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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
| Ion Storm: An Insider's View |
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Here's part of an email exchange I had with a now ex-Ion Storm developer:<blockquote><em>I was one of the many laid off. I'd say about 25 or so were there today getting laid off, and there were probably four or five more people who weren't there (I only know of ONE for sure, though) who were also laid off. This was the first real layoff I've been involved in, so I don't know how it normally goes. However, they brought in HR from San Francisco to make sure things went by the book, and our access to our company's network was cut off immediately. This was the strangest batch of firings I've ever seen hit a company. There were a lot of REALLY talented people cut today: artists, designers, and programmers. I didn't notice any management being cut. A big shame all in all. Some of the instrumental people who fixed a lot of the problems that would have made Thief not ship on time (or with all of the problems that plagued DX2) and some of the people who were on Thief from the beginning were all cut. It was really deep cuts, and wasn't just a bunch of losers. Oh well, life must go on!
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<br>The current state of Ion is strange. I still have friends there, and they're not thrilled about what's happened and what is still happening. I guess the thing that I'd really say is: how many game companies have you seen that have had massive layoffs that suddenly did well afterwards? I have my doubts about the future of Ion Storm. I wish them success, for the sake of my friends and the game industry in Austin. I just don't have much hope. They've cut the studio to a one-team-one-project studio. Also, Warren Spector is no longer with Ion, as I understand it.</em></blockquote>It's sad to see these things happen and we wish all the staff involved the very best and good luck in securing new positions. |
Sat May 29, 2004 12:57 am |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
As much as I criticised DX:IW, it was still "deeper" than most action games and despite some mistakes, it's sad to see a studio that had been following in the footsteps of Looking Glass diminished.
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Sat May 29, 2004 1:03 am |
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thanks for the confirmation Dhruin, i wonder if they will change the name and produce only PS2 games as it`s written on Shacknews
B. |
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Sat May 29, 2004 1:07 am |
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Remus
Overgrown Cat
Joined: 03 Jul 2002
Posts: 1657
Location: Fish bowl |
That is one &*% big surprise!.
What happened? I suppose it was because of double digits grow of console game sales as some Eidos exeutive said few days ago. So the change is essentially the publisher decision?. It's sad to see developer got turn around by publisher so easily, it's sad that the creative peoples and capable workers got layoff because of market change. Well, now we have one less company that can make PC game!.
This is pretty much the end of The Looking Glass legacy!
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Sat May 29, 2004 4:02 am |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
It seems the PS2-only rumour is incorrect - simply that PS2 is being added to the platforms for the next title - whatever it is. An updated quote can be found on the news pages.
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Sat May 29, 2004 4:31 am |
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Jeepers! As if things weren't bad enough when they were designing their games with Xbox as the lowest common denominator. And to top it off, I'm willing to bet this next game will be that Deus Ex Clan action game. Way to go out with a bang, Ion/Eidos. |
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Sat May 29, 2004 7:42 am |
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Its a bad move alright, DX:IW was not up to the standard of the original DX but Theif 3 although not perfect was an improvment i felt. Its makes no sense to strip mine PC companies like this to move them toward a console centre development team... Why not just open a new studio's with no baggage. It all seems very simular to the road interplay has gone down, and we all know where interplay are now, a company that cant even pay its employee's or keep its website up. Admitedly eidos have alot of other titles to fall back on, but so did interplay at one time. Ion was the preimer dev house and without that i see eidos relegated to the league of EA churning out franchise hits but nothing "arthouse" like ion was capable off. |
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Sat May 29, 2004 4:22 pm |
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"strip mine PC and focus on console"
Actually, you need to look at the industry numbers - simple pragmatic reality will tell you that most game companies need to focus on consoles unless their particular genre is somehow tied to the pc platform and can not make it on consoles.
The latter is getting harder and harder to justify, and is extremely difficult to get a contract for owing to the sincerely scary lack of potential profit. When console game sales overall dramatically outnumber PC game sales, AND piracy is much reduced, AND development and testing on consoles is much more cost effective ( you do realize many pc-supporting companies are only NOW being allowed to drop support for win9x systems, right ) it then becomes a simple decision.
PC development MUST grow smaller over time.
I've been doing games since '92 and while it is not the longest term of many, and some that I work with, it is enough to give me this practical perspective.
We must remember that a game company IS a FOR-PROFIT enterprise, not a BREAK-EVEN - or more likely - MONEY LOSING enterprise.
That some of the publishers are in fact willing to take risks on ANY titles at all, banking on profits from other titles, is great and is NOT universal.
About Ion Specifically
This last week hurt bad out there, both from the "survivor" and "fatality" lists - I know the former first hand and the latter 1.5 hand. It's been a great couple years for me being there, I've learned a non trivial amount, and helped others learn some too, which had been great. I sincerely hope that in the coming months work there can in fact stabilize and grown to something cool and fun again, yet become reliably profitable and work-life sustainable.
