What Went Wrong? - Hello Neighbor 2

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What Went Wrong with Hello Neighbor 2? Apparently quite a lot, with the promise of AI working on a Neural Network that wasn't in the game, an open world sandbox that turned out to be linear, lacking content, broken DLC (Back to School and Late Fees), the Guest missing and a rough launch.
Regardless of it's flaws and all the drama, Hello Neighbor 2 isn't a terrible game. Alpha 1 and Alpha 1.5 of Hello Neighbor 2 had some promising features and it's a shame that they were cut from the full game.
Compared to the original Hello Neighbor, this is objectively much better even more so now with patches released in the past few months. It's not perfect but I can only hope that they can make good on the broken promises and deliver more with future updates.

[@WickedWiz]

"I love my lil wiz"

[@weylinwest9505]

*lil*

[@agente9901]

wicked

[@funkyyukiedits]

lil? 😳 dont be humble king

[@X862go]

I can not believe I am just hearing about it it looks awesome!

[@KozelPraiseGOELRO]

Excess masturbation is not good for your health.

[@Xaaaach]

It's kind of crazy how Hello Neighbor is ALWAYS better in the alpha compared to the full release lol

[@ZombiesWerePeopleToo]

I feel like their obsession with making every version entirely different from the last to "prevent spoilers" means that every version has a bunch of wasted effort

[@Raoul1808.]

“Lads, we need to restart the project again. The player is having *too much fun* with the current alpha build”

[@RMJ1984]

because they lie on purpose to get you hyped. Not sure why people keep getting fooled by them.

[@Boldorx]

Ikr alpha 1 actually felt like youd die if he caught you

[@Cowpoke1911]

Alpha 1 was the best one

[@onion8761]

It really pissed me off how Hello Neighbor constantly mentioned MatPat on social media. They were so desperate to have a theory, because they didn't even know what their own game plot was.

[@bunnyfrosting1744]

What is that? Matpat

[@alexsiemers7898]

@@bunnyfrosting1744 the creator of the KZbin channel “The Game Theorists”

[@SamOfTheShadows]

@@bunnyfrosting1744Nickname of the game theory dude

[@volfcraizen6746]

Apparently it was just one guy who got fired but it could just be an excuse to cover their asses.

[@Mrdashell]

supposedly it was some guy who was a big fan of game theory and got fired.

[@jorgyt754]

The idea of Mr. Peterson's AI advancing past expectations, to the point of breaking his own game to get to the player is so funny to me. It's literally the meme where Freddy Fazbear breaks the window in the office and opens the door from outside.

[@BriarPatchNyra]

The fact I’ve been here since 2014 and have never seen this meme astounds me

[@crylune]

@@BriarPatchNyra same i need to see it

[@TheJoMan2]

Imagine he glitches to your house to infinitly spawn kill you

[@chocomelo454]

​@@BriarPatchNyraI can't find it either

[@Stillbraixentho]

no one seems to found the meme,who is bro talking to??? 😭😭

[@dokchampa9324]

it's actually really impressive how they managed to make a good game twice and then turn it into utter shit later on

[@acev3521]

People say this all the time but imo all versions look absolute ass

[@thebadwolf3088]

​@@acev3521 It had really good ideas, a lot of potential was wasted. That's why people say it was impressive.

[@self-proclaimedanimator]

If only valve made this game Imagine if the devs if this game We're noticed by Valve when they were making the demo for Hello Neighbor 1 And Valve hired them Imagine how Revolutionary the game could have been Imagine how good the second game Prolly a universe where Valve made Hello Neighbor And it is considered one of their best games Like this has the perfect valve formula Guffy Design and Lore Puzzles Platformers This could have been the perfect valve game And revolutnize Horror Games

[@rosyfeather468]

@@self-proclaimedanimator this comment is peak cringe

[@roseCatcher_]

Tinybuild correctly estimated its target audience, which is why it focussed on youtubers whose viewership primarily included children (like Markiplier etc). What it couldn't predict was that Hello Neighbor also had appealed to a bunch of 40 year olds that had mannerisms and playing habits of children. Which is why their ratings went down.

[@juances]

This went from "these guys were being overambitious but had no ill intents" to "these guys know what they are doing and maliciously manipulating their young audience to get more money"

[@asteroidrules]

Any game series that's targeting predatory microtransactions at an audience they *know* is mostly elementary school children, is disgusting no matter what the actual content of the games is. In a way it's almost better that the games are bad since that at least limits the amount of victims they'll get.

[@lingricen8077]

Fool me twice, shame on me. You only have yourselves to blame.

[@peterprime2140]

​@@lingricen8077 The self-admitted main audience are literal children, the blame lies solely with Tinybuild and the Devs.

[@MxPokirby]

@@asteroidrules Thanks capitalism 🙃

[@SemsEssence]

​@@peterprime2140I mean most of the time I wouldn't blame it on the devs there is always the benefit of the doubt that the devs aren't as scummy as the higher ups

[@AugustQ-p1w]

"regardless of demographic, quality still matters" THANK YOU! I hate hearing people use "it's just for kids" as an excuse for poor quality. Yeah, kids media probably shouldn't be held to the exact same standards as something made for an adult audience, but that doesn't mean it has a free pass to be straight up terrible. Just because kids are more likely to accept a poor quality experience, doesn't mean they don't deserve something better.

[@Vii-rb9vp]

well you could probably argue that kids media should be held to a HIGHER standard than adult media, since kids are much more impressionable than adults so if you feed kids garbage content, it has much more dramatic affects than if u fed it to an adult.

[@portobeIIa]

kids media being kids media just means that it will delve on different themes than adult media. puberty, friendship, loss, honesty. there wont be, at least i hope not, a breaking bad adaptation made for kids because the themes of the show are so inherently adult (dissatisfaction with career, family life, basically a mid life crisis). im not even talking about gore and sexual things happening. when you realise that it all makes sense that you can still very well mess up delving into kids themes and making bad quality media as well as good quality. regardless of western marketing tactics that taint kids media, obligating it all to be the samey bright colored jizz, the inner workings of a show can be just a complex regardless of which quadrant it's aimed at. if you do it well enough, you suddenly are hitting all 4 quadrants of audiences. look at what happened to the first toy story, heck even bluey and my little pony to an extent.

[@axios4702]

If anything stuff made for kids should have a higher quality. An adult can be expected to absentmindedly consume media but children are sponges, a good work of art could influence them their whole life, feeding them terrible stuff can't be good.

[@poppythedogofwonders]

Disagree. Kids content should be held to a much higher standard than adult's media, kids are easily moulded by their experiences and the type of media they consume can effect that. Due to this, kids media should be held in a much stricter standard of quality than adult's media.

[@angryboi595]

No kid is gonna like poorly done shit, I certainly didn’t. For example, I hated Teen Titans Go as a kid because it was so stupid and unfunny to me, I liked watching Ben 10 for how cool it was and the badass fight scenes and characters. Kids generally do not care for baby shit that tired to treat them like kids

[@PedroLucas-ix8tx]

I don't know if is sad or outrageous that the alpha of both games are better than the final product

[@StanleyNumber427]

It is both. I have a feeling that many years later, the alpha will still be better than the final product - essentially history repeating itself.

[@zyriantel9601]

With the current state of the gaming industry being, “shove out garbage and fix it later only once we’ve raked in the money from suckers for it,” I can’t be too surprised. Disappointed, yes, but not surprised. It’s why I’ve largely backed myself off from AAA releases to just Switch ports and indie games, unless I learn that a AAA release actually didn’t suck ass for once. (And with the… _thing_ that Hello Neighbor has become, I think we can pretty safely call it a AAA title, now.)

[@drschwandi3687]

The concept is insanely good but the vision is too big in practice

[@goopah]

Dev 1: "They like the alpha!" Dev 2: "OH shit, now what do we do?" Dev 1: "Hmmm....I have it! Here's the plan: 1. Fuck up everything good. 2. Release game. 3. .... 4. Profit!"

[@just_right9642]

@@zyriantel9601too bad most Indie games are pure garbage

[@TheGary108]

The Guest should have been the overarching villain that even the Neighbor is afraid of. That would put an interesting twist on the Neighbor’s constant renovations and adding puzzles, he was trying to keep the Guest out. Plus it would have been an interesting dynamic with the day/night cycles, during the day, the Neighbor is the prime antagonist and in the night, the Guest is the one that is the bigger threat. But nope, jump-scares are cool.

[@Zooms888]

This comment is far more interesting than the game itself

[@Duckking92]

That would make his name make sense too

[@suspense_comix3237]

But, the Guest is the Neighbor. Our favorite Crow Costume was being worn by Mr Peterson all along.

[@suspense_comix3237]

@be11ieve_u The books say that he’s the Guest, bruh.

[@Boosky-Barry]

THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED IN LORE DURING THE VR GAME LOL

[@SquibboQ]

The guest wasn’t “bugged out” on your van, he just climbed up and got to scared to come down.

[@boydtom9]

yes

[@tappajavittu]

It never ceases to amaze me how rampant false advertising is in the video game industry and how there's little to no accountability for it.

