KickStarter Homeworld 3 from Blackbird Interactive

[DesolationStone]

The game was initially set to release in summer 2022, lol
Imagine if Embracer decides to shut down Gearbox in April and Homeworld 3 is cancelled

 

[Grotesque]

"It's less Homeworld 1, more Homeworld 2, but reminds me too much of Dawn of War 3."

 

[Raghar]

The game was initially set to release in summer 2022, lol
Imagine if Embracer decides to shut down Gearbox in April and Homeworld 3 is cancelled

How large was Homeworld I crew?
And how large was HW 2 crew?
Frankly there might be some weird inefficiency and cost creep.

 

[Tyranicon]

You know, at some point we really have to ask the question: are video games that hard to make?

Especially when you already made two of these games before, remade one, and it's been 25 years of technological progress.

 

[Cyberarmy]

"It's less Homeworld 1, more Homeworld 2, but reminds me too much of Dawn of War 3."

This is so sad that it is kinda funny...

 

[DesolationStone]

How large was Homeworld I crew?
And how large was HW 2 crew?
Frankly there might be some weird inefficiency and cost creep.

In an interview in 2022, Cunnigham said that over 40 people were working on Homeworld 3.
In August 2023, Blackbird Interactive laid off 41 people. In their statement, Blackbird didn't specify which people were laid off (because BBI have about 3 or 4 different teams), but we know for sure that from the Homeworld team, Quinn Duffy, one of the designers of the original Homeworld, was laid off.
Looking at Mobygames, it seems that 20/30 people worked on the original Homeworld as designers/programmers/artists (if we count everyone, we have 130+ people + 40 thanks)
My theory
First build of game was ok
Embracer/Gearbox hired some influencers who mostly play COD or MOBA as Q/A testers.
Influencers said "nooooo, too complex, scale down, like COD or LOL".
Embracer fired all the old Homeworld developers, demoted Cunnigham as art director and promoted Andrew Ritchie, a developer/designer with more experience in arena shooters than RTS (my theory is that he was originally hired to develop the server side of the game).
Embracer/Gearbox also forced Blackbird to change the game's narrative style, from the minimalism of the original to this new "anime style" with cutscenes and actors.

 

[DesolationStone]

Oh it's also seems that they removed the balistic system that was promised in the FIG campaign

 

[Hellraiser]

Oh it's also seems that they removed the balistic system that was promised in the FIG campaign

Did they? I could swear from watching strike craft duke it out that the shots hitting seemed physics/collision based.

 

[Raghar]

How large was Homeworld I crew?
And how large was HW 2 crew?
Frankly there might be some weird inefficiency and cost creep.

In an interview in 2022, Cunnigham said that over 40 people were working on Homeworld 3.
In August 2023, Blackbird Interactive laid off 41 people. In their statement, Blackbird didn't specify which people were laid off (because BBI have about 3 or 4 different teams), but we know for sure that from the Homeworld team, Quinn Duffy, one of the designers of the original Homeworld, was laid off.
Looking at Mobygames, it seems that 20/30 people worked on the original Homeworld as designers/programmers/artists (if we count everyone, we have 130+ people + 40 thanks)
My theory
First build of game was ok
Embracer/Gearbox hired some influencers who mostly play COD or MOBA as Q/A testers.
Influencers said "nooooo, too complex, scale down, like COD or LOL".
Embracer fired all the old Homeworld developers, demoted Cunnigham as art director and promoted Andrew Ritchie, a developer/designer with more experience in arena shooters than RTS (my theory is that he was originally hired to develop the server side of the game).
Embracer/Gearbox also forced Blackbird to change the game's narrative style, from the minimalism of the original to this new "anime style" with cutscenes and actors.

Firing 40 people, I wonder why they did that. Did they hired original team and found they can't program for shit because they lost theirs skills by doing easier jobs... Or were they oldies who couldn't do at sensible pace anymore?

In HW2 they had:
5 designers.
12 programmers.
5 script writers and story writers.
1 composer.
1 orchestra director and producer.
18 real world musicians with instruments.

