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RedTribe

RedTribe develops and releases Jumper for 360. Some reviews for your amusement :-)

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/xbox360/jumper?q=jumper%20360

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 28/08/08 - 11:47 AM Permalink

It's a solid game. I think more importantly its a lot of fun too. If you compare it to other licensed kids games then it is a success. I don't think we ever set out to make Ratchet and Clank. We set out to make a solid kids platformer and that's exactly what we did.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 28/08/08 - 11:55 AM Permalink

The Jumper movie was terrible, why would anyone make a game out of that I don't know. Space Chimps looks good from what I've read. I'm definately curious, sounds like fun. Maybe a rental for me, I'm a BIG monkey fan.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 28/08/08 - 12:38 PM Permalink

Hey bud, don't miss represent. Meta Critic score is 57%. Bring it on :)

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 28/08/08 - 12:40 PM Permalink

Kudos Mosely ;)

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 28/08/08 - 1:33 PM Permalink

Hmm.. sounds like a earlier poster mentioned prototyping so someone decided to mention prototyping in regards to space chimps.

I'd trust the word of Tired Developer over you guys.

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 28/08/08 - 5:35 PM Permalink

There was definately a LOT of prototype work done from the start. I agree with the earlier post.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 28/08/08 - 10:05 PM Permalink

Got games to play so I'll make this quick.. all dot point like and shit

Space Chimps is a mediocre game at best for the following reasons:

* inexperience in management and design
* still not having a workable level design process
* spent too much time actually giving a fuck about the story of a shovelware title and fighting for control over it on the design side of things.
* design delusions of grandeur
* forgetting about the camera in level design (that cost us atleast 1 pass at levels even though we were given a stern talking to by camera coder number 2)... a guy at Insomniac ended up confirming for me once and for all.. IF YOU'RE GOING TO GO DOWN IN 3RD PERSON MAKE AN EVENT OF IT. Use a lift, a zip line, an avalanche, the second coming of jesus, whatever.. DON'T JUST PUT A SLOPE OR A DROP
* too many mechanics, at one point we had stealth in the game and zelda style lock on combat. those two things alone cost us a fun combat system and another pass at levels. having as many features as we did ensured that we had application programmers maintaining those mechanics passed GMC
* a realistic unified vision for the game came way too late. we were all very relieved to discover in the end that we were making a childrens platformer
* bowing to a number of foolish publisher requests early (eg. minigames, multiplayer, 12 levels, 4 fucking skus), back of the box bullshit ... yes you need 5 key points for the back of the box but they shouldn't near unplayable empty promises that are dev team resource hungry
* too many fucking skus

The game would have been a lot worse than mediocre had it not been for heroic efforts from great artists, engine coders, level designers, and more so than anyone else the guy who reads this and doesn't fit into any of the former categories and wonders why he wasn't given props.. he MADE the fucking project

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 28/08/08 - 11:38 PM Permalink

Looks like you're more pissed off than I am...

I second all of your reasons, but with much less anger. Everything you say is true, but was there anything that could have been done by the dev team? Instead, I choose to focus on the heroic efforts of the dev team to get the game out the door.

Its time to end the Redtribe bashing... I think they've had enough. Sure, they've pissed off a lot of people (myself included), but there are great people still working there, people who I respect and look up to, and I don't want to see their names tarnished.

-- Tired Redtribe Developer

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 29/08/08 - 2:02 AM Permalink

I'm not really sure how pissed off I am..

All things considered I learned a hell of a lot and am sincerely grateful for having had the opportunity. Working for Red Tribe is a bit of a funny one. Sometimes it's a bit like being in an AA meeting or something, like we're going through an ordeal together that's bringing us closer to together. To some extent I imagine that's what all places are like. To the company's credit though, as mentioned above there are a lot great people there, and it's working with those guys that makes it a job I'd be loathed to leave. Good times even in the rough patches.

