Video Games Behind The Scenes Bonkers Nonsense

5 Predator: Hunting Grounds Was Almost A Wiretap Wet Dream

Predator: Hunting Grounds allows a bunch of friends to team up and have some fun times getting mauled by or being The Predator. It's pretty rad but would have been even better if it allowed for players to break the law -- like originally intended.

The titular Alien from the popular Alien: Isolation is scarier than the Aliens from the films because A) most of the films are crap and B) because the Patriotic (acting) devs gave the NPC Xenomorph a 24/7 wiretap license on players' mics. 

The guys doing a game about the Alien's greatest rival knew they had to do better.

So, just like the Predator from the original film, the one from Predator: Hunting Grounds would have the ability not just to listen to players chatting but also to record their already panic-stricken shrieking to play it back and scare players even further.

Too bad actually recording players in that way opens up so many legal cans of worms that even intergalactic hunters with no concept of law don't dare to do it. Predators interested in messing with players' minds will have to contend with coming up with unexpectedly disarming shit to say on their voice comms, like revealing that the original Predator was a crab from Brussels.

4 The Making Of Grim Fandango Remastered Is A Bunch Of Dudes Pulling Movie Heist Tricks In Real Life

Nowadays, Grim Fandango might be one of the most revered adventure games of all time, but that's a pretty unexpected plot twist for a game that only critics seemed to have played upon release. It took the game nearly two decades of garnering a fanbase to convince the original team to come out of homelessness to put together an HD remaster. The remaster finally got the game the popularity it deserved, but better yet is how it only came to be through some nerd-style Ocean's Eleven type shit.

Yeah, LucasArts, the company that made the game, was deader than the skeleton you play as, and since the gaming industry is famously worse at preserving old data than actual pirates, remastering Grim Fandango was less about coding, more about scavenging and "asking" for long last data. It got so hardcore that at some point, they had to retrieve some of the original data that was stashed away in another company's lair. This meant that the devs had to -- in their own words, not ours -- steal old hard drives to regain access to old assets needed to make the game work.

The game's director, Tim Schafer, concludes that none of his essential work was illegal. We believe him because the remaster turned out great, and snitches get glitches.

3 Creators Try To Clean Up Harry Potter's Name, Accidentally Uses A Trash Person

J.K. Rowling once cast a magic spell with her writing that kept her work thriving while her transphobic rants alone fuelled the sinking of her reputation to the bottom of the ocean. While this means rights holders of the series can keep banking their golden eggs (not a mistake; the wizarding world is messed up), they know they should proceed with caution. To that effect, Warner Bros. set out to create Hogwarts Legacy, a game that serves as a completely fresh take on the Hogwarts experience. 

Buuuuuuuut too bad that the previous job of Hogwarts Legacy's lead developer was one of spewing inflammatory hate-mongering bullshit online on a large, but, unfortunately, not surprisingly large for its kind YouTube channel.

Now say what you will, but this guy at least deserves some respect for surviving the extremely dangerous levels of toxic waste coursing through his blood caused by being the dude-bro version of J.K. Rowling.

2 No One Lives Forever Is About A Spy Who Covered Her Tracks All Too Well

No One Lives Forever is one of the most acclaimed games from back in 2000 that most people nowadays will think you're making up. NOLF is a unique case of a game that became a cult classic not for growing a passionate following despite poor sales, but for selling well then getting its shelf life cut short for Top Secret reasons.

Fans have been asking what the hell happened to it, and it makes sense, as 2020 marked not only the game's 20th anniversary but also the 10th anniversary of the time they should have released a goddamn HD remaster. Even Night Dive, a competent crew responsible for bringing old games to Steam and GOG, asked for the chance to simply re-release the original version. So far, it's been a no-go. Who could possibly be this toe-dragging against the thought of making money these days?

Welp, that would be FOX, Warner Bros., and Activision, who the NOLF's rights happen to be split between. Yes, their official response is that they don't really know who exactly owns what, or if they even do at all, so they're all just washing their hands of trying to figure out a way to re-publish the game.

1 Daikatana's Offices Were Just Too Baller To Function

The times leading up to the release of Daikatana were the stuff of legends. From the game's suicidal promotional campaign that hyped reporters into asking companies working on small titles such as Half-Life how they'll keep up with such an unstoppable juggernaut to the disappointing final product failure was plentiful. And most of it could be blamed on one of the most hilarious culprits imaginable. As it turns out, the sheer pimpness of the building they rented to work on the game prevented the team from doing their best work. 

Yeah, developer Ion Storm decided to rent a penthouse to serve as their office without making sure its skylights wouldn't make coding a living hell. We kind of get it, as they were probably the first developers to ever code at a penthouse, but their new large-ass windows allowed so much sunlight to hit the computer screens that they rendered the office unusable for most of the day. 

However, a cool silver lining is that the devs made up for the time not making a game by doing some vampire LARPing, as they were forced to set up black curtains that turned their supposedly awesome cubicles into caves.

We tend to give the developers of this one a hard time, but ask yourself, how many times do you expect working with Microsoft Windows to be less of a hassle than working with the actual windows of your office?

Top Image: IllFonic