The fall of Starbreeze

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-01-28-the-fall-of-swedish-game-wonder-starbreeze

A very interesting article on how they went hit, to hit in the face with a sloppy sausage.

Highlights -

Multiple people who worked on The Walking Dead project - and others within Starbreeze who worked on other projects going on at the time, such as Payday 2 DLC, Raid: World War 2, a co-op take on Korean FPS Crossfire for publisher Smilegate, and virtual reality projects, told Eurogamer the company suffered from mismanagement. According to staff, Starbreeze producers caused huge problems that affected not only the quality of the company's products, but the mental health of the people who built them. The Walking Dead, however, seemed to suffer in particular. From unreasonable demands ("Let's make it like The Division! / No, we don't have nine months to put that together...") to dramatic changes ("I've been playing a game all weekend and I've got this great idea, let's do an exploding zombie! / You've been playing Dying Light..."), staff struggled to cope with a project that had no cohesive vision or leadership. "Every day there would be a different change," one person said.

"I need the game designer to tell me the intention of his design, so I can make something the user will follow," another said. "In most cases the reasoning behind stuff was the game they played over the weekend. You would hear stuff like, can we have this like Far Cry? We start making it, and two weeks later, can we have this like Assassin's Creed? Dude, just tell me what you want to do, and I'll make it so. Don't worry. Just tell me what you want to happen."

The reason for fall of starbreeze is they never made a good game after this masterpiece

This game was one of the best game of all time. and literally almost perfect game. kinda shame how starbreeze has fallen.

Machinegames was the best thing to come out of Starbreeze.

I can't say I feel bad about Starbreeze disappearing.

@ghosts4ever: Most the people that made that game left the company.

No its not. after starbreeze they made 2 (technically 3) of most mediocre and some of the worst FPS games ever made.

absolutely terrible. comparing Riddick to wolfenstein is like comparing Diamond to trash.

@ghosts4ever: Riddick was good, really good, but best game of all time bwahahahaha, no matter what you post you just come off as a complete joke with very limited gaming experience.

Unpopular opinion: I liked Syndicate (2012) enough. For what it had for a good, immersive atmosphere, and very fun gunplay mechanics... its execution with the story was shoddy at best. Oh, and can't forget about the 'bloom' mechanic it had. Playing with the gamma slider in graphics will remind people of what I mean. ;)

I kinda wanted to see a sequel to it. That's not going to happen now it seems.

I only ever played 2 games from these guys but the 2 I did play were awesome in Enclave & The Darkness.

Last game of theirs I played was Syndicate, I enjoyed that one.

A fairly apt accurate description. Would apply it to Crytek as well.

Sounds like they were working on some awful shit.

Whatever. Their prime days of The Darkness and Riddick are long gone.

@ghosts4ever said:

The reason for fall of starbreeze is they never made a good game after this masterpiece

This game was one of the best game of all time. and literally almost perfect game. kinda shame how starbreeze has fallen.

Yeah, Riddick was pretty amazing for its time. The visuals were seriously impressive. A simple increase in resolution and texture detail and it wouldn't be far off from a 360/PS3 era game. I'd argue that The Darkness was quite a good game too, not as groundbreaking as Riddick but still a fun and stylish SP FPS.

Edit: Riddick was actually one of the first games I played when I got an Xbox. I can distinctly remember my dad getting pissed off at me shooting a corpse in the face repeatedly because I was so impressed by the blood decals.

Meh, Starbreeze only made a couple of games that I liked.

So far every Machine Games product has been a hit.

They definitely went downhill after Riddick. That game was really good.

That was a really creepy episode, the bad special effects made the alien more unsettling.

read again. i said one of the best game not best and yes it was really really really that good. one of the most badass game i have ever played.

i was young at that time and i was completely blown away.