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EA Shuts Down Pandemic Studios, Cuts 200 Jobs
lbalbalba writes "Electronic Arts is shutting down its Westwood-based game developer Pandemic Studios just two years after acquiring it, putting nearly 200 people out of work. 'The struggling video game publisher informed employees Tuesday morning that it was closing the studio as part of a recently announced plan to eliminate 1,500 jobs, or 16% of its global workforce. Pandemic has about 220 employees, but an EA spokesman said that a core team, estimated by two people close to the studio to be about 25, will be integrated into the publisher's other Los Angeles studio, in Playa Vista.' An ex-developer for Pandemic attributed the studio's struggles to poor decisions from the management."
Hopefully, the 25 will re-consider this idea and grab a number of the others to be laid off and approach another VC to start a new company. Heck, if smart, try to create 2 new companies out of it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
EA destroys and corrupts whatever it touches. A developer being bought by EA is the kiss of death for all their franchises, IMO. The classic example is Westwood Studios and a series that was very dear to me, Command & Conquer.
At least we'll always have new versions of Madden!
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
... are "a core intellectual property team".
... are a "core intellectual property team".
I guess EA found its own way to take care of the current pandemic, without having to wait in line for
The Star Wars Battlefront PC games were pretty good. The console ports were decent too.
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
Pandemic studios never made anything worth having
I beg to differ. Battlezone 2 was and still is one of the best games ever made, easily one of the most immersive games around, one that never gets stale, which is maybe why it still has a loyal following. What other game from 10 years ago still has new mods coming out, to say nothing of substantial revisions to the original game done by some of the original programmers working on their own time?
perhaps they thought they were doing public service.
This makes sense. EA is strapped for cash. It's not like they just designed, developed, leased, furnished, and staffed a couple of storefronts on prime real estate to advertise one game to a limited audience.
Companies don't know how to manage money anymore. Long term gains (like a productive group with experience working together) are traded for short term gains (advertising gimmicks) so often that nowadays it's just the expected mode of operation.
I don't know too much about Pandemic Studios in particular, but I've been hearing about a LOT of layoffs at EA, and at the same time it's almost like they are throwing money away on brand placement. No company ever thinks to improve their bottom line by steadily generating quality product anymore. The money that goes into solid development is always the dregs of money first given to analysts and marketers.
I'm normally not a foaming-at-the-mouth anti-establishment labor-theory humanist, but things like this (especially with the oft-cited 'global economy') really and truly make me sick.
What other game from 10 years ago still has new mods coming out, to say nothing of substantial revisions to the original game done by some of the original programmers working on their own time?
4x4 Evo2 http://vales.com/evo2/default.asp
And yes, I know you were being rhetorical, but you did ask.
Sell me the Origin Systems IPs. I'll pay top dollar for them so you can keep your current employees employed.
I'll then bankroll a proper Wing Commander game since you people don't seem interested in doing it.
Anonymous Coward: "This is slashdot. Accuracy is second class citizen here, unlike King Bias."
I've lost count of how many studios EA has chewed up and spit out.
This isn't news, it's just more of the same.
I heard they had decent console ports on Star Wars Battlefront PC games, which was a decent game, too.
The ONLY thing Pandemic ever made that was good was Battlezone II : Combat Commander. Everything else was fluff.
Interesting as EA CEO John Riccitiello made a lot of moneyfrom EA buying them in the first place, while EA shareholders are the losers.
I assume one of the bad management decisions was seemingly spending all their money on Gamasutra job postings? When I was looking around for a new job a couple of years ago it seemed like every other posting was for a position at Pandemic.
Is this model sustainable? With the number of expansions, absorbed companies and conquest, it looks like EA is turning into the GM of gaming. they may be healthy now but what about in a year? 5 years? 10 years? It's like cutting off your pinky to lose weight. It's gone, and never coming back.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Will you make torrents available?