[@bigjohnsbreakfastlog5819]

Head on over to mobile gaming. The next time someone tells the truth about one of their games will be the first time they tell the truth.

[@EricDrinksWater]

If the president can do it, you bet a game company can hahah

[@Schnort]

" Gameplay footage not final "

[@riven4121]

I'm still surprised companies like Ubisoft, CDPR, and EA were never sued for some of the blatant false advertising they've done. CDPR is probably the most recent and egregious one after CP2077 was nothing like the trailers they showed, had next to none of the features they advertised and quite literally did not function at launch for a large number of people.

[@xale3658B]

It's not just video games...it's everywhere, hence the "99.9% of bacteria killed" or "% natural" kinda product, look at any product and you'll see the amount of lawyer that went on the design process.

[@techmaster9781]

They went from "cool artificial learning mechanics" to "PLEASE MAKE A THEORY ABOUT OUR 'LORE' AND GIVE US MONEY" real quick

[@jacksonreynolds7433]

And they did it in both Hello Neighbour 1 and 2

[@techmaster9781]

@@jacksonreynolds7433yep

[@maxmikester8185]

Theory baiting for free marketing at the cost of game quality.

[@self-proclaimedanimator]

I feel like they asking for theories So if they find one good enough they would just copy the idea and say Yo you were right this is what happens

[@techmaster9781]

@@self-proclaimedanimator they have merchandise to sell, they don't have time for frivolous things like story and logic

[@royalblanket]

Apparently the mechanic where the guest would throw you out was extremely buggy for a lot of people. Probably couldn't find a way to fix it, so just axed it entirely. Real bummer

[@CharlieWilson1987]

While playing the alphas the guest grabbed me in his bedroom and got stuck entering the code and trying to leave over and over for over 5 minutes. I do wish it were included though.

[@ReginaldSkulls]

My biggest issue with HN as a whole was that over time they made the puzzles way too complicated compared to the original alpha. Seeing them go from "Watch the guest put in the code, then grab the key from his room" to "learn college level algebra, understand how to perfectly line yourself up to the pin point of a needle, and get the key from somersaulting there from the needle without ever touching the ground... And don't get caught."

[@inplane9970]

While having to deal with the overly janky, unforgiving platforming mechanics that the game engine was clearly not built upon. It's really like they took every bad aspect of HL1 and just doubled down on it because, "Haha funny KZbinr struggling with our game."

[@theflaminglitten-fo6jd]

why couldnt they just...give us real puzzles! they clearly know how to do it so why do they insist on adding platforming to a game that just cant handle it. why are they so willing to die on this platforming hill?

[@motivatedman9730]

​@@theflaminglitten-fo6jdthere is next to no platforming in hello neighbor 2 lmao and even then the jumping physics are better now and the platforming is easy also the puzzles in this game are pretty simple to understand but are kinda annoying to do like one puzzle in the hunter house is pull down 4 bear heads to open the microwave to get a part of a map but like its really hard to get with the guy bcus it has a time limit

[@MisterJohnDoe]

Knowing Hello Neighbor, I can't tell if that's a joke or not.

[@PANCAKEMINEZZ]

It's like a modern Nazi zombie Easter egg

[@polterboo3515]

Words cannot describe how disappointed i was that The Guest was demoted to a one time jumpscare I found them genuinely more interesting and unnerving than the neighbor and seeing something so promising get tossed aside and reduced to a cheap jumpscare was a huge letdown

[@Nikolai1939]

Yeah, the neighbour isn't scary at all, nor interesting design wise

[@contenttheory1717]

You do you know they are bringing the guest back right?

[@segafan1316]

@@contenttheory1717 It still sucks that he wasn't even in the main game besides a jumpscare when he was there in the beta

[@polterboo3515]

​​@@contenttheory1717 My point is I would've liked the initial game story where the Guest was the main antagonist and all those features of him sneaking around and stalking you, dragging you around when he caught you, etc, all stayed My frustration is the fact they built The Guest up so much and made him so promising only to demote him to having a one time cheap jumpscare and get brushed off as some minor side character It was a massive disappointment at the time and why I gave up on having any sort of high hopes for Hello Neighbor games

[@galactic_cupcake8744]

guest > neighbour, neighbour is neighboring

[@zanetaylor3308]

Game Dev: The alpha is going great! Everyone is having fun and we just need a few more tweaks before it's perfect! Boss: Change everything. Game Dev: ......Do what? Boss: Change....... EVERYTHING.

[@ledumpsterfire6474]

As far as I'm concerned, TinyBuild isn't a game dev company, they're a marketing company. They're middling at game dev at the best of times, but they're incredible at marketing. Even with how much they soured people with HN1, they still brought people back around on the second game. That "wishlist the game to make the game better" nonsense was just.. chef's kiss. Truly.

[@genericname2747]

Really feels like a hostage situation. "If you don't wishlist the game RIGHT NOW, the AI will be bad"

[@zyriantel9601]

Yeah, I gotta (grudgingly) hand it to them, they definitely know how to pull the wool over people’s eyes when they need to.

[@terraspark4776]

@@genericname2747 You might as well be held at gun point to wishlist the game lol.

[@Espartanica]

Taking advantage of children, nothing more

[@catinsured]

Yes, TinyBuild are game publishers, not developers. Publishers don't create games, they fund and market them. They were likely the ones that rushed this obviously unfinished (at launch) game, if I had to take a guess. Edit: Just realized they also are credited as developers for the game, so there's that.

[@LittleThiefCat]

It feels like basically every alpha and beta you discussed here was a different game that they threw out before building up an entirely new one. Perfect is the enemy of good and all that. If they just picked one vision and stuck with it they'd have something so much better than the unfinished mess they ended with.

[@BlackGateofMordor]

Yeah, the devs don't seem to have a clear vision of what the alphas were even meant to be. Surely you should be iterating on the ideas you think are good instead of making essentially entirely new games every few months? That's probably why there's so little content in each one.

[@zpefm9457]

@@BlackGateofMordor Eh, I'd say they had a pretty good clear vision of what they wanted to do originally with the game, what it feels like to me is something went wrong internally within the company or studio, causing the whole game to change drastically. I suppose it could be because of Nikita's demotion-which in of itself might be because of the community to blame, details I won't get into here-but then you have alpha 2 and the beta, with Alexus showing promising concepts and ideas here and there, then in the transition from beta to full game something must've happened after Nikita's demotion. Or at least that's how it all feels like to me after my own experience in the community during the development of the game.

[@b2modby]

Feel like its more of a case of "We have an idea, and we build alpha around it, but then we realize its simply not possible to achieve with our current skill set and resources, so we better do something entirely different quick"

[@nihili4196]

I feel like this is very much just priority shift internally. First Hello Neighbor had similar problem. Originally it was supposed to be a game centered around very smart AI that would be learning, with game having some amounts of plot hidden. But then it slowly shifted towards platformer with physics engine not optimized for that, with plot so convoluted and abstract, FNaF makes more sense, and with AI just being there, more annoying than threatening. It's wasn't caused by shift in leadership. It's a problem this studio always had. They have an idea, make an alpha that's almost working game, get bored, make beta that's focusing on different things, get bored again, create "full" release that's trying to barely connect both previous versions in a way that doesn't work, then focus on yet another thing. This isn't "perfect is enemy of good", this is "I have an idea, let me work on it only for as long as I see it fun, then I'll move to other things"

[@Horvath_Gabor]

@@nihili4196 I think it's even simpler than that. They started out with a break-in hide-and-seek game with smart AI, which is easier the less variables there are, so the early Alphas with a small house worked, and it got popular because of the streamer-sphere lapping it up. Then, they tried to expand the game and realized that the bigger the house got and the more variables they added, the faster and more often the AI broke down, so they pivoted, recognizing that the "franchise" is built on streamer-hype. By the time of the full release, it was no longer about whether the game itself was good or not, but whether it was weird, quirky, and "mysterious" enough to draw in said streamers and the Game Theory crowd. It's actually eerily similar to the FNaF franchise, as both are pretty mediocre and oftentimes broken games carried entirely by the online hype-train generated on Twitch and publicity stunts, and as much as we complain, it apparently works.

[@archiermanilo23]

"Regardless of demographic, quality still matters" it is so unfortunate how little people realize this.

[@ShadowWolf2023-yp5zg]

Yup pretty much most games from AAA companies lacks any sort of quality control these days...just making quick dollars on pretty much barely anything other than quantity.

[@GreatFernicus]

Fr, the "it's for kids, it doesn't have to be as good" is such a BS argument. Sure, a kid might be satisfied by a low-quality game or show or movie, but they would also be satisfied with...something good. Plus by making something good they can significantly expand beyond the original target demographic

[@Queen_Cnidarian]

First thing that comes to mind is Teen Titans and Teen Titans Go. Both are made for kids, but while one is loved by people of all ages, and made the Teen Titans and its members a household name, the other is hated. Making quality content, though difficult, can build a large and strong fan base that will help keep your IP alive for decades.

[@haybale287]

I know, dwarves are so smart

[@alex.g7317]

@@GreatFernicusnot defending people who say this, but it’s pretty difficult for me to agree when kids do just watch low effort content. I’m not saying that’s what they deserve, but it’ll be pretty difficult to get them to stop, especially since they don’t really care. I wish they did, but they don’t.

