14 DAY TRIAL // Former developers that worked at Kaos Studios during the creation process of Homefront have revealed a few interesting things about the game and how THQ changed the enemy from China to North Korea by force.
Homefront appeared last year and was supposed to establish THQ as a large scale publisher and confirm the talent of New York-based developer Kaos Studios.
Unfortunately, that didn’t exactly happen, as the game failed to meet expectations, causing a series of financial problems for THQ that led to the shutdown of Kaos Studios, with members of its team being offered a chance to move to the new THQ Montreal branch.
Now, some members of the original Kaos team have come forward in a piece by Gamasutra and revealed just how involved THQ, particularly its Executive Vice President, Danny Bilson, was with the Homefront project.
"He got very involved during the middle of our production," the ex-staffers said, but quickly added that some decisions were quite good. "I really can't slam the guy... He gave us a great opportunity and all the resources to accomplish it. We didn't exactly deliver."
One major decision, however, affected the whole project, which was the replacement of the original enemy force, China, with a new one, North Korea.
This led to a “demoralizing” atmosphere at Kaos Studios, largely because THQ forced the change in order to protect its future investments in China or with Chinese partners.
After the decision was taken, Bilson’s visits to Kaos were shrouded in a hostile atmosphere and developers weren’t so keen on taking feedback from the executive.
Now, Homefront 2 is being developed by an independent studio, Crytek UK, which has already said that it doesn’t maintain a close relationship with THQ in order to make sure it has creative freedom.
Meanwhile, THQ is still restructuring its assets and studios in order to make a comeback in terms of profits as soon as possible.