10 Potentially Great Video Games That Were Dead On Arrival

6. Hellgate: London

Once a seemingly sure-fire hit, the story of Hellgate: London has since become a cautionary tale among developers. Created by Flagship Studios, and with the involvement of Blizzard North€™s co-founders, the game was set to feature in a demon-infested London. Earning attention for the big names involved an explosive presentation; millions of dollars were put into comics, novels and action figures long before the game was ever released. Suffice to say the hype behind the game was enormous. So high in fact, that Flagship Studios itself began to buy into it. For the developers Hellgate: London was the first of many things. Their first FPS/Action-RPG hybrid, their first title to involve an ongoing subscription and even their first game to be rendered in 3D. The ideas behind the game were experimental, fantastic concepts which could make it stand out from the crowd, yet not one person working on it seemed to have a backup plan in place just in case Hellgate: London somehow failed to be an instant hit. Surprise surprise, the impossible happened and the game bombed. Many of the ideas behind the setting were half-baked and hamstrung thanks to a lack of experience, but worse still were the bugs. The disc contained a veritable plague of programming errors and problems which made progression it impossible. Complete system crashes, were common, but even beyond that NPCs could fail to load along with plot essential items, leaving players stuck. While some developers would later find success with Torchlight, the failure of Hellgate: London was enough to cause Flagship Studios to close its doors barely a year later.