Hyenas (video Game)
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''Hyenas'' was a planned
science-fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, sp ...
first-person shooter A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game genre, video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a First person (video games), first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through t ...
developed by
Creative Assembly The Creative Assembly Limited (trade name: Creative Assembly) is a British video game developer based in Horsham, founded in 1987 by Tim Ansell. In its early years, the company worked on porting games to MS-DOS from Amiga and ZX Spectrum platfo ...
and published by
Sega is a Japanese video game company and subsidiary of Sega Sammy Holdings headquartered in Tokyo. It produces several List of best-selling video game franchises, multi-million-selling game franchises for arcade game, arcades and video game cons ...
. Set in a dystopian near-future, players were to take control of a
space pirate Space pirates are a type of stock character from science fiction. A take on the traditional seafaring piracy, pirates of history or the fictional air pirates of the 19th century, space pirates travel through outer space. Where traditional pirate ...
known as a Hyena and compete in teams of three to raid heavily-guarded Plunderships. The game was ultimately cancelled by Sega in late September 2023, citing a low potential for profitability.


Setting

''Hyenas'' takes place in a near-future setting. After the wealthy move to Mars and turn it into a paradise for those who can afford to live there, the Earth is torn apart in an enormous accident. The survivors live miserably on a collection of orbiting slums known colloquially as The Taint. To add meaning to their vapid lives, the elites of Mars raid the ruins of Earth for Merch, pop-culture relics such as old VHS tapes or vinyl records. Players control a titular Hyena, a space-pirate from the Taint that raids enormous Plunderships on their way from Earth to Mars in an attempt to steal the Merch held within.


Development

''Hyenas'' was initially dubbed "Project Keaton" and presented internally in 2017, where it was
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following the critical success of '' Alien: Isolation'', despite its commercial disappointment. Wanting a game with broader commercial appeal, the studio's management decided to create a console-based online multiplayer shooter inspired by ''
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'', ''
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'' and '' PUBG''. It also drew inspiration from ''
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'', although the development team refrained from developing a battle royale title due to the belief that genre would be dominated by experienced development teams. ''Hyenas'' was estimated to have a 5-year development time. The game's feel was intended to be based on
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s like
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or the crew in ''
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'', in a gritty sci-fi setting incorporating some realistic elements. It was planned to utilize the engine of ''Alien: Isolation'', but was switched to
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partway through development, requiring part of the team to be moved to work on ''
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'' instead. In 2019, filmmaker
Neill Blomkamp Neill Blomkamp (; born 17 September 1979) is a South African and Canadian film director and screenwriter. He is known as the co-writer and director of the science fiction action film ''District 9'' (2009), for which he was nominated for the Aca ...
visited the development team and provided feedback on the concept, creating a mood video and influencing the creative direction of the game towards collecting valuable pop-culture artifacts and inserting Internet humor. This was said to have been welcomed by the development team, who had often felt "rudderless". Blomkamp eventually parted ways with Sega. ''Hyenas'' was said to have been Sega's highest-budget game ever, exceeding the USD $70 million spent on ''
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'' in 1999. Sega called it one of its "Super Games", ambitious titles it hoped would recoup their investment. The game was officially announced on June 22, 2022 as part of ''
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''s Summer of Gaming event. Announced at the same time was the first of several closed
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tests, the first of which began on September 23. The game's first public
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was at
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in Cologne in 2023. After the game's alpha tests, Sega was unhappy with the game's progress and began providing more scrutiny, sending employees from Sega Japan to remain permanently at the developer's UK office in an unusually hands-on manner. The game was due to release on PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One. However, in early August 2023, Sega executives publicly called ''Hyenas development "challenging", raising the possibility it would be cancelled, and stated they would look at "adjusting" the game's business model, possibly to
free-to-play "Free-to-play" ("F2P" or "FtP") video games are games that give players access to a significant portion of their content for free. The term "free-to-play business model" or simply, "free-to-play model", refers collectively to business models tha ...
. Its development was halted by Sega on September 28, 2023 along with multiple other unannounced games, due to "lower profitability of the European region". An anonymous developer blamed the game's failure on a lack of creative direction, management being "asleep at the wheel", making an unoriginal game for a saturated market, as well as the "disruptive" engine change to Unreal. They believed that, in the future, Sega would be more demanding about games they published due to the significant monetary loss of the game's cancellation.


Reception

Ed Thorn of ''
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'' was initially unimpressed by the game, calling it "obnoxious and underwhelming", but in an August 2023 preview, he stated that he came away "pleasantly surprised". Saying that he liked the combination of fast-paced
team deathmatch Deathmatch, also known as free-for-all, is a gameplay mode integrated into many shooter games, including first-person shooter (FPS), and real-time strategy (RTS) video games, where the goal is to kill (or "frag") the other players' characters as ...
and extraction shooter, he noted that it might have more of a chance of launch survival than he thought, but also expressing the opinion that the game would still "struggle to crack a saturated space". In another preview, Lexi Luddy of ''
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'' said that the game was a "lot of fun", but expressed trepidation that it would survive, noting technical difficulties during the beta. Kelsey Raynor of ''
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'' said that the game was "surprisingly distinct from other shooters", noting how it paid homage to the 1980s and 1990s. Jake Tucker of ''
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'' stated that the game had an "overwhelming" pace and was set apart by its bright colors and vivid costumes, which, combined with its nostalgia, gave him the impression it was designed for newcomers to extraction shooters. He said that the game was not for him, but expressed the hope it would do well for people who were fans. However, he noted that he was not sure it would find an audience as a paid game when compared to free-to-play games like ''
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''.


References

{{Creative Assembly Cancelled PlayStation 4 games Cancelled PlayStation 5 games Cancelled Windows games Cancelled Xbox One games Cancelled Xbox Series X and Series S games Creative Assembly games Dystopian video games Fiction about space pirates First-person shooter multiplayer online games Science fiction video games Sega video games Video games about pirates Video games set in outer space