TimeSplitters - What Happened?

[Music] hello and welcome to another time thrashing monkey blasting episode of what happened the investigative YouTube style pop culture media show that your mama warned you about ah it's been a little while since I used that one you know 2023 has been a banger year for video games and if you exclusively get your news from recent broadcasts it was a year with absolutely no concerning negative Trends or major issues at all speaking of no major issues at all allow me to bring up the embracer group who at the rate they're going at might have closed down another Studio by the time I finished this sentence unfortunately one of those Studios was the newly reformed free radical design who of course have an indelible Legacy intertwined with our subject today the funly remembered but never forgotten FPS franchise time Splitters but this wasn't the first time that Sergeant Cortez Harry Tipper Corporal Hart and the rest have faced adversity as the fan laed series didn't exactly have the smoothest of development histories even in the best of times so polish your time crystals and unholster your sci-fi handguns as I answer the question what happened to Tom time Splitters it's time to split in 1998 around five staff members from rare's Golden ey/ Perfect Dark team including David do and Steve Ellis decided to go at it on their own as they had grown tired of rare's managerial style and were looking for some fresh opportunities elsewhere so they set up free radical design and immediately set about securing funding from a publisher any publisher to make the type of games that they wanted to make they then drafted up a p H for something that ironically had nothing to do with time and or splitting in an interview in issue 218 of retro Gamer magazine David do explained that free radicals first title had originally started off as something quite different and only through happen stance and timing did it morph into the silly arcade shoot bang it's known as today the project that we pitched to Publishers when we were trying to get funding was actually the game that became Second Sight the working title was called Redemption and it was going to be a firstperson narrative driven shooter with psychic abilities the pitch for this telepathy title eventually convinced another big UK based Studio idos interactive who clearly saw the value in employing some key members who worked on the 8 million plus selling golden ey7 and thus contracted them to make Redemption into a PS double Ballin exclusive and within a 3-year timeline because of idos good relationship with Sony they were able to procure PS2 Dev kits which were not easy to come by in 1999 but Sony management became even more impressed by the fact that free radical were able to get a firstperson demo up and running so quickly which do credits to Steve Ellis's technical Wizardry as the team came to grips with the console the rumor Mills started to churn that Sony's machine was in for a pretty significant delay free radical therefore started to rethink their approach and deviate from the initial plan as they were want to do with the extra time afforded by a hardware delay the thought process was that it might be more advantageous to instead scale down to a simpler more accessible shooter experience that will be available at launch rather than spend the 3 years making an ambitious story focused epic later on in the console's life if one were to put themselves in their shoes this does seem like the more appealing plan since this was the team's first title under a new roof and on new hardware it made more sense to create something that was on the safer side rather than shoot for the stars the first time out so that's exactly what free radical did they zeroed in on what they felt would be the most fun thing they could make in a short period of time which was a souped up version of golden eyes multiplayer mode no longer restrained by the n64's many technological shortcomings as well as primming in as many playable characters and weapons they could imagine there was just one tiny issue though free radical did not consult the higher ups at idos interactive about this massive change in plan instead deferring to the Ironclad adage of asking for forgiveness rather than permission there was just one tiny issue with that though idos interactive once they found out did neither their contract was for a serious narrative heavy single player game and not a madat multiplayer shooter so idos straight up refused to continue supporting them unless they went back to the original design free radical however strongly believed in their new plan but for them to actually achieve it they would need to resort to some uh truly radical tactics in that same interview with retro gamer do was pretty forthcoming in regards toe radicals attitude around that time and their solution to get around their Publishers a staunch refusal to see things their way it was all very novel to us we had never been in charge of our own destiny before because we had just been working at rare but we told idos what we wanted to do and they said absolutely not don't change what you're doing we don't want that kind of messing around going on knowing that arguing the point would get them nowhere free radical boldly went above idos Management's heads and took their case directly to Sony showing them what they were working on and how idos were fighting against it very quickly time Splitters as we know it was a go the Chad likee balls of this move can best be summed up by saying we were a bit Brash which do admitted to Retro gamer once things officially got moving the team focused on creating a variety of maps characters and weaponry without much thought of it all being thematically consistent in fact the whole time traveling narrative was just an excuse for the staff to make whatever they felt like not wanting to be constrained by say a movie's script or any one set time period hell even the aonomus alien race the time Splitters were slapped together without much thought with the staff taking one of their random character models used for the horror levels and repurposing them to be the series main antagonists this was a pretty surface level way of justifying the jumbled setting with David do affectionally calling it lazy sci-fi but that was perfectly fine to free radical they were more concerned with making the multiplayer as fun as possible which would be pushed even further