WarDevil/Project Kane [Xbox 360, PS3 – Cancelled]

WarDevil, also known as WarDevil: Enigma, WarDevil: Unleash the Beast Within and later rebranded as Project Kane, is a canceled futuristic post-apocalyptic action beat them up game developed at least from 2003 until 2011 by Ignition London, formerly Digi-Guys, and published by UTV Ignition Entertainment, first for the Xbox and Gamecube, then for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

For years, WarDevil was a nebulous project, long considered as a vaporware and whose development seems to have been very chaotic. Between probably excessive ambitions, money management problems from the top and controversies concerning the veracity of this game, WarDevil remains a very interesting obscure canceled title, and whose disastrous management seems to have been only another story in the video game industry. A story that could be attributed to its publisher.

First Revelation

It all started in November 2004 when the first information about WarDevil was shared with a hundred screenshots and a trailer released by some dedicated media. As we can read on Eurogamer, the game is already intended at this time for the Xbox 360, still called Xbox 2 back then:

Digi-Guys, a hitherto unsighted games developer based at Pinewood Studios here in the UK, has released a short and breathtaking teaser trailer for its next-generation game WarDevil: Unleash the Beast Within, believed to be on its way to Xbox 2 before the end of 2005.

The trailer is available in various sizes from the official WarDevil website here, and although it’s impossible to judge whether it’s running in real-time on actual console hardware or not, it’s nevertheless an impressive glimpse of what developers are confident next-gen tech will be able to do.

“Designed as both a short movie and a videogame,” according to Digi-Guys’ website, WarDevil has been in development for “over 15 months” and aims to stand tall among its next-gen neighbours thanks to glorious 3D visuals and a filmic narrative, which pitches the player into the role of a “WarDevil” in a near-future world “ruled by the iron fist of the Chun Federation”, where you must discover how to quell “the Beast Within”.

Although billed as a “next-generation 3D title” in most of the on-site literature, tellingly the developer mentions Xbox development tools on the recruitment pages of the side, and as a result it’s been widely linked to Xbox 2.

That said, there’s no solid confirmation WarDevil won’t appear on other formats. Hopefully we’ll hear more in the coming days and weeks as the website is updated with more information and media.

Probing further, Digi-Guys is also preparing to start work on full-length CG motion picture and game projects, according to its corporate web presence, with work on both taking place under the same roof at Pinewood Studios in the UK – and set to commence in early 2005.

The game reappeared with a new trailer during the Tokyo Game Show 2005, revealing some details about the in-house engine that powered the game, named Real Time Engine 1080, or simply RTE 1080:

The WarDevil RTE 1080 Engine has been developed by Digi-guys to realise the graphical depht & complexity that’s required for the WarDevil project.

Unlike other Engines, the RTE 1080 is designed to work in HD (1920×1080) and to create a visual style that surpasses the look & feel of conventional ‘Pre-Rendered’ FMV sequences.

The goal of the RTE 1080 is to achieve in-Game graphics that compare to the quality of the Pre-Rendered sequences creating a true Cinematic Game Playing experience.

WarDevil Tokyo Game Show 2005 trailer

Change Of Video Game Platforms

The project resurfaced again in May 2006, during E3. By this time, Digi-Guys announced that WarDevil wasn’t planned for the Xbox 360 anymore, and became a Playstation 3 exclusive. Another video tech demo was shown during the event, revealing a new design for the main character. IGN wrote this conclusion:

Meanwhile, what about the gameplay? There’s only so much to talk about right now –we spoke with the team at Digi-Guys briefly, and they said that the demo was basically a last-minute project kicked onto the PS3 to prove its tech. The game will not be playable here at E3, but it is promised to be fully playable at TGS. The trailer was meaty stuff, and while it’s disappointing that the game was not playable in any major form and was also missing a lot of technology, the fact that the team was kicking out 1080p is a feather in their cap.

