The 3DO Company
is finally dead. Trip spent all of E3 attempting to wheel and deal
the company off to the highest bidder. The problem was that there
weren’t any bidders! What assets does the company have? High
Heat Baseball is probably the best one, however it always finishes
a distant 3rd to EA and Sega Sports, despite the glowing reviews and fantastic
gameplay. The company banked all its hopes on the upcoming Four
Horsemen of the Apocalypse console game, but there were several problems
with this strategy: 1) the game sucked, 2) there were 100 people
on the development team, making it a management nightmare, 3) it was still
8-10 months from release, and 4) did we mention it sucked?
The doors closed
at the beginning of June, leaving approximately 10 employees left to inventory
the assets, turn off the lights, and cry in their alcohol. Even Trip’s
seemingly endless bank account couldn’t save the company from oblivion.
Bankruptcy is their savior, though word has it the senior management knew
it was coming at the end of May, but they kept their employees around for
another 2-3 weeks knowing they couldn’t be paid. Nice guys!
Let the feeding
frenzy begin.
6/23/03
UbiSoft Montreal
We received
this e-mail about UbiSoft’s Montreal office. Apparently they made
a rather nasty hiring blunder:
Here's
a minor tidbit for you that may yet turn into a major catastrophe for Ubi
Soft Montreal. They've just hired Andre Roy, formerly from Vircom Interactive,
a small Montreal-based Cryo-owned company that used to develop MMORPGs.
Following Roy's devastating passage within the company (compounded no doubt
by Cryo's own cash flow problems), the whole interactive division was shut
down and two dozen very talented individuals lost their jobs.
At Vircom,
his job was to handle a game operation center for The 4th Coming, a Vircom-produced/published
MMORPG. In France, GOA was successfully operating 10 servers and doing
so quite successfully (that's 2000+ players at peak time). At Vircom, after
9 months of Roy's "enlightened" guidance, the company managed to peak at
30 users simultaneously, before poor performance led to a downward spiral
that cost Vircom 7-digit figures.
Roy's special
blend of management involved sabotaging middle managers from other teams,
undermining their authorities, and setting them up as
scapegoats
for crisis he helped create through his own incompetence. When things got
bad at Vircom, upper management decided he deserved a promotion for all
this and put him in charge of Vircom Interactive, which he efficiently
ran into the ground during the following months.
The good news
was that he was let go with the rest of the production team. Serves him
right.
The bad news
is that he has conned Ubi Soft into believing he was competent, and now
occupies a position as Online Producer. He will produce (if you can call
it that) expansions for Splinter Cell and RavenShield.
We'll keep
you posted of Roy's managerial blunders. I pity the fools who work under
his military-styled management. He may be ugly, he may be dumb, but he
has enough chutzpah to fool everyone into believing *his* mistakes are
*their* fault. If I were them, I'd start polishing up my resume and look
elsewhere.
As you
may or may not know, UbiSoft moved all of their online operations up to
the Montreal office—guess they enjoy the high Canadian tax rate or the
lack of a quality talent pool. Perhaps they are all simply idiots.
6/23/03
3D Realms E-mail Exchange
Check out this
e-mail exchange between a member of the Duke Nuke’m community and one of
this contacts at 3D Realms:
To:
fatinsider@fatbabies.com
;
fattissimo@fatbabies.com
;
fatbango@fatbabies.com
Sent: Friday,
April 25, 2003 2:55 PM
Subject: 3D
Realms New Game Insider Gossip!
Basically I
have a friend in the utterly pathetic Duke Nukem fan community who is very
close friends with Brad Wernicke, a friend of 3D Realms and who used to
run Dukeworld.
Wernicke,
being chummy with the 3DR guys, had seen Duke Nukem Forever last year,
and although this wasn't a secret, what he had seen obviously was.
Bigmouthed
Brad told our mutual buddy about DNF (it's a long way off, apparently they're
just getting lots of content in place) and - something he now denies as
3D Realms aren't pleased with him - another game in development, too. An
action game, not an existing franchise however, and certainly not Prey.
Not Shadow Warrior either. All new. I think I can recall him as saying
it was partly 3rd person but don't quote me on that.
Anyway I asked
Brad and 3DR about this and, hilariously, they slipped up in emails! :
----------------
(From
Brad)
Do I know
you? Why are you dropping my name to Joe and George?
I didn’t see
another game in development besides Duke Nukem Forever.
I don’t know
where you are getting your information from, but it is not accurate.
Brad
-----Original
Message-----
From: Joe
Siegler [mailto:joes@3drealms.com]
Sent: Friday,
April 18, 2003 9:51 AM
To: George
Broussard
Cc: Brad Wernicke
Subject: Fw:
Question (No, not about DNF)
...
Brad? Is there
something going on I should be aware of?
Joe
---------
Joe saying
"Is there something going on I should be aware of?" Hmm! Sounds VERY
SUSPICIOUS. Surely this just confirms that there IS something Brad
could be doing 3DR aren't liking?
And surely
gossiping to loose-lipped pals is one of them?
