As promised, Polish developer Techland has today released a video updating the world on the state of the zombie thriller parkour Dying light 2. It’s actually an extremely concise look at one of the most toxic cycles underlying the video game industry.
In the first half of the video about three minutes, several Techland developers read comments full of fan explanations calling for the game’s release or at least prove it still exists. “FIRE THIS BULLSHIT !!! Release the dying light 2 or do a fucking GOD DAMNIT demonstration, ”says one of the messages.
Then the second half of the video begins with one of the developers stating calmly and seriously: “Okay everyone, we got the message. We understand you’re curious about the game because you want to Dying light 2 be as good as you imagined ”.
The developers explain this Dying light 2 it’s a big game, a complex game, the kind of game that’s hard to make (note: everyone is), and that the studio just needs a little more time to bring to life its ambitious creative vision, especially after of a year full of unique challenges and tragedies stemming from the ongoing pandemic. The second half of the video is defensive, limited to apologies, apparently in an attempt to calm the most energetic and also virulent fans of the next game.
“Everyone here is putting their heart into offering a game that you’ll keep playing for months,” says one developer as if he was filming a hostage video.
“We’re proud to have fans as devoted as you, no matter how you express your feelings,” says Tymon Smektała, the game’s lead designer, in the end, completing the unhealthy loop of video game marketing addiction.
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“Normalizing this shit or playing it to laugh makes the industry worse for everyone,” he wrote GamesIndustry.biz editor Brendan Sinclair today on Twitter. He is right.
We’ve seen this game dozens of times before. A certain segment of gaming fans adore a developer until they bombard him with death threats because a game was delayed or, God forbid, had a wrong ending. However, some of the largest studios and game publishers continue to cater to these hyper-online and super fickle “fans,” because they are also the ones who will spread the gospel of E3 marketing on social media and private chats, report the non-believers, and be prepared to launch a harassment campaign at any time if the review scores don’t turn out as expected.
Dying light 2 was first revealed during Microsoft’s press conference at E3 2018, three years after the launch of the first game. It looked neat. A hands-on demonstration I even saw provoked there may be an interesting world construction beyond the standard zombie survival hijinks. But the game never had a firm release date, and early last year Techland announced it it would be delayed indefinitely. So some Dying light 2 apparently, fans set about launching abuses against the game’s developers and now Techland is trying to get them back, even with a new short teaser to mark them until the studio is finally ready to announce more.
We saw this exact scenario play out last year with Ciberpunk 2077. After the game was delayed for the third time in late October, chief game designer Andrzej Zawadzki and others reported that they were harassed by the news. “I’ll burn you alive if you don’t throw the game,” one of the death threats said shared in a screenshot. It happened several weeks later Bloomberg reported for the first time that the developers of CD Projekt Red were required to work mandatory overtime to finish the game, and several weeks before any Ciberpunk 2077 the fans would become uncomfortable for insufficiently positive reviews of the final match. The game quickly sold 13 million copies and it was removed so quickly from the PlayStation Store for performance issues. In spite of everything years of marketing edgelord, has plummeted outside of NPD sales charts. Who exactly served this whole messy cycle?
And yet, we see it again with Dying light 2. Months after being delayed, Polish departure PolskiGameDev.pl reported that development was not going well, and that the studio was struggling to deliver on its promise of a dynamic and changing world. Last month, The player reported that the project suffered from a lack of direction and cited several incidents in the study that pointed to a toxic management pattern at Techland. Last week, he tweeted from the studio, “We announced the game too early, but it’s far from hell.” Techland’s leadership sold a dream for what Dying light 2 it could have been for fans years ago and now it’s a nightmare that feeds commentators and the studio’s potentially deeper issues.
Eventually, the game will come out (the new video says 2021) or not. It can be good, bad or bad. Whatever the outcome, hopefully the very visible and obvious problems that are around Ciberpunk 2077, Dying light 2, and fan-based games with similar weapons will convince creators to stop trusting the circus of years ago to promote their games. Or at least stop accepting this strategy in the worst parts of the fan base tends to create.