Fate of Troika

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"ChoyKw" <newsreader@newsgroup.com> wrote in message
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>
> hopefully this will be a lesson to all game studios - don't push out buggy
> products.

*holds envelope up to forehead*

It won't.

--
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"ChoyKw" <newsreader@newsgroup.com> wrote in message
news:421ff04f$1_2@news.tm.net.my...
> http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=7029
>
> hopefully this will be a lesson to all game studios - don't push out buggy
> products.

It is still pretty sad... The worst part is though that I found all 3 of
their developed games to be really lacking.

Arcanum could've been great, but it got repetative, easy and boring very
quickly.

ToEE was doomed to failure the day it was released due to its level 10 cap
(for all my friends and I anyway)

Bloodlines was so great, for the first few hours when after that you
realised it was just a hacknslash game and all the well modeled jigglies in
the world couldnt make up for it, or it crashed at the end of the Leopold
society and you lost all interest in having to replay it again.

As cruel as it may be for me to say, im very glad Betheda purchased the
Fallout license and not Troika.

Ceo-
 
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On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 14:21:06 +0800, "Ceowulf" <ceo@NOSPAMii.ATALLnet>
wrote:

>"ChoyKw" <newsreader@newsgroup.com> wrote in message
>news:421ff04f$1_2@news.tm.net.my...
>> http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=7029
>>
>> hopefully this will be a lesson to all game studios - don't push out buggy
>> products.
>
>It is still pretty sad... The worst part is though that I found all 3 of
>their developed games to be really lacking.
>
>Arcanum could've been great, but it got repetative, easy and boring very
>quickly.

I really liked it, but the combat was far too easy in turn based, and
impossible in real time. And the last 15% of the game felt really
rushed (and was there a missing subplot about gnomes kidnapping people
and breeding them with trolls ?).

>ToEE was doomed to failure the day it was released due to its level 10 cap
>(for all my friends and I anyway)
>
>Bloodlines was so great, for the first few hours when after that you
>realised it was just a hacknslash game and all the well modeled jigglies in
>the world couldnt make up for it, or it crashed at the end of the Leopold
>society and you lost all interest in having to replay it again.

Again, I liked it until I got the the game stopping bug. Or rather,
the second game stopping bug - I got past the Loepold one with a
developer code line to skip the level. The second was a door barred
with a non-sliding wooded bar. I read that if you hit it from the
exact angle, it opened, but after an hour or so of running and the
door and bouncing off, I gave up.

>As cruel as it may be for me to say, im very glad Betheda purchased the
>Fallout license and not Troika.
>
Yep.

Troika has a lot of talent, but their stuff suffered from being a
little rushed and flawed in some way.

--

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They got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses !
And what's with all the carrots ?
What do they need such good eyesight for anyway ?
Bunnies ! Bunnies ! It must be BUNNIES !
 
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"JWB" <jwb3333__removethissection__@excite.com> once tried to test me
with:

> To me, Troika's problem was they had big ideas, but lacked the
> business experience to negotiate a proper deal. For example, every
> game they made, it was the same story about a patch: "if the publisher
> pays us to make a patch, we'll make one"... I've never heard a game
> developer say that before. Every game released in the last ten years
> has needed a patch. How about telling Atari or whomever a patch has to
> be a part of the funding deal?
>
> No, it appears Troika just took whatever sum was offered them and
> promised they could deliver the game without really knowing how much $
> or work it would really take. They had no QA, no real testing, and (it
> would appear) a bare bones programming team. And after they released a
> game, they appeared to be somewhat adversarial to the publisher,
> blaming them for not funding a patch or whatnot. No publisher worked
> with them twice, so that's gotta tell you something.

You make a lot of sense. Here's a fun Interview I found on GameSpy (i've
interjected my own comments):

GameSpy: Troika has been around for several years, and had three good
titles under its belt. Why do you think you weren't able to secure funding
for your next project?

