Microsoft

Worms Battle Rally [PS2 XBOX GC – Cancelled]

Worms Battle Rally is a cancelled racing / battle game similar to Mario Kart, that was in development by Team 17 in 2003 / 2004, probably planned for the Playstation 2, Xbox and GameCube. We can speculate that the gameplay was going to be similar to MK’s battle mode, at least from what we can see from the few screenshots preserved below, thanks to www.dream17.info.

Production on WBR was halted as part of the developer/publisher deal which resulted in Worms Forts: Under Siege.

Thanks to whitestrider for the contribution!

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ShadowClan [X360 PS3 – Cancelled]

Shadow Clan is a cancelled action game similar to Ninja Gaiden that was in development in 2005 / 2006 by Tiger Hill Entertainment for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. The studio was founded by John Woo and Terence Chang, to try to enter into the digital entertainment business after their popularity with films, but in the end they never released any game. In ShadowClan players would had took the role of a ninja able to control and to cooperate with multiple AI characters, a planned online mode was meant to have ninja-clans to fight against other human opponents. We dont know what happened to Tiger Hill Entertainment or how much of the game was done before its cancellation.

Thanks to Celine and Userdante for the contribution!

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Infiltrator: Shadow Wars [XBOX – Cancelled]

Infiltrator Shadow Wars is a cancelled Massive Multiplayer Online RPG that was in development by Orbital Frog Productions for the XBOX. As we can read in the original press release, the game was set in a futuristic online world of espionage: Orbital Frog promised that Infiltrator would had in-depth character development and an enveloping and interactive environment for the player to interact with. There was to also be an interactive online environment to pit the players to the task of creating their own teams, researching new weapons, and brand new technologies.

During the development something went wrong and Infiltrator: Shadow Wars had to be cancelled. Sadly only few concept arts remain from this lost project.

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LMNO [X360 PS3 – Cancelled]

LMNO (also known as The Escape Artist) is a cancelled action adventure that was in development for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 from 2005 to 2010 by Electronic Arts Los Angeles, with the help of Steven Spielberg. As we can read in Wikipedia, the partnership with Spielberg, first announced in 2005, was to produce an action game with an aim to evoke emotion, described as “a mix of first-person parkour movement with adventure/RPG objectives and escape-focused gameplay, all based around the player’s relationship with an alien-looking character named Eve”.

The team never released many information about the game, but after it was officially cancelled in october 2010, 1UP wrote an interesting article about LMNO, in which we can read some previously unknown facts on the project and see a target-render video:

When EA signed its deal with Spielberg in 2005, some of the specifics were intentionally left unclear. The deal committed him to create three franchises for EA, but initially, LMNO was the only one locked in, and there was no team in place to make it. Project two, “PQRS,” went on to become Boom Blox, while project three hasn’t been mentioned publicly since the deal was announced.

EA’s answer was to hire designer Doug Church and build a small team around him in their Los Angeles studio. Through 2007, they put together a group of 25-30 people who worked under Young’s EA Blueprint group — a quiet experimental label designed to build new intellectual property while outsourcing much of its production (such as some of LMNO’s level design that went to Arkane in France late in the project’s life) — to prototype ideas. […]

On the surface, it was a first-person action/adventure PS3/360/PC game set in modern times. Players would split their time between light role-playing objectives like talking to characters to uncover information, and action sequences featuring a lot of what the team referred to as “escape gameplay” where the player would run from approaching helicopters and FBI-style agents too overwhelming to fight face-to-face. […]

The developers did a lot of prototyping with Eve to make for a strong connection between her and Lincoln. Part of that came visually — Eve’s design was deliberately exaggerated, with large eyes and lanky fingers, to help the animators express her emotions, and she was designed to be sympathetic and sensitive rather than a sex symbol. Part of that came with her abilities — she could team up with Lincoln for cooperative attacks, or project things into his vision because she had the power to tap into his mind, so things like storm clouds would appear when she was in trouble. […]

In 2008 EA laid off most of the LMNO team, and the project evolved from a characters-driven adventure into a more traditional action game (now called The Escape Artist), somewhat similar to Uncharted. It seems that the original LMNO concept was too abitous and even after the change in its design, EA decided that it was not worth the risk to continue with the development, after so many years of work and money already spent on it. Instead in November 2009 EA acquired popular social game developer Playfish, and on the same day laid off approximately 1,500 employees in other EA studios“.