Victor Costanzi did violin.
Sue Round did cello.

Normally developers don't want to work with real people because when they do some samples instead of real musicians, stuff works on THEIRS own pace.

Aside of that unexpected 18 musicians and their producer, it looks like normal team.

 

[Alienman]

Embracer/Gearbox hired some influencers who mostly play COD or MOBA as Q/A testers.

Reminds of me when Tripware hired COD players for Red Orchestra 2 because that is what we wanted... RO2 turned to shit, unexpectedly.

 

[Van-d-all]

Played the demo and personally I think it's a disaster.

Essentially the only obvious single-player element the demo has is a 20 minute long tutorial ON BASIC CONTROLS.

There are two control schemes, the old one and the new one they are trying to push. Every simple thing like zooming, panning, selecting units is presented as a separate, worded objective at a glacial pace. Why? Because active cooldown MOBA skills have been added to units, and the control scheme needs hotkeys to accommodate them like World In Conflict did while maintaining a freeform 3d space that already requires at least two clicks to even move.

So the bright idea is to either have those hotkeys disabled in classic mode (forcing the player to slowly click them by icon) or have them mapped to the very same WSAD + QE camera movement keys BUT act like camera when RMB is pressed, or like hotkeys when not. Yeah, someone approved that shit.

The tutorial then continues on to fighting two enemy groups and that's it. Well, WOULD be it, because I've spent the next 10 minutes adjusting the truckload of various camera/UI/control settings just to unfuck all the shit they've added to be somewhat playable. Just to learn the only other thing in the demo is multiplayer skirmish (that can be set to play against AI).

Now, I know Deserts Of Kharak already had some active abilities like the overcharge, World In Conflict (2007) was generally well acclaimed, and I can even remember Ground Control 1 & 2 (2000) where unit abilities were actually fun. BUT. It was ages ago and those games focused on small number of units (in 2d...), while Homeworld were always more akin to Supreme Commander where gameplay is more about strategizing and giving orders than managing 10 second win buttons on 30 second cooldowns.

I can understand that tapping on MOBA market is a major wish, but those types of games are so fundamentally different that skewing the franchise in their favor won't really bring in those players anyway, but estrange the regular franchise audience instead. It just screams fail exactly like Dawn Of War 3 did.

 

[Alienman]

The MOBA market is such a weird thing to cater to. I can't imagine any LOL player going "Oh golly, oh gee, Homeworld 3 is out soon, I better put LOL to rest"

 

[Tyranicon]

I thought the focus was on being a co-op roguelite?

Also, wtf? At this rate, the next Diablo is going to be a deckbuilder.

 

[karoliner]

 

[fizzelopeguss]

How large was Homeworld I crew?
And how large was HW 2 crew?
Frankly there might be some weird inefficiency and cost creep.

In an interview in 2022, Cunnigham said that over 40 people were working on Homeworld 3.
In August 2023, Blackbird Interactive laid off 41 people. In their statement, Blackbird didn't specify which people were laid off (because BBI have about 3 or 4 different teams), but we know for sure that from the Homeworld team, Quinn Duffy, one of the designers of the original Homeworld, was laid off.
Looking at Mobygames, it seems that 20/30 people worked on the original Homeworld as designers/programmers/artists (if we count everyone, we have 130+ people + 40 thanks)
My theory
First build of game was ok
Embracer/Gearbox hired some influencers who mostly play COD or MOBA as Q/A testers.
Influencers said "nooooo, too complex, scale down, like COD or LOL".
Embracer fired all the old Homeworld developers, demoted Cunnigham as art director and promoted Andrew Ritchie, a developer/designer with more experience in arena shooters than RTS (my theory is that he was originally hired to develop the server side of the game).
Embracer/Gearbox also forced Blackbird to change the game's narrative style, from the minimalism of the original to this new "anime style" with cutscenes and actors.

They don't even have the basics working in the game buddy.
I'm wondering if they couldn't get Unreal Engine to work for them at all.

