Sleeping Dogs, the 2010 sleeper hit that was once a reboot of true crime, only to morph into its own unique blend of open world crime, has a storied history.
A new documentary by Gvmers goes in-depth on the behind-the-scenes development of the game before, during, and after its release. Starting as a title from Treyarch (which was and still is owned by Activision), neither the original developer, United Front Games, nor game protagonist, Wei Shen, were part of the game. It was originally supposed to star a female assassin, and the project went under the name Black Lotus.
Of course, that didn't happen. Although Activision denied it, an investigation by GamaSutra stated that the publisher pushed its developer to gear itself towards titles with male leads, given that many successful 2000s' franchises had male leads.
And then, along came United Front Games, the now sadly defunct developer that would overtake the project. United and Activision partnered on the basis that the latter wanted an open-world version of the aforementioned Black Lotus. And the rest is history, unless you watch the video below.
