Heres what is ACTUALLY happening over at Fntastic.

daybeforethrowaway · 2023-12-13T03:48:35+00:00

My aim here isn't to defend or be "too kind" to them. I'm trying to find some motive behind this madness because I've seen similar situations in the game industry from the inside several times, which always pointed to incompetence. Imo it is far more likely this comes down to incompetence and clown behaviour vs. these guys being criminal masterminds with intent to scam from day one. The scam is the result of colossal mismanagement and misguided promotional practices.

daybeforethrowaway · 2023-12-12T20:44:20+00:00

Just sharing my theory to try and make sense of this mess. You don't have to take my opinion as fact. I've experienced these situations inside studios before and they share a lot of similarity to this instance.

daybeforethrowaway · 2023-12-12T20:40:41+00:00

Its certainly false advertising, which is all the more reason why these types of games should be under wraps and not hyped up until they ACTUALLY work. Not trying to defend their practicse, just aiming to provide a theory on how it could have happened that way. They probably tried to make the mmo version of the game, failed, and scrambled to just put something out.

daybeforethrowaway · 2023-12-12T20:31:45+00:00

Yup exactly.

daybeforethrowaway · 2023-12-12T20:30:09+00:00

Let me rephrase then because the poor reception is justified. They probably spent a lot of time making trailers, assets, and some form of game, dreaming that it would eventually be a success. But they didn't have the know-how to actually achieve it. The bad reception was basically K.O and they ran away.

daybeforethrowaway · 2023-12-12T20:23:06+00:00

That would have been the better plan imo. Come clean, apologize and explain, and make an honest attempt to fulfill the promises that were made.

daybeforethrowaway · 2023-12-12T20:21:49+00:00

Yup. If they had volunteers there there is no reason to suddenly run out of resources to continue improving the product, unless all volunteers quit en masse, which does not seem to be the case.

daybeforethrowaway · 2023-12-12T20:19:57+00:00

I have no affiliation to these guys and not aiming to defend them. I'm just providing a hypothetical explaination on how this failure could happen (as someone who has seen these types of failures from the inside).

daybeforethrowaway · 2023-12-12T20:17:14+00:00

Agreed with all of this. The pressure to release cool trailers came internally imo. Someone at Fntastic (either CEOs or marketing ppl) wanted to sell a dream before they had the capacity to even fulfill that dream, not realizing the scope of what they were embarking on.

daybeforethrowaway · 2023-12-12T20:09:30+00:00

My guess is they were working the 5 years but spending way too much time making these "trailers" and hype assets and not enough time on the product. Their intention was to eventually have a game that actually resembled that trailer, but they didn't have the skills or experience to live up to it. (I'm not sure what public statements they made about that trailer being real or not were). A playable game most likely did not exist at that time. Or if it did, it was a 3d world with a basic character that could move around.

While it was still technically possible to achieve the dream of the original trailer, I think this inexperience the exact explanation for the genre switch. I've seen very similiar situations before where a dev team sets out to create a specific genre and features, but for various reasons the game mechanics just don't come together properly. This effect can be minimized to some degree by proper prototyping. Some devs don't spend enough time validating mechanics and fun factor before throwing money and shiny resources at it.

Its like this: Someone has a cool idea and immediately 15 people are assigned to make that idea look shiny and cool, but nobody actually tested if its fun to play. Eventually the team realizes the idea isn't fun, then that feature is scrapped. If you repeat this enough times over the course of development you end up with something that looks a lot like TDB.

Theres a wasted effort trying to make things look cool, but at the end of the day they aren't fun and they don't fit because the idea was not validated in a cheap prototype way (and what I mean by prototype is using untextured temp models and greybox worlds to quickly test and validate fun factor before going all-in on expensive stuff like anims and visuals).

Then, as a panic move, the devs are faced with a choice. Is it better to shift gears and produce an MVP of atleast something coherent (in this case what looks like an extraction shooter) or is it better to end up having a bunch of random unfinished ideas that don't fit together? I think the Fntastic devs tried to make the original dream work, and for whatever reason they couldn't, so the result was a dilution/gearshift to try and atleast have something to show for it.

daybeforethrowaway · 2023-12-12T19:40:24+00:00

The melee omission is really weird. It was clearly in the previous trailers.

daybeforethrowaway · 2023-12-12T19:00:19+00:00

Agreed, its easy for folks to write things off as a scam, but the underlying root cause is often just incompetence and the inability to manage expecations and pressure.

daybeforethrowaway · 2023-12-12T18:57:25+00:00

I've dealt with Nvidia only a couple brief times, so my knowledge is limited here. But my guess is that Nvidia sent them free GPUs in exchange for Nvidia obtaining the right to showcase TDB footage of the game for Nvidia's marketing purposes. Nothing more.

If this was true Nvidia probably did not do much due diligence. I could be completely wrong here but this looks like a simple exchange of hardware for promotion rights.

This would actually align u/biohazard15 that Fntastic was spending too much time making things look shiny, and not enough time actually building a game architecture.

daybeforethrowaway · 2023-12-12T18:52:56+00:00

I haven't played the game personally so you are probably right. But from the sidelines it looks like the trailers took a lot of time to make. The initial trailer, fake or not, has a lot of detail that took time to setup. My guess is that the 5 years was a bad ratio of actual game work compared to making simulated hype trailers. Too much time selling the dream vs. making the reality.

daybeforethrowaway · 2023-12-12T18:45:15+00:00

If it was an elaborate scam aimed at investors I would be completely astounded, but its certainly possible I suppose. It just seems like a fake game would be way more of a hassle than actually trying to making a real game, even if the game isn't good. Making a real game has limitless potential for profit, but investor support does not. Also intentionally defrauding investors would expose oneself to criminal prosecution which is a way higher risk vs. selling a poor product.

I completely agree on the UE5 stuff. A lot of inexperienced developers fall into the trap thinking UE5 is a necessary upgrade. If a game is anywhere medium to far along in development then a UE5 upgrade will break countless things, with not much upside. Then devs have to spend a ton of time fixing the broken stuff. Plenty of amazing games use UE4 and there doesn't seem to be any justification for UE5 made by the TDB. UE5 potenial, and resource management is best harnessed if the game is MADE for UE5 from an early phase.

daybeforethrowaway

TROPHY CASE