Gamespot, for its part, concluded:

Like many of the PlayStation 3 demos being shown at the Sony booth, the WarDevil demo claims that it is running at 1080p, and though there’s no way for us to really determine how true that is, we’re certain that it’s running in some kind of HD resolution. Not a whole lot happens over the course of the demo, but there was a certain cinematic quality to the demo. There’s no question to us that what we saw was running in real-time, as there were a few moments of slowdown. What we’d really like to see now is some actual gameplay.

UTV Ignition Comes Into Play

During this period, things revolving around WarDevil become a bit more hazy. Obviously, the game wasn’t shown at the Tokyo Game Show 2006. In December of the same year, it was announced that the Indian company UTV Software Communications acquired the English publisher Ignition Entertainment. The press release announced this acquisition as well as the ambitions of UTV revealing that Ignition is the publisher of WarDevil, although so far no communication on this subject has been revealed. Was Digi-Guys already in partnership with Ignition Entertainment, since their only game, Strike Force Hydra, an obscure shoot’em up marketed around 2003/2004 on Gameboy Advance and Playstation 1, was already published by them? Still, Ignition is mentioned for the first time on WarDevil following their takeover:

Mumbai-based UTV Software Communication has staked company’s claim in the virtual gaming business.

The company has acquired a 70% stake in Ignition, which is currently developing a graphic intensive game exclusively for Sony Playstation 3. (…) Ignition’s WarDevil will give the company access to the console gaming market (like Sony’s Playstation and Microsoft’s Xbox), which accounts for 61% of the gaming software industry. Ignition’s game WarDevil, a Rs 85 crore (around 10 millions of U.S. $) project, will find its way into millions of Sony Playstation 3 in 2008.

According to Hexus.net, following the final acquisition of Ignition by UTV, Digi-Guys became a subsidiary of the publisher:

Digi-Guys are a wholly owned subsidiary of Ignition – with its roots in both Videogames & High End CGI, Post-Production & VFX for movies. Based in it’s own high-end facility inside the world famous Ealing Studios (London, UK), the studio’s remit is to push far beyond the confines of conventional ‘next-gen’ thinking and produce unique, innovative and platform leading Videogames & Digital content across all media, utilising a broad spectrum of Games & Movie CG experience.

One year after the finalization of the deal between Ignition and UTV, WarDevil was shown again, in the spring of 2008, with a new trailer on PSU.com, in addition to new screenshots showing a redesign of the main character:

Some details the developers have told us:

– They are not finished with the game yet, still adding improvements both gameplay-wise and graphically

– They are making good use of the SPU’s and streaming off of the Blu-ray disc

– Their goal is to get the Blu-ray film & game to look as identical as possible so there is no transition between the game and cinematics

Controversy

However, it was in November 2008 that the title was the target of controversy. On the PSU forums, a person under the pseudonym of ‘Leearcher‘ declared to be someone close to the development of the game, and accused the developers of lying about the technical capabilities of the project and that everything from the beginning was pre-rendered. Here are some of the messages written on this subject:

With WarDevil hiding out since it’s last showing back in May, PSU contacted the Digi-Guys to get an update on what’s going on with development. According to our contact, the developers have moved back into stealth mode but will be revealing new details on the project soon.

“We’re back in ‘below radar’ mode at the moment… so there’s no news or info I can share yet,” wrote the Digi-Guys representative. “[However] there will be some soon.”

Leearcher: The images you have on your posts here are completely faked. Not one of them is done in real-time. PERIOD.

• They are no where near completing this game based on the information I have.
• They have been working on the same 3 levels, one of which was recycled from a previous “attempt” at the project before Ignition/UTV merger for the last 3 years.
• It’s supposed to be a game with 20 hours worth of play, and a 2 hour feature film?
• Get real. The levels are so small you could walk though them in 5 minutes and be like “what? That’s it? **** that”.

An exclusive to what exactly? Whilst that might sound exciting to some (press release? hah), for me I smell more lies about to puked out from Whitehurst and company with an attempt at some form of credability to their statements borrowed from PSUforums.com for this exclusive news update. Laughable to say the least.

