World Builders Inc. [3DO – Cancelled]

World Builders Inc. [3DO – Cancelled]

When 3DO was first revealed in mid 1993 among the games presented by Electronic Arts to support the system there was a nice sci-fi simulation called World Builders Inc. Not much is known about it however in September 1994 the game was already on hold for unknown reasons and in the end it was never released. If you know something else about World Builders Inc, please let us know!

Images from Edge issue 1, EGM issue 48, GameFan issue 1-9 and 1-11, Player One issue 33.

Images:


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6 thoughts on “World Builders Inc. [3DO – Cancelled]

  1. r-e-g

    The screens named “world-builders-3do-gamefan1-11-2”, “worldbuilders3”, “worldbuilders4” and “worldbuilders5” suspiciously look like it’s from the “Shock Wave”…

    Here’s a “Shock Wave” intro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRKat11MW18

    “worldbuilders5” – one-in-one copy see it 1:43
    “worldbuilders4” – very look like on 2:46

    Maybe EA took they development from “World Builders Inc.” and put in into “Shock Wave”?

  2. Catherine Winters

    Actually, if you look at Gamefan Volume 1, Issue 09 (https://archive.org/stream/GamefanVolume1Issue09August1993#page/n87/mode/2up) and Issue 11, (https://archive.org/stream/GamefanVolume1Issue11/GamefanVolume1Issue11October1993#page/n133/mode/2up) it looks to me like those weren’t intended to illustrate World Builders Inc., they were always part of Shock Wave.

    It’s just the placement of the World Builders art on the same page of Issue 11 that makes it look like they could be the same game.

  3. Ross Sillifant

    E.A claimed it was canned as the developers couldn’t meet deadlines..

    However others claim:

    (I won’t name source to protect their privacy)

    “Worldbuilders died in a flurry of project consolidation and related
    finger- pointing, acrimony, and resignations. The short version of events
    is that Worldbuilders and Universal Station were sacrificed to get Jurrasic Park and
    Twisted out the door (mainly JP). More detail than that wouldn’t be fair
    to the principals (I wasn’t on any of the title teams but had friends on
    all of them), but it should be noted that the boardgame mock-up of
    Worldbuilders (much derided internally at the time) represented a lot of
    work by the designers. At the time it was cancelled a lot of thought had
    gone into the gameplay for Worldbuilders and relatively little on getting
    elements up on the screen; vice versa for other titles. And it didn’t
    help that Worldbuilders was designed to deliver more think-think than
    bang-bang at a point when it was suddenly decided necessary to cram out
    anything that would stimulate gamers like wired-up lab rats frantically
    pressing the endorphin bar. And even that wasn’t the fault of the
    designers since Worldbuilders was originally chartered as an educational,
    or at least marginally cognitive, game (there was a related planetary
    science demo that was supposed to go with it). Hell, there was supposed
    to be a whole educational software group at 3DO…but all that is long
    gone (except for the keyboard driver).

    I worked the booth at SCES ’93 and I think the Worldbuilders demo was just
    screen shots of planets and theoretical game vehicles, but I could be
    wrong. “

  4. Ross Sillifant

    A second source backs up the claim Jurrasic Park had priority:

    WorldBuilders was a Studio 3DO effort. It was dropped when 3DO cut
    staff after early budget problems and some great people like Noah Falstein
    were let go. Many of the folks working on WorldBuilders were moved to
    Jurassic Park Interactive, which was viewed as a priority title.

  5. Ross Sillifant

    Worldbuilders was Noah Falstein’s major titling project at 3DO.  It was
    an ambitious role playing game with a theme, broadly speaking, of
    planetary colonization.  He did a lot of design and play modeling
    before the project finally died.  I believe that my boss, Fightin’ Bob
    Laws, played a few rounds of Noah’s boardgame model of the eventual
    title, by way of alpha testing.  However, Noah was never given the
    resources to do the full title and I was never clear why.  Not
    obviously whiz-bang enough in part, I think.

    Noah was one of the really early SMSG crew, hired away from LucasArts
    by Trip to be one of the major content guys for his secret project that
    eventually became 3DO.  Noah had been a semi-famous game designer at
    Lucas and I always had the impression that Trip had made him a lot of
    promises that he never kept.  Trip tends to do that.  A lot.

    Worldbuilders was also supposed to have significant educational content
    and Noah was slated to staff up and head a semi-educational titling
    group.  It was an overlooked part of the early hype, but the business
    model for developing and marketing the Opera contained a definite
    commitment to promote educational uses for the system.  That was
    supposed to include both producing educational titles in-house and
    pushing for some hardware licensee to produce the peripherals necessary
    for educational use, like a keyboard and hard drive.

    It’s a moot point now but many of us signed on with 3DO on the basis of
    that commitment.  We did *not* want to be flogging shoot-’em-ups to the
    kiddies, at least not solely.  All through that frenzied rollout year
    there was a contingent within 3DO who were pushing for the company not
    to lose focus on important peripheral committments, like educational
    uses.  It was enough of an issue internally that Trip had to address it
    a couple of times at company meetings, I recall.  He always pointed to
    Worldbuilders and Noah as proof we were “doing the right thing” or
    whatever.  And then he let all that die out slowly.

    That’s Trip for you: hype the hell out of it and then zoom on to the
    next thing before anyone holds you accountable.  

    >If you look on the old SAMPLER CD discs, you’ll find ads for games like
    >that. Including the Star Trek, Red Baron  & other games that just didn’t
    >make it to release.

    Oh, who was it that was doing the Star Trek title?  Their demo was one
    of the best looking things on the Opera prior to rollout.  I saw some
    early code snippets of Red Baron at a licensee site when I was doing
    field upgrades of development systems.  They had a controllable model
    of the Red Baron’s plane running.  Probably never got beyond that
    point.

    Bill Baker 3DO

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