Thread by @WritNelson

Okay: you know how I was soliciting stories about developer experiences working with licensed games?
I got a *really* juicy one that, after a lot of back and forth, they realized they didn't exactly want published in PC Gamer magazine.

HOWEVER

...The company (which isn't huge, but has a reputation--you'd know their games immediately) did say I could share the story publicly as long as I did not provide identifying details about either of the parties in the story.

So, I won't do that.

Without further ado, here we fricking go:

Did you know we almost got a LICENSED Hawaiian resort management sim?
Yeah.

That was almost a Thing.

It was the early 2000s. The PC game market was in a weird place, and the few titles selling were either casual games, Major Shooters, RTS titles, or management games. Human management, city management...people like this stuff, and it played well outside of the core audience.

A Major Corporation specializing in hotels and resort properties saw this niche (flash games and casual stuff was just beginning to boom), and considered investing into a licensed title for promotional and diversification purposes.

Cut to a crowded hotel bar during CES.

The Corporation Executive and a Game Developer are sitting at the bar.
Sounds like the setup for a joke, right?

Well, these guys get chatting, and pretty soon they hit it off. Shots are taken. Too many shots are taken.

At the point in the night when everyone is attractive and hilarious and absolutely best friends, the conversation turned to partnership.

The executive talks about his company's exploration of that space, the game developer talks about their experience making games in that genre.

The next morning, the game developer wakes up with a splitting hangover. He dimly remember the executive and the excitement he felt about the opportunity (his studio hit a real rough patch in the wake of the Dot Com bubble), but he doubted it would come to anything.

It was drunken chatter. Like a dream, if a dream made you sensitive to light the next day and forced you to look up 'hangover cures' on overloaded connections.

The game developer's hotel phone starts ringing.
It's the executive--and true to his word, he was following up.

The conversations that game developer and executive had at CES laid the groundwork for a deal that would, unbeknownst to the latter party, save the developer's studio.

When they parted, the dev promised they'd stay in touch and start sending design proposals ASAP.

There were some culture and process differences between the corporation and the studio. However, they ultimately settled on a design that--AT FIRST--made both parties happy.

A light, fun game about building and managing a Hawaiian resort.

The game would prominently feature the hotel brand in as many places as humanly possible--and some others that weren't. The studio got full funding to design a title for a genre that was popular. Maybe they could ride the wave again.

Either way--the studio was saved.

Now, at this point, the co-founder of the game studio makes a decision that REALLY saves the company.

He suggests to his partners that they staff up and really commit to the resort game, sure--but they should reserve a division of the original employees for contract work.

This division would complete assignments that slowly put money into the studio's reserves, and eventually spin up a second, smaller project while the bulk of the studio fulfilled their contractual obligations to the hotel.

They humored him and allowed him to split the team.

SHORTLY AFTER
Trouble begins to rumble in paradise.

It starts with a few light disagreements over changes the developers believed were suggestions. It progresses into withheld milestone payments over arbitrary changes--the color of a sign, for example.

The work of 10 minutes got used as an excuse to not pay tens of thousands of dollars.

The corporation began throwing their weight around, demanding a kitchen-sink approach to design. If it was popular at the moment, they wanted it in THEIR game.

Minigames began to flood the, originally, reasonably scoped management sim.

Dress-up minigames.
Arcade throwback minigames (for the obligatory arcade expansion to your resort lobby).
Action-RPG stuff (don't ask).
Diner Dash-style minigames, but for cocktails.

So many minigames.

The developers warned that the game would cost more money to build and maintain if the requests kept piling up. The corporation pushed forward, saying they'd pay for it--and for a while, that was true.

For a while.

At the next major investor's report, the corporation executives were forced to defend why they were planning to invest over seven figures into a GAME. A game that would PROBABLY FAIL.
WHAT THE HELL.
WHY DID YOU DO THIS.

The corporation executives didn't like that.

Now, the developers weren't in the room, so they can't say exactly how it went down, but they could absolutely tell a difference when the executives got back.

The corporationcalled on a provision in the contract to halve the budget--but retained the same, expanded scope.

The developers pushed back for the first time--hard. Protesting, they said they couldn't even make the game for their ORIGINAL budget. Something would have to give.

It turned out, that Thing would be the developers.

The corporation came back and demanded that the game be put through an extensive battery of focus tests.

The buggy, half-finished, unfocused mess of a game they were only starting to TRY to pull together would be submitted for full corporate review.

Needless to say, the game (which even at its systemic core only had a quarter of its full systems operational) was slaughtered.

The testers weren't told to judge it as a work in progress, but as a *full game*. Gamers and non SAVAGED the incomplete piece while the devs watched.

The one thing that was received well was an oddly polished dance minigame created by the writer of the game.

She didn't have much to do until later in the project, so she would just work on this little, oddly sincere thing for hours.
It shined in the mess.
They called her.

The corporation and the studio made a new deal. The latter didn't have much of a choice.

The developers would build a new version of the game entirely around the dance simulator, repurpose stuff like the dress minigame for THIS, and release it on casual portals.

The budget was duly cut, the writer in the background was pushed into a co-direction position, and development began again in earnest.

