作者：Luke McKinney

电子游戏开发商兼发行商THQ申请了Chapter 11破产，并且与其它深受喜爱的公司一样，它似乎也难以回头了。现在，电子游戏拥有比NASA更多的预算以及更先进的技术。THQ是一家拥有数十亿资产的公司。它拥有迪士尼，皮克斯以及WWE游戏的独家授权。出售虚假的战斗给摔跤运动的粉丝是你将目标市场带向简单模式的一种方法。

THQ的破产并不能说是网络产业的灾难或社交网络游戏的共享领域的幻灭。没有人对如今的Zynga遭遇的巨大损失与员工流失感到惊讶。Zynga的核心策略是“找到世界上最容易分心的人，然后尝试着吸引他们的注意力好几年。”

THQ以极快的速度赔了许多钱，连Donald Trump（游戏邦注：美国的地产大亨）也表示如果自己是这家公司的首席执行官便会宣告它的破产。比起我自己的作品，我花在THQ的作品上的时间会更多，所以我觉得自己有权利说些话。

6.uDraw

当任何一家公司失败后，人们会问的第一件事总是原因，但是对于THQ来说，这一问题的答案却很尴尬。

uDraw（from cracked）

最初的uDraw是Wii的图像配件。这是合理的，因为根据定义，Wii拥有者将只是因为乐趣而购买一些非常有限的硬件。但这是因为任天堂拥有三个遗留的授权。（过去是四个，但是他们将《银河战士》交给了Team NINJA，这家认为女性需要把胸口遮盖住的公司。《银河战士：另一个M》使Samus Aran丧失了尊严，不过幸运的是她并没有穿上透明的盔甲。）

uDraw仍设法去赚钱。之后，将其推向Xbox 360和PS3更是THQ所做出的非常愚蠢的决定。自从Alamo“1836年面向墨西哥人的半价弹药”促销以来便不再出现过自杀式的市场营销。THQ宣称市场调查预示着对于这些产品的“强大需求”，这只能证明THQ不能与市场研究扯上关系。那一年Xbox上最畅销的游戏是《现代战争3》，《天际》和《战地3》。主机玩家唯一想要涂上的颜色是红色，并伴随着短程猎枪以及一具敌人尸体。

面向PS3用户营销一个廉价的颜色工具就像在磁反应堆上贴上一首有关地磁的诗歌：任何人都想使用这样昂贵且不允许人们靠近的硬件。他们可能也会提供给HAL 9000“说与拼写”功能。仅仅一个季度内，超过100万个未售出的单位便为该公司造成了5600万美元的损失。如果他们告诉CEO去解决数千美元的账单并将其关在一个让人吃到饱的印度自助餐厅里，他们的损失可能就不会这么多。如果他们用香蕉和卡祖笛自杀的话可能会更有尊严。

5.《国土纺线》

THQ尝试着带着《国土防线》进入射击游戏市场，而你只会再次发现像《 Hellraiser》那样糟糕的开场。射击游戏是自动化种族主义者。基本机制是“玩家所面对的另一端的其他人需要被射中。”这并不是个必要的问题。有些游戏编造了虚构的外星人，也有些游戏，如《使命召唤》告诉玩家任何带有肤色或第二语言的人都有两个爱好：暴行以及愚蠢地把脑袋伸到盖子外边。这便是《毁灭公爵》发展的唯一主题。

bleeding heart liberal（from cracked）

《国土防线》将这种自动化种族主义指向了7500万朝鲜人。这真的很可笑，它让《Red Dawn》为少数角色而欢呼。《国土防线》中的朝鲜人比《M*A*S*H》中的朝鲜人承受了更血腥的痛苦，并且呈现出更少的同情。城市让City 17更像是迪士尼中的世界。朝鲜人抵触着日内瓦公约。他们违反了许多条款。在简介中，你会看到他们破坏别人的家庭，打压无辜的居民，枪决囚犯，并创建一个工作营，所有的这一切都在践踏着爱国者们的鲜血。

在电子游戏中朝鲜人并未咬小狗的头的唯一原因是，他们花太多精力去割下小狗的眼皮。最糟糕的部分在于游戏显然认为这是很严重的。这便是最拙劣的模仿—-即对于《Hot Shots: The Shooting unAmericans Game》，但它却像上帝般将红色淌入白色与蓝色间而帮助美国抵御外国人。这真的很奇怪，因为如果他想要从外国人手下保卫美国，他便可以在1492年更轻松地做到这点。而游戏却非常的暴力，Rambo本来可以放下枪给对方一个拥抱的。