EA's management is the demise of that company. They pull all their developers from games once they are done and leave noone to fix bugs. They very rarely release patches for anything. There are many online games that have had game impacting issues for years that just drive people away. If they were smart they would get on the model of releasing paid items into some of their games to pull in extra revenue. Or releasing more MAP packs for some of their better games that they just mothball. I hope the whole company folds and makes way for some other game companies that actually care about the user experience.
You...are...so...wrong
Destroy All Humans 1 & 2 is damn good game series.
Mercenaries 1 & 2 is also a good games.
The interesting part of this is that the CEO had EA purchase his old company for a high amount of $$$ and only two years later shut it down while he personally pocketed several million.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/96237-Analyst-Chews-Out-EA-CEO-Over-Pandemic-Closure
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I'm an ex-Pandemite.
For me, the turning point was around 2006, with the new hardware generation. There were lots of really passionate people here, but the development and design methodologies that worked well in the previous gen simply did not scale up with the larger projects, and things got confusing and out of hand. This was compounded by each internal team having their own unique technology and tools. The amount of redundancy, knowledge lost and effort wasted between projects was quite substantial, not to mention a somewhat lack of ownership or accountability. I was hoping that Sab would be the turning point, but it looks like it is not to be (good news is that last I heard, all SKUs are golden). I hope that many will be able to enjoy it.
What really irks me is that this was a really passionate and talented bunch with so much potential. Definitely the best group I've had the honor to be with, and possibly ever will be.
Cheers to the 16, 18, and 19.
Full Spectrum Warrior was quite innovative and in my opinion, one of the best games last generation. I also crack out Battlezone 2 once in a while, and few games have me coming back after such a long time. Unfortunately, it does seem they missed the boat a bit for this gen, but the Saboteur looks quite promising. You may not like the games they have produced, but celebrating the loss of hundreds of jobs is unwarranted. It must be great to celebrate years of work and dedication with a pink slip as your product is about to hit the market, especially with the holidays coming up.
What other game from 10 years ago still has new mods coming out, to say nothing of substantial revisions to the original game done by some of the original programmers working on their own time?
Are you serious??
Freespace 2: http://scp.indiegames.us/
Baldur's Gate & Baldur's Gate II: http://pocketplane.net/mambo/ http://gibberlings3.net/
There also was a very large unofficial patch for Arcanum, including a high resolution mod which saw recent development.
And those are only the games I recently played...
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Has anyone noticed that everything get's blamed on the economy ? This seems to be another form of asset stripping where the investors are king, profit is king. Of course these are companies, but they are also services producing for society. I get the feeling some EA management are quite cynical and uncaring about video games and are really corporate employees moving between different manufacturing posts ? It's sad when this kind of corporate lifestyle hurts creativity. Why did Pandemic allow themselves to be bought by EA in the first place ? They shouldn't have done it. They might have made a bit less money, but it would have been more interesting, they would have made more games and this industry would still have an interesting developer.
command and conquer. Though I'd say a better comparison would be how many people are willing to buy the game today, vs how much effort the community has put into the game.
Defective Logic
...the games get considerably worse.
This is what EA does best -- buying intellectual property by purchasing a studio, letting said studio run for a few years, and then gutting it and turning out unimaginative sequels on said intellectual property. See example Origins (Wing Commander & Ultima), Westwood Studio (Command & Conquer), and Kesmai (Air Warrior, MultiPlayer Battletech). The only difference is that the economy has sped up the process, because it usually takes EA 5 years to gut everything.
Star Wars: Battlefront 1 & 2 says you are wrong.
There is a war going on for your mind.
yeah but were they decent?
Star Wars Battlefront I has shit play control and crap camera behavior (not to mention generally shitty graphics.) Star Wars Battlefront II eliminated everything good about the first game (huge maps, more vehicles) but gave great play control and much better camera behavior. It's hard to say either of them is really a fantastic game; if you put the two of them together, you'd have one fantastic title. I have both, can no longer bring myself to play SWBF I as I always feel like it's cheaped me to death, but play SWBF II occasionally when I just want to get in some killin'. It has perhaps the best play control of any console FPS (at least that I've played so far) but the scope is a bit pathetic, especially since the second game is ostensibly based on the same engine, so there is NO excuse for not including all original maps. The original had far MORE maps, also; it's not just that it had a lot of good ones that there's no good counterpart for in the sequel.
