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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
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.
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.
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.