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[Monk]

Troika Games Interview

GB: Was there any interest in your post-apocalyptic tech demo? If you don't mind me asking, what sort of pitch/demo were you doing with the Half Life 2 engine?

Leon: We had some initial interest in our post apocalyptic game, but it was felt that it would have taken too long a dev cycle to develop the engine and then the game. We were hoping to do it in conjunction with another project with the same publisher to offset the development costs of the engine, but that deal fell through somewhere in the executive realm of the company we were talking to. The strangest thing for us was that we were in contact with a lot of development people who really wanted to work with us – producers, etc, but marketing and the execs are real wary of RPGs.

http://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/troikagames.php#null




Response to gamespy eulogy

Vampire: Bloodlines contractually couldn't be released until after Half-Life 2 came out. Half-Life 2 suffered numerous delays. Here's my understanding (which may not be correct, as it's based on hearsay from developers I chat with): During the final stretch of delays, Vampire was finished (playable) but not polished (devs were aware of problems that could be fixed). However, rather than pay to have the game finished, Activision decided not to invest in any more development. The game sat, as-is, for several months before release, waiting for Half-Life 2 to come out first. I think those last couple of months could've done wonders for the final product, smoothing the rough edges and catching the bigger bugs. Why was development stopped? Was it already over budget? I can't say for sure, but I understand that the talent was there and ready to do it but that the money wasn't there to pay them.

http://www.gamespy.com/articles/596/596238p1.html?fromint=1

 

[Enigma]

Gamespy has lots of good articles on how the publishers do their best to kill the industry with incompetence. Vampire was one of my most anticipated games of last year, but I didn't buy it because of the the final product released. I may pick it up when it drops under 10 dollars, but without a patch, even that's questionable. It's a shame, because had Activision used that time to polish it, it could have been one of 2004 real hits. As it is, I hope they lost money on the whole project, because they definetly deserve it.

 

[Patrick Klepek]

I recently interviewed Leon for a story I'm working on...he's pretty bitter about the whole thing. Understandably, but it's still sad