GameMill Entertainment

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GameMill Entertainment
Guess you could say these guys are GameMilling the money.
Formerly: GameMill Publishing, Inc.
Type: Private
Founded: 2001
Headquarters: Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States
Key people: Tim Flaherty (partner)
Mark Meadows (partner)
Dave Oxford (partner, global head of studios)
Andy Koehler (SVP of business development and licensing)
Jeremy Barker (VP of finance)
Paul Campagna (VP of studios)
Website: gamemill.com

GameMill Entertainment LLC (formerly GameMill Publishing, Inc.) is an American video game publisher based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was originally known for releasing budget games for Microsoft Windows and nowadays GameMill publishes licensed games on consoles, as well as computers.

Notable games

Why They Suck

  1. As mentioned above, most of their titles are cheap shovelware games made to just get a quick buck. Like with most typical licensed games based on movies or cartoons, the games that they fund and publish tend to be incredibly hit or miss, and a majority of the time especially with 2023, they have been miss so far. In fact, their infamous reputation with publishing unpolished licensed games started off in 2016 with Cartoon Network: Battle Crashers, after Activision and Little Orbit stopped doing licensed games.
  2. Many of their games are rushed and unfinished, i.e. Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing and American Ninja Warrior: Challenge are just broken messes that have the tendencies to crash. Big Rigs is a game that barely made it through alpha stages and was somehow released as a game that was sold on store shelves despite being unfinished in so many ways.
  3. Similar to Outright Games, many of their games look and feel more poorly made mobile games or shovelware titles, with very poor graphics, production value, etc.
  4. Many glitches and bugs can be found in their games, further proving that they were rushed and unfinished, and that no time and effort were put into them. This is a side effect of GameMill's crunch time being applied to the devs, which means no time for quality assurance.
  5. Many of their games feel lifeless. No voice acting or charm are present in some of their games.
  6. Many of their games lack any kind of special content and feel bare bones, meaning people will get bored of their games real fast.
  7. False advertising can be found in many areas within their games, for example:
    • In Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, the back of the box says stuff about police chases and delivering illegal cargo, but there are no police chases, no delivering illegal cargo, and every screenshot on the packaging is fake.
    • In the pre-release trailer for Nickelodeon Kart Racers, there were noticeable voiceovers for the characters. In the final game, however, there are no voiceovers.
    • In Zombieland: Double Tap – Road Trip, some trailers say that there is online co-op, but in the final game, no online co-op is anywhere in the game, and instead there is only local co-op.
    • Cartoon Network: Battle Crashers' page on their site shows a cover for the Nintendo DS version, but there's no DS version for this game, which could potentially mean they made an error or that a planned DS release ended up getting scrapped.
  8. Many of their games' prices are too high for the quality of those games, with most of them costing $39.99-$49.99, some costing that price at launch but later permanently reduced.
  9. Some of their games are just bland and uninspired rip-offs of far superior games, like Cartoon Network: Battle Crashers is an obvious rip-off of Castle Crashers from similar gameplay to their names, and Nickelodeon Kart Racers is a rip-off of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed and Mario Kart 7 and 8 due to having similar mechanics of transforming vehicles.
  10. Poor source material grasp can be found in a lot of their games, for example:
    • In Cartoon Network: Battle Crashers, Steven Universe's main attack is a bubble, but in his show, the bubble was only used to protect himself and others from harm or to capture corrupted gems, but never to attack.
    • In Nickelodeon Kart Racers, the character models and CGI for Tommy and Angelica have only sixteen fingers, four on each hand, and the course based on the Pickles house from Rugrats features the house in an L-shape, but in the actual show, The Pickles' house is in a perfect square shape save for the garage.
  11. They try to be trendy sometimes, like how Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix features popular and terribly annoying teen star, JoJo Siwa.
  12. They are known to give developers crunch times and less than a year to make their games. Contrary to popular belief, Nick isn't to blame for Avatar: The Last Airbender: Quest for Balance's negative reception, as within that same year, it has been proven through both Skull Island: Rise of Kong and The Walking Dead: Destinies that GameMill is the one that gives developers the time and budget to develop the game. While 2021 slightly improved GameMill's reputation, that also came to a fluke when 2023 saw three games that were critically panned due to GameMill giving their devs heavy crunch and strict deadlines.

Redeeming Qualities

  1. Sometimes they do try to improve their games. For example:
    • Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix is very much an improvement over its previous, as there's a much bigger roster, and there's way more content such as online multiplayer and a "pit crew" system.
  2. Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl (and the sequel) looks the best of all GameMill games so far, and especially that the game was developed by indie studio Ludosity, the people who previously developed a fairly successful platform fighter titled Slap City.
  3. Unlike most companies, they listen to fans.
  4. Like Activision, they don't announce their games too early.

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