The opposite idea would be cool too, like 10 games that make gaming company wealthy. Great video as always ! 👍

Randomly came across this video, wasn't expecting my old stomping ground to make an appearance (but doesn't surprise me). I'm one of the employees that worked at Eurocom for around 4/5 years until they closed. To clear some bits up, one of the issues you have with a James Bond game, and going back in time through the previous Bond stories is that you can only LEGALLY use the James Bond that is contracted at the time, which meant we were forced to use Daniel Craig for all of it, which also meant including his version of bond which essentially meant all gadgets out the window. This also tied with the fact Activision were actively getting in the way of development, and essentially pigeon holed us into creating a more "call of duty" experience than a "James Bond" game. However, the game didn't ruin Eurocom. It was a combination of trying to maintain our own engine, when there was far better engines on the rise (unreal + unity) and Eurocom got in pocket with Activision so when they pulled the plug, we didn't have anyone else who wanted to work with us, which essentially killed us. I have always maintained that Activision killed Eurocom developments, and it was a massive shame for saying how long they had been about.

I worked at Eurocom for a few years until it was closed. Activision really had them screwed on that project by moving release dates earlier and earlier whilst cutting the budget to be instead spent on primetime advertising. Relentless efforts - sleeping at the workplace regularly in a number of cases - weren't enough to have the project completed to a good enough standard. If the deadlines weren't reached, they choked the financial supply they as publishers provide for the project. More and more the game became a carbon copy of call of duty, at which point it became a tick sheet of comparison. It had character initially, but fell apart massively. Loved the people there, such a great place to work. It's a shame how it turned out in the end.

the first two Dave Mirra games ruled so hard and had great sound tracks. I was super bummed when he passed, RIP Dave

Kingdoms of Amalur was actually such a good game, hugely disappointed that we will never see a sequel because the developers were stupid beyond belief

You’re right about one thing: the original DOOM is still fun to play in 2022. I bought it for my Switch and it’s one of those games that you always keep installed and just keep playing it forever, like Diablo and Into The Breach.

Can we just stop for a moment and appreciate they actually filed a Trademark for "Suck it down."? Someone at the trademark office had to process that paperwork. They probably went home that night and had to rethink their life.

I had a pirated PS2, so I only have 2 original games. Those games are Turok: Evolution and Shadow Man: 2econd Coming. Both by Acclaim. What a lucky man I am

I always get happy hearing about comeback stories like NiER, its such an excellent game that just didn't vibe with people at the time but its now a once forgotten and now found classic.

One game you should mention is Raven Software's Singularity. While Raven Software is technically still around, the Soul of the studio has long left. Singularity was a great game, but Activision didn't want them to succeed so they didn't advertise for it and it sold poorly. Ever since then Raven has been stuck in the Call Of Duty mines.

I adored APB. I was in the alpha, then the beta. On release day, I called into work and showed up at Gamestop before they opened and as soon as it did, the clerk (a friend of mine) knew exactly what I was there for. I burnt through my initial 24 hours of open (whatever the time you had in the open world was called) 40 hours later. I LOVED that game. But, nobody else did. I felt like I was in that city and an actual part of a larger thing. I played Crims so of course I was going around causing problems. People bitched about the microtransactions but they were nothing compared to modern day. It was a creator's paradise as you could fully customize stuff however you wanted. I had a Scooby Doo van, a Joy Division T-Shirt (I actually made that one), and all sorts of other neat crap. Gosh, I wish games allowed stuff like that now. They shitcanned it and I got a free copy of Mass Effect 2 (the only reason I played that game) out of it. I miss being 18. From what I hear, GTA Online is the same experience only better (but without the customization). I couldn't get it into it. Maybe it's an age thing.

I must be one of the only people that loved the hell out of Too Human (and still has their OG disc). I was so excited for the next two games in the trilogy and was just heartbroken when the studio shuttered.

Oh man, I knew Too Human would be on here. I love that game with all its faults, I still own a physical copy of it. The idea for the world it takes place in is just fun.

Too Human made me so sad. The whole DLC tab never had a single option and the game AND idea was SO good. Even today I still love that game.

