About the Developer

[Dr_Skoda]

So I rediscovered this game in my library, played it long ago like everyone else.

Anybody know what happened? I can't seem to find any information from the Developer in regards to what happened here, and where they've went.

[specko]

This game is well over a decade old by now, I think things just fizzled out after the last update in 2016. Grappledome, the other game of theirs on steam, has a final update message from December 2018 talking about a hiatus on development. I believe that is the last ever public communication from the 800 North devs.

I think that the Devs just moved on to other things as the game slowed in terms of players and sales. I don't think 800 North as a games studio is active anymore. I believe all the Devs were initially from the TV Industry funnily enough, so maybe they've moved back to that.

Back in the day I emailed one of the devs (Novgorad) about the game and got a really nice and long email back. That email hints at some answers about what happened. There is a lot of personal information in the email so I can't just post it, so there's gonna be a lot of "trust me bro" so take what you want from this:

Did you know at one point this game was going to get a TV show adaption? As I said before the Devs were initially TV industry workers, so I think the franchise got the chance to be adapted as a show. It ultimately fell through for a couple reasons, in the email Novgorad highlights the fact that writers couldn't agree on what it was supposed to be, and the Devs had a hard time keeping any adaption consistent with the themes of the game. At one point apparently the show was going to be an Archer style animated show with "cigar-chomping dinosaurs".

The remnants of this multi-year process was the comic book DLC. The reasons the models for Nigel and Hardgrave are different in-game to what they are in the comic is because those comic models were test redesigns for an animated show. If you play around with the Dino D-Day files on GMod you can also find some other unreleased stuff from that era. Ultimately I think pursuing those efforts at adapting the franchise took a serious toll on the resources the devs could put into Dino D-Day, and may have just burnt them out on making new content.

So, that, and also other things: the Source Engine is fairly old, the player base was shrinking, and people were moving on to new things. Keep in mind that the games market was changing significantly at the time. I think it is fair to point to 2016-2017 as start of the decline of formerly popular free to play FPS games like TF2 (2007!!) and the rise of newer free to play games like Overwatch (2016) and Fortnite (2017). I think battle royale games took over and dominated this niche, hell even Call Of Duty was struggling at this time (remember how hated the trailer for COD: Infinite Warfare was???). When you keep in mind how franchise games were struggling at this time, it makes sense that little old indie Dino D-Day just wasn't ever big enough to sustain support.

A quick search on LinkedIn shows that Novgorad is still working in the games industry, so the other devs will all still be around somewhere, Dino D-Day is just unfortunately in the past. Maybe one day the concept will be revived! Who knows. Hope this answers some questions.

[Bloodthirsty Acrus]

Originally posted by specko:

This game is well over a decade old by now, I think things just fizzled out after the last update in 2016. Grappledome, the other game of theirs on steam, has a final update message from December 2018 talking about a hiatus on development. I believe that is the last ever public communication from the 800 North devs.

I think that the Devs just moved on to other things as the game slowed in terms of players and sales. I don't think 800 North as a games studio is active anymore. I believe all the Devs were initially from the TV Industry funnily enough, so maybe they've moved back to that.

Back in the day I emailed one of the devs (Novgorad) about the game and got a really nice and long email back. That email hints at some answers about what happened. There is a lot of personal information in the email so I can't just post it, so there's gonna be a lot of "trust me bro" so take what you want from this:

Did you know at one point this game was going to get a TV show adaption? As I said before the Devs were initially TV industry workers, so I think the franchise got the chance to be adapted as a show. It ultimately fell through for a couple reasons, in the email Novgorad highlights the fact that writers couldn't agree on what it was supposed to be, and the Devs had a hard time keeping any adaption consistent with the themes of the game. At one point apparently the show was going to be an Archer style animated show with "cigar-chomping dinosaurs".

The remnants of this multi-year process was the comic book DLC. The reasons the models for Nigel and Hardgrave are different in-game to what they are in the comic is because those comic models were test redesigns for an animated show. If you play around with the Dino D-Day files on GMod you can also find some other unreleased stuff from that era. Ultimately I think pursuing those efforts at adapting the franchise took a serious toll on the resources the devs could put into Dino D-Day, and may have just burnt them out on making new content.

So, that, and also other things: the Source Engine is fairly old, the player base was shrinking, and people were moving on to new things. Keep in mind that the games market was changing significantly at the time. I think it is fair to point to 2016-2017 as start of the decline of formerly popular free to play FPS games like TF2 (2007!!) and the rise of newer free to play games like Overwatch (2016) and Fortnite (2017). I think battle royale games took over and dominated this niche, hell even Call Of Duty was struggling at this time (remember how hated the trailer for COD: Infinite Warfare was???). When you keep in mind how franchise games were struggling at this time, it makes sense that little old indie Dino D-Day just wasn't ever big enough to sustain support.

A quick search on LinkedIn shows that Novgorad is still working in the games industry, so the other devs will all still be around somewhere, Dino D-Day is just unfortunately in the past. Maybe one day the concept will be revived! Who knows. Hope this answers some questions.

I rlly wondered what happened with that game, i wish i could read that email myself, is that still possible to write to Novigrad or anything about that game and more ? Yet u said most of what i rlly wanted to hear, honestly sad to see it got into state as is it rn