More potential insight into what happened with Hardsuit Labs' version of VtM:B2
So everyone pass around the grains of salt, but what BlueSky user whitequeennv.bsky.social seems possible.
Here is the link of The White Queen's thread, which was a response to someone else commenting on Paradox's mismanagement. The White Queen's account is thin on the ground, but mostly does seem like a gamer with interest in the technicalities of the industry. And GRRM's Lost Lands.
Allegedly, Hardsuit Labs never completed the game, or really made a game. What is a vertical slice? A vertical slice is when the nebulous ideas of a game across various departments meet for the first time to prove that all these ideas are workable. It's a small section of the game that includes all the main assets. All the various bits and bobs unite. It's meant for internal use only, to cement the game vision for the team, and like, technically playable but very much not finished. Read more here. Critically, Hardsuit Labs could obfuscate lack of game content by showing these flashy tidbits to Paradox, other investors, and even marketing employees like Outstar.
Now, as it turns out, I am not good at looking up users on Reddit. These comments are not properly dated and u/nekosplatoon admits their source is a friend of a friend.
More critically and convincingly, what u/nekosplatoon says matches with what Paradox's deputy chief executive officer Mattias Lilja says in this 2024 RockPaperShotgun interview:
"With Hardsuit Labs, we agreed on a vision of what they were gonna make, [and] they had a problem delivering on that," Lilja told me. "We were in agreement, we moved [development] to The Chinese Room and we said, this is the vision and this is what Hardsuit Labs have made. And of course, we gave them quite a lot of freedom to interpret the vision, based on what Hardsuit Labs had made, or change or remove whatever they didn't like.
What White Queen is saying about fake or misleading demos or E3 presentations matches my understanding of the games industry. I won't go so far as saying it's standard practice, but it's been known to happen. Bioware's Anthem did it. For a full post-mortem on Anthem, watch consulting producer Mark Darrah's videos on it (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) or read this article. The most salient paragraph:
“After E3, that’s when it really felt like, ‘Okay, this is the game we’re making,’” said one Anthem developer. “But it still felt like it took a while to get the entire team up to speed. It was also kind of tricky because there were still a lot of question marks. The demo was not actually built properly—a lot of it was fake, like most E3 demos. There was a lot of stuff that was like, ‘Oh are we actually doing this? Do we have the tech for that, do we have the tools for that? To what end can you fly? How big should the world be?’”
Here's the artstation link: https://chaoticenigma.artstation.com/albums/9212037
What White Queen says about carryover between games matches what I understand here too. When a studio makes a game (in the USA at least), all assets are copyrighted. The Chinese Room could not receive a USB stick with all of Hardsuits Lab's work and continue working on the game from there. However, because Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 is set in Seattle, a real place, The Chinese Room could reuse assets featuring public landmarks and historical figures--with some tweaking to make theirs an original rendition. Pioneer Square is in both games, because HSL!Pioneer Square is just different enough from TCR!Pioneer Square. That's why Alec Cross or Mr Damp aren't in the game, but Lou is. Switch her name from Lou Grand to Lou Graham, change her Clan, and voila: the Chinese Room has made their own original, copyright-able rendition of Lou Graham, the historical person. I'm guessing juuuust enough is different about Tolly and Dale that they too could manage crossing over.
I debated whether to post White Queen's words here. Like I said up top, it all SEEMS possible. That HSL mismanaged itself into IP loss--that upper management is once again to blame--is a comforting, familiar narrative. This answer is possible and comforting enough to cross-post. I hope it offers some peace to the VtM fans who are still wondering and mourning what could have been.