by the map maker a feature the team were especially proud of even though this seemed like a pretty valuable and Innovative thing to have in your video game especially in a console one it was another feature they had to fight for as idos management apparently saw no value in it all those problems aside when time Splitters launched right alongside the PS2 console it was clear it wasn't hitting above its weight class as it wasn't graphically stunning nor Grand in scope but what it did deliver was undeniably fun and was certainly a standout from the rather ho hum launch lineup of competing titles and while it did sell quite well it was handicapped by the ps2's admittedly slow first year at Market which would kick in high gear a year later with the release of titles like GTA 3 and Final Fantasy 10 free radical were encouraged by The Game's success regardless and immediately launched into the sequel laser focused on delivering more of everything new characters over the top weapons a more fleshed out single player mode an endlessly replayable Suite of challenges and an even more detailed map maker they did all this in less than 2 years delivering the sequel not only on the PS2 but the Xbox and GameCube as well with the latter being a particularly thorny subject between both developer and publisher free radical felt for time Splitters become an even bigger success and needed to be on all three major consoles but idos were notoriously hostile towards supporting Nintendo's machine something I already covered in my GameCube video an unnamed exec even went so far as to say that they had no relationship with Nintendo even though they Tech technically did they were just really salty about it idos were so adamant against this GameCube Port that PR radical then started talking to Activision about possibly handling the publishing duties for it instead since they were already in discussion about their other in development title redemption or second site which at that point didn't have a publishing partner these conversations spooked idos so much they ran that the hell back rep pledging their support for the game Cube Port although it was begrudgingly I'm sure when time Splitters 2 hit store shelves in October of 2002 it received waves of critical Acclaim and plenty of love from fans especially on the consoles were built in for player support which along with some pizza probably fueled many a sleepover for the months and years to come even former staffers who worked on it cited the game as Peak free radical in the Retro gamer piece hell TS2 was so well loved loved even sea took the time to play for a few seconds on a busy Monday morning when it came to sales however free radical couldn't help but think it should have performed a lot better now the sales were good mind you as even idos were pleased but given how much more improved the sequel was and the fact was available on more platforms the team were still a little crestfallen this disappointment then turned to dissatisfaction with how much or how little they felt I had marketed the game and given how many times they had already clashed over creative decisions pre radical started looking for someone else to shack up with for their next project now remember hindsight is 2020 and things were quite different in the video game industry Circa the mid 2000s so you can't exactly blame free radical for this but the new someone they chose was Electronic Arts now don't get it twisted this seemed like a great move at the time cuz it's back when EA was publishing the hot ass smoking bangers like Death Jam fight for New York burnout SSX and everything or nothing but still this wouldn't turn out exactly like free radical had hoped in fact compared to their situation with idos it would kind of get even worse speaking once again to Retro gamer David do plainly stated we navely thought that EA are better at selling games than idos so we ended up doing a deal with EA working with EA was disappointing if you've been paying attention it's been pretty clear that idos had taken issue with specific big choices free radical had made but they largely left the day-to-day development alone allowing the team to go crazy with quirky characters and Oddball humor the problem with EA however was that their style of game development was largely powered by marketing as several staff members were calling they'd be subjected to Long meetings with EA reps where they would be presented with mood boards reference material to contemporary pop culture and an overlin desire for the next time Splitters to be more serious and in line with current FPS Trends cuz they were clueless on how to Market time Splitters in its original guys they grab a whole bunch of scenes from some films they like and they show it to you and they say look at this clever vision and their clever Vision was just we really like Wesley Snipes and blade oh the are you out of your damn mind despite a longer development time future perfect which released in March of 2005 wasn't the big leap over its predecessor that TS2 had been although it should be noted the map maker certainly did see a big leap as it would now allow players to share their creations with each other over the magic Super Highway way that is the internet but was only available on the PS2 and Xbox of course sorry GameCube no one knows what it's fortunately aside from Cortez now being positioned as the master chief of the game locking him in as the only playable protagonist in the single player mode the spirit of the franchise was still very much present in future perfect although fans are still debating to this day which was the better of the two sequels what definitely wasn't better was the game sales which while I can't find hard numbers for xfr staffers seemed to indicate that they were on the softer side mostly attributed to again poor marketing on EA's part and the meteoric rise of the likes of Call of Duty and Halo but even before that things were already less than ideal behind the scenes because Second Sight the game which technically started at all and released the previous year under code Masters also greatly underperform formed putting free radical in a precarious position undaunted work started on a fourth time Splitters anyhow and continued for about a year until it just sort of petered out because every publisher free radical spoke to turned up their noses at the thought monkeys mustaches and unmonetized mat makers were out and