6/23/03
Sony Pulls Trademark Application
Sony withdraws
"Shock and Awe" trademark application
Apologizes
for "regrettable bad judgement" after media battering
Responding
to media outcry and accusations that it was attempting to capitalise on
the recent war in Iraq, Sony Computer Entertainment has withdrawn its trademark
application for the term "Shock and Awe".
Ha Haw!
Maybe they realized, like the Iraqi elite did that the "Shock and Awe"
didn't exactly work too well... and was beaten to death term-wise by every
damn newscaster for weeks on end. Anyways, rumor is that Don Rumsfeld
already filed for use of the term as the title of his upcoming autobiography.
4/11/03
Response About GDC
A faithful
reader wrote in to respond to the 3/10/03 Bitter GDC Attendee post:
To
"Disgusted" who complained bitterly about GDC, "it was pretty much the
same people giving the same talks as last year" -- Welcome to your second
GDC.
Every GDC is
the same list of lectures every year. Here is the template lecture
list they use each year.
Production
Track
1. Postmortem
on my game. What went right: Smart people and we kicked ass in crunch
time! What went wrong: We needed more time and resources, and our
publisher made this and that bad decision. The game sold well because
of the incredibly creative team (or: the game didn't sell very well because
of the incredibly bad marketing; or, because the public did not grasp my
genre-bending storyline).
2. How
to master Problem X (project management, building a team, making a good
game). Here is my pet theory about one point on which I will obsess a lot
based on my experience making my last game. This is obviously strictly
better than doing it the other way, although here's an alternative I thought
of that somebody should try.
3. Big
time celebrity doing a puff piece. Resembles a keynote because it's
heavily attended, and almost content free. May include photographers
snapping pictures to show the important celebrities you'll see if you pay
$1000 for the full conference pass for next year's GDC.
4. How
to work with QA. A session attended by testers only.
Artist Track
1. How
to master Maya/Max/Photoshop. Here are two tips that I have learned
which will be useful to you, and 78 things that are either obvious to everyone
who has used the program for a week, or useless because the technique only
comes into play when animating a flaming reptilian nose hair in zero gravity.
I will explain them all anyway.
2. How
to animate a character well. I will show you how I animated my favorite
character from the last game I worked on. Notice how his swinging
hips give him attitude!!!
Design Track
1. My
abstract game design theory. I will list twelve platitudes and tell
you my 15 design rules, and don't forget, to be innovative you have to
break the rules! By the way, did you know the best games, like SimCity,
came from game designers and not big companies?
2. The
next big thing is going to be (episodic content, wireless gaming, massively
multiplayer Defender, collaborative online story development, women gamers,
indie game developers, interactive stories, games for the mass market)
and here's how it's all going to go. The days are numbered for shallow
experiences like first person shooters such as Quake 3, which I have been
told that all of you play all the time. By the way, I will not be
around in 2 years for you to taunt me about my vision of the future of
gaming.
Programming
Track
1. Enjoy
the ExtremeGameTech(tm) shader engine! This sponsored session will
teach you all about how to [can't complete paragraph, all reading stops
after this point. This talk is repeated 8 times and comprises over
50% of available sessions.]
2. Keynote
from Carmack or similar respected programmer celebrity.
3. Here
is my needlessly complicated talk about the (pipeline, system, optimization,
effects programming, simulator) that we did for the last game I worked
on. It is not useful to you but sure sounds impressive. Man,
did I write a lot of lines of code creating this tool. Look at how
the interface works! I wrote that. God, that took a lot of
late nights. (sighs)
Audio Track
1. Nobody
reading this has ever gone to an audio session, right? Let me tell
you that the session titles are all fake. All audio sessions consist
of wanna-be musicians or movie scorers sitting around smoking hash and
bitching about having to create SFX all day. They also make up the
titles for the audio sessions for next year's GDC.
========
This is not
to say that the GDC is bad. Every talk usually gives me one thing
to think about. If you lower your expectations to this point then
you'll probably enjoy yourself at your third GDC. Unfortunately the
price has gone up a lot in the past years and it's probably not worth the
money the second (and third...) time you go.
FatMassivelyMultiplayerDefender
There you
have it. Spoken like a true war veteran. Why are these sessions
the same? Why can't they offer up anything new? Why are the
parties so lame? And why are the prices still going up, up, and up?
But at least the chicks are getting more numerous and better looking.
4/11/03
Stolar Departs as BAM is Downgraded
From the newswire:
BAM!
president and COO Bernie Stolar is leaving the sinking publisher, which
is just about to be delisted Bernie Stolar, the president and COO of troubled
publisher BAM! Entertainment, has announced that he intends to leave the
company in order to "pursue other opportunities".
Stolar, who
was previously involved in the launch of the PlayStation at Sony Computer
Entertainment America before serving as COO of Sega of America, was seen
as a heavyweight addition to the management team of the publisher when
he joined less than two years ago.
However, his
departure comes as BAM! faces an increasingly uncertain future - with the
company's stocks, BFUN, set to be delisted and transferred onto the NASDAQ
Smallcap Market as of this Thursday.
