Why does Spec Ops: The Line not get a sequel?” Asks a naive fan of the game on Twitter at Walt Williams, a screenwriter of the title, signed by Yager Entertainment. Williams’s answer: “Because he had a brutal and painful development, and anyone who worked for us would prefer to eat broken glass instead of another. Also, he did not sell well .
” The tweets have obviously become news that can bounce around the world, from the British VideoGamer to the pages of your dear and italic SpazioGames. I would also say rightly, given the pertinentity with which Williams responded to the question.
On these occasions, usually, it tends to be vague, even when the sequel is not even in the proverbial drawer of ideas.This is because the world of video games lives on hype and destroys it with such violence is something that you do not see very often as well as counterproductive to all parties involved.
Spec Ops: The Line , specifically, is part of the long array of critically-liked products (just under 80 points on Metacritic), apart from users, but has sold very little, as Williams also recalls.
A production that obviously did not travel shipped as you could expect. Already in 2012, lead designer Cory Davis called “carcinogenic” the multiplayer compartment that 2K Games suggested to incorporate into the game. Davis called it a violation of gaming mechanics. I also imagine heavy working conditions, not dissimilar to backgrounds in the development ofMass Effect Andromeda , on which Kotaku built an excellent investigation.
Much worse in Team Bondi’s studio, author of LA Noire(recently announced for current generation consoles), despite the much higher title rating than Spec Ops: The Line was closed in 2011, with employees partially resettled and partly fired. The story of No Man’s Sky , which we have spoken several times, is another example, albeit with different shades. In the case of Sean Murray’s title, there has been no failure, but from the launch to today the space adventure of Hello Games has found a second life and over time has only increased the number of its enthusiastic worshipers.
They are not new stories, and we can say it to bizarre. However, it is always important that they become public domain because it is fair that the workmen, but especially the players, have a clear vision of the state of the video game industry.
An industry where, at times, even if it does not work, it would eat glass. It is not a statement to be taken lightly, because it represents the frustration that developers are subjected to in some environments, especially in the case of major projects.
The cases we mentioned, excluding Spec Ops: The Line, they had a single denominator: the hype. A dictatorship, that of expectation, which causes an unbearable pressure on people working in these great productions.
Working under pressure also happens that there are so many problems because studies are made up of humans, even if we sometimes forget. Human beings, in spite of everything, work on their head and bring home the result.
These news are, therefore, “reality check”, of very important consciousness for each one of us. Whenever you wonder why a particular feature has not been introduced, or how easy it might have been to modify a detail in one way or another, it is likely that the answer lies in an infamous deadline in an over-workload over time to complete it, or in a publisher who asks for the insertion of elements that slow down production, perhaps even twisting the game itself.