4.《致命搏击》

《致命搏击》是一款暴力格斗类游戏。暴力格斗游戏将永远作为带有最优秀名字的游戏。

tagline（from cracked）

《致命搏击》是第一款意识到你应该使用数字化图像而不是游戏玩法的游戏，而THQ在向SNES转换时却忘记了图像。街机游戏是图像的改革，即那时候这意味着“人们开始知道如何使用摄像机”。它的唯一买点是大量的数字化图像，THQ在发行游戏时还伴随着一些较小的精灵。

暗盒是对于娱乐理念的暴力攻击，这也是其唯一成功的打击。这是如此糟糕的编程，即一个角色带有其它角色所没有的Flash般的优势，并且只是因为他拥有较少的动画帧。这直接证明了程序员破坏了他们所碰触到的一切内容：只是因为他们花了较少的时间于该角色身上他便拥有了绝对的优势。

整个声道便是一个样本，拥有比平均铃声更短且更少的旋律。1992年，游戏拥有比幽灵还糟糕的碰撞检测，并且比起幽灵原体对于控制的反应更慢。如果说什么能够彻底毁掉THQ，这便首当其冲。比起聘请一个性工作者去看管你的孩子，花50美元在《致命搏击》上真的太不值了，因为至少灾难中的参与者知道自己正在做些什么。

3.《战锤40K：星际战士》

在可怕的未来中，只留下无尽的战争。可怕的战争。在《战锤40K》的世界中，人们意识到不能使用电锯解决冷漠宇宙中无尽的恐怖，所以他们发明了链轴和链拳。在这个宇宙中，战士将航行着舰船到外星世界中，驾驶着装备了激光炮的武装直升机下降到表面，驱动装有大炮的坦克往前开，然后握着巨大的剑向敌人冲去。如果你认为我是在说笑，你便错失了一些要点。

《战争黎明》是有趣的实时策略游戏，而《星际战士》则是围绕着一个粉色手提包的《机器战争》一般的游戏。《机器战争》是带有少数颜色的“打地鼠”模拟游戏。在某些人死之前你掌握了他们的真正属性，而在《机器战争》中这一属性便是“胆怯”。胆怯射击者的再生系统意味着最聪明的行动便是蜷缩起来，这样别人便看不到你，也不能对你做任何事了。这并不是一种战争策略，只是在“休眠”。

The chainsword（from cracked）

《星际战士》并不具有这样的“胆怯”按键，玩家在这种时候携带的将是一把枪而不是衔着蕾丝边的白旗。他们是通过执行任务而恢复生命值—-如果你基于一次特别的行动而花一秒钟杀死一个敌人，你便能够恢复生命值。这是一种核心的游戏机制。当你将要死亡时，你的冲击反应将变成“向敌人扑去而尽可能消灭更多敌人”以及“想要知道为什么事实并非总是如此。”很明确地，如果你曾经拥有完整的生命值，你便不可能做对。你并不是在无止尽地射击；你是通过敌人的血液而补充能量的战争引擎。

2.《鬼玩人：尸变重生》

《The Necronomicon Ex Mortis》是恐怖游戏中能够召唤出死亡，控制生命并诅咒英雄的魔法书。Ashley J. Williams是一手带着电锯，另一只手握着短枪，并带着绝对的精力去避免致命危险的英雄。他是游戏中唯一能够通过击掌而杀死敌人的行动英雄，但比起敌人Deadite，他在游戏中的大部分时间里都是步履蹒跚地行走着。

在《A Fistful of Boomstick》中，玩家可能会用掉汽油并只剩下一个无用的电动工具。这意味着至少一名程序员认为有关僵尸肢解的游戏是解决自己阳痿的方法。THQ在《尸变重生》中对此做出了道歉。这款游戏是《鬼玩人II》的续集，即比起回到过去，Ash来到了一个刑事收容所，因为警察发现他手上连着一个电锯并且在一间小屋子里找到了被锯断的女朋友尸首。在这款游戏中，Ash可以用鱼叉发射器，火焰喷射器以及枪榴弹发射器换掉电锯，这为之前未解答的问题“为什么你不换掉装了电锯的手”提供了答案。