-- the most anonymous designer ever

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 29/08/08 - 8:11 AM Permalink

"To some extent I imagine that's what all places are like"

To Tired Developer and The Most Anonymous Designer Ever - you deserve better. What you experienced is not the norm in the industry anymore, even for a growing company (or ESPCECIALLY for a growing company that needs to make sure it keeps its people). IMHO, a lot of the comments in this thread come from people in the industry being fed up with Red Tribe management's BS - going on and on and on and on about the awesome AAA titles they are working on, and how they look after their people with perks and treats and only touch them with velvet gloves, and anonymously commenting on Tsumea pretending to be happy Red Tribers. Then when you see the products that are shipped and hear people talking about working conditions, the reality is different and you wonder what the hell all the hype was about. We all want more successful Australian games companies, that's good for everyone, but PLEASE STOP THE BS. That's my constructive criticism!

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 29/08/08 - 9:31 AM Permalink

Agreed. That's why its been so refreshing to get proper insider looks into the studio. Instead of these anonymous "fantastic perks" message.

Whats become clear, there are some talented staff at red tribe, and I don't think anyone in the industry would want to put you guys down.

I'd be just concerned myself because of the following:
I worked for a company where the moral wasn't so high on the product, it was sinking about half way through. There was stupid amounts of overtime due to publisher pressure to get the product out the door and the way the team had overengineered the code base. I felt like the games industry was a dumb industry, I should get out, or travel overseas and work for more professional companies. Being in that stressful environment makes you see things differently.

I quit the company I was working for without having secured another job.

Luckily a few weeks later I got a call from another local developer, I was hesitant because of my experiences with the massive amount of overtime and low moral issues at the last place. I ended up staying there for 3 years, and did 1 weekend in my entire time there in overtime, and that was me feeling I needed the little extra time to complete what I was working on, not management pushing me. Plus they had a lot of little extra real perks, like pizza and beer on fridays, fresh fruit daily, paid movie outings etc.

I only left there because another company is making games I enjoy more. Much harder decision, since they been so good to me at the last employer, but I had my mates in the place so knew it wasn't going to be another "sorcher" situation. So far so good.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 29/08/08 - 10:53 AM Permalink

Not a Redtriber but thankyou for saying that. It gives confidence to those who have had bad experiences with other developers.

Submitted by Kookiemunster on Tue, 02/09/08 - 3:40 AM Permalink

Okay people Firstly Lets start with Jumper.. For the amount of dev time they had on that.... What was it, Six to 8 months......and the the small team that worked on it... well I challenge anybody to do a better job on it. NO I DIDN'T WORK ON IT. I'm not going to get into spacechimps as enough has been said on it. It's a solid kids title. It has bugs yes but hey that is External QA job to test that stuff. Yes Redtribe has teething problem... Lets just say not all the problems are in management. The people talking negative about Redtribe are disgruntle ex employees. In my time at the Tribe conditions were good. I had no complaints, yes you get your occasional problems but what workplaces don't... Try working in the corporate world.
What young game company didn't have its teething problems. Some companies didn't pay there staff for 2 or 3 months on end. We wont mention any names.
Anyway to all you guys saying ill things within the Au game community.
Just Remember, it is smaller than you think it is. Everybody knows everybody,(especially at the top end) and at some point you may need a somebody and well, your bridges are burned.
I still have a good relationship with Redtribe and will continue to do so.

There are some very talented people working at redtribe and I will say props to them for all the hard work you have put in.. I have been on the sidelines closely watching your progress. Making games isn't easy and on three consoles at the same time. Well done.

Keep plugging away Retribe and good luck.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 02/09/08 - 8:15 AM Permalink

It's sad to see an Australian developed game as officially the lowest scored Xbox360 retail title ever made ( exluding a free live arcade game which scored lower ) :(

Well you learn more from failure then sucess so hopefully Red Tribe learnt a hell of a lot from it and their next title is at the other end of the scoring charts.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 02/09/08 - 10:49 AM Permalink

I've worked at 3 local game studios and my experiences have been pretty similar. It really depends who’s on your team and who your leads are. Redtribe was a relatively new and small company when I was there.