Boyarsky: I'm not sure, you'd have to ask the publishers. If I had to
guess, I'd say it's because triple A titles are costing more and more to
make, and people are looking for titles that will appeal to a more
mainstream audience than ours have traditionally. In plain English, our
games just didn't sell enough units.

KNIGHT37: If that's a problem, then self-publish. There IS a market for
GOOD computer RPG games. If EA and Atari don't want to touch it, then find
a smaller publisher or publish your own titles via the internet. If it is
true that the market isn't massive enough for RPGs, then cater to the
market that is there in a way that makes money, don't try to make it appeal
to the masses who can't even understand the concept of the genre much less
appreciate it. This advice is pretty much moot at this point for Troika but
for someone else starting a RPG dev team it might not be.

KNIGHT37: But I have to question if this is just Bullshit or not. Why is
Lucas Arts bothering publishing KOTOR 1 and 2? Why is Bethesda making
Oblivious er oBlivion? Why is Bioware working on Dragon Age and NWN2? Why
are RPG titles on the consoles such popular items (esp. in Japan)?

KNIGHT37: If you mean *YOUR* RPGs as opposed to RPGs in general, I do not
think it's a lack of good ideas, I think it's a lack of quality control.



GameSpy: Did you have any projects in the works? If so, what will happen to
them now?

Boyarsky: We had several projects in various stages of pre production,
mostly just documents, though. We did have our own tech demo, as well as
another pitch/demo using the HL2 engine, but that was about it. I don't
suppose anything will happen with any of our proposals.

KNIGHT37: AFTER your game is out is too late to be pitching a game to
another publisher. Lining up games at least a year before the current game
is done is the only way you can keep business rolling in. So either these
ideas just weren't thought of as worthwhile, or the game companies you were
pitching them to didn't like Troika for some reason.



GameSpy: What happens to Bloodlines in terms of support? Were any patches
or updates in the works?

Boyarsky: I cannot comment on Bloodlines' support, you'd have to talk
to Activision about that. We were not working on any patches or updates -
we haven't had a team since mid December.

KNIGHT37: Reading between the lines - No, it's dumped, there will be no
patches. No one who knows anything about how the game works is going to be
around to fix it. And besides that, Activision has never been very good
about post-launch support, so why should they start now?



GameSpy: What's next for you?

Boyarsky: I have absolutely no idea. Any suggestions?

KNIGHT37: In a different interview you said something about having plans to
hire a business person to do the business end while you and the other
founders of Troika acted as lead designers. If that's where your talents
lie then I suggest hiring on to another gaming developer that needs RPG-
designer talent.


--

Knight37

The gene pool could use a little chlorine.
 
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On 26 Feb 2005 07:18:59 GMT, Knight37 <knight37m@email.com> wrote:
>> Bloodlines was so great, for the first few hours when after that you
>> realised it was just a hacknslash game and all the well modeled
>> jigglies in the world couldnt make up for it, or it crashed at the end
>> of the Leopold society and you lost all interest in having to replay
>> it again.

Bloodlines really showed up that Troika don't know how to polish a game,
i.e. remove all the bugs and tidy up loose ends. Consider that they had
nearly an extra year to work on it as it was originally due to release
after HL2's 1st missed date, although that may be down to not being able
to budget for that extra development time as no-one expected Valve to
stall so long.

Releasing at the same time as HL2 probably hurt their sales, although
I've not seen any estimated figures on that.
>
>I'm not so confident in Bethesda either. But I guess a "not sure loser" is
>better than a "sure loser." Having said that, the one game of theirs I am
>actually looking forward to is that Cthulhu game, because, hey, they can't
>break the RPG systems if the game isn't an RPG. And Morrowind sure was
>pretty.

I thought that the Cthulhu game was going to be based upon the Call Of
Cthulhu RPG, or at least Cthulhu d20 ?

--
Alfie
<http://www.delphia.co.uk/>
Out of my mind. Back in five minutes.
 
