Aliens: Colonial Marines

[Emmett The Crab]

You know that scene in the Simpsons where Bart really wants Bonestorm, but his mother asks Comic shop guy what the best game is, and he says the game he wants to get rid of (Lee Carvello's Putting Challenging).   That's what happened when my grandmother bought us E.T. at o e of those old Video game mall kiosks, the guy lied and said E.T. was what all the kids wanted. 

[mylifewithsega]

Emmett, I am so, so sorry. That's an awful thing to do to someone. You have my sympathies.

[Chaosmaster8753]

I think this might be an interesting article:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/03/15/from-codehunters-to-aliens-colonial-marines-how-gearbox-has-become-one-of-the-most-controversial-studios-in-the-industry/

Plano, TX based game developer Gearbox has been in the game-making business for a long time. In fact, this past February marked the developer’s 14th anniversary. But prior to the release of Borderlands in 2009, Gearbox flew largely under the radar.

Before Borderlands, the studio had developed a number of Brothers in Arms games, some Half-Life spin-offs, and a number of other titles, but it wasn’t until Borderlands caught fire that the company really staked out its place as a major game developer doing important—some might say groundbreaking—work.

With last year’s release of Borderlands 2, Gearbox firmly cemented its place on top of the gaming world. The critically acclaimed sequel was better than the original in almost every way, offering up a more colorful, better written game full of diverse environments and enemies and even more guns.

Here was a developer who had opened up their own vault of success, striking gold in the Pandoran wilds and winning over the hearts of gamers everywhere with the game’s unique shoot-and-loot system and distinct art style.

Then came the release of Aliens: Colonial Marines, a game so widely panned by critics and fans alike that it’s hard to imagine how the game—littered with bugs, low-quality textures, and clunky gameplay—could have emerged from the same company. It turns out that, in many ways, it didn’t.

Though the exact details of Gearbox’s involvement (or lack thereof) in the development of Colonial Marines remains somewhat murky, it’s become clear over time that the bulk of the studio’s efforts and resources went into the development of Borderlands and Borderlands 2 rather than the licensed Aliens IP.

To fully understand Gearbox, however, we need to look back further.

http://vimeo.com/7432584

The above video isn’t a trailer for Borderlands, but no one would hold it against you if you thought it was. After all, the art style is remarkably similar—disconcertingly similar, one might say—and even the silent plot appears to share some similar elements with Gearbox’s first-person shooter.

CodeHunters was the brainchild of Ben Hibon, who had been commissioned to produce the film by MTV back in 2006.

Unsurprisingly, it met with universal praise for its unique art style and action-packed story.

Indeed, if I’d seen it back then I would have crossed my fingers, hoping some clever developer would license it immediately for a video game—you know, a video game about four tough protagonists in a barren, futuristic Wild West setting taking on well-armed enemies. That sort of thing.

Borderlands, basically, which opens with this cinematic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fArm_D6TuRE

Notice the similarities?

You have the bus pulling into town; you have the four protagonists, the dusty dystopian science-fiction gunslinger vibe. At the very least, the game appears to be heavily influenced by CodeHunters.

While the art-style is certainly similar, it goes beyond that. Some frames appear a little too close for comfort, like this one:



Or this one:



The color palette is different. CodeHunters is basically sepia-toned. Borderlands is more vibrant. But the similarities are impossible to ignore.

It’s important to note, also, that Borderlands didn’t always look this way. Once upon a time, it looked like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSvTqfmv3DE

That’s the original trailer. It’s basically a very generic-looking science fiction game at this point, which was exactly the problem.

“We didn’t want to be considered a poor man’s Rage,” said Gearbox chief creative officer Brian Martel at GDC 2010 in his talk Borderlands & The 11th Hour Art Style Change (Don’t Try This at Home.)

The question became: How do you transform “a poor man’s Rage” into something that will stand out in a crowded FPS market?

That was the hard question facing Gearbox. The vast bulk of work on Borderlands had already been completed but something obviously needed to be done.

So they scrapped the art style and began working on a new skin.

With 75 percent of the game already finished, it was no small task to start fresh.

Of course, Gearbox didn’t have to do all the legwork. They retained many of the monsters and environments they’d already created, but gave them a major graphical makeover. And the hard work of coming up with a brand new art-style had largely been taken care of.

What they ended up was less a “poor man’s Rage” and more a “rich man’s CodeHunters.”

The sudden overhaul of the game was a brash gamble that ultimately paid off, with Borderlands selling well over 4 million copies since its release. The combination of RPG elements and a very unique art style led to a welcome critical and consumer reaction.



