“ reportedly enforcing uncompensated overtime, allegedly trying to pay staff below minimum wage, and a toxic work environment cultivated by an alleged abusive leadership.”
Saved you a click!
Explains why the game was so bad
The idea that only having a €15M budget is what caused this game’s issues is ridiculous. It’s not a game that had good ideas and just failed to execute them properly; it’s fundamentally bad on a conceptual level.
The setting and story concept are bad. When the game was first announced, I don’t think I heard or saw a single discussion where someone was excited to experience playing through the story of Gollum in that time period in the story. Or even playing as Gollum at all - he’s a great secondary character in the books and films, but he’s hardly a character you want to play as in a video game. There’s no room for character development either.
The game design is bad. It’s just bad. No amount of time, money or polish is going to fix the terrible basic design principles the game is built on. And even if they had 10x the budget and hired a world-class lead game designer from the start, it still would have the issues with the story and character.
The whole project is one that shouldn’t have left the brainstorming session it was conceived in.
The first time I heard about the game, not long before it was released, I thought it was a joke.
I’m not convinced whoever pitched it wasn’t joking either, and then studio execs picked it up and ran with it
I could have seen it as a Stardew valley-esque Hobbit farming Sim, you start with simple farming, interacting with lore accurate villagers, fishing, cave gathering as Smeagol.
Then after a certain point of the game in a quest you find the Ring and your memories start getting hazy and your farming skill starts deteriorating and your cave gathering skills improve and the Ring blanks out part of your days and suddenly you find Deagols body and get flashbacks to what happened.
In the epilogue you start your usual day in the cave ‘bed’ instead of your Hobbit hole bed and you go gathering and meet Bilbo. Then cut to black
What was released was a disaster that hadn’t had anywhere near enough thought and consideration put into it. However, frankly if you don’t think a gollum game couldn’t be good I’d have to blame it on a lack of imagination.
I for one am shocked that this game was a disaster of a production. I don’t think anyone could have seen this coming to light.
Removed by mod
They spread The Hobbit out into three movies and banked $2.5B
Removed by mod
Wanna be Aragorn as a ranger? Galadriel in the second age? Elrond during the last alliance? Fuck you, here’s Gollum.
I mean, I get it from one angle - Gollum is one of the longest lived characters in LOTR. The issue is that even being 500 years old, he doesn’t really witness or interact with it all that much. Someone like Galadriel or Aragorn or Gandalf would be far more interesting.
Well, Smeagol is an interesting character because he is tragically relatable underneath it all. He was consumed by his greed, and completely lost his mind to it. His flashes of innocence and weakness make him at times sympathetic. But, then he reverts to Gollum and you see the consequences of his weakness, again and again.
That being said, being at times partially relatable does not make me want to be him, even in a video game. I think an interesting game where you play as Smeagol is absolutely possible, but that’s an unnecessary uphill battle if I’ve ever seen one.
alleges publisher Nacon used AI tool ChatGPT to write the apology statement issued after Gollum’s failings became public
What? No way dude, totally fooled us, we absolutely couldn’t tell!
Probably the least important of all these problems, but really, the publisher issuing a blanket chatGPT-generated apology, in the name of the studio without their knowledge, not even getting the name of the fucking game right.
Dude, maybe try to take your job a bit seriously?
Why start at exactly that point though?
All this abuse to ship public haired Gollum.
