GameMill Entertainment

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

• Remington Big Buck Trophy Hunt (2002)
• Ultimate Civil War Battles: Robert E. Lee vs. Ulysses S. Grant (2003)
• Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing (2003)
• Midnight Race Club: Supercharged! (2004)
• Xia-Xia (2012)
• Frozen: Olaf's Quest (2013)
• Big Hero 6: Battle in the Bay (2014)
• Goosebumps: The Game (2015)
• Big Buck Hunter Arcade (2016)
• Monster Jam: Crush It! (2016)
• Cartoon Network: Battle Crashers (2016)
• Rapala Fishing Pro Series (2017)
• Nickelodeon Kart Racers (2018)
• American Ninja Warrior: Challenge (2019)
• Zombieland: Double Tap – Road Trip (2019)
• Street Outlaws: The List (2019)
• Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix (2020)
• G.I. Joe: Operation Blackout (2020)
• Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues (2020)
• Cruis'n Blast (physical releases) (2021)
• Street Outlaws 2: Winner Takes All (2021)
• Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl (2021)
• Nerf Legends (2021)
• Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway (2022)

Why They and (Most of) Their Games Suck

1. As mentioned above, most of their titles are cheap shovelware games made to just get a quick buck.
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 like cheap flash, mobile, or java games, with the biggest example being Cartoon Network: Battle Crashers.
4. Many glitches and bugs can be found in their games, further proving that they were rushed and unfinished, and no time and effort were put into them.
5. Many of their games feel lifeless, no voice acting or charm is 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, 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 Tommy's house features the house in an L-shape, but in the actual show (Rugrats), Tommy's house is in a perfect square shape save for his garage.
11. They try to be trendy sometimes, for example, Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix features popular (and terribly annoying) teen star, JoJo Siwa.
12. None of their Nickelodeon games from 2018-present (except for Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl since the June 2022 update) have voice acting.

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 predecessor, as there's a much bigger roster with the amount of characters increased from 12 to 30, and there's way more content such as online multiplayer and a "pit crew" system (70 members to choose from).
   • The upcoming Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway is expected to have over 40 playable characters, over 90 pit crew members to select, and best of all, voice acting!
2. Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 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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