put in their place were two weapon limits waste High cover and World War II in the Retro gamer article David do stated that by that that point EA just didn't care and admitted since they were kind of hard to work with most other Publishers didn't want to take a chance on them either eventually seeing the writing on the wall though free radical just threw up their hands and decided that they had better start making the types of shooters that Publishers were funding if they wanted to stay open that resulted of course in the ever Infamous Haze a critically reviled and low selling attempt at catching the eye of the mainstream gamer which did No Such Thing uh Corin still thinks it's the though well haz's failure was a massive blow to the company the true final nail in the coffin came with the cancellation of a title most people didn't even know existed for a number of years Star Wars Battlefront 3 a nearly completed and by most accounts phenominal game had the lightsaber brought down on it for no reason whatsoever in addition to continuing a well-established spin-off of Star Wars BF3 represented free radicals desire to stay alive where they once strived to Simply make the games they wanted to make they were now willing to develop one based on a licensed IP with a controlling owner as for its sudden and secretive deletion while Lucas Arts just so happen to be going through a massive restructuring and management change at the time which always means a swath of cancellations and this this one just happened to be the last contracted work free radical had in Dev the company was on death's door by the tail end of 2008 and subsequently announced it had filed for bankruptcy with its staff of 185 strong getting cut down to a mere 40 all was not lost though just mostly the remaining staff were able to hang on until it was announced in early 2009 that free radical were being purchased by krych and would thus be renamed to krych UK who then proceeded to do not much of anything despite reportedly A50 million euro investment all they were used for was to support kryc main Studio developing ports of Crisis 2 and three never actually making their own all original title well kind of but we'll get to that in 2010 talk of a new time splitter started to surface with krych K's managing director Carl Hilton saying to Euro gamer that they have met with other Publishers about the possibility of bringing the franchise back in some way but failed to cite names or details or anything really yeah we'd like to make a new one sure why not seemed to be the overall sentiment by early 2012 this hadn't really changed but cryex position in the industry certainly had the crisis sequels really didn't take off like there a supposta still lagging far behind other comparable franchises so krych announced they were leaving the AAA box retail game space and would adopt a more free-to-play model as well as something called gace I don't feel like looking that up anyway that same June krych CEO savat urly spoke publicly about the situation saying to The Escapist look I wish we were working on it I will will say that I think hopes are high but change has to happen in the platform space I'm very excited potentially about the idea of a Time splitters for gface I'm not looking that up whatever it is anyway he went on to say frustratingly the thing with time Splitters is if we made a sequel two time Splitters nobody would accept this apart from some fans and we don't know how big the fan Community is unfortunately and we don't want to design this as a package Goods game that Launches on a console and even if we wanted to I don't think Publishers would like the idea that is the truth and that was the truth even before we bought free radical what the hell are you talking about then later that August there was another update sort of by Mr yly via an interview with vg247 and if you thought that last statement was frustrating wait just five more seconds for this next one I tested through my official blog to see how big the time Splinter's Community is and while the volume of responses was quite High we feel it's not high enough yet that being said it did indeed trigger a deeper evaluation of what we do with time Splitters and I can only say this for now we might have some surprises coming soon and they sure did but I think most can honestly say that wasn't a 100% positive surprise because instead of say paying someone to make a new time Splitters like I don't know it's original creators that you literally own old yearly announced that they were instead not going to pay a bunch of fans from the TS Community to create time Splitters rewind an odd project that even 10 years later has not yet come out or been officially cancelled what this deal boy boiled down to was simply allowing fans under the name Pantheon to use the time Splitters IP and assets to make an HD best of package that combined the multiplayer elements of the first three games together so that meant all the characters weapons and maps and eventually allowing that to be downloaded by players free of charge things would predictably get worse in 2014 because krych UK employees started to raise a stink about Miss payments by their parent company because try not to be shocked here kryc moves in the free-to-play market were not in fact money moves and thus were looking to sell off any assets they deemed Expendable to stay afloat said assets were krych UK and the game they had just started development on a sequel to Homefront that nobody asked for both were then sold to cotch media deeps who then renamed the studio to gamb Buster who eventually released the game as Homefront the revolution which while not very good at all at least contained a very good Easter egg buried in the game's code for years was a fully playable 4K version of time Splitters too like the whole game both the single and multiplayer warning you must actually own a copy of home front the Revolution and play like 5 hours of it before you can unlock this much better if you'd like a bit more Insight on the whole home front debacle feel free to check out my Dead Island 2 video now let's just fast forward a little bit to 2018 where things started to get more exciting to any TS fans who happen to have their ears close to the ground at some point cotch media quietly purchased the time spitters IP from krych and publicly announced this acquisition in a news blur which made for a tantalizing morsel for fans of a