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De-Evolve: The Life and Death of a Game

February 20th, 2016 09:18 AM

So, I stumbled upon this video on Reddit, and I had absolutely no idea what a phenomenal failure that Evolve had turned out to be. I admit that it never really caught my attention in the first place, so I wasn't part of the crowd to get disappointed. I first saw it demo'd on PS4, I believe, during E3, but never really cared much to look at it past that.



This video, however, shows how the game managed to build up ridiculous amounts of hype and not only failed to deliver on it, but actually went directly on to milking the product dry. This is the same studio, keep in mind, that developed Left 4 Dead, a game that still has a fairly active playerbase today.

At the time of this writing, the game costs €30 on Steam. That's just for the base game. If you want the "full pack", which includes all the monsters and that jazz(things that should've been included in the game to begin with), you have to shell out €60. If you want all the DLC, cosmetics too, you have to put down €230.

This is ridiculous. And yes, this is coming from a guy who owns most of the Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV DLC, but those games have the popularity to actually back it up. This game does not.

Turtle Rock really should've done a 180 and decided to perhaps cater a little bit more to the disappointed fans, instead of milking the shit out of their product?

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Re: De-Evolve: The Life and Death of a Game

February 20th, 2016 10:16 AM

I knew it was all lost when one of the developers basically said that Evolved had been "built from the ground up with DLC in mind"

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Re: De-Evolve: The Life and Death of a Game

February 20th, 2016 03:42 PM

Yeah. I think this game failed because it was created around a ridiculously-exploitative business model and pushed it along with the usual AAA hype. It's just a part of the problem of high-budget gaming and why I no longer touch it with a 10-ft pole with few exceptions.

Similar thing happened with Star Wars: Battlefront, and I expect that game to be forgotten and dead very soon.

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Re: De-Evolve: The Life and Death of a Game

February 20th, 2016 07:24 PM

The real question is, how long will it take for people to actually learn their lesson that some of these big-name companies just don't deliver anymore?

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Re: De-Evolve: The Life and Death of a Game

February 21st, 2016 03:44 AM

This isn't similar to Ubisoft, where a publisher consistently release flawed games with terrible PR. Turtle Rock was previously partnered with Valve, and have provided some of the most iconic maps for the Counter-Strike series. They also developed Left 4 Dead, of course, which was widely beloved and had no DLC at all. For them to just do a 180 and completely screw up, not only on the design aspects, but the PR? That's not very common.

I also wouldn't call it more of a "big-name" than Jonathan Blow or Phil Fish. They're a smalltime developer.

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Re: De-Evolve: The Life and Death of a Game

February 21st, 2016 04:16 AM

I agree that the DLC business model is not very fair. But most big titles these days are built with DLCs in mind and people don't care. Evolve had a nice marketing campaign but the game's selling point was an innovative gameplay mechanism which failed to convince people.

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Re: De-Evolve: The Life and Death of a Game

February 21st, 2016 10:02 AM

I honestly stayed away from Evolve's hype. I didn't hear about the game until ads started appearing in Wal-Mart, and I frankly figured it was another overhyped title at the time. Turns out I was correct.

Games media does nothing to help the situation as they add to the hype by showering unfinished games with awards and praise before they're ever finished, which drives up pre-orders. Given how corrupt games media is, and how publishers basically own it, it's easy to conspire that games publishers encourage this practice.

I always seem to think the publisher is at fault for that. You don't find these practices in indie games very often. They exist, but are less common than in AAA published titles. It really seems like with most large publishers, the more they spend on a title, the more they monetize it to guarantee a return on investment, and thus the more exploitative and split-up it is.

So I feel it's 2K Games milking the fans of Evolve, not Turtle Rock Studios, just like how EA, Activision, and Ubisoft (and others) milk their fans with design decisions made in board room meetings in front of shareholders at corporate HQ. Good independent developers rarely do this because they're not focused on meeting sales targets and pleasing shareholders, but instead making a quality video game out of the love of making games.

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Re: De-Evolve: The Life and Death of a Game

February 21st, 2016 10:06 AM

There's nothing wrong with DLC at all. If applied correctly, it can really prolong a game's longevity. Unfortunately, you have games like Borderlands, Evolve and Payday 2 that just do it entirely wrong. At the very least, make skins unlockable in-game through playing, but keep them in a store for fast-tracks.

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Re: De-Evolve: The Life and Death of a Game

February 21st, 2016 10:14 AM

There are games that do DLC and microtransactions fairly. I know TF2 and Loadout were good examples where content updates didn't require you to pay more money, but still offered incentives to those that wanted to without breaking gameplay. Payday 2 was actually fair at this at first, then went nuts with paid DLC and is now seen as a game that went to the dark side (along with Overkill).

I really do miss the days of having extras unlocked through gameplay. This was the norm until people saw that you could charge others for these options and get away with it. Anything to get that extra buck or two from a $60 purchase. Still, cosmetic DLC is never the worst kind.