The Day Of

 And there it goes...

I remember when we first embarked on the tale of the game that would be known as 'The Day Before'. A title I immediately dismissed as 'just another survival zombie game' in a generation already full up to the brink with them. Of course all it took was watching the first trailer for suspicions to form- I just never believed the thing looked like a real functioning product from the first moment. I'm not the only one, but a solid contingent of real (mouth) breathing people, unfortunately, were subject to the glitz of those original gameplay 'dives'. The real-time reflections, effusive lighting, cluttered and abandoned city streets. The 'Division'-esque movement and promise of movie-style zombie interactions intercut with dangerous and deadly human encounters. This was going to be an MMO. Breathing and alive. Aflush with player driven dynamic encounters that would keep the spirit of the world alive, whilst delivering AAA quality visual fidelity all the while. And of course it was a scam.

With every new trailer the team seemed to dig themselves deeper and deeper into the hole, promising ever more over-elaborate nonsense from a development team who had never once presented themselves close to that level of capability. They weren't totally incapable dreamers, mind you. Fntastic, the company in question, had put out Propnight, a monetised version of the popular Gmod game- 'Prop Hunt'. Which isn't creative, per se, but it is a game. And one that even brushed the YouTube circuit lightly when it was relevant, which I'm sure did not hurt their potential sales. In fact, perhaps it was that stab at notoriety which gave the team at Fntastic their 'unique' view of game development. A view where the game itself was secondary to the amount of buzz you could drum up around. A process of ultimate risk and ultimate reward. A process which would lead to 'The Day Before'.

You see, whilst 'The Day Before' was slapping together pre-rendered high-light reels of speculative gameplay mechanics they absolutely had not yet realised, the team were not doing the typical scammer move of fund draining the public. There was no Kickstarter, no donation links, nothing to indicate this project was a quick scam- and that might be because I suspect their 'scam' was largely unintentional on the team's part, although no less legitimate in the end. As I've voiced before, I suspect that what the team where trying to do was build up the profile of their game and studio through fake trailers in order to spark the interest of investors and Publishers. If anybody managed to take them up on the offer and inject some cash into Fntastic, then the developer could build itself up and get around to maybe living up to some of those wild promises. Even if they feel short of everything they wanted to do, the same tactics that had led to them becoming the most wishlisted game on steam would surely rocket up enough day one sales to make them a ton of money. See: big risk, big reward.

Only it seems no one took the bait. I cannot imagine why, game investment gets thrown at everything with a pulse if you head to the right sectors of the industry. Maybe they weren't knocking on the right doors, or maybe the suspicions on their conduct spread quicker than all the blind optimism. Either way, Fntastic weren't getting any closer to realising their dreams at the start of 2023. The gameplay they put out earlier this year, lacking most of the graphical streaks of brilliance they once teased with the reveal and presenting a systematically dead world with little to nothing to do- presented a cold truth to the hopeful, the game they had been sold on was a lie. From there the clock was ticking, everything else just brought the team closer to doomsday. The trademark dispute over their name, the delayed release, the misguided teaser snippet trailers- all just piled atop the files of the bed they'd laid for themselves.

And then the game released.

To call it a mess would be a little bit of an understatement. For one, they attempted to drop it a few hours before the GameAwards in hopes it would be overshadowed by the event. Fat chance. Secondly, the game that was marketed all it's life as an MMO, released as an extraction shooter. 'Tarkov' at home, so to speak. Thirdly. The thing hardly functioned on pitiful servers that snapped under the slightest pressure, bizarre visual bugs that made character models balloon to the size of Kajiu from certain angles and a general non-functioning AI suite that needed to be patched in order to jolt some life into the scant two or three zombies you could expect to run into every hour or so. The team put the game out with a desperate statement begging people not to call them a scam or an asset flip, but it only took people a couple of hours to track down the entire city on an asset hub site. The Day Before was everything people thought it would be, a disaster.

Now, merely four days after the game released, the team are declaring not only that they are shutting it down, but that they are shuttering the entire company as well. Propnight and all. Goodnight Fntastic- bye bye. On their way out they deleted all their videos on YouTube, cleared their personal website and withdrew the ability to buy the game on Steam, creating lost media almost instantly. And in their goodbye message, Fntastic wanted the world to know them as failures, not scammers, and wanted to drive home how hard they worked these five years. Despite evidence to the contrary, they really hammered on that 'no scam' line, possibly to try and avoid the incoming lawsuit they are no doubt going to receive. And in their defence the game never did ask money from the public. You know, until they released it on 'Early Access' for $40 a pop. (Which, judging from their player peak, probably earned them around 1.2 million- not counting all the many refunds I'm sure they were hit with.) But, well, that still doesn't make it not a scam.

For one, the 'full release' was dropped as an Early Access game out of nowhere, despite promising a proper release eons ago. Secondly, the game was sold to people on lies the entire way, every purchase they made was either on false pretences or curiosity about how horrendously bad the game actually was. And more pressingly, the team probably tried to shop around their game to investors based on their notoriety from all their false marketing, which means that if they received any funding whatsoever they'll be liable for major financial fraud. Their goose is well and truly cooked, and we can look at this tactical bankruptcy as the team pulling stocks out of the market before they lose anything else, running for the Bahamas and probably trying to change their names. All whilst covering their traces and hoping they can get away with dropping such a solid worst game of the year candidate.

I did not expect the ballad of The Day Before to end so suddenly. Truth be told, I was kind of hoping the story would go on for another full year of minimal update after minimal update, breaking the game more and more as the player base dries up and withers. You'd get those stragglers singing the praises of the broken game, saying how it's actually tons better than everything else on the market. ("Actually, it's the community that makes it unique." Is what Fallout 76 players say to justify themselves slumming it. I'm in many of their circles, I hear it a lot.) Then the game would peter out after everyone had forgotten about it and slip away. But I guess we saw a much sped up version of that timeline, full with explosions and shock exits- and maybe this is for the better. Afterall, we have Skull and Bones ready to fill that space in the new year, and 'Suicide League gank the Justice Squad' for deserts. Guess all that's left is to put the story to bed and prepare The Day After.