Former Gearbox staffer blasts long development process, says Gearbox outsourced single-player campaign to TimeGate Studios.
A "total train wreck" of development saw Gearbox outsource the entire single-player campaign of Aliens: Colonial Marines to TimeGate Studios, a recently surfaced forum post by an alleged ex-staffer at Gearbox has claimed.
The long-dormant post from May 2012 (spotted by Superannuation) pours cold water on another poster's anticipation for the title. "Hate to say it, but I wouldn't get your hopes up too high for Colonial Marines," it said.
"I used to work at Gearbox, and the development of that game has been a total train wreck, going on what, 6 years now? Gearbox isn't even making the game, except for the multiplayer. Primary development was outsourced to TimeGate Studios, which has a less than stellar past."
"I hope it proves me wrong, as I still have alot of friends still working at Gearbox, but I am expecting it to be average at best."
The author of the comment said he now works for Austin-based startup Armature Studio, a team founded by some of the ex-Retro staff behind Metroid Prime and responsible for the PS Vita port of the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection.
TimeGate Studios is credited for development in Aliens: Colonial Marines, alongside Shoot Many Robots developer Demiurge Studios and Nerve, who handled the multiplayer for id's Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
The claims that TimeGate Studios handled so much of the game's development clashes with previous statements. Speaking to Gamasutra last year, Gearbox president Randy Pitchford said that "roughly 80 percent of the work on Colonial Marines is being done in-house at Gearbox, with the rest being done by outside developers."
Sega did not respond to comment when approached by GameSpot.
In his 4.5 GameSpot review, Kevin VanOrd said, "The first two Alien films are steeped in mystery and anxiety, qualities all but absent in developer Gearbox's lackluster interpretation. Instead, Aliens: Colonial Marines is a shallow bit of science-fiction fluff with cheap production values and an indifferent attitude. It's forgettable enough to deem unnecessary, which is a grievous sin for a game in a universe brimming with so much potential."
Multiplayer, however, gets a more positive appraisal. "Competitive play finds more success," said Kevin, "because the unpredictability of other players leads to occasional moments of tension. All four modes pit a team of marines against a team of aliens, though Escape is the standout among them. Here, four marines make their way through alien-infested territory from one mark to the next, hoping to escape the wrath of the acid-spitting, sharp-clawed opposition."
Aliens: Colonial Marines is available on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. A Wii U version will be released in March. A season pass for the game's multiplayer modes is also available.
Has absolutely never at all had the song from Beauty and the Beast sung to him at any point during his life, ever.
this has been happening a lot lately...
they hype a game up for years and years, talking about how it'll be the biggest success ever then it releases and flops miserably and then the developers, publishers and PR guys all confess that it was a trainwreck from the start and they made all these mistakes.
pride kills
Thank God, when you pay for a game at gamestop, you have the option to change and put it towards a different game. God of War...here I come
Never ever bet on console game companies, i laugh how crap these games are, POOR console gamers should play such a junk always :D
3 Like @666NightsInHell WFT are you talking about? This is a multi system release! PC ALSO. Go back to Kansas little boy and leave the rest of us in peace.
@KingofCabal Awh, I'm from Kansas. Trust me, we don't want people like @666NightsInHell either.
2 Like I really dont get why people run out and buy games without reading a few opinions and reviews first. Most games these days have a few reviews out almost at the same time as release. Stop being stupid Fan boys!!
@KingofCabal That's why developers push so hard for preorders--offering incentives and the like--Most people would wait for the review before purchasing if there were no incentives to order in advance. That would hurt sales across the board. I suspect that to be the true reason the industry has grown in the past decade. The rise of the pre-order.
1 Like Every one should have known better to but their trust in gearbox aka shitbox including my self. The game took 6 years to come out, no demo, game play was show behind closed doors to a select few, which they probably selected best the looking bits from the game. Randy's usual hype bullshit.The game looks decent enough on PC but the console version looks dreadful. I went to my friends to see it on his 360 and laughed out loud, I then showed him what it looks like on my on PC. A tear of sadness rolled down his face. I beat the game on badass"hardest setting" in just over 5hrs. Worth a play through once an that's pushing it, even with the stupid AI and NCP's getting stuck in walls an been able to walk through them like their invisible. AI escaping out of a door on the sulaco in to thin air lol. You could see through the glass there was no escape pods so where were they going? Randy and gearbox I hate you even more now is there any thing you can't F***k up.Please leave gaming altogether. I hear McDonald's is hiring but you would probably F**k the burgers up to.
4 Like gamespot i dare to do a feed backula about this topic, maybe the cmpanies will listen to THEIR LOYAL FANS THEY VE JUST CRUSHED WITH THE I DONT GIVE A F#CK ATTITUDE. what if we dont and stop buying YOUR software cos its SH#T
@itchyflop i totaly agree theyve had six years to get this right .i know a lot of people been waiting for this and theyve fucked it up.. how can dead space 3 be so good and ACM be so shit?
2 Like Total and absolute money grabbing bastards, Aliens could have been amazing what is the fucking problem? Did no one at any point say..... 'ahhhhh guys you know what? this is absolute shit we need to start again....' The conversation did probably happen but the old 'how much would that cost' statement meant that they were prepared to take devaluation of the companies reputation vs money! Slap a big non disclosure ruling on the project until release day and make as much money as possible.... Gearbox hasn't done this once but twice! now with Duke Nukem Forever unofficially or officially the shitist game of all time, ACM is a close second. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Finally started playing it last night and I don't think it's quite as bad as most people make out. It has little good about it either. It is just the most 'Meh' game ever. The one thing that annoys me most is that i've spent more time killing other humans rather than Xenos so far. Why do you think I bought a game with 'Aliens' in the title? If I wanted to spend most of a game wailing on other humans I would have kept BF3!!!
