EA Mythic/Bioware drama

[Riposte]

Wasn't sure where to put this... in the WAR thread or TOR thread or the console thread... Videogame industry drama is always awesome. This guy talks about how indecent the leaders of the team were during WAR. He also discusses the state of TOR and predicts it will be a huge failure.

http://ealouse.wordpress.com/2010/10...orld/#comments

I found out recently that I will be dismissed from Bioware Mythic during the next round of layoffs EA coming this November. I’m sick of seeing EA outsource their art and find every excuse to get rid of us and still not achieve anything. Mythic is dying, and its not us who killed him but we’re taking the fall.

But if you want to know what really went down with Warhammer, I’ll tell you right now.

First, the project leaders did not know what they were doing. Jeff Hickman was the saddest excuse for a producer I’ve seen. All he did was drink the Koolaid and suck up to the right people. He was the perfect yes-man, and this reached down to almost all managers.

My boss who will not be named, again and again would tell us that Rob Denton, one of the original owners, said we should “do this” and “do that” and we would say “omg it makes NO sense, please explain A, B, and C to him. “And then he’d come back and tell us, after we thought he had gone to talk with him,” No, Rob wants in this way. Jeff agrees, this is what we’re going to do. Understood? ” They never actually talked back to Rob. We didn’t talk back to them.

Rob said jump, our leaders said, “How high?! And on who?”

So we shut up and did what we were told, by people too afraid to tackle real problems. It is a culture of fear, especially since Mark Jacobs was fired.

Oh, he left voluntarily you say? No, he was fired, and everything placed on his shoulders by those closest to him so they could divide his salary and annual bonus. I bet Rob is enjoying that sweet new Maserati he bought after leaving the knife in his partner of 15 years.

And Bioware? Don’t make me laugh. They’ve spent more money making the Old Republic than James Cameron spent on Avatar. Shit you not. More than $ 300 million! Can you believe that?

And you know what they’re most proud of? This is the kicker. They are most proud of the sound. No seriously. Something like a 20Gig installation, and most of it is voiceover work. That’s the best they have. The rest of the game is a joke. EA knows it and so does George Lucas,they’re panicking , and so most of Mythic has already been cannibalized to work in Austin on it because they can’t keep pushing back launch.

Old Republic will be one of the greatest failures in the history of MMOs from EA. Probably at the level of the Sims Online. We all know it too ……

[Hyan]

TOR will suck? Water is wet, indeed.

[vrumpt]

never saw that one coming! (/sarcasm)

[Lucavi]

So much pettiness at the top.

[Riposte]

I am more afraid for the future of Bioware, than anything else. Lets see if they can pull it off.

EDIT: Though is George Lucas really that involved? Sounds like partial BS.

[Ksandra]

Oddly enough I was just talking about ea yesterday. I guess it's notorious for layoffs. Their method had been for a long time to mass hire contract people for a specific game and then lay them off when the project is done. It has happened to a few of my husband's old classmates. Ea is basically the last resort place to work for when it comes to the artistic/creative departments. Looks like the guy in the op never got the memo.

[bruiser]

Oddly enough I was just talking about ea yesterday. I guess it's notorious for layoffs. Their method had been for a long time to mass hire contract people for a specific game and then lay them off when the project is done. It has happened to a few of my husband's old classmates. Ea is basically the last resort place to work for when it comes to the artistic/creative departments. Looks like the guy in the op never got the memo.

If you're hired contract it's not really considered a layoff.

[Hyan]

I am more afraid for the future of Bioware, than anything else. Lets see if they can pull it off.

I think the project was too expensive for EA to completely trust Bioware so they interfered and this is the result.

It's more of a lesson for them than Bioware, honestly.

[Riposte]

On the contrary Bioware has no experience with MMOs and are actually rather limited. Yeah, if this blows up it will be a lesson to EA. You don't throw around 300 million dollars.