The company
has already seen serious cost-cutting moves this year following the announcement
of disastrous financial results, including the axing of many products in
development and the sale of its London studio to Scottish developer VIS
Entertainment.
BERNIE
STOLAR TAKES LIFEPOD FROM BAM--After the worst company launch in interactive
History, Ray Musci's band of Con Artists have run out of steam and have
lost their key player, Bernie Stolar. After staffing up on French
Hippocrits like Alain Tascan from UBISOFT(Licensing guy to run development)
and Yves Legris from INFOGRAMES (Org Guy to do biz development), BAM began
the sad journey into Stock oblivion. Rumors have surfaced of an SEC
investigation into possible fraud charges to be levied as Ray promised
the investors that BAM would be at $100 million in revenue the first year.
All that happened is that the initial $40 million in investor money has
been wasted on luxurious trips and ego stroking.
We're sure
Bernie just popped his usual 'golden parachute' and floated away richer
than he started, if we know Bernie. Expect to see his executive resume
circulating soon... There is a sucker-company born every minute...
4/11/03
THQ Slams Profit Growth
After a lack
luster Christmas season and the weight of mounting costs crushing the bottom
line, THQ slashes products, staff and rethinks online strategy. Insiders
blame much of the avoidable disaster on Mike Rubinelli. Although
some of the shit that hit the fan should fall on Dave Kelly and Brian Farrell
who lived in the same building with the guy who single-handedly ruined
Madden
1995 for EA. The year that Madden never shipped!
Unfortunately for THQ, their ridiculous purchases of several studios like
Pacific Coast Power and Light and Volition, continues to crush their bottom
line forcing them to cancel projects and people. Hey guys, where
is your product? Canceled! Instead of just licensing or buying
product, they made the fateful mistake of buying overhead!
4/11/03
Luxoflux
Acquired by
Activision--In another blunder move by stagnating Activision, we have gotten
wind of this little manuever that will cost Activision investors $9 million
bucks! Once again, an executive must justify his paycheck and cast
the company headfirst into overheard building and profit reduction!
Luxoflux as a developer only does "ME TOO" products like Vigilante 8
(copy of Twisted Metal) and their upcoming copy of Grand Theft
Auto based in LA. The people at Activision have been shocked
to see how poor the level design is and how it will be seen as only some
lame clone. You would think that after buying the team that worked
on the Quake mod Metal Of Honor and has given them a multi-title
deal for $5 million, that Activision would get a clue. If anyone
gives a shit about running a business, stop wasting the investors' money
on insider deals. People should look into who really make the Metal
Of Honor mod since most of the EA folks in LA claim to have made it.
4/11/03
UbiSoft Funds Developer in Austin, TX
A new developer
made up of former EPIC employees has appeared on the radar. After
all being fired by EPIC for working on their own title, they relocated
to Austin to start up this insane new developer to syphon money out of
UbiSoft. Like lemmings, UbiSoft signs checks over to this developer
for making a MOD for the Epic Engine. Sources inside the new developer
have bragged that they pay all their internal people very well to the tune
of $150K each per year. It is no surprise that UbiSoft is being taken
as their head development Monkey is Brett Barry and his nefarious banana
peeling
sidekick Dexter Chau. These two clowns run the zoo.
4/11/03
Angel Studios Takes Two
In a heart
stopping move, Take Two spends $40 million to acquire Angel Studios and
their band of developers. Jonesing to spend their money, they foolishly
acquired a developer that will only be a drain on the bottom line.
After realizing that the days of free money were ending, the management
at Angel decided that it was time to "get out" while there was a willing
moron with money. Before Take Two could re-consider, the ink was
dry and the dirty deed was done. Move over United, there is another
hunk-o-shit flying the friendly skies headed for eventual layoffs and shutdown
within 18 months and a total waste of $40 million dollars.
4/11/03
Activision Sees Red
Mark Struhl,
Activision's Exec Producer on the Star Trek brand, buries the axe.
After consistently taking the credit for everyone else's work, Mark has
really done it this time. What Activison doesn't know is that the
latest Star Trek budget is out of control. The chief architect
of this is Marc Struhl. This time, the buddies that have protected
him have turned their back on this guy because of his habit of taking all
the credit and then eliminating all those that can tell the truth.
When Marc is not out acting like one of the FAST and the DUBIOUS, he is
surfing the web and yelling to get attention. So far it has worked...
time is running...
4/11/03
FatBabies Mentioned in Article
FatBabies.com
was mentioned in an article for Online Journalism Review:
Ethics
in Video Game Journalism
Pretty good
stuff there.
3/10/03
Sovereign Canceled
Verant's massively-multiplayer
online real-time strategy game Sovereign was canceled recently.
Didn’t we call this years ago??
Over and over
Sony Online/Verant repeated "No, it’s still in production." How many
team members did it burn through? To Verant employees, being put
on the Sovereign team was akin to being a German soldier in WWII
and being told you were going to be sent to the Russian Front. It
was the kiss of death.
