Talk:Lost media
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Unreleased isn't lost
This is a great topic, thanks for putting it together! To your question, I don't think purely internal preproduction material like Secret of Cybertron, Dark Glass, or the binder count as "lost." --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 08:10, 30 January 2025 (EST)
- Hey, thank you very much! And I guess that the internal / external distinction is a pretty solid idea, it could filter out a lot of stuff that was never really meant to be seen by the public in the first place while still allowing space for media that media that was announced but never released (e.g., Reactivated). I think the latter type is worth preserving on the page still because a lot of lost media circles do discuss cancelled media, but it is true that something like The Secret of Cybertron or the binder aren't on quite the same league: seems counter-intuitive to say that something that was never intended to be released was lost, I guess. (FortressMaxxing (talk) 09:21, 30 January 2025 (EST))
- As an extension of this, I do think the meaning of the term "lost media" has gotten muddled in previous years, and there needs to be more clear delineation between lost media and stuff that was straight up cancelled or never finished, like I said. Like, at least to me, there's a big difference between the MMOs like Universe and Online that were actually playable by the public for an extended period before going offline, and Reactivate, which was never finished enough to reach that state at all. I think there needs to be a level of completion (e.g. fully produced but unreleased, like the Animated shorts, or released but taken down, like the MMOs) to really qualify as lost media. -- Cyberlink420 (talk)
- The argument on the level of completion makes sense - it just seems that, at least in the case of Reactivate, it did get pretty far in development, there are videos that show the game in a very playable state with near-finished environments and even elements like the HUD design (which are usually some of the last things done in game development) appearing to have received a decent amount of attention. My vote would still be on treating whether something was intended to be officially released or not as the core determining factor for lost media, but it is true that the degree of completion also seems like a useful standard to decide whether or not it deserves to be mentioned in this page - perhaps we could take both into account then. (FortressMaxxing (talk) 09:48, 30 January 2025 (EST))
- It got attention, sure, but by the admission of an anonymous dev team member at Splash Damage, "we never settled on a final vision for that game and so spent years going around in circles making cool demos that never extended much beyond one or two missions and three Transformers." The way it's described makes it sound like it was nowhere close to anything resembling a finished state, in which case I'm not sure what sets it apart from any of the other cancelled games. (IMO, Heavy Metal would be better for inclusion since that one did get soft-launched.) -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 09:58, 30 January 2025 (EST)
- The argument on the level of completion makes sense - it just seems that, at least in the case of Reactivate, it did get pretty far in development, there are videos that show the game in a very playable state with near-finished environments and even elements like the HUD design (which are usually some of the last things done in game development) appearing to have received a decent amount of attention. My vote would still be on treating whether something was intended to be officially released or not as the core determining factor for lost media, but it is true that the degree of completion also seems like a useful standard to decide whether or not it deserves to be mentioned in this page - perhaps we could take both into account then. (FortressMaxxing (talk) 09:48, 30 January 2025 (EST))
- As an extension of this, I do think the meaning of the term "lost media" has gotten muddled in previous years, and there needs to be more clear delineation between lost media and stuff that was straight up cancelled or never finished, like I said. Like, at least to me, there's a big difference between the MMOs like Universe and Online that were actually playable by the public for an extended period before going offline, and Reactivate, which was never finished enough to reach that state at all. I think there needs to be a level of completion (e.g. fully produced but unreleased, like the Animated shorts, or released but taken down, like the MMOs) to really qualify as lost media. -- Cyberlink420 (talk)
Just going to leave this here since I don't plan on editing this page, but the Club bio stuff we do have copies of, or at least I do, not sure if the TFWiki Club archive also has them. Escargon (talk) 10:01, 30 January 2025 (EST)
