 PlayStation Virtual Reality headset released over four years ago and with a new PlayStation Virtual Reality headset having just been announced by Sony the PS viewer that we have and love today is officially in the twilight of its life and that fact has me looking back on the PS viewer journey so far. There's been some great PS viewer games from some talented developers in those four years Firewall, Blood and Truth, Astro Boss and Resident Evil 7 to name just a few and yet there has been some disappointments too. Some games that seemed destined for greatness but sadly fell short. There was also some developers who seemed like a match made in heaven for PS viewer until they no longer were. No studio exemplifies this better than Supermassive Games. In this video I want to take a look back at the story of Supermassive Games on PlayStation and PlayStation Virtual Reality to see what the hell happened. But first let's do a quick breakdown on who Supermassive Games are just in case you didn't know. Supermassive Games, a UK based video game developer founded all the way back in 2008, are a studio you might know today as the developers behind the Dark Pictures anthology. A series of interactive drama games where the crux of the gameplay mostly comes down to the players making set decisions rather than traditional gameplay. The series includes 2019's Man of Medan and 2020's Little Hope, with Supermassive set to release a new entry in that franchise in 2021 called House of Ashes. Not to be confused with House of Asses by Seymour Butts. Many would widely agree that the Dark Pictures anthology is a spiritual successor to Supermassive Games' earlier 2015 title Until Dawn, which also happened to be a PlayStation 4 exclusive title. You see back in 2015, Supermassive Games and Sony they had a pretty tight relationship. The vast majority of Supermassive Games' early output were PlayStation 3 exclusives. And interestingly, many of those games were designed to showcase Sony's more experimental side, shall we say. Very kinky. These ventures included Wonderbook games, as well as games that utilized the PS3's camera for augmented reality. And of course, games that featured the PlayStation Move controllers. Those fancy states of the art motion controllers from all the way back in 2010 that we are still forced to use today in 2021. Did I say forced? I meant to say, well forced, because we're being forced, somebody send help, please. None of these games were particularly successful for Sony, not that you would blame Supermassive Games for that. I mean, Wonderbook. Come on. None until, well, until Dawn. Perhaps unsurprisingly, until Dawn began life in 2010 as yes, another PlayStation Move game for the PS3 console. And early builds indicates it started life as a London studio title before Sony approached Supermassive Games with it. Sometime after 2012, Supermassive decided to change until Dawn in a big way, part way through development. Now, Sony must have had faith in Supermassive as they gave them the green lights to reinvent the game from a first-person PS3 game with motion controls to a fixed-camera third-person PS4 game with even worse motion controls. And Sony even allowed them to use their very own Decima engine, which also powered games like Killzone Shadowflow, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Dead Stranding. Boy, I haven't seen a relationship as tight as that since House of Asses by Seymour Butts, not to be confused with House of Ashes by Supermassive Games. So with until Dawn becoming a somewhat surprising success, Sony didn't really market it too heavily compared to maybe some of its other first-party exclusives. Sony and Supermassive both seemed very eager to work together again immediately, as evidenced by the fact that Supermassive Games went on to release a staggering five PlayStation exclusive titles in just two years. And four of those games were PlayStation Viewer titles, tragically for Supermassive Games, who I can only assume were very relieved not to have to use the move controllers in Until Dawn in the first place, not long. After Until Dawn released, Supermassive set about working on a virtual reality spin-off called Until Dawn Rush of Blood, which brought them back kicking and screaming to those move controllers and presumably led them to develop symptoms of Stockholm syndrome towards them as they would go on to use them again in the future. But back in the past, Rush of Blood was an on-rails choosing gallery that saw you going on terrifying roller coaster rides whilst shooting at just about everything you could see. Whilst developing Rush of Blood, Supermassive were also working on another PS viewer title called Tumble Vior, a game about stacking wooden blocks on top of each other like a baby. While both of these games were considerably smaller in scope than Until Dawn, it was still impressive that Supermassive managed to have both of these games ready for the PS viewers launch a little over a year later. And not only that, but both Rush of Blood and Tumble both received some decent praise from critics and audiences alike. Unfortunately, that run of success was about to come to an abrupt end. It wasn't long after Rush of Blood and Tumble released that we learned of two more Supermassive games coming to PlayStation Virtual Reality, both of which were due in 2017. One was a co-op first-person shooter which utilized the aim controller called Bravo Team, the other was a first-person horror prequel to Until Dawn called the endpatient. Both of these games were considerably hyped in the PS viewer community thanks to Supermassive's solid track record at that point. And even when both games got delayed to 2018, it didn't raise too many questions considering it had only been such a short time since Tumble and Rush of Blood. That all changed however when the inpatient released in January 2018. The game was something of a disappointment, receiving very mixed reviews and simply put, it was unable to live up to the Until Dawn reputation. With Bravo Team due out in just a couple of months people began to ask the question, did Supermassive bite off more than they could chew with trying to release four PS4 games in just two years? Fast