Only John Smedley’s
ego kept the project running, as Sovereign was his baby.
Well John,
sometimes babies need to be aborted.
Read about
it here.
3/10/03
Bitter GDC Attendee
We received
this e-mail from a bitter GDC attendee:
From:
[censored]
To: <fatbango@fatbabies.com>
Date: Mon,
8 Mar 2003 01:20:19 -0800
Subject: GDC
2003
This was the
lamest Game Developer’s Conference I’ve ever attended. It was just
more of the same. I couldn’t believe the lecture list—it was pretty
much the same people giving the same talks as last year! I half expected
to see Peter Molyneux giving yet another talk about Black & White.
Oh wait, HE DID! Pathetic!
You’d think,
in the year that the industry has advanced, developers would have something
better to talk about than last year’s drivel.
I’m done with
GDC’s .
Pathetic was
the word for GDC 2003.
Oh, to Gordon
Walton: You’re not GOD. You’re just a foolish egomaniac who
likes to hear himself speak. Get a clue: nobody cares!
Signed,
Disgusted
We do agree
with you to a certain extent. This year’s show contained much less
substance and more EA keynotes. Look at Bruce McMillan’s photo:
it’s right out of GQ magazine. Here’s our clue for Bruce: it
ain’t about the hair, it’s about the substance.
3/10/03
EA.bomb
As reported
in our forums:
---Ehhhh
heh heh heh heh heh!!! The better to hide this debt-ridden mess with my
pretty!!!
Electronic
Arts Calls It Quits With EA.com Subsidiary
Electronic
Arts said today that it plans to roll its online unit, EA.com, back into
its core operations. The company said that the move will eliminate dual-class
reporting as of April 1, 2003, the start of its new fiscal year. EA executives
said the consolidation is expected to improve efficiency, simplify the
staff reporting structure, and better integrate EA's online activities
into the company's core console and PC business.
EA had long
hoped that EA.com would turn the corner and post a profit, but a string
of online disappointments prevented that. The company had hoped that the
release of The Sims Online would be the magic bullet to achieve profitability.
But the game's longer-than-expected development cycle and slower-than-expected
sales were a setback to a near-term turnaround. On top of that, another
EA.com marquis title, Motor City Online, was cancelled on February 26 due
to a declining player base.
EA will record
a charge of $55-$75 million in fiscal Q4, which ends March 31, as a result
of the reorganization. The charge covers restructuring costs, some of which
entails the consolidation EA.com operations from the San Francisco Bay
Area to the company's new Los Angeles studio.
We expect
shares of Electronic Arts to begin the decline to the more realistic $15-20
range. It is still trading at 22 times earnings! This is a
short waiting to happen.
3/10/03
Codefire Folds
Looks like
Codefire has finally died. This e-mail was posted by Codefire’s CEO
Michael Williams in the wiz-war.com message forums:
"Well,
I'm sure this will please Anonymous, and disappoint everyone else, but
CodeFire has gone out of business. It went out of business in large part
because of Anonymous (and Anonymous stole equipment), but that's neither
here nor there.
I'm still talking
with Tom Jolly about future possibilities. I'm working on fulfilling the
promises that were made. It's a matter of pride (plus I don't like letting
losers like Anonymous ruin the day for the rest of us).
Hold faith.
There is something in the works. I will join the rest of us in supporting
and encouraging any effort to bring out a digital version of Wiz-War and
I do have some things in the works that might restore this project to prime
time.
With regrets,
MikeW
We were
surprised they actually survived this long!
3/10/03
Sad Day
What a sad,
sad day it is.
http://rome.ro/comics_index.html
3/10/03
Protest at GDC for Cash
Those of you
who went to GDC probably noticed the mock protestors in front of the convention
center. We have the "job" listing that was posted up on craig’s list:
Mock
Protesters Needed 3/6/03!
Reply to:
Ogelement@aol.com
Date: Mon
Feb 24th 08:24
PROTEST BAD
ART! INTERESTED IN PICKETING AND ACTING TICKED OFF? SMALL VIDEO GAME CO.
LOOKING TO BUG OUT THE COMPETITION WITH FAKE PROTEST. WHEN? THURSDAY MARCH
6TH (San Jose convention center). HOW LONG? APPROX. 6-8 HOURS.
E-MAIL ME
AT Ogelement@aol.com FOR MORE INFORMATION.
This will
be a great experience but please only respond if you are interested. Pay
is $65, plus potential for bonus if things go well.
Not to mention
daring perks to tempt not the faint at heart.
Phone Tim
at (707)829-6494
Not that
it really mattered, the "protest" was plain stupid. This is, however,
the technique that the Democrats use to drum up all those anti-Bush protestors--they
pay top dollar! And who says the DNC can't buy friends?
