Grave Gamer News & Views — editorial

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2, the highly anticipated sequel to 2010’s imaginative, and successful, reboot came out this Tuesday and critics are raving that Dracula… kind of sucks.

Awash in a bloodbath of mediocre scores, one anonymous MercurySteam developer has come forward with some decently scathing remarks hurled at the studio’s troubled management in the hopes of explaining why Dracula’s latest bites (all right, all right, no more puns).

Lobbying their complaints through a user on a Meristation forum, the unnamed employee confessed that he went through his own personal “Hell” during the sequel’s development, fitted with hot coals of “shameful wages” and “everyday bullying.” And who oversaw this pit of torment?

“If there’s someone to blame here, that’s Enric Álvarez,” co-founder and owner of MercurySteam. “He is the person who has led a broken development based on his personal criteria, completely overlooking programmers, designers and artists.”

The employee goes on to lambaste Alvarez, stating that the studio director’s ego inflated after the first Lords of Shadow’s success, to the point where he wouldn’t greet lowly team members he’d pass by in the hall. A general mistrust of his own workers was intimated, as “most of the development team often found out features of the game through press news, rather than from the studio’s head.”

The employee also claims the studio’s internal structure was “archaic,” citing MercurySteam’s flawed engine as a key example. “Access for the new programmers to the source code to update or refurbish the engine is denied, so things are still done in a 10-year-old fashion.”

New hires supposedly knew even more than the bosses that hired them on, leading to a fractured, almost chaotic dynamic behind-the-scenes. “This structure only leads to a slow, messy and absurd development process, with the end result of Lords of Shadow 2 being a perfect example of what happens due to that.”

Despite his damning comments, the unnamed employee made sure not to disparage his fellow team members, saying that he hasn’t seen such passion and talent in a group, though their potential is forever marred at MercurySteam under the current regime. “If all those guys who are not allowed to be promoted due to our Jurassic studio leads had the chance to set the course of the company, our future would be so bright,” he said.

That future, unfortunately, may be in trouble. 35 employees were laid off after Lords of Shadow 2 went gold, according to this source, and more firings are on the table, especially given Konami’s alleged dissatisfaction over the final product.

“The vast majority of this team is aware that the game we’ve done is a real piece of shit that has nothing to do with the first one’s quality and production values… Nobody is surprised by the low reviews we’ve got.”

[My two cents on the issue follow beneath the break.]

Connecticut Town Inviting Residents to Destroy Their Violent Video Games

On January 12th, at a drive-in theater off of the Meriden-Waterbury Turnpike between 9 A.M. and 12 P.M., a Southington, Connecticut awareness group will be hosting the video game equivalent of a book burning.

Each resident that brings in games depicting violence will have their act of “responsible citizenship” rewarded with a gift certificate worth $25 in value, donated on behalf of a member of the town’s very own Chamber of Commerce.  On location will be a dumpster meant not only for the collection of violent video games but, SouthingtonSOS, the community group sponsoring the event, invites their neighbors to dispose of any other media that challenges citizens’ moral perceptions, including CD’s and DVD’s.  Collected media will be destroyed and then thrown into the town’s dumpster for “appropriate permanent disposal,” according to SouthintonSOS.