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On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 14:21:06 +0800, "Ceowulf" <ceo@NOSPAMii.ATALLnet> wrote:

>"ChoyKw" <newsreader@newsgroup.com> wrote in message
>news:421ff04f$1_2@news.tm.net.my...
>> http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=7029
>>
>> hopefully this will be a lesson to all game studios - don't push out buggy
>> products.
>
>It is still pretty sad... The worst part is though that I found all 3 of
>their developed games to be really lacking.
>
>Arcanum could've been great, but it got repetative, easy and boring very
>quickly.
>
>ToEE was doomed to failure the day it was released due to its level 10 cap
>(for all my friends and I anyway)

You didn't really need to go any higher than that anyway. If you did it would
have been hopelessly easy, and it was pretty easy to begin with.

>Bloodlines was so great, for the first few hours when after that you
>realised it was just a hacknslash game and all the well modeled jigglies in
>the world couldnt make up for it, or it crashed at the end of the Leopold
>society and you lost all interest in having to replay it again.
>
>As cruel as it may be for me to say, im very glad Betheda purchased the
>Fallout license and not Troika.
>
>Ceo-
>
 
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> developer code line to skip the level. The second was a door barred
> with a non-sliding wooded bar. I read that if you hit it from the
> exact angle, it opened, but after an hour or so of running and the
> door and bouncing off, I gave up.

You had to USE the bar from a correct angle :)

No shame there, I was stuck also for a while. Bad design. But
I loved Vampire Bloodlines overall.

-Moa Dragon
 
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"Alfie [UK]" <me@privacy.net> once tried to test me with:

>>I'm not so confident in Bethesda either. But I guess a "not sure
>>loser" is better than a "sure loser." Having said that, the one game
>>of theirs I am actually looking forward to is that Cthulhu game,
>>because, hey, they can't break the RPG systems if the game isn't an
>>RPG. And Morrowind sure was pretty.
>
> I thought that the Cthulhu game was going to be based upon the Call Of
> Cthulhu RPG, or at least Cthulhu d20 ?

Everything I've seen and read about it indicates that it's an action game
full blown. I don't think it has much in the way of RPG elements if any.
It's based on the Call of Cthulhu RPG in the sense that it will use story
elements and background information from that RPG. And the insanity. The
more you are exposed to the "Mythos" the more insane your character gets
and the less control over the character you have on the screen. I'm
expecting some really funky insanity effects.

--

Knight37

The gene pool could use a little chlorine.
 
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In article <Xns9609136E5F191knight37m@130.133.1.4>, knight37m@email.com
says...
> "JWB" <jwb3333__removethissection__@excite.com> once tried to test me
> with:
>
> Boyarsky: I'm not sure, you'd have to ask the publishers. If I had to
> guess, I'd say it's because triple A titles are costing more and more to
> make, and people are looking for titles that will appeal to a more
> mainstream audience than ours have traditionally. In plain English, our
> games just didn't sell enough units.
>
> KNIGHT37: If that's a problem, then self-publish. There IS a market for
> GOOD computer RPG games. If EA and Atari don't want to touch it, then find
> a smaller publisher or publish your own titles via the internet. If it is
> true that the market isn't massive enough for RPGs, then cater to the
> market that is there in a way that makes money, don't try to make it appeal
> to the masses who can't even understand the concept of the genre much less
> appreciate it. This advice is pretty much moot at this point for Troika but
> for someone else starting a RPG dev team it might not be.

The problem here is that their concept of an RPG may include high
quality graphics etc. that will cost a certain large amount of money to
create. If the market is not there, that outlay won't be recouped.

Or are you saying that "real CRPG players don't care about graphics"?

- Gerry Quinn
 
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"Knight37" <knight37m@email.com> wrote in message
news:Xns960926920E5CAknight37m@130.133.1.4...
> "Alfie [UK]" <me@