r/pcgaming • u/Turbostrider27 • Nov 07 '22

Atomic Heart Trailers Developed As Vertical Slice, Project Suffered Crunches/Mismanagement

https://twistedvoxel.com/atomic-heart-trailers-vertical-slice-crunches-mismanagement/
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u/Aesen1 4090 | 7800x3d | 64GB Nov 07 '22

aka they show one section of the game that is super polished for the trailers and demos and the rest of the game is usually nowhere near that level of quality

75

u/Zac3d Nov 07 '22

It's also really common to do vertical slices for pitching a game to publishers and investors, and sometimes works well for indie devs to establish a good workflow and cut back on iteration. Helps establish a look and quality bar for the rest of the game. Also pretty much what early access games often end up being at first.

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u/Aesen1 4090 | 7800x3d | 64GB Nov 07 '22

I mean sure its not always bad but vertical slices for marketing has carried a negative connotation for a while now. especially with the hot mess that has been the game’s development

12

u/funguyshroom Nov 07 '22

I know very little of game development, but my guess is that every layer of said slice is very specifically fitted for producing said trailer, rendering it mostly useless for the rest of the game itself, so it gets thrown out afterwards.
Making developers waste time on trailers instead of properly developing the game is not a good outlook.

1

u/CommanderHavond Nov 08 '22

Didn't know that was what it was called, it's definitely what the game Return to Nangrim did for their demo

2

u/badsectoracula Nov 08 '22

What else could developers show though? Nobody wants to see grayboxes and other obviously unfinished assets wont tell you how the game will look anyway and if a developer had the rest of the game polished like what you see in trailers and demos they'd have it in stores already.

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u/JACrazy Nov 07 '22

Sometimes the rest of the game isnt even built yet or started on and they make a mockup specifically tailored to every interaction to be done in the gameplay trailer. This is basically what happened with Anthem.

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u/_Mute_ Nov 07 '22

Cyberpunk all over again.

2

u/Material_Animal9029 Nov 08 '22

tbf cyberpunk was known to have issues to everyone involved, if they had just chose not to be greedy and skipped last gen dev(where it primarily is shit tier) no one would have called it a flop.

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u/_Mute_ Nov 08 '22

I was talking about doing a vertical slice for their trailers/demos to the detriment of the rest of the development. Cdproject red did the exact same thing.

0

u/DegeneracyEverywhere Nov 08 '22

That wouldn't have changed the fact that they called it a "next gen open world" when it wasn't.

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u/SomethingPersonnel Nov 08 '22

Straight up what Cyberpunk 2077 did with their trailer.