The first time Harvey Smith came to Montreal he had just finished his work as lead designer on the acclaimed classic, Deus Ex. On this trip, his last game was Blacksite: Area 51, a game published by Midway which one critic called "a major disappointment."
"This project was so fucked up," said Smith, by way of explanation.
"With a year to go, the game was disastrously off rails." There were long delays just getting Blacksite playable, and once it was he says, "it went straight from alpha to final."
Even though he accepts his own faults with the design process, Smith still thinks the game was underrated. "I would give it an 80," he says, claiming the gameplay is still fun and that the contemporary political satire sets it apart from most games.
Derik Moore of Gaming Rebellion Writes: "Welcome to another Gaming For Official Use Only. I have wanted to cover this topic for a long time, but I really couldn’t decide on which Area 51 game I would cover. There’s the classic light gun arcade game from the 1990’s, and a fairly forgotten FPS reboot from the 2000’s. I spent too much time trying to figure out which I would cover until it hit me: I don’t have to choose. I’ll cover both before going on to probably the most well known conspiracy theory in mainstream media. Let’s start with the awesome light gun game."
EB's Nat Smyth writes, "Blacksite Area 51 piqued my curiosity when I was a new Xbox 360 owner in 2007, and I had seen it on the shelf too many times in visits to my local Gamestop to pass it up, so I finally bought it. What I got when I played it was a dull, lifeless, and somewhat ugly looking first person shooter that didn’t hold up at all next to the recently released Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare."
Justin from TMSGamer is back for the third, and final part of his article about the worst games he has played on this generation. Remember, these are games only he has played.
"When asked why he would be so open about the faults of the game so soon after it launched, Smith's response was, 'I believe in personal accountability.'"
Maximum respect for this interview. All developers should be that open.
They had ONLY 4 days to fix it O.o
Talking about publisher pressure >.>
Hopefully the game will get better with some more patches, or at least that is what some reviewers said that the game had potential despite giving then low scores
I like how Smith is taking responsibility for the crappy game, but I don't like how he makes it seem like his politcal satire is so amazing. It isn't.
Accountability is nice but when it sucks it sucks.....and this one was a big let down for sure.
I would think you wouldn't want to trash your game so soon after release. An interview like this should probably take place a good year after (if anyone is still interested at that time). Anyone reading what the designer had to say and might have been thinking of picking it up, sure wouldn't be now.
Honesty is one thing, but why sabotage sales?