Former employees of CCP Atlanta, the studio behind World of Darkness, have revealed that the doomed game Reached an alpha stage in its development three times over its nine years of development.
The vampire MMO that refused to die (quite apt, really) was actually tested multiple times in this state by the studio’s employees, who put a severe case of project mismanagement at the centre of the blame. Nick Blood (again, another irony in the studio) tested it himself on two occasions, “With the first play test, I was amazed at how little of the core game was there – at this point the game had been in development for over half a decade. I mean, there was just nothing, literally nothing.”
“On the second play test, quite some time later, I was struck by how much had changed – and yet remained unfinished.”
Management staff apparently blamed their staff for the constant downfalls of the game, and congratulated any small success no matter how futile. One such example given by Nick Blood was when the developers moved the game onto a new movement system, akin to the ones used in the Assassin’s Creed series. Although it was primitive in comparison, “the internal propaganda was that this kind of movement system would revolutionise MMO gaming.”
Blood also described staff meetings as “aggressive” and “loud”, with the management staff blaming their lack of vision for the game on its developers. “One email sent on the eve of the company’s 2010 team-building trip stated that all teams had to work through the weekend, and that this necessary overtime was the fault of the teams.”
Elsewhere in CCP, there was a mounting sense of aggravation against them from the gaming community. Their F2P PS3 shoot-em-up Dust 514 never took off, and Eve Online was going in the exact direction that the fans didn’t want it to. Reacting to the critics, CCP revolted and changed the company’s outlook, and this was another factor in World of Darkness’s downfall. Cuts were made, and morale dropped to a new low, even though, to the rest of the world, they were still upbeat about the game’s development right up until earlier this year, when it was announced that they were scrapping it just after a final play test.
Written on 6th June 2014, Published on http://www.thirteen1.com/2014/06/05/world-darkness-achieved-alpha-state-three-times-scrapped/ on 6th June 2014
Chris Malla 