Top 10 Video Games That Were Set Up To Fail

Script written by Ty Richardson

We like to believe studios want their games to succeed, but it seems these releases were set up for failure. For this list, we’re looking at games that were practically set up to ultimately bomb at launch. Our countdown includes “Anthem” (2019), “Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly” (2002), “Duke Nukem Forever” (2011), “Crucible” (2021), and more! Which of these games surprised you the most? Let us know in the comments.

#10: “No Man’s Sky” (2016)

The marketing for “No Man’s Sky” was always shrouded in mystery. While the game was continuously getting shown off in the months leading up to launch, we rarely, if ever, saw legitimate gameplay. On top of that, director Sean Murray confirmed a handful of features that were not present in the game. When “No Man’s Sky” finally released, Murray and development studio Hello Games were met with overwhelming backlash for false promises and questionable marketing. Though the game has seen success with its expansions and have done good on improving the game’s quality, this blemish on the game’s history will never be forgotten.

#9: “Crash Team Racing” (1999)

In the case of “Crash Team Racing”, this kart-racer was meant to be the death of the bandicoot. Developer Naughty Dog had grown to resent Universal Interactive, the original owner of the “Crash” IP, due to a miniscule share in the profits. For their final game, Naughty Dog decided to try and tank the IP so that Universal could no longer profit from the games after their contract expired. To do this, they came up with the goofy dumb plot about an alien challenging Earth to a race and shipped the game in a not-so polished state compared to the previous ones. However, “Crash Team Racing” became an accidental success and is often cited as one of the best racing games ever.

#8: “Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly” (2002)

After signing a contract with Universal Interactive in 2000, Check Six Studios and Equinoxe Digital Entertainment were signed on to develop a brand new “Spyro” game for the sixth console generation. “Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly” received scathing feedback for its buggy state, abysmal visuals, and poor optimization. How did the game get this way? Well, interviews conducted by French journalist The Wumpa Gem reveal a harrowing development cycle. Executives and managers at both Check Six and Equinoxe frequently fought over creative differences, failed to communicate with each other, saw devs turnover throughout development, and even threatened each other with canceling the game. “Enter the Dragonfly” would be the first, last, and only game either studio would develop before shutting down.

#7: “Duke Nukem Forever” (2011)

While Duke Nukem saw huge success throughout the 90’s, his next outing wouldn’t happen for a long, long time. Revealed in 1997, “Duke Nukem Forever” would spend fourteen long and grueling years in development. Throughout this lengthy cycle, the game would change engines several times and saw half of an entire dev team walk away. By this point, the game was vaporware. So, imagine everyone’s shock when Gearbox Software resurrected the project in September 2010 and had the game go gold eight months later. Mistakes were very clearly made as the game launched with awful controls, boring action, and none of the overt humor of the classic games. Fourteen years and forty-four days in development, and nothing to show for it.

#6: “Fallout 76” (2018)

In the summer of 2018, just days before the reveal of “Fallout 76”, word had gotten out that the next “Fallout” game was going to focus on online multiplayer with a much different VATS system and more survival-based mechanics. The rumor immediately divided the “Fallout” community, even after the official reveal. But all those trailers playing “Country Roads” could not mask the awful quality of “Fallout 76” no matter how many times we heard them. Broken questlines, an empty world, fetch quests, lack of NPCs, wastelands of audio logs, and bugs and glitches galore! And this is just without all the garbage with Fallout 1st, the moldy Power Helmets, canvas bag, and doxxing of customers. It’s like the game itself wanted to die!

#5: “Assassin’s Creed: Unity” (2014)

Remember in the early 2010’s when Ubisoft was churning out annual releases of “Assassin’s Creed”? While it worked for a couple of years, the constant crunch eventually caught up to the conglomerate. When “Assassin’s Creed Unity” launched in 2014, players got to see faceless NPCs, floating mouths and eyeballs, and a variety of other bugs and glitches. Ubisoft immediately went into damage control, ceasing sales of the game’s Season Pass and Gold Edition while offering players who already bought the Season Pass a free Ubisoft game. Since “Syndicate” launched the following year, we see a new “Assassin’s Creed” every eighteen months to two years now, though that might change with the “Assassin’s Creed Infinite” live service game.

#4: “Crucible” (2021)

The first title to come from Amazon Game Studios was not a remarkable first outing. “Crucible” was pretty much the generic game you’d think of when you hear “online third-person shooter”, and the dispassion was evident after former senior systems designer Stephen Dewhurst spoke to PC Gamer in March 2022. Dewhurst stated that Amazon’s executives thought successful methods could translate across anything and everything, and that learning from others was a fruitless endeavor. According to Dewhurst, he was asked, "Why would learning things help you do your job?" “Crucible” never made it out of beta, and the game was shut down less than six months after it was first available to download.

#3: “Anthem” (2019)

Oh, yes, we all knew “Anthem” was bound to show up at some point. Announced in 2017, “Anthem” spent years hyping up the press with nothing more than cinematics, pre-rendered footage, and *gasp* flying!? You mean the thing we did in “Super Mario 64” back in 1996?? Oh joy!! Little did anyone know, there was no real work done at this time. According to an exposé published by Kotaku just two months after launch, management failed to make any decisions about the game’s direction, and development did not start until eighteen months before launch. What’s worse is that management had told staff that the supposed “BioWare magic” would kick in, and everything would come together at launch for a fantastic product. “Anthem” would cease support two years after its release.

#2: “Marvel’s Avengers” (2020)

When an “Avengers” game was announced from Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics in January 2017, the world was hyped. What could the legendary “Tomb Raider” studio and “Final Fantasy” publisher bring to such a massive Marvel IP? Well, the picture grw ugly quick, and it got uglier the more it was shown off. Bland combat, a live service model, and an aesthetic that barely toed the line between original and MCU made for a rather forgettable package. In addition to awful technical performance, the game was drip-fed content since launch, and the inclusion of Spider-Man months later only made the game more of a joke. Perhaps single-player games were Crystal Dynamics’ bread and butter?

#1: “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982)

Out of any game that was arguably set up to fail, Atari’s “E.T.” game is the poster child for intentional failure, and we aren’t just saying that because of how it led to the 1983 video game market crash. “E.T.” was developed in a mere FIVE WEEKS by only one guy: Howard Scott Warshaw. In the documentary “Atari: Game Over”, Warshaw described his time working on the game, stating that he was basically working at every waking moment. Even when he was away from his computer, he was working in his head. Sleepless nights during this massive crunch period resulted in one of the worst games ever made and a wake-up call for a still young video game industry.