Pearl Abyss games with impressive visuals are disappearing

[DavidGraham]

DokeV and Plan 8 showed very impressive in game visuals back in 2020 and 2021, yet not a word is heard from them ever since.

 

[Cyan]

both look so impressive, specially Plan 8, the particles are stunning on that one. But tbh, did anyone hear about those games before?

 

[fehu]

Are they kickstarter founded too?

 

[orangpelupa]

Their dev cycle has always been long, right? Including their previous mmo

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Their dev cycle has always been long, right? Including their previous mmo

Yes. DokeV also initially was planned to be an MMO before they switched gears on that. So, the plan at the start likely involved funding for 6-8 years of development. The switch to a non-MMO game is also rumored to have delayed the game further. So, perhaps in the end it'll have 8-10 years of development time.

Some South Korean Developers have traditionally enjoyed far longer dev cycles than Western Developers. For example, ArchAge was in development from 2006 to 2013 (7 years). Lost Ark a more recent game was in development from 2011 until 2019 (8 years).

Games as a service pretty much dominates South Korean gaming, that affords them significantly more development time despite a traditionally smaller user base (Korean PC gamers which is a smaller market than global video games). Which in turn historically have allowed them to have on average better looking games than the West for similar periods of time. Of course, it may not initially appear that way as historically Korean games didn't receive a Western port (if they ever got one) until years after their South Korean launch.

Regards,
SB

 

[TopSpoiler]

According to rumors from insider, all of DokeV's core developers (including director) have left the company.

 

[TopSpoiler]

Apparently development of DokeV is in progress but it seems in a low priority at the moment.

[컨콜] 펄어비스 “‘도깨비’ 개발도 속도… 인게임 영상 공개도 고민 중”

펄어비스 도깨비. [ⓒ펄어비스]...

m.ddaily.co.kr

Pearl Abyss CEO Heo Jin-young said in the earnings conference call on the 10th, "We were developing with Crimson Desert through the Black Space Engine, but now that the development of Crimson Desert has been completed, we are transferring development personnel to DokeV."

He said, "We are thinking about releasing additional in-game videos," but added, "For now, we are planning to release (videos) after the release of Crimson Desert in order to focus on Crimson Desert."

He said, "As we know that there are many expectations from the external market for DokeV, we will work hard to prepare to release the information to users as soon as possible."