💩 so men(esp wt men) get fed over bjt wanna save the strong indep. woman. the story was so dumb and nonsensical...and the dlc i watched via yt...so they even topped the bad maingame...rediculous💩.....
The graphics in Callisto Protocol are so gorgeous. It’s a shame that the gameplay is mediocre. The dodge mechanic makes even the hardest difficulty setting super easy.
dodge mechanic seemed a lot more skill based previously from some previews, i guess ign reviewers got pissy at how hard it was and they then make a slight change which ruined the entire system.
@@NukeNuke22 No, it wasn't more skill based, it was just that enemies used to attack more than one at a time. The problem was that the dodge just didn't work at all in that scenario, and so the game broke - if two enemies appeared, the player was nearly guaranteed to die. Basically, they would've needed entirely new features to supplement it.
@@SyndicateOperativeThis is exactly what caused me to stop playing the game. Too often I’d be locked in combat with one dude then I’d get sucker punched by another enemy and couldn’t do anything about it.
looking good means nothing today, anyone can make a good looking realistic game, few can actually make good gameplay, Callisto failed on the latter in a fundamental level, they weren't gonna salvage it
@@bud389 Combat like that would be trash regardless how much time and money are thrown at it. Story is impotent from the start, what are 3 extra monts gonna do about it?
@@KosmataBradva The total development time for the game was supposed to be 15 months, and that was cut back by 3 months, so they just lost 20% of their development time. You do the math.
Yeah to he fair if the dev time was initially 15 months. Thats not even that long. So clearly they'd get quite a bit of development done in just a few months, so those 3 months could hace made thevgame so much better. There were some amazing aspects of this game that just didn't get fleshed out. Id bet it wouldnt have made it GOtY, but its likely wouldve scored and sold better woth that extra time.
This game needed a complete overhaul to it's combat. That update they did to "fix" the reviewers' complaints, ended up ruining the best thing the game had.
remember seeing a preview from ign before release, and they brought up how difficult the combat was to learn and master. release comes, and the combat is the easiest in any survival horror.
@@RugsterClaps idk, herpahs dodging via alternating A/D on keyboard feels stupid, but on gamepad it feels more natural, and I like that much more over typical dodge rolls in other games. Considering all the circumstances they did amazing job with this game.
i have redeemed the free copy forom Epic Game Store and i not try to play, my plan is go to the end of some games that be finished before play Callisto Protocol.
I think 3 months was the bare minimum. The performance issues etc could've definitely been solved, and have been solved within 3 months after the game released. The cut content, might have made it in 3 months. Would both of that be enough to make it a better game? I think so. A bad first impression for games is a huge deal, it would at least not go through a bad release.
I recently finished the game and loved it. I had no context prior to playing it, nor have I played Dead Space so I went in with the mindset of “This looks cool, it’s free, and it’s October.” I’m a fan of graphics and I enjoyed the story. I’m sure there are things that could be better, but for what it is, I would definitely recommend it. Interesting to hear about the launch and behind the scenes, and I’m glad I didn’t know much about it prior to playing the game. I hope they can continue to create games with amazing graphics and story.
Then it would've been pretty obvious what was happening and people could've cancel their preorders, helping spread the situation. It isnt a "damn if you do, damn if you don't" type of situation.
@@shib5267 Basically this. Would surprise me if even 1% of people who play games bother with gaming news, at least in a deeper level than just commercials.
It's a sympathetic story and I'm sure it was rough. But I'll be real, any game with THAT combat sysem was always going to be bad, 100%, no matter how much time or budget you invest. Bad design ideas kill a project from the ground up.
@@madnox9538I’ll be the compromiser here and like what was mentioned before, they lost aprox 20% of the planned dev time they thought they had. This resulted in the combat system we got, which lacked refinement for enough of the audience to enjoy it 🤷🏻♂️ Still results in a bad experience for all parties…except the c-suites, as usual
@@GeorgeZimmermen dead space 1 and 2 are considered some of those classics and by your own logic those classics you were referring to would only have been liked because they were earlier and not that they were better.
What's really crappy is any notion that Krafton executives were giving to studio heads that they can put whatever they want into the game, it'll release next year anyway, and then later say that they're cutting development time short. This resulted in an unintended (or intended?) crunch - classic video game industry.
The reality is the game wasn't very good, and likely would not have seen much improvement if given more time. Sometimes the suits know what's best for business. Sucks it didn't work out but they had to cut their losses.
@@Jim-yh5uj yeah no, the only problem with the game is gameplay that would've been fixed with those 3 months and a half, atmosphere and story wise it's a good game...
@@brendanlucero8585 Let me ask you this, you start making a game, and then randomly someone tells you you're going to have 3 and a half months less of development time, what do you think the team is going to do? They're going to compromise on decisions that will finish the game faster, the combat is probably one of those decisions... Personally I like the game, not so much the combat, but I like it overall...
@@TheAdypoker I totally get that they were wronged in that way, but Combat should've been the absolute last thing they should've compromised on. I personally think it shouldn't have been on the cutting board to begin with. Also if they were that pressed for time, they should've quit being so focused on graphics because even though the game is gorgeous, the graphics are the least important aspect of a game in my opinion. I say this because I remember seeing an interview with Glen Schofield when he was "at work" in the studio so to speak and he was talking about this section of the game where you could peer outside of the ship and see the mountains of the moon and he was showing off how awesome it looked, as well as the in room lamp. While I appreciate that level of attention to detail, it spoke of misplaced priorities. Gameplay and combat is king, and frankly they did a poor job of making a survival horror if your character can go fistycuffs with said horror aspect. The Necromorphs in Deadspace were an all consuming cosmic threat that felt real and the pressure was there to keep your distance.
Definitely not. Though I would imagine it could have helped with making upgrades cost less, make ranged weapons more effective, adjust enemy placement, and other balance fixes.
One of the biggest problems with business structure, is executives don’t get rewarded for the company’s long-term health, at least not nearly as much as a “killer quarter.” Compounding this problem is that executive themselves or mercenary. They make a bunch of short term gain, long-term loss bad decisions. Then when things get too hot, they go somewhere else. Most of the time for bigger title and salary. This is impossible, but if somehow you could make a big portion of salary and bonuses be tied to performance over 3 to 5 years, I bet it would at least get these guys to slow down and think a little harder about that new initiative to make people, time their bathroom breaks or count out ketchup packets at the drive though.
Now Callisto Protocol being free on Epic store might be the last nail in the coffin Edit : The amount of people who can't comprehen the meaning are so absurd.
To be fair, there have been a lot of great games free on EGS. TMNT Shredder's Revenge is awesome, it was free on EGS not too long ago and it came out the same year. Different class of game for sure, but it's just one example of many.
Another epic stores victory Cheap prices with discounts and a free game every Thursday They truly are an amazing game store. I've played so many games I never would've have if not for them or bought dlcs that are cheaper than Sony's store
I spent many years working as a project manager in the tech industry. We have something we like to call the Triple Constraint: Scope, Time and Cost. It is a triangle and the premise behind the concept is that if you adjust one side of the triangle, the other sides also have to change. By shifting the time in this circumstance, scope invariably was sacrificed and it explains why the end result lacked a lot of the functionality that was expected.
dodging and dipping in the combat design kinda ruins the horror aspect when you start throwing hands. however if it's gonna lean into that, let the protag's technique improve over time instead of overcommitted flaily swinging the whole game
The melee dodge fest was annoying and plain "not fun" If it was a "once in awhile" moment then that would have been fine.. but being a core gameplay loop fighting monsters was just ... not fun. I put the game down 1/2 way through it as it felt like a real slog to play. Bought the Dead Space remake later on and that was really fun to play.
No combat was not a design problem. Do you know what hardened criminals do in prison? They work out in order to defend themselves in a fight. When they turn into monsters, they're going to rip you a new one. It makes total sense but thats just me.
This feels like shifting the blame a bit. Glen had more control over Callisto Protocol than he ever had over Dead Space under the thumb of EA... We know that based upon how the sequels unfolded and how they moved farther and farther away from Glen's initial image of Dead Space. Furthermore, THE BULK of Callisto Protocol's largest issues could not have come at the hands of corporate meddling, as the biggest issues are FOUNDATIONAL. The game was literally designed from the ground up around a few flawed and unfulfilling mechanics/systems. These would have been present since the design-doc phase of pre-production, and in early builds of the game... Before Striking Distance started getting outside funding. That's not the fault of the publisher, because publishers aren't part of the pre-production and design doc process. This was Glen and his crew sitting around in a room coming up with ideas, systems, and mechanics... Some of which fell flat, and were ever-present. Now had the game been piece-mealed with finished content being held for a season pass, had the game ended abruptly because the publisher wasn't issuing them any additional funds to complete development, or had the issue been a general lack of polish, I could understand that being because the publisher cut corners and relegated the polish-phase to post-launch patches. But none of those were REALLY the issue. Even if everything was functioning perfectly, the game would still fall short of the premise and potential. We're seeing too many directors shift the blame for "failed" projects onto the higher ups, when ultimately they are the head of the project and should be able to create within the time and financial confines of their corporate overlords... Corporate oversight and meddling is part of almost every double and triple-A project. And with Glen being an OG who's had something they conceived be stripped from them and changed into something they never wanted, he should have had the experience to prevent that from happening this time around, if we're going to go with his version of events. So I still wouldn't say he's not primarily responsible for how things turned out. This is like how now every time a movie fails the director says its because the film they wanted was left on the editing room floor, and a "directors cut" would save the film... When if all you filmed was dookie, you can't edit that to look like diamonds... And polishing a turd doesn't make it something new, it's just a shiny piece of poop. And ultimately, if Glen Scolfield and Striking Distance couldn't make it happen with Callisto Protocol, they are in need of new management, because it only gets worse from here. So while I won't doubt that corporate meddling played a factor in why Callisto Protocol turned out how it did, it's disingenuous to act like the game's foundational shortcomings it's why it failed to catch hold. And the problem with a game that in foundationally flawed is that no amount of time is going to fix that. So if the game had another year in the oven, that's just another million copies it would have needed to sell to recoup the additional development costs. And if a publisher determines that no amount of money or time would make a product turn a significantly larger profit or better product, then they cannot justify extending the dev cycle and issuing more funds. At that point they'll just put it out and let it make what its going to make.
i knew the game was bad at the start when an in-game pop up said: Move the L stick left and right to dodge attacks. _There are no input windows, just move the stick and Jacob will dodge._ 🤨
I was "asked" to do some crush once in my previous job. To come to work on a Saturday, without any pay but we'll get to enjoy a cheerful happy spirit and (maybe) one delicious pizza to share together. thanks no. they also pressured us all the time that if we performe well and finish work early there will be a huge bonus for us. turned out : 1. the company fired 90% of the people after 3 months and 2. the bonus was mostly for the managers, CEO... meanwhile, we who worked hard, we got nothing but a "end of employment" certificate.
The combat is fine you haven't played the game in depth, just about everyone shitting on it haven't. You just expected dead space 4 and got mad when that wasn't it.
@@mlfc1950every advertisement for this game is "they are not nonames, they are Dead Space creators". Interesting, why everyone expected Dead Space game?
