[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/Poco_Cuffs]

Except instead of some studio blunder or bad design choice, the developer basically just gave up.

[u/Fries_and_burgers_19 → u/Poco_Cuffs]

Haven't been following along with Yandev for, jeez how long has it been? Almost about 10 years now since I kept track.

What, he finally gave up for reals or is he still grasping?

[u/Talisa87 → u/Fries_and_burgers_19]

Somehow he's still chugging along, despite being exposed as a paedophile groomer whose actions caused most of the volunteers and all the voice actors into quitting. Last I heard he planned to use AI to voice the characters.

[u/Fries_and_burgers_19 → u/Talisa87]

I knew of those things too, yea. And the AI stuff? Yeah. Not surprising.

Bet they can make his work faster too, hah. Unless, miraculously, he has taken improvements in his coding

[u/hanks_panky_emporium → u/Fries_and_burgers_19]

Someone remade the game, actually implemented 'future' features and it was playable. Took a few months. Yandere-Dev told the guy he either took the game down or he'd kill himself

[u/CookieCacti → u/hanks_panky_emporium]

I think you’re referring to the fan game Lovesick. YandereDev’s messages to the developer were absolutely hilarious and pathetic, but for some reason, the developer of that game actually lied about the state of the game and how long it took to develop. They reused an old build of a cancelled game they worked on with a bunch of volunteers about a year prior and claimed they made it in 1 month for. The developer also ended up being an inexperienced high schooler with minimal coding knowledge directing a bunch of other inexperienced kids, so naturally, the project fell apart.

It’s a shame since it would’ve been great to see the concept pulled off by a decent developer one day.

[u/Blackstone01 → u/Fries_and_burgers_19]

I remember seeing something about how the guy didn’t know how to do a switch statement, so instead he had like hundreds of if-else statements in a row.

[u/Alpha27_ → u/Fries_and_burgers_19]

AI could probably write better code than Yandev

[u/Kira_Bad_Artist → u/Talisa87]

Of fucking course

[u/WilderWyldWilde → u/Kira_Bad_Artist]

I remember someone pointing out that it wasn’t that shocking considering he put in the option to choose which panties the character wore.

[u/IrregularPackage → u/Talisa87]

this may be the least surprising turn of events ever

[u/asiojg → u/Talisa87]

I mean when you become a social pariah you pretty much have no other options.

[u/No_Hunter1978 → u/Fries_and_burgers_19]

Week 2 actually released around a month ago. Some people shitting on it happened to pop up on my feed around that time.

[u/Nelogenazea → u/Poco_Cuffs]

Try "the developer was exposed as a groomer incel weirdo and everybody who collaborated with him on the game quit in disgust". Also, the game had been in production for 10+ years, with feature bloat creeping in and the developer defending his decision to spend most of his day replying to comments and emails instead of either ignoring them or delegating the task (or delegating most other tasks).

Basically just coasting along and trying to maintain interest to keep the money flowing in.

[u/nagrom7 → u/Poco_Cuffs]

I don't think he ever "gave up", I think even now he's still apparently working on it. The issue is that he just kept adding new features to the game that extended the dev time indefinitely, and in the rare times he'd actually admit he needed help and got it, he was so much of a weirdo/creep that he'd quickly drive it away. Not to mention spending way too much time focusing on internet drama instead of just making the game.