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EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO

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Re: EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO

#11

Post by ahoyhere »

ukdm wrote: post #3

I worked on Warhammer Online for nearly two years before it left the offices of Climax Entertainment in Nottingham, England. When I arrived the game was already a couple of years in development, but the focus was on the technology not the game. We had no game, just a test area running on a local server. There was a design department consisting of 10 people, 4 working on environment and level design, 6 working on ques…

A little outside perspective: This is exactly the way it goes with a huge percentage of IT-related projects, in many serious industries. The "Enterprise" is screwed.

Re: EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO

#12

Post by pilkers »

robryan wrote: post #8
ukdm wrote: post #3

I worked on Warhammer Online for nearly two years before it left the offices of Climax Entertainment in Nottingham, England. When I arrived the game was already a couple of years in development, but the focus was on the technology not the game. We had no game, just a test area running on a local server. There was a design department consisting of 10 people, 4 working on environment and level design, 6 working on ques…

I would be annoyed to if I was games workshop, having spent decades painstakingly creating the IP to have a flop of an MMO created that was clearly pushed out before it was done.

It's hardly unprecedented for games based on existing franchises to turn out less than stellar. They knew what they were getting in to.

Re: EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO

#13

Post by rthng »

pilkers wrote: post #5

See APB (All Points Bulletin) for an even bigger recent MMO game fiasco. In development for 5+ years, cost over $50 million to make, closed 2 months after launch. Over 250 people were laid off, including those working on a different game.

There were some similarities in the situations from what EA Louse is saying to what I experienced. I'll be interested in seeing the Old Republic launch product because of that.

In respect to the RTW failure, senior dev Luke has a series of articles which explain it much more eloquently (and kindly) than I ever could.

http://lukehalliwell.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/where-realtime...

Re: EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO

#15

Post by msabalau »

Interesting article. I'm not certain I understand the complaint about the non-existent marketing campaign. According to the author, they sold a million boxes, but lost two thirds of the subscribers in the first month, and kept losing them thereafter. It sounds like they got the bums on the seats, people just hated the show.

I could understand faulting Evans for not pushing back and saying "We can't release this, it it's not ready" But it's hard to see how inducing more people to experience a lousy product would have helped, given that the business case presumably lives or dies on recurring revenue.

Re: EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO

#16

Post by steveklabnik »

As someone who literally has two Warhammer tattoos on his forearms, I was so let down by WHO. I was one of those launch purchases, and I wanted to game to be good so dearly... but it just wasn't.

It's unfortunate when developers are forced to release something that they feel isn't ready.

Re: EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO

#17

Post by singular »

ahoyhere wrote: post #11
ukdm wrote: post #3

I worked on Warhammer Online for nearly two years before it left the offices of Climax Entertainment in Nottingham, England. When I arrived the game was already a couple of years in development, but the focus was on the technology not the game. We had no game, just a test area running on a local server. There was a design department consisting of 10 people, 4 working on environment and level design, 6 working on ques…

A little outside perspective: This is exactly the way it goes with a huge percentage of IT-related projects, in many serious industries. The "Enterprise" is screwed.

I think the key factors are politics and managerial ignorance - there appears to be a general consensus that the most qualified person for the job is the a. biggest suck up and b. the least technically knowledgeable guy/gal available.

The problem with having politicals in senior positions is that they will, by their nature, happily abandon honesty + humility - the two most important qualities required by devs/management for any software project to even have a chance of something approaching sane completion.

Unfortunately politics and honesty/humility are not compatible.

Luckily there are companies out there that 'get it', but depressingly few.

Re: EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO

#18

Post by pilkers »

rthng wrote: post #13
pilkers wrote: post #5

See APB (All Points Bulletin) for an even bigger recent MMO game fiasco. In development for 5+ years, cost over $50 million to make, closed 2 months after launch. Over 250 people were laid off, including those working on a different game.

There were some similarities in the situations from what EA Louse is saying to what I experienced. I'll be interested in seeing the Old Republic launch product because of that. In respect to the RTW failure, senior dev Luke has a series of articles which explain it much more eloquently (and kindly) than I ever could. http://lukehalliwell.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/where-realtime...

RTW claimed to be of top pedigree, yet spent a long time and a lot of money to make a horrible game. Led by pretenders, I'd say.

Re: EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO

#19

Post by robryan »

msabalau wrote: post #15

Interesting article. I'm not certain I understand the complaint about the non-existent marketing campaign. According to the author, they sold a million boxes, but lost two thirds of the subscribers in the first month, and kept losing them thereafter. It sounds like they got the bums on the seats, people just hated the show. I could understand faulting Evans for not pushing back and saying "We can't release this, it i…

Given some of the hype they come out with about the game and the IP it was a given they were going to get a heap of people to give it a shot, same with Age of Conan, it sold a heap of copies initially.

Once you lose the player base it's a real uphill battle to retain them, if Age of Conan released in it's current state it would be a different story for them, would have kept a lot more people initially.

Re: EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO

#20

Post by jim_dot »

hitonagashi wrote: post #4
Xero wrote: post #2

http://ealouse.wordpress.com/

There's some interesting comments on that(as well as the inevitable trolls)..

Yeah really, I was kinda hoping to read through some relevant posts, but it's just been taken over by a bunch of tards concentrating on his SWTOR comments.
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