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Ninja Theory co-founder Tameem Antoniades has apologised for the “mixed messages” from the developer earlier today after it tweeted to say that it would be “starting production afresh” on PS4/PC action game Hellblade.
In an update on the game’s website, Antoniades said that the team would “like to apologise for creating a little alarm today,” telling fans to “rest assured that we have moved out of our preproduction phase which was centred around testing ideas and are now making the full game in earnest”.
“We are committed to being open to our followers and supporters in the hope that we can prove that the independent AAA development model can work for the videogames industry at large,” he said.
“Ordinarily, the development process is undertaken under a veil of secrecy and both the public and press are hidden away from progress until the last 3 months of development. Whereas we are showing how things develop from the very beginning, and the process we go through to final game.
“Few developers do this as so many things can and do go wrong along the way and there is always the risk that you will be judged against other games that are near-finished but we feel confident the benefits of being open outweigh any bumps along the way.”
A tweet from Ninja Theory earlier today (which has since been deleted) explained that “a vertical slice is a testbed of ideas, not part of the final game. It has been retired and we have started Hellblade production afresh”.
Somewhat contradictory, however, it soon followed up with another tweet stating that “retiring a vertical slice and moving on into full production is good news. It is not starting again, it is moving forward as expected”.
Asked for clarification, the developer told VideoGamer.com: “We are not starting the game development again. Production is a phase of dev that we are just moving into. Now we build the game.”
Ninja Theory presented a playable build of Hellblade at Gamescom last month, but has yet to date the game for release.
“Since we created the vertical slice, we have answered most of our pressing questions and feel confident enough to build the game correctly, taking our successes forward while leaving the failed experiments behind,” Antoniades added.
“This is how many top-end game development studios work and how we have always produced our games. It is what we mean when we say that we are ‘starting production afresh’. It doesn’t mean we are going back a year and starting again! Quite the opposite. We are ready to move forward.”
Source: hellblade.com