@@mlfc1950 that is garbage. I played it start to finish and the lock on melee system was an absolute joke. This was Glens decision and not Krafton and it is on him.
I played Callisto Protocol a couple months back and loved it. Great story, cinematics, weapons and environments. The gameplay did get a bit repetitive but still enjoyed it.
Executive meddling or not, one thing I've learned from Callisto protocol, mighty number nine, that new StarCraft clone, and countless other examples, is to never trust a developer of a famous game saying "execs ruined my last franchise, so now I'm going to try and do the same thing again but make it good." It just doesn't seem to work when a studio's main selling point is this exact idea. I think conflicts require two parties. And the world is rarely as one sided as a bereaved party tries to sell it.
One thing I think that some people, who've never been through a really rough crunch situation, don't understand is that when you are looking from the outside in and you're like "ya, man I would really relish the chance to take on a difficult challenge like that" - you are speaking from a perspective of being "fresh", meaning that you are in a good mental space and rested and full of energy and creativity. But once you get about half way through, you are burned out, in a rough mental space with a poor outlook on things and likely sleep deprived and drained of all energy and suddenly it doesn't look like "this great challenge/opportunity" anymore. It just looks like a forlorn, bottomless pit of despair and regret. You have to keep that in mind, when saying things like, "I think a big part of me would really love the chance to tackle something like this crunch" ...
I have seen things that indicate a fair sized chunk of devs don't have the fortitude to cope with ANY sort of crunch. the attitude of jumping companies every 3 years at most is just as worrying. I get why they do it from an employee standpoint given how the big publishers have been, but it is a horrible attitude in regards to the end product.
@@scout360pyroz To be fair the reverse is just game is done. Lets lay off half the staff to make the numbers look better. Companies stopped being loyal to their employees and only saw them as an expense/return value on their spreadsheets. So why shouldn't people just move whenever it is beneficial for them to do so? Especially in a company that crunches. I work in an adjacent field with a similar turn over rate. And let me tell you if my company started crunching for more than a week or two at most I would be out of there. Because my physical and mental health are worth more to me than the "pride" of working through crunch. We owe the higher ups nothing.
You must likely live in the first world to be able to work as a gamedev to begin with. "Crunch" is just a stupid leftist rebranding of "overtime" and is common and justifiable in virtually any industry you can come up with because these things are not exact sciences and sometimes workload just gets concentrated. It's not a real problem. Imagine if a doctor had to bitch and complain about it because "omg le crunch is killing me :((((" Point is, it's not made with the intention to explore the worker but the left is incapable of viewing that as it contradicts their dogmatic "opressors vs opressed" world view. And finally if you're feeling "burnout" (another bullshit meaningless word) this is just a reality of life. It's impossible to avoid struggle, it's reality of nature and for as long as you live this will remain. If you're feeling "le burnout" is so bad you can always be homeless and starve if you think that's a better alternative.
When your bucket’s already 90% full and filling, and someone opens the floodgates, and tends to cause everything to overflow. Everything looks easy when your bucket it as 25%
"Now that there is not stakes on the tables at all anymore...NOW I have the courage to finally say I would really have loved to fight against Evil...too bad It's useless now...eh ??"
Unfortunately we live in an era where one bad word or statement by big media outlets, including big UA-camrs towards a product can have an impact on a game studio or movie studio. Callisto protocol is a game that was never given a chance at all to succeed. Right from the get go it was compared to dead space, and was bashed because ignorant fanboys were expecting a carbon copy of dead space. And seeing how EA the company that destroyed the franchise 12 years ago decided to release a remaster against Callisto around the same month didn’t help either. It’s unfortunate that the game and its creators weren’t given the opportunity to make a comeback and separate itself from dead space, cuz Callisto protocol is a huge underrated game that many (now that they’re actually getting a chance to play it for free) are going to regret bashing the game from existence, just because they decided to join the bandwagon of hate.
@@johnsilver6316I was very excited about this game and watched many interviews and deep dives on it where schofield himself was comparing it to dead space and calling it a spiritual successor because dead space was his baby dude, if he didn’t want that to happen he could’ve done more to separate it from potential comparisons even if yeah dead space fanboys would’ve done it anyway. A good game is a good game and there are good bones in Callisto for sure but it’s just not good, maybe he should’ve just made dead space 4 with a different name instead🤷♂️.
@@yuro5833 yes and no. when it comes to big money and tight schedules, you resort to doing what you already know. there is no room for exploration in development, that has to be done before you even pitch it
Man I want to be sympathetic to the devs, but you can't expect me to believe this game could have been fine with a few more months. It's combat mechanics needed a complete overhaul.
No offense but nobody here is asking the real question that needs to be answered which is how did this game end up costing $150 million? There is absolutely no reason for a linear single-player to cost $150 million. That is a massive hurdle to clear for any linear single-player game in general, let alone the first entry in a new, unproven IP. Everyone needs to take a couple steps back from the buzzwords of "crunch" and "corporate greed" and actually determine where the economics of game development are going off the rails. Hot take incoming but given the rampant fundamental design and mechanics issues with Callisto Protocol I would argue that even if they had been allowed to stick to their original deadline I do not believe for a second that the finished product would've been sufficiently improved from what we got. The videogame industry has been enduring for a good while now the same overbudgeting and scale-bloat that has consumed the film & tv industries over the past 20 years. There's too much money being pumped into too many bloated projects that never stick the landing no matter how much extra dev time you get or how many times you reboot. Skull and Bones, anyone?
The short answer is: visual fidelity. The game was praised before release for how amazing it looked. Unfortunately visual fidelity is the absolute top priority in AAA game development. And with the goalpost shifting each year the budgets get out of control. There's a great presentation that a guy from Ubisoft did on GIC (Game industry Conference) titled "The Case Against Fidelity" which hits this nail on the head. The AAA industry is unsustainable, and will collapse if this doesn't change. It is collapsing already with all the studios getting shut down after one unfinished game gets forcefully pushed out the door because most of the budget goes to asset creation, and starves everything else fro resources. No time or money is left for playtesting, quality assurance, or even finishing your design. The game must push the visual fidelity envelope or it will be ignored by the general public. Everything else is secondary. It's the cult of the screenshot - screenshots sell games. That's also why all the rendering tech is so bad in motion. It works for screenshots and slow "cinematic" camera movement, but falls apart due to TAA smearing in motion. Because the alternative is super grainy shadows, relfections, hair, clouds, foliage, smoke, volumetrics etc. Also there's no time and budget left for decent optimization so games ship with shader compilation issues and other performance problems that don't show up on screenshots or in "gameplay" videos that were captured in realtime, at low settings, but then re-rendered frame after frame from a game replay at max settings for the trailers.
@@unfa00 Precisely and that's my point. Cutting edge graphics is a trap that has set up so many games for failure over the last 20 years in particular and yet there are tons of gamers out there that pointlessly obsess over it in a bid to self-validate their hardware purchases which only fuels the studios'/publishers' misconception that graphical fidelity = financial success, which it doesn't. Good art design will beat out ultra-max settings any day of the week. No level of graphical fidelity justifies $150 million for a linear single-player game. Heck that price tag is difficult to justify in most games in general.
@@elibrainless90 No offense to the cast but with the names they hired and the industry's longstanding practice of underpaying voice actors I severely doubt that accounted for that much of the budget. They very clearly threw the lion's share of their money at the visuals as they infamously marketed the game as "AAAA" to no effect.
I remember working for a firm that was looking for a takeover. To get the deal that was acceptable to shareholders, unions and bidders they basically shredded quality and pished staff as hard as physically possible for 18 months. When the takeover went through for probably 3x the real value of the company, this got worse, as the new owners slowly realised how bad a deal they'd actually got. Steadily, this has meant fewer customers paying more money for an inferior service.
Yeah the level of copium here is fierce. 3 months would not fix level design, story, the entire combat model and enemy variety. The game was a flop, maybe Krafton realized it and just wanted to push out the turd as fast as possible cutting down the dev time to the barest time needed, instead of investing in a fix. Not saying that's a good path just trying to see reasons from Krafton. Honestly this feels like Schofield is trying to just escape all responsibility for a bad game, also his next game is going to be announced soon so no surprise a positive PR fluff is coming out now. Callisto had bad bones, deep bad bones that where not fixable without massive time and money being sunk into a compete rebuild. Regardless if Krafton was amazing to work under or an evil public menace three months was never going to save this game.
Exactly, nothing is saving a game where you hold left, hold right for the entire game! The gameplay was the most damaging part of that game. The whole 'don't blame the developers it was our investors' is used as a escape for criticism way too many times. Bellular is 100% bias here
Yeah, I expected more if he was blaming the shortened dev time. Losing 3 months would have cost them time to bug fix, and it did ship buggy. It wouldn't have affected story or fundamental gameplay that has to be decided early.
You get it. This guy is trying to pass the blame for a turd on his resume when he's the leader standing at ground zero. The leader who actually BOASTED about crunch on social media. But now somehow crunch was someone else's fault.
I agree. The other side of this is New Vegas. Conceptually amazing but managers didn’t give themselves enough time. But even that unfinished game is hailed as amazing.
The what-if here would not be asking what they would do with an additional 4 months. It would really be about asking what did they have to change starting Jan 22 in order to try and hit the Dec 22 launch date.
That's what I was thinking as well. Not only that, but the enemies lacked any sort of creativity, especially when compared to Dead Space, and the story was just bad. I don't really think this could've been fixed with anything but a complete remake.
It's not about the additional time. It's about the constant shifts in direction forced on the design team over the course of the entire build. Seriously guys. Think shit through before you speak. Helps a lot in not looking stupid.
It really did feel like a well expertly prepared corpse. They look so lifelike and realistic in the casket at the funeral, but they're obviously still 100% dead on the inside.
Didn't get a job @ riot a long long time ago for telling the junior producers I would push back if asked to ship unfinished work, I worked on a plethora of unfinished and even shipped games, I consider all of them unfinished. I don't mind having to wrap things up and finish when that is the right thing to do, getting corporate yes men to see that is damn near impossible. This guy probably would have been removed from the project if he said he wasn't going to ship which would hurt a lot more imo, sometimes you are just inbetween a rock and a hard spot.
Popular series, a niche game for me (didnt play but heard of it), concisely delivered and with a very small tiny bit of redundancy. Good content, keep it up!
Considering the technical issues at release that were fixed pretty quickly, I am convinced that when Krafton learned that there was a Dead Space remake, any chance of a delay for polish was gone. This game was marketed as a spiritual successor to Dead Space, and here it was coming out barely before Dead Space.
10:54 - YES! Absolutely. I am just like that as well. I've sadly had that happen to me (before being in the games industry, though). I burnt myself a lot working 2 public-facing jobs and caused myself a ton of health problems, including vision and digestive problems, because I kept going over the limit. And it's probably at least in part neuron-related. So brain damage is definitely possible. Be warned.
It seems so short sighted to rush the release of something and end up losing a huge amount of money as opposed to letting it cook. I can only suppose someone looked at it and decided that they needed much longer to make it worth money and decided to cut losses. Not out of the realm of possibility that this is just the dev trying to save face for making a bad game.
@@themuffinlord6442 the profits must increase every single quarter no shareholder company has ever been like, no its okay take your time we'll have a few bad quarters but then we'll have a great one.