Well, that started out rather level headed and quickly became a rant which for me means, this game aint no good! it even uses 'spawn rooms' for the enemy mercs. come on guys! What is this? 1997?
1 Like I have a feeling you'd be entertained my dangling car keys Neon. Its an absolute mess.
@The-Neon-Seal and what about the suspense killer of the radar short bling before any enemy comes warning you!! thats why i have the radar to look when i need to adding suspense. im so annoyed with time gate im at the point of writing hate mail to them. And as for sega, they re barmy putting their name on it. but then again they probably dont give a f#ck either like the other corporate giants, they went bumo fir a reason.
1 Like 80% and year old forum posts aside, Timegate's own website front page lists them as the developer of Aliens, and makes no mention of Gearbox.
Let's just face it. Doing games based on movies, has rarely been successful. And by rarely I mean 1 out of 50 games.
@souther_hill The problem is that their has been some very good Alien and Predator games. Case in point Alien vs. Predator released in 1999.
@souther_hill this one could have, ha it hasn't, it looked promising from the short clips.
Agree 100% bought this on steam launch night want my money back played it for 45 minutes and to be honest felt a bit sick that they wasted such an opportunity
Randy Pitchford should fire himself after allowing this festering pile of shit to be released to the public. I will never buy another Gearbox game again.
@ChiefFreeman trust needs to re established another proper game needs to ne made if they have any sense.
Man, I wanted this to be good and I thought about buying it on the release date, but I did my research and I'm glad I didn't. This sounds like Duke Nukem all over again. O.k., maybe not THAT bad.
I loved Aliens CM and appreciate them for making a game that brings back the memmories of the milestones of cinema. I found myself enjoying both the campaign and multiplayer and it deserves much more positive praise.
3 Like It's obvious someone really fucked up here. If I knew my game wasn't up to par I wouldn't release it until it was fixed. Maybe this game was beyond fixing and they decided to release it to try and cut their losses as much as they could. I just really hope everyone involved can learn from their mistakes. If you can't do that, you are either comepletely ignorant, or you are not very smart and shouldn't be in the industry.
4 Like @tightwad34 You would've thought they would have learned from their mistakes with Duke Nukem Forever. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice....
The opinion of a critic isn't always relevant. It's perfectly possible for a title to be panned by critics but popular among audiences; it happens with music and films all the time. However, I've not played this game so can't decide if it's one of those cases. I suspect not.
2 Like @RuthlessRich it took longer for the game to install than for me to play it, i feel cheated and ripped off. Bad is an understatement, I feel like sending hate male to sega, gearbox and time gate studios.
@itchyflop @RuthlessRich I'm pretty Sega wouldn't like it if you sent a bunch of hateful males to their door step.
4 Like @itchyflop @RuthlessRich Hate mail*
I imagine those studios are getting lots of that recently so they're used to it, but if you send them a hate male then they're going to be quite shocked.
1 Like Gearbox is such a strange company. On one hand, they make some amazing smash hits like Borderlands and Brothers in Arms, and then they come out of no where with a complete flop ala Duke Nukem and now this. I'm sure the outsourcing is where the blame primarily lies, but it's kind of crazy how one developer manages to hit two opposite extremes of quality in such a short time.
One thing is for sure, Randy is really good at his job. He had people fooled hard about this game. The fact that it managed to sell so well despite being panned by almost every critic is both disgusting and impressive.
1 Like @Lambchopzin Yeah, the man knows how to sell and speak a good game. Had me interested, but then I saw the graphics...I'm not sure if I'd play this if it was given to me.
@Lambchopzin That was mostly 3D realms. The game was what? Like 90 to 95% complete when Gearbox & Piranha Games it finished off. If they started the game from scratch then I would blame Gearbox.
And same goes with Aliens. It was in Developer hell for quite a number of years. I blame Sega for this.
1 Like From the trailers and gameplay sneak peeks they released I was already kind of aware that they'd fail, but nothing could've prepared me about how they could run it that hard into the ground - There should be a law, preventing fuckups like this.
I'll just pretend, for my own sanity, that this game doesn't even exist, because I love the Aliens franchise.
Just in case any potential customer plans on buying this, I suggest to take that money (or part of it) and throw it at the developers of Interstellar Marines (http://www.interstellarmarines.com) instead.
well if one is to learn anything from all this and gearbox, is after Duke Nukem, to never listen to gearbox or randy. Makes me sad the Alien games being released I still think AvP the Originals and the reboot are only Alien games worth damn. Other then the Original Arcade game of AvP I have fond memory's of the Arcade AvP
Make sense, between now and 2008, Gearbox released like 4 games, Brother in Arms: Hell's Highway, Borderland 1 & 2 and even Duke Nukem f*cking forever, 3 of them scored decently, so it's fair that Gearbox did not actaully making the other two.
oh look gearbox did it again! right after a terrible release like DUKE NUKEM and now ALIENS hahaahha gearbox needs to shut its doors down.
Stop sulking over wasting $50 on this game. I too wasted $50 preordering this, and I felt like shit with the finished product, but then I thought about all the people who bought the $30 DLC pass and I realized it could be worse
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