Ash（from cracked）

它也通过给予玩家一个烦人的伙伴角色然后让你反复杀死他而了解玩家。你可以做的第一件事便是将它推到一个木头削片机里。在游戏中拾起几页《Necronomicon》能够打开有关Bruce Cambell的访问，以此证明他们了解《鬼玩人》的粉丝，因为那些仍然在玩2005年版本的《鬼玩人》游戏的玩家已经到达了一个不可能的点，即从医药学领域来看不可能获得足够的Bruce Cambell了。

1.《黑道圣徒3》

作为THQ最后的作品之一，《黑道圣徒3》就像耶稣最后的任务一样，都是要拯救人类。《黑道圣徒3》不能说是一款游戏；它被神化了。在制作了这款游戏后THQ遭遇了破产的情况便证明了世界上简直没有公理。他们利用了《侠盗猎车手》并将其变成一些具有乐趣的内容，而不是基于为了获得技术成就的责任感。

The greatest energy bars（from cracked）

升级后的游戏突出了更加强烈的燃料。第一个任务是空运一个银行金库，第二个则是踢飞一架大型喷气式客机，在驾驶了三个级别的汽车后，你的角色将会说：“吝啬鬼，给我坦克。”没有刷任务也没有长时间的开锁—-只要游戏能做到的，它便会尽可能提供给你任何它能想到的内容，然后也会给你喷气摩托和TRON大炮。通过创造出有趣的护航任务，这款游戏将实现一些不可能的任务，因为你的驱动形式将根据你的乘客是否是该死的老虎而受到影响。

《黑道圣徒3》知道自己是一款游戏并喜欢它。如果你处于汽车10平方米范围内，那么按压“steal”，你将头朝下穿过挡风玻璃跳过去抓住它，因为四处走动也将到达准确的位置。如果你在水里待的时间超过1秒，你便可以瞬间移动到海岸上。完成半个街区的任务目标将驱动它。这就像是开发者真的在玩游戏并摆脱了所有问题。《黑道圣徒3》应该成为被他测试必要的一部分。其它开发者必须完成他们的工作，玩《黑道圣徒3》，然后回头去修改游戏。

《黑道圣徒3》不应该只是赚钱。它还应该让所有人与游戏中的任何神物相连接。就像圣杯，它将诅咒任何接触到它的物体染上疾病。THQ的工作室Volition Inc.不应该被其它公司所收购；它们应该获得执行自由去重新创造世界上的任何其它游戏。他们将把《最终幻想》变成一款角色扮演游戏，你可以在此再次扮演角色，而不是穿着不可思议的衣服走向无止尽的直道上，就像世界最糟糕且最长的狭小通道。他们将创造出你需要花费大多数时间去杀人的《刺客信条》。他们还可能创造出价值60美元的全新《Madden》游戏。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

6 Reasons a Great Game Developer Just Went Bankrupt

By Luke McKinney

A giant has fallen. Video game developer and publisher THQ filed for Chapter 11, and like the death of any loved one, it seemed to come out of an impossible nowhere. Right now, video games have bigger budgets than NASA and use more advanced technology. THQ was a billion-dollar company. It had the exclusive license to Disney, Pixar, and WWE games. Selling fake fights to wrestling fans is how you switch your target market to easy mode.

THQ wasn’t some dot-com disaster or a fartbubble in the filthy shared bathwater of social network gaming. No one’s surprised that Zynga is now hemorrhaging money and employees. Zynga’s core strategy was “Find the most easily distracted people in the world, then try to hold their attention for several years.”

THQ lost money so quickly and impossibly that Donald Trump thought he was CEO and declared bankruptcy again. I’ve spent more time with products of THQ than some products of my own family tree, so I’d like to say a few words.

#6. uDraw

The first thing people ask after any death is what the cause was, and for THQ, the answer was more embarrassing than being found tied to David Carradine.

The original uDraw was an art accessory for the Wii. This made sense, because by definition Wii owners will buy extremely limited hardware for the sake of some simple fun. But that’s because Nintendo has three guaranteed top-notch franchises. (It used to have four, but it gave Metroid to Team NINJA, a company that thinks women need concealed-carry permits to cover their breasts. Metroid: Other M robbed Samus Aran of so much dignity, she was lucky she didn’t end up in transparent armor.)

The uDraw still managed to make a few dollars. Then
THQ went completely insane by releasing it for the Xbox 360 and PS3. There hasn’t been such suicidal marketing since the Alamo’s “New Year 1836 Half-Price Ammunition for Mexicans” sale. THQ claimed that market research indicated a “strong demand” for these products, which only proved that THQ shouldn’t have slept with market research’s wife. That year’s top-selling Xbox games were Modern Warfare 3, Skyrim, and Battlefield 3. The only color that console’s players wanted to paint was red, with close-range shotgun blasts and an enemy corpse.