Weak senior management from the studio caused the crunch and agreed to the reduced timelines. Even when faced with all the issues at the time they did nothing to delay it. The old Blizzard mantra springs to mind 'We'll release it when it's ready' Another point is this game had little to no coverage at release I don't even recall it
You’d have to care about the industry news he covers to care. I’ve also felt this way about cellular taking half the video to make the point and then leaving no reason to listen to the rest of the content. Generally there’s an upswing at the end of the videos but whatever
Played it, finished it, liked it. That being said, it did feel like they could've done more and the story was a bit all over the place, but the horror factor was there, and I believe that a 2nd game would've addressed a lot of the complaints better than some patches, such a shame really.
I don't know if we should blame the suits exclusively, they still didn't reign in the expectations and intentionally weren't truthful on some things. Beurocracy aside, they were allotted a lot of freedom early on and sold the facade of "its great, its exactly what we set out to make and complete at launch"
Lol this video has to come out when it's free on the Epic Store. Yeah, I remember how awkward this game was to come out right before the Dead Space 1 Remake. Couldn't have just saved all that dev time and resources to maybe remake Dead Space 2....
_"Aww poor widdle dewv, he was the project lead earning 300K, sure he miss managed everything and blame the poor widdle executives, but pwease think of him!"_ 😢😭🙏🏻 I'm sick and tired of this nonsense, bad professionals should get the mighty boot, no excuses.
Yeah, that's because the developers were denied time to finish them for the base release. Do you think it was their idea to sell that to the players later?
Bellular News nothing stops glen or other developers from leaking the source code of the game right now so moders can mod/fix the game, i call BS that they cared about the game.
That hurts. As childhood fan of Dead Space a.k.a Glen Shofield works i've been longing for a gaming like Callisto for years. When i finally saw the trailer i was so excited. I took the preorder and played day on ps5 back then (on pc now, i have bought the game for pc as well) and remember already feeling nostalgic and amazed about how beaufiful, grounded and focus the game felt. It felt like the game was made for me. Long crawls through narrow corridors that by themselves represent how you're infinitely trapped in a place where the illusion of progress makes you think you have a way out. The music are absolute sci-fi art and the sound effects of machinery and stuff they all fit so well to immerse you in that world. Now imagine how my happy expression changed when i was done with my gaming session after playing for 2 hours and going on UA-cam It was like if my new born son was getting teared apart by crazy hens and tarnished by insulting and ignorant video titles belittling the game in favour of Dead Space. I thought horror game players were on a united front before the release of both DS and TCP, but i guess that at the end they prefer to claim one game as the best and the other one as disappointing and not worth your time. Gamer brain. And now i watch your video and learn that basically Krafton is responsible for the all problems the game had that made it suffer it's sad undeserved hate from the public. Like damn. You know what it feels like to be fan of Callisto? It feels like you're gonna get trashed any time in comments for saying you like it. That if you like it you're not smart with your games or games in general and "should know" better. Whatever. What has been done has been done and we can't change it. But im still very thankful for what Callisto turned out to be. Glen really as it all being proud of his team's work. 'Cuz i sure am when i'm in awe everytime i finish the game, listen to the musics, and think about all of it's symbolism in the story and the locations in the game. When i look at Callisto, i see it as; cheated from it's potential. Yet beautiful and symbolistic in it's last form.
PS: when i say cheated from it's potential, i refer to it's potential reach. So many people would have loved to have this game in their hand if they knew how good it was. The 2 million copies sold announced by Krafton are literally pin point worst time of release strategy they go for, which sabotaged it. All of my friends all the people that play games or not when i make them play Callisto they all get hooked and when to play more, they're hooked. what i'm tryna infer is that critic score and bad sell numbers are all a very bad indicator of this game performance and quality as people are blown away everytime when they go in there without expectation and looking for a good solo linear game with good story. IMO TCP deserves more than 67% as score. It is deserving of more than a 85% in it's current iteration. But yeah. You cant repair the stain of 2, December 2022. All the people that were destined to like this game, didnt get to fast enough before it was sent to the shadow realm. RIP. Now go listen some of that music and thanks for reading have a good one
Ya'know. Im starting to notice a bit of a theme going on when corporates start to get involved in game development. I cant quite put my finger on it though.
For people who claim that 3 months "wouldn't have saved this game" - I think you misunderstood. When your cook tells you "this beef needs to sit in the oven for 2 more hours" and you tell them "you have one hour" don't be surprised it's both raw and burned when they do the only thing that they have left and that is to up the heat and hope for the best. The developers weren't messing up and asked for 3 more months and were denied that. They were told they have the time they need. They have already planned their production and were executing that plan. Then suddenly they were told "oops, you need to ship this game three months early lol". The 3 months weren't a denied time to "fix the game" - *it was promised time to finish it*. The last stretch of the development cycle is usually reserved for playtesting, balancing, bugfixing and optimization. And that time is incredibly important and could have absolutely changed how this game plays and got received. But because the were forced to ship early, they would not be able to ship at all if they didn't do some radical cuts, gutting the design in the process, resulting in a cake with missing layers and garnish that is both raw and burnt in a few places.
The idea of a directional movement based melee system paired with ranged weapons was a fundamentally awful idea. 3 more months wasn't going to save it.
Lack of enemies variety, the one reused boss and the obvious detached quality of the level design (you crawl through lots of vents for no good reason) were the only problems with the game. I like it as is but would have loved it with those issues resolved.
Presentation is 10/10. The graphics and mocap animation are S tier. Amazing tech demo for UE 4 with early UE 5 features. Shame about the level design and gameplay, though. Incredibly mid in those departments. Plus, the amount of vents you have to crawl through is straight up criminal.
The games industry isnt meant for the realm of publicly traded companies. It's an industry that is far too product and consumer focused. The whims and desires of someone who doesn't contribute anything to the creative process have no place there.
I was one of the people that bought it on day one and I was legit disappointed by how the dodge system worked and how there was always pods that shoot that skull tentacle at you. And I remember they did it a ton for jump scares. But when you go through 5 of them in a row, it lost its effectiveness. Now I wonder that the reason we had to deal with so many pod monsters was because of them cutting out other creatures. And would the dodge system be different other than just left and right?
To be honest, I could barely make it through 1/3 of the game before quitting, and I have zero doubts that the extra 3 months would not have changed my opinion. The game had serious foundational issues and simply was not fun to play in the least.
12:15 ok, that’s still the admins fault though?? Were they not prepared for the challenges of going public? If they wanted to maintain control and not have to deal with shareholders they shouldn’t have gone public, this changes nothing about the situation except adding specific context as to how higher ups fucked up
I know someone who worked with the studio on Callisto. He wasn't even on their team and I could see he was being burned out by the crazy expectations, pressure, and their pace/scheduling etc.
Callisto wasn’t bad… but my only complaint was the melee system was pretty garbage, and unfortunately a lot of the game revolved around it. The story was awesome, graphics superb, gunplay great. But I think the melee system and reliance on it killed the game for most people
I think this is an excuse for poor level and combat design. I played all of the game + expansion dlc. You just backpaddle the analog stick to dodge and the limited guns were generic. Pistol & Shotgun were the most viable and none of them were fun to slice and destroy the monster with like in Dead Space. Not to mention the over abundance of air vent crawling. Geeesh.
The one shot bosses tilted me pretty badly. That and the reoccuring oh you meet up with friend aaand instantly isolated again via comically ridiculous event.
This is why independent developers make substantially better games. Sure, the wait for certain games *cough cough Silksong cough* can be agonizing, but it's usually worth it.
This actually brings up some interesting nuance around crunch. Or at least, how we should look at crunch. Here is an example where we can see that the crunch was forced by the publisher, and even the head of the company was crunching against their will; they just have to put a positive spin on it at the time, because if they piss off the publisher and the game gets dropped entirely, then a lot of the time the dev company would die. Like, I think not enough people understand just how much most devs are riding the line of bankruptcy and are really just at the whims of whoever is holding the money. We like to pretend "Oh I'd be different, I'd stand up for what is right!" but when the choice is "crunch or tell everyone that no one has a job anymore" you start making some hard choices.
You know what, considering how much turmoil this studio went through, it makes me more impressed by the game. I played through it that January when it came out and I thought the combat was certainly a bit weird, but the atmosphere and graphics and sound in the dark on an OLED with headphones.... really spectacular. I definitely enjoyed it and would give it a solid 7/10.
Im No. 2 in a small engineering firm. We are expanding and growing relatively quick. One thing i notice -- the extra stress, working late, aworkign weekends is pretty much on me. Me and the owner made it he decision to expand fast. When I lose my shit because of thr stress, i just remind myself that i will profiting more from the growth than the others engineers. I'm believe that this is how it always should be... Its the leaders who should be first to feel the consequences of their decisions, both good and bad consequences.
I'm sorry, but a few things about the timeline here don't make a whole lot of sense to me? First off, Calisto Protocol wasn't a project of 12 or 15 months, as you claim at 2:16. It was a 3-year project. That's 36 months. So, with the earlier release we're talking 39 vs 36 months, not 15 vs 12. That's a completely different situation. Also, when you think you're 15 months from releasing a AAA game and you're _still_ sitting around "designing, come up with other ideas with some of the guys", something is already going wrong, sorry. At that point, you _should_ be deep in production phase already, not designing completely new things to put in the game. Oh... interesting side-note: The original announcement trailer from December 2020 already claims a release in 2022. Sure, the release may then have been moved to 2023 during development, but it's not as if the game was always planned to be released 2023. I'm not saying the issues he brought up didn't matter, but I am saying they were definitely not the only reasons Calisto Protocol ended up being another game with outstanding looks but pretty mediocre gameplay. Let's be honest: Visuals and sound were about the only outstanding aspects of the game, which is odd, considering Schofield brings up completely missing VFX and animation departments etc. as reasons for the state of the game. Sure, 3 months more would have helped even out some of the wrinkles, but you're not going to make a drastically different game because you have 3 more months. Sorry, but Calisto Protocol was a _very_ Dead Space "inspired" game with more focus on melee combat, but sadly missing an actually good melee combat system. On top of that, it got released two months before the Dead Space remake reached the market, as well, and I don't think it's too far-fetched to assume many people just waited to see how that one turned out and then just went with the better reviewed game.
Honestly even if they had 3 or 4 more months, while I think it would of been less buggy, I am rather doubtful it would of changed the end product to be much better. The game itself just felt like it was flawed design wise from the start. While I'm sure more could of been added beyond just simply bug fixes/touch ups, I'm just very doubtful it could of majorly shifted a mediocre at best game to be a great one.
The video had all the reasons and it makes sense. Massive turnover of staff, high sickness rates for extended periods and a reduced timeframe with no additional staff. Hiring people as devs isn't an overnight process people have months of notice to work before starting
@@Jabarri74 Still, the over-all design choice in itself I just feel was never going to work. Even with more enemy types I don't think the way combat was designed was ever going to work and be compelling. From what was discussed nothing seems to imply there was any idea of making combat work differently then how it came out working.