[@JustReaganYT]

The fact that hello neighbour can be defined as a franchise makes me feel hollow

[@kummynipples]

Them begging MattPat to do a Game Theory video on their game was peak cringe

[@SpringDavid]

Do you want something to fill that?

[@Kaldin0203]

Everything with at least 2 releases of any kind is technically a franchise, so eh.

[@ryokiritani28]

@@kummynipples that was already confirmed to be a rogue employee lol

[@smwatertasteslikewater]

@@ryokiritani28 and?

[@shybandit521]

I always liked the idea that the guest and the neighbor were opposites, with the neighbor being slow but conniving and hard to phase, while the guest is fast and reckless but easily knocked over. The Neighbor would rather set up traps for a guaranteed victory rather than commit to a chase which will stop people who try to outsmart or outfight him, but opens the opportunity to simply run away since he's not able to keep up with a fast player. The Guest on the other hand would chase on sight, crashing into walls in pursuit of their target, which would be too fast for simple "run for your life" strategies to work, but hes easily outsmarted and is tripped up by a good box toss.

[@morley364]

Apparently someone else commented that you can see the neighbor throw the guest costume into the furnace in a presentation scene from the company, showing they're the same person. So....that's fun....they're really cutting down the lore here I guess.

[@-cams.]

@@morley364 I guess it was Game Theory bait all along.

[@suspense_comix3237]

But, according to the books, the Guest is the Neighbor. Our favorite crow costume was being worn by Mr Peterson. Also, in the ending of Hello Neighbor 2 Alpha 1, we see the Neighbor outside the house when we grab the smaller Crow Costume from the attic. How did he know? The only people in the house at the time were you and the Guest. The Guest was the only person or creature to see you walk into the attic. However, Mr Peterson knew that you went into the attic too. How? Because Mr Peterson is the Guest. Mr Peterson is the one wearing the Crow Costume. Also, I’m not gonna use the trailer to say that Mr Peterson is the Guest, because the trailer is the trailer and it doesn’t matter.

[@shybandit521]

@@suspense_comix3237 they can be the same person and have completely different strategies.

[@amogoose2971]

@@morley364 maybe its an alter ego or maybe he's being posessed

[@SonOfmowgef]

Fun Fact: The Hello Engineer game you mentioned had an all time peek player base of about 20. Given that two of the five chapters haven't been released yet, I'm not particularly confident they'll ever appear.

[@JacobIczkowski]

Yeah, there is literally 0 people playing it right now.

[@originaltitan6418]

The definition of wasted resources

[@xdarin_]

The guest was so cool. The weird design, the strange sounds, and the way he stalked you around the map while also being able to _FLY ON THE EXTINGUISHER,_ and they practically cut the poor man out. Despite the fact that there are plenty of other NPCs in the game that replaced the neighbor in various houses, one of which COULD HAVE BEEN GUEST.

[@vsptylore3639]

Also, the Guest was creepy, at least by "game targeted at kids" standards. I'm not scared of the Neighbor, he's just a dumpy balding middle aged man, I can go to a cracker barrel and see one of those any day. The Guest felt more like a cryptid, possessing inhuman abilities with a weird design, and a story that seemed to imply that he was trying to brainwash the Neighbor into becoming like him. The final game is just yeehaw town

[@Mfn_Tagilla]

Justice for the Guest is needed

[@Zooms888]

Yeah he just generally a much more interesting and intimidating antagonist Like he was the only reason I was a tiny bit interested in hello neighbour 2, he has alot of mystery and feels like an actual threat.

[@Queen_Cnidarian]

I will admit, in Hello Guest, the ability to trip the Guest up and the way he throws you out of the house sucks all the horror out of it because I was too busy laughing at the physics. I can understand if they wanted to remove it to make it scarier, but because the first Hello Neighbor is more of a puzzle platformer then horror, I can’t imagine that’s the a reason they rolled the Guest back.

[@SoireePoisson]

Yeah him flying on the extinguishers was very funny but also a little intimidating

[@planescaped]

The whole system of each Hello Neighbor alpha being almost a different game entirely was such a freaking mess. Can't believe they carried that over into the second.

[@KarmikCykle]

I can believe it. Because, as a marketing tactic, it worked. TWICE now.

[@zyriantel9601]

@@KarmikCykle That’s the depressing part, it keeps working

[@RickJaeger]

I mean, what qualifies as "working" here? The money they made from it? Maybe, but how did having a better alpha than final make money??

[@zyriantel9601]

@@RickJaeger Suckering people into preordering with a solid alpha in the hopes that the final release would be as good as said alpha, then rolling out the shit final once the money had changed hands, I’m guessing.

[@wayneswirl]

A comment mentioning the Helldivers 2 "balancing dev" Alexus, is this same guy who was responsible for the bugs in this game, brought me here. Hoping HD2 can avoid the same fate

[@coolwing79]

There's other stuff with alexus too when it comes to HN2 that a lot of helldivers fans don't know - like how he took credit for the Alpha 1.5 level design thay he didn't do, how he lied about receiving death threats so he wouldn't have to answer for what he did, and how months after HN2 launched he went on Twitter and acted like a sarcastic a$$hole about what he did

[@wayneswirl]

@coolwing79 thanks for highlighting this. Hoping CEO Johann Pilestadt personally addresses this like he has suggested

[@supermodestmouse]

@@coolwing79watch him pull the same card here. The hd2 community is threatening me. I'm going to continue to punish them for having fun. Dude obviously doesn't play his own game, just looks at spreadsheets.

[@coolwing79]

@@supermodestmouse i'm pretty sure he confirmed in their discord server that the balance team uses data to determine how to balance the weapons rather than player feedback and actually playing the game themselves

[@wayneswirl]

@@coolwing79 spreadsheet balancing is an awful approach

[@b-3nn1]

They actually do not have further plans with the Guest character. In an Xbox presentation, they confirmed that the Guest is literally just the Neighbor in a weird bird disguise for no reason. In the presentation, you can see the Neighbor holding the Guest costume and throwing it into the furnace.

[@Justapikachu577]

Seriously?? Thats so stupid

[@b-3nn1]

@@Justapikachu577 Yep. And I hate it because I was legitimately interested to know more. There was so much potential in that character and they just dumped in the dumpster fire they're currently working with.

[@0bomberjack0]

@@b-3nn1 lmao did they do that so they won't spoil that the neighbor is the antagonist again? or just to create a mystery to bait gametheory into making a vid about who the guest is? Either way it's stupid.

[@b-3nn1]

@@0bomberjack0 I would assume GameTheory bait. They made it pretty clear when the tv show attempt released that he was one of their biggest concerns with that, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same for the sequel game.

[@TheShape45]

That's a lie,the guest still appears in the final game for 1 fucking second,and as a separate entity from the neighbor

[@ZonoYT]

I genuinely wonder what actually goes on over at Tinybuild when they look at all the positive reception to the Alpha builds of both Hello Neighbor and Hello Guest and think "let's make it shit"

[@Windwalker88]

It really is unbelievable

[@urbanarmory]

That usually is the result of infighting...

[@ghoulchan7525]

it's because they constandly kept changing stuff to keep things a surprise even for the people that played the alphas

[@anondecepticon]

@@ghoulchan7525 I think if you’re developing a game where the main appeal is solving a mystery, you should avoid early release like the plague, or at least avoid giving too many clues that could potentially spoil the big reveal. Otherwise you have to keep adding layers to the mystery to stay one step ahead of the early access players, which is only feasible if you come up with a bunch of red herrings to keep them occupied. If you reveal the actual clues during early access, the only reason people will have to buy the full release version is to see the final solution, which will be spoiled the instant someone records a KZbin video about it, and will probably disappoint them anyway because by then they’ll have spent far more time speculating about it than you ever did, and come up with an solution they like more than the one you wrote.

[@ma.2089]

It’s cuz ppl in charge of gaming companies often don’t know anything about game designing. So they think they know best and know how to be as ”generically” appealing as possible. So they stick their grubby fingers in to “fix” things, and remove creative control from the original devs. And then when things go back everyone points fingers at the devs and not the higher ups.

[@Tralfazz74]

It amazes me how both games were made, and continued to be built quite well, shaping themselves into promising experiences, but the moment that the developers showed it to the public, all logic started melting out of their ears

[@Tralfazz74]

@@Jiffles Now that'd be interesting to see

[@AntheanCeilliers]

@02:14 The line, "One of (you) is secretly a neighbor," really drives home how horror-free this ostensible horror franchise really is.

[@buggibii]

it turns out the real neighbors were the friends we made along the way

[@thethrashyone]

Just screams of "Hey, kids, do you know _a m o g u s???_ Well now you can be a NEIGHBOR AMOGUS, isn't that wacky?!" I feel like I'd be really insulted by all of this if I were a kid.