2/13/03
Angry Over Westwood
An email from
either a now former Westwood employee, or simply from someone who hates
Electronic Arts. You be the judge:
Westwood
article
Thats right,
after they layed off over 1/2 of the original staff at Westwood, they decided
to close the studios! At least Eric Wang (Sucker) won't be able to find
a job in the industry now! Ooo wait I hope he does get a spot at EA so
he can ruin them from the inside too! Hey the good news is at least good
ol' Louie C. has a spot already picked out at EA... now he can really focus
on making those mediocre games that EA loves to make... no point in doing
anything that requires talent or creativity anymore eh Louie? Well at least
we won't have titles like Lands of Lore 3 cluttering up the store shelves
now! I hope at least some of you saw this coming and at least appropriated
some hardware into your private inventory. In closing, I just want to say
FUCK Westwood, FUCK Louie C., FUCK Brett S., and mostly FUCK EA!!
Such anger.
It can only lead to the dark side.
2/13/03
Check Six Studios
Follow-up to
our our recent Rumor about
Check Six Studios, sent in by a French guy supposedly "in the know:"
I
saw the rumor on Check Six Studios:
- The big Rumor
around these here parts is that Check Six Studios (of Spyro 4 "fame") is
now Check Sux—because they have closed their doors. Thank the maker,
as Spyro 4 was a large turd.
If it's not
the case yet, it should be right in a couple of days.
In fact, they
work on a PS2 game for a fucking french publisher called LSP (www.lspgames.com
). LSP is a very bad and small publisher who fired half of the initial
team just to leave Paris to Marseille (South of France).
Unfortunately,
they fired the good ones...
They've got
the shitest properties such as Felix the Cat, Antz and so on.
They tried
to make a PS2 game (Inspector Gadget) in 6 months (!?!!) The game is so
bad that SCEE didn't want to see it published. LSP had to pay an extra
fee to publish it.
In the same
spirit, they tried to make Gremlins (Warner property) always on PS2, but
they can't make a good game once again so Warner stop the game approval
process until they meet all their expectations. They also bought a PC game
called Escape From Alcatraz developed by Phylos.
This game was
originally sold to german publisher CDV, but there was a breech of contract
from CDV as the game couldn' be ended by Phylos in more than 2 years.
Back to Check
Six, the game is Return of the Mummy (the cartoon serie not the movie !!)
but as LSP is near of the bankruptcy, they won't be paid for the work done,
so long Check Six !!!
2/13/03
Bam Entertainment
Bam or Sham?
A new year,
a new leaf? No way. More losses, more excuses, and more
dragging their
people down with them.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030114/sftu075_1.html
http://biz.yahoo.com/t/b/bfun.html
http://www.fatbabies.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1486&highlight=bammed
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?section_name=dev&aid=950
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?section_name=pub&aid=976
What a bloody
mess...
1/29/03
Goings on Down at Midway, San Diego
Kit Fisto wrote
in to tell us about the goings on down at Midway in sunny San Diego, CA:
Fatbango,
Some truths
to this regarding Dave Simon. Despite what it seems, Neil and Ken both
have been defending him through all the ordeals at Midway from the great
games he's mastered like WarGods, Bio Freaks, and Freaky Flyers (the only
3 games he ever worked on by the way) to all the sexual harrassment cover
ups. He's cost the company a little more than $15 Million all together
over his fantastic stretch at Midway. No wonder he was kept around so long.
Finally the pressure was so much after the last Stock reportings where
Midway acknowledged that "Bad Management" has been the cause of stocks
falling. (Yeah that along with HORRIBLE games) and Simon is part of this
Bad Management. However several others still remain and with majority of
the talent gone, Midway has nothing left.
After his leaving
close to 40 people (some internal and 3rd party production crews as well
as people in the Marketing, HR, Art and Programming departments), all have
been let go of or quit at Midway since. Not including the 60 some from
QA. San Diego is in trouble but no more than the rest of the company. It's
unfortunate that all the Division's Management took everything good about
Midway and pissed it away.
They are trying
desperately to sell the lump of crap that's left but the asking price is
$200 Mil (which is 200 Million too much). Nobody in their right mind would
attempt to by out Midway because they do not offer "ANYTHING" to the industry.
Look at the sales.
Thanks for
listening and for God's sake: DO NOT WORK AT MIDWAY!
- Kit Fisto
Sounds
like numbered days over there. And with no real brands to speak of
(is Mortal Kombat still a viable brand?), not having the talent
to create compelling new products spells certain doom for the studio.
1/29/03
Infogrames Story Follow-up
The 1/8/03
Story about Infogrames has sparked a few responses from industry veterans:
Would
someone please tell FatNonFrog that you dont need a college degree to be
sucsessful in this industry (or any industry for that matter). Thats
one of the problems with Infogrames. They hired moronic college biz
majors who had no clue about games, but were quite adept at french
kissing french asses.
If you look
at a lot of the problems in this industry they can all be traced back to
someone with a "college degree". College degree is code for "I dont
give a shit about games and could care even less about my co-workers.
Just show me who I can step on next to make more money, while I drive this
company straight into a brick wall".
Otherwise,
his story on Infogrames was pretty much dead on.