The most typical thing that happened to me time and time again: - manager asks me for work estimation - I give him an answer - let's say "6 months" - he sets the deadline 6 months from today - 3 months later he gives me and still expects me to make this deadline, because I "said it will be done by then" It's the same in every company I ever worked for. It's like I just never met an actual manager - you know - someone who actually understands the difference between work estimation and deadline
Okay, but bugs weren't the biggest issue. The thing that killed the game was poor design. The combat was boring and no amount of development time was going to help when the initial idea was bad.
I recently played this on GamePass. Granted it's a couple of years (and patches) later, but the game did not feel incomplete or had technical issues. It wasn't great and, for me, the reasons were more about direction rather than not having enough time or resources to implement that direction. I feel it aped a lot from Dead Space, even down to the basic story, leaned a lot on overdone horror tropes and scares and most importantly, had shitloads of sections where you're just slowly and barely interactively crawling through some vent or tight space. A lot of people seem to think these sections were hidden loading screen, but the vast amount, placement and sometimes back-and-forth, makes me believe it was an artistic choice, supposedly to help with immersion. I've seen Scofield in a couple of interviews an he seems like a passionate guy and Dead Space was fucking amazing. Too bad he didn't get a break with this.
Gamers love to defend devs and hate on publishers: 1. Do you really think 3 months of additional work would suddenly make a 5/10 game a GOTY candidate? 2. Publisher invested 150m USD in new IP and wanted to release it earlier due to keep the cost as close as it was in the budget - you can clearly see that pov matters. Korea was not having Covid issues, USA - had. You're publisher, and suddenly you're getting information that large % of people that you're hired is either sick and completely out of office or they're going elsewhere. One of the key decisions corporations are making - they're trying to release asap to squeeze as much money as they lost. 3. I love Glen but obviously he was not able to fullfill the role of CEO (he was a game director earlier?). He obviously had a lot on his head, however in my opinion he approved a lot of bad design decisions thinking it would work: - linear and generic level design (10+ years earlier he participated in the game that till this day has incredible level design) - extremely cheap jump scares (those heads that pop up suddenly and you're cutting it with the knife) - again look what he did 10+ years ago with DS - superbasic plot that you've lived through in countless games (it seems that they're hired students to prepare the plot, twists, background and all of the audio collectibles) - he approved the worst decision in the game - melee combat. Gameplay wise it was decent but it completely ruined the atmosphere, mood and sense of horror. Instead of keeping the enemies at the distance and avoid them at all costs halfway through the game you were just spamming left and right in order to defeat the enemies 4. They focused on incredible technology - you can see that they had a lot of talented people ignoring everything else that lead to game being medicore. I was the first one that purchased the game, loved the graphics, atmosphere during some sections (ex. during the snow - superb!), loved the idea that we've got AAA title that mimics my favourite Dead Space game. But I strongly believe that adding few more bossess instead of one, making linear levels slightly less linear and working on varied jump scares/atmosphere would't save this game. The game had bad design decisions that were made years before release (melee combat, low replayability, supersimplified level desing - corridor, hallway, fight, bigger room, repeat) and these things ultimatelly made the game average at best.
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Yeah u want us to support you a defender of crunch and worker abuse , no thx
*tons
Not tonnes
Hate when creators beg for subs and likes.
Callisto protocol weak script, no charismatic characters, even a worst final boss, so time was not the only problem.
Have you thought about that? That your boss is the algorithm is a little dystopian.
A suit and a spreadsheet can destroy anything
Its also how it funds almost anything. Delicate balance as the Ferrengi would know
@@dretchlord873Weren't the Ferrengi just "late stage capitalism at its worst" personified?
It only took a spreadsheet for Helldivers 2. They better put the numbers away and start pulling their heads out of each other's rears.
@@ThatReplyGuy That was possibly the intention. Of course, "late capitalism" is Marxist theory with all attendant hypocrisy.
Its not the suit, its the person wearing it.
Execs: "Crunch or you lose your job"
Devs: **crunch to finish the project**
Execs: "You lose your job"
"Finish" 😂
Stop crying
@@Cha4k except gamers can't make direct demands in that way outside of standard supply & demand, and we NEVER demand crunch coz it's bad for everybody and often guarantees a worse product. Customers have expectations and they're publicly known, your goal is to make a satisfying/attractive product that meets or exceeds them and the only constraints on how that's achieved is determined by the company.
At best you can rephrase it to _"Make us a good, complete game..."_ followed by *_crunch to ship an incomplete game_* . Plenty of successful games around to reference.
If threats like that are being made you are already in decline and you should begin looking for a new job and leave as soon as you find one.
@@Cha4k there is no way you are gonna try and blame the customer when the devs and executives fuck up.
It seems going public is the worst thing a gaming company can do.
Replace A with any. Leveraged buyouts also says hi. Pay nothing buy a company, debt for buying company transfers to said company bankers bank the interest company has to operate a shady business model to even hope to pay the debt off
Going public is a deal with the devil in every industry.
absolutely.
That or letting themselves getting bought a publisher.
more like any companies. the consumers change from pleasing commonfolk with good product to making as much as money to investors. this is why stuff getting worse
1. Force launch before it's ready
2. The game fails to meet sales goals
3. Blame devs and fire half the team
4. Profit?
"A late game is just late. Suck is forever"
lack of profit
I don't think Callisto Protocol went out too early. Game is garbage on a fundamental, core level. They would need another 4 years and redo it from scratch.
The worst decisions for a product normally come from people who don't build or use it... and unfortunately those people are normally your boss.
Truer words have not been spoken.
My friend is a project manager at a major game development studio, the devs to director are passionate about the game. The issue is that almost always that it is the execs, VPs who dont even play games are the ones who ruin everything, these people demand that draft sections or working versions of the early game are submitted to them and their analytics team to identify "monetisation opportunities", or concept designs need committee approval from people who only care about ticking boxes etc, there are people who can go above the director of the game and change things based on how they feel the game should be
Maybe thats why indie games, more often than not, are rly good despite being technically inferior to triple A
That's why the best ones are their own boss or bosses that prioritizes a finished product.
And sometimes it's an aggressive micro-minority.
"How The Callisto Protocol's Gameplay Was Perfected Months Before Release"
Man, I'll never forget this headline.
+1, Great moments in game journalism
Pretty sure they never posted any videos after that one too
To be fair, this sounds like vertical slice analysis. They could have a demo where the devs perfectly implement something with different mechanics, monsters and weapons that is really flashy and fun but not be able to make it work live in game on the timeline. Sure they could get 80-85% of it in but without the whole package its just not the same.
There's a reasonable devil's advocate argument to be had.
Imagine my suprise that the publisher going public forced a bunch of bad decisions to happen in order to give the appearance of being profitable. I keep seeing an ongoging trend of publishers and developers going public KILLS ALL QUALITY AND FUN IN A GAME! You'd figure that an executive would figure it out at some point. Oh well, let's keep seeing the collapse of large public publishers and devs, and the gaming industry should correct itself.
its all a gamble at the end of the day. You go public and you could rake in millions and millions and be set forever and make so much more money, or you can fail and loose everything, but usually that means the top of management leave with lots of money, and everyone else in the company suffers.
Not accounting for the ego and narcissism. Why should I care about something not relevant to me? Why should I care about anything past very short term gains? Why why are notions they don't care about. Plus then there is the I can do better. It won't happen to me nonsense if they just so happened to be aware
The corpos don't actually care what they destroy as long as they have their golden parachute. Corpos aren't held accountable
Cause there's big money to be made in going public, if you can avoid crashing and burning (or can cash out and bail before the crash.) If you're in a leadership position, at least. There's basically no benefit for the actual workers.
There's a reason why artists aren't publicly tradeable on the stock market. You aren't going to get art if you have to answer and change your art for the whims of people in suits.
I watched my buddy get absolutly destroyed by a robot in that game then it just casually said ‘have a united day.’ And sauntered off with his guts on its foot. Metal as fuck
Executives constantly taking the pizza out of the oven before it's done because of hungry shareholders has become a real problem.
And then bringing it back to the pizza development team, hysterically screaming "THIS ISN"T GOOD!! FIX IT! PUT 20 PEOPLE ON THE JOB OF PUSHING THE "ON" BUTTON!!!"
Pizza still not well-cooked. Execs screaming:
STILL NOT GOOD! PUT 24-HOUR SHIFT ON SETTING THE TEMPERATURE!!
Still a bad pizza. (Shareholders sell out at IPO price.)
"Ship it."
"But we've got the pepperoni fix to implement!
"Ship it."
"We've got the cheese ratio perfected..."
"Ship it."
It's a problem everywhere. Execubots, VC money and public trading are a goddam pox on ever building anything good.
@@Koop415 amen
You’d think shareholders would learn this too, and encourage patience, but geez
Nope! Too much greed!
Wallstreet is destroying not just the gaming industry.
@@Koop415 They do it because we keep buying it for them.
My uncle worked on this. He was excitedly sharing his process for years then just clammed up when this dropped and won't talk about it. I know he's peeved. He helped design the engine and skins. His work and the amount of effort put in by the entire team cannot be understated. I was so sad when they had to speed it up, my cousins started complaining about never seeing him. I frankly haven't seen him in person in years. Would have been nice if they'd set reasonable dev time.
Man that makes me so sad, you can tell a lot of passion was put into the game despite its shortcomings. I love the skins, and the visuals are incredible, so thank your uncle for me. :)
@@sleepysartorialist this game is actually amazing and I enjoyed it better than dead space the story intrigued me more and I had more fun with the combat and the graphics were better the only thing that I disliked was the ending
@@Drunkpunch33 I mean that's great but I'm not gonna tell him that. As I stated, I haven't heard from him in years. Dev crunch impacts people in the real world. This comment does nothing to alleviate that, I'm afraid.
Damn. This was a really sad story. Shareholder capitalism is so merciless!
Get why Valve never wants to go Public - Who needs this $hit!
A one off cash grab to the bankers who will then ruin the company
The managers also screwed the shareholders. The game made less profit than it should have, with long-term negative consequences. The problem isn't "shareholder capitalism", it's "corrupt middle management". The devs, players, and shareholders all want to see a great game that does well. The middle managers want to advance their own career by the shortest, easiest path, with 0 concern for anyone else (and once the founder of a company leaves, the execs are just the most evil middle managers).
@@SkorjOlafsenWhy mention just middle management? It seems like senior management is also responsible here.
@@Maelstromme they need a narrative that they can tell themselves so they can continue to believe this isn't an issue with capitalism itself
@@Maelstromme Sure, which is why it matters so much whether the founder is still leading the company. Founders usually have a long-term view of profit, or they fail before going public. But once they leave, it's "middle managers" all the way down.
I still enjoyed Callisto Protocol. It’s a shame, it could’ve been a real masterpiece.
the comat sucks and to many insta death quick time events
Don't understand how; that game was one of the most miserable slogs I had subjected myself to...very disappointing for a "spiritual successor".
I enjoyed too. Not the best game but i liked the performances. The combat gameplay not much. I hate the expansion because the twist end. I suppose that closed any chance to Josh Duhamel appear in a sequel. If this even happen
there was absolute nothing to be enjoyed for. I just fought through because i wanted to know how more bad it could get..and just 2 enemy types...or you could say just one, a zombie....wow😂🎉...