[@butterflydreamer9649]

@@thethrashyone didn’t that game come out in 2019? Yea sure among us came out before that but it didn’t get popular until like 2020

[@UndeadPlayer1]

@@thethrashyone people keep saying how much secret neighbor is an among us rip off when the first versions came out before among us was released or before among us became popular. And the game is pretty different than among us except for the fact that one of you is secretly a traitor but the gameplay is way different than among us. Secret neighbor also has some cool events like the storm and seems to have in a lot more effort and replayability than the other hello neighbor games

[@Treyman-yi7ei]

@@butterflydreamer9649 the concept isn't new anyway. I used to watch Chilled Chaos play Trouble In Terrorist Town over a decade ago

[@Morgannin]

I've never seen a developer so keen on throwing away substantial amounts of work just to end up with a much more shallow product than they started with. The pre-alpha concept seemed like potential brilliance - taking place in a theme park, having a job to manage while dealing with a stalker and a mystery to solve. Then they decide to... Get rid of that and just re-tread the first game's concept again. But in fairness, it seemed like they were moving the concept forward, changing the puzzles, the stalker behavior, and the consequences for failure. And once again, they ditch that to just end up with a very iterative result that is just the original game but somewhat bigger. I'm fully aware that sometimes you need to cut your losses if executing an idea is more trouble than you can afford, but this really seems like they just radically changed their minds partway through development, like they expected the game wouldn't sell as well if it wasn't more of the same.

[@zyriantel9601]

Well, I mean, look at how game trends have been going: it wasn’t that long ago that we were all getting sick of battle royales because the market was absolutely oversaturated with the damn things. Loot boxes have essentially become commonplace in games, in spite of all the backlash against them. Nobody bats an eye at DLC anymore if it’s not horrendously egregious, and people used to hate that shit. Now games from yesteryear are being remade, in many cases for no good reason, to avoid having to put effort into a brand new title. Sadly, if Hello Neighbor didn’t do more of the same, the sequel very well might NOT have sold.

[@metademetra]

I've seen it in exactly one other case. Coincidentally from a certain anime themed developer Tiny Build stopped working for. Some say he's still coding Osana to this day...

[@horusreloaded6387]

​@@zyriantel9601 I checked out Monster Hunter Rise the other day and it has 252 DLC. Some are big, some are voice packs and some are armor sets where each piece is sold separately.

[@IllTakeThisName]

​@@zyriantel9601 blame zoomers lol

[@demetriam2408]

​@@IllTakeThisName for what? Capitalism? Feels a bit much mate.

[@troubledvoidling9741]

what's really frustrating is that anyone who knows about neural networks could tell you that this plan was never going to produce anything workable given the degrees of freedom in the game and the amount of play-data required. Not to mention the computational cost

[@daylen577]

It has always bothered me that the Hello Neighbours alphas/betas all seemed like completely different games from one to the next. Makes it abundantly clear that the devs had no clue what they actually wanted, and apparently getting bought by a publisher did not change that.

[@n646n]

They do that on purpose to 'avoid spoilers'.

[@destroyer4929]

@@n646nthen why not just keep the story stuff out of the alphas so the gameplay stays the same and you avoid spoilers

[@Cogu985]

The guest looked really cool. I liked how he crawled around the place like an aminal. I wish there they made an actual game that utilized this character's potential.

[@Ad-fu6tj]

It works this way: - make a good Alpha - it gets a lot of love from fans - every next version is worse than previous - tell it's amazing

[@sgandrf]

Secret Neighbor:

[@davidweaver4436]

lmao, all the Helldivers 2 people (me included) learning about this Alexus guy and wanting to know how screwed we are. Yeesh.

[@TinnWard]

We're fucking cooked aren't we?

[@grigori9061]

@@TinnWard the CEO has commented that he doesn’t like how the game is being balanced so we may actually be able to come out of this with a W

[@TinnWard]

@grigori9061 I saw those posts, and I'm hoping it's not just posturing. I know darktide took about a year to get it's shit together, so that's my expectation here

[@bjornvroemen6967]

Nah pilestedt is serious about this, he wants this game to succceed. They already handled a lot of stuff and even went as far as firing an out of line CM. I'm sure that if Alexus doesn't step up his game, he too will meet his democracy officer sooner rather then later

[@TheJurzerker]

​@bjornvroemen6967 are you talking about Spitz? Id hardly put that in the win catagory. He got fired for suggesting the review bombs.

[@averyeml]

I can’t get over how every Neighbor game is not only promising more during pre-alphas and alphas, but actively delivering on it. Like, I remember that in Neighbor 1 they promised a localized version of that Neighbor AI- he’d watch how you escape/invade and the next round it would be harder to do that thing. And during the playthroughs of the first iteration I watched, he was already pretty good at it! But despite that being the thing people were excited about, they decided to go the LoRe HeAvY route and tanked the rest. This time… there isn’t even really an excuse? It was promised, heavily advertised, and some features already mostly worked and then they just… vanished.

[@coolwing79]

With hello neighbor 2, the reason none of the marketed features were in the game was because of alexus. He joined the team back in September 2020, got promoted to lead game designer in October 2021, and proceeded to scrap literally EVERYTHING. He then bailed from the dev team less than three weeks before launch

[@visassess8607]

​@@coolwing79Wow that's so shitty

[@CreeperOnYourHouse]

@@coolwing79 Sounds like they shouldn't have changed lead game devs in the middle of development in the first place.

[@variantgamer9885]

⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠@@coolwing79 >joins dev team >gets promoted to lead game designer >proceeds to scrap all promised features >refuses to elaborate >leaves less than 3 weeks before game launch

[@coolwing79]

@@variantgamer9885 yeah that is quite literally what happened

[@GooTheMighty]

More horror games should let you beat up the “monster” like that. It’s hilarious and gives you a limited way to defend yourself, where most games in this vein have immortal enemies.

[@AstroTom]

While it's not a horror game, Sonic Adventure manages to pull off the monster chasing you idea pretty well. It has levels where Amy is chased by a giant robot trying to capture her, and you have to hide from it. You're allowed to hit it over the head, making it short circuit for a few seconds, giving you time to escape, but too many hits makes it invincible. There are even a couple of well done jumpscares, and I think jumpscares are the worst form of horror, so I'm impressed with how they handled it there.

[@chrismanuel9768]

​@@AstroTomThat's because the Sonic Adventure jumpscares are the adversary EXPLODING THROUGH WALLS TO CHASE YOU DOWN. It's not BOO! SCARED YOU! It's THE UNKILLABLE VILLAIN WILL DESTROY THE WORLD TO GET YOU AND YOU CANNOT STOP IT

[@belldrop7365]

Why even call it a horror game when you can just beat the monster's ass? Just call it a game of tag... ...where the "monster" is the player whose goal is to catch the "victim" without being beaten to death.

[@aughman]

I am really really late, but you should play The Upturned. Very fun quirky horror game where the central mechanic is that you can throw shit around, and you can beat up monsters by throwing everything but the kitchen sink at them. It's a very underrated gem, you should honestly check it out.

[@3u-n3ma_r1-c0]

games dont do this because any horror factor is immediately lost once you realize you can just beat the Wendigo to death with a lead pipe

[@shewolfcub3]

Hello Neighbor was originally an amazing game, the first games Pre-Alpha and Alpha 1 are unironically great games with a guaranteed fun not too aggrivating time.

[@LilyPenguin123]

Bro, the chase music in the older versions. We're so good. Then they changed it and made it so bad

[@suicune3776]

@@LilyPenguin123 And the giant neighbor that would lean in the house on occasion. And the security shark. And the dream sequence. It was so freaky!

[@massgunner4152]

I still have no idea how development goes to shit like that.

[@shewolfcub3]

@@LilyPenguin123 I loved how it created a sense of urgency and panic and it made you wanna run away as fast as possible

[@shewolfcub3]

@@massgunner4152 Samee, I think Alpha 2 was good still but the start of the decline

[@Nuggette]

It's crazy how they made the claim that their AI will be self learning and then go back on this promise AGAIN. I would say it's even crazier that it once again worked to create hype, but it's safe to assume that the target audience of this game doesn't even remember what the first game promised and failed to deliver

[@superdavid14Gaming]

The target audience wasn’t even sentient when the first game came out, some probably weren’t even born (holy shit it’s THAT old now)

[@cyjanek7818]

I slept through most of the video so when he was talking about lack of AI in HN2 I was confused, I thought it already happened in first one

[@zyriantel9601]

@@superdavid14Gaming That… makes me feel bad, man. I can feel myself becoming the Saving Private Ryan meme as we speak.

[@adrianamurillo5810]

Honestly I'm really sad that the first alpha and the guest got completely discarded, I think this was probably my favorite version of it and I loved the Guest's desing (I dunno it's just so silly it's kinda cute). It really makes no sense to me to discard so many good things like entire animations, maps and mechanics that were well received and liked by the testers, I mean I'm not a programmer or game designer or anything but I simply don't get it :/

[@denmark1226]

Do you mean design?

