14 DAY TRIAL // Blacksite: Area 51, the first person shooter published by Midway was, in many critics' eyes, a great disappointment. Harvey Smith, Area 51 designer, partially blames himself for the way critics received the game, even stating: "This project was so f***ed up", trying to explain himself.
The game was highly anticipated, because it was meant to have a special political message: the first person shooter was supposed to bring a satirical look at the war in Iraq, at how war veterans are treated and, overall, at the whole military industrial complex. But the project of Blacksite sounded not so intriguing for Harvey Smith, and, atop of that, he was working on another project, too. That's why he takes part of the fault for the criticisms received.
Also, enough time was not something the developer team had on their hands for this project, as he explains: even though it took eight months to get one "thing" working in the game (he didn't mention what thing he was referring to), they only had four days to polish and fix an entire level. But the biggest problem for Smith was the lack of time for testing the game, as he declares: "With a year to go, the game was disastrously off rails", and it actually "went straight from alpha to final".
But, even though Smith agrees that the project was f-ed up, he still thinks that Blacksite: Aria 51 was an underrated game - he would have given it 80 points out of 100, because of the fun game and, specially, because of the satire. But, as it seems, people didn't really appreciate the satire. On the contrary. And he offers the example of the scene where the player has to fight back a horde of military veterans turned to monsters, all of them under a banner that reads: "Veterans Memorial".
Smith asked: "How can you look at all these elements and not think this is super subversive?". Well... it seems it is quite possible. The low scores prove it.