Marketing a cheap coloring tool to the PS3 crowd was like offering magnetic poetry to stick on the side of a nuclear reactor: Anyone who wants to use such expensive hardware like that isn’t allowed near it. They might as well have offered HAL 9000 a Speak & Spell. Over a million unsold units contributed to a company-wide loss of $56 million for the quarter. They would have lost less money if they’d told their CEO to wipe his ass with thousand-dollar bills and locked him in an all-you-can-eat Indian buffet. It would have been a more dignified suicide if they’d performed seppuku with a banana and a kazoo soundtrack.

#5. Homefront

THQ tried to get into the shooter market with Homefront, and you’ll only find worse opening moves in a Hellraiser movie. Shooting games are automatically racist. The basic mechanic has to be “anybody on the other side needs to be shot in the face.” That’s not necessarily a problem. Some games make up harmless imaginary aliens, while other games, like Call of Duty, teach players that anyone with a skin tone or second language has only two hobbies: atrocities and stupidly sticking their heads out of cover. This is the one and only subject in which Duke Nukem is progressive.

Homefront turned this automatic racism dial up to 75 million filthy Koreans. It’s so ludicrously gung-ho, it would make Red Dawn cheer for the minority characters. The Koreans in Homefront were responsible for more bloody agony than the Koreans in M*A*S*H, and were less sympathetically represented. The cities make City 17 look like Disney World. Koreans contravene the Geneva Conventions like there’s an achievement for 100 percent completion. They violated more clauses than a horny reindeer. In the intro, you watch them breaking up families, beating innocent civilians, executing prisoners, and starting a work camp, all through a window both liberally and literally spattered with the blood of patriots.

The only reason the video game Koreans don’t bite the heads off puppies is because they put too much work into cutting their puppy eyelids off and making them stare at salt. The worst part is that the game clearly thinks it’s serious. This could have been the ultimate parody — Hot Shots: The Shooting unAmericans Game — but it acts like God personally bled the red into the white and blue to defend America from filthy foreigners. Which is weird, because if he’d wanted to defend America from foreigners, he could have done it much easier with a few hurricanes around 1492. The game was so insanely violent, Rambo would have dropped his guns to give it a hug.

#4. Pit Fighter

Pit Fighter was a Violence Fight-style game. Violence Fight was and will forever remain a Greatest-Name-Ever-style game.

Pit Fighter was one of the first games to realize that you could use digitized graphics instead of gameplay, and THQ’s SNES conversion forgot the graphics. The arcade game was a revolution in graphics back when that meant “someone knows how to use a camera.” Its only selling point was massive digitized graphics, and THQ released it with tiny sprites. The only thing less fun when shrunk while still screwing people so badly is an actual penis.

The cartridge is a violent attack on the concept of entertainment, and that was its only successful blow. It was so poorly programmed that one character had a Flash-like advantage over the others simply because he had fewer animation frames. It was direct proof that the programmers destroyed everything they touched: He had the upper hand specifically because they spent less time working on him.

The entire soundtrack was a single sample shorter and less melodic than the average ringtone. In 1992. The game had worse collision detection than a ghost, and was less responsive to control than that ghost’s original body. If anything should have killed THQ, it was this. Pit Fighter was a worse use of $50 than hiring a sex worker to screw your kid, because at least then one person involved in the disaster would know what they were doing.

So why should we mourn their passing?

#3. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war. Awesome, awesome war. Warhammer 40,000 is a world where people realized that you couldn’t tackle the bleak horror of an uncaring universe with a chainsaw, so they invented chainaxes and chainfists, too. It’s a universe where warriors sail planet-killing warpships to alien worlds, fly turbolaser-equipped gunships down to the surface, drive volcano-cannon tanks to the front, then get out and run at the enemy with big swords. And if you think I was taking the piss, you’ve missed the point.

The Dawn of War games were fine real-time strategy titles, but Space Marine was where 40K explained that the “Gears of War” were actually the little hinges on a pink handbag. Gears of War is a whack-a-mole simulator with fewer colors. You learn someone’s true nature in the moments before their death, and in Gears of War, that nature is “cower.” The regenerative health system in cover shooters means that the smartest move is huddling where no one can see you and not doing anything until you feel better. That’s not a battle strategy, that’s hibernation. That crisis response tactic is one couch and a pint of ice cream away from both watching and being Ally McBeal.