[@delaneyelekes8660]

I think they should've leaned into the Hello Guest idea. They clearly want a level of "grandness" with these games, resulting in bigger houses, and now MULTIPLE houses. Meanwhile, the amusement park idea lends itself well to a larger, more detailed setting, without requiring the devs to come up with multiple characters and spend time creating visually diverse, cramped quarters for the AI and player to navigate. The "end of shift" mechanic seems cool too- The store in allows the player to work towards getting a few key items to mess with, without needing to spend time aimlessly searching. An amusement park at night also fits the whimsical yet dark tone the games dip their toes into, and by extension gives the game a bit more identity- especially with the Guest around. It's so strange to me that they hit gold and, for some reason, threw it away to spend time working on multiple houses instead. Not to say the final game's idea couldn't have worked, but they had already started on Hello Guest, so why not just finish that and then move onto Hello Neighbor 2? Their final idea was just too ambitious with little benefit.

[@Katie-xd1nt]

more houses more characters which means more toys to sell

[@Mr_Chasm]

With the amusement park they hit gold but they still kept looking for silver

[@TheSpartan451]

A dubious honor for a game series to have multiple entries on this show

[@zyriantel9601]

Hello Neighbor stands on the lofty heights of crap beside CodeHatch. Actually, maybe above CodeHatch, since TinyBuild don’t just randomly give up on their games whenever the whimsy takes them. The series might be crap, but at least TinyBuild saw that crap through.

[@empoleonmaster6709]

@@zyriantel9601 What's CodeHatch? Is that one of the other companies he's covered for being crap?

[@zyriantel9601]

@@empoleonmaster6709 Oh, definitely. Check out the rest of the What Went Wrong videos, they have at least two videos all to themselves.

[@KolMan2000]

Don’t you just love when game devs spend time designing great features that just end up getting entirely removed for no explicable reason

[@brianhull2407]

I find it funny that, in this franchise, both the alphas and the spin-offs are better received than the final versions of the main games. Hide & Seek, Secret Neighbor, and even the Engineer game are, at worst, harmless fun, and often better than that, and the books and cartoon aren’t half-bad. And, of course, the alphas of the main games are incredibly well received.

[@derpfluidvariant0916]

This. Their early ideas were a lot more thought out than the final ones.

[@brianhull2407]

@@derpfluidvariant0916 And their random whims, too, when you think of the spin-offs. Like, that really boggles my mind.

[@derpfluidvariant0916]

@@brianhull2407 maybe it's a case of yandere dev? They know what they want to do at the start, but keep getting distracted with new ideas and end up with a half baked version of their most recent ideas, rather than a long term focus on the core gameplay people seem to enjoy.

[@brianhull2407]

@@derpfluidvariant0916 Could be… Like, Yandere Simulator works really well as a sandbox game with fun Easter eggs, but progression isn’t the best… And they both seem to overreach.

[@cttommy73]

This is why you don't pre-order games from any devs making big promises until they show you properly what is in their game.And even then, with a company as shady as the devs of Hello Neighbors, you do not buy the game before what they promised is actually delivered.

[@cmdrnova]

I just want to highlight that despite false advertising, most gamedevs never say "we promise", and this constant gamer thing where we say "THEY PROMISED!" makes people sound like 5 year olds who didn't get a candy bar at Walmart

[@EnderElohim]

@@cmdrnova i'm a indie game developer and currently i put my first pc game on steam as early access called Hell Runner and when i fill early access description i had to rewrite it again because valve said your early access description sound like you promising stuff so don't do that rather than make sure you write stuff as "you planning" because they dont want any promises :D

[@cttommy73]

@@cmdrnova False advertising is called promising. What you wrote is so wrong, I don't even know how and why you wrote this comment. In case you don't understand, telling and hyping people up with you marketing that "You will have X feature" means you are telling people you will have this one specific thing. i.e you make a promise. An example would be Ubisoft and the Watchdog original gameplay demo with the super good graphics and whatnot video. They showed all that off and made people think all of that was in there, only to completely bait and switch people. Guess what, the law says that is big no no because that is a promise and you hook people in by making said promise only to not deliver it, is ILLEGAL. Another example would be if you buy a concert ticket for say, Lordi and it is advertise that Lordi would be there, only for them to not show up, means false promises means false advertising. Please, restudy english and law if you do not understand how all this works and don't comment such a ignorant thing.

[@ShaCaro]

​@@cmdrnova Features that have been clearly stated to be part of a game Should be part of said game unless clearly stated otherwise. That's how business works. The basis of you insulting gamers is that devs don't specifically say the word 'promise', which ironically sounds like something the children you mentioned would use as an excuse.

[@linkfreeman1998]

If only pre order is made illegal my man.. Like who tf allow this kind of transaction not only in games, but in practically everything?

[@iJchaelTV]

Hello Neighbor is like the Benjamin Button of video game developments.

[@Kishi_Kaisei]

​@cartooncatisthebest The main character of a movie who is born as an old man and gets younger over the spawn of his life

[@derekrequiem4359]

Amazing how they managed to make alphas that turned out to be better than the final product... *twice!* As a wise man once said, "Fool me once, shame on you. You fool me I can't get fooled again."

[@Walter.111]

fool me one time shame on you fool me twice can't put the blame on you🗣️

[@alienraven]

The Guest has such a cool Character design. Its criminal that you don't see more of him in the final game.

[@ShaggyDabbyDank]

Oh you do, he just isn't wearing his Guest costume. Tinybuild made The Neighbor the Guest, as seen in this video at the end. kzbin.info/www/bejne/oaDXe3h_ls16mrM The Guest is running around the whole trailer setting things up, then after the 'Hello Neighbor 2' screen pops up there's a short 'after credits' that has the Neighbor throwing the Guest costume into the furnace.

[@nym2717]

honestly, if that AI had been added like it was supposed to be, it sounds like itd be HELL on players who started playing much later than everyone else. imagine years from now, with tons of people playing and training the AI, and some newbie comes along and tries to play. little Timmy gonna get his ass beat by a godly neighbor edit: spelling

[@genericname2747]

Imagine not playing the game for awhile, and then you come back to the AI being unstoppable

[@Ramsey276one]

*THIS* If there is no way to have that happen gradually as each player progress through the game, it's not going to be fun...

[@qag3513]

It's a weird selling point to me since it means the people who play the game first are gonna be playing vs the neighbour at his absolute worst.

[@TotallyNotSnowman]

This. Honestly I'd rather take an AI that learns from your behaviour like the first HN (when it still works, at least) any day

[@RitzStarr]

They could probably turn it into difficulty levels. Anything is better than what they have now. The entire game is pure ass but the AI is truly the worst part. Because there is none. All they do is randomly choose from a minuscule list of tasks, walk over to the specified location for said task, and do it for a specified amount of time. They will immediately chase you once you come into line of sight, and that's the extent of their AI. If you ever break line of sight the AI pretty much immediately shuts down and reverts back to its previous task. What a garbagefire of a game.

[@shawnk300]

Here as research for Alexus because his balances are ruining HD2.

[@chuki8131]

Same

[@BUZZKILL109]

Yup

[@paint4r]

Same

[@ilannewaz3177]

samesies

[@NedFlanders612]

same

[@zyriantel9601]

Okay, so, they had a good idea going with the “Secret code you puzzle out in-game for the secret download” thing, but then they went and made it needlessly convoluted for no reason. Like, seeing the clipboard with the website extension, and having to open a mystery door to get the code for the download? I was on board with that. That was genuinely cool. Having to do a whole rigmarole with a teleporter 20+ times just to get that code? What the fuck.

[@DanimationYT]

Hey let's count our blessings, they could've put that code out of order and ran it through a cipher or two on top of that. 😅

[@zyriantel9601]

@@DanimationYT You know, you got me there, it could’ve been worse

[@Fermi_Consistency]

​@@DanimationYT I would have just used ghidra and reverse engineered the zip

[@theMoporter]

What's wrong with it? If you didn't like it, you would only have to wait two weeks for the community to solve it for you. If everyone had to go through it then yeah, it would be ridiculous, but the reward required team play and was easily redistributable - it was intended to be solved by the fans as a group effort. As someone that likes ARGs, and has absolutely no attachment to Hello Neighbour, I think this is a satisfying length and difficulty for the payout of an entirely new substantial demo.

[@haybale287]

@@theMoporter Yeah, but in the moment you don't know if it'll take two weeks or two years - or if it will be solved at all. You might say, 'Well, it ended up being the sequel game, so that game would've been released anyway.' But, again, you don't know that at the moment. I love ARGs too, but you're being unnecessarily unfair and defensive here. Besides, most ARGs have a level of love and effort put into them. Hello Neighbor on the other hand...?

[@zwarteschim]

The original idea with the park and the thing on the mountain was really interesting, such a shame we’ll never get a full game/ story

[@youtube-kit9450]

I hope some indie dev picks up on that idea and turns it into its own game.

[@visassess8607]

I bet they never even had an interesting answer for that mystery

[@thejaded]

That whole setting was so nice. The art style complimented it.. UGHH

[@likes_Wafflez]

not wickedwiz saying that he'll do a game that went right, then proceeding to vanish off the internet 💀💀

[@mayawhitten-desroches9800]

He's focusing on his gaming channel wicked wizard now

[@seagoddess9937]

Well he returned now at least

[@NotOnLand]

It's so bizarre how they keep making all these great assets and features, only to immediately discard them. Really feels like they don't understand how alpha and beta builds are supposed to work, like they're restarting from the ground up every version.