- Fat-uneducated
Hey Mark Long
here. I'm with Zombie in Seattle. Look, I never do this kind
of thing. I love your site, but your story on Infogrames is bullshit
- and someone needs to call you on it. It's arrogant to claim you
need a college degree to be a manager and it's racist to say that because
you're french you're inherently incompetent. What are you, thirteen
years old?
Infogrames
is the single best Publisher we've worked for. All the Producers
and Directors I've worked with are sharp as fuck. They know exactly
what they want and we get paid with alacrity. They are NIGHT and
DAY from the standard we-know-the-license-is-a-piece-of-shit-and-10-months-is-all-
you've-got,
take it or leave it Publisher.
They don't
know to pick titles? Unreal, Neverwinter Nights, Driver, Civillization,
the whole Tycoon series - have you ever looked at Survivors sales numbers?
And some play
testers got so drunk at the company party, the bar called the cops?
Sounds like my kind of party.
Mark
It’s true
that you certainly don’t need a degree to be a skilled employee and a solid
contributor to development, but as the economy worsens and competition
for candidates heats up, having a degree, or even an advanced degree such
as an MBA, Masters, etc., is going to help. While degrees might not
mean jack to the job, it means the world to the human resources departments
who ultimately have the final say when it comes to hiring people.
And in today’s tough job market, a person should take all the help he can
get.
1/29/03
Unreal Tournament 2003 Training Vids
We received
the following e-mail from Rob Rolnick, who wanted to share with us the
work 3D Buzz has recently done, and to offer their services to other game
developers:
Hi
Mr. FatBango,
I wanted to
share a scoop with you. Epic Games (www.epicgames.com) has recently contracted
3D Buzz (www.3dbuzz.com) to produce free, video training for their upcoming
hit Unreal Tournament 2003.
Jason Busby
(aka Buzz), renown for his free VTMs (video training magazines) covering
3D Studio Max (www.discreet.com), Maya (www.aliaswavefront.com), XSI (www.softimage.com),
Photoshop (www.adobe.com), Houdini (www.sidefx.com), and other high end
software, has already created an eight hour long piece that teaches how
to create, animate, and import a weapon into Unreal Tournament using 3D
Studio Max. However, this new line of VTMs underway will focus on Unreal
Tournament 2003 in terms of UnrealEd, static mesh creation, and even character
rigging and animation!
3D Buzz began
as a small site that shipped these CDs containing hours of quality video
training (encoded in DivX) straight to your house. They offered (and continue
to offer) free global shipping. Within the past few months, they have expanded
their system to include the download of VTMs, as well as a free online
course that focuses on Houdini.
Jason Busby
firmly believes that everyone, regardless of their location or financial
situation, deserves the right to a quality education. During the day, he
is the director of animation at a non-profit 3D training facility, in Tennessee,
The Renaissance Center (www.rcenter.org). During the evening and often
continuing until early morning Jason Busby, will film, master, and ship
out these VTMs at his own expense. He does this with the help of his wife
Angela, some of The Renaissance Center’s alumni, and some of his current
students.
I was wondering,
if you could please take a look at 3DBuzz.com and possibly mention its
endeavors on your site. The training Buzz offers in gaming development
as well as 3D will be invaluable to many of your readers who are interested
in Videogames and Film, but would otherwise be unable to afford expensive
classes that often range upwards of a couple thousand dollars. I’m sure
that upon looking at any of his VTMs you too will be impressed, and agree
that this is news worthy material. Feel free to sign up, for free, and
then download a few sections from any VTM. See for yourself the quality
of training Mr. Busby offers, for free, to anyone willing to learn. You’ll
need WinRar 3.0 ( www.rarlab.com) in order to uncompress the videos.
After you see
how inspiring this free training is, be sure to contact Jason himself.
(busbyj@3dbuzz.com) and possibly run an interview with this amazing man.
Thank you for
your time
Sincerely,
~Rob Rolnick
P.S. You can
read all about the deal
between Epic Games and 3D Buzz here.
Thanks
for the mail, Rob. Sounds like 3DBuzz is the way to go if a developer
is looking for training videos. Now if only they would do some in-game
tutorials... Perhaps that's an area for future expansion by the company?
1/29/03
EA's European PR Department
We received
an e-mail response to our recent Musing about EA’s PR department going
cheap on editors:
Hi,
I would like
to respond on the musing about EA going cheap.
I don't know
how it is in the other countries, but in the Benelux, EA (and its PR agency)
are doing a great job. We get almost everything we want from them.
Companies that
should think again about their PR on the other hand are Infogrames and
Vivendi. Vivendi's distributor in Belgium (who also is responsible for
the PR) doesn't seem to care about online press as we and many of our colleagues
tend to do nothing but complain that it's hardly impossible to get your
hands on any reviewcopies from them. When sending a mail to f.i. Sierra,
their answer is to ask reviewcopies from the distributor (duh! Been there,
done that!). This has been going on for years already and it's not likely
that this will change. I already hear loads of people hoping that Vivendi
will sell their gaming division to another company which would hopefully
use another PR agency and/or distributor.