For All The Fans Out There
I wish that Eidos/Ion management could say more, more frequently, but they can't and there are good reasons for that. There is no business that can survive with all of it's internal tought processes externally criticized, we should not expect that. Note: I am NOT management in either fashion, I just have the perspective of maturity, I feel.
*sigh* |
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Sun May 30, 2004 1:30 am |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
I'm always fascinated that "consoles" are spoken of as one platform. These are the first figures I can lay hands on which show that PC games are 17.3% of the entire games industry. I have seen breakdowns before (that I can't find in this timeframe, unfortunately) that show the PS2 has >40% market share, followed by PC with Xbox and Gamecube lower than the PC.
So while "consoles" collectively are far bigger than the PC, 2 of the 3 console platforms are actually smaller than the PC (as I understand it). No doubt these are changing and individual genres would vary.
Given the licensing costs of consoles, wouldn't it be as profitable to make an appropriate game (as in a suitable PC genre) for PS2 and PC rather than, say, PS2 and Xbox?
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Sun May 30, 2004 2:16 am |
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The reason they use "consoles" collectively is that alot of titles are multiplatform nowadays. So they can make some random crap console anime kiddie title (with card collecting elements) that won't work for PC gamers and then sell it on GC, XBOX and PS2. The way I see it, most new gamers nowadays are about 10 years behind hardcore PC gamers as far as expectations and what not goes. After they have grown out of playing crap, maybe quality will drag itself out of the gutter. Hell, the average gamer is 29 and 40%+ are female so maybe just throwing tits and blood at the general gaming populace will stop working eventually right? |
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Sun May 30, 2004 11:36 pm |
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I wonder if "consoles" is used by the dominantly non-console ( e.g. PC & Mac crowd ) - I don't know, just wondering.
One thing to keep in mind is that it is not all about platform penetration, whether a title is profit-earning or not. There are the "hidden" but huge issues of compatability development, compatability testing, and returns.
For the most part, if you develop for one of the consoles you can rely upon every consumer console being identical to your test systems. This results in dramatically lower development costs for a console title when compared to a PC title - even you only support Windows XP. The sheer possible combinations of hardware in the PC market make it impossible to fully test a title to a very high confidence level. It is also a sad fact that even if you test a given hardware confirguration as working, there will be many consumers with system differences in software that break the title.
Witness the release of DX:IW to north america, I understand that the PC platform has been subject to many issues not only from performance, but from simple inability to run on a given machine - even though the machine may be a "stocK" PC-clone type with all supported hardware.
I am NOT unaware of the console mod community, however people that mod their bokes often keep a virgin box around also, and are not a sales / return issue for the publisher.
On a big title trying to take advantage of modern hardware this causes huge problems. If you don't do that, and rely upon 3+ year old tech, then you get hammered for that. It's no-win on that score in the PC community.
No such issues on a platform that doesn't change at all for a couple years. Even a title that development is started upon after the platform starts hitting consumer hands is "safe" to deploy upon two or three years later. Usually with a larger installed base, and correspondingly larger sales.
On the PC, we often have been under gun to attempt to design and develop software that uses technology not really in physical existence, or to make the title scalable enough to take advantage of a machine that will be purchased at the time of title sale to consumer. Think about what the "hot" machines were 2001 and what they are now, and you begin to get the picture. |
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Mon May 31, 2004 2:39 am |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
That all makes sense. But we have to offset that extra compatibility testing against the licensing costs to Microsoft or Sony, right?
Larian recently gave the example of a return to the developer of as little as $4 / unit. I don't know how typical that figure is but if I'm taking $4 - $7 / unit out of the retail price to pay Microsoft, there's less money to go around.
I'd be interested to know the breakdown between Xbox and PC sales for DX:IW. Did the Xbox version outsell the PC (or vice versa) and by how much?
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Mon May 31, 2004 3:37 am |
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Remus
Overgrown Cat
Joined: 03 Jul 2002
Posts: 1657
Location: Fish bowl |
I wonder how big the compatibility advantage is in the issue of PC vs console games making. PC already a complicated machine when it became popular gaming platform, but i didn't hear as many PC game developers moaning about the issue of compatibility 5 years ago or before. Only recent years when the console markets growing fast enough to push developers to justifying compatility as one the huge problem. The actual, main or most influential could be as simple as just because of more profit in making console games, and, taking an easy way out without worry about patch(es) and minimum technical services.
And what about the theory of "pendulum swing?." Some peoples said the popularity and the market growth of consoles is just temporary thing. It happened before and it will happen again?.
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Mon May 31, 2004 5:34 am |
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