World Builders Inc. [3DO – Cancelled]

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

1. r-e-g 18-01-2011 at 11:34

   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”?

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2. Celine 18-01-2011 at 22:11

   Really interesting reg. That could have been the case.

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3. Catherine Winters 08-02-2018 at 19:26

   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.

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4. Ross Sillifant 27-08-2018 at 01:44

   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. “

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5. Ross Sillifant 27-08-2018 at 01:47

   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.

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6. Ross Sillifant 23-02-2019 at 21:46

   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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