MindsEye’s controversial Blacklisted DLC is a desperate publicity stunt

There are a few ways to deal with a bad video game launch. Some studios dedicate themselves to rehabilitating a bad game they still believe in; others cut their losses and move on to the next project knowing what not to do next time. Or, you could do… whatever MindsEye developer Build a Rocket Boy did instead.

After the disastrous launch of MindsEye, a third-person shooter directed by former Grand Theft Auto producer Leslie Benzies, a typical flop turned into a circus over the course of nine months. Rather than taking a loss with grace, Benzies began spreading conspiracy theories that the game was sabotaged by internal and external forces. Studio co-CEO Mark Gerhard even went as far as to suggest that some of the negative reception to the game was being financed by malicious actors.

A tantalizing mystery rose from a flop that was far more interesting than MindsEye ever was: Who wanted to kill MindsEye and why?

Build a Rocket Boy promised to deliver some of those answers in the game’s first DLC expansion, Blacklisted, which is available now as a free update. Gerhard has spent the last month hyping up the shooter’s new mission as a must-see event, claiming it would contain real “evidence” of sabotage. He even teased that it would include the names of some of the people involved with the behind-the-scenes drama.

The reality is much more mundane than that. Gerhard’s salacious comments have proven to be little more than a cynical marketing tactic for a paltry mission that doesn’t attempt to address any of MindsEye’s real problems. Aside from peppering in a few poorly coded references to real people, the only thing that’s shocking about Blacklisted is how boring it is.

In Blacklisted, you play as a brand-new super spy named Julia Black. She works for an agency called Meridian, who has sent her to the Las Vegas-inspired Redrock to assassinate two people behind a new designer drug that’s spreading through the city. The spy mission plays out like a repurposed Hitman mission, as Julia bounces between a few locations, gathers intel, and executes the bad guys. Along the way, she learns that there’s a much bigger conspiracy theory happening behind the scenes that’s bigger than euphoria-inducing drugs. Intrigued yet?

Let’s back up for a second, because there are some weird things you’ll see in the very first minute of the DLC. Actually, wait, let’s go back even further and give the DLC some credit. Start with the trailer for the DLC, which features its own glitzy Bond theme that’s as cinematic as 007 First Light’s Lana Del Rey-sung title track. It’s at least a sign that Build a Rocket Boy is investing in high production — no wait, scratch that. It’s royalty-free music. Carry on.

Upon loading the mission, you’ll be met with a screen informing you that you cannot save at any point during Blacklisted, and you will lose all progress when you exit the game. That’s a bizarre choice, but not a total inconvenience, because Blacklisted is over in less than an hour. If that sounds rather insubstantial for a big DLC, it’s because Build a Rocket Boy’s intent is that you’ll play it over and over again to rack up a high score during a playthrough and reach the top of the leaderboards. (It is never clear at any point that you are amassing points until you reach the ending and are met with unexplained math.)

The real red flag is in the DLC’s opening cinematic, where a voiceover sets the stage. If it’s not an AI voice reading the script, then the actor behind it deserves a Game Award for Best Performance. The robotic voice explains that the game’s targets plan to meet at a hotel where they will “agree a deal” to create a fleet of drug-hauling drones. It’s the first real indication that MindsEye isn’t going to be redeemed here.

TK CUTSCENE CLIP HERE

And boy, oh boy, it sure isn’t. Despite starring a new character with some vague parental drama, Blacklisted is classic MindsEye (derogatory). Half of the short DLC is spent driving from location to location while your handler drops exposition. When you’re allowed to leave the car — you cannot exit your vehicle unless you’ve reached your destination — you’re left to engage in some very light and linear stealth action. Snipe a target after picking them out of a crowd with a drone, infiltrate a warehouse to find some intel on your next hit, and disguise your way into a party just like Agent 47. Everything here is Hitman 101, but in short scenes that hardly have any time to build on MindsEye’s perfectly servicable third-person shooting.

Blacklisted wants to trick you into thinking that it’s an immersive sim, but it’s not fooling anyone. The world is entirely unreactive, and the story plays out in a linear fashion despite the fact that there are four endings to chase. If you walk into a hotel waving a gun around, the guards won’t bat an eye. If you smash into a cop car while fleeing from the scene of an assassination, the cops will just leave you alone and continue on with their business. Nobody questions when Julia steals the identity of a popular DJ and shows up to the gig he’s supposed to work in his signature mask. During the climactic final scene on a hotel rooftop, I accidentally blew my cover and ended up in a shootout with the guards. That seemed to lock me out of finishing the story. I had to jump off the roof and plummet to my death to reset. With pleasure.

Image: Build a Rocket Boy via Polygon

But who cares about any of that, right? That’s not what we’re here for. The whole appeal of Blacklisted is seeing one of the weirdest PR cycles in video game history build to a bizarre in-game crashout. Unfortunately, Gerhard is one hell of a marketer. Blacklisted isn’t full of real documents showing evidence that MindsEye was sabotaged. The only real hint we get toward the real-life studio drama is Julia’s handler rambling about how there is a mole within Meridian who stole data from the company. The language matches what Benzies has said about Build a Rocket Boy, but it’s hardly new insight that proves a conspiracy.

Like a Taylor Swift album, there are at least some not-so-subtly-coded references to real people. In the mission where you have to steal a DJ’s identity, the dialogue calls out a shady agency called Ritual Network. That’s also the name of a real company, which Gerhard previously suggested was behind the alleged MindsEye smear campaign. The mission has you abducting an annoying masked influencer, which could be read as a nod to content creator Cyberboi. Gerhard previously suggested that the YouTuber had been paid by Ritual Network to smear MindsEye, which Cyberboi denies.

Like MindsEye itself, all of this is painfully stupid. Blacklisted is a petty diss track that hardly delivers any substantial bars; imagine if Kendrick Lamar spent the entirety of “Not Like Us” complaining about Drake’s shoes. It reeks of desperation, coming across as Build a Rocket Boy trying to turn controversy into a juicy tabloid story that will sell copies of the game. (Notably, the free update comes alongside a price cut for the base game. Convenient!)

Image: Build a Rocket Boy via Polygon

I’d find the situation a lot funnier if the studio wasn’t embroiled in very real labor issues. The studio has reportedly laid off hundreds of developers since last June, all while pinning MindsEye’s failure on “corporate espionage.” Some of the studio’s remaining staff members have sued the studio, alleging that Build a Rocket Boy’s bosses placed surveillance software on their devices. The studio isn’t exactly in a position to turn its situation into a pithy video game farce.

The direction hasn’t done much to make MindsEye any better, either. Beyond the poor stealth gameplay, Blacklisted is a technical mess even on PlayStation 5 Pro. I experienced frequent framerate dips and temporary freezes during shootouts. The DLC’s low-quality voice acting only adds to the sense that MindsEye stands to get worse as Build a Rocket Boy turns the shooter into a place for it to monetize its conspiratorial rants. Even covering Blacklisted feels like I’m doing the company’s job for it by making it sound like a “so bad it’s good” guilty pleasure that you simply have to play for yourself.

Whether or not you want to satisfy your morbid curiosity is up to you, but Blacklisted isn’t worth the attention it begs for. It’s a lifeless stealth mission littered with a few Easter eggs that YouTubers can make videos about. The only one sabotaging Build a Rocket Boy at this point is its leadership.