Page 14 - Old School Gamer Magazine Issue #21 Free Edition

picture of himself, but only on his Birthday, December 10,” McNeely said. “It was a crazy surprise for many, including all of us at Lobotomy because we didn’t know it was a part of the released product. I found out about it when one of our producers from Japan sent me a fax with an image of the changed title screen on December 10, 1996, shortly after the game’s release, emphatically asking me what it meant and how it happened. It was pretty funny at the time, but definite- ly not something developers could get away with today.
With all of this tender love and care, and fun under the hood, you’d expect the team to be confident in their chances of delivering a hit. However, for a variety of reasons, Powerslave didn’t have the staying power in the United States as it did in other parts of the world. That, however, didn’t stop the game from being warmly
But thanks to that critical success, the game was origi- nally set to have a sequel. However, after Lobotomy was acquired by Crave Entertainment in 1998, that game was canceled. It’s something that he still thinks about to this day. “My only regret is that we decided to try and develop a sequel as a third-person game instead of sticking with the first-person formula,” McNeely said. “I think that decision played a part in the demise of the sequel and what could have been more success for our company.”
So, while Powerslave wasn’t the success it could have been and didn’t get the sequel it deserved, it did teach McNeely a few valuable lessons. Continuing to work in the industry and games in the Duke Nukem and Quake franchises after Powerslave, McNeely also earned design credits on the 2004 Xbox shooter Mob Enforcer
and Stunt Racer 64.
received by a bevy of game publications the likes of Mean Machines, Absolute PlayStation and GamePro, which all gave the game a score over 90/100.
“We didn’t know what to expect when the game was released, but we felt good about what we had made and felt that the product had the potential to offer something different to gamers,” McNeely said. “There was a strong marketing push in Europe and as a result, the game did much better there. Our publisher in the U.S. didn’t produce many copies of the game and didn’t push much marketing for the game and so it wasn’t very well known in the U.S. Regardless of sales numbers, we were thrilled about the positive reactions the game received overall.”
“The experience helped me realize the importance of gathering preliminary gameplay feedback during devel- opment to help make a better product overall,” McNeely said. “We didn’t get much-unbiased feedback from players that weren’t directly involved with the devel- opment, like having focus testing sessions with friends and family, and as a result, the product ended up being geared more toward experienced game players, which is in part why the overall difficulty level was so high. If we had spent more time gathering feedback from a wide range of players, we could have made adjust- ments so that the game appealed to a larger audience. That experience helped me realize how important it is to translate what is learned from testing into a better- balanced game.”
14 OLD SCHOOL GAMER MAGAZINE • ISSUE #21