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Reich: Downfall [Cancelled – Xbox 360, PS3, PC]

Reich, sometimes known as Reich: Downfall, is a canceled First-Person Shooter made from 2007 to 2010 by Ignition Florida, formerly Artificial Studios, for the publisher UTV Ignition Entertainment. Planned for the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 systems, the game was set in a distant future where Nazis have won the second World War and rule all around the world. The player would have take control of Janus Cross, a former officer of the reich, who associated with a sect of resistance fighters possessing telekinetic powers, or Psi-powers, called The Chosen, in order to take down the reich. It featured a heavily modified Unreal Engine 3 which allowed large scale destructible environments as well as the use of telekinetic powers and weapons to defeat your foes, especially by using environment as a weapon.

Some features of the game were:

  • Unreal Engine 3 (modified with deferred lighting, physics engine was custom-made).
  • Game was based on the idea that “Ambrosia” fueled your “psi-powers”.
  • ‘Psi blades’ were blades attached to arms (think Baraka from Mortal Kombat’s franchise). This was eventually ditched.
  • Art direction for 6 month was to not have any curves in art, so everything was flat like boxes.
  • Planned release for 10-10-10

Development Starting

Before reading the details preserved below, keep in mind that every commentary by Jeremy Stieglitz, founder and project director at Artificial Studios, was made on Youtube dedicated videos, but were deleted over the years. According to him, development of the game began in mid-2007 with a prototype within his company, before taking a more concrete form in November of the same year with massive recruitments, according to many LinkedIn profiles of developers who worked on the project.

In discussion with various publishers, the studio made the decision to be acquired by the English publisher Ignition Entertainment on February 6, 2008. Following this announcement, some details about Reich, then known under the codename R6, were disclosed by Stieglitz:

“It’s using physics in a way few action games have before, the way you can interact with the environment and use the environment as a weapon.”

The purchase of Artificial by Ignition was due in particular to the takeover of the latter by the Indian company UTV Software Communications at the end of 2007, allowing the company to get additional funds for an extension in the AAA market. Artificial was rebranded Ignition Florida. During the first year of development, Reich was managed by Stieglitz as creative director with the art director Steven Stahlberg on board. During this period, some management issues were already deplored by some anonymous developers on Develop-Online and Spong.com, evoking poorly managed funds in the recruitment of seasoned developers as well as inexperience within the leadership and a certain immaturity, as recall by three sources:

“The blame falls all on the shoulder of Vijay Chadha, CEO of Ignition, who from the start put a 24 year kid named Jeremy Stieglitz in charge of the whole studio a boy barely out of college who could not even balance his check book let alone a multi-million dollar AAA game. Stieglitz spent millions on getting employees to Gainesville, Florida, paying thousands to fly them down for interviews and hiring no talents and giving them outlandish salaries. The biggest mistake of all was when Vijay Chadha, with pressure from UTV their parent company and the 60% Disney shareholders suits, wanted Ignition to present a premature slice of the game “Reich” to Microsoft and Sony, the visuals werent ready nor the gameplay as it was all a mess.” – Reich anonymous ex-developer #1

“(…) The aforementioned Jeremy was the first (manager), and while he had a vision for the game, it was a terrible one. He would constantly edit the story that the writers would come up with to insert his own stupid ideas. He couldn’t keep his hands off of any aspect of development, sometimes even editing code (which would break things for unknown reasons until the engineers found out what he had done). He had no sense of how to design a game from start to finish. He had no concept of money management — even once throwing himself a housewarming party on the company dime and spending nearly $3000 on alcohol alone.” – Reich anonymous ex-developer #2