The Space Marines don’t have a cover button, for the same reason they carry guns instead of white flags made of frilly lace panties. Health recovery is via execution — if you take a second to kill an enemy with a particularly brutal move, you recover health. That’s badassery as a core gameplay mechanic. When you’re about to die, your impulse reaction becomes “diving at the enemy to destroy as many as possible” and “wondering why that’s not always the case.” It’s made very clear that if you ever have full health, you’re not doing it right. You’re not playing endless shooting galleries; you’re an engine of war powered by enemy blood.

#2. Evil Dead: Regeneration

The Necronomicon Ex Mortis is an evil text that can raise the dead, possess the living, and curse the most guaranteed action hero in history with an eternity of terrible games. Ashley J. Williams has a chainsaw for one hand, carries a shotgun in the other, and is sustained by sheer kickass to avoid the lethal risk of ever unzipping his pants. He’s the only action hero who could kill enemies with a high-five, but most of his games have been worse shambling wrecks than his own Deadite enemies.

In A Fistful of Boomstick, it was possible to run out of gasoline and be left clutching a useless power tool. Meaning that at least one programmer thought a video game about a zombie-shredding chainsaw was the place to work through his impotence issues. THQ apologized with Evil Dead: Regeneration. The game is an alternate sequel to Evil Dead II, where instead of traveling back in time, Ash has traveled to a criminal asylum, because that’s what happens when the police find you connected to a chainsaw in a shack full of girlfriend parts. In this game, Ash can replace his chainsaw with a harpoon launcher, flamethrower, and grenade launcher, providing an omnipotent trinity of answers to the previously unanswerable question, “Why would you ever replace your chainsaw hand?”

It also understood gamers by giving you an annoying sidekick character and then letting you immediately repeatedly murder him. One of the first things you can do is punt him into a wood chipper. Note: I want this team working on Duck Hunt: Regeneration. Picking up pages of the Necronomicon in the game unlocked DVD extras of interviews with Bruce Campbell, proving that they understood Evil Dead fans, because anyone still buying Evil Dead games in 2005 has reached a point where it’s medically impossible to get enough Bruce Campbell.

#1. Saints Row: The Third

One of THQ’s last works was Saints Row: The Third, in the same way that one of Jesus’ last works was the salvation of mankind. Saints Row 3 wasn’t a game; it was apotheosis. That THQ could go bankrupt after making this is proof that there is no justice in the world. They took Grand Theft Auto and turned it into something you’d actually play for fun, instead of a sense of duty to impressive technical achievement.

The game escalated like oral sex in a launching space shuttle and featured more burning fuel. The first mission airlifts a bank vault, the second flying-kicks right through a (now exploding) jumbo jet, and after only three levels of driving cars, your character says, “Screw this, get me the tank.” No grinding, no game-long unlocks — the game gives you everything it can think of as soon as it can, then gives you jetbikes and a TRON cannon, too. This game even achieves the impossible by making escort missions fun, because your driving style is affected by whether your passenger is receiving oral sex or being a goddamn tiger.

Saints Row 3 knows it’s a game and loves it. If you’re within 10 square meters of a car and press “steal,” you immediately leap headfirst through the windscreen to take it, because fuck moving around to get into the right position. Just like a lack of tigers or grinding boringly until you’re done, their design document was “If you don’t want it during sex, you don’t want it during this game.” If you’re in the water for longer than a second, you can teleport to shore. Getting within half a block of a mission objective triggers it. It’s almost like the developers actually played the game and got rid of all the problems. Saints Row 3 should be a compulsory part of beta testing. ALL beta testing. Every other developer should be made to finish their work, play Saints Row 3, then go back and fix their game.

Saints Row shouldn’t just have made money. Saints Row should have made everyone connected with the game immortal. Like the Holy Grail, it simply cured the ills of anything it was exposed to. THQ’s studio Volition Inc. shouldn’t be bought by another company; they should be granted executive freedom to remake every other game on the planet. They’d make Final Fantasy role-playing games where you actually play a role again, instead of wearing improbable clothes down endless straight paths like the world’s worst and longest catwalk. They’d make an Assassin’s Creed where you spend most of your time actually killing people. Hell, they could probably make a new Madden game that was actually worth another $60.(source:cracked)