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Former SOE producer take on the layoffs
ice-vortex
Member UncommonPosts: 960
Hey guys,
I came on to say goodbye to you guys (at least in my current role, prepare for lurking), but after scanning the front page I wanted to change the flavor of the post a bit.
Columbus Nova deserves no hate in all this. They are more like white knights than negative forces here. SOE needed a shake up/new direction, and CN provided that. They have done nothing but been gracious in their new ownership, and they went out of their way to make sure that Devs and support teams that got laid off were taken care of. Right now things seem shitty, and of course for the folks that were let go, today was rough, but CN and DB were both very open about the need for restructuring. This wasn't a surprise to folks in the company.
Gaming is a tough industry, and not for everyone. I've seen lots of people come and go, both good and otherwise. The fact is, there are no (or at least, extremely few) permanent gaming jobs. If you want to have just one job in your career, don't pick gaming, or even computer software. It's just the nature of the beast in such a pioneering industry. But the flip side is that there is always a new opportunity awaiting, it just may require a move to a new location or some other sacrifice.
Most of the let go folks will be working in the gaming industry soon. The rest may decide to move on to other, less volatile lines of work. But no one I talked to regrets their time making games for folks to enjoy. It's a rare job that lets you bring pleasure to so many people's lives.
Back to the subject - if you guys feel angry or betrayed, it would be misdirected to place that at the feet of the new company. They didn't bring in new staff to replace us, or say we did a shitty job and treat us poorly - they looked at the bottom line and the numbers just didn't line up. The new layout lines up now, and the goal is that DB can be successful and move on from this and eventually expand again. Saying "I'm cancelling my sub" or "I'm never buying another thing in PS2" isn't the right tactic, as much as the former Devs appreciate the intent of your support. If you want to make a positive impact, then keep doing what you're doing - if you like the game, play it. Give feedback. Get your friends to play. Buy what you want to, and what you feel gives you value. If you aren't happy, tell DB through the means you do now, social media and /bug reports. The game will grow or shrink depending on how you guys act, which is how it should be. If you make a statement on principal for the dearly departed devs, you will be hurting the remaining staff who have worked just as hard to make you guys a game you like to play. They may not be all names you know, but trust me, they put their blood, sweat, and tears into this.
TL;DR - CN didn't do this, it was something that had to be done. CN is providing a chance for the games you love to continue going
-David C, former PS2 Producer
Edit: Ugh seeing the 'former dev' post header brought things home; I'll miss you and your well-meaning pitchforks :-(
Comments
Good read.
To be fair, this has potential to calm people down.
I think most people know where this is heading next. You have an Investment firm that is not focused in gaming buying up a gaming company at a stupidly cheap price because SONY wanted to offload out of the PC market.
Now weeks / month later SOE is being gutted from the top down and these producers some having worked on these games for years + are now being replaced by bean counter from the investment firm. Next step will be to max the amount of cash they can pull from the cash shop and then offload the IPs to any company willing to pick them up.
I hate to say it but the days are numbered for all the SOE games. They would have had a much better chance being bought by EA then they do now. Under SONY, SOE had the run to do just about anything they wanted.
If reports from other sites are true that half of the team from H1Z1, Everquest games, PS2 are gone. Then you can bet you will hear about a IP sell off within the next year.
Rereading what he wrote is even more annoying. They all certainly acted last week like not much was going to change. Now he's saying everyone knew and basically agreed that this needed to happen to save the games? Yeah that's a big load of BS.
Regardless of the financials and what needed to happen, gutting this many people just after purchasing isn't about continuing on with business as usual as this supposed ex-dev claims.
Yeah this sounds about right.
Except Columbus Nova has never done this to any of the companies they bought. This isn't the first gaming company they purchased, that would be Harmonix which is still producing games.
SOE had 500-1000 employees and reported a $60 million loss last year. It was completely bloated and a sinking ship. They were producing far less than companies a faction of their size. There was no choice but to restructure and reduce the size of company.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
I find it reminiscent of when the State of Rhode Island sat on Kurt Schilling's MMO and found out the market value of a dated half developed MMO is zero. If these guys are half as smart as they think they are, and it seems they have no intention of putting in the money to develop EQN, that means they need to sell what they have in a hurry.
I have it on good authority by some members of this very site, that the post on Glassdoor is a lie and conspiracy made up by a disgruntled gamer. Wait. No. To paraphrase, "old veteran gamers that need to move along".
At the end of the day a company has to be able to make money..
This will prob end up being a good thing for them, sometimes it good to have a fresh start.
Ha! You'll rarely get the real story from a publicly identified game company vet. At least, not from one that wants to keep working in the majors. Hiring departments don't like folks who talk out of school.
And there is a lot of behind-the-scenes chicanery. Me, I don't know much about SOE's dirty laundry, but the Glass Door equivalents are likely the only place you'll get some idea of that stuff, unless you know someone who's been there and who'll discuss it privately.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Yeah, sure, nobody at "producer" level is going to publicly criticize this ownership change or the actions taken, not if they intend to continue working in the industry.
First, we will hear that the new ownership is good for the studio and will allow it to continue making great games.
Next, we will hear that the layoff of staff is good for the studio and will allow it to continue making great games.
Then we will hear that the closing-down of certain "older" MMO's is good for the studio and will allow it to continue making great games.
Eventually we will hear that the shift away from making MMO's is good for the studio and will allow it to continue making great games...