“(…) Jeremy needed a good right-hand man to curb his worst tendencies and let him focus on what he is good at. Instead he ended up surrounded with the incompetent, the deranged and a bunch of massive egos. Some of these egos were “untouchable” and interefered with the game’s direction. Hiring exceptionally talented artists from non-gaming backgrounds can work well (see those concept pics?) but not when they end up thinking they’re running the show and start violating every practice that’s needed to make a game dev studio function properly. This is a common theme with Reich and Wardevil.” – Reich anonymous ex-developer #4

Reich Steven Stahlberg’s version (2007-2008)

First Changes

In the spring of 2008, a first presentation to the executives of Ignition as well as UTV, took place. The publisher’s feedback was then to rework the art direction, the project was visually rebooted and new recruitments took place. Jean-Pierre “JP” Targete succeeded to Stalhberg when the second version started. The latter nevertheless remained within the company as an artist until October of the same year. Two Ignition ex-developers wrote:

“(…) The concept artists actually saved the game development from being ditched in a major presentation to Ignition corporate UTV in 2008. Some 8 million or more was poured into the studio at that milestone. If this did not happen many employees would probably have been canned and development stalled.” – Reich anonymous ex-developer #5

“There were two major presentations if I remember while we were there, one was in May of 2008, there was no new 3D art based on the art-style at that time and the cinematic had some issues, and right from the source, Vijay Chadha and UTV approved extra funds based on the progression of the art style and the concept art but as always the tech and physics was always strong. This was the 2nd art reboot. Now there was another major presentation to the Ignition heads and UTV’s CEO Ronnie Screwvala in September of 2008 I think which did have concept art, gameplay, 3D art and the Reich soldiers vs the Psi freak cutscene thats been posted etc so you might have been refering to that. – Reich anonymous ex-developer #8

Reich’s level demo ‘museum’ shown in May 2008, before the art reboot.

The development of the second version continued without too many additional problems, and the game was once again briefly mentioned by the press in July 2008:

Ignition Entertainment has licensed Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 for a new FPS under development at its Florida’s studio. Described as a ‘groundbreaking’ new game, the title is a new IP for release next year which will ‘bring something fresh and exciting to one of the industry’s core genres’.

“Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 is an extremely versatile engine,” said Jeremy Stieglitz, game director and lead designer, Ignition Florida.

“So when deciding on technology for Ignition Florida’s first next-generation video game, there was no questioning that Unreal Engine 3 is the way to go.”

“Ignition Florida is pushing Unreal Engine 3 in a very exciting direction, especially in terms of environmental capabilities,” added Mark Rein, VP, Epic Games. “These guys have the chops to create some remarkable games, and we have complete faith in their technical and creative abilities.”

Reich’s level demo shown in September 2008. 2nd version lead by Jean-Pierre Targete (2008-2009)

Reich’s cutscene showing troopers confronting an escaping scientific experiment gone wrong named ‘Psi freak’.

Troubles Occurs

However, new twists occurred in the spring of 2009. Ignition Florida recruited the late Paul Steed, known for working on a few games in the Wing Commander and Quake series, to oversee Stieglitz in terms of leadership in addition to Exigent 3D, his own outsourcing company specialised in video game visual development. Following his arrival, Targete left the studio in April 2009 and Steed became the new art director of Reich, as stated by one of the previous source:

“The art director and artist who worked on [Reich] resigned from the company when Paul Steed and Exigent an outsource studio were brought in to help with management.” – Reich anonymous ex-developer #1

With the help of his own company which took care of the art direction, a third version was launched and all the work done by Targete was trashed. Stieglitz himself would say that one of the main problems in Reich’s development was “finding the good art direction” to create a dystopian futuristic universe ruled by the Nazis. Very quickly, a change of atmosphere took place within the studio, the game, meanwhile, also undergoing constant changes in terms of gameplay mechanics, game design, visual development or even scripted scene (where Stieglitz wanted to make Reich the “God of War of First-Person Shooter”, Steed took more inspiration from classic 90’s shooters). Many artists found themselves made redundant and replaced by others from the Exigent 3D studio. A tech demo/target render was shown in closed doors at E3 2009. In the end of summer of the same year, Stieglitz left his post at Ignition Florida and Steed got his duties as the creative director as declared by another ex-developer wanting to stay anonymous:

“During the time I was there Paul Steed *somehow* was promoted again and again from Outsource Art Director to Studio Art Director and eventually to Creative Director over all facets of the studio, including Tech/Code and Game Design. How he managed to falsify those credentials I’ll never know. Of course while this was happening, he was still the managing owner of the outsource company producing the majority of art for the studio. When in charge, he essentially played games with the artists – where he would give them a task and the one who completed it closest to his satisfaction got to keep their job. He fired most of the artists just to fill Exigent’s work orders and make himself more money. If that isn’t a severe conflict of interest, I don’t know what is. Even poor corporate management wouldn’t allow for something like that to happen…” – Reich anonymous ex-developer #7

Reich’s level demo ‘quarry’ shown behind closed doors at E3 2009. 3rd version lead by Paul Steed (2009-2010)

During this period, many developers resigned due to his most borderline attitude, but also criticized his artistic vision which displeased and was qualified as generic, in addition to some frauds, as will indicate to me in 2015 Cory Collins, former animator on the game:

“There were a lot of similarities with Killzone, as our outsource company basically stole their artworks and painted over them, then tried to pretend it was from them.”

Another developer wrote:

“I left not long after Steed was hired. I remember when JP and Jeremy were running the show not many people were fired and at least there seem to be progress. Don’t get me wrong it was by far a perfect but it seem to have been moving along. I feel if we would have stuck with the original direction and see it through and have completed the game much of this could have been avoided. The problem is, firing and then re-hiring and then going in a new direction is not only time consuming but a waste of money. I mean gameplay wise their were some great concepts that were created like the Statue-mech, the Psi-freak, the Reich dog. I heard Steed trashed all the hard work that had been done and started over. Looking at the pre-Steed artwork, it seems it had more continuity. What Steed provided seemed generic something you could see in a poor-man’s version of BioShock or Fallout with no true vision.” – Reich anonymous ex-developer #13

And another one said :

“Its just his actual visual design sensibility that was stupid. For instance there was some period of time where we were designing some golem looking non-playable character. We went through various approaches. I guess Paul got frustrated and decided to model it himself. It looked like some goofy looking low poly boulder snowman that some kid taking a first year course might make. At a different point, we’d been going through revision after revision of the weapons over and over. Just when he’d settle on something, the following week, he’d change his mind. When it came to designing a sort of energy shotgun, there were literally dozens of concepts to choose from. Apparently he liked none of them and decides to design and model one himself. It was literally a weird, ugly as hell nonsensical combination of breakopen overunder shotgun and pump action shotgun, that looked like 2 very low poly low detail shortbarreled Mossberg 500s stacked atop each other. The weapon was mostly primitive shapes for god’s sake. I should also add that he kept pushing and pushing and pushing for stuff in our game that would get us an Adults only rating, even when it was obvious that there’s no way in hell we could afford to sell a game like that. Stuff like a giant spider raping a female non-playable character, or having sex with a female nazi officer right in the intro. I wish I was joking.” – Reich anonymous ex-developer #6

About his abusive attitude, former level designer Rachel Cordone, alongside one of the anonymous ex-developer above, wrote:

“I worked with Paul Steed at Ignition Florida for a total of three months. I moved my entire house and family to Gainesville. I left the studio solely based on Paul Steed’s abusive behavior. This was a year ago before any fears came to light about the studio possibly closing down. The man would walk into the studio completely shit faced and make creative suggestions that he would completely not remember the next day and would ask you why you made those changes. He asked me once “Please make this cave entrance look like a nice juicy wet pussy” he was completely serious with this request by the way. He would yell at employees and belittle them in front of everyone constantly.” – Rachel Cordone [Senior Level Designer, Ignition Florida]

(…)”Hell, he seemed like a nice enough guy when I first met him, but that impression did not last long.

-He once fired a guy for taking a vacation he was approved for. For his sister’s wedding no less.

-He once fired a guy for coming in a little late on a weekend despite the guy commutes on a bicycle and was one of our better artists.

-He most certainly did have numerous pending sexual harassment claims against him.

-He would talk shit about his employees

-Most definitely got intoxicated on the premises

-Definitely got in fights, there’s been a few employees that have or have almost taken knuckle sandwiches from him both in and out of the office.

