BlackSite designer looks back on development woes

Midway Studios Austin’s latest game for the first person shooter genre, Blacksite: Area 51 (PC, Xbox 360, PS3), may have had much promise, but it failed to meet expectations of players and reviewers alike. Game designer Harvey Smith, known for his work on the memorable Deus Ex, looked back on the critical errors made while developing BlackSite.

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Although the game is still in it’s infancy stage since it first debuted in the US back in November 13, Midway Studios Austin’s latest game for the first person shooter genre, BlackSite: Area 51 (PC, Xbox 360, PS3), was met with a pelting deluge of mixed reviews from both critics and fans alike at the recent Montreal International Game Summit for 2007.

Before it got released, BlackSite had already garnered fame for it’s political leanings towards the ongoing war in Iraq, but it was in the last year of BlackSite‘s development that those political issues materialized. It seems that the limited time given produced a “half baked” message of sorts which could’ve been misinterpreted by the public.

It was revealed that BlackSite‘s designer, Harvey Smith, expressed his initial lack of interest about working on the game. He said he was simultaneously working on two other projects that could’ve made focusing on BlackSite quite difficult for him.

There were also tech problems that further exacerbated BlackSite‘s development problems. Though Smith did not say if Unreal Engine 3 was part of their tech woes, he did reveal that tech sharing was most problematic. “Everyone was forced to share tech. It took eight months to get one thing working, ” he said.

Smith complained that Blacksite‘s levels were “orange boxed”  – that is, patched and polished – in the span of just four days just to meet corporate deadlines. And when the game was found to be playable, it jumped from Alpha to final in a heartbeat. He admitted to the mistake, calling it “completely reprehensible”.

BlackSite clearly needed a lot of improvement, but Smith felt that the game was underrated and stated that he would’ve given it a rating of 80 instead its current GameRanking score.

Buy: [ Blacksite: Area 51 (PC) ]

Buy: [ Blacksite: Area 51 (PS3) ]

Buy: [ Blacksite: Area 51 (Xbox 360) ]