Infogrames
is almost as good. In the first half of 2002, everything was still ok and
reviewcopies were not too difficult to get (although we were asked not
to request too much anymore due to budget cuts). After a couple of months
(August) we suddenly noticed that no reviewcopies were coming in anymore...
When calling our contact person to inform what was happening we heard that
their complete budget for reviewcopies was drained and that internet sites
we no longer getting any (magazines would still be provided with some).
Pretty cool seeing that their financial year started in June. So in less
than 3 months Infogrames Benelux managed to almost completely use up their
yearly budget for reviewcopies... I'm wondering what they did with the
money ? Oh, but they did have money to invite the whole press in Belgium
and The Netherlands for a presentation of Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 in the
Six Flags Belgium and Holland entertainment parks. To be honest, I would
have prefered some more reviewcopies than some stupid presentation of 1
game...
Still, we didn't
quite give up and hoped maybe other Infogrames offices might come in handy
and help us get reviewcopies. Not so. About 2 weeks after we contacted
the UK office (logical as they are the closest big office next to Benelux
and we wouldn't want them to have too much costs, would we?), we got a
mail from our representative at Infogrames Benelux that we "are not allowed
to contact other offices".
Irony at best
: the same day we were told not to have contact with other offices than
the Benelux one, we got contacted by an Infogrames US representative to
ask whether we were interested in some info on some of their games... After
they heard that we were located in Belgium, no more responses were given
of course.
I guess Infogrames
does not realise that outside US and UK there are also other sites which
target an international audience. After all, the internet is local, isn't
it ?
regards,
Fragland
Thanks for the
e-mail, Fragland. Check out Fragland’s website here: http://www.fragland.net
1/8/03 EA
"Fan" Speaks Out
We received
this e-mail from a "fan" of Electronic Arts products:
Hey,
I found your site today (from uncleclive's links) and it's really nice
to find a gaming news site with some bite. I'm only a lowly emulation junky,
and I spend most of my time cruising mIRC channels & news sites for
my next hit. But I can appreciate that the work you're doing is great.
I was just
wondering: Where do all these people come from?
I was reading
through the 'Musings' section and pretty much half the e-mails are defending
EA.
Why would anyone
defend EA?
Everything
they put out is terrible and they think that they can make up for it with
blanket advertizing. I used to be on the mailing list for review copies
of EA games (I did some reviews for a piss-poor e-magazine) and I have
never had so many coasters in my house, I had to buy more mugs to make
use of them all. We'd wile away hours playing plastic pigeon shooting:
I'd throw a poorly made EA psx game into the air and my friend would try
to shoot it out of the air with an air rifle, and I can honestly say that
is the most fun you can have with most EA titles.
AppleJuce -
gamer & man of leisure
Well AppleJuce,
it’s like this. EA built up some amazing brands through the hard
work and dedication of people 10 years ago! It was those people who
set out to create the first John Madden Football, NHL Hockey,
and NBA Live (called Lakers vs. Celtics/Bulls vs. Blazers/what
have you). Those are the people who created fantastic gameplay with
archaic graphics and sound on the Sega Genesis platform. Those development
teams made EA what it is today. And how many of those guys ever saw
any return, other than the satisfaction of shipping a great game?
Very few of them. Indeed, how many of them are still with EA?
A scant few.
You are right
in that today’s EA products are me-too knockoffs of other great hits, or
regurgitations of existing brands with updated player rosters and graphics.
Oh, don’t forget the marketing flash that has been added. Instead
of giving us great gameplay, we now have music videos included!
Lucky us.
1/8/03 A
Tester's Experience with EA
A former EA
tester laments his experience with The Evil Empire:
Well,
as my contract with EA winds down, I've decided to take a quick look at
what I've learned in my first 6 months of the industry.
1. Electronic
Arts views testers the same way the nazi's viewed the jews. Change
thier badge color so they're easily distinguished, and then ship them all
off to the showers when thier usefullness is used up.
2. The new
"Language Integration Department" at Electronic Arts is a completely useless
department. The theory behind this department, is to streamline the
transition between regular testing and Language testing. However,
any issues reported will quickly be swept under the rug and deemed "Not
our problem".
3. The old
theory that hard work and commitment will actually mean something to your
employer, means absolutely dick. An employee, who we will call "Pierre",
was recently promoted to Language Integration Lead tester, despite the
fact that he is the single most transparent kiss-ass in the western hemisphere.
His new position of $16.00/hr should reinforce his belief that kissing
ass pays off. This would not be so horrible, if it hadn't meant the
sacrifice of 12 Hard-working, dedicated, and talented young testers, now
thrown to the winds of the Free-agent pool of the gaming industry.
that's about
it.., print it or burn it.., just felt like bitching to someone, thanks
for the shoulder.
Peace.
Anonymous
We say,
"Welcome to the game industry"
EA says, "Now
go home."
1/8/03 N-Space
Apparently Lives
Ah, so supposedly
n-space lives! In response to our 11/6/02
Rumor on n-space, an n-space employee wrote in to tell us "No, we’re
still here. Fear and Hope is our new project we are working
on. There was a big layoff over a year ago, but our new page is now
up."
