listen to me info dump about until dawn and the fall of Supermassive Games along with its predecessors

      Fair warning, my grammar and capitalization is all over the place but I don’t care enough to fix it since this is just me rambling about games, all casual stuff AND PLEASE tell me what you think if you find this interesting at all!!!  

      I could yap about this game all day. Until dawn is such a fantastic game it's pacing is spot on, you don't feel bored playing (touch on this later), good twists, compelling narratives and characters, and beautiful settings (love a good winter cabin moment). Of course it falls flat sometimes with the voice acting and character models, but for 2015 these graphics were insanely high definition. I actually prefer until dawn's models compared to their newer stuff like the quarry, because with super high rendering comes this uncanny valley that wasn't present before. Also, motion capture and story based games weren't that huge, The only similar projects coming before being "the walking dead series" and "life is strange". So for its time it was pretty groundbreaking.

       I feel that the devs were very committed to making an enjoyable experience since it was going to be the company's big break. If you look at the stuff Supermassive games put out before until dawn you’ll see a bunch of mediocre no heart shit. No shade tho, just love, but I’m being serious!! They made a muppets dlc for Little Big planet, a weird side scroller platformer game for Doctor Who, a VR dinosaur wonderbook (idk what that is honest) for kids, and a family party game. I kind of love that the devs behind one of the best horror games (im biased duh) started as a family friendly gaming company. Anywho, that’s why so much love went into Until Dawn it was their pièce de résistance, the company’s baby if you will. The devs actually cared about the gameplay and the users enjoyment! They even did biometric testing, where a bracelet was put around the game tester’s wrist to track their emotions during the game. This allowed the dev team to go back and add some scares if things got too dull and mundane. This also allowed them to back off if things became too much for the effect they were trying to pull off. And I just fucking love that, the attention to detail was insane and the devs actually saw what people liked about the game and used constructive criticism to make it the amazing thing it is today. 

      But then they kept making games and they just kept getting worse and worse. ENTER THE FALL OF DEVELOPMENT COMPANIES!!! Hey, remember when I was talking about the walking dead series and how it paved the way for these new story led experiences. Well their development company, TellTale kept laying off their employees and then shut down due to being broke bitches. Hip hip hooray for awful business!! “But Em, what happened? How did this successful company lose everything??” do not fret young one for I have all the answers (I’ve been focusing on this for wayyy too long) but first we must go back in time to 2004, mcr’s three cheers just came out, and everyone and their momma is listening to American idiot. Here we find a silly little gaming company called LucasArts which mostly dealt with making game adaptations from LucasFilm. They did a ton of star wars and Indiana Jones stuff, Disney owns all this now but that’s irrelevant. Three developers (Kevin Bruner, Dan Connors and Troy Molander) from LucasArts decided to quit and make their own indie game development resulting in TellTale. 

      The early days of TellTale were pretty nice, mostly producing games using intellectual property which gave them a small but devoted cult following. During this time they produced Sam & Max games (the bunny and dog detectives, I love them so much I def recommend if you grew up with point and click adventure games like I did!! (putt-putt has my heart) ), wallace and gromit, and even homestar runner. Throwback amirite, anywho with the success of these games TellTale was able to get the property for the walking dead and created the 2012 Walking Dead chapter 1 which broke free from the point and click style and into a more choose your own story route. And it was amazing, bitches loved this shit and understandably so it was new, cool, and based on the most popular airing show during that time. (I know it was technically based off of a comic book which came first but just let me have this okay) With this huge boom of success the company grew, no longer was Telltale a cute little indie company trying to make ends meet. It became a money raking machine. 

      Before you know it, TellTale is pumping out more major successes like minecraft story mode, the wolf among us, and batman. They did other stuff too but these are the big ones in my head. It’s during this time when everything starts going to shit. Dan Connors stepped down from being CEO in 2015 After the walking dead season 2 (for the game) came out. Now only one of the original founders, Kevin Bruner is in control of the company and man oh man is he stretching everyone real thin. He keeps pushing multiple projects on everyone which leads to poor morale and this grinding work culture. In turn this leaves very little room for change or improvement and all of the games start becoming predictable, boring, and heartless because they’re being made by the corpses of dev teams. This finally catches up to Kevin and in 2017 and he steps down, being replaced by Pete Hawley who was originally from the dev company Zynga. Which you might recognize as the creator of farmville. That’s right folks the Vice President from the studio that brought you farmville is now in charge of the massive company TellTale. What possibly could go wrong? 

      November 2017, 25% of TellTale’s employees were laid off. THAT'S ALL THIS FUCKER DID HE JUST FIRED PEOPLE AND THOUGHT THAT WOULD FIX EVERYTHING JHASKJHSKJHDF WHAT… I will say he did think that laying people off would slow down production and let the developers create at a more reasonable pace which is nice and all. But that clearly didn’t work out because only one year later the company filed for bankruptcy!!!! Turns out when you put bad people in charge they produce bad things (aka the netflix minecraft story mode) which in turns scares away all your investors, leaving you with no money yippee!!!!! 
 
      Now that we got that all cleared up, I'm worried that we are watching the exact same thing happen with Supermassive games. Until dawn is telltale's walking dead, they found something that worked, got greedy with it, and are now suffering because their games are not anywhere near as impactful as they used to be. It makes me so sad to see artistry die due to capitalism and money hungry CEOS. Watching the quarry playthrough is bittersweet because yay this is what i’ve been asking for, a longer heavy native based horror game like until dawn! But it just falls flat in comparison. I think the development spent too much time making it all extravagant and large instead of focusing on those little details. One big qualm that I have with the Quarry is its mundaneness. The dialogue is cheesy and boring at times and gives me no new insight on the characters or the overarching plot. This game was a lot more open compared to until dawn and I think that’s another one of its downfalls. Exploring becomes a chore which I often opt out of to continue narrative. But in Until Dawn it was rewarded, the totems were clearer, getting evidence is what helped you figure out the plot, and it wouldn’t take too much time away from the actual plot. One of my favorite things in Until dawn is that if you didn’t get enough evidence you miss an entire chunk of the story, and for the little matpat theorizer in me THAT MADE ME SO HAPPY!! I had to earn that information, the game didn’t just tell me outright. 

      But yeah anyway those are my thoughts, they just don’t be making games the way they used to :( BUT I’D LOVE TO TALK MORE ABOUT THIS and if you disagree with my opinion tell me why!! I’d love to have my mind changed because that means more games for me to enjoy!