You could easily chalk the whole thing up to coincidence or innocent inspiration, which is basically what Gearbox said back in 2010 when Gearbox chief Randy Pitchford told Kotaku:

“I would like to thank news sites who chose to share the awesome work in Code Hunters with their readers. It’s great content and one can no doubt imagine that a number of artists and designers at Gearbox were inspired and influenced by it. It was inspiring to me when “The Incredibles” was clearly a big source of influence for titles like Battlefield Heroes and Team Fortress 2 (and other amazing games and media). Perhaps with more attention from gaming news sites and other sources, Code Hunters can be more respected and honored for their innovation and leadership in CG as well. Maybe I’m too optimistic to believe that Code Hunters can get as much attention as Pixar (with due respect I believe they deserve), but with the help of gaming news sites and others who care about great content, maybe more people can notice and recognize and, perhaps, be inspired by it.”

In fact, Gearbox was very much aware of CodeHunters when they made the art-style changes, though no credit was given to the film by the studio.

They’d been in touch with the film’s creator prior to the game’s release.

“I was contacted by Gearbox prior to the re-design of the game – in 2008,” Ben Hibon told Gather Your Party’s Mark Ceb in an interview (the above comparison screens are taken from that interview.)

“They asked me if I would be interested to direct/design some cut-scenes for them. We exchanged a few emails but the project didn’t materialize in the end. I didn’t think much of it at the time – until I saw the final game in 2009.”

The project may not have materialized, but Borderlands certainly did, and Hibon says he’s more than a little confused by the outcome.

“I think most of the team that worked on “CODEHUNTERS” would have loved the opportunity to work on game like that – including myself,” he said. I asked Hibon to comment further but he declined, though he confirmed that he stood by everything he said in the previous interview.

“To be absolutely clear,” Hibon told Gather Your Party, “I have never created or designed anything for Gearbox or Borderlands. Gearbox saw my work and decided to reproduce it – make it their own – without my help or my consent.”

Borderlands and Borderlands 2 are games that are truly unique in their own right. “Halo meets Diablo” is a concept that really hadn’t been tried before, and Gearbox did a solid job at genre-blending. So it is strange that the games would borrow so much from an animated short film, especially without involving Hibon or anyone else on the project.

Then again, when you start to look at the broader picture, Gearbox’s actions may not seem so odd after all.



These are posters designed by artist Olly Moss for the Star Wars trilogy. It’s a very distinct, unique look.

Now here’s a comparison of these posters to some of the artwork included with Borderlands 2:



It’s not just similar. It actually uses bits taken directly from the Olly Moss posters. Those zig-zag clouds? They’re identical to the ones in the Empire Strikes Back poster. Not similar—identical.

This all came to light when Moss expressed his disappointment over the artwork via Twitter: ”I’m a huge Gearbox fan so I was really disappointed to see this image inside the Borderlands 2 box,” he said, including an image of the box art.

Kotaku reported on the story, and soon Pitchford was on Twitter telling Moss that he inspired them and that inspiration is a big part of art. Moss responded that the whole thing was no big deal.

And really, taken on its own, it isn’t that big of a deal.

Taken alongside CodeHunters, however, it starts to paint a slightly more troubling picture. At what point does inspiration cross the line? At what point should a game developer decide to seek permission to use other peoples’ work rather than call it their own?

And why didn’t Gearbox follow through with Hibon on directing cut-scenes or working on the Borderlands project in some other faculty? I would love to answer that question, but Gearbox has declined to comment on this story.



Inspiration is one thing, but when it comes to Aliens: Colonial Marines Gearbox has given credit where credit’s due.

While neither Sega or Gearbox are making any official comments on the matter, the release and reception of the long-delayed Aliens: Colonial Marines shooter has sparked renewed controversy. The question of who made the game (and who is responsible for its many flaws) has never been fully answered, though a general portrait of the chaos surrounding its development has been cobbled together.

Kotaku has tracked down various anonymous sources who claim to have worked on the game at various stages of its development.

As far back as 2006, Sega announced that it had gained rights to the Aliens brand and would release both an Aliens RPG and a shooter. The RPG, which would have been developed by Obsidian, was later cancelled. The shooter was given to Gearbox.

Gearbox, of course, was working on Borderlands at the time and had run into the big 11th hour art style change, with the vast bulk of Gearbox’s development resources poured into the overhaul. After the wild success of Borderlands, the studio dove directly into development of Borderlands 2.

Aliens: Colonial Marines had to be outsourced to developer TimeGate.

This out-sourcing reportedly took place in 2010 around the same time as work on Borderlands 2 began and a whopping four years after Aliens was announced by publisher Sega.

Unfortunately, the game was much further from completion than TimeGate realized. “There was obviously not four years of work done on the game,” one source told Kotaku.

The developer was in a bind, unsure how to proceed with the game.

Chaos ensued. Gearbox, TimeGate, and Sega each had a different vision for Colonial Marines, a different approach to its development, and too many people making the calls or pushing on the brakes.