@@yabitoits pro......💩 so men(esp wt men) get fed over bjt wanna save the strong indep. woman. the story was so dumb and nonsensical...and the dlc i watched via yt...so they even topped the bad maingame...rediculous💩.....
The graphics in Callisto Protocol are so gorgeous. It’s a shame that the gameplay is mediocre. The dodge mechanic makes even the hardest difficulty setting super easy.
dodge mechanic seemed a lot more skill based previously from some previews, i guess ign reviewers got pissy at how hard it was and they then make a slight change which ruined the entire system.
@@NukeNuke22 No, it wasn't more skill based, it was just that enemies used to attack more than one at a time. The problem was that the dodge just didn't work at all in that scenario, and so the game broke - if two enemies appeared, the player was nearly guaranteed to die.
Basically, they would've needed entirely new features to supplement it.
It’s impossible to die to a boss in this game gameplay is so bad
@@SyndicateOperativeThis is exactly what caused me to stop playing the game. Too often I’d be locked in combat with one dude then I’d get sucker punched by another enemy and couldn’t do anything about it.
looking good means nothing today, anyone can make a good looking realistic game, few can actually make good gameplay, Callisto failed on the latter in a fundamental level, they weren't gonna salvage it
Executive be like:
- Put the terrible melee system in, Glen.
- Ignore anyone who critisizes you, Glen.
- The story must be dull Glen, c'mon do it!
How the story progresses and the depth of the melee combat depends on the development time, genius.
@@bud389 Combat like that would be trash regardless how much time and money are thrown at it.
Story is impotent from the start, what are 3 extra monts gonna do about it?
@@KosmataBradva The total development time for the game was supposed to be 15 months, and that was cut back by 3 months, so they just lost 20% of their development time. You do the math.
Yeah to he fair if the dev time was initially 15 months. Thats not even that long. So clearly they'd get quite a bit of development done in just a few months, so those 3 months could hace made thevgame so much better.
There were some amazing aspects of this game that just didn't get fleshed out. Id bet it wouldnt have made it GOtY, but its likely wouldve scored and sold better woth that extra time.
Its such a shame because Calisto protocol looks amazing and has very immersive atmosphere. So much untapped potential.
It may look amazing but it doesn't play that great to be honest.
Finished the game a month and a half ago.
@@andresilvasophisma yep, I agree.
Yeah, Calisto Protocol is widely regarded as the spiritual successor to Dead Space. Shame this happened.
@@andresilvasophismaalmost like they needed more time to work on it, like the whole point of this video 🤔🤔🤔
I think it could have been a pretty good game! Like a 8-8,5/10. Maybe even higher.
Callisto Protocol needed 3 more YEARS, not 3 months
This game needed a complete overhaul to it's combat. That update they did to "fix" the reviewers' complaints, ended up ruining the best thing the game had.
yup. 3 more months wouldnt have completely reworked its awful melee combat. they decided on the wrong path long long ago
remember seeing a preview from ign before release, and they brought up how difficult the combat was to learn and master. release comes, and the combat is the easiest in any survival horror.
@@RugsterClapsit might have been a placeholder system,interviews and behind the scenes make it seem so
@@RugsterClaps idk, herpahs dodging via alternating A/D on keyboard feels stupid, but on gamepad it feels more natural, and I like that much more over typical dodge rolls in other games. Considering all the circumstances they did amazing job with this game.
You're saying the gameplay was good before the patch? Curious what you mean exactly
As someone who played Calisto I will clearly say that it needed way more than 3 months to be a good game.
i have redeemed the free copy forom Epic Game Store and i not try to play, my plan is go to the end of some games that be finished before play Callisto Protocol.
Idk I thoroughly enjoyed the game but I think they really needed to fine tune things to compete with deadspace
I think 3 months was the bare minimum. The performance issues etc could've definitely been solved, and have been solved within 3 months after the game released. The cut content, might have made it in 3 months. Would both of that be enough to make it a better game? I think so. A bad first impression for games is a huge deal, it would at least not go through a bad release.
I recently finished the game and loved it. I had no context prior to playing it, nor have I played Dead Space so I went in with the mindset of “This looks cool, it’s free, and it’s October.” I’m a fan of graphics and I enjoyed the story. I’m sure there are things that could be better, but for what it is, I would definitely recommend it. Interesting to hear about the launch and behind the scenes, and I’m glad I didn’t know much about it prior to playing the game. I hope they can continue to create games with amazing graphics and story.
@@LilPou Yeah I agree the game is in a good state now, but sadly it wasn't as good at launch. I still enjoyed it even back then!
Well if he did then executives would have looked to remove him and get a replacement that would do what executives wanted.
Then it would've been pretty obvious what was happening and people could've cancel their preorders, helping spread the situation. It isnt a "damn if you do, damn if you don't" type of situation.
But that's exactly it, the executives always win
@@LegalPhantom People don't read articles or watch tweets about the gaming industry
I thought the point was that he *did* do what they wanted?
@@shib5267 Basically this. Would surprise me if even 1% of people who play games bother with gaming news, at least in a deeper level than just commercials.
@4:00 - You can't make a baby in less than 9 months, no matter how many women you put on the task.
@JesseHouston but if you have many women on your "task," you'll have a ball tryin'.
It's a sympathetic story and I'm sure it was rough. But I'll be real, any game with THAT combat sysem was always going to be bad, 100%, no matter how much time or budget you invest. Bad design ideas kill a project from the ground up.
I don't understand why people don't like the combat system. I thought it was pretty dope.
Hot take: The Combat System is not Bad, people just need(in Dark Souls terms) Get Gud.
@@madnox9538I’ll be the compromiser here and like what was mentioned before, they lost aprox 20% of the planned dev time they thought they had. This resulted in the combat system we got, which lacked refinement for enough of the audience to enjoy it 🤷🏻♂️
Still results in a bad experience for all parties…except the c-suites, as usual
@@madnox9538 No, it truly awful. You don't need to get gud at a combat system that plays itself.
Lol nah this combat is the worst I have ever played. It lacks control and its not even satisfying.
the moral of the story is tencent is not good for gaming. we know they're calling the shots here.
Committee made games usually underwhelm.
tencent literally has nothing to do with this game.
Dead space 2 is one of the best games ive ever played
1/2 are 2 of mine.
I do agree, It was the first horror game i played and it was worth it.
@@AC-ut3nkthat’s why. It was your first horror game that’s why. Horror games existed years prior and some classics were born
@@GeorgeZimmermen dead space 1 and 2 are considered some of those classics and by your own logic those classics you were referring to would only have been liked because they were earlier and not that they were better.
soma has bestt story i have seen u can try that to
Doesn’t matter the fundamental game mechanics sucked
What's really crappy is any notion that Krafton executives were giving to studio heads that they can put whatever they want into the game, it'll release next year anyway, and then later say that they're cutting development time short. This resulted in an unintended (or intended?) crunch - classic video game industry.
The reality is the game wasn't very good, and likely would not have seen much improvement if given more time. Sometimes the suits know what's best for business. Sucks it didn't work out but they had to cut their losses.
@@Jim-yh5uj yeah no, the only problem with the game is gameplay that would've been fixed with those 3 months and a half, atmosphere and story wise it's a good game...
@TheAdypoker 3 months wouldn't have done anything for a this game far along. Unfortunately Striking Distance released a bad game that looks pretty.
@@brendanlucero8585 Let me ask you this, you start making a game, and then randomly someone tells you you're going to have 3 and a half months less of development time, what do you think the team is going to do?
They're going to compromise on decisions that will finish the game faster, the combat is probably one of those decisions...
Personally I like the game, not so much the combat, but I like it overall...
@@TheAdypoker I totally get that they were wronged in that way, but Combat should've been the absolute last thing they should've compromised on. I personally think it shouldn't have been on the cutting board to begin with.
Also if they were that pressed for time, they should've quit being so focused on graphics because even though the game is gorgeous, the graphics are the least important aspect of a game in my opinion.
I say this because I remember seeing an interview with Glen Schofield when he was "at work" in the studio so to speak and he was talking about this section of the game where you could peer outside of the ship and see the mountains of the moon and he was showing off how awesome it looked, as well as the in room lamp.
While I appreciate that level of attention to detail, it spoke of misplaced priorities. Gameplay and combat is king, and frankly they did a poor job of making a survival horror if your character can go fistycuffs with said horror aspect.
The Necromorphs in Deadspace were an all consuming cosmic threat that felt real and the pressure was there to keep your distance.
3 months would not have saved the Callisto protocol, it's problems were far more fundamental
Doesn't feel like 3 months would have changed those core design choices.
Definitely not. Though I would imagine it could have helped with making upgrades cost less, make ranged weapons more effective, adjust enemy placement, and other balance fixes.
@alloounou6900 I remember the unavoidable head in an egg enemies. Always placed in places you couldn't shoot them, so it was just unavoidable damage
I didn’t like the fact you were forced to to use melee and the melee combat system.
Also man hours though right. Three months could be equivalent to a man year of effort depending on team size etc.
@@alloounou6900 These things are balance problems, it's just how survival horror games are. Perhaps the genre is not for you.
One of the biggest problems with business structure, is executives don’t get rewarded for the company’s long-term health, at least not nearly as much as a “killer quarter.” Compounding this problem is that executive themselves or mercenary. They make a bunch of short term gain, long-term loss bad decisions. Then when things get too hot, they go somewhere else. Most of the time for bigger title and salary. This is impossible, but if somehow you could make a big portion of salary and bonuses be tied to performance over 3 to 5 years, I bet it would at least get these guys to slow down and think a little harder about that new initiative to make people, time their bathroom breaks or count out ketchup packets at the drive though.
Now Callisto Protocol being free on Epic store might be the last nail in the coffin
Edit : The amount of people who can't comprehen the meaning are so absurd.
Seeing it there hit really hard. Like, how did it get so bad?
To be fair, there have been a lot of great games free on EGS. TMNT Shredder's Revenge is awesome, it was free on EGS not too long ago and it came out the same year. Different class of game for sure, but it's just one example of many.
Another epic stores victory
Cheap prices with discounts and a free game every Thursday
They truly are an amazing game store. I've played so many games I never would've have if not for them or bought dlcs that are cheaper than Sony's store
I got Remnant 1 free from there, I preordered 2 and all the DLC. Even GTA5 has been given out free. I don't see the link
Thanks for the news, downloading it right now
I spent many years working as a project manager in the tech industry. We have something we like to call the Triple Constraint: Scope, Time and Cost.
It is a triangle and the premise behind the concept is that if you adjust one side of the triangle, the other sides also have to change.
By shifting the time in this circumstance, scope invariably was sacrificed and it explains why the end result lacked a lot of the functionality that was expected.
Was combat design the problem. Dead space fans expected a survival shooter horror. Not some melee dodge fest
Besides annoying melee combat I actually enjoyed this game. Good narrative and pacing and awesome atmosphere.
dodging and dipping in the combat design kinda ruins the horror aspect when you start throwing hands. however if it's gonna lean into that, let the protag's technique improve over time instead of overcommitted flaily swinging the whole game
Agree. Melee in deadspace was a last ditch effort since the necromorphs completely outclassed you physically. It was tense if you got cornered.
