9mo ago

Will Smith Zombie Game No One Has Heard Of Bombs

kotaku.com Will Smith Zombie Game No One Has Heard Of Bombs

The Oscar-winning actor promoted Undawn before its June 2023 launch, but it still 'flopped spectacularly'

Will Smith Zombie Game No One Has Heard Of Bombs. The Oscar-winning actor promoted Undawn before its June 2023 launch, but it still 'flopped spectacularly'

kotaku.com /undawn-will-smith-tencent-mobile-pc-flop-1851358692

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Dude slapped away his career.
- Used to be one of The top movie stars in the world. Not even Tom Cruz has thrown it all away yet. Smith managed it though.
  
  Fucking seriously. Dude was a massive box office draw and on top of that had had a truly wholesome career. He was well respected. Could really act....had solid comedy chops. Very few true stinkers in his IMDB page. And he threw it all away for a removed who LAUGHS about cheating on him.
  I hate the word because of right wing fucks but there is no other way to describe it. He's a fucking cuck.
  
  Ton Cruise is incredibly successful, vastly more successful than better people with no baggage. It’s kind of weird because Cruise’s cult is way, way worse than the slap. But Cruise also seems to be more talented and outwardly likable and his cult is pretty good at staying hidden.
  
  From pretty much all reports Tom Cruise is generally really nice to people. If you're a nice weirdo then whatever, they're Hollywood people, they're all weirdos.
  But if you're an asshole weirdo, that's when people won't like you anymore.
- Is it actually known that the slap had a negative effect on his career? I don’t follow these things, but most of the reactions I’ve seen were on the neutral/comedic side
  
  People make jokes about it but... People also make jokes about Elon musk while at the same time hating the fucker. He's not Elon musk level hated now but the reaction in this comment section seems to show that both people really don't like him anymore. I know I'm one of them for sure and I grew up with the dude. So many huge things in my life were him.
  And then look at the facts... He's done basically nothing since then. There's this game. He has a few producer credits on his IMDb. And last I heard the only actual movie he works is a completely nonsensical sequel to I Am Legend.
  He fucking died at the end of that movie! They flat out said they're just going to pretend the end of the movie didn't happen so they could make a sequel lol.
  
  Much is made about online cancel culture, but that's just people making a lot of noise on the internet and doesn't matter much.
  The real cancel culture is when most people simply don't like an actor as much as they used to. If the majority of people like an actor just 10% less than they used to, they take a massive hit to their career. Just liking someone a slightly less means you're just going to watch something else instead. But when a majority of people feel the same way then liking someone a little less means translates into a large percentage of people not watching something. It's not like you are going to watch 90% of a Will Smith movie because you like him 10% less, you either watch a movie or you don't.
  Real cancel culture isn't "I HATE THIS GUY SO MUCH I'LL NEVER EVER WATCH ANYTHING HE'S IN!" as portrayed on the internet. The real version is "Will Smith? Meh... there's probably something better to watch."
  I don't vehemently hate Will Smith for the slap. But The fact that I'm a little less likely to watch his movies now and the fact that there's always other things to watch means it's unlikely I'll watch another Will Smith movie.
  And whatever, he's got lots of money already, it's no big deal if his show business career is over.
- He was well washed out before the slap.
  
  My boy, he won the Oscar for best actor on slap night. He was still pissing gold.
  
  I mean... Five minutes before the slap, he was sitting in his front-row seat at an internationally-televised award ceremony where he had just been nominated for two of the most coveted honors in cinema. I dunno if he was that bad off.
  
  Eh....not really. He hadn't done anything Independence Day level for a while but he was still cranking out popular shit. That movie about the Williams sisters was only 1 year before he threw it all away and that did pretty well.
- I just checked the game out on the steam store.
  Outside of it looking like a game from 2012, it seems to be very much pay to win, clunky, and I watched their videos and looked through pics and read the description on the games page.....Not a single picture or mention of Will Smith at all. Nothing.
- Doesn't help that he's a removed

Bonus: Dunkey made a video on the game
I'm 100% convinced this was an elaborate scam. No way this broken asset flip needed over 100 million dollars.
- Oh my god they broke out into a song.
  Game of the year.
  
