Sometimes I wish more games were just a vertical slice

[Administrator]

Sega is cutting cheques for consumers who felt Aliens: Colonial Marines was wildly different to the marketing videos used to promote it, but while that particular battle is over, the war of words between the publisher and Gearbox Software, which developed the game, certainly isn't. This week brings fresh squabbling to light. The respective parties presumably wish they could just dust off and nuke the whole sorry episode from orbit.
They can't, of course, and having played Aliens: Colonial Marines to completion myself last year in order to appear on a panel about it at the Glasgow Film Festival, I certainly hope everyone concerned has to waste at least as many hours dealing with its putrid aftertaste as I lost suffering through its wretched incompetence and incompletion. But I have moved on now (that ranty bit just then was a momentary lapse), so really what I thought when I saw the stuff this week was, well heck, those vertical slice demos are a double-edged sword.
In gaming terms, vertical slices are simply demos that illustrate progress in every component of a piece of work. They're the sort of things developers produce to pitch games to publishers, to convince publishers development is on track and, increasingly, to show to the public to drum up enthusiasm. And in Aliens' case, sending out that famous video is probably now considered a bit of an error - sort of on a par with sending colonists to LV-426 in the first place.
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