The melee dodge fest was annoying and plain "not fun" If it was a "once in awhile" moment then that would have been fine.. but being a core gameplay loop fighting monsters was just ... not fun. I put the game down 1/2 way through it as it felt like a real slog to play. Bought the Dead Space remake later on and that was really fun to play.
No combat was not a design problem. Do you know what hardened criminals do in prison? They work out in order to defend themselves in a fight. When they turn into monsters, they're going to rip you a new one. It makes total sense but thats just me.
I don’t think losing 20% of the dev time makes up for how bad the combat is, game left a lot to be desired.
Exactly
Yes could not have said it any other way😉👍
And they now own Hi Fi rush and tango gameworks right?
Gee, man...
Yeah, I've instantly gone from ecstatic that Tango was picked up again to really worried about the devs' future.
not tango only the game
@@johansvensson833not the game, tango gameworks
@@johansvensson833 Pretty sure they own Tango
I have zero hope if there’s another Evil Within game now
This feels like shifting the blame a bit. Glen had more control over Callisto Protocol than he ever had over Dead Space under the thumb of EA... We know that based upon how the sequels unfolded and how they moved farther and farther away from Glen's initial image of Dead Space.
Furthermore, THE BULK of Callisto Protocol's largest issues could not have come at the hands of corporate meddling, as the biggest issues are FOUNDATIONAL. The game was literally designed from the ground up around a few flawed and unfulfilling mechanics/systems. These would have been present since the design-doc phase of pre-production, and in early builds of the game... Before Striking Distance started getting outside funding.
That's not the fault of the publisher, because publishers aren't part of the pre-production and design doc process. This was Glen and his crew sitting around in a room coming up with ideas, systems, and mechanics... Some of which fell flat, and were ever-present.
Now had the game been piece-mealed with finished content being held for a season pass, had the game ended abruptly because the publisher wasn't issuing them any additional funds to complete development, or had the issue been a general lack of polish, I could understand that being because the publisher cut corners and relegated the polish-phase to post-launch patches.
But none of those were REALLY the issue. Even if everything was functioning perfectly, the game would still fall short of the premise and potential.
We're seeing too many directors shift the blame for "failed" projects onto the higher ups, when ultimately they are the head of the project and should be able to create within the time and financial confines of their corporate overlords... Corporate oversight and meddling is part of almost every double and triple-A project. And with Glen being an OG who's had something they conceived be stripped from them and changed into something they never wanted, he should have had the experience to prevent that from happening this time around, if we're going to go with his version of events. So I still wouldn't say he's not primarily responsible for how things turned out.
This is like how now every time a movie fails the director says its because the film they wanted was left on the editing room floor, and a "directors cut" would save the film...
When if all you filmed was dookie, you can't edit that to look like diamonds... And polishing a turd doesn't make it something new, it's just a shiny piece of poop.
And ultimately, if Glen Scolfield and Striking Distance couldn't make it happen with Callisto Protocol, they are in need of new management, because it only gets worse from here. So while I won't doubt that corporate meddling played a factor in why Callisto Protocol turned out how it did, it's disingenuous to act like the game's foundational shortcomings it's why it failed to catch hold.
And the problem with a game that in foundationally flawed is that no amount of time is going to fix that.
So if the game had another year in the oven, that's just another million copies it would have needed to sell to recoup the additional development costs.
And if a publisher determines that no amount of money or time would make a product turn a significantly larger profit or better product, then they cannot justify extending the dev cycle and issuing more funds.
At that point they'll just put it out and let it make what its going to make.
i knew the game was bad at the start when an in-game pop up said:
Move the L stick left and right to dodge attacks. _There are no input windows, just move the stick and Jacob will dodge._ 🤨
I was "asked" to do some crush once in my previous job. To come to work on a Saturday, without any pay but we'll get to enjoy a cheerful happy spirit and (maybe) one delicious pizza to share together. thanks no. they also pressured us all the time that if we performe well and finish work early there will be a huge bonus for us. turned out : 1. the company fired 90% of the people after 3 months and 2. the bonus was mostly for the managers, CEO... meanwhile, we who worked hard, we got nothing but a "end of employment" certificate.
3 Months wouldn't have fixed the flawed by design combat mechanics
The combat is fine you haven't played the game in depth, just about everyone shitting on it haven't. You just expected dead space 4 and got mad when that wasn't it.
@@mlfc1950every advertisement for this game is "they are not nonames, they are Dead Space creators". Interesting, why everyone expected Dead Space game?
@@mlfc1950 that is garbage. I played it start to finish and the lock on melee system was an absolute joke. This was Glens decision and not Krafton and it is on him.
@@nikopro6462 you are wrong
@@RakNeubienniy and you are wrong.
I played Callisto Protocol a couple months back and loved it. Great story, cinematics, weapons and environments. The gameplay did get a bit repetitive but still enjoyed it.
Executive meddling or not, one thing I've learned from Callisto protocol, mighty number nine, that new StarCraft clone, and countless other examples, is to never trust a developer of a famous game saying "execs ruined my last franchise, so now I'm going to try and do the same thing again but make it good."
It just doesn't seem to work when a studio's main selling point is this exact idea. I think conflicts require two parties. And the world is rarely as one sided as a bereaved party tries to sell it.
Exactly my thoughts. Too many either studios or ex studio teams fumbling hard. A lot of the teams broke up and don't exist anymore.
@@heideknight9122 Yeah, while it's true that director is important, so does the rest of the team
I think glen was a flash in the pan
lol
"execs ruined my last franchise, so now I'm going to try and do the same thing again but make it good. What could possibly go wrong?" fify
8:50 "Do not burn a candle at both ends, as it leads to the life of a hairdresser." - Rolf
One thing I think that some people, who've never been through a really rough crunch situation, don't understand is that when you are looking from the outside in and you're like "ya, man I would really relish the chance to take on a difficult challenge like that" - you are speaking from a perspective of being "fresh", meaning that you are in a good mental space and rested and full of energy and creativity. But once you get about half way through, you are burned out, in a rough mental space with a poor outlook on things and likely sleep deprived and drained of all energy and suddenly it doesn't look like "this great challenge/opportunity" anymore. It just looks like a forlorn, bottomless pit of despair and regret. You have to keep that in mind, when saying things like, "I think a big part of me would really love the chance to tackle something like this crunch" ...
I have seen things that indicate a fair sized chunk of devs don't have the fortitude to cope with ANY sort of crunch.
the attitude of jumping companies every 3 years at most is just as worrying.
I get why they do it from an employee standpoint given how the big publishers have been, but it is a horrible attitude in regards to the end product.
@@scout360pyroz To be fair the reverse is just game is done. Lets lay off half the staff to make the numbers look better. Companies stopped being loyal to their employees and only saw them as an expense/return value on their spreadsheets. So why shouldn't people just move whenever it is beneficial for them to do so? Especially in a company that crunches. I work in an adjacent field with a similar turn over rate. And let me tell you if my company started crunching for more than a week or two at most I would be out of there. Because my physical and mental health are worth more to me than the "pride" of working through crunch. We owe the higher ups nothing.
@@TheArmnorn Sure, I get that, as I said.
Its just horrifying on more levels than just what the company does.
You must likely live in the first world to be able to work as a gamedev to begin with. "Crunch" is just a stupid leftist rebranding of "overtime" and is common and justifiable in virtually any industry you can come up with because these things are not exact sciences and sometimes workload just gets concentrated. It's not a real problem. Imagine if a doctor had to bitch and complain about it because "omg le crunch is killing me :((((" Point is, it's not made with the intention to explore the worker but the left is incapable of viewing that as it contradicts their dogmatic "opressors vs opressed" world view. And finally if you're feeling "burnout" (another bullshit meaningless word) this is just a reality of life. It's impossible to avoid struggle, it's reality of nature and for as long as you live this will remain. If you're feeling "le burnout" is so bad you can always be homeless and starve if you think that's a better alternative.
When your bucket’s already 90% full and filling, and someone opens the floodgates, and tends to cause everything to overflow. Everything looks easy when your bucket it as 25%
Love the structure of the video as well, very well put together & well spoken !
That's his job. He is to blame as well.
"Now that there is not stakes on the tables at all anymore...NOW I have the courage to finally say I would really have loved to fight against Evil...too bad It's useless now...eh ??"
Unfortunately we live in an era where one bad word or statement by big media outlets, including big UA-camrs towards a product can have an impact on a game studio or movie studio. Callisto protocol is a game that was never given a chance at all to succeed. Right from the get go it was compared to dead space, and was bashed because ignorant fanboys were expecting a carbon copy of dead space. And seeing how EA the company that destroyed the franchise 12 years ago decided to release a remaster against Callisto around the same month didn’t help either. It’s unfortunate that the game and its creators weren’t given the opportunity to make a comeback and separate itself from dead space, cuz Callisto protocol is a huge underrated game that many (now that they’re actually getting a chance to play it for free) are going to regret bashing the game from existence, just because they decided to join the bandwagon of hate.
@@johnsilver6316I was very excited about this game and watched many interviews and deep dives on it where schofield himself was comparing it to dead space and calling it a spiritual successor because dead space was his baby dude, if he didn’t want that to happen he could’ve done more to separate it from potential comparisons even if yeah dead space fanboys would’ve done it anyway. A good game is a good game and there are good bones in Callisto for sure but it’s just not good, maybe he should’ve just made dead space 4 with a different name instead🤷♂️.
@@yuro5833 yes and no. when it comes to big money and tight schedules, you resort to doing what you already know. there is no room for exploration in development, that has to be done before you even pitch it
@@johnsilver6316We didn't get to this point, because gamers "are too critical".
Man I want to be sympathetic to the devs, but you can't expect me to believe this game could have been fine with a few more months. It's combat mechanics needed a complete overhaul.
Maybe the overhaul was half-way there, but they had to drop it and ship the placeholder instead?
No offense but nobody here is asking the real question that needs to be answered which is how did this game end up costing $150 million? There is absolutely no reason for a linear single-player to cost $150 million. That is a massive hurdle to clear for any linear single-player game in general, let alone the first entry in a new, unproven IP. Everyone needs to take a couple steps back from the buzzwords of "crunch" and "corporate greed" and actually determine where the economics of game development are going off the rails. Hot take incoming but given the rampant fundamental design and mechanics issues with Callisto Protocol I would argue that even if they had been allowed to stick to their original deadline I do not believe for a second that the finished product would've been sufficiently improved from what we got. The videogame industry has been enduring for a good while now the same overbudgeting and scale-bloat that has consumed the film & tv industries over the past 20 years. There's too much money being pumped into too many bloated projects that never stick the landing no matter how much extra dev time you get or how many times you reboot. Skull and Bones, anyone?
Very well said.
The short answer is: visual fidelity.
The game was praised before release for how amazing it looked.
Unfortunately visual fidelity is the absolute top priority in AAA game development. And with the goalpost shifting each year the budgets get out of control.
There's a great presentation that a guy from Ubisoft did on GIC (Game industry Conference) titled "The Case Against Fidelity" which hits this nail on the head.
The AAA industry is unsustainable, and will collapse if this doesn't change. It is collapsing already with all the studios getting shut down after one unfinished game gets forcefully pushed out the door because most of the budget goes to asset creation, and starves everything else fro resources. No time or money is left for playtesting, quality assurance, or even finishing your design.