Then in 2012 Gearbox swooped in and took the game back. After seven years, approaching Sega with another delay request wasn’t an option—rushing the game out the door appeared at the time to be the lesser of two evils.

According to Pitchford, TimeGate worked on the game “probably about 20 or 25 percent of the total time” though “if you take preproduction out of it, their effort’s probably equivalent to ours. Now, it’s not fair to take preproduction out of it, but that says a lot about how much horsepower those guys put into it.”

Other unnamed sources dispute this claim, saying that TimeGate put in far more time than Gearbox claims.

“It’s a big, ambitious game,” according to Pitchford. “Some of the other studios involved, we decided that these guys are awesome. They did a lot of really valuable work. We’re not contractually obligated to put anybody’s credits there, but we value talent and respect talent. We wanted to make sure that those logos were there and that work was represented. In big efforts, that’s not an uncommon thing. You don’t usually see it up front.”

It’s unclear whether Gearbox wanted to credit TimeGate for their hard work or in order to deflect criticism over the game’s shoddy release. That may sound uncharitable, but no similar credit was given to Ben Hibon for CodeHunters for the much more successful Borderlands.

Whatever happened behind the scenes during the development of Aliens: Colonial Marines or during the transition from a “poor man’s Rage” in the 11th Hour Borderlands art-style overhaul to a rich man’s CodeHunters, Gearbox has set itself up both as an accomplished and obviously talented developer, and as a studio apparently willing to push the boundaries of acceptable ethical use of other peoples’ creative property.

These decisions and contradictions are inexplicable at best, and certainly impossible to fully understand without more transparency from the developer—transparency that so far has not been forthcoming.

As CodeHunters’ Hibon says, “The hardest part for me when this happened was understanding why they wouldn’t ask me directly. We were already talking about doing some work together – it made no sense.”

[max_cady]

Jesus, dude, just post the link to the article, not the whole friggin' thing.

I had heard about that Coder Hunters thing briefly on The Loading Bar podcast a few weeks ago, though, just when the Aliens: CM crap was hittin' the fan.

Speaking of which SEGA published a new article on it's blog talking about a major update for the game:

A 3.8GB update for Aliens: Colonial Marines on PC is now rolling out on Steam. This update contains the changes that were in the recent update for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions, along with some additional changes that will be part of future updates for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. This update also includes several PC-specific changes, notably: improved texture resolution, various visual improvements, the addition of a mouse smoothing option, and some fixes for PC-only crashes.

SEGA and Gearbox have been working to identify areas of improvement. Many fixes are already available now in today’s patch, and console versions of these updates will be made available as soon as possible.

Jesus, nearly 4 gigabytes worth of patching. That's almost an entire game, it seems. Wonder if it'll drastically change that game that much...

[MadeManG74]

I really want to watch Code Hunters now.

[Emmett The Crab]

Emmett, I am so, so sorry. That's an awful thing to do to someone. You have my sympathies.

Haha!  Thanks.  It was 30+ years ago.

[mylifewithsega]

Haha!  Thanks.  It was 30+ years ago.

It still hurts....LOL!

[George]

I was going to do a before and after thing but I deleted the game from the computer. Worth re-installing?

[Chaosmaster8753]

So how much worse do you guys think Gearbox is after reading that article I posted?

[George]

I turned from respecting the company to hating them in the last few months. 2013; eh?

[mylifewithsega]

Didn't really think much of Gearbox to begin with. I mean, I tried playing Borderlands way back when, but I wasn't all that impressed.

[George]

I approved of using them for Aliens due to their initial talks about how strongly they loved the films, franchise and how much this game mean't to their company. I loved them even more when they PR talked Borderlands and named dropped Phantasy Star Online as a big influence.

I played Borderlands and I thought the progression system was lame, so many times I would find myself over powered by enemies, out of ammo... etc. Die, respawn. Maybe I played it wrong. But I wasn't having too much fun.

Borderlands 2 I only played a few minutes of and its already way better. I have a 'pirated' copy of the game somewhere, maybe one day I'll install it and play it with a few friends. But right now, I'm too bitter to do any of that lol.

[ROJM]

Since some people in this topic think that the patch won't make a difference it will be intresting to see if it does. That's if anyone would want to play the game again under the patch...

[max_cady]

I played the first stage of Aliens: CM and only out of morbid curiosity am I checking this out.

The only other similar case was Hydrophobia, a game that has been on a couple of "Worst of" lists, in which they released a patch, but treated it as a sequel or Director's Cut version in spite of the backlash the devs got.

[Ben]

Since some people in this topic think that the patch won't make a difference it will be intresting to see if it does. That's if anyone would want to play the game again under the patch...

I can't imagine that too many people will want to play through the game again.

That's why it pays to get it right the first time. Though regardless I doubt these tweaks, while they may help, will do much to change people's perception of the game.