Alleged WarDevil investor said:

Here is the real goods on WarDevil.

The project is a complete and total scam. I have intimate knowledge of the management team at Digi-Guys (also known internally to its many current and former staff as Digi-Lies) and they are about as qualified to produce (or direct) a video game as I would be qualified to be the Project Manager.

They have no “engine”. The entire demo has been faked through pre-rendering those “cutscenes” which are not done in real time at all. Actually to my knowledge NONE of the stuff reported on their site in the demos are actually done using the “engine” but really what it is, is simply a sophisticated 3D scene file player with some smoke and mirrors. It’s not playable at all.

Yes it does motion blur but it looks worse now than when the project introduced it into the original engine on the Xbox 360 or the first rounds on the PS3. It’s actually a horrible looking thing to see on screen.

The project has been delayed time and time again for one single reason. The project director is a complete hack/con artist. He’s lied to not just one batch of investors but now also to their new owners UTV to secure financing when it seems they have absolutely no desire to ship the product whatsoever and he has lied time and time again to a list of some of the most talented artists in the world who have done duty at that company only to be ripped off (the artists can never show any of their work because it will never release and the Non-Disclosure Agreements are crap but they will threaten you with an army of lawyers if you talk, well guess what Andy! **** YOU, the jig is up and we are going to fight you) with the excuse that its a great opportunity to work on a game title like this. ********!

That company is a complete joke. It’s management is a joke. It’s run like a day care center with one big fat spoiled brat right in the center of it. Andy Whitehurst.

You’re con days are over.

Wardevil is NOT a title you want to hold your breath for. It’s unlikely it will ship in the first place, even though the delusional fool in charge “director, andy whitehurst” has admitted it would be more like late 2010 before it ships. And many people doubt even that. They have missed every single demo for the last 3 years I am told by weeks, even full quarters from what they planned out.

UTV, if you are reading this. Cut your losses and **** can Whitehurst immediately and cancel him out of his contracts on the basis of fraud. It’s that or you are going to have to start explaining some of the bullshit thats been going on at Digi-Lies.

What might seem like a pointless anecdote nevertheless took on a certain importance when the same day, we could read on PS3Center.net:

Forums exploded earlier this week when a forum poster on PS3forums said that the PS3 exclusive WarDevil was vaporware. ‘Lee Archer’, a supposed investor in the studio, said that the title would never be launched, and insinuated that the higher ups on the project were rotten to the core.  The topic has since been deleted and ‘Lee Archer’ banned, though his comments on other WarDevil topics remain visible.

Now Digi-Guys has taken legal action against the poster, but details still remain slim on their project. Since then, Digi-Guys are unable to post anything until this matter has been settled in court.  Digi-Guys wrote “they understand that this will be frustrating to the real fans of Wardevil out there but at this time are unable to comment further.”

As of right now, PCN has been unable to reach Digi-Guys for further comments.

The controversy does not stop there, since several months later, in July 2009 more precisely, this same ‘Leearcher‘ wrote this time on Gamefaqs this:

I have to speak up here on this subject. Now for fear of what happened on PSU last fall after posts were made on this subject by “leearcher”, I am going to keep this short and simple. No one in gamer land should ever for one second believe that the images in the latest trailer from Digi-Guys is realtime, in engine, or ingame in anyway whatsoever. It’s a completely pre-rendered piece using Lightwave and Fusion to produce those images. This statement does NOT violate any NDA whatsoever, since even Digi-Guys themselves do not put the RTE1080 logo on the material any more.

This next statement also doesn’t violate any NDA whatesoever. During the course of this “game” being developed the number of staff turnover at Digi-Guys has been astronomical. By now, best estimates are that it’s well over 200 staff who have come and gone, with many more staff trying desperately to get out of the company and find work else where to this day.