The game must push the visual fidelity envelope or it will be ignored by the general public. Everything else is secondary.
It's the cult of the screenshot - screenshots sell games. That's also why all the rendering tech is so bad in motion. It works for screenshots and slow "cinematic" camera movement, but falls apart due to TAA smearing in motion. Because the alternative is super grainy shadows, relfections, hair, clouds, foliage, smoke, volumetrics etc. Also there's no time and budget left for decent optimization so games ship with shader compilation issues and other performance problems that don't show up on screenshots or in "gameplay" videos that were captured in realtime, at low settings, but then re-rendered frame after frame from a game replay at max settings for the trailers.
It's because hiring big name actors for the cast inflated the budget
@@unfa00 Precisely and that's my point. Cutting edge graphics is a trap that has set up so many games for failure over the last 20 years in particular and yet there are tons of gamers out there that pointlessly obsess over it in a bid to self-validate their hardware purchases which only fuels the studios'/publishers' misconception that graphical fidelity = financial success, which it doesn't. Good art design will beat out ultra-max settings any day of the week. No level of graphical fidelity justifies $150 million for a linear single-player game. Heck that price tag is difficult to justify in most games in general.
@@elibrainless90 No offense to the cast but with the names they hired and the industry's longstanding practice of underpaying voice actors I severely doubt that accounted for that much of the budget. They very clearly threw the lion's share of their money at the visuals as they infamously marketed the game as "AAAA" to no effect.
I remember working for a firm that was looking for a takeover. To get the deal that was acceptable to shareholders, unions and bidders they basically shredded quality and pished staff as hard as physically possible for 18 months. When the takeover went through for probably 3x the real value of the company, this got worse, as the new owners slowly realised how bad a deal they'd actually got. Steadily, this has meant fewer customers paying more money for an inferior service.
Is any info published about that case?
Yeah the level of copium here is fierce. 3 months would not fix level design, story, the entire combat model and enemy variety. The game was a flop, maybe Krafton realized it and just wanted to push out the turd as fast as possible cutting down the dev time to the barest time needed, instead of investing in a fix. Not saying that's a good path just trying to see reasons from Krafton. Honestly this feels like Schofield is trying to just escape all responsibility for a bad game, also his next game is going to be announced soon so no surprise a positive PR fluff is coming out now. Callisto had bad bones, deep bad bones that where not fixable without massive time and money being sunk into a compete rebuild. Regardless if Krafton was amazing to work under or an evil public menace three months was never going to save this game.
Let's not forget that most of the game's budget was spent on *ACTORS* and time was spent on the death screen
He is a bad director through and through
@@amspook Is the part about the actors confirmed anywhere?
Exactly, nothing is saving a game where you hold left, hold right for the entire game! The gameplay was the most damaging part of that game. The whole 'don't blame the developers it was our investors' is used as a escape for criticism way too many times. Bellular is 100% bias here
Yeah, I expected more if he was blaming the shortened dev time. Losing 3 months would have cost them time to bug fix, and it did ship buggy. It wouldn't have affected story or fundamental gameplay that has to be decided early.
You get it. This guy is trying to pass the blame for a turd on his resume when he's the leader standing at ground zero. The leader who actually BOASTED about crunch on social media. But now somehow crunch was someone else's fault.
This is an excellent video man, you deserve more likes and subs. Seriously.
The game was conceptually unsound. I can't imagine an extra four months making enough of a difference.
I agree. The other side of this is New Vegas. Conceptually amazing but managers didn’t give themselves enough time. But even that unfinished game is hailed as amazing.
The what-if here would not be asking what they would do with an additional 4 months. It would really be about asking what did they have to change starting Jan 22 in order to try and hit the Dec 22 launch date.
Well said
That's what I was thinking as well. Not only that, but the enemies lacked any sort of creativity, especially when compared to Dead Space, and the story was just bad. I don't really think this could've been fixed with anything but a complete remake.
It's not about the additional time. It's about the constant shifts in direction forced on the design team over the course of the entire build.
Seriously guys. Think shit through before you speak. Helps a lot in not looking stupid.
It really did feel like a well expertly prepared corpse.
They look so lifelike and realistic in the casket at the funeral, but they're obviously still 100% dead on the inside.
Didn't get a job @ riot a long long time ago for telling the junior producers I would push back if asked to ship unfinished work, I worked on a plethora of unfinished and even shipped games, I consider all of them unfinished. I don't mind having to wrap things up and finish when that is the right thing to do, getting corporate yes men to see that is damn near impossible. This guy probably would have been removed from the project if he said he wasn't going to ship which would hurt a lot more imo, sometimes you are just inbetween a rock and a hard spot.
Popular series, a niche game for me (didnt play but heard of it), concisely delivered and with a very small tiny bit of redundancy. Good content, keep it up!
Considering the technical issues at release that were fixed pretty quickly, I am convinced that when Krafton learned that there was a Dead Space remake, any chance of a delay for polish was gone. This game was marketed as a spiritual successor to Dead Space, and here it was coming out barely before Dead Space.
10:54 - YES! Absolutely. I am just like that as well. I've sadly had that happen to me (before being in the games industry, though). I burnt myself a lot working 2 public-facing jobs and caused myself a ton of health problems, including vision and digestive problems, because I kept going over the limit. And it's probably at least in part neuron-related. So brain damage is definitely possible. Be warned.
It seems so short sighted to rush the release of something and end up losing a huge amount of money as opposed to letting it cook. I can only suppose someone looked at it and decided that they needed much longer to make it worth money and decided to cut losses. Not out of the realm of possibility that this is just the dev trying to save face for making a bad game.
That's why the senior management at the studio should have stepped up to the plate and delayed, said nothing yet now come out with excuses
The corporate world is full of people that can’t think on the long run.
@@themuffinlord6442 the profits must increase every single quarter no shareholder company has ever been like, no its okay take your time we'll have a few bad quarters but then we'll have a great one.
You asked me to subscribe in a refreshingly genuine, non-obnoxious way and so I did.
Weak senior management from the studio caused the crunch and agreed to the reduced timelines. Even when faced with all the issues at the time they did nothing to delay it. The old Blizzard mantra springs to mind 'We'll release it when it's ready'
Another point is this game had little to no coverage at release I don't even recall it
Huge, if true, where did this information come from?
game had huge coverage, had an ad at the superbowl and summer games fest trailer.
That was also cdpr mantra with cyberpunk untill they went public and shit it out of the door haha.
Gaming company: "Let's go public."
vs
Nobles in Westeros: "Let's have a wedding."
Did you really take 15 minutes to tell us that Krafton required a game to come out within a certain fiscal year and so rushed the game?
Slop content to the maximum
Yeah it's a look into it, Not zoomer 3 second news. Next time we will have him jingle some keys so you have something to keep your attention
What did you need subway surfer and candy crush on the side?
You’d have to care about the industry news he covers to care. I’ve also felt this way about cellular taking half the video to make the point and then leaving no reason to listen to the rest of the content. Generally there’s an upswing at the end of the videos but whatever
And that's why he wouldn't be good at crunch because you could fit it in 8 minutes and get the same money
3.5 months wouldn’t have made the story make sense and probably wouldn’t have done enough to fix the god awful gameplay.
Played it, finished it, liked it. That being said, it did feel like they could've done more and the story was a bit all over the place, but the horror factor was there, and I believe that a 2nd game would've addressed a lot of the complaints better than some patches, such a shame really.
I don't know if we should blame the suits exclusively, they still didn't reign in the expectations and intentionally weren't truthful on some things. Beurocracy aside, they were allotted a lot of freedom early on and sold the facade of "its great, its exactly what we set out to make and complete at launch"
Lol this video has to come out when it's free on the Epic Store. Yeah, I remember how awkward this game was to come out right before the Dead Space 1 Remake. Couldn't have just saved all that dev time and resources to maybe remake Dead Space 2....
Real easy to blame the executives instead of taking responsibility for not managing the project
and he is the one who came up with the horrible combat
_"Aww poor widdle dewv, he was the project lead earning 300K, sure he miss managed everything and blame the poor widdle executives, but pwease think of him!"_ 😢😭🙏🏻
I'm sick and tired of this nonsense, bad professionals should get the mighty boot, no excuses.
there was a lot of blowback about the DLC too, like charging for different death animations in the main game. that was super scummy.
Yeah, that's because the developers were denied time to finish them for the base release. Do you think it was their idea to sell that to the players later?
@@unfa00 No, as 99% of stupid decisions are from publishers.
Bellular News
nothing stops glen or other developers from leaking the source code of the game
right now so moders can mod/fix the game, i call BS that they cared about the game.
Well this is what happens when company goes public. Seducing and pleasing shareholders are all they think about.
The thing is, you can't even say no. Meaning suits, with only greed in their veins, are running the show.
That hurts. As childhood fan of Dead Space a.k.a Glen Shofield works i've been longing for a gaming like Callisto for years. When i finally saw the trailer i was so excited. I took the preorder and played day on ps5 back then (on pc now, i have bought the game for pc as well) and remember already feeling nostalgic and amazed about how beaufiful, grounded and focus the game felt. It felt like the game was made for me. Long crawls through narrow corridors that by themselves represent how you're infinitely trapped in a place where the illusion of progress makes you think you have a way out. The music are absolute sci-fi art and the sound effects of machinery and stuff they all fit so well to immerse you in that world.
Now imagine how my happy expression changed when i was done with my gaming session after playing for 2 hours and going on UA-cam
It was like if my new born son was getting teared apart by crazy hens and tarnished by insulting and ignorant video titles belittling the game in favour of Dead Space. I thought horror game players were on a united front before the release of both DS and TCP, but i guess that at the end they prefer to claim one game as the best and the other one as disappointing and not worth your time. Gamer brain.
And now i watch your video and learn that basically Krafton is responsible for the all problems the game had that made it suffer it's sad undeserved hate from the public. Like damn. You know what it feels like to be fan of Callisto? It feels like you're gonna get trashed any time in comments for saying you like it.
That if you like it you're not smart with your games or games in general and "should know" better.
Whatever. What has been done has been done and we can't change it. But im still very thankful for what Callisto turned out to be. Glen really as it all being proud of his team's work. 'Cuz i sure am when i'm in awe everytime i finish the game, listen to the musics, and think about all of it's symbolism in the story and the locations in the game. When i look at Callisto, i see it as; cheated from it's potential. Yet beautiful and symbolistic in it's last form.
PS: when i say cheated from it's potential, i refer to it's potential reach. So many people would have loved to have this game in their hand if they knew how good it was. The 2 million copies sold announced by Krafton are literally pin point worst time of release strategy they go for, which sabotaged it. All of my friends all the people that play games or not when i make them play Callisto they all get hooked and when to play more, they're hooked. what i'm tryna infer is that critic score and bad sell numbers are all a very bad indicator of this game performance and quality as people are blown away everytime when they go in there without expectation and looking for a good solo linear game with good story.
IMO TCP deserves more than 67% as score. It is deserving of more than a 85% in it's current iteration.