There was always the feeling that we were trying to create the best game we could. This was both good and bad. Good because we were striving for excellence. Bad because we set our sights too high many times and we couldn’t back it up.

What made it hard back then was Redtribe didn’t have enough experienced staff. They hired a lot of newbies. Good if you want to get your foot in the door. It made the task a bit harder as everyone found their feet. I felt Chris was too involved with the programmers and didn’t pay enough attention to the art side of things. It was always about getting good technology that would run on all platforms simultaneously. I guess from a business perspective it worked well, but I felt this was at the expense of other things.

Redtribe gave a lot of people the opportunity to work in the industry and gain valuable experience; me included. Reading this thread, I get the impression they have gained a lot of valuable experience and are starting to turn a corner. Space Chimps sounds like a solid game and a good stepping stone to better things. I’m left thinking that Redtribe is a developer to keep an eye on.

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 02/09/08 - 2:29 PM Permalink

I read all this tripe about Red Tribe and some of it mildly accurate but most of it is just rubbish. Sounds like some angry person somewhere making up random stuff and making it sound like he knows whats happening, or trying to make out like they're standing up for oz dev or something ridiculous. makes me mad. You ain't standing up for the little fellow mate, you're just a piss ant.

How do I know, I'm here right now. Is morale perfect, no. Is the company perfect, no. Do we have perfect technology and tools, no. Am I happy here, yup!! Are we a bad company, Nope we're pretty decent and we're going to kick ass!! Is Space Chimps perfect, no. Am I proud of the game and what we did, yup!! I'm happy, it's a shame you're not, but I can't change that.

On a positive note, makes me want to do even better next time. lol, end of rant.

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 02/09/08 - 2:48 PM Permalink

fail.

RedTribe develops and releases Jumper for 360. Some reviews for your amusement :-)

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/xbox360/jumper?q=jumper%20360


Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 28/08/08 - 11:47 AM Permalink

It's a solid game. I think more importantly its a lot of fun too. If you compare it to other licensed kids games then it is a success. I don't think we ever set out to make Ratchet and Clank. We set out to make a solid kids platformer and that's exactly what we did.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 28/08/08 - 11:55 AM Permalink

The Jumper movie was terrible, why would anyone make a game out of that I don't know. Space Chimps looks good from what I've read. I'm definately curious, sounds like fun. Maybe a rental for me, I'm a BIG monkey fan.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 28/08/08 - 12:38 PM Permalink

Hey bud, don't miss represent. Meta Critic score is 57%. Bring it on :)

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 28/08/08 - 12:40 PM Permalink

Kudos Mosely ;)

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 28/08/08 - 1:33 PM Permalink

Hmm.. sounds like a earlier poster mentioned prototyping so someone decided to mention prototyping in regards to space chimps.

I'd trust the word of Tired Developer over you guys.

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 28/08/08 - 5:35 PM Permalink

There was definately a LOT of prototype work done from the start. I agree with the earlier post.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 28/08/08 - 10:05 PM Permalink

Got games to play so I'll make this quick.. all dot point like and shit

Space Chimps is a mediocre game at best for the following reasons:

* inexperience in management and design
* still not having a workable level design process
* spent too much time actually giving a fuck about the story of a shovelware title and fighting for control over it on the design side of things.
* design delusions of grandeur
* forgetting about the camera in level design (that cost us atleast 1 pass at levels even though we were given a stern talking to by camera coder number 2)... a guy at Insomniac ended up confirming for me once and for all.. IF YOU'RE GOING TO GO DOWN IN 3RD PERSON MAKE AN EVENT OF IT. Use a lift, a zip line, an avalanche, the second coming of jesus, whatever.. DON'T JUST PUT A SLOPE OR A DROP
* too many mechanics, at one point we had stealth in the game and zelda style lock on combat. those two things alone cost us a fun combat system and another pass at levels. having as many features as we did ensured that we had application programmers maintaining those mechanics passed GMC
* a realistic unified vision for the game came way too late. we were all very relieved to discover in the end that we were making a childrens platformer
* bowing to a number of foolish publisher requests early (eg. minigames, multiplayer, 12 levels, 4 fucking skus), back of the box bullshit ... yes you need 5 key points for the back of the box but they shouldn't near unplayable empty promises that are dev team resource hungry
* too many fucking skus

The game would have been a lot worse than mediocre had it not been for heroic efforts from great artists, engine coders, level designers, and more so than anyone else the guy who reads this and doesn't fit into any of the former categories and wonders why he wasn't given props.. he MADE the fucking project

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 28/08/08 - 11:38 PM Permalink

Looks like you're more pissed off than I am...

I second all of your reasons, but with much less anger. Everything you say is true, but was there anything that could have been done by the dev team? Instead, I choose to focus on the heroic efforts of the dev team to get the game out the door.

Its time to end the Redtribe bashing... I think they've had enough. Sure, they've pissed off a lot of people (myself included), but there are great people still working there, people who I respect and look up to, and I don't want to see their names tarnished.

-- Tired Redtribe Developer

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 29/08/08 - 2:02 AM Permalink

I'm not really sure how pissed off I am..

All things considered I learned a hell of a lot and am sincerely grateful for having had the opportunity. Working for Red Tribe is a bit of a funny one. Sometimes it's a bit like being in an AA meeting or something, like we're going through an ordeal together that's bringing us closer to together. To some extent I imagine that's what all places are like. To the company's credit though, as mentioned above there are a lot great people there, and it's working with those guys that makes it a job I'd be loathed to leave. Good times even in the rough patches.

-- the most anonymous designer ever

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 29/08/08 - 8:11 AM Permalink

"To some extent I imagine that's what all places are like"

To Tired Developer and The Most Anonymous Designer Ever - you deserve better. What you experienced is not the norm in the industry anymore, even for a growing company (or ESPCECIALLY for a growing company that needs to make sure it keeps its people). IMHO, a lot of the comments in this thread come from people in the industry being fed up with Red Tribe management's BS - going on and on and on and on about the awesome AAA titles they are working on, and how they look after their people with perks and treats and only touch them with velvet gloves, and anonymously commenting on Tsumea pretending to be happy Red Tribers. Then when you see the products that are shipped and hear people talking about working conditions, the reality is different and you wonder what the hell all the hype was about. We all want more successful Australian games companies, that's good for everyone, but PLEASE STOP THE BS. That's my constructive criticism!

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 29/08/08 - 9:31 AM Permalink

Agreed. That's why its been so refreshing to get proper insider looks into the studio. Instead of these anonymous "fantastic perks" message.

Whats become clear, there are some talented staff at red tribe, and I don't think anyone in the industry would want to put you guys down.

I'd be just concerned myself because of the following:
I worked for a company where the moral wasn't so high on the product, it was sinking about half way through. There was stupid amounts of overtime due to publisher pressure to get the product out the door and the way the team had overengineered the code base. I felt like the games industry was a dumb industry, I should get out, or travel overseas and work for more professional companies. Being in that stressful environment makes you see things differently.

I quit the company I was working for without having secured another job.

Luckily a few weeks later I got a call from another local developer, I was hesitant because of my experiences with the massive amount of overtime and low moral issues at the last place. I ended up staying there for 3 years, and did 1 weekend in my entire time there in overtime, and that was me feeling I needed the little extra time to complete what I was working on, not management pushing me. Plus they had a lot of little extra real perks, like pizza and beer on fridays, fresh fruit daily, paid movie outings etc.