[@quinn799]

Jacksepticeye had to reset completely while playing hello neighbor several times because the neighbor got too difficult. Frustrating

[@hedcrabmoment]

we do a little trolling

[@AraiDigital]

I mean, at least the AI works? lmao

[@AnEmu404]

Yeah, the AI was the selling point of the original first game but it’s definitely a flawed concept. Cool idea, not so good in practice for a fun game, and the neural network idea sounds like it would be even more hellish, because how would you reset it?

[@pomtamto5586]

One of the biggest rules in game development is that the AI has to be specifically programmed. It cannot be allowed to learn because it’ll just end up becoming omnipotent and completely ruining the game. The developers literally had no idea what they were doing.

[@hedcrabmoment]

@@pomtamto5586i wonder why limits exist

[@pipsqueak2343]

I genuinely think it's kind of disgusting that they have released something so broken and buggy and clearly not paid attention to and then ask people for money for it. It's a real shame when there is potential and that gets destroyed by money grabbing. It almost feels like a scam.

[@RipRLeeErmey]

It's even worse when you remember that this is a franchise that markets heavily towards children.

[@Deverer93]

I didn't even know there was a Hello Neighbor 2. The fact I'm finding out here probably can say a lot about how it's doing. Wonder how many others didn't know about this.

[@RitzStarr]

It's really not worth playing. He makes it sound way better than it is, which is saying something. It's borderline unplayable with how bad the controls are and feel. But if you have xbox game pass, it's free and an easy 1000 gamerscore with a guide. Frankly, not worth the pain it causes but eh.

[@contenttheory1717]

​​@@RitzStarr you know the game it's not finish right they already confirmed it please do your research

[@mapytrix3982]

​@@contenttheory1717 That is not an excuse. They charge money for an unplayable game, no matter how much they MIGHT improve it later on.

[@collin5753]

@@mapytrix3982 wasn't it $40 yea... there is no excuse, I've played games that were more finished with extra content for $10. The games "alpha's" had more time put into them than the main that felt rushed and haphazardly slapped together. Don't forget they charged extra for a DLC when the game was in that poor state at launch.

[@ShaCaro]

​@@contenttheory1717 the game has been released and should thusly be finished.

[@bvdf84]

well the steel wool thing may be something like this: they are originally a company that makes VR games (Security Breach is their first major non-vr game) so they probably hired them for Hello Neighbor VR and accidentally added them to the Hello Neighbor 2's dev list too these type of simple errors are pretty common even for the biggest game studios

[@faithe.barnes6342]

to be honest, SB was so trash so I wouldn’t be surprised if SW had something to do with HN2 as well given how it turned out, lol.

[@bvdf84]

@@faithe.barnes6342 the problem with sb was pretty obvious 1- it was their first time doing non-vr game 2- They decided to add more than what scott had planned so most things were unplanned 3- The bugs and the significant change in gameplay made fans really mad so they straight up ignored the actual game and just started to shit on it even before playing Hello neighbor 2 suffers from no such issues since it not only had pre-release builds but they also didn't have major setbacks like deciding to add 4 more floors mid-development or having their supervisor retire when they already delayed the game twice

[@faithe.barnes6342]

@@bvdf84 no, not really. SB wasn’t only buggy as all hell (just look at markiplier’s gameplay), but it also rehashed a villain that was put to rest by Scott himself thereby ignoring his will and legacy, had a terrible save system, had abusable mechanics galore and was so much more story oriented than the others yet decided to not make use of it. there was so much that could’ve been done in every sense to make it more interesting or even just remotely cool. I’ve followed FNaF since about 2015 and I was so excited for a free roam game, but this was exactly not what anyone was hoping for.

[@bvdf84]

@@faithe.barnes6342 yes and those problems are mainly caused by them deciding to make the game literally 4 times bigger than it's supposed to be and this being their first big non-vr game they developed

[@Zooms888]

@@faithe.barnes6342 Security breach feels like if a random fan got control of the series (which is actually kinda true because steel wool are big fans fans) like they were just like oh let's bring back Afton and let's make new characters and make it free roam and Freddy a good guy and on and on and on

[@Wandergirl108]

The idea of the Neighbor learning from the entire community's play styles sounds to me like a way to make the game not fun REALLY fast - within days, the AI would be too good, getting around it would be impossible. How is that a selling point? I mean, the fact that it was falsely advertised is bad, but how it ever generated buzz instead of putting people OFF from wanting to try it is beyond me. When I play a game, I want to know I at least have a chance of beating it, and the neural network learning model would eliminate any chance of that within maybe two weeks tops. How would that be fun? "Hey everyone, this AI will be too smart to beat a month after this game goes live, doesn't that sound cool?!" No. No it does not, it sounds annoying and frustrating and the opposite of fun. Can someone explain how this idea got people excited? Please?

[@shinrailp1416]

While i can't say why people would be excited i have an idea why this was marketed so heavily. Specifically for the reasons you mentioned, people would get that the AI would be impossible at some point so they kinda forced people to purchase right after release. This Franchise became weirdly popular and poeple wanted to play an beat it so they had no other chance but to buy day one.

[@yoshibear1009]

They're targeting 8-16 year olds. They're selling the hype and the idea, and know their audience aren't going to understand any of its intricacies.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Yeah, after a while the game would be incredibly hard. And any player coming in later would face unbeatable odds. Now a learning enemy within the playthrough is nice. The neighbor getting better and learning and reacting to your strategies? Sure. But if the enemy learns from other people's playthroughs that happened way earlier? You end up with a game that gets progressively harder without a progressively improving community of players. Imagine if you start to play CS and you are instantly in LE matchmaking and have to win those matches to continue.

[@RenShinomiya121]

The game was announced in the age of rage games and souls games being popular. It being hard is a selling point around that time.

[@asoret]

@@HappyBeezerStudios You could make a mix of both, having normal single player mode with resetable ai, which you can train as long as you want, and then a hardcore mode with comunity training, im sure many people and content creators would love to make videos trying to beat hardest ai

[@Easyflux]

History has told us that fans are very accepting to studios being honest and transparent. By not talking about hurdles and problems, fans are left thinking it's pure laziness or malevolent behaviour. There's really no reason to withold information like this, unless your hands are tied by higher up's. Fans will understand, and the reputation will not suffer as much. It's a shame to see studios still take the complete silence approach, still..

[@volundrfrey896]

Well yes and no, "fans" has also sent death and bomb threats to many studios after e.g. announcing delays. So most people are reasonable or more likely just don't care all that much. But some people are deranged.

[@lasarousi]

That just sounds like idiots ready to be scammed.

[@kingsly2275]

Honestly though it humanizes the studios when they’re as transparent as possible

[@zyriantel9601]

I still remember when Bungie almost suffered a major scandal (Destiny content creators getting banned left and right in spite of Bungie’s extremely generous “20% original/80% borrowed” content creation rules, which I believe turned out to be third-party fuckery later on), but because Bungie took it on the chin and worked their asses off to resolve the problem, they came away from it with grace and a lot of goodwill.

[@mariotheundying]

True, to get big you have to be honest, and if you don't keep being honest, you immediately become just another company that's lazy and wants money, which they probably become anyways actually

[@ten1086]

The man came right on time with 50 mins of CONTENT. Thank you, good sir.

[@TheTundraTerror]

My boy might take his time to arrive, but he brings the entire band with him when he kicks the door down.

[@RitzStarr]

Insane considering the game can be beaten in like 15 minutes by a brand new player and a short guide on where to wiggle.

[@elijahgarner1571]

Can confirm Alexus is now working hard, or more accurately hardly working shitting all over Helldivers 2 game balence, ig sometimes no matter how good a games idea is, it's failure can often be attributed to disconnected and ideotic game balancing.

[@ragnarkjell8586]

The weirdest thing about Hello Neighbour for me personally was that the official account started following me. Back then I posted mostly homoerotic W40k art, which is probably one of the most niche things to draw.

[@SunburnOmori]

Wait what, actually?

[@SunburnOmori]

If so. That’s funny as hell.

[@overestimatedforesight]

... are you on grimdank?

[@ragnarkjell8586]

@@overestimatedforesight No, that was back on tumblr.

[@voxelbandit]

the neighbour is a cultured man, obviously

[@arthurdurham]

I can understand cutting some things (not justify but understand why they would want to) but it seems they constantly cut things that wouldn't be a hassle to keep in for some reason. Like they purposely remove features or things that fans like. For instance, The Guest. You'd think they'd double down on him being so popular. He should be as easy to keep in as any other NPC The dev team's decision making is baffling tbh. Like two entirely seperate studios create the betas and the final game.

[@trianglemoebius]

My theory: They were planning to pretend the AI was still there and there just hadn't been enough playthroughs for it to be "good" yet. The Guest, being an enemy that can roam across the map instead of just stay within one area, would have made it too obvious that this wasn't the case.