Fact: To date, no independently verified “in-game” game play has ever been witnessed by anyone in the press. Fact: The real reason this is a PS3 exclusive is not because Digi-Guys wanted to focus on one platform, but instead, and this is harsh, but shows just how these guys operate – had to go with PS3 because they originally showed a tech demo of the game on the Xbox 360 using hacked Xboxes to do it, and when Microsoft raised the question of “where did you get these dev kits/boxes?” and it came back they didn’t have legal kits – MicroSoft walked away possibly threatening to sue (although that part is unconfirmed, but they apparently left the meeting very unimpressed and we can understand why).

So when Digi-Guys say they wanted to focus on one platform the reasons they are giving to the public for that decision are essentially false. Of course they wouldn’t really want to admit to this in public, so I am sure someone will throw another lawyer into the mix here soon and threaten some kind of legal action. However this information is old. Really old. Pre-2007. But it is still the truth behind the PS3 exclusive decision.

Fact: It is almost the end of July 2009, and the latest announcement of any significance was in response to the original posts on PSU, claiming those statements were, and we quote “baseless” and that in Q1 2009 new information and media would be released. Many assumed this would be screenshots, in-game stills, verifiable game play etc., or otherwise further information of some kind that would indicate that these original “baseless” statements were indeed false, however nothing to date has materialized proving otherwise and that the title would still be on track for 2009 release.

Fact: No lawsuit ever materialized over the PSU forums controversy last fall.

Fact: A Digi-Guys representative claimed that since “legal action” (in the form of a lawsuit) was proceeding, they couldn’t discuss it any further. This is a blatant misrepresentation of the FACTS and could be construed as a fraudulent statement. If at any time Digi-Guys continues to hide behind that “legal action is underway” statement, they are in effect lying, and are using it to stall for whatever reason. You can draw your own conclusions. But please keep these FACTS in mind.

Signed,

The people who are “Leearcher”.

A video game? A movie? Both!

Meanwhile, Digi-Guys had indeed made another announcement, in January 2009, indicating that new information would be released, revealing WarDevil Chronicles a 2D animated feature supposed to introduce various characters and scenarios throughout the main WarDevil project:

According to the Digi-Guys, Wardevil Chronicles is an accompanying 2D Cartoon/Anime that will be used to debut various characters and scenarios throughout the life of the main WarDevil Project.

“We may do more – and expand the Project in many ways, as we’ve had great fun creating the 2D style – it’s designed to be very different to the  high-end/CG look of the main Project. We’ll be releasing new material in 2009, but when/how is in the hands of our Publisher – therefore, we must keep to their schedules. WarDevil is progressing to plan – it has a long development process as we’re creating an Engine, a Game & Short Movie and each of these elements can take a lot of time on their own,” said a Digi-Guys representative.

Edge Magazine Presentation

It was in October 2009 that WarDevil finally seemed to reveal itself, after 5 years of information scattered here and there. The game made the first cover of Edge magazine, issue number 207. Here is a summary of what we could read about the demo shown and some development trivia:

It’s with some trepidation that we walk through the gates of Ealing Studios to find out if WarDevil, a game that most people still associate with a 2004 technical teaser clip, is anything more than CGI fluff.

Another worry is that this visit, which for creator Digi-Guys is the first of its kind, has been arranged as a ‘technical reveal’. And it’s a reveal that’s coming five years after the game’s announcement. Andy Whitehurst, the studio’s founder and the game’s project lead, has a lot of explaining to do.

“Every now and again something needs to shake the industry up,” he says. “I hope that either WarDevil or its pipeline can do something like that.” Our mistake, the demo suggests, was expecting the myth to be simply that WarDevil, a thirdperson action game set thousands of years in the future, was vaporware. It’s not, but that quickly becomes irrelevant.

Some more about that Xbox demo, first, as it casts Whitehurst’s rhetoric in a substantially different light. It was developed in 2005, when you’d expect all eyes to be on Xbox 360. Such is the nature of Digi-Guys’ new pipeline, though – designed as it is to render Hollywood-grade visuals at true 1080p, at an unbroken 60frames per second, using just one core of a modern Console CPU – that the demo would have to do much more with much less to be valid proof of concept. “Hold me to it and hang me, because the reality is that if we don’t do it this way, it’s not a project,” says Whitehurst. “If we reduce the textures, there’d be no point in doing it.” So on come the black block of a chipped retail Xbox, and his words are put into action.