I only left there because another company is making games I enjoy more. Much harder decision, since they been so good to me at the last employer, but I had my mates in the place so knew it wasn't going to be another "sorcher" situation. So far so good.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 29/08/08 - 10:53 AM Permalink

Not a Redtriber but thankyou for saying that. It gives confidence to those who have had bad experiences with other developers.

Submitted by Kookiemunster on Tue, 02/09/08 - 3:40 AM Permalink

Okay people Firstly Lets start with Jumper.. For the amount of dev time they had on that.... What was it, Six to 8 months......and the the small team that worked on it... well I challenge anybody to do a better job on it. NO I DIDN'T WORK ON IT. I'm not going to get into spacechimps as enough has been said on it. It's a solid kids title. It has bugs yes but hey that is External QA job to test that stuff. Yes Redtribe has teething problem... Lets just say not all the problems are in management. The people talking negative about Redtribe are disgruntle ex employees. In my time at the Tribe conditions were good. I had no complaints, yes you get your occasional problems but what workplaces don't... Try working in the corporate world.
What young game company didn't have its teething problems. Some companies didn't pay there staff for 2 or 3 months on end. We wont mention any names.
Anyway to all you guys saying ill things within the Au game community.
Just Remember, it is smaller than you think it is. Everybody knows everybody,(especially at the top end) and at some point you may need a somebody and well, your bridges are burned.
I still have a good relationship with Redtribe and will continue to do so.

There are some very talented people working at redtribe and I will say props to them for all the hard work you have put in.. I have been on the sidelines closely watching your progress. Making games isn't easy and on three consoles at the same time. Well done.

Keep plugging away Retribe and good luck.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 02/09/08 - 8:15 AM Permalink

It's sad to see an Australian developed game as officially the lowest scored Xbox360 retail title ever made ( exluding a free live arcade game which scored lower ) :(

Well you learn more from failure then sucess so hopefully Red Tribe learnt a hell of a lot from it and their next title is at the other end of the scoring charts.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 02/09/08 - 10:49 AM Permalink

I've worked at 3 local game studios and my experiences have been pretty similar. It really depends who’s on your team and who your leads are. Redtribe was a relatively new and small company when I was there.

There was always the feeling that we were trying to create the best game we could. This was both good and bad. Good because we were striving for excellence. Bad because we set our sights too high many times and we couldn’t back it up.

What made it hard back then was Redtribe didn’t have enough experienced staff. They hired a lot of newbies. Good if you want to get your foot in the door. It made the task a bit harder as everyone found their feet. I felt Chris was too involved with the programmers and didn’t pay enough attention to the art side of things. It was always about getting good technology that would run on all platforms simultaneously. I guess from a business perspective it worked well, but I felt this was at the expense of other things.

Redtribe gave a lot of people the opportunity to work in the industry and gain valuable experience; me included. Reading this thread, I get the impression they have gained a lot of valuable experience and are starting to turn a corner. Space Chimps sounds like a solid game and a good stepping stone to better things. I’m left thinking that Redtribe is a developer to keep an eye on.

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 02/09/08 - 2:29 PM Permalink

I read all this tripe about Red Tribe and some of it mildly accurate but most of it is just rubbish. Sounds like some angry person somewhere making up random stuff and making it sound like he knows whats happening, or trying to make out like they're standing up for oz dev or something ridiculous. makes me mad. You ain't standing up for the little fellow mate, you're just a piss ant.

How do I know, I'm here right now. Is morale perfect, no. Is the company perfect, no. Do we have perfect technology and tools, no. Am I happy here, yup!! Are we a bad company, Nope we're pretty decent and we're going to kick ass!! Is Space Chimps perfect, no. Am I proud of the game and what we did, yup!! I'm happy, it's a shame you're not, but I can't change that.

On a positive note, makes me want to do even better next time. lol, end of rant.

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 02/09/08 - 2:48 PM Permalink

fail.