  Holy shit, that really was worse than it sounded
- I like how men look like regular men but all the women are almost anime like goddesses
- Maybe he needed a tax writeoff to avoid paying some taxes?
  
  This is not made by Will. He only did some advertising and stuff for it I think.
- that is what i call a BBB game
  
  I'd go CCC myself, but to each their own.
- How did I miss this masterpiece of a game?

I’d be careful to read too much into this. If they wanted it to be successful, it would have been Raid: Shadow Legends or Genshin Impact level promoted, especially with $140M sunk in dev.
This seems like they had no confidence in the finished product so they didn’t even bother to market it, just shat it out to app stores probably to meet contractual obligations and it will be gone soon.
Either that or there is some behind the scenes nonsense happening preventing it from being marketed. Think something like Will Smith having it in his contract that it has to release and giving him 25% of sales, for example.
But for something to cost that much and bomb that hard, it’s essentially impossible without them basically cutting their losses before launch and expecting it to fail. It’s the mobile game equivalent of the “lowest grossing movie”, basically something that was only released because it has to be, and not a true reflection of product quality. Like I’m sure it sucks, but is it THAT much worse than 99% of mobile trash? Probably not.
- Any chance a lot of the money got funneled somewhere else and the actual game had some tiny budget?
  
  Definitely a non-zero chance, at the very least

Zombie: "Rawrrr" munch munch nom nom
Will: "Get my wife's arm out of your fucking mouth!"
</low hanging fruit>

I genuinely have no interest in anything he does any more. Not actively boycotting his projects or anything, more complete disinterest. And I'm not even saying all art has to be viewed through the lens of the artist. But there are people that have such memorable or distinct performances that afterwards they have trouble getting other roles... This is like that, but cranked up to 11.
And I know he's a meme and we joke about it... but because of his weird hangups he chose to use violence on another person on a world stage, with cameras on him. By his own actions he made it impossible for me to lose myself in any character he plays, instead I'll only think about The Slap.
- I genuinely have no interest in anything he does any more
  This was me when he started trying to shoehorn his kid into the spotlight with those cringe interviews and that really awful movie about not being scared of aliens or whatever. I care about it so little that I can't remember the name of the movie and have zero interest in looking it up.
  This comment about not caring about Will Smith is the maximum effort I'm willing to put into anything related to him.
  
  His kid has been in a few movies now, and his daughter made that one song. I honestly don't care that he is trying to promote his kids because I think they wanted that and Will had the sway to do it. I think most parents would use their privilege to help their kids. But I do agree that that alien fear movie was trash.
- I really only liked Will Smith as an actor because he seemed to be a likeable person. Now I know better.
  
  Eh, I think he's a good person that was hit by a horribly misplaced attempt at chivalry. There's a lot of stuff he's done that I don't like, but it's mostly been in his attempts to protect and help his family.
  There are worse reasons to do bad things. It's not an excuse; I just think he's not a terrible person.
  
  Keep Will Smith's name out of your fucking mouth!!!

Dunkie’s review is hilarious
- If that's a review our terminology is getting a little... Loose
  
  I mean, the key part of that sentence was Dunkey. Its kind of funny too because I now feel similar about Dunkey as I do Smith. They did that one persona REALLY WELL, but its just one persona, and eventually it gets old

Celebrity endorsement has never been a factor in how well a videogame does either way, regardless of level of star power or degree of involvement for the celebrity: Keanu Reeves playing a heavy hand (heh) in the story of Cyberpunk 2077 did little to stop the game's initial bad press, and the main reason Baldur's Gate 3 did well isn't because JK Simmons is playing Kethric Thorm. (still, he had a great performance). Gameplay matters a lot more for a videogame.
It's unsurprising then, that Oscar winning actor Will Smith's involvement in a game in the oversaturated genre of zombie survival shooters did not become successful.
Plus, I don't think paying celebrities to promote videos on their YouTube channel is an effective marketing strategy, mainly because nobody really watches any celebrities' own YouTube channel, with the exception of Jack Black's gaming channel, of course.
- JK Simmons is playing Kethric Thorm
  See I played Baldur's Gate but I didn't know that shit
  
  They gave him a full beard instead of a stache thats why you couldnt tell.
  
