I have harbored some ambivalence about a number of games I've worked on: I was uneasy about the violence in The Godfather, the police brutality in Hardline, even the "racial determinism" in the fantasy of Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons.
I was deeply ambivalent about Dead Space Ignition, too, but not for any such profound reasons. I just didn't think it was very good.
They can't all be winners. I've been around a long time, and I know sometimes a project just doesn't come together. Certainly none of us thought Alon D'ar was some world-beater as we were finishing it, for example. But that was a stand-alone product, a new IP on a new console -- it was a risk. It didn't pay off, but that's what risk means.
Ignition felt different. Dead Space had established a meaningful quality bar, Extraction had done a good job to keep it up, and on the Dead Space 2 team we were deep -- deep -- into trying to exceed that bar.
And then along came Ignition. This little title was designed to ship before Dead Space 2, and it was hard to shake the apprehension that it might take the audience's good will and set it on fire.
I don't believe Ignition's conception was cynical. Maybe a bit of a crass game industry marketing gimmick, but EA's gonna EA. And anyway, it was only $5 -- or free with a Dead Space 2 pre-order. So not a cash grab. It made some sense as a small story bridge and a pre-order incentive for the main game, and it mostly wasn't developed at Visceral. But my team did the sound for it, and it was...tough.
I escalated my concerns with the quality of the product, but it went nowhere. So we got back to work. We did our job, and got it sounding as good as we could. The Wikipedia entry on the game summarizes its overall poor critical reviews, but does say, "when mentioned, the sound design was praised."
Nonetheless, even those reviews damn with some faint praise. "Dead Space Ignition possesses far greater sound design than its graphical presentation," wrote PALGN. I appreciate the positive feedback, but...
It worked out, in it's way. This didn't poison the franchise: Dead Space 2 launched to acclaim and became a classic, and I doubt many even remember this existed. And the unlockable suit was pretty nifty.