But yeah. You cant repair the stain of 2, December 2022. All the people that were destined to like this game, didnt get to fast enough before it was sent to the shadow realm. RIP. Now go listen some of that music and thanks for reading have a good one
Ya'know. Im starting to notice a bit of a theme going on when corporates start to get involved in game development. I cant quite put my finger on it though.
For people who claim that 3 months "wouldn't have saved this game" - I think you misunderstood.
When your cook tells you "this beef needs to sit in the oven for 2 more hours" and you tell them "you have one hour" don't be surprised it's both raw and burned when they do the only thing that they have left and that is to up the heat and hope for the best.
The developers weren't messing up and asked for 3 more months and were denied that.
They were told they have the time they need. They have already planned their production and were executing that plan.
Then suddenly they were told "oops, you need to ship this game three months early lol".
The 3 months weren't a denied time to "fix the game" - *it was promised time to finish it*.
The last stretch of the development cycle is usually reserved for playtesting, balancing, bugfixing and optimization.
And that time is incredibly important and could have absolutely changed how this game plays and got received.
But because the were forced to ship early, they would not be able to ship at all if they didn't do some radical cuts, gutting the design in the process, resulting in a cake with missing layers and garnish that is both raw and burnt in a few places.
The idea of a directional movement based melee system paired with ranged weapons was a fundamentally awful idea. 3 more months wasn't going to save it.
It's free on Epic Store right now. Lol
That's the Callisto Protocol
Oh shot download
It's free to get you to buy the dlcs which is the real final chapter
Thanks for letting me know, I wanted to give it a go one day, but I don't think I'll finish it
@@LocoMohsinyes?....
These creatives always blame someone else, never themselves. My brother you were there too you went ahead with the plans.
Lack of enemies variety, the one reused boss and the obvious detached quality of the level design (you crawl through lots of vents for no good reason) were the only problems with the game. I like it as is but would have loved it with those issues resolved.
Presentation is 10/10. The graphics and mocap animation are S tier. Amazing tech demo for UE 4 with early UE 5 features. Shame about the level design and gameplay, though. Incredibly mid in those departments. Plus, the amount of vents you have to crawl through is straight up criminal.
I was on the fence with Callisto Protocol but I loved it once I played it and the DLC was even better...
I played & beat the game twice. 3 extra months of development was not nearly enough time to have made Callisto Protocol "good".
The games industry isnt meant for the realm of publicly traded companies. It's an industry that is far too product and consumer focused. The whims and desires of someone who doesn't contribute anything to the creative process have no place there.
This is true, but is proving to be a difficult lesson for some to learn.
I was one of the people that bought it on day one and I was legit disappointed by how the dodge system worked and how there was always pods that shoot that skull tentacle at you. And I remember they did it a ton for jump scares. But when you go through 5 of them in a row, it lost its effectiveness. Now I wonder that the reason we had to deal with so many pod monsters was because of them cutting out other creatures. And would the dodge system be different other than just left and right?
To be honest, I could barely make it through 1/3 of the game before quitting, and I have zero doubts that the extra 3 months would not have changed my opinion. The game had serious foundational issues and simply was not fun to play in the least.
Man I dont think 3 more months would’ve saved it, the core gameplay elements were just okay
12:15 ok, that’s still the admins fault though?? Were they not prepared for the challenges of going public? If they wanted to maintain control and not have to deal with shareholders they shouldn’t have gone public, this changes nothing about the situation except adding specific context as to how higher ups fucked up
I know someone who worked with the studio on Callisto. He wasn't even on their team and I could see he was being burned out by the crazy expectations, pressure, and their pace/scheduling etc.
Callisto wasn’t bad… but my only complaint was the melee system was pretty garbage, and unfortunately a lot of the game revolved around it. The story was awesome, graphics superb, gunplay great. But I think the melee system and reliance on it killed the game for most people
And here I was excited for Tango being saved.
I think this is an excuse for poor level and combat design. I played all of the game + expansion dlc. You just backpaddle the analog stick to dodge and the limited guns were generic. Pistol & Shotgun were the most viable and none of them were fun to slice and destroy the monster with like in Dead Space. Not to mention the over abundance of air vent crawling. Geeesh.
The one shot bosses tilted me pretty badly. That and the reoccuring oh you meet up with friend aaand instantly isolated again via comically ridiculous event.
This is why independent developers make substantially better games. Sure, the wait for certain games *cough cough Silksong cough* can be agonizing, but it's usually worth it.
"Quarterly results" have killed more games than any other reason...
This actually brings up some interesting nuance around crunch. Or at least, how we should look at crunch. Here is an example where we can see that the crunch was forced by the publisher, and even the head of the company was crunching against their will; they just have to put a positive spin on it at the time, because if they piss off the publisher and the game gets dropped entirely, then a lot of the time the dev company would die.
Like, I think not enough people understand just how much most devs are riding the line of bankruptcy and are really just at the whims of whoever is holding the money. We like to pretend "Oh I'd be different, I'd stand up for what is right!" but when the choice is "crunch or tell everyone that no one has a job anymore" you start making some hard choices.
You know what, considering how much turmoil this studio went through, it makes me more impressed by the game. I played through it that January when it came out and I thought the combat was certainly a bit weird, but the atmosphere and graphics and sound in the dark on an OLED with headphones.... really spectacular. I definitely enjoyed it and would give it a solid 7/10.
Wow thank god this is an isolated incident and no other executives have ever interfered with development or pushed impossible deadlines.
The core gameplay was dogshit. I don’t think a release date had anything to do with that.
Im No. 2 in a small engineering firm. We are expanding and growing relatively quick. One thing i notice -- the extra stress, working late, aworkign weekends is pretty much on me. Me and the owner made it he decision to expand fast. When I lose my shit because of thr stress, i just remind myself that i will profiting more from the growth than the others engineers. I'm believe that this is how it always should be... Its the leaders who should be first to feel the consequences of their decisions, both good and bad consequences.
I'm sorry, but a few things about the timeline here don't make a whole lot of sense to me?
First off, Calisto Protocol wasn't a project of 12 or 15 months, as you claim at 2:16. It was a 3-year project. That's 36 months. So, with the earlier release we're talking 39 vs 36 months, not 15 vs 12. That's a completely different situation.
Also, when you think you're 15 months from releasing a AAA game and you're _still_ sitting around "designing, come up with other ideas with some of the guys", something is already going wrong, sorry. At that point, you _should_ be deep in production phase already, not designing completely new things to put in the game.
Oh... interesting side-note: The original announcement trailer from December 2020 already claims a release in 2022. Sure, the release may then have been moved to 2023 during development, but it's not as if the game was always planned to be released 2023.
I'm not saying the issues he brought up didn't matter, but I am saying they were definitely not the only reasons Calisto Protocol ended up being another game with outstanding looks but pretty mediocre gameplay. Let's be honest: Visuals and sound were about the only outstanding aspects of the game, which is odd, considering Schofield brings up completely missing VFX and animation departments etc. as reasons for the state of the game.
Sure, 3 months more would have helped even out some of the wrinkles, but you're not going to make a drastically different game because you have 3 more months.
Sorry, but Calisto Protocol was a _very_ Dead Space "inspired" game with more focus on melee combat, but sadly missing an actually good melee combat system. On top of that, it got released two months before the Dead Space remake reached the market, as well, and I don't think it's too far-fetched to assume many people just waited to see how that one turned out and then just went with the better reviewed game.
Schofield seems like an all around great guy, and his involvement is always a major selling point to me.
Honestly even if they had 3 or 4 more months, while I think it would of been less buggy, I am rather doubtful it would of changed the end product to be much better. The game itself just felt like it was flawed design wise from the start. While I'm sure more could of been added beyond just simply bug fixes/touch ups, I'm just very doubtful it could of majorly shifted a mediocre at best game to be a great one.
The video had all the reasons and it makes sense. Massive turnover of staff, high sickness rates for extended periods and a reduced timeframe with no additional staff. Hiring people as devs isn't an overnight process people have months of notice to work before starting
@@Jabarri74 Still, the over-all design choice in itself I just feel was never going to work. Even with more enemy types I don't think the way combat was designed was ever going to work and be compelling. From what was discussed nothing seems to imply there was any idea of making combat work differently then how it came out working.
The most typical thing that happened to me time and time again:
- manager asks me for work estimation
- I give him an answer - let's say "6 months"
- he sets the deadline 6 months from today
- 3 months later he gives me and still expects me to make this deadline, because I "said it will be done by then"
It's the same in every company I ever worked for. It's like I just never met an actual manager - you know - someone who actually understands the difference between work estimation and deadline
Okay, but bugs weren't the biggest issue. The thing that killed the game was poor design. The combat was boring and no amount of development time was going to help when the initial idea was bad.
I recently played this on GamePass. Granted it's a couple of years (and patches) later, but the game did not feel incomplete or had technical issues. It wasn't great and, for me, the reasons were more about direction rather than not having enough time or resources to implement that direction. I feel it aped a lot from Dead Space, even down to the basic story, leaned a lot on overdone horror tropes and scares and most importantly, had shitloads of sections where you're just slowly and barely interactively crawling through some vent or tight space. A lot of people seem to think these sections were hidden loading screen, but the vast amount, placement and sometimes back-and-forth, makes me believe it was an artistic choice, supposedly to help with immersion.
I've seen Scofield in a couple of interviews an he seems like a passionate guy and Dead Space was fucking amazing. Too bad he didn't get a break with this.
Gamers love to defend devs and hate on publishers:
1. Do you really think 3 months of additional work would suddenly make a 5/10 game a GOTY candidate?
2. Publisher invested 150m USD in new IP and wanted to release it earlier due to keep the cost as close as it was in the budget - you can clearly see that pov matters. Korea was not having Covid issues, USA - had. You're publisher, and suddenly you're getting information that large % of people that you're hired is either sick and completely out of office or they're going elsewhere. One of the key decisions corporations are making - they're trying to release asap to squeeze as much money as they lost.
3. I love Glen but obviously he was not able to fullfill the role of CEO (he was a game director earlier?). He obviously had a lot on his head, however in my opinion he approved a lot of bad design decisions thinking it would work:
- linear and generic level design (10+ years earlier he participated in the game that till this day has incredible level design)
- extremely cheap jump scares (those heads that pop up suddenly and you're cutting it with the knife) - again look what he did 10+ years ago with DS
- superbasic plot that you've lived through in countless games (it seems that they're hired students to prepare the plot, twists, background and all of the audio collectibles)
- he approved the worst decision in the game - melee combat. Gameplay wise it was decent but it completely ruined the atmosphere, mood and sense of horror. Instead of keeping the enemies at the distance and avoid them at all costs halfway through the game you were just spamming left and right in order to defeat the enemies
4. They focused on incredible technology - you can see that they had a lot of talented people ignoring everything else that lead to game being medicore.
I was the first one that purchased the game, loved the graphics, atmosphere during some sections (ex. during the snow - superb!), loved the idea that we've got AAA title that mimics my favourite Dead Space game. But I strongly believe that adding few more bossess instead of one, making linear levels slightly less linear and working on varied jump scares/atmosphere would't save this game. The game had bad design decisions that were made years before release (melee combat, low replayability, supersimplified level desing - corridor, hallway, fight, bigger room, repeat) and these things ultimatelly made the game average at best.