Still remember the crafting system from Kingdoms of Amalur where you could give your weapon a name which was pretty neat, still kinda sad it failed, it had its issues but overall it was a decent action rpg

I wonder how the developers of Nier feel seeing their work live on and become so beloved years down the line. I wish them all the best, they made a great game.

there's a whole ton of videos on Tombraider - angel of darkness. the staff were exhausted, the game was rushed and it WAS half finished. nothing like the game intended. it would be an interesting project for someone to actually complete the game and present it as it was intended.

Although a bit sad, it was a very interesting episode. Would love to learn more about top 10 'stolen' / unlicensed game engines. For example I just found out yesterday that Transport Tycoon 2 actually uses the HoMM 2 engine and originally without consent....

Gameranx videos are always giving entertaining lists, full of info about the industry, that I wouldn't know about otherwise. Of the many video game channels on KZfaq, this is one of my favorites.

It's cool to see that it was never the "games" fault, but bad business practices that led to these failures for the most part big takeaway: never rush a huge complicated project

Eternal Darkness was a masterpiece for its time, and still is worth playing today. But the best way to play it is to not look up any hints or game guides if you get stumped. Back when it was released, most people didn't have computers or the internet and the main way you got a game guide was to go to the store and buy one. With less access to that stuff, when you got stumped in the game you had to actually figure out how to progress. From knowing which spells to use, to figuring out how to beat bosses, the game was frustrating at times but also extremely rewarding when you had that eureka moment of figuring it out. Those surprise insanity effects were also unique and fun, especially when you didn't even know about them, they'd actually get you or make you go "WTF is going on?!". Getting the full ending was also satisfying, as the game generally played the same through each playthrough, but you had different benefits and handicaps against enemies.

The development cost for APB clearly went into the character and vehicle customization options. There has never been a customization system as deep before it, or since. The ability to customize all of your characters clothes, tattoos, and cars with items you personally made. And you could go into a studio to design your own custom music that played each time you killed a player. All of that stuff was where the money clearly went instead of actually developing the game. Yet I still loved APB and made some life long friends from there because we Role Played our characters instead of just doing missions and such.

So many of these I totally forgot about until you started talking about them. Unlocked some core memories of 2000's gaming

Some of these games were staples of my childhood, didn't realize some were so hated such as BMX XXX and Vexx. I thought they were great! Even APB was great after it went F2P. I played for many many hours.

I'm still sad that we'll never see a Kingdom's of Amalur 2. Game was actually fun and both it and the studios had a lot of potential, but money problems will do that to you. It'd still be nice if the minds behind the idea could join or work with another company to produce another game. A man can dream.

Wow it's crazy to think that one game can ruin an entire game company.

As a young teen when bmx xxx came out I have very fond memories and can say I truly enjoyed the game.

More than any of the companies mentioned, I feel really sad for CliffyB. Gears 1 and 2 had such an epic and memorable story. Instead of continuing that trend of story telling and making games like that, they went and tried to be more trendy. So sad to see that.

the pandemic studios were shut down in 2009 by EA and i still haven't gotten over it. it had developed one of the best games that not a lot people know about and it's called "the saboteur". the game was ahead of it's time and a true masterpiece also having an ending which kinda was going for a sequel but sadly that never happened. RIP pandemic

Gotta love seeing this crew succeeding. Thanks for all the videos

I remember the Daikatana mess, I believe that was the first time I ever actively rooted for a developer to fail. And boy, Romero didn't let me down.

I still own Tomb Raider:Angel of Darkness. Where I see how it feels unfinished in some aspects, I still love that game. It definitely has a lot of bugs lol. But it’s super nostalgic to me and I’m grateful it led me to the new Tomb Raider games.

Kingdom of Amalur is one of my all time favorite games i hope the remaster sold enough to earn a sequel.

Kingdoms of amalur was my favorite game during the 2010s, more than skyrim, it gave of fable vibes and I was so hooked at the story

APB does have one thing going for it though. It has the most in depth customization of all GTA-like games and possibly of all games ever made. You can paint, put letters on your cars and clothes, change materials, even paint individual components on cars. I didn't see anyone do anything like that before or since.