Using creatures and environments familiar to both the teaser video and now the game itself, it’s a smooth stroll through and arid, sun-drenched scene: the cloister of a temple carved into a moutain, apparently, opening out into an arena full of richly detailed pillars. Biomeks adopt various positions before a Virtua Cop-style shooting system takes them down. This, importantly, is not how WarDevil will actually play.

Let’s return to what this means for WarDevil itself, and another demo that brings things bang up to date. The background for this one is a visit by Sony reps in October 2005, by which time Whitehurst had built his HD studio. They saw the Xbox demo – and remember, this is the same year that Doom 3 struggled it’s on to the same console – and were suitably impressed. “They said: ‘Here’s some devkits. Let’s see what you can do’. So we got a very quick build running, then there was this whole shebang for the E3 2006 PS3 launch, with everyone having to submit what they were doing.” WarDevil was lucky enough to be picked, and together with Heavy Rain was one of few non-aligned projects on show. “It was good for us and it wasn’t, because we were just 16 people at the time, with all the pressure of doing it.”

That’s not the only reason for PS3 becoming WarDevil’s lead platform. “Sony’s hype was right,” says Whitehurst, echoing those old, oft-forgotten claims that the architecture of Cell and it’s satellite SPU’s is ideal for the future of HD gaming, as opposed to the present, which is ruled by DirectX. “It’s advantageous fo our thought process. There’s better filtering on 360 but the whole thing comes together better on PS3.”

Currently pencilled in for behind-closed-doors display at September’s Tokyo Game Show, the PS3 demo of WarDevil is frustratingly small. The texture streaming system is still under development, though it’s expected to boost the current texture bandwith to support 1K (1024×1024) textures for every four square metres of gameworld. Characters meanwhile, already boast seperate 2K (2048×2048) textures for their faces, torsos and limbs.

The demo is essentially a short section of gameplay and introductory cutscene in which the WarDevil, an ‘ultime killing machine that can make 10,000 men lay down their arms’, shows his stuff against the troops of his nemesis, The General, using a God Of War-style mix of blade attacks, martial arts and supernatural powers. Given his name, the WarDevil himself is a suprisingly lithe and humanoid figure, decked in a ornately festooned armour resembling that of Lieutenant Colonel Kroenen, the clockwork Nazi in Hellboy. The environment, meanwhile, is a weathered canyon splashed with vibrant ancient motifs, juxtaposed with a central pillar full of perfect angles and bronzed metal.

Much like Hideo Kojima when demoing early footage of Metal Gear Solid 4, Whitehurst’s trick when presenting this brief section is to stop the action and detach the camera, bringing it to within touching distance of various characters. As promised, there’s no discernible point at which the edges start to soften. Chainmail retains its crispness as the links fill the screen, skin reveals its pores and subcutaneous layers, and the standard of decoration in the various crests and engravings is never compromised.

This almost exact reproduction of the team’s concept art – there are now 75 staff on site, a third of them from the CG animation industry – is what Whitehurst calls “living, breathing concept art”.

WarDevil, you see, isn’t just a game. The selling point of Digi-Guys’ pipeline is its speed when rendering everything from high-quality movie material to in-game action, and Whitehurst has no doubt that it can deliver WarDevil as both a game and Blu-ray movie, albeit one with a forecast duration of just 40 minutes. “Rather than taking hours and hours per frame, the movie side renders in about 45 seconds per frame, maybe a minute and a half maximum. So by the end of one day we can all have movie footage and game footage rendered side-by-side using the same assets.”

It’s enough to convince us that WarDevil will happen, and in fascinating form regardless of whether it actually works. Whitehurst share a telling fondness for David Lynch‘s Dune, and WarDevil, with its rival factions of FreeState Brotherhood and Chun caste – “Masters of the Sky, Overlords of the Earh and keepers of the Beast” – seems no less idiosyncratic.