  Says a lot for the quality of voice acting in BG3 that it had Jason Isaacs and JK Simmons and I didn't really notice either of them standing out.
  Although I did notice Gale in an episode of Good Omens.
- I wouldn't hold it against Keanu personally because its clear he really cared and did gave a good performance but i feel like his involvement with cyberpunk ruined a lot of things that could have been.
  
  CDPR effectively rewrote the campaign after Keanu Reeves told them that he's game if CDPR wants to record more lines. I still remember the E3 demo where CDPR said that the campaign has been completed and they're just in the polishing stages.
  
  No one will hold it against him personally, it's not uncommon.
  There are certain actors who performs great in every single movie they appear in, yet still have many of these movies flop. Many times, it's out of the actor's control.
  All we can do is our best.
- Wasn't aware there were celebrities other than Jack Black on YouTube... TIL
  
  Ron Livingstone's YouTube channel had just one video on it for 8 years.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu0qtEwb9gE
  
  Russel Brand is now a far right Christian YouTuber.
- Keanu Reeves really helped promote the game though.
  
  Yes, he did. But neither the main praise nor criticism of the game was not directed towards him but on the overall buginess and removal of RPG elements from the game.
- I mean look how many celebrities are in Squadron42/Star Citizen…

I would play No One Has Heard Of Bombs, sounds like an interesting game
- It's a great title. Weird and evocative.
  
  If no one has heard of bombs then no one can know the title of the game, because otherwise they will see or hear the word bombs. But I've seen the title. Do I even know what a bomb is? I think I do... but do I? The paradox of the bomb knowledge will keep me up tonight.
- What is bomb?
  
  Don't worry about it, on an unrelated note here is a gift of a bulky alarm clock counting down to zero with many wires
  
  Something that comes with lamp oil and rope.
  
  Something somebody set up us with.
- On skimming, I'd thought it had something to do with the kpop group, BTS. They have a song called Louder than Bombs.

Lmfao the trailer doesn't even include any dialogue from Will Smith's character?! Imagine paying (I assume) millions of dollars to get an A-list Hollywood celebrity in your game and you don't even show them in your trailer!
- I watched a dunkey video for it, i dont think there is any dialogue from will smiths character. Like they didnt bother to record it. There was one or two instances where he spoke, and it wasn't will smith.
  
  Wait, so they just licensed Will Smith's likeness?
  They couldn't have just done a character that looks sort of like Will Smith?
  
  What would be cringingly terrible, but entirely possible, is if Will DID record lines for his character, but content pipeline faults/laziness or programming errors mean it doesn’t play ingame.
  I even feel like that same circumstance has happened before…

I'm going to assume that any game that a celebrity suddenly endorses out of nowhere is some low effort mobile thing that probably involves crypto.

wtf I never heard of this game before. How come a game that cost ~$140 million had virtually no marketing except for Will Smith posting it on his youtube channel?
- I think we're seeing the marketing right now.
- Rich People's ego. He thinks his "name" is enough that he doesn't have to market.
- 95% of the budget went to paying Will Smith.
- The post-apocalyptic zombie shooter allegedly had more than 300 developers on it and a budget of nearly 1 billion yuan (around $140 million)
  The word "allegedly" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. There is no way on this Earth that a mess like that cost $140 million to develop, unless somebody pocketed $130m of that and then just outsourced the rest to a tinpot Z tier studio.
  
  Will and Jada are scientologists so that's exactly what happened.
- "We can save millions in advertising, just get your friend Will to post about it, it will be great."
- For real, I might get it to try it out. I'm learning about it from this post.
  
  I wouldn't...
  
