Wives and Game Development

lol - I know I shouldn't laugh at the humurous cynicism because obviously there are some scars left over from the whole experience...it's a bit sad I guess.

I was sad the day i heard of Westwood being shutdown/overrun by EA.

So how many were laid off exactly? Was it the whole crew at Westwood?

I hope that all the crew were laidoff got another job safely; was there ever a reunion or follow up after the closing of the studio?

But yeah, i guess you always have to think that those that are laid off are quite possibly family providers. One thing can make quite a chain reaction and a lot of the time, it does.

happens in every industry - sad but true !

Actually Tbag, we were part of the Westwood Pacific office. At our peak we had about 40 people. Westwood Vegas was the main brance with about 200 people at it's peak (maybe 250) anyway, the completely "relocated" the vegas office out to LA which ment; 1/3 were straight up fired, 1/3 were told, you can keep your job if you relocate yourself, and 1/3 were given a relocation package. Out of all those, I think only about a dozen or so went.

When EA "relocated" our office, Everyone but 1 was given the offer of a reloc package but only about 30% of the people stayed (1 year later, only 2 of the original artists are still there). The quote that my friends wife said had to do with taking a once fantastic team (We created Nox, RA2, Yuri's and Generals) and through bad management of the project and the human resources, they completely alienated the whole team and essentially destroyed a blockbuster cast. Heh, not even the Lure of working on LoTR: Battle for Middle Earth, could keep us there.

Anyway, life is good now. 2 of the artists are working in movies (one just finished work on Shrek 2, and another had wrapped up work on Star Wars Episode 3 a few months back). Most of the programmers that left are now working at better jobs (A few are working for a company being contracted out by Valve, Turtle Rock Studios). And me, 6 month vacation (backpacking Australia) followed by a 6 month contract working at Timegate Studios, I'm moving back to Australia :)

Heh I guess in a way, the piss poor management of EA turned out to be a good thing :)

Well done Munkee - 6 month backpacking round .au sounds like a good scheme, wouldnt mind doing something like that myself!!

Heh, thanks :)
A lot can be said about taking time out and living/learning about a place. You never know what you'll learn or find. In fact, my girlfriend, a native of Perth, she took a year off after her honours and she chose to explore Australia as oppose to some other country. Heh, I'm glad she did otherwise I wouldn't have met her in Cairns, fallen in love with her in Darwin, stayed with her in Perth, and now is a big reason why I'm dusting off my Australian Citizenship and moving down there :) Hehe Culture shock, here I come!

So in a way the whole thing worked out pretty good despite the sadness, take that EA! [:p]

So how many developers have gone down now thanks to bigger developers?

If you think its crap and you know it clap your hands!

I won't have any of you saying another bad word about EA or someone's gonna get hurt. Comprende

It seems that most companies that are bought out by publishers go belly up within a few years. Those that survive are only a shadow of their former glory. Makes you wonder why publishers buy out developers in the first place.

quote:Originally posted by bullet21

I won't have any of you saying another bad word about EA or someone's gonna get hurt. Comprende

Just curious, why do you like EA? Do you work for them? Have you been bought out by them? Or do you just like the games?

EA has a reputation of burning out a team. I mean look, the whole Medal of Honor team, yes, the WHOLE TEAM decided to leave EA. That says a lot. Sure there are studios that survive, Look at Tiburon, they're responsible for the Maden Series (don't know how popular that is down in Australia but over here it's one of EA's bread and butter titles). Anyway, they have had the opposite experience with EA. Increased growth, their own management, and more IPs to work on. So, EA has some good qualities. Although, I hear working as a 3rd party for EA is crap, developers tend to get the shaft in terms of contracts etc.

ANyway, just curios what your experience has been with them.

Chris

If you're still doing the backpacking thing, DaMunkee, (though I think you are talking about it in the past-tense) and you drop into Canberra, drop me an email.
I'll buy you a few beers of appreciation for Generals.. Just finished playing it on the hard setting.. Again.

