WB Interactive was always such a missed opportunity. Monolith shut down because the studio lost its best talent when they weren’t allowed to work on a new IP, where their creativity took them. Even back during the MOBA fad era (Remember that one? It was after MMOs and before hero shooters and battle royales.), during the development and promotional period for DC’s Infinite Crisis, I spoke to one of the developers from Turbine, asking what the pitch process was under WB. Even back then, this guy told me, “Well, it’s WB, so whatever your idea is, they’ll say, ‘Cool, now make it Batman,’ or ‘Cool, now make it Lord of the Rings.’”
If it doesn’t naturally fit with that IP, that’s all backwards. Even in the most capitalistic view I can take on it, the best way forward sounds a lot like keeping an eye on a budding new idea and steering it toward a direction where it can become a good movie or an HBO show, in the event that the game is successful. Because what was obviously always going to happen when WB tried to sell its Interactive component is that their video game division is worthless when their games are all tied to WB intellectual property. It would be like Disney buying Marvel Comics and Lucasfilm so that they could only make Mickey Mouse comics and Pirates of the Caribbean sequels.
Krudler@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I will always appear to tell Monolith to go fuck themselves, and dance on their graves.
Fuck you Matt, fuck you Monolith. You fucked our company over, stole our technology, presented it at the game developer conference like it was yours - dealing with you Matt was the worst two fucking years of my life you big sack of hihly-incomprtant bloated shit.
HiddenLychee@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Care to elaborate?
Krudler@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Truthfully, no. I was a really top level fucker in the industry and let me tell you man… It’s a vicious game, and even thinking about things that happened 30 years ago are causing my hairs to stand on end right now even though I’m sitting with a nice warm espresso in a sunbeam smoking a joint.
I’m going to copy and paste from a previous answer. Please do me the courtesy of not asking any questions about my history in the game industry, because I will go off like a f’king neutron bomb. It will be real but it will be ugly. I mean ask if you want, but you’ll get the fuck beaten out of you and you won’t like it and it’ll explode things that you thought were real and they aren’t.
“They were contracted to design the (edit: low-level coin op hardware, etc) API for our new Internet-enabled touchscreen gaming network kiosks (world first at the time) and they were fucking useless. And then had the gall to present the piece of shit at the CGDG 1997, as a half-finished completely non-functional, but presented it like it was their own product and not a massive NDA violation. Presented like their own product which could be generically extended to other platforms. Fuck you Matt. Fuck you Monolith you fucking cunts.”
ripcord@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Based on his previous comments when he’s brought this up - he appears way, way more outraged than seems to make sense for what happened.
Thcdenton@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Which Matt? :D