They say that when there’s good, there’s always bad, or is it the other way around? Either way, the fact remains that, in the same year that we got two all-timers in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Baldur’s Gate 3, we’re also getting two of the worst games in recent memory. Mind you, we aren’t just talking about “bad” because of predatory microtransactions, like what happened with NBA 2K24, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and Overwatch 2.
After The Lord of the Rings: Gollum all but forced its developers to close shop because of how bad it was, a new project is hoping to surpass it.
Skull Island: Rise of Kong is a contender for one of the worst games of the year if not all time, and, just like The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, it tells of an awful tale of overworked developers and greedy publishers.
As per a report by The Verge, an anonymous developer over at IguanaBee, the team who worked on Skull Island: Rise of Kong, GameMill, the game’s publishers, only gave the team a year to make the game from the ground up.
Upon further investigation, The Verge found out that the cycle of hiring small-time developers and giving them a year’s worth of development time is normal for GameMill, which is a Minnesota-based video game publisher that describes itself as a “third-party publisher of casual games for the mass market consumer.”
Despite the backlash, the development team is proud of its achievement, as per the report.
Now, long development times don’t always translate to quality. Many projects have spent years in development. Star Citizen, for example, has cost nearly a billion. On the other hand, many excellent games have cost less time, money and effort such as Final Fantasy 6, a favourite among fans and developers over at Square Enix. But, a common denominator between both games is that they were and are a all-hands-on deck type of project. It’s obvious Skull Island: Rise of Kong isn’t.
Similar to The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, which reportedly only cost $15.9 million to make and included the use of the popular AI software, ChatGPT, to write an apology letter, Skull Island: Rise of Kong is emblematic of a troubling trend that still exists in the gaming industry – smaller studios falling victim to bigger publishers.
Good video games take a long time to make. Even then, they don’t guarantee excellent returns. While publishers should look out for their bottom line, forcing studios to push out games in record time shouldn’t be the norm. As video game development becomes more intricate and more costly, publishers should realize that they can’t rush things. Otherwise, we end up with games like Skull Island: Rise of Kong.
Skull Island: Rise of Kong deserves some of the criticism it’s getting, but it’s unfair to throw shade at a game and its developers now that we know what we know.
In an ideal world, GameMill would’ve given IguanaBee enough time to work on the licensed project. Maybe then, we’ll find out if it could’ve been good or not. Alas, we have no way of knowing.
Thankfully, the other licensed products based on Kong aren’t wanting for a larger budget. The upcoming MonsterVerse film, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, is coming out on April 2024 after being initially scheduled for March 2024. It’s not unclear what its budget is but after the success of the first filmt, we’re easily looking at somewhere between $200 million. But, if waiting until then is too long, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is coming out on Apple TV+ on November 17.