Video provided by Samat Algozhin

WarDevil’s Cancellation

Despite this presentation, WarDevil was officially canceled in September 2010, nearly a year after it was shown to Edge. As we could read on Gamesindustry, Digi-Guys was originally scheduled to shut down the following month with an undisclosed number of staff laid off. It was also at this time that we learned the existence of a second game in development codenamed Project Kane. One of the decisions considered by UTV Ignition then was to outsource these two titles:

Developer Ignition is to close the doors of its London studio, GamesIndustry.biz has learned.

The company is in the process of laying off an undisclosed number of staff, and has wound up internal development on upcoming titles Wardevil (already much-delayed) and Project Kane.

However, both games have apparently passed proof of concept stage, with Ignition hinting that their future – if they have one – may lie in outsourcing.

The company will retain a corporate headquarters in London, but now seeks to work primarily with external developers in more of a publishing role. GameIndustry.biz understands the Ealing-based studio is to close on October 31.

Said Hassan Sadiq, Group Chairman at Ignition Entertainment in a statement, “Throughout the last year Ignition has gone through a number of changes, including bringing in a strong new management team with a core focus of working with the world’s best external developers to bring AAA content to emerging downloadable platforms.

“This week saw the pre-scheduled completion of a six month proof of concept project on the War Devil / Project Kane titles internally, which the board and studio management are currently evaluating as to whether the required quality will be achieved by completing internally or with an external partner.”

Resurrection

However, UTV Ignition backtracked its decision in November 2010 by resurrecting WarDevil, renaming it Project Kane. To date, it is not clear if the two projects were merged, or if simply the development of WarDevil was restarted from scratch and modified in its initial design. An Ignition internal studio based in London was established in order to continue the project:

While it seemed last month that the saga of Ignition London’s WarDevil had finally ended in cancellation after five years in development, Ignition today revealed another twist in the tale–development will indeed continue, under the name Project Kane.

“Following a comprehensive audit of the title, assets and internal team, we have decided that a core team responsible for the Project Kane prototype will take the game into full production, led by the key vision holders,” said UTV Ignition group chairman Hassan Sadiq. Outsourcing and an internal team will handle development together.

“We have cherry picked from some of the world’s best teams to build our UK studio,” said design director Julian Glover, “which includes personnel whose combined previous development credits include Burnout 3, Crysis, Little BigPlanet, and Heavenly Sword. We are extremely excited to fast-track development of Project Kane.”

Scam or too ambitious?

As Ross Silifant told us in the comments on this same page, it seems that in its WarDevil form, the game has never reached the playable stage once. These comments were made by Jim Bagley who was coder on the project from 2002 to 2010. He also confirmed that the game was initially planned first on Xbox and Gamecube, before moving to Xbox 360, then Playstation 3:

Ross: Rumour had it you were working on a PS3/360 game, if true, what was it and what happened to it?

Jim: This is true, I was the only coder working on a PS3 game, called WarDevil, the investors canned the project before it was completed, for reasons of a financial nature. Which was a shame, because at the time, it was the only PS3 game to my knowledge that was rendered at 1080p and looked amazing!

He has also confirmed that the game started out planned for GameCube and Xbox, before moving to PS3 and the E3 PS3 Demo was just a tech demo. Game never reached a playable stage.

Years later, in February 2019, voice-over talent Kit Harrison tweeted about the game and its presentation to Edge:

Heavens, I do miss WarDevil now I’ve remembered it. I must have read that issue of Edge a hundred times, and that game – the story for which was one that got me interested in being a part of the industry forever – pretty much only largely exists as that cover story.

Richard “Rich” Stanton, back then from Kotaku UK, answered him the same day:

I wrote that feature. Went over to Stockholm (sic). The demo they had was mind-blowing. Must’ve been all smoke-and-mirrors, but what smoke-and-mirror.Weird to think that’s all the outside world will probably ever know of that project. It was incredibly ambitious, unfortunately maybe too ambitious.