[Hyan]

Although the last I heard the budget was something like 150 million. 300 million sounds absurd.

[Ksandra]

If you're hired contract it's not really considered a layoff.

Semantics, and it's only certain departments that are contracted.

[Atreides]

I don't really see Bioware's other development projects being at all affected, you're talking about some of the most lucrative franchises for EA, which (unlike activision) has come a long way in the past 10 years in allowing their studios to enjoy a certain degree of autonomy as long as they bring in money.

The only thing I'm confused about is why developers (in general) continue to throw huge sums of money at MMOs hoping to unseat WoW, when Blizzard has such a firm hold on its substantial marketshare. I get spending a small amount on an MMO hoping to capture a niche market, but even a 150 million budget is insane considering how many subscribers WoW still has, most of which wouldn't be making the switch to TOR had this drama not occurred.

[miokomioko]

Hiring by contract for one project at a time is how everyone does everything these days. It's absurd.

[Katlan]

The only thing I'm confused about is why developers (in general) continue to throw huge sums of money at MMOs hoping to unseat WoW, when Blizzard has such a firm hold on its substantial marketshare. I get spending a small amount on an MMO hoping to capture a niche market, but even a 150 million budget is insane considering how many subscribers WoW still has, most of which wouldn't be making the switch to TOR had this drama not occurred.

WoW is only so big because of their China market. While the chinese servers were taken down WoW's sub's was only about 5-6m (thats still a huge amount, but yeah). When the chinese servers came back online w/WotLK they then pushed to 12m+ (but 6m+ of that is from China). But yeah, if all these other games held off on release until the games were rdy then I bet WoW would start to lose customers, its just that companies are trying to throw unfinished mmo's out the door thinking they can get away w/it

[Merovingian]

no disrespect to anyone but Kotor 3 should have been a single player rpg, none of this mmo bullshit they are trying to pull. I wish the best to the game but i think it will end like star wars galaxies.

[Egon]

I saw this posted on OCN. I must say I really hate EA. I loved Command & Conquer. They started great with 3, but just gave up on it. It would still have a nice player base if they would have fixed the bugs it had. Don't get me started on 4, that game was terrible.

Also Need for Speed Shift was great, but they stopped updating the PC version. Being a BMW fan, I got very angry I couldn't get my M1!

They start great, but just give up half way through. Makes me miss the good old days of id Software, 3D Realms, Cavedog and of course Westwood. These small grass roots companies had passion, and the money was the added bonus.

[Atreides]

EA has improved considerably since the whole Command & Conquer/Westwood Studios debacle. Most of these big companies are very cognizant of their own public image and in EA's defense, they have devoted considerable effort to allowing internal studios to maintain autonomy since then, Bioware being a common example. As far as evil game companies go Activision has got them beat by far.

And I think it's something of a mischaracterization to say that the good old days of gaming have come and gone. Yes, a number of factors have allowed a handful of companies to grow into huge corporate entities (which, of course, act as stereotypical evil corporations at one point or another) but the kind of small, grassroots game studios you're talking have only increased in number (exponentially), fueled largely by digital distribution and social networking.

[Lucavi]

WoW is only so big because of their China market. While the chinese servers were taken down WoW's sub's was only about 5-6m (thats still a huge amount, but yeah). When the chinese servers came back online w/WotLK they then pushed to 12m+ (but 6m+ of that is from China). But yeah, if all these other games held off on release until the games were rdy then I bet WoW would start to lose customers, its just that companies are trying to throw unfinished mmo's out the door thinking they can get away w/it

That's still a disgracefully large amount of subs, considering that I can count the number of other MMOs that broke 1 mil subs on my hand, and I can't count the number of other MMOs that held 1 mil subs for more than a quarter of a year on my hand.

[Kyo]

These small grass roots companies had passion, and the money was the added bonus.

lol

[Zhais]

EA is a steaming pile of shit to work for, in basically all departments. Programming, art, etc. I've heard horror stories from across the board.