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[Kifimbo]

Although sources had told GameSpot that the teams behind the tepidly received GoldenEye: Rogue Agent and the near-complete Medal of Honor: Dogs of War were hit hardest by the cuts

If they cut the least talented people, that explained why Rising Sun and Rogue Agent were so bad.

 

[mashoutposse]

unemployment is so hilarious!

Especially when it happens to that annoying whiner of a colleague with no advance warning :lol

 

[Amused_To_Death]

Their CEO was talking on their conference call yesterday how they'll be standardizing all of EA studio on Renderware and that should help them cut down on the time to make the game, and kind of hinted on the amount of people working on games. I think EA will be cutting more people off their payrolls in the next 6-12 months as they roll out Renderware.

 

[Phoenix]

Their CEO was talking on their conference call yesterday how they'll be standardizing all of EA studio on Renderware and that should help them cut down on the time to make the game, and kind of hinted on the amount of people working on games. I think EA will be cutting more people off their payrolls in the next 6-12 months as they roll out Renderware.

I guess Take2 will buy NetImmerse in retaliation to make sure all their developers are using the same core technology. The Renderware move WAS a very smart move on EAs part because now they have a core technology they can use across the enterprise. It helps that there were a ton of their studios using it already anyways. Will be interesting to see how they sort out some of the issues across genres using the same core tech however.

 

[chespace]

I hope my two friends on the MOH team were unaffected.

But alas, I haven't heard back from them yet.

 

[MassiveAttack]

I hope my two friends on the MOH team were unaffected.

But alas, I haven't heard back from them yet.

Che, are you talking about Joe? I certainly hope he's avoided this.

 

[Acosta]

EA is a mega corp that must churn out titles on a timely basis or they miss their numbers. I don't think it works like that in the game business. That's why sports fits them perfectly: make minimal changes, roster updates, and voila, you're done. Innovative, ground- breaking games require time to make and test and then some more time. That's why you don't see a GTA, Halo, Half Life, or WoW type of game from EA. They just can't afford to invest 2-3 years into one game. Their shareholders will kill them. How can this be a good envrironment to work for? No wonder DICE and UBISOFT don't want any part of EA. Any self-respected programmer or developer would want to work for a gamer-type company, not an assemply line operation like EA.

Well, I´m not into EA= Evil Empire, I have concerns as player of its model but it´s not good to demonize them. But it´s certain that there is certain "levels" for each type of game. Sports games has to be launched every year yes or yes, then there are certain types of games that need to be launched in key time and others project that have free pass.

EA it´s good in the sense they can support very interesting games with the ordinary revenues of the yearly sports games (like The Sims or Burnout 3). I´m sure that a game likes Goodfather won´t have strict dates, it´s too important for them to have something to counter GTA, specially with the fight between Take 2 and them.

What I miss from EA it´s less benefits and more "free pass" games. With their money and structure they could do outstanding games, but they launch in my opinion too many games for key dates. It can work for simple games like Def Jam Vendetta, SSX and lot of quality games, but a FPS needs much more balancing and time, that is why I feel they have failed with all first person James Bond games.

I have my problems with the history of the company, specially for taking to the grave some awesome companies, but my only concern with EA is that their model lacks of equilibrium, I would like EA to become more videogame company and not as corporative .

 

[chespace]

Che, are you talking about Joe? I certainly hope he's avoided this.

Joe and another guy I've known forever through #vidgames

 

[Odnetnin]

thanks for the profits. GOODBYE. you're the weakest link.

 

[chespace]

Sweet, they've both survived the cuts.

DOGS OF WAR, HERE WE COME.

 

[john tv]

Sweet, they've both survived the cuts.

DOGS OF WAR, HERE WE COME.

Glad to hear that. As soon as I saw this, I was worried about them both. Especially Lee, he's so talented but he always ends up getting screwed by game companies. Glad to see it didn't happen this time!!

 

[etiolate]

When the NFL deal came down, one of my first thoughts was that this was also a preventive measure against the labor despuits. Instead of having to deal with their employees so they can up the bar against competetion, EA could just layoff people, cut back their teams and put less work into yearly roster updates.

 

[Gazunta]

Joe and another guy I've known forever through #vidgames

Who from #vidgames? I swear, we get everywhere these days...