franchise that had been abs absolutely starving we are hugely excited to have acquired time Splitters the original games gave fans a massive content offer and provided a pure and genuinely Fun Arcade shooter experience we have many fans of the time splitter series among our own staff who are passionate about creating a product that will thrill today's gaming audience of course details were still being kept Under Wraps because it was early days but said details then proceeded to be unwrapped in 2021 with the official announcement that time Splitters fans had been waiting on for the last 16 years free radical design had been reformed as a brand new studio filled with a mix of new and season Talent many of whom who had worked on the original trilogy and best of all the two that were placed at the very top were David do and Steve Ellis neither had actually stayed on with the original free radical when once they had transitioned to citech or to damster and instead had taken a long sabatical from active game development all the juiciest bits were kept to a minimum like Target platforms a release date or even if it was a sequel or not the air was electric regardless with Ellis proudly saying in the press release to finally be able to confirm that this studio has been formed and that we have a plan for the next time Splitters game is incredible while we cannot tell you any anything more at the moment we look forward to sharing information in the future as you may have correctly predicted though that information was never shared before we get dragged Kicking and Screaming into the reality that is 2023 let's rewind a bit back to uh time Splitters rewind while the fan project soldiered on even after the cotch media announcement of the purchase of the IP updates did start start to slow down despite assurances that the project was in no immediate danger hell updates even continued after the announcement that a new official time Splitters game was being developed by its original creators no less at some point though you got to assume between the IP changing to a completely different company and then that company being bought by another much bigger company might get messed up along the way but fingers crossed it'll be back eventually especially in these dark times because if you were ever a fan of time Splitters the timeline we are currently living in is indeed the worst after that 2021 announcement the rumor mill would occasionally stir Whenever there was a new video game focused event like Gamescom on the horizon with fans hopeful that eventually something would be shown or just confirmation of the basic details was this going to be a reboot a remake a fullon sequel everyone was Des desperate for news so you can imagine how devastating it was when in early November of this year reports out of free radical were saying the studio was being unceremoniously shut down and their game whatever it was was also being cancelled if you'll recall at the end of my recent Saints Row video I painted a very Vivid and Bleak picture of what was happening and what was to come which was the embracer group the parent company of cotch media making a bad $2 billion deal that fell through in spectacular fashion and to recoup this Monumental blunder the heads of the unfilling conglomerate started to go through their stable and cut loose any Studios that were deemed too expensive to keep running were in between projects or who had barely started One to begin with this is due to the fact that the embracer group bought like 173 different Studios across the globe in anticipation for that two billion doll investment that never came the reaction from the free radical staffers when the closure was finally made official and public is nothing short of heartbreaking well that's it officially the final day of our time at free radical design and an entire studio just over 80 people is out of work the last day at F frd was very different from what I imagined I don't think it sunk in properly just yet but handed my keys in and left the building the last time it's time to split but it was a statement from the head of QA Kevin Ellis on his LinkedIn which really encapsulated the current state of affairs and the grander problem that's been plaguing the industry as of late as the sun sets on my last day at free radical design I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to collaborate both with industry Legends and with emerging talents who will no doubt shape the future of the industry free radical design was a hub of creativity but sadly we joined an Ever growing list of casualties in a broken industry where entire studios are treated as replaceable cogs in a soulless machine fixated on nothing but share prices aside from play on a subsidary of the embracer group confirming the closures and thanking free radical for their service best of luck and other meaningless sentiments there's been no further news about the time Splitters franchise is it just dead being moved to another Studio or will they sell it to a publisher that actually does care about its Brands and employees um as of right now we simply don't know out of all the episodes of done here on what happened this has to be one of the most unbelievably unfair easily the most disappointing and upsetting way a story can end for a franchise to have been teased for so long and to be out of the Limelight for the better part of two decades to then actually getting a second chance at life with most of the original creators back on board only for it all to be taken away before they even got to show their work with the rest of the world and all just because some incompetent ogres at the top botched a business deal that was bad for the entire industry from like the very beginning and then for hundreds of people who had nothing to do with that having to pay for it it just really makes you wish that Cortez could just leap back in time with a smirk on his Vin diesle face and stop this whole Canon event from happening because well it just sucks uh yeah so happy holidays I guess if you know of any other Tales of misery from the video game or movie Industries let me know on the comments below or time hop over onto my social media things see you next time and thanks for [Music] watching

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 266,303

Keywords: matt mcmuscles

Id: Kw9UZcGQIrI

Length: 29min 26sec (1766 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 23 2023