‘The Lord of the Rings: Gollum’ had been a very promising title when it was first announced in March 2019. It was a new and exciting concept revolving around one of the most iconic characters out of the LOTR universe: Gollum. Naturally people looked forward to the newest addition of the Middle-earth saga. Though they finally released it on May the 25th 2023… It was a disaster. People were quick to call it the worst game of recent years. Now people are wondering: How was a result like this even possible? There have been multiple warning signs along the way but it seemed everyone turned a blind eye on them. We are going to analyze where things went wrong and why the game failed in the first place.
What is Daedalic Entertainment?
Before we can start our journey on how ‘The Lord of the Rings: Gollum’ earned its title for the worst game of 2023, we need to look at the developer and publisher: Daedalic Entertainment.
Daedalic Entertainment is based in Germany, Hamburg and was founded in the year 2007 by Carsten Fichtelmann and Jan “Poki” Baumann. They are widely known for their highly praised point-and-click adventures like ‘Deponia’, ‘The Pillars of the Earth’ or ‘The Whispered World’. They also act as a publisher for a variety of successful games like ‘Unrailed!’, ‘Witch it!” and many more.
The company already tried to get the rights on Lotr in the year 2014 but failed in their attempt. After many years of negotiations with the Tolkin family they finally managed to land the deal in 2018. ‘The Lord of the Rings: Gollum’ would be their first AAA title. It should help the studio become even more popular and expand its reach to a global audience. So how could an experienced game studio like that fail to release a proper game?
The Huge Scope of Game
Like many studios nowadays Daedalic Entertainment bit off more than they could chew. The second they got their hands on the rights of LotR, they already announced the game on various platforms. They even made claims that it would be a timeless classic like ‘Tomb Raider’. This set the bar rather high resulting in a lot of attention from the media world wide. Though that also meant they had to deliver.
The studio itself hardly had any experience in creating AAA titles . Everyone knew them for their 2D hand drawn point-and-click adventures. While they released some 3D games as well, hardly any of them were successful. They also dabbled with the Unreal Engine in the past while they created their RTS game ‘A Year of Rain’. Sadly despite their efforts this game flopped as well which should have been the first big warning sign.
Despite that, the team was highly motivated when they started the project. They also had a lot of promising ideas for the game but sadly bigger is not always better. They wanted to implement way too many elements. From different mini games to various game play mechanics that were supposed to bring variety and depth to the game. Instead they either scrapped it entirely or implemented them in a rather broken and unfinished state.
CD Project Red had made the same mistake in the past with ‘Cyberpunk’. They promised people things they couldn’t deliver in time for the release. Though with multiple emergency patches and a dedicated team they were able to make amends. Now years later with the release of the DLC ‘Phantom Liberty’ the game not only has a huge fan base but also lives up to its name. This was possible because Cyberpunk had already a good base to built up on. Gollums problems on the other hand start within it’s very core.
Gollum – A Challenging Protagonist
Making a character that is moving around on all four is way more difficult than one that walks on two legs. This alone easily doubled the amount of work. The team has to deal with more complex collision detections, animations and other things regarding the Gollum model. Controlling the main character of a game has to feel good. If that’s not the case, what is the point of even playing? Especially in games that include platforming or stealth elements, the character’s movement should have been the main focus. Sadly Gollum’s controls are very clunky, buggy and often just look off, easily breaking the immersion of the game.
The mechanic evolving around the split mind of Smeagol and Gollum was a very interesting and unique concept. It sounded very promising but the end result looked more like a prototype than a finished gameplay element. The two personalities arguing with each other while trying to decided what to do in a certain situation could have been something outstanding if done right. It would have been a perfect opportunity to make the game decision based, focusing solely on the story narrative like the ‘The Walking Dead’, ‘Life is Strange’ and ‘Detroit: Become Human’.
Crunch Time & Burned Out Employees
Crunch time is the period right before a release where everyone on the team stands under high-pressure to meet a certain deadline. It often means longer hours and a lot of stress at work. Sadly that is a very common practice in the game industry. While this is normal in most studios, according to ex-employees of Daedalic entertainment, crunch time happens way too often. Sometimes even weekly. They also claimed that they often didn’t get paid for working overtime. This caused a lot of arguments between the employees and the higher ups. Some people even left the company behind even before Gollum got released due to the negative work climate. It was expected from them to do the work because it was an honor to be even working in the game industry which is a statement not exactly uncommon in many game studios.
Another problem was that the studio would have needed at least double if not triple the amount of people working on a project like that which caused the people already working on it to spiral into burn out. The scope of the game was way too big for the team that was rather small compared to the AAA studios like Ubisoft, Square Enix and more.
Lack of Time, Money & Experience
Lack of time and money are problems a lot of game developers are facing. Especially if you have to please the stakeholders of your company that financed the project. It happens more and more often that the studio gets immense pressure to finally release the game even though it is buggy and unfinished. Alpha, Beta or Early Access versions of games are a very common practice. Especially for Indie games but if you pay sixty bucks for a title, people expect a completed or at the very least playable game without any major issues.
Of course you can fix things with Day-One-Patches, Hotfixes etc. but in the case of ‘The Lord of the Rings: Gollum’ it was the base that was already lacking and you can’t build a game on a broken foundation no matter how hard you try. It’s hard to say if it was the tight deadline, lack of financial support or the lack of AAA Experience in the team that led to this disastrous outcome. The developers tried their hardest, invested blood, sweat and tears into a project that got completely taken apart by everyone in just a couple of days. This even led to the point where the company shut down the development department for good.
We should keep in mind that cases like ‘The Lord of the Rings: Gollum’ aren’t unique in the game industry. A lot of projects get scrapped midway and never see the light of day or they get released in a rather broken state and get one patch after another to salvage the damage just because of a lack of time, money or experience.
The most common mistake Game Design students make is that they try to do too many things at once instead of focusing on the core elements. This is exactly how ‘The Lord of the Rings: Gollum’ feels like: an unfinished project with a poor base because they got carried away by their big ambitions.
If you’re interested to know, how you can create an outstanding platforming experience, check out this blog:
Jump, Bounce, Win – Create the Perfect Platformer
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