-Definitely would forget the changes that he’d have requested the day before and then go off about how you aren’t taking the work seriously.

-He’d often circumvent everyone and try to include his own laughably amateurish attempts at 3D modeling into the game.

-And then all the incredibly stupid artistic, and managerial decisions

Hell, when he was in charge, morale had hit rock bottom, people left in droves, I knew many people that quit just because of Paul and no other reason. I knew people that arranged their resignation with Human Ressources to specifically not let Paul know that they were leaving, because they were afraid of how he’d react.” – Reich anonymous ex-developer #6

Back in September 2023, former Senior Level Designer Craig Harrison answered me this:

“Paul would keep us there till all hours of the night and tell he would show up finally. And so we were pretty much stuck living at the studio half the time.”

Development delays were piling up, deadlines were missed and developer morale sunk while at UTV Ignition no one seemed to care about what happened. Nevertheless, a video showing gameplay clips as well as a short multiplayer demo were still shown at the Tokyo Game Show 2009.

Reich: Downfall Tokyo Game Show 2009 trailer

In early 2010, however, following numerous complaints accumulated and video footage showing Steed’s behavior, the executives at UTV Ignition made the decision to demote him of his functions and forced him to work indefinitely at home. He remained nevertheless still art director but his role of project director was taken over by Richard Kidd, who had never worked in video games before. Former level designer Anthony D’Antonio and Craig Harrison, alongside two other ex-employees wrote and shared their personal experiences during that part of the development:

“Paul Steed. I don’t know too much about him, since he came on board right before I bailed. (…) I got a call a few months back from a friend at the company that told me an incredible story. The story of how Paul got himself fired. One night, an engineer was working late and when he went to leave, he found Paul drunk and passed out cold against the studio doors. When he reached down to wake him up, Paul punched him square in the face, knocking him down. As soon as corporate found out, he was fired immediately. I was then told that finding Paul in various states of drunkenness throughout the day was a common occurrence.” – Reich anonymous ex-developer #2

(…) “Many weren’t so lucky they got verbally abused and some physically by Steed who in a drunk rage punched a programmer for no reason who was working late one evening. (…) Steed has a reputation of getting drunk at bars and fighting small weak programmers.” – Reich anonymous ex-developer #3

“Early this year, we almost got him fired. Almost. By that point all the complaints about Steed had finally reached some boiling point with his superiors at UTV. All the hostile workplace complaints, pending sexual harassment claims, and numerous complaints about his mismanagement of resources and personnel, had forced UTV to step in. (…) UTV insisted on interviewing the entire departments. The Wednesday prior to the Monday corporate visit, Paul, probably seeing that shit was going bad for him, got ridiculous drunk late the night on the office premises, wandered around, urinated on things, and threw up on one of the building entrances before passing out. Then reflexively sucker punched someone who tried to help him up. This was caught on security cam. He never showed up to work the next day, by that afternoon though almost everyone heard what had happened. (…) During the Monday interviews with UTV. The whole studio pretty much threw Paul under the bus. (…) However due to his conflict of interest type situation where he owned the outsourcing studio that we used, we couldn’t totally be rid of him. So instead he got knocked down about 3 positions from the top and forced to work from home indefinitely, and was replaced by Richard Kidd.” – Anthony D’Antonio [Senior Level Designer, Ignition Florida]

“Eventually a group of us got together and we discussed what to do. Moving forward, I ended up emailing corporate head Ronnie Screwvala. I got his information through another studio head and just as I was finishing up a correspondence with Ronnie, one of our producers walked in and ask me what I was doing. They had intercepted my email to the other studio head I was asking for the information from who by coincidence Vijay and Paul had freashly fired. I got escorted out of the building. Sent home to wait with pay for a month. I was paid and asked to wait till they figured out what to do with Paul. UTV sent a bunch of people to investigate what was going on at that time but I had already found another job for myself and a couple of others then we took off for Europe.” – Craig Harrison [Senior Level Designer, Ignition Florida]

The new management continued to stall game development and many millions of dollars have already been squandered on the project. As stated by three sources:

“Several months ago, I called a friend of mine that still worked there and asked how the game was going (post-Steed departure). He said that they had literally just been sitting around for weeks, waiting to be told what game to make. Again, waste of money.” – Reich anonymous ex-developer #2

“(…) The project had been going downhill for a while. I’ve read it elsewhere, but it’s very true how work was constantly being thrown out and redone most often for story reasons. That wasn’t good for morale. I was hired after Steed left (corporate was actually approving new hires right up until about a month ago), and I don’t think we made any real progress the entire time I was there. As of last week, the story itself was one of the most cliched and uninspired bits I’ve ever seen, but the powers that be were so devoted to it that they were constantly sacrificing anyone’s attempts to make the game fun because it needed to fit their god-awful story. (…) The leaked videos of the first iteration look more fun to me than what was being worked on last week, because having that much fun didn’t fit into the story anymore.” – Reich anonymous ex-developer #14

“(…) They had a regime change after Steed and a few others were fired but they hired quite a few good people into the company too late. The fall from my perspective was done under Steed and then their mistake with the Senior Producer who focused so much on story it was ridiculous and didn’t care about gameplay. From what I know, he made them change levels that were near completion to something totally different just so it’d fit the story. And did it more than once wasting all that time the designers and scripters put into the level. All the good employees with good training were all still too low on the food chain to do anything about it so they had to follow directions. – Reich anonymous ex-developer #15

Gameplay glimpses of the 3rd version and a bit of the 4th version from Joel Benefiel

Last Reboot

However, in May 2010, shortly before E3, Ignition again decided to cleanup by firing Kidd and replacing him with Scot Kramarich instead, while Steed announced his departure from the project with his outsourcing company. As Anthony D’Antonio and another former employee wrote:

“Around 2 weeks before I left, Paul just kinda disappeared with a very white washed email about exploring other options or some crap like that. We figured at the time he either got tired of being sidelined or UTV finally found out how to can his ass.” – Anthony D’Antonio [Senior Level Designer, Ignition Florida]

“I was there when UTV tried to bring back Steed again in May and everyone was leaving or talking about leaving. It was around that time Vijay Chadha the CEO of Ignition seemed to disappear from the picture. Both him and his brother who headed up US publishing didnt show up at E3. Then I heard Ajay got fired. Vijay went off sick at exactly the same time and has not been seen since. But its pretty obvious something happened there. Especially as just around then Ignition hired new managers in London. A coincidence?! But there has never been any formal announcement or anything about a change of CEO or him leaving or anything.They came over around same time and fired Kidd, just before E3. And we had been hearing through our grapevine Paul Steed was coming back and was in town. He was telling people on the team he was coming back and people started leaving or talking about leaving in droves. But instead of Steed coming back they promoted up Scot Kramarich to head the team instead. One of the guys from London told me the Ignition marketing team had categorically rejected Steed’s game concept as unsellable. So it seems some people in Ignition did know what they were doing. But sadly not the ones calling the shots. You really got to ask what kind of idiots would rehire a guy after he abuses staff and swindles money out of the company into his own pocket ?”. – Reich anonymous ex-developer #12

E3 2010 trailer which was never showed as the game was rebooted for the last time a month before. Video edited by Joshua Basche from Pompous Cat Studios and directed by Harry Jarvis

Jason Kaehler was then the new art director, working as a consultant, and a fourth and final visual reboot was underway, recycling many assets from the third version in order to accelerate the development of the game and reduce development costs as much as possible, as three differents sources said:

“The game went through several art directors and 3 game directors (hence, 3 reboots)” – Reich anonymous ex-developer #2

“The Executive Producer was doing good stuff and brought in good people to try and save this thing. We did have to reboot, but it was for the best. We were actually making a game finally. It’s not their fault the dick-heads before them Jeremy/Steed/Kidd pissed away cash.” – Reich anonymous ex-developer #10