I'm not concerned what the letter says, although I read it twice to be politely attentive. I feel disappointed and frustrated and I'd be portraying myself disingenuously if I acted any other way than disappointed and frustrated. It's like having preferred artists and authors, and you really want to see their next works, but halfway through the project they're replaced with unknowns. Well, that's a bunch of horsecrap. I think well of these artists, my hype was built on these artists, my hope for the project relied on these artists, and now I'm getting... something else. I'll tell the powers that be straight to their faces, "I do not want it".
I don't want a book written by Joe Schmo if it was originally understood it was to be written by Steven King. I don't want a painting by Picasso if the last half was finished by Jim Dandy. I don't want your damned art product, on which you decided to cut cost halfway through. Don't tell me what to feel when I'm being honest with you. I don't want EQNext now. I'm sure you'll do fine selling to people who don't know better, but leave me out of it.
Now that the shoe is on the other foot, it doesn't feel good does it? Many ole EQ vets from back in the day were told to buzz off, or move along because we were displeased with the direction of things.. Well... KARMA baby.. I like your Steven King example, however, could it not be viewed this way too.. You were wanting Steven King, but maybe some of us wanted JRR Tolkien.. However, I don't think we are going to see EQN at all.. I think it's just a matter to time, before it's announced that EQN is cancelled as you know it..
Who knows, maybe the new staff and management might want to turn EQN into a multiplatform game like Diablo 3?
You could be right. My guess is we will be hearing about lots of changes over the next few months. One thing I am sure of, this investment group bought them to make money not different then any owned studio. I know BioWare name means less to me since EA got their hands on it. Question is what rep are they going to make with gamers?
You realize that Rosie is still there right? She's the Art Director for EQ since the very first one and that mean Picasso haven't had his painting finished by someone else.
Terry Michaels is still there too, he's the Senior Producer for EQNext. That's the guy seen in the reveal video for EQNext and most of the Landmark Live twitch.
Micheals Mann is still there, that's the young hyperactive looking guy that explained how the classes works in EQNext last summer at SOE Live, along with a few other gameplay features. He's the Lead System Designer for EQNext and that position is the key design position.
Steven Klug, the guy responsible for the technical side, still working at Daybreak too.
Good points,however that doesn't tell us much about the direction of EQN or anything else.. I view them as the cooks in the kitchen that are actually earning their paychecks.. From what I've seen so far of the "list" of layoffs are the decision makers or PR people I guess.. It'll be interesting to see what changes come from Daybreak in months and years to come..
Smartest post you have ever done. Im waiting as well to see how they manage their games, current and in development. This will tell me if they are going in for a quick cash grab or want to make a name with gamers. I feel bad for the people laid off but I think everyone knew this was coming, even the people laid off =- Funny thing is even the ones laid off have nothing but good things to say. ????
Because all the dogshit titles that you people hype then quit after the first month for the last decade has been so enriching for the genre.
Stephen King was Joe Schmo once too, everybody you ever liked was. Getting too attached to one particular artist is pretty silly. Who's to say you would've like EQNext in the first place? You sound like one of those fans who would turn on people you supported the second they release something that you didn't agree with. Which uniformly is going to be the case if you follow someone long enough, real artists evolve and piss off their fan base all the time.
Agreed. Of course the new owners are "nice" those are the professional salesman and assessors you met, these will be some of the most sincere and honest seeming people you will ever meet during a transaction. Once the transaction is done, the investment firm turns the new acquisition over to the people that crunch the numbers, not the people you met when you were bought, those guys are onto the next deal. You wont see them stopping by with gift baskets, though you may see an auditor or two or three in the very near future.
I hope this does bring a new direction and sense of urgency to their games. I have been rather disappointed in the development of EQN and Landmark. Not so much in what is being produced, but how slow it has gone!
How many years do we need to work on a game before you can put something out there? Lots of other companies seem to blast out product a lot faster. I love the concept that has been brought forth for EQN, but it seems like a game that has been in development this long should have had more to show for it by now.
Hopefully the new managers will buckle down and get some stuff done now. Sometimes you need to light a fire under some butts to get the best out of people.
I doubt the direction will change much. Lead Designers are responsible for the direction and outside of Danuser, I haven't seen anyone else layoff in that category for the EQNext/Landmark team...and there is actually other content designer outside of Danuser who are still there who can take his place.
The problem is have you ever seen a MMO get more players by producing less content? Those people let go from games like PS2 and EQ2 means content updates for those games are going to be slower and even smaller than they already where. Now maybe there was some room for restructuring but I just don't see how letting go of the people writing the code and creating the content is going to speed things up.
EQN might come to market faster now but it seems likely that some of the lofty ideas we have seen around this game such as dynamic living world which is really hard to do right by the way is going to take a back seat. We might just very well have seen EQN turn from a open world sandbox with Storybricks driven NPC's into a quest hub game. I hope not but I also have the feeling their older games are going to see content slow down even more. Well except for cash shop items, those I'm sure won't have any issues being made.
I came across this article that I think sums it up well. So Daybreak as a EQ2 subscriber and customer. What content can you produce with 10 people? My continued patronage as a customer will depend on the answer.
http://eq2wire.com/2015/02/12/opinion-on-daybreak-games-it-didnt-have-to-be-this-way/
You forgot Darrin McPherson who is the Lead Game Designer of EQN.