forward to the release of Bravo Team in March of 2018 and the answer appeared to be… yes. While the inpatient got a very mixed reception, Bravo Team was a much more universal disappointment, with one crazyg even calling it the worst game he ever played awarding the game a 1.5 out of 10. Yikes! Bravo Team has since turned out to be the last PlayStation exclusive that Supermassive games have made, having since moved on to the multi-platform Derek Pictures anthology series. The studio seemed to have also dropped the idea of developing virtual reality games, at least for the time being, so what the hell happened? How did Supermassive go from the highs of Until Dawn and Rush of Blood to the lows of Bravo Team? Well luckily we don't really have to do too much speculating as this article from Eurogamer by Tom Phillips goes some ways into explaining where it all went wrong. The article was created with input and help from various anonymous Supermassive employees, giving us a look behind the curtain, and it makes for some grim reading. Allow me to read some select quotes from the article so you can get a good idea of how things went down the toilet. We intended and expected to mimic the established conventions for a first-person shooter and where relevant the titles one person said, but the studio blocked any design that wasn't realistic or movie realistic. This meant no heads-up displayed to relay information on weapons and ammo, not showing your character's floating hands, not showing navigation points, and not featuring a traditional story that had been designed for use in Bravo Team, but only 4 made it in because it was decided the game could only explain how a small number worked visually without a hood to differentiate between them. Staff also wanted to include music, which was kept to a minimum because players would wonder where it was coming from. Let me stress that one. In a game that they wanted to be as cinematic as possible, they would not allow music because players would not know where the music was coming from. What? What? Supermassive leadership wanted a game which looked as good as until dawn, but for to still be a first-person shooter, a task staff who actually worked on the game said felt pitched as the game which defines shooters on virtual reality and the halo of fewer resources than promised. It felt like we would fail, and mock reviews in September confirmed this independently, but the delay from November to March didn't help because the sole focus was framerate and most of the team were moved off. This optimization work met the game worse than when we had the mock reviews. We stripped visual effects, reduced enemy numbers, lost behavior and inserted loading screen. The team was begging for chain action, was take house of ass by Seymour Butts. At one point in 2017, Supermassive's focus was placed over seven simultaneous teams. One project was dropped while another large project being worked on is in production without a publisher. And yes, staff say Bravo Team felt undermanned. We couldn't get the people one person told me. You can see them sitting there on another project. The three Sony projects were starved of resources while an unsigned project was not. Around August, management finally recognized the severity of the problems and released some resources to help inpatient. But that resulted in about a quarter of the Bravo Team resources also being lost. Bravo Team staff size peaked at around 25, although the majority of the project's lifespan it was less. It was a tiny amount of people for what they wanted to do, one staff member states it. It all goes back to Antel Don staff say, and a desire to stick to that same visual quality bar no matter what. The difference there though is that Supermassive spent five years on that project after a prototype for the game had been around for even longer, inherited from Sony London. By comparison, Supermassive's 13 months spent on Bravo Team inevitably feels like a rushed job. I think it's fair to say that poor management from Supermassive Games is what led to the inpatient and Bravo teams going the way that they did. Going by this article, it seems very much that Supermassive Games were already focused on doing their dark pitchers anthology while doing the absolute bare minimum for the PS viewer titles that they're making for Sony. It's enough to make you wonder why they even bothered in the first place. Were they perhaps contractually obliged to make a certain amount of PS viewer exclusives for Sony? Perhaps they expected Sony to buy them after the success of Antel Don and maybe became disillusioned with Sony when that never happened. A scorned lover and whatnot. Or was it much more innocent? Was it a case of biting off more than they could chew without realising us? Whatever the case may be, it seems like Supermassive Games are done with PS viewer and I would imagine Sony are likely hesitant to team up with Supermassive Games for a first party title in the near future. But who knows, maybe they'll be back for PlayStation viewer 2. What do you think? Before I end this video, let me thank my Patreon supporters whose names are on the screen as we speak. Thanks to their generosity, they're helping keep this channel going in particular. Let me give a shout out to the following Top, Tier, Soak and Wet Pumpkin Supporters, Daniel the Pumpkin Patch Kid, Christopher Columbus III, Pete Hawkins, Chopped517, Tradition and Crump. Thank you very much for that support gentlemen and it is appreciated very very much. If you'd like to help out over on Patreon you can do so over at patreon.com forward slash petrifying. Pumpkins, however, if not, you can help out the old fashioned way with the likes, the comments, the shares, the subscribes and all that you use. You will shite that you're used to hearing on YouTube that I hate having to recycle over and over again. Finally, last but not least, let me thank Decepticon for letting me use his music in all of my videos. Thank you very much Decepticon. You can find him Decepticon.com. Link to him in the description as well. That has been it for this video. Thank you very much for watching. Really do appreciate it. Until the next time, please stay moist.