Strike craft idiotically bouncing off each other and objects like the Turanic raider first appearance. (probably why they move so slowly and why there's NO RAMMING SPEED)

No directional armour from what I saw in the demo. (???)

No sub system targeting.

Everything seemed so short range that I don't even see the point in the ballistics. I also didn't see physics engine shunting ships around when they were struck in combat.

Pathfinding is lol, considering how focused the game is on all that retarded terrain. Like seriously, what is this obsession with space hulks? It nearly killed HW2, and they had the foresight to reign in their ego's to dump that shit 20 years ago.



Homeworld is a very simple game, it's a glorified model viewer. An that's why it worked.

 

[Pika-Cthulhu]

-suit demanded they add moba elements
-devs played a few moba games and took notes
said moba elements turn into all the creeps have active abilities the player can use

something like this?

Worse, its anemic abilities with no strategic tradeoffs (fuel/combat), dance dance revolution keyboard awesome button mashing retard festival type of game. Can you program your keyboard to play different varaints of fart noises for this shit?

 

[RobotSquirrel]

Pathfinding is lol, considering how focused the game is on all that retarded terrain. Like seriously, what is this obsession with space hulks? It nearly killed HW2, and they had the foresight to reign in their ego's to dump that shit 20 years ago.

this is predictable because we know how Homeworld's pathfinding worked in the past, it was never going to work with a solid piece of collider with no way to path around it. The devs were being idiots and the game didn't need it, its a stupid feature no one asked for and worse the camera doesn't work well with it either, the caverns for example are very difficult to move the camera around in.

How on earth did they go from Homeworld Remastered and not just continue development? it was the logical choice if you had to do Homeworld 3 you'd continue it off the base of the first two games, but no instead they do a rebuild. Of course the same exact shit happened with DoW and CoH so no one should be surprised it happened again. Gonna go out on a limb here and say that ex-Relic just can't make games anymore.

 

[Tyranicon]

How on earth did they go from Homeworld Remastered and not just continue development?

-Takes Homeworld Remastered
-Adds on new ship designs, new mechanics, new story
-Tada, Homeworld 3

It's basically this meme

 

[DesolationStone]

I forgot to post here that Blackbird fired more people last week lol

 

[DesolationStone]

How on earth did they go from Homeworld Remastered and not just continue development?

-Takes Homeworld Remastered
-Adds on new ship designs, new mechanics, new story
-Tada, Homeworld 3

It's basically this meme

View attachment 46762

What's even more unbelievable is that they could just make a remake of Cataclysm from scratch (perhaps fixing all the plot problems and integrating the story with Homeworld 2) and then start from there.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

The box selection is the most horrific shit I've ever seen a AAA studio implement. Worse still it seems intentional. (If I had their code I could fix it in a day, I've implemented box selection in Unreal 4, Unity and Godot)
The Units don't even have line of sight either, they just shoot in the vague direction of the target and ignore anything in the way.

This really only goes to prove that modern developers can't do anything right.

 

[Alienman]

What's the problem with the box selection?

 

[RobotSquirrel]

What's the problem with the box selection?

it snaps to units outside of the selection box. https://youtu.be/yuonl50R6Eo?t=940
I'm wondering if it happens with the setting turned off, but it being defaulted to on and it being this bad... What the hell were they thinking here.

 

[Tyranicon]

What's the problem with the box selection?

it snaps to units outside of the selection box. https://youtu.be/yuonl50R6Eo?t=940
I'm wondering if it happens with the setting turned off, but it being defaulted to on and it being this bad... What the hell were they thinking here.

This is why they needed a position for something called "Managing Director of Narrative Properties."

For an AA game. That needed a fig campaign. Top kek.

I hope you have your popcorn ready, this game is gonna be a shitshow.

 

[Perkel]

Jesus christ. I was looking forward to it but now it looks like dumpster fire. I was completely blind as I didn't want to spoil myself, good luck i sort of clicked here.

Being Homeworld fans seems to be as fun as being Silent Hill fan. Every time game is announced you just start to think in what way they will fail.