Project Kane version

Seasoned developers came on board at Ignition London trying to save this title which was, according to Tom Bolton, set to be released on Playstation Network and Xbox Live Arcade, using the Unreal Engine 3 instead. Unlike the previous iteration, it seems this time it managed to reach a playable state.

But it was already too little too late; in June 2011 after 7 months of development, UTV Ignition took the decision to cancel every in-house games, closed every internal development studios, and only focused as a publisher for downloadable titles:

Ignition Games’ transition to a pure publishing operation continues, Develop reports, with layoffs at the company’s London studio following those last week in Austin. Anonymous sources told the site that the London team was told of the layoffs on Friday. As Develop puts it, “redundancies have been issued across the entire London development outfit.”

This once again brings work on WarDevil to a halt. The game was canceled last year following an earlier round of layoffs in Ignition’s UK operation. Development started again later that year under the name Project Kane. Develop was unable to confirm this, but heard reports that Ignition was willing to let the project continue if an external developer signed on to complete it.

Another project that knew the same fate with this decision was Reich: Downfall, later becoming BOOM: Unleashed, which was also canceled, rebooted then canceled again, following an incredible disastrous development cycle where UTV Ignition’s inexperience in AAA management took a huge part in it.

Following its ultimate cancellation, it seems that some people have no regrets from Digi-Guys/Ignition London’s closure, as we can read from VFX supervisor Kelly Myers, who worked on WarDevil in 2007-2008, on Liberty3D:

News came earlier this week that Ignition London (aka Digi-guys or Digi-Lies depending on who you ask) has finally been forced to can Project Kane, WarDevil, Enigma, or whatever the hell it was they were working on after 9 -10 years in development. The article link below says 5 years, but that’s since Ignition bought them and turned them into the UTV family of companies. The actual development time on that “title” was closer to a full 10 years and was a complete waste of money. I worked at Digi-Guys and I can tell you the problem was not with the artists, but with MANAGEMENT. Good riddance! The only question now is, what are they going to do with all that awesome hardware they spent millions on and didn’t use for anything? (…) Digi-Guys/Ignition management was always vague because they were always clueless.

Andrew Whitehurst (the “creative director”) was the worst pixel f*cker I’ve ever had to work for, with etc. Totally insane person with no idea or clue as to what he really wanted until he “saw” it, and he would piss around to try and look and act like a “director” when all he was really doing was wasting money and embarrassing himself.

Someone else wrote:

I had dealings with this company years ago when they were starting up this project, and they were the biggest collecton of stupid wankers I ever heard of, it’s enough to put anyone off working in games for life.

Kelly Myers: Totally nutty people and when it really came down to it, complete scam/slime jobs. I feel for the artists that “stuck with it” because all they got in the end was pink slips.

Thanks to Ross Silifant for the contribution!

Article by Daniel Nicaise

WarDevil’s videos:

WarDevil General character intro by Samat Algozhin

3D models vehicles by Kevin Wilson

WarDevil’s animations by Darren Froggatt

Project Kane’s videos:

Project Kane’s prototype camera sequence by Tom Bolton

Project Kane’s prototype lava sequence by Tom Bolton. This was the final level in the game and shown the antagonist’s final lair, towards the end of the section.

Project Kane’s early prototype of combat by Tom Bolton

WarDevil images:

Project Kane images:

What do you think about this unseen game? Give your vote!

(5 votes, average: 4.40 out of 5)

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monokoma

Editor in Chief, UX & SE Optimization at Unseen64

I'm an Italian gamer with not enough free time to play as much as i'd like to and sadly not enough time to write about cancelled and beta games. Founder of Unseen64 in 2001, i'd like to sleep more than 5 hours a day, but i have to pay the bills. I'm currently working for various italian & international websites for a better User Experience & Search Engine Optimization, you can add me on Twitter, Last FM or contact me by email.

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