Missing a few: Sim City (2013) killed Maxis, C&C Renegade killed Westwood just to mention a few from EA.

Two favorites of mine can make that list are: 1. LA Noire - which ruined Team Bondi (crunch, c.e.o mistreating of staff, and not crediting staff who were let go before the game's release). 2. UFC undisputed 3 - ruined THQ (due to copyright lawsuits filed by a tattoo artist because a fighter who he tattooed was recreated in the game with the same tattoo without his knowledge, which added to other problems THQ was facing at the time, so they filled for bankruptcy, and EA has been making atrocious ufc games since then).

The saddest stories are contracted development teams meeting their end. The publisher contracted them in the first place, they're the ones that should be held responsible if the game flops.

still have a copy of bmxxxx on the shelf next to my xbox. also sank 1000s of hours into Apb through all 3 publishers. was an officer of a very large clan on the NAwest server. Apb had the best customization that has been available in a game. met some of my best friends that i still play various games with or just chill and talk in discord now.

A lot of these games are covered on this extensively and very exposition heavy show called “Wha Happun”. Seriously he goes into depth about the whole Kingdom of Alamar or Almur debacle and it is as insane as it sounds.

This video is a TLDR version of Matt McMuscles excellent "Wha' Happun'?" series. There's even a few over there that focus on the dev's themselves in the "Gone Too Soon" series. Go there for the full stories on each of these games/developers. Very inciteful videos for those interested.

The bulk of the cost for APB came from the in-game customization system which they had to license the tech from other big studios. Customization in the game was absolutely insane, on top of being able to shape your character however you want, you also have an entire livery and sticker editor that you could use to custom build your own clothing, tattoos, and cars, and the full set of your customized character would appear exactly the same to others in-game. And on top of that, there was even an in-depth midi editor that lets you make music for a jingle that plays out when you knock someone out or just to have as a music that plays out loudly from your car speakers. To this day, no game has ever come close to the level of customization that APB has and probably for good reason too, because anytime a new player loads into the map, the game would stall for a good couple seconds in order to load the custom playermodel mid-game.

I honestly loved playing Radical Heights. I always wondered why it shut down :(

Nice video, well paced without being too hectic.

APB had a few things going for them 1: Character Customization and Vehicle customization was the best I seen in a game like this. 2: I don't know if you still can but you could add your own custom music and other people could hear it while you passed by. Or when your radio was playing when they got inside your car

I am working on video-game ideas on the daily. I'm in a team called Moonshine and we're always looking for the next big game idea. Your videos I find are instrumental in showing many of the pitfalls professional gaming corporations run into - and I thank you for that. I'm already a subscriber.

Seeing as growth is often harder to manage than contraction, I wonder if there are any stories of games blowing up (commercially) and subsequently demolishing their devs?

I remember picking up angel of darkness and realizing how bad it was when playing the first level !!!

I really enjoyed playing radical heights. Maybe because it had a grid system instead of a closing circle system so it forced you to move around and camping wasn't a viable strategy. Afaik no other battle royale has tried using it and that's a shame.

I remember playing APB years ago and thinking it was an alright demo, which just needed some more development time and features. I had no idea at the time that the company had gone bust so the game was just going to remain as it was.

I know of a game that wrecked its company pretty hard, along with the staff, due to a certain 'manager' over hyping everything and under performing. The game is called, The dead Linger. They took a LOT of cash from early backers, no refunds, its all gone, and no one knows where it went.

I loved 007 Legends! I played a ton of the multiplayer and became pretty competitive at it!

Amalur' 2012 release is one of the most well optimised games I've ever played. Never seen such a pretty game run so well on such low level hardware.

The one that hurt me the most was Activision shutting down Bizarre Creations due to low sales on The 20 person racing game Blur which used licensed vehicles in a Mariokart adjacent style that actually had alot of depth and was more engaging than any Mariokart game due to its Drifting system having an insanely high skill ceiling and an EMP "Blue shell like item that had to be skillfully evaded to stay in first. Activision shut them down while they were working on a much more polished Blur 2 which was looking really good considering it was only a very early build. They were giving it a more stylized neon futuristic style with tighter controls and an overhauled power up system that I wish would have been made. Infamously Blur and Split/Second split the consumer base with each person claiming their unique racing game was the better one... They both were stellar however longterm Blur was far more engaging, even though Split/Second had some bombastic and insane set pieces for its era.

