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Star Trek - Elite Force II Goes Gold, Team Laid Off
Warrior-GS writes "GameSpy has confirmed that developer Ritual was forced to lay off most of the team that created the PC FPS Star Trek: Elite Force II, only two days after the game went gold. Apparently, a couple of other projects fell through. Ritual's other in-development games, Counter-Strike for Xbox and Counter-Strike: Condition Zero for PC are unaffected." Fansite Ritualistic has plenty of extra information on Elite Force II, which is looking promising despite this unexpected news.
Did they think about who would write updates for the game, or was the team so good that they got it perfect on their first try. If that's the case, why on earth would you fire them all?
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
"...developer Ritual was forced to lay off most of the team that created the PC FPS Star Trek: Elite Force II, only two days after the game went gold." Jeez. "Nice job guys. Your game did so great, how about an vacation?"
â¦of the unemployed. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated. At least until the fall when things could possibly pick up again.
If that isnt a case of cutting of your nose to spite your face, I don't know what is. You can certainly see why sequels are often worse than the original.
Too bad management doesn't seem to be an "Elite Force".
*bows*
I know if I suspected I would be fired whenever I finished a project, I wouldn't be in any hurry to get it done. This kind of thing could drag morale and productivity into the toilet.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
This is just getting out of control. When are execs going to realize that eng are not like running water or heating!?!?!? We ARE the company. We ARE the product. Not to understand the importance of marketing and sales, but people poor their hearts into this code. Their personalities come out in these projects. This is like a racing team firing drivers after they win a race. "Oh a driver is a driver, if we do another race we'll just hire another driver, his skills and experience didn't really impact this victory" INSANITY!
Not to mention that many of us "gamers" and also engineers. And I for one will do everything I can to NOT pay for this title. I don't want that company making ONE DIME off the dedicated work of a buch of coders and designers they cut.
This is just total BS and I hope they burn for it.
sorry
A friend of mine who has worked at several computer game companies explained why he joined a startup doing a massively multiplayer online game, Dransik. "When you do a standalone game, the publishers pay you until it's done, and then they fire you. When you do an online game, you work for free until it's done, and then they start paying you." If I had to choose, I'd do what he did.
You mean he worked on that game Dransik and it's actually making money???
HAHAHA!
don't expect a patch any time soon.
This type of thing is common in the gaming industry. People get fired all the time, but are quickly swept up. I wouldn't be surprise if all these people had jobs by the end of next week. There isn't much job security though except the stuff you make yourself. EA, 2015, and Mythic are asking for their CVs, so I've heard.
But the product is the brand. The classic example being nike. Anyone ever talk about the factory workers being the product? Hell no. They talk about shoe designs and don't give a fuck if this years shoe was made in Taiwan and not Indonesia. The product in this case is the franchise + game design. In fact, the fact that activision simply paid this software company to develop a game for the band they paid for is another example of this. Its all moving to a giant virtual company where things like the workforce become a lot more 'fluid'. Sure the human side of it sucks just like it shops for sweatshop workers, that doesn't mean it isn't happening.
Photos.
so many typos / spelling / grammar/ errors. Feh, its still readable.
btw, i meant ever hear anyone talk about the factory workers being the company, not being the product.
Photos.
Hmmm, maybe this could explain why Duke Nukem Forever has been taking so long to go gold -- the developers want to remain gainfully employed.
Any interest in a (formal) boycott? Any other way to express our disgust with corporate bull like this? Sounds like a Dilbert to me.
I'd not likely buy the game anytime soon anyways (haven't bought a game for more than $20 in over a year now...And I save on having to buy the latest h/w.)
This headline means nothing. this article offers few facts. Software talent doesn't go unnoticed, but it is easier to flush a team and approach individuals in private.
The lack of knowledgable people to patch this will be the programmer's revenge. The demo was unplayable for me. Even though I meet/exceed all minimum specs and have mainstream (nVidia, Creative Labs, Intel) hardware and ran it at mimimum settings I got... wait for it... (boy did I ever wait)... 5 SECONDS per FRAME. If more than a few other people have the kind of experience I did, well...
For great justice.
So its 40 miles from your home to your job?
And presumably you're already commuting 50+ minutes by car each way.
What my household normally does in that case is bike/transit/bike: bike to a public transit node (bus or train), ride the most of the distance, then have a $20 el-cheapo bike permanently stationed at the station to take ourselves the last mile or two. (Many communities have this as an official program called "park and ride" or something similar). The transit time is much more useful than time spent in a car - you can read the paper, or a book, or sleep.
In all my alternative commutes, I find the first route I try never ends up being the optimal one. Shortcuts, often through suburbs or low traffic zones, tend to appear more readily to a "man on horseback" than a person looking at a map. Usually the optimal route appears after a month.
Another thing to check out would be the local ridesharing programs. One way to cut emmissions by a factor of 4 is to cram 3 other workers into your car.
Often times I find people that buy their houses in Outer suburbia then are like "public transit sucks! I have to drive because they don't come out here". Often they didn't consider alternative transport at all in making their location decision. More's the pity.
"We found ourselves unable to maintain multiple AAA teams and were forced to release some of the most gifted game developers back into the industry's talent pool. "
- quoted from Tom Mustaine, vice president and director of development at Ritual.
That has to be the most beautiful way to put. Don't think of yourself of feeling worthless, sitting at home skimming through the employment ads in the newspapers after a night of beer and crisps (the only thing you CAN afford) while playing your old PSone titles over and over, but think of yourself as swimming in the tropical talent pool of the gaming industries. Now where are the plastic palmtrees when you need them?
This is just getting out of control. When are execs going to realize that eng are not like running water or heating!?!?!? We ARE the company ...
This is getting rediculous. When are slashdotters going to realize that software is not free (brewery). Somebody has to pay for it. A developer either spends his precious time without monetary compensation, a developer is subsidized by government and private interests, a developer is paid in a work-for-hire situation, etc. Has anyone considered that there was not any additional money coming in for this project, no new projects ready to go? A company can not keep employess if it has no money for payroll. I am not saying this is what happened, I'm just amazed that so few are considering this possibility. I've met far more managers that felt like shit for laying off good people they like because the money was gone than pointy-haired-bosses who see an opportunity to cut expenses.