Robert M. Atkins
Reporting and statements that mention Robert M. Atkins.
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The design lead of Half-Life's biggest competitor says that its publisher was so 'pissed off' by the time the game launched that it didn't bother testing it properly: 'We got trashed in the press because of bugs'
Robert M. Atkins, design lead for the 1998 first-person shooter Sin, revealed that its publisher Activision was upset with the developer Ritual Entertainment's formation of the Gathering of Developers publisher alliance. This strained relationship led to Activision allegedly not properly testing the game's gold master, resulting in significant bugs at launch that harmed its reception. The game also faced immense competition from Valve's Half-Life, which released shortly after.
"We tried something different": Looking back on SiN Episodes: Emergence, the Valve-backed shooter that tried and failed to kick off an age of episodic gaming
Ritual Entertainment's 2006 sci-fi shooter SiN Episodes: Emergence, backed by Valve, aimed to pioneer episodic gaming but ultimately failed to launch a new era due to financial and development challenges. Despite its ambition and innovative features like adaptive difficulty, the game's short runtime and the studio's financial struggles led to the cancellation of future episodes and the eventual sale of Ritual Entertainment. The article reflects on the game's legacy and the difficulties faced by developers attempting new distribution models in the mid-2000s.