Edit: Oh, and yay me for earning a tag at last.

 

[Sho Nuff]

I think it's more a case of:

EA: HEY WE GOT GOLDENEYE LICENSE, MAKE GAME FOR XMAS
Team: Uh, but it's July.
EA: TOO BAD MAKE IT
Team: It's not going to be any good.
EA: DO I HAVE TO ASK YOU THREE TIMES
Team: ...

(Six months later)
EA: THIS GAME SUCKS TURD FROM BUTTHOLE!
Team: No shit, we made it in six months.
EA: UR FIRED
Team: OK bye

 

[ferricide]

Who from #vidgames? I swear, we get everywhere these days...

argyle

 

[bishoptl]

I think it's more a case of:

EA: HEY WE GOT GOLDENEYE LICENSE, MAKE GAME FOR XMAS
Team: Uh, but it's July.
EA: TOO BAD MAKE IT
Team: It's not going to be any good.
EA: DO I HAVE TO ASK YOU THREE TIMES
Team: ...

(Six months later)
EA: THIS GAME SUCKS TURD FROM BUTTHOLE!
Team: No shit, we made it in six months.
EA: UR FIRED
Team: OK bye

:lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol

 

[Littleberu]

I think it's more a case of:

EA: HEY WE GOT GOLDENEYE LICENSE, MAKE GAME FOR XMAS
Team: Uh, but it's July.
EA: TOO BAD MAKE IT
Team: It's not going to be any good.
EA: DO I HAVE TO ASK YOU THREE TIMES
Team: ...

(Six months later)
EA: THIS GAME SUCKS TURD FROM BUTTHOLE!
Team: No shit, we made it in six months.
EA: UR FIRED
Team: OK bye

ahahaha awesome!

 

[mj1108]

I think it's more a case of:

EA: HEY WE GOT GOLDENEYE LICENSE, MAKE GAME FOR XMAS
Team: Uh, but it's July.
EA: TOO BAD MAKE IT
Team: It's not going to be any good.
EA: DO I HAVE TO ASK YOU THREE TIMES
Team: ...

(Six months later)
EA: THIS GAME SUCKS TURD FROM BUTTHOLE!
Team: No shit, we made it in six months.
EA: UR FIRED
Team: OK bye

:lol :lol Probably closer to the truth than anything.

 

[Socreges]

Not if you've seen those offices.

If I was working, beautiful LA with the most amazing offices ever or Canada? :lol

:lol Really, who would want to live in VANCOUVER??

:lol no thanks


Give me some o' that BEAUTIFUL LA!

Hells yeah!

 

[Deg]

Which team did 007 EON?

 

[Kobold]

Which team did 007 EON?

They doing from Russia With Love I believe, in the same style. That game (EoN) was genuinely average but sometimes even pretty cool.

 

[Acosta]

Vancouver it's fantastic, I loved the lake and how peaceful it was for being a big city. The only thing that shocked me was how many homeless were in the street, I have never seen so many.

James Bond is a third person game, no doubt about it, even doen't requiere as much balancing and doen't have to compete with Halos and Half Life. For me it´s more natural that way.

 

[FightyF]

Maybe they made this move because both games sucked? *gasp*

I don't see the logic in that.

If one of those games sold nearly a million, it doesn't matter how much it sucked because it's a money maker. A LOT of EA's games suck...actually, most (ie. 75%) of their titles do.

Secondly, games like NHL 2005 sucked AND sold horribly...why don't we see a lot of those people getting fired as well? We did see some of the games producers get fired, but not the whole dev team.

Which shows that there is more to this than most think.

EA bought DICE??!?!? WHEN?!?! NO!! GOD...NO!!!!

 

[Zeenbor]

http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2005/01/electronic-arts-la-layoffs.html

A nice inside look as to what went wrong and why GE:RA and MOH went to shit.

Here's the article for those lazy:

If you didn't hear this news yesterday, Electronic Arts laid off sixty programmers in their L.A. studio. Here's an excerpt from the Gamespot article:

EA hands out pink slips in LA
60 programmers, designers, and managers laid off at Electronic Arts' SoCal operation; studio boss Neil Young calls the move "regrettable, unfortunate, and very necessary"... According to Young, who spoke with GameSpot this afternoon, the layoffs were done in the interest of "rebalancing the teams across the entire studio." He called the cuts the "first step in transforming the studio for the future."