[@jesusramirezromo2037]

Tiny Build clearly has no idea what Alphas and Betas are supposed to be

[@digitlive7750]

there was a executive game DESIGNER, WHO PRACTICALLY DECIDED WHAT THE GAME WAS GOING TO BE, called Nikita Kolesnikov but he was replaced by another game DEsigner WHO PRACTICALLY RUINED THE game

[@evetoyoumwah]

"Next time we'll look at a game that didn't go wrong" -> last upload 8 months ago. :D

[@FlashheadX]

The "neural network plus algorithms" thing sounds to me like it's inspired by Alien: Isolation. The Alien has its predetermined paths and strategies, and if the player hides in a lot of vents, the probability of the Alien looking into vents increases. Which is not really a neural network, and likely a marketing buzz word in the case of Hello Neighbor 2? The main difference being that these probabilities are shifted not by a single player, but by all of them. Which, in the long run, probably has the sole benefit of filtering out hiding places and escape routes that no player uses in the first place.

[@Arctem]

Also having an AI that actually runs via neural network for this kind of game is a comically stupid idea. Even ignoring the sheer amount of training data you would need, which likely outnumbers the amount of times players would play the game, the *best* case scenario is that you get an AI so insanely good that the vast majority of players don't stand a chance. And that's assuming it actually works. Neural networks for game AI are mostly a cool research project, not something to actually use in a game. There's no benefit to them over a standard behavior tree that can tweak the probabilities of certain actions (like you mention Alien: Isolation doing) and you're adding in all the complexities and nuances and general hassle that comes with training a neural network onto your existing game project. Plus whenever you change something about the game you're going to have to throw out a lot of your training data because it's useless, adding even more chaos to the project.

[@thatoneguy609]

@@Arctem That’s what I was thinking lol, I’m not sure what made that an appealing selling point to people

[@Oscar97o]

@@thatoneguy609 Keep in mind that the target demographic is kids.

[@Arctem]

@@thatoneguy609 To most people a neural network just means "magic thing that does whatever you imagine it does", so each person likely has a very different idea of what it would do (and also a great overestimation how much "good AI" is important to a game like this). It's basically selling snake oil.

[@TaRAAASHBAGS]

I still find it funny Creative Assembly made an amazing AI for their Alien game and the computer in all their Total Wars are dumb as bricks.

[@bog463]

love how the alphas are always so much better than the actual release

[@SirPream]

Came here after finding out that Alexus is part of the dev team for Helldivers 2. How the heck this person ended up on another dev team after this is crazy.

[@grigori9061]

Probably connections or blackmail

[@crazybunnyproductions7287]

The development process for their games is definitely the most bizarre to me, since I've never really seen it before. They make an alpha showing off some puzzles and features, all that have very solid foundations. The next alpha, instead of polishing those puzzles off in some way, and then adding more, they instead move the goalposts. Instead of expanding the number of objectives, they make the distance between those objectives LONGER without preserving anything that made them functional. If they were worried about people getting bored because they know all the answers, then they should just do what any other game does... restrict the alpha's content until the final release.

[@DanimationYT]

It is very bizarre. They have a concept that is well received, they polish it. Add models, animations, new mechanics and features and this is also well received.... then they toss most of it out and do something else... they do more work on the new idea... and then toss all of that out again. I'm a 3D artist and I would lose my shit if I spent weeks on making content for a game just for it to be all thrown out and made to start again. They aren't even alphas, they're completely different games. The theme park looked so cool and there was so much work put into that.

[@Boomrainbownuke9608]

@@DanimationYT im a 3D artist too and i might just straight up leave instead of just losing my shit. The very idea of hours days or weeks or even months of work being thrown out all because they cant make up their damn minds on what the game is supposed to be It out right piss me off. You plan what the game is first then make the assets and code it! Not randomly change direction into s completely different design mid development!

[@Mcng2343]

Whose here after learning that the hell divers 2 balancing dev was responsible for this game

[@spenceduggs]

They actually hit you with a "congration, you done it" screen at the end 😭 I know indie games with smaller budgets & no publisher that managed to end more satisfactorily than this. Hell, Undertale was made by two people for $10k, and it has one of the best endings in gaming.

[@DanimationYT]

1 person with some help on art* Difference is that Toby Fox actually gave a shit. He would've made the game even without the funding (at a smaller scale) because he wanted to tell the story. These people at Tiny Build, or at least whoever they answer to and take cheques from, just care about making money. The devs have good ideas, they're clearly creative people with drive to make things but it seems like they're being forced to rush out garbage and shill out the brand as much as possible to make money. No self respecting artist and developer would be happy with this, especially given the sheer amount of wasted work that went into the original alphas.

[@Roadent1241]

Surprisingly even my lazy butt is putting more effort into the free game - third of a series - I'm starting making this weekend than than A PAID COMPANY, I have a whole credits sequence (Mostly of what inspired me/where I got assets) set up - and depending on whether you get a good or bad ending!! So two!!!

[@BrunoSantos-jp1lv]

They really pulled a "CONGLATURATION !!! YOU HAVE COMPLETED A GREAT GAME." and thought we wouldn't notice

[@aboogala4678]

​@@BrunoSantos-jp1lvA real "A winner is you" moment

[@ghhn4505]

"and den everyone was friends and dey all wived happiwy evew aftew da end" is not one of the best endings in gaming lmao, go play more games

[@FiatUno2003]

This franchise could've been so much better if they decided to make the games actually good and not made for kids with the attention span of a knobless door. The first alphas/betas of Hello Neighbor were so simple and actually good. After that they decided to overcomplicate the game and it went downhill. I miss the time where I was actually hyped to see what would happen on the new betas, but after the third I just gave up and forgot about this game. Now we have like 5 more games ☠️

[@bigjohnsbreakfastlog5819]

But we got merch to sell! Remember, it's often the goal to make money and the easiest way to make money? Market to children. They don't understand common sense and have a high degree of material value.

[@ketaminepoptarts]

i think "the attention span of a knobless door" might be a new sentence

[@Morgannin]

@@ketaminepoptarts ...do knobbed doors have a longer attention span than a knobless one?

[@Josuh]

@@Morgannin ​ maybe, you would probably spent more time looking and wondering why there's a knobless door in the first place rather than just instinctively opening a knobbed door

[@zyriantel9601]

@@Josuh I dunno man, sometimes I really have to contemplate certain shapes of doorknobs before I figure out how to open the damn door.

[@austinbarker9239]

You forgot to mention that the only interactable items were quest items, as opposed to HN1 where you could pick up practically anything, which made it more of a challenge not knowing if the item was useless or needed. Also HN1 had various ways to complete a quest, ie exit the neighbors yard. Last but not least I felt like stacking boxes & the umbrella were hello neighbor staples, and both were excluded from this game.

[@yerodin1840]

The thing is, that tiny build can make a coherent designed game. Graveyard keeper is actually a very good pixel art/indie game with a lot of charm. Very grindy at late game, but still good.

[@Falkuzrules]

From what little I know I'm pretty convinced it's a perfectly normal dev company that was corrupted by the ideas of "We could be the next FNaF!" and tumbled downhill ever since.

[@BriarPatchNyra]

Graveyard keeper is a game I LOVE. It’s bizarre to think they also made this mess.

[@Autokendo17]

They also made No Time to Explain, which is actually pretty good, how did they make this mess?!

[@jerrytc2978]

tinybuild for all its issues, is willing to give anyone they think is passionate a chance which while it has its problems, is at least admirable they wanna encourage more devs to just go full force, and if they...just so happen to be major hits, they get alot of profit for little its not a bad business strategy and helps PR at the same time hello neighbor is just one of the ones thats less quality, graveyard was quality (other then the DLCs iirc)

[@walidbentaher]

@@Autokendo17 Oh yeah I remember no time to explain!

[@mirandaluttrell5799]

I genuinely wish they stuck with the amusement park as the map, that was so cool!!! I loved the guest and its sad to see them default to "invade a house"

[@moonkinx]

Helldivers brought me here , turns out the designer is now working at Arrowhead Studio

[@michellestrange3188]

37:57 it interesting that these minor puzzles that don't make sense could be fixed if you add to it a bit. Like for the scissors they could be more higher up where you can't reach and only the train could reach, requiring you to solve the puzzle. Or for the Bush, the button could have been deeper inside it and the bush could be made prickly, therefore giving a reason to cut the bush to get the item.

[@Geffro]

Yeah it seems to me like they probably had ideas but left placeholders there and never fixed them.

[@AnAverageGoblin]

knowing the devs they probably thought Shatpat would have made theories about why those items were in logic-free locations.

[@nazodreemur8284]

So bad news The guy who did this controversial update, is the guy who currently making bad balance update in Helldivers 2

[@alice20001]

The cool thing about bad puzzles for kids is that it makes them feel smart. I remember playing all kinds of point and click mystery games when I was a kid, and it felt kinda dumb or simple at times. But then there were these bad games, overly complicated, no real point to it, but reading the guides online and then doing them felt awesome! At first. Then I started to think: Hey, this is not like the other puzzles that were symbolic, memorable, or part of the story arc. It’s just overdeveloped for the sake of being overdeveloped.

[@TotallyNotSnowman]

Wait, would creating impossible puzzles that force players to consult a guide to solve make anyone feel smart?

[@kzkaa.]

@@TotallyNotSnowman No. It really wouldn't.

[@history-jovian]

​@@TotallyNotSnowman for idiots yes, for normals no, for psychopath no, For Some with the mental capacity of a 1 year old yes.