“The sad thing is, after rebooting at the end of May ’10 and fixing all the mistakes previous management had made to where they could actually finish the game and ship Q3’11, management dropped the ball in a huge way. They put a hiring freeze in place to keep the studio from hiring the essential artists needed to complete the game (you know, the ones Paul Steed fired?), and yet complained about the art quality (which was primarily Paul Steed’s previous art as placeholder). The team had 3 levels finished with gameplay, waiting for art which couldn’t be delivered due to the freeze, and 3 more in production during the studio closure. The management that the studio received in the last few months did a great job of cleaning up and getting schedules in place (another failing of Paul Steed) and we caught by surprise just as much as the rest of the studio because everyone was on their way to finishing a good (if not great) game.” – Reich anonymous ex-developer #7

4th version destruction prototype by Jesse Rapczak

 

By the way, the story of the game was slightly modified: this last version saw the whole concept of the sect of the Chosen as well as the character of Janus Cross being ditched. Instead, you played as Grimm, a former veteran soldier, who found himself left for dead after the Reich attempted to do experiments on him, leaving him with telekinetic powers in the process. He was then recovered by the Resistance, with on board, the character of Morgan, leader of the latter.

Mission intro script named ‘Zeppelin Assault’ by Travis Greene

Final Nail In The Coffin

It will be too little too late, however; in Fall 2010, a demo of the game was apparently shown and collected a rating of 5.0/10 while the publisher expected a rating of 8.5/10 according to Gamesindustry, UTV Ignition took the decision to close Ignition Florida, laying off 70 developers in total and cancelling once and for all Reich on November 3, 2010. In the end, it’s 3 years of development, 4 different versions and 23 millions dollars of budget which were invested in Reich. Several assets and some tech ideas were to be reused for another FPS from Ignition, BOOM: Unleashed, which will also be canceled in 2011 for other reasons, as implied by a former Reich’s developer:

“Whatever hope Ignition had of making that money back is gone now. Instead of launching a AAA title, they’ll swallow that loss and release a cheap digital download.” – Reich anonymous ex-developer #7

And later stated by Destructoid:

“According to Shane Bettenhausen, the form that Reich originally took “isn’t there anymore.” Whether this means it’s changed genre, altered its sexy, over-the-top themes, or something else, remains to be seen. The studio working on it merged with a browser-based free-to-play dev called True Games.”

That same politic would be applicate by the company for WarDevil, becoming Project Kane, a slightly less ambitious title set to be released for console’s digital platforms, following the success of Blacklight: Tango Down.

Nearly entire level demo of unfinished Mission 04 from the 4th version. Video provided by Damien Bull

Why It Failed

In the end, the chaotic development and cancellation of Reich is due to inexperience. The development studio had never worked on AAA games before, same thing for the publisher, quite modest in its previous productions, which had suddenly decided this change of market without knowing what it required. Interestingly, many of the people who worked on the game were on their first try for a AAA game at this time, it was even, for others, their first game at all in the industry, as an anonymous developer wrote:

“(…) There were low paying employees, fresh meat from Full Sail University or other schools like University of Florida who didn’t know better and who were glad just to have a job doing game work.” – Reich anonymous ex-developer #16

Craig Harrison explained to me:

“I worked on a team of mostly new folks. A couple of us were vets from various games. (…) I was offered to decent salary. So it wasn’t as extravagant as others, but it was Florida and the cost of living is different than Santa Monica to say the least.”

Five ex-developers concluded on why it failed:

“Jeremy didn’t need a “right hand man” because he had two left hands and was pretty much crippled by his lack of managerial skills, he needed experience working under someone who knew how to direct a AAA game, unfortunately he didn’t have that and Paul Steed wasn’t the answer. Jeremy’s a brilliant guy and an awesome programmer and I think with some time he will develop into a decent game director but at that time he was not ready.” – Reich anonymous ex-developer #5

“The problem was that Ignition took a great, small independent outfit and decided to immediately grow them into a big-money AAA studio without stopping to think that it might not be a good idea. (…) Having seen the way people were relocated to Florida then hit with pay cuts, changes of responsibility etc. it’s no wonder morale was shot. There isn’t a team in the world that could have “risen above” the crap that was going on there. I left Ignition not long after the move to the new building in Gainesville. I was tired of all the lies, egotism and rank incompetence and the effect that was having on a team that had a great kernel of talented devs. Since then it’s just been one more sick/hilarious story after another.” – Reich anonymous ex-developer #4

