Подписаться Подписаться Подписаться Подписаться Нравится Нравится Тема Войти Вот основанное на фактах краткое содержание истории: Попробуйте что-нибудь другое: Покажите мне факты Объясните это, как будто мне 5 лет Дайте мне веселое резюме
In 1979, Francis Ford Coppola released Apocalypse Now. Despite being widely recognized as one of the best movies ever made, its traumatic production left deep scars in just about everyone involved.
Like any other art form, videogames have a particular talent for torturing the souls behind them. Sometimes it’s because of a troubled development, other times it’s internal conflict, and every now and then, you have a game that plays great but is not what the creator wanted to make in the first place.
Whatever the reason, these great games have led their creators to distance themselves, dislike, or even disown their once precious creations. It’s OK though—if the creators can’t love these games, we’re here to do it for them.
8 Тени проклятых
Death by Corpo Meddling
Goichi Suda, better known as Suda51, has one of the most iconic directing styles in the videogame industry, and Shadows of the Damned is another great example of what makes him a legend among action fans.
Shadows of the Damned was supposed to be a happy story, allying the creative powers of Suda and producer Shinji Mikami with the budget and marketing might of EA. Instead, the result was corporate meddling, poor sales, and a frustrated director.
After the game’s release, producer Mikami accused EA of lying to Suda about liking his concept early on given the extent of changes requested, leading to a heartbroken director and a game that was rewritten so many times it was unrecognizable from the original concept.
While Shadows of the Damned broke Suda’s heart, it did not come anywhere to breaking even, but beneath the disappointing development and sales is a tight gameplay loop with fun mechanics. Hardly Suda51’s best work, but that speaks volumes about how high he set the bar.
7. Флэппи Бёрд
A Quick Project Turned Nightmare
Way before Nintendo was trying to sue Palworld into the ground, we had to deal with the discourse over whether Flappy Bird plagiarized Super Mario. The mobile sidescroller was the solo work of Nguyễn Hà Đông, and while it raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars, its creator pulled the game less than a year after its release.
In a sorrowful post uploaded to Twitter, Nguyễn was overwhelmed by guilt, and said he ‘cannot take this anymore’. The creator explained in a Forbes interview that he wanted the game to be a chill pastime, but instead it became addictive. Rather than let the guilt consume him, Nguyễn made the responsible call to pull the plug on the game.
Although clones have flooded the market since 2014, Nguyễn’s lack of engagement with the title meant he lost the trademark, which has been handed over to Gametech Holdings. The company has rebooted the game under ‘The Flappy Bird Foundation’ in 2024, but this nostalgia bait without the creator’s involvement has predictably flopped.
6 Басня 2
What the Hater Hates Most
I’ll be as soft as I can when I say Peter Molyneux is a bit of a controversial industry figure. There’s pleasure in the small irony that he feels the same about Fable 2. Despite not beign perfect, the game is generally considered the best in the series, but that doesn’t seem enough to please Molyneux.
During a conference in 2010, Molyneux said the game has ‘some terribly messy things about it’, especially toward the end. The director says part of that is because the team was rushed to finish the game, which at one point was the buggiest title ever presented to the Microsoft Test team.
While there’s no disputing that Fable 2 had its fair share of problems, including wonderfully traumatic bugs where your family could despawn forever and loading times so long they made for perfect coffee breaks, it was a powerful story with insane potential for customization and a fun gameplay loop. All of Molyneux’s complaining cannot change that.
5 Обитель зла 4
Off to Bingo
In the early 1990s, Shinji Mikami transformed horror games forever with Resident Evil, but I doubt he knew this would frustrate his career progression by a decade.
Mikami spent what he considers his prime working on the franchise before bailing out following the release of Resident Evil 4. Although most (though not all) titles in the series are universally loved, his shift into ‘Mikami the producer’ meant not being able to be ‘Mikami the creator’, as he put during a 2022 interview.
Had Shinji Mikami left the franchise earlier, maybe he would have been able to exercise that creative muscle earlier on, but the selfish player in me thinks it was worth the sacrifice when you look at how he essentially shaped modern horror.
4 Поле битвы 3
This Is The Price You Pay
This one hurts a little bit, because the Battlefield 3 is easily my favorite Battlefield campaign, but writer David Goldfarb has different opinions.
The Bad Company 2 veteran took to social media to vent about how bad he was made to feel beacuse of the BF3 campaign. Goldfarb got a lot of internal heat over it, which skewed his perception of the finished product relative to the public view.
Although the Battlefield 3 campaign wasn’t a hit with critics initially, it has since grown into a bit of a cult icon, and you’d have to be blind to not see how Battlefield 6 tried (and mostly failed) to copy some of its more memorable moments.
For all the trauma it caused the developer, riding tanks into Iran or pulling a HALO jump to seize Kaffarov is the grounded cinematic awesomeness that defines modern Battlefield.
3 Спецоперации: Линия
A Nightmare in Dubai
Brutal and painful. Those are the words narrative designer Walt Williams used to describe the development period for Spec Ops: The Line, but they also perfectly describe why it was such a good game.
Willams once said that he would rather ‘eat broken glass before making another’, while lead designer Cory Davis blamed 2K for forcing a multiplayer mode that was a ‘low-quality Call of Duty Clone’ that ‘tossed out the creative pillars of the product’.
Beyond a traumatic development, Spec Ops: The Line and Apocalypse Now also share a common inspiration—Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Both accomplish their narrative goals fairly well, but the interactive nature of the game makes you an active perpetrator rather than just an observer.
I know it was painful, but I cannot thank Yager enough for seeing this one through. The only issue now is that the game is virtually impossible to purchase legally due to licensing issues.
2 СТАЛКЕР: Чистое небо
In the Shadow of Its Prequel
Although GSC established itself as the prime maker of radioactive horror shooters, it earned this reputation long after those responsible for it had left the company following STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl.
The few team members who didn’t jump ship immediately bore witness to STALKER: Clear Sky and STALKER: Call of Pripyat. Although iconic games in their own right, the core team behind Shadow of Chernobyl felt the sequels were just a rehash of the work they didn’t get fairly compensated for.
While one could argue Call of Pripyat did enough with the mechanics, story, and setting to warrant original credits, Clear Sky is hard to pin down as anything other than a Shadow of Chernobyl rehash with some faction gimmicks on top. And honestly, we wouldn’t have it any other way.
1 Metal Gear Solid V: Фантомная боль
Почему мы здесь?
I cannot think of a videogame divorce uglier than the one between Hideo Kojima and Konami, and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was central to all of this.
The game shipped unfinished according to Kojima, it blew up the relationship between the director and actor David Hayter, and it cost as much as $80 million to make according to some estimates. As traumatic as the game was for the Metal Gear series and everyone involved, The Phantom Pain is also the best entry in the series despite its flaws.
Even the much-maligned second half of the game has its own poetic beauty, as it exposes point blank how futile it feels to be a gun-for-hire when there is no cause to even pretend to believe in. Go, kill, return, go again, except instead of glory you get a paycheck or a bullet to the head.