[@mechanomics2649]

@@TotallyNotSnowman Personally, it just makes me feel cheated. Games that all but force you to use a guide boil my blood.

[@PointsofData]

Glue banana to shoelace on stick to catch sewer fish for the shopkeeps cat

[@GeorgeNoiseless]

Before watching this video I knew very little about the Hello Neighbor series outside of "creepy dude chases intruder (you) around the house". I'm now fascinated by how much HN relates to old Point-and-Click adventure games with its puzzles (and "moon logic" in many cases). Not the biggest fan of that genre. But the whole sneaking, snooping, breaking and entering gameplay bring back nostalgic memories of the Thief franchise. Glad to see some vestiges of that legacy living on not only through Dishonoured, but in the indie scene as well. Thank You, Wiz.

[@Falkuzrules]

Was fun for me watching MatPat go completely insane as he desperately tried to figure out each of the Alpha versions' logic-less puzzles and finally beat em, fully aware that another version would come out and either add more nonsense or change the entire game. There's two things I remember the most about HN1: You have to stack looooots of boxes, and you have to freeze a globe. Yeah, like an Earth globe. You have to freeze it.

[@Oscar97o]

It's crazy that these games almost feel like immersive sims, except the devs don't know what they're doing and keep discarding every interesting element they put in the game.

[@captainjurgh8142]

It's painful to see games with good premise start declining beyond recover. Hello Neighbor series is like this, but with in-game trivial stuff we didn't even ask for weighing it down in slow motion

[@hokage102364]

They almost certainly had to get rid of the learning AI for the enemy, especially one learning from the whole community, because that would have eventually made it invincible for all intents and purposes.

[@robineaken4524]

I think it just straight up didn’t work lol

[@house_cocoon]

​@Robin Eaken I think you're both right lmfao. Just think, us players learned how to clip through walls and fly out of bounds within pretty much the first hour of the games release. Can you imagine what the AI would've done if it was learning that same shit from all of us at once? It'd be like playing against a speedrunner 24/7

[@gulsher6635]

Maybe they should've made the ai forget mechanics used very infrequently, so that the community would have to consistently change its playstyle.

[@woothedoo2440]

imagine seeing the disaster that is hello neighbor 1, and thinking "damn ill spend 60 bucks on the special edition to the sequel!"

[@mahmoodmaan]

Yeah Helldivers 2 💀🙏 is gone if this m f stayed here #BE_GONE_alexsus

[@ahmesbaloshy472]

I was looking for this comment

[@ImperiousMax]

What I've learned is the people behind Hello Neighbor look at the feedback to their first alpha and wonder "how can we make it worse?".

[@LockedOnTargetShow]

Hopefully the neural network of the younger generation learns something from this. Don't preorders games or believe companies before the game actually releases.

[@GM_Loona]

Looks like the nerfs aren’t going to get any better, Helldivers

[@Jefftarnish]

We need this mf to go

[@MrDeothor]

7:00 gotta say this community-event-puzzle challenge sounds amazing. I'd hate to participate myself, but listening to it sounds like I missed on quite cool adventure.

[@lewislovelord8977]

They're very sly with their marketing. FO76 learned much from them.

[@buggibii]

"I'd hate to participate myself" is exactly how i feel about arg's lol 'cool!! 😀 someone else do all the work, tho!' like honey i don't have the attention span

[@mistywww3199]

@@buggibii They are great for a 30 min documentary after they are solved, screw being the one solving it.

[@circleofsorrow4583]

I'm here to ask if 'Alexus' is a guy that helped ruin HN2, and if he is the same guy 'balancing' Helldivers 2? How about it Wiz?

[@mahmoodmaan]

Yes it’s the same person

[@mrg2155]

I watched this whole video looking for something and “Alexus” didn’t do anything but take over once another dev left. Literally no mention of them otherwise. Witch hunts are NOT COOL @mahmoodmaan

[@coolwing79]

​@mrg2155 you don't understand - alexus is the one that scrapped all the marketed features. They were still planned back when Nikita (series creator and original lead game designer) was in charge of the game.

[@sebastianturner2458]

That AI marketing... That's a huge red flag. What, are they gonna run some absolutely massive servers so that every single instance of the neighbor can be part of some giant AI learning program? I mean, aside from the fact that I have no clue whether it'd be remotely plausible to have an already functional AI before you start the neural network. And the fact that it'd train incredibly, unbelievably slowly. And that it's just a stupid idea to not have full control of how your game's AI works. "Oh, whoops, looks like our invincible, instakilling AI learned to camp the story objective and never leave for any reason and now everyone's games are softlocked. How could we have forseen this?"

[@almightyk11]

Promised features not being released is one thing (sometimes it's harder to make than you thought) but to actively remove features that already existed is just ridiculous.

[@mkaleborn]

Thank you for the video. As a Helldivers 2 player I've heard all about the "Hello Neighbor 2" shenanigans by the infamous 'lead dev' and wondered what all the fuss was about. This lays it all out nicely. Pretty surprised he ended up at Arrowhead. But it explains a bit better everybody's serious concerns about his input on HD2...

[@baldmartin6741]

MatPat sure gonna love this

[@bigjohnsbreakfastlog5819]

To be fair, MatPat loves the idea of mascot horror games recycling content instead of trying new ideas so I'm surprised he didn't take the offer back in the day.

[@HydragonofDeath]

@@bigjohnsbreakfastlog5819 TBH back then he seemed to have higher standards and he did the research himself (most of the time, he didn't steal as much as he does now), if it were the matpat now he'd probably accept though because now his channel's research is done by people he's paying, thus the decline in quality when you have like 6 different people with varying ability to research working on theories.

[@zyriantel9601]

With the new plushie, Wiz will forever be a man of his word, standing on literally everything we put him on

[@sheik_link]

And now Alexus is ruining Helldivers 2. Wonderful

[@gamemusicify]

Il never forget watching mat play the first one and seeing him go thru the janky box stacking mechanics was enough to convince me never to touch this franchise

[@IAmTheShadowStar]

I find it interesting that Bendy and the Dark Revival is literally the parallel to this game, It was also a sequel to an indie hit from 2017-18, had around 5 years of development time, released in the same time window & promised to be even bigger & better than the original. Only difference is that BATDR delivered on those promises, & while of course that's not to say that there was no controversy involved because trust me, there certainly was, but I feel like if you asked most people how they felt about this game, they would tell you "Yes, we got what we were promised"

[@spademagna2672]

What kind of controversy?

[@just_kris]

Ye I also would like to know what controversy? I didn't hear about anything like that.

[@IAmTheShadowStar]

@@just_kris It's a really complicated issue but to make a long story short, the developer's game studio was expanding rapidly & after they're second game "Showdown Bandit" underperformed, the studio laid off a good amount of employees allegedly without warning. Chris Portal has 2 great videos on it if you want all the details

[@just_kris]

@@IAmTheShadowStar ah OK thx

[@DanimationYT]

The thing about BATDR is that it doesn't really feel like the same series to me. They went from indie survival horror with puzzles and some basic combat mechanics to straight up Bioshock. Not really horror, not the same feel at all. I wasn't a fan of BATIM but if you're making a sequel to a game, the least you can do is maintain its identity.

[@madmarduk1936]

What happened is their “balance” dev cratered the game and then jumped ship to ruin Helldivers 2 the same way.

[@sebarus8108]

I feel like it says a lot that there is a whole franchise about this, yet as someone who plays a lot of games and stays in touch with gaming news, I have never heard about any of the games mentioned in this video, aside from Hello Neighbor and Hello Neighbor 2.

[@Falkuzrules]

I followed the original game to release and never knew about 2 until I learned it exists a few months ago.

[@daviddavidson2357]

The lead dev, Alexus Kravchenko, who removed most of the features from HN1, is now the lead balancing dev for Helldivers 2. And boy oh boy is he ruining that game *fast *

[@RichSmithson]

Want an example of how incompentent Alexus is? Auto Cannon, Auto Cannon Sentry and the new Emancipator mech all fire the exact same rounds. Yet they all do different damage and the mech does the least of all. Imagine releasing a mech that the entire community have been looking forward too, and Alexus has nerfed it and made it not fun before its even released.

[@daviddavidson2357]

​@@RichSmithson The handheld AC fires 20mm rounds, the sentry uses 40mm. There's a huge size difference in the rounds if you look at the casings. The AC sentry likely predates Alexus' BS The new mech is a joke, it should either be twin 20mm, or a single, slow firing 40mm with a 10mm cannon on the other arm, or a 40mm and ballistic shield arm. Alexus needs nerfed, if it's so hard to fire people in Sweden, AH should take a note from the Japanese and make him a 'window looker' ie he still has a job, but reduced salary and no tasks other than to get other people coffee and look out of a window in a very, very small office.

[@SusuLakuProductions]

What is this guy's plan? To ruin every video game by removing most of the features and then fucking right off before he can get punished

[@lucaskohler8261]

I cannot every fully explain the excitement that goes through me when I see a new wicked wiz video

[@Sunny_Jace]

I bust a nut when i heard his voice fr

[@zyriantel9601]

Makes you excited enough to stand on something, maybe?