The new King Kong game, Skull Island: Rise of Kong has become the subject of harsh appraisals for its poor quality since launch earlier this week, and a new report has alleged how it came to launch in that state. A report by The Verge lays responsibility for the debacle firmly at the feet of publisher, GameMill Entertainment.
All of the developers who spoke about the situation are past or present members of development studio IguanaBee, speaking under the condition of anonymity. The report paints a picture of a project that was rushed.
At any time, the studio had between two and 20 people working on the game, with barely a year allocated to see the project to completion. Development “was started in June of last year and it was aimed to end on June 2nd this year,” said one person who was on the team during that period. “The crunch was really set in motion in February,” they added. “I was on automatic pilot by the end of February because all hope was lost.”
By the sounds of it, Rise of Kong was a contract project, which means that the publisher holds almost all of the power. It’s a problematic relationship, but arrangements like this are often the only way such small studios are able to keep the doors open.
Another developer who had previously worked at IguanaBee on earlier titles published by GameMill implied that an earlier project supported by GameMill was under-resourced: “I remember very well that they let go of a colleague who had been there longer than me. Deep down, I knew it was because the publisher didn’t provide them with enough funding to maintain a certain number of people for an extended period.” They also spoke about a chaotic development process, where they were not provided with all of the necessary information about the project.
The blowback faced by IguanaBee and Skull Island: Rise of Kong is unfortunate, but reporting on internal industry machinations are valuable as a tool to highlight the struggles of the process and the power imbalances within the industry.