So yes, although SWBF II has good play control, I would say both it and the original are mediocre at best.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I do not know about this merger (or acquisition) but I have worked in companies in the past where a stronger competitor wanted two things: 1) our technology and 2) us to not compete with them. So the competitor came in and bought our company and about 90% of us lost our jobs. This could've been the plan all along in this transaction ... to knock our company out of their way and to gain a technology advantage at the same time (all while keeping our brightest and most talented employees). This is a common trick in the business world (to look like it's all sad and everything but they really got what they wanted to begin with 2 years ago).
Yeah, that's basically my experience with them. I still install & play the first one sometimes, mostly to play single-player with bots and do Hoth over and over, or to play the galactic conquest mode or whatever it's called. It's not a great game, but come on, Hoth!
II was terrible, though. Maybe it's better multiplayer?
Planescape: Torment ?
What a depressingly stupid machine.
I'm not sure the fact that they had a great game 10 years ago (which I've only vaguely heard of) merits keeping them open.
-- gid
EA bashing is only really appropriate for recent history. Heck, early on they recognized all their development talent. They had special signed packaging for a lot of games and went out of their way to give developers freedom. I remember several great titles that helped get them to be the HUGE horrible software tyrants they are today:
Bard's Tale
Archon
Mail order monsters
Populus
Battle Chess
Marble Madness
Alternate Reality
Demon Stalkers
Wasteland
Those are some of my favorites anyhow.
You can only be young once, but you can be immature forever.
In one of the G4 TV series code monkeys episodes, one of the game developers, BolecoVision, has its managers using whips and axes to flay and behead its workers who aren't up to par/can't take the stress anymore. This reminds me of EA for some strange reason.
This is not a troll, it is an opinion.
-1 raving lunatic; +6 subGenius... Things even out...
Thief
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One warning though, it does have a pretty big learning curve. The queuing system is MUCH better than other RTS's I've played. It's in many ways an unofficial successor to "Total Annihilation"
One thing to be warned of though, gameplay can vary massively, and it does take quite awhile to get a strategy that works online, especially if you switch to the expansion "Forged Alliance." When I did so I went from games that were often 1-2 hours and massive tech/anti-tech competitions to being swamped by level 1 units... but I've more or less figured out how to get past that now.
My only other warning is that SC is very, very addictive.
The noise ewoks made when you shot them was very satisfying.
Me and a group of my buddies who were big fans of the Battlezone were actually quite disappointed with the Battlezone 2. The game mechanics and the general feel of the game (not to mention very awkward controls - specially on tracked vehicles) resulted with the game flopping with most of the players of the Activisions' original re-make.
And as to the following, many games have hard-core addicts who try to keep them alive long past the "best before" date. Even the original Battlezone still has servers running maintained by some truly die-hard types.
I still remember the small controversy over Mercenaries 2: World in Flames.
The government of Venezuala was not amused.
Mercenaries 2 is filed under "Shit, Complete & Total"
It was just another shitty GTA rip-off with uninspired weapons, boring vehicles, a plot that made 30 Days of Night look good, and actually forced you to be a nearly-decent human being (killing innocent civilians has repercussions beyond drawing the attention of enemy forces? lamesauce) instead of a psychotic murdering rapist.
Oh, and the hardest thing in the whole game was not losing the will to live after pressing over 9000 buttons in the same lameass hijacking sequences over and over again. Sure, it was kinda cool the first time you jacked a tank by running down the cannon and shoving a grenade down some dude's throat, but once you realized it was the exact same shit every single time it somehow became a lot less fun.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
OO-TEE-DEEE!!!
No, wait...that was Jawas...
Dehn-gaaar? Ee-chi-wawa? Nub nub nub?
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