I don't think any of those big companies understand that the team dynamic created when you have a bunch of people working together for a long time, is in fact the most valuable asset under the companies name.

When they take a few of the old people, and throw in a bunch of new people, you lose that dynamic. It's not something that carries over with the vets.

I guess good management could get around the problem.. But I don't think good management would let that kind of thing happen.

Anyways, DaMunkee, it sounds like it all turned out for the best.. I'm sure theres a bunch of negative feelings in there from everyone, but it sounds like there have been positive results for some of the people.

You're right, I have already done my "Great Australian Adventure" but, as I am a traveller by nature, I'm sure I'll be in Canberra soon enough :)

So, do you play it online at all? Would you be interested in playing a game together? No need to worrry, I've only played like 20 games since we shipped it over a year ago so you'll probably kick my butt but hey, it'd be fun :) Now, if anyone want's to play Yuri's, I'm actually quite good at that :)

You're right, in the end everything has worked out for most of us, also by us leaving, that opened a lot of oppertunity for others to work on a true "AAA" title. (In fact, one of my friends from Timegate just went over to work for the same manager that I use to work for, we warned him but the lure of working on LoTR was too great, ahh well, to each his own and you never know, hey may enjoy the torture :)

I'm 17 i dont work for anyone but KFC :(. I would love to work for them though. I like them cos i love their games. MEdal of Honour kix arse, as does the Fifa games and the NHL games. I hope you didn't get offended did you?

Hehe, not at all, I was wondering if you were a developer and if you actually had a good experience dealing with EA, I admit as well, they do make great games, unfortunatly the means at which they do it leaves something to be desired :)

quote:Originally posted by bullet21

I'm 17 i dont work for anyone but KFC :(. I would love to work for them though. I like them cos i love their games. MEdal of Honour kix arse, as does the Fifa games and the NHL games. I hope you didn't get offended did you?

Just because the game is great does not mean the conditions in which it was made is great.

I think this is one of the points that DaMunkee is trying to get across.

There are a lot of young people trying to "get into the industry" that do not really look at the larger picture. The larger picture being things like how does this company treat its staff, working in a place where you are actually happy, etc.

Yeah, have have heard some horror stories about 2015 - the guys that made Medal of Honor. Apparently they treat their employees like dirt. Most of their crew seperated off to create Infinity Ward and made Call to Duty.

I don't need to tell you how successful that game was :)

Yeah, I'd love to give you a game, I haven't given it a whirl online yet.. I like to think that pummelling the computer has made me an expert.. But I think my abilities are going to get mocked by a human opponent.

I haven't actually played Call of Duty yet, but people ramble on about it like nothing. I think there are way to many world war 2 games though and they mostlyl started after the success of MOHAA

Incase your wondering, i never said i hated EA [:p]. I like quite a lot of their work [:p].

As for Call of Duty it seems to be the WW2 game of choice now-a-days next to Battlefield 1942. I've never played it but it looks pretty damn good [;)].

Bullet - Call of Duty is great fun.. Multiplayer is pretty mindless, but I would rate the single player game as the best I've played in a fps since half life. The levels are all heavily scripted, but they have a frantic - non stop feel to them that really immerses you into the game.

quote:Originally posted by Sorceror Bob

Bullet - Call of Duty is great fun.. Multiplayer is pretty mindless, but I would rate the single player game as the best I've played in a fps since half life. The levels are all heavily scripted, but they have a frantic - non stop feel to them that really immerses you into the game.

How long are the levels? Like Half-Life(ish) length or longer? [:p]

Errr....what do the levels have to do with wives and game dev?

I think the term is Hi-Jacking :P

Well.. If. Say.... I had a wife who played games.. And her skills were on par with mine.. I'd say she would finish each level in roughly 10 - 20 minutes.. Give or take

Half life only had one level too.. Well it had 'chapter' type things.. But with CoD theres a definate beginning and end to a level. Some would say objective.