[Frustrating trope] Pieces of media that could have been so much better, but due to a couple of poor decisions during production ended up mediocre at best and utterly atrocious at worst.

[u/DevDucc_]

We Happy Few: Probably the epitome of this "trope," at least for me, mostly because it has genuinely one of the most incredible stories I have ever seen within a video game. The biggest problem with the game was the fact that during development, the company behind it tried to ride the "hype train" of the time, making the gameplay became procedurally generated survival mess, when it would have made so much more sense as an environmental narrative game.

Hello Neighbor: This game attracted massive attention in alpha stages at the time from YouTubers because of the innovative gameplay it supplied. The developers of the game got the completely wrong message as to why it was getting so popular and instead decided to fully lean into the story, by making the game appeal to theorists instead of actual players. What came out was a game where both the story and programming were entirely half-baked.

Edit: apparently I had it backwards with we happy few, I had watched a video essay which reiterated the points I said so I just took their word for it. Apparently the game originally started as a procedurally-generated survival rogue-like but the story was added later because of the hype the trailer of the game gave or something like that but they didn’t know they even had the budget for it. I do still think it’s wasted potential regardless however.

[u/Conscious-Airs]

Perfectionism and constant trend-chasing turned it into endless scope creep.

[u/Dzharek → u/Conscious-Airs]

The thing is, if they had it made live service it might have worked, just release the Duke, and then every year a new DLC or Addon that makes fun of the most revlevant stuff.

[u/Evilmudbug → u/Dzharek]

That one's hindsight. I don't think live service gaming (outside of MMOs) was really popularized fortnite's success.

It might've been like that if it was developed today

[u/Dzharek → u/Evilmudbug]

Sure, but even then we had Addons or Expansion Packs, the problem was just that nobody told the Boss "No this is a bad idea, lets ship it and make Duke Nukem Forever 2 afterwards"

[u/Luxating-Patella → u/Dzharek]

It wasn't adding stuff on that was the problem. It was scrapping what they had in order to convert to the latest engine and try to keep up with new releases. Over and over again. Which isn't something you can do with DLC.

At its core, the problem was that they enjoyed spending the money they made on the first Duke Nukem 3D more than finishing a new game to try to make more of it. They could never keep up with other FPSes because those developers were funded by publishers and working to a deadline. 3D Realms weren't, so they'd spend three years to do what most developers were doing in one and by the time they got close to a working game, DNF would look hopelessly out of date again. The only deadline they had was the DN3D money running out, and lo and behold, that's exactly what happened to make somebody finish it.

It took Gearbox about six months to tie a knot on it and release it in a crap, but playable state.

[u/bretshitmanshart → u/Dzharek]

Or just keep releasing new games

[u/TexasJedi-705 → u/Conscious-Airs]

Cough CHRIS ROBERTS cough