Call It A Remix
Developer spends 10 years taking publisher money for a game. Developer spends said money on something else, perhaps hookers and blow. Publisher comes calling. Developer throws together art from half a dozen of highly recognizable games and shovels it out the door.
You must read this amazing thread. This is a good summary here. Finding art for Limbo of the Lost is now its own bizarre metagame, fueled by geek outrage everywhere.
Super ironic quote from the developer:
Gordon: So have any more recent games influenced your current project?
Steve: The project is more influenced by film and literature rather than other games, we want the experience to be as original as possible and as such we have made a calculated effort to keep away from other games in the genre. Limbo of the Lost is an experience first and foremost, secondly wrapped up in a game media and genre.
On the bright side, the game is getting five star reviews!
[…] worthwhile links to read about this: Rockpapershotgun.com’s coverage, Zen of Design — “Call it a Remix”, and this forum post at cheapassgamer.com. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own […]
Pingback by Critical Games » Blog Archive » Limbo of the Lost — June 13, 2008 @ 4:37 pmThose 5-star reviews are pure snark. Unbelievable that they blatantly ripped off that many games.
Comment by Bonavox — June 13, 2008 @ 5:33 pmI found a playable version online in one of the threads. So full of win!
http://www.thup.com/lol/
Comment by Will Wallace — June 13, 2008 @ 5:36 pm[…] he beat me to it. Punk. That don’t mean nothin’. My male-pattern-baldness is way ahead of his, so I […]
Pingback by Call it “budget outsourcing” (by Jeff Freeman) — June 13, 2008 @ 6:02 pmThe publisher is shocked, SHOCKED I TELL YOU that the game contains so many “comparisons”.
When I was at 3DO, we outsourced the music for one game to a company in the U.S. After the music arrived late, I listened to it; this was about the time The Matrix had come out and I was listening to the soundrack. Funny, that new song from the game sounds familiar…
It was “Rock is Dead” by Marilyn Manson; the song we were given was an instrumental version done on with synthesized instruments. The manager on the project could barely believe it. Funny, because I thought it was a joke on his part, since I was borrowing the soundtrack from him!
I saved 3DO from a copyright infringement lawsuit, and all I got was mental scarring. Sadly, the game really did deserve to be pulled out of distribution.
Good times, good times.
Comment by Brian 'Psychochild' Green — June 14, 2008 @ 1:50 pmHeh, I’ve been seeing quite a bit about this lately and… well, it just doesn’t stop being amusing. The fact that you can actually buy it makes it all the better.
Comment by Arrakiv — June 14, 2008 @ 11:14 pmI suspect it was probably all a big outsourcing fiasco, like the one Brian described. Perhaps if they weren’t making such a “calculated effort” to “keep away from other games,” they’d have noticed that all this art that Alexei was sending them was ripped off. If they were using an off-shore source (which they probably were), then they have no recourse, either. They’re basically screwed.
Comment by Tess — June 16, 2008 @ 2:51 pmI want to get a copy so I can play the stolen sound effects version of the metagame
Comment by kidko — June 16, 2008 @ 6:52 pmTragicomic. Bethesda probably has the strongest claim against them for damages, but it seems that a handful of other companies can immediately sue them too. Wikipedia lists about 14 games and 3 movies which they appear to have stolen content from.
Comment by moo — June 16, 2008 @ 9:37 pm…… FRAPS watermarks on cutscenes, for serious?
The man… he made a post on the 3rd (http://forum.dead-code.org/index.php?topic=2904.msg18305)… asking if anyone wanted to work on the sequel. A SEQUEL.
….LoL. Indeed.
Comment by Bryan Murphree — June 17, 2008 @ 3:59 amThe funny thing is that they probably could have gotten away with it if they had said it “contained dozens of little homages that pay tribute to many games we ourselves have played and love.”
What are the chances that they just used an outsourcer that these other games also used, and who got lazy and tossed LOL their more used assets?
Comment by IQpierce — June 17, 2008 @ 8:25 amYah know, and I thought educational plagiarism was bad. At least when a student copies someone, they don’t get paid for it.
I hope Bethesda makes a very, very nasty example out of LoL.
Comment by The Big Bad Wolf — June 17, 2008 @ 11:36 pm