“This comes as no surprise. It’s been a couple years since I left Ignition Florida behind, and the friends I have that still worked there when the studio was shut down had nothing but horror stories throughout Reich’s development. Laying off/firing talented and seasoned developers, and hiring untalented ones to replace them at lower salaries to cut costs. Result: the game was redesigned from scratch 3 times (maybe more), after millions had already been dumped into each iteration. (…) In the end, nothing went right. Nothing. There were some very talented guys there at various stages of the first iteration, which I was a part of, but things went to s**t incredibly quickly when we realized our game director had no idea how to direct a game.” – Reich anonymous ex-developer #2

“(…) Ignition and it’s investors are chumps who don’t know a thing about business, let alone game design. (…)I suppose one wonders why Ignition continued to put so much faith in Paul… it’s because Paul never delivered a game. He would deliver a movie to corporate every single time because the game was unplayable, unpredictable, and scripted/edited movies are great for pretend time with the executives who know nothing about what real game development looks like.” – Reich anonymous ex-developer #7

“(…) Basically all iterations of the game suffered because of one main reason: the corporate heads at Ignition didn’t know how to control nor run a US based game studio. They made some seriously bad choices in managers and directors down the line.” – Reich anonymous ex-developer #11

Craig Harrison wrote:

“I felt there was no traction. Once certain folks were in place, it became more of a management of resources to keep to try and get the game off the ground.”

Today, some key Reich’s developers work within Studio Wildcard, well known for Ark: Survival Evolved and its upcoming sequel. There are at least 8 ex-developers within the company, including Jeremy Stieglitz and Richard Kidd.

On the 31st December 2021, an Xbox 360 prototype playable via emulator from June 23 2009 was uploaded to ObscureGamers, it appears to be the demo presented at E3 2009.

Despite this painful experience, Craig Harrison concluded his email with these powerful words:

“My heart goes out to the people who were young and had this as their first example of game development. Hope it didn’t discouraged them. However, a bunch of us, old heads, did get some of the greener Crowd Recommendations to other studios. I know they are almost all doing well.

It’s a PTSD story for sure but also a story to know your worth. Don’t ever let anyone make you feel you deserve to be disrespected less than you are in this industry for a reason.

My dad told me that before he passed while this was all going on, it’s not always easy to see that cause you feel like a fraud or you aren’t good enough, made even worse by a person in power coming down on you, but they dont matter, it’s how you feel about yourself and you are in control of that. Everyday doesn’t have to be a struggle, some days will be easier than others but that’s how we grow and became better than the day before as artist and designers.

Special thanks to Craig Harrison and Cory Collins for their contributions on this article.

Article by Daniel Nicaise

First version images: 

Second version images:

Third version images:

Fourth version images:

Videos:

Reich prototype’ Steven Stahlberg version (2007)

Reich’s level ‘New Berlin’. Jean-Pierre Targete’s version (2008-2009)

Reich’s presentation by Jeremy Stieglitz, before the second art reboot (2009)

2nd version enemies animations by Cory Collins

2nd version dog overview by Mark Dedecker

2nd version multiple characters animations by Mark Dedecker

3rd version prototype by Jesse Rapczak

3rd version prototype demo from June 2009

3rd version Reich trooper animation by Cory Collins and Rigel Freeman

Crawler enemy animations from the 3rd version by Daniel McCrummen

4th version level design demo and 3rd version prototype by Steven Collins

3rd version gameplay with prototype’s physics tests. Video originally provided by Jesse Rapczak.

Short gameplay section of the 3rd version. It was initially coming from 2 separate videos that I stitched together with Bandicut, hence the rough cut between them as well as the increased resolution quality as both weren’t the same. Videos originally provided by Craig Schiller and Jesse Rapczak.

VFX test level from 3rd and 4th versions by Joel Benefiel

4th version’s trailer. Video provided by Steve Durst

 

4th version Full Motion Video sequence introducing the Mecha boss by Carsten Rojahn

 

Level design demo of the 4th version by Steven Collins