Rebellion being made of veteran Core programmers makes me like the Sniper Elite series even more.

Looks like we can add Volition with the Saints Row reboot to the list.

Some of these games might of just dropped at the wrong place wrong time with the wrong developers

Turok Evolution is such a cool/weird game, I loved it so much. It's nice to see it mentioned even if it's not for a great reason

'Angel of Darkness' was my first new PC video game (started with a Amiga 1200 and spent most of the time with low-end budget desktops and free/old games) ... Tomb Raider came with the Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum back then. There was a very big fan scene about all the planned story elements, deleted scripts, disabled moves/sounds and so on - the game would have been awesome if Core had finnished it - I still like the game because of the huge original storyline (a planned trilogy, if I remember correctly) today (bugs aside). Its sad how many people hate the game, but almost nobody knows about the epic concept and remembers how awesome Core design once was (loved them since 'Banshee' on the Amiga).

I absolutely love Gameranx videos, amazing when your an absolute gamer nerd like myself

Being rooted in Big Huge's MMO explains the mechanics of Amalur. Calling your game a [popular thing] killer has been a curse since the beginning of video games.

I absolutely loved Kingdoms on Amalur when it launched all those years ago. Shortly around the time of Skyrim and I found myself playing KOA more

Haze had so much hype, especially with an entire song being released by Korn to go with the marketing campaign

One additional studio I'm kinda curious about is EA Black Box. They ruled the NFS Series but kinda lost it when it came to the 7th generation

I actually really enjoyed Too Human, at the time. I'll always be hoping for a sequal or remake lol

APB was absolutely a great game and there is a reason every time they Announce a remaster players coming flooding back to it, what actually killed the game was the Hackers. The game held up to 4k users all the way up till 2017. Considering that game came out in 2012 that was a pretty good player count back then.

I had totally forgot Acclaim had made Vex. That was one of the few gamecube games I never finished.

I was enjoying Angel of Darkness about 10 years ago until the tunnel level glitched and I couldn’t continue through the level. It was saved like that and everything. I was gutted and could never get back into it after that.

The funny thing about Haze is that despite being so poorly recieved I used the Haze helmet icon as my Playstation 3 profile icon because I thought it looked cool.

I remember enjoying Too Human. It was a different style of game, but I thought that it was good, and the story wasn't bad.

I played the Lawbreakers beta and actually had a ton of fun with it. Back in 2013-2014 I had a competitive Team Fortress 2 team with some guys I met while playing online and Lawbreakers let us reconnect after not having a game we all played anymore. I loved the mechanics and had fun but u absolutely hated the art style. Everything looked so grimey and it was hard to distinguish what was going on. I also think launching the game at $60 was a huge mistake.

APB was one of the coolest games man. An absolutely incredible idea and insane customization system.

Wow, what a trip down memory lane, thanks for that! How about a Top video with games that exceeded expectations? Came from nowhere? Saved a company? Revitalized a genre? If those are out there already, groovy. About to continue to dig through the library.

I love Kingdoms of Amalur so much. Bought the original game, I have a nearly 100% completion on it, bought the remaster/remake and I'm working my way up to completion again. Shame about the bad business decisions with 38 Studios

TA Kingdoms (1999) killed Cavedog. They managed to put out an expansion sequal as well as a patch for it in 2000 and that was it (though Go Old Games did release it with a 1080p patch in 2020). It's an interesting story, because it wasn't so bad that it killed the studio, it was so good that domestic PCs couldn't run it and they also had to bit-crush the sound effects to compensate for the graphics as well. Still it's fun. I've got a full playthrough on my gaming channel (in a playlist) if anyone's curious about a game that tried so hard that it failed.

Now we have LOTR Gollem, The Day Before and King Kong, skull Island to add to the list

Even back when I was more politically ignorant the thought of using taxpayer dollars to pay for video game development was massively stupid to me.