If you check
out their website,
all it allows you to do is submit an e-mail requesting information about
Fear
and Hope.
We’d say it
appears they’ve still got problems.
1/8/03 Want
to Be on TV?
We received
this e-mail from Gamer TV in London. If you are interested in talking
with them about gaming, development, or anything industry related, drop
them a line.
Dear
Fatbabies,
I write from
Gamer TV, a television production company based in London (UK). We specialise
in producing a wide range of entertainment shows and factual documentaries
about the video game industry, which we distribute to a worldwide audience.
Please check out our website at www.gamer.tv
We are currently
researching for a very exciting new 8-part documentary
series entitled
AROUND THE STATES IN 80 GAMES - landing in New York and
ending up
in Seattle we travel across the United States to visit the sites and meet
the people that have helped define (and continue to define) American culture
and the extraordinary phenomenon that is the modern video game industry.
And as the title suggests, our travels will remind you of eighty games
that have touched the hearts and minds of gamers all over the world. From
Pong to Grand Turismo, game developers to pro-gamers, hi-tech studios to
grand arcades and virtual reality attractions, this will be the ultimate
'gaming pilgrimage', encompassing thirty years of American history at the
forefront of video game technology and innovation.
We'd love to
meet and interview as many lively /interesting/ crazy video games people
(gamers and industry ) as possible and was wondering if your website could
aid us in finding out key interviewees. Our interviews would not take up
too much time and we would be happy to film at a location convenient to
you. Our team has yet to finalise a filming schedule but we expect to be
doing 2 routes Boston to Chicago and Las Vegas to Seattle. So please get
in touch by email as soon as is possible if you are on our route.
Any help is
appreciated!
We look forward
to hearing from you.
Regards,
Dishad Husain
Assistant
Producer
Gamer TV
dishad.husain@gamer.tv
(+44)20 8233
7825
www.gamer.tv
Perhaps
John Romero, Stevie Case, Will Wright, American McGee, or those other glory
hounds will now make contact. How much you wanna bet Stevie is going
to flash her boobs to get a gig?
1/8/03 EA
Is Cheap
Is Electronic
Arts being too cheap for their own good? Some media sites have been
upset over EA's refusal to provide review copies of products for free.
Yet EA expects reviews of those games! Over at GamerWeb.com, they
recently blasted EA in a feature article. Here's an excerpt:
Since
we don't require our staff to purchase games for review, there are some
games that you will never see reviewed here - most notably, those from
publisher Electronic Arts. Electronic Arts hasn't sent GamerWeb a game
to be reviewed in ages.
Read the
whole
thing here.
12/6/02
Wright and Wombley
One of our
Fat Fans mailed in this link to us. He said that after several years
of seeing horrible management practices at a variety of game companies
and other software developers, he came up with Wright & Wombley, two
fictional managers who advocate CEO’s running their own companies into
the ground for fun and profit. While not totally game industry related,
it's worth a listen.
Check
this out, as we’re sure you’ll appreciate the humor.
www.mp3.com/w_w
Enjoy, and
if you like it, please pass the link along to your readers.
Thanks, and
I look forward to hearing from you.
Steve Ogden
Wright and
Wombley
www.wright-wombley.com
12/6/02
More on EA's Jeane Wong
It looks as
if EA’s Jeane Wong had some fans in this industry, as one of them mailed
in to chastise us for running our 11/6/02 Musing slamming Jeane.
Subject:
jeane wong
as a writer
for entertainment weekly, wired, the new york times and the gaming industry
news, i have to say i have never, ever been treated by ea pr and jeane
wong in anything but a professional manner. i really like the fact
that you're out there muckraking, but this kind of stuff about wong is
just plain wrong.
Can’t we
all just get along? Ummm, no
12/6/02
Defending EA
FatPimp takes
it to the streets and busts a nut on us for running the 11/6/02 "Anti-EA
PR Rant" Musing. Has it really come to this?
Subject:
A New Low
I used to read
Fatbabies because it was fun and informative, but that long vacation must've
gone to your heads. You guys have reached a new low by printing a letter
from a guy who obviously has an axe to grind. Say what you will about EA's
public relations, I certaily have had my beefs with them, but those vicious
personal attacks against Steve Groll and Jeane Wong are totally uncalled
for. Just think how many people who know them are going to read that mindfart
of a "letter." That anonymous dumbass who calls himself Dan Morris is simply
a frustrated little boy who's trashing Jeane just because he couldn't score
with her.
In the future,
don't print something just because it's going to cause a stir. It does
you a disservice when you grope for attention just to pull in a few extra
hits to your navel-gazing website.
Best,
FatPimp
We never
print things just because they will cause a stir. We only print things
that are anti-EA.
12/6/02
3DO Hits New Low
As if 3DO has
not been slammed by everyone in the industry enough already, there is now
an article ranting on the company for being "One of the 20 Most Embarassing
Companies." It's a hilarious read:
Toastyfrog.com |