  Calm down, Will.

Will Smith is a "past" celebrity, relying on his name, infamy, and horning in on already proven commodities.
Bad Boys for Life, Aladdin, Suicide Squad, (oh, and "King Richard" lol, we've all seen that!)
Those are his "popular" movies since 2009. Put a fork in him. He's done. He should enter politics.
- He should enter politics.
  Please don't do this to us.
  
  Maybe he can go slap putin (hckkkk sppt)
- To be fair Suicide Squad is something he did and passed up Independence Day 2 for believing if he was in one of these "Super Hero Movies that are doing so well" it would revive his career
  And he likely would have been right...... If he went with Marvel instead of the DCEU
  
  Dodging a bullet on ID2 just to land on Suicide Squad. Ouch.
- Didn't he try the celebrity YouTube route for a hot minute?
  
  Yaaaa!
- Aladdin was pretty good though.
  Haven't seen the rest.

Maybe if you promote your game I'll have heard of it...
Looking at you Alone In The Dark 2024
- Wait what? They've made another alone in the dark game and haven't promoted it. Oh god.
  
  Eyup and with tons of Day 1 DLC too! - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1310410/Alone_in_the_Dark/
  Because for some reason only things already ubiquitous get marketed these days
- It suffered a fate worse than no promotion. It was Embracer'd

It's like Goldeneye except the only weapon setting is "Slappers only"
(Too easy, I know)
- Take your eyes of my wife's screen!
- What's up, slappers

This is the big problem with modern gaming. Too many companies are now in hock to investors and publishers. To those at the top of the hierarchy, making a game is an investment, a bet. Innovation is stifled in favour 9f 'safe bets', no wonder gaming is stagnating.
It's not all doom and gloom, there are still exceptions to the rule. But it's certainly not looking good for fantastic single player games.
I'm expecting gta 6 to have a much shorter single player campaign with most of the focus towards online (and more obscene earnings from shark cards 2.0).
- I agree with the rest but it's not just modern gaming it was happening back in the 90s on consoles and earlier in arcades. One of the first games I played was an obvious cash grab by Marvel, Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge for the Gameboy. It was barely playable.
  
  I heard also that even earlier than that, there was an E.T. game that may have been a bad cash grab. I doubt it had any serious impact, though.
- I personally like to think this trend of enshittification in the gaming industry is geared more towards the triple AAA side of things because a lot of the actual indie devs (not the people putting out low effort mobile games or shovelware or scams or straight up large corporatios masquerading their games as indie titles) are putting out some of the best games I've seen in years for single player experiences.
  Though I absolutely agree with your assessment of the situation in general.
  
  Indie games is really where it's at right now.
  
  This was what I meant. It's these smaller devs that seem to be innovating to any extent at the moment!
  Maybe I'm just a bit jaded due to being an old fart nowadays... I remember playing the original Doom / Wolfenstein so especially FPS feel so overdone to me. When was the last time you saw a truly novel game concept? I'm sure I've seen a few over the last few years but can't remember (see, old fart).
- Ive commented on this before, as sad as it is if we want innovative, expansive, beautiful AAA titles we have to accept that investors arent going to keep backing the money truck up on maybes. Microtransactions, subscriptions, dlcs... there has to be an ongoing income stream or an absolutely eyewatering launch price OR we get used to safer and safer bets or games with very narrow scopes.
  
  Yep, it's a real quandary. I'm not sure what the solution is, or if there is one from our perspective... it's no point voting with my wallet when there's millions of others who won't.

Also never heard of this game before.
The top user review on steam made it sound like awful pay to win gacha garbage though, so I'll just move on.

Looks like the church of scientology will need to find another cash cow.
- Hollywood has plenty of scientologists, it's wild.
  
  Kinda but numbers are way down, scientology is dying at the moment

It is rewind time.

I would've loved a proper game using his I am Legend fame, but it seems like even publishers didn't care about it.
- I am legend really loses something when mistitled

Oh joy another soulless zombie shooter. I have no idea why it didn’t make it

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