I have to totally disagree with your view on APB. APB is actually fun, especially with friends. The customization is beyond the scope of anything else that's been out. What APB lacks is actual support from the devs. Which is why it's dying and why now it can be considered dull only because of it's low player count. Now, there were some other issues out there including some P2W stuff but even then it was able to be countered with the free to play stuff. If APB had received better support and attention from it's devs, both in the beginning and during the re-launch, I think it would be a much better game. With REAL new content, more maps to play in, actual action taken against hackers, perhaps new mission types, it could have been something really special. Sadly, it's fallen victim to neglect and a whole lot of cheaters that just make it unfun.

I spent a day at Eurocom in 1998 talking about Duke Nukem. Interviewed one of the founders. Walked around lovely Derby. He took me to lunch in his supercar. Shame it didn’t last, though not sure they ever made a good game.

As a Rhode Islander I'm glad the 38 studios story was told, such a scandal when it happened.

Kingdoms of amalur is still one of my favorite RPGs. The combat and world was fantastic.

Would love a new Timesplitters game, the series was great. Even a remastered collection or something would be nice

I somehow thought THQ would be on this list. They did the Darksiders series of games that I thought did well but they filed for bankruptcy before Nordic Games bought them. They have a HUGE list of IP's and games, but nothing could bring them back from the amount of debt they acquired.

LawBreakers was such a good game, it's a shame it was a bit mismanaged and that people didn't want to give it a try.

Crackdown was a lot of fun, I especially liked the detail that the upgrade system would result in very noticeable differences to the vehicles you drove after you got into them. That, and hopping around like a pre-flight powers Superman. I was rather disappointed with Crackdown 2. It was just overall a downgrade, especially with the vehicle upgrade visual effects (as I recall, they did away with that).

I don’t know why but I loved Vexx, but I definitely know it was extremely flawed 😂

I think it kinda sucks that past failures mean kids instantly reject any further projects. It's like, authors sometimes write a few bad books in a ROW, but people still try to read their stuff, and they get a best seller. Gaming is like highschool unfortunately, but instead of the cool football players, it's nerds in charge and they're extra vengeful.

Kingdom of Amular was a great game! I think the main issue besides the money problem was that Skyrim was barely only a few months old, which as all know is a game that will NOT die and is released on every thing that can run a game!

I expected LA Noire so much I don't know if I'm happy that I saw one more of these : D

I really enjoyed kingdoms of amalur especially since it was the first in what I was hoping would be a series. Unfortunately things went down the way they did

I remember growing up playing Vexx and absolutely loved it. Played it a few years back although not as great as I remember it definitely wasn’t bad in my opinion.

wow.. The Disney Hercules games gave me nostalgia, not only me but also my parents and my big bro, we were all obsessed with that game.

Crackdown was a blast to play. The follow up was incredibly disappointing.

Was Angel of Darkness the one where Lara Croft is trying to clear her name of a murder charge, but she sneaks around a museum snapping the necks of the museum guards? That always made sense to me.

For me in the late 90s and early 00s. Renting video games was the way to play them back then when parents can’t be buying $40 game that maybe really unenjoyable and money wasted. GameInformer magazines was our KZfaq back then.

Fantastic tutorial, keep up the great videos!

I loved KOA and it sucks how that all went down. My wife got into it after me and beat it 3 times over the course of a few yrs, just kept going back.

Can already see people saying “where cyber punk because bug = bad game company go boom” No, the truth is CDPR is still doing well, they’ve got an ongoing live-action Witcher series, a Cyberpunk Anime releasing next month and not to mention a newly announced Witcher game. Cyberpunk sold 18 million whether you like the game or not, and yes, that’s with the refunds factored in, even though there were very few in reality.

Good job, very interesting, i´m going to subscribe.

I remember having watched a Discovery Channel program when I was a kid (don´t remember exactly which one) and they were interviewing John Romero and he was hyping a lot about Daikatana. A few years ago I found Daikatana´s ROM on a random page so I gave it a try with an N64 emulator. I honestly found it to be like meh, it is interesting at some points and the whole time travel thing at least gives it many different environments but visuals were really odd and it is nowhere as fun as other FPS from that era.