I'm not trying to pick on EA or Neil Young when I say this, but the phrase "transforming the studio for the future" is typical corporate doublespeak bullcrap. Studios don't get "transformed" when they're profitable--they get staff cuts because they were badly managed. Period.

Later in the day, I exchanged a series of e-mails with an employee of the EA L.A. division. This person, obviously, wishes to remain anonymous.

Here's the first e-mail I received:
I'd say at least 25% of the workforce was laid off. It is entirely because the management does not know how to utilize talent to make games, as proven by Medal of Honor: Rising Sun and Golden Eye 2: Rogue Agent. The studio wasted an amazing amount of resources on those sub-standard titles. This measure to cut costs is perhaps sensible, given that the executives don't know what to do with these people anyway.

Besides, if you spend all your money on exclusive licensing deals and advertisement, you don't have that much left to "waste" on development anyway.

The e-mail gave me an opportunity to ask a question I've always wanted to ask, Here is an excerpt of my response: "What do you think ruined those games and how early did you know that they were going to be sub-standard? I'm asking because I'm really curious as to how early in the development process something like that becomes readily apparent."

I received this response:
When it comes to the future quality of a product becoming readily apparent, it is of course different in every situation, but it is also dependant on the question, "apparent to whom?"

In the case of these two projects, it was apparent to the most experienced engineers from the very outset, due to the important engineering decisions being made by non-engineering personnel, which in the long run resulted in something like 50 thousand bugs logged, and not enough time to finish the game. Further lack of quality was driven by the lack of development skill in leadership, as demonstrated by:
- Multiple months of relative inactivity at the beginning of the project, while management meets with designers to dream up all the features which will later be cut for lack of time (presumably, designers get months of inactivity at the end of the project, since management is not yet ready to micromanage the next design phase).
- Demo-to-demo planning. ~75% of the development time (pre-finaling-phase) is spent preparing various demos. Demo hacks become ludicrous codebase during the next demo push.
- One year to make a two year game.
- "If we add online play, the hardware manufacturer will pay for advertising." Of course development time doesn’t change for this. After all we can put up a company from Texas and another from SCOTLAND in hotels across from the office for MONTHS to buy the additional man-hours we need (and extract the rest from the dev team for free!). Think of it. With no family or friends around, they have nothing to do after work or on the weekends, but work some more! I mean man-hours = product right?

And ultimately, it was clear that GE2:RA was doomed when, at the end of MoH:RS, the management didn’t say, "OK, we screwed that one up royally. Thanks for bailing us out this time.", but rather went around patting themselves on the back for the money it made (And by ‘bailing out’, I mean shipping a game, not shipping a great game. No one could have done that.).

I saw a tiny little GE2:RA postmortem that said things like "Online mode was a risk." How oblivious is that? If they want a clue, they can start with the reviews to find out what was wrong with the game, then maybe ask around about how it got that way.

Interestingly, many of the grievous management-as-engineers mistakes are being rendered impossible to make on the next go-around by the fact that they are being forced to use Renderware. But take my word for it, they’re doing their darndest.

Thanks to the anonymous source for a fascinating look inside the studio.

 

[chespace]

http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2005/01/electronic-arts-la-layoffs.html

A nice inside look as to what went wrong and why GE:RA and MOH went to shit.

Here's the article for those lazy:

Wow, that is... an eye-opening account of big budget development and how soulless and fucked up it is. Someone needs to do a Start-up.com style documentary and follow a game from inception to shit reviews.

 

[Amused_To_Death]

http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2005/01/electronic-arts-la-layoffs.html

A nice inside look as to what went wrong and why GE:RA and MOH went to shit.

Here's the article for those lazy:

That's what happens when coporate suits make decisions on when to get games out and micro-manage these projects and not let the studios and the developers put out the best game they can make, and put it out when it's DONE. EA is a great sports game company, sports games don't have to be designed from the ground up, just make minor changes and improvements and update the rosters and they're done. EA should be doing sports only!

 

[Ferrarisimo]

Anyone know if Cross survived?

I know a few dudes on the MoH teams, hope most of them made it.

John Cross? He did.

Glad to hear that. As soon as I saw this, I was worried about them both.

I get no love.