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That bad King Kong game was only in development for a year
That the game came out at all is commendable.
www.theverge.com
That bad King Kong game was only in development for a year
According to developers who worked on the project, Skull Island: Rise of Kong only had a year’s worth of development time.
By Ash Parrish, a reporter who has covered the business, culture, and communities of video games for seven years. Previously, she worked at Kotaku.Oct 20, 2023, 12:24 PM EDT|
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25018703/Screen_Shot_2023_10_20_at_11.08.06_AM.png "Screenshot from Skull Island: Rise of Kong featuring gorilla King Kong in a jungle making a threatening display.")
Image: GameMill Entertainment
Earlier this week, images and clips from Skull Island: Rise of Kong started popping up on social media. Released on October 17th, the game was roundly mocked for its dated-looking graphics and gameplay. IGN reported that players were calling it the worst game of 2023.
Though it is easy to see why this game might have earned that moniker, after speaking with developers involved in making the game, one fact becomes clear — Skull Island is the best it possibly could have been because it was produced under restrictive circumstances imposed by its publisher, the Minnesota-based game company, GameMill Entertainment.
The Verge spoke with developers involved with the game, who explained that though the team at IguanaBee, which developed Skull Island, is extremely talented, that talent was not able to be fully expressed because GameMill only allowed one year for the team to develop the game from scratch.
“The development process of this game was started in June of last year and it was aimed to end on June 2nd this year. So one year development process,” said a developer at IguanaBee, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal.
“I was on automatic pilot by the end of February because all hope was lost.”
IguanaBee is an indie developer based in Santiago, Chile, that has worked on a number of games, including original and licensed properties. It has worked on a number of projects for GameMill Entertainment, including Little League World Series Baseball 2022, which, according to sources, was also only allowed one year for development.
In fact, GameMill seems to have a reputation for contracting smaller developers to make licensed games under short turnaround times with varying degrees of success and quality.
“It was very common for us not to be provided with all the information about the project,” said a former IguanaBee developer who did not work on Skull Island specifically but other GameMill-published games at IguanaBee and wished to remain anonymous to protect future employment opportunities. “Which was quite frustrating when working because we had to improvise with the limited information we had on hand.”
They spoke about how, even though GameMill was funding a particular project, the funding apparently wasn’t enough to keep experienced staff on hand.
