A huge gaming series was nearly killed by development hell, but it has come out the other side and is seemingly thriving. Video games are an incredibly complex thing to make, as there are so many variables and unpredictable aspects to developing them. While studios do their best to prepare for every possible turn, sometimes, things just don’t go as planned. We’ve seen games get cancelled as a result of this, but we’ve also seen games just get completely stuck. Famously, Duke Nukem Forever took nearly 15 years to make, and when it released, it was a total bomb that killed the franchise.
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There are other games in development hell as we speak, like BioShock 4, but one did survive and now, we’re getting a sequel. Dead Island 2 was announced in 2014 at E3 and was highly anticipated after a fantastic CG trailer. The game was slated to release sometime in 2015 and was shown to the press behind closed doors at Gamescom a few months after its initial reveal. Things seemed to be going well with ambitious plans for an eight-player co-op campaign, but things eventually spiraled, and a bunch of setbacks pushed the game back almost a full decade. For a while there, it looked like the game was cancelled… but it persisted, and ultimately, the series will live on.
Dead Island 3 Announcement Is a Rare Win for a Franchise Stuck in Development Hell
Earlier this week, it was confirmed that Dead Island 3 is actively in the works and targeting a 2028 release. This was a huge win for fans as sometimes games stuck in development hell can release, but ultimately kill the franchise they were part of. A lot of money can be burnt with little way of recouping it in a meaningful way or the overall investment, both financially and in terms of time, can make it so developers never want to take another crack at it.
Dead Island 2 had a very unique development where the original studio, Yager Interactive, was pulled off the project mid-development. It was revealed that Yager and publisher Deep Silver didn’t see eye to eye on the vision for the undead sequel, but the publisher also wasn’t willing to cancel the game. As a result, the game was turned over to Sumo Digital in 2015. Things went quiet for years before it was revealed a Sumo Digital was also pulled off the project, and Dead Island 2 would be developed by Dambuster Studios.
Three different studios took a crack at this game, and it’s kind of a miracle that Dead Island 2 turned out as good as it did. It wasn’t perfect, but it’s a competent and solid game. The game went on to sell over 3 million copies, which is great for something of its size. Now, it’s getting a threequel. There’s a lot of speculation about what the next game will look like, but it seems like it will be set in a new location based on a teaser image that featured a character leaving Los Angeles with luggage.
Dead Island 2 scaled back a bit on the scale of the first game, so maybe Dead Island 3 will be more of a return to that. The first game had vehicles, while the second game didn’t and instead focused on more contained, blocked off sections of the map. Either way, at least Dead Island 3 probably won’t have as messy of a development or be nearly as compromised as the previous game.
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