Rather than firing the extra staff immediately, the studio put them in the second division, which was...turning a profit?

Given a position of authority directly reinforced by the corporation, the writer had significant creative control in game for the first time in her life. She did well.

Combined with a new producer, the shallow premise of the original minigame began to take on a life of its own.

The gameplay became more technical and inspired by actual Hawaiian dances (the corporation liked that they might be able to sell it, or a version of it, as educational). The narrative was poppy. The dress-up minigame flourished in the new context.

Things were going well.

The developers hit Alpha, and then Beta. To celebrate the smooth partnership, the corporation decided to fly the core team to an actual resort in Hawaii for a 'research' trip.

The team was ecstatic.
They had made it.

The writer began to do research ahead of the trip--and what she found disturbed her. A history of horrid colonialism and continued exploitation pushed by entities like the corporation she'd promote.

For one member of the team, a dream vacation was becoming an existential crisis.

When the team arrived at the resort, she smiled and went along with the expertly guided tourist experience--but she found every crack she could to ask REAL questions too. Her suspicions were confirmed.

She began to inform others in the team of her findings, and discovered allies

The core team of the game came back home, and through their experience, saw not just a papering over of larger issues, but also blatant falsehoods they'd perpetuate through THEIR game.

They couldn't bring this to the corporation, so they brought it to the rest of the studio.

Their reception was...not great. A lot of folks doubted the seriousness and necessity of the problem proposed. Others didn't want to risk their jobs yet again.

Some of the original allies fell away--but the writer had some control yet.

The framing of the game changed. You would no longer be a lilly-white tourist coming to delight in the wonders of the island, but a native, affected by diaspora, attempting to express themselves and their culture even *through* the exploitation.

It needed a light touch.

The co-director took a massive cut in pay bring another employee onboard--a new writer. Someone from a native Hawaiian background.

This writer wasn't versed in games, but she learned soon enough.

Instead of finally buying a new bed, the co-director slept on an air mattress.

The corporation was *bothered* by the changes, and increasingly unconvinced that the studio wanted to make the resort look good.

However, they'd already played so many cards, and the game was so far along, nothing less than a pure breach could be used to shut the studio down now

The executives used the THIRD-TO-LAST MILESTONE to call a surprise meeting. An informal playtest. Nothing major.

The narrative framing was still conflicted, both due to an imperfect light touch, and by the massive compromise of serving two masters.
Again, something had to give.

Midnight. Just before the corporate playtest.
The co-director and new writer met to talk through their issues with the game. They had a decision to make:

Bring this flawed, compromised mess to the table and get cancelled anyway, or present something they could be proud of.

They had just enough allies to choose the latter, and so, worked through the night to get the new narrative in.

The build was committed, compiled, and put onto a hard drive.

It was showtime.

By the way - no one except the confederacy knew that THIS was the version of the game they would be presenting to the folks who controlled their livelihoods. Those outside the allied core hated the 'unnecessary changes' as it was.

IMAGINE THEIR SURPRISE.

The informal playtest was a trap.

Of course.

The executives had brought their children to play the game on their behalf--and the little monsters absolutely savaged the game yet again.

I won't say the title didn't have problems. Particularly for a mouse and keyboard setup designed for casual portals, the controls were far too non-standard. Fiddly. But, it was nothing that couldn't be tightened up for ship.

If not for the kids.

The kids didn't get the subtle, nuanced story.
The kids didn't get the UI flow.
The kids, most of whom were boys trained in the most toxic of high-class toxic masculinity, hated that they had to dance.

It was a disaster.

Those parents who looked over the kids shoulder witnessed something special...but remained silent.

The game was duly cancelled for breach of contract, with the largest reason cited being that the gameplay and narrative were totally disconnected.
Their 'expert panel' hated it.

The narrative and gameplay *were* disconnected, of course. It was a miracle either were intact.

But it didn't matter!
The contract stated that they couldn't reuse the code, so the game was effectively dead. Killed by corporate...

MEANWHILE

IN THE SECOND DIVISION

The B-team had become the A-team, and the management game THEY spun up was an unexpected smash hit. Again, you'd know the franchise instantly if I told you.

No one at the studio was fired as a result. They just transitioned over, or left the industry.

I hear the writer is a librarian and activist, now.
The co-director cashed out her shares, in time, and currently works in venture capital.

The corporation never dabbled in entertainment investment again--except for one board member's odd belief in a company called "Netflix".

The studio lived on, but this just serves to show how fragile this business is. A couple missed milestones, some petty disagreements--even a single chance meeting can spell success or failure.

Every game release is a miracle.

A promising, potentially revolutionary title was destroyed, all by a bunch of meddling kids and a trumped-up charge of narrative and gameplay disconnection in its treatment of Hawaii's present.

Killed, I'm afraid to say, by

...

Luaunarrative Dissonance.

I HAVE NEVER FELT

MORE

FUCKING

ALIVE

Hi, I'm Xalavier Nelson Jr., a narrative designer/journalist/Event Man.

Sometimes, I use my skills for good on games like the IGF-nominated Hypnospace Outlaw.
store.steampowered.com/app/844590/Hyp…

Sometimes I use it for other things.
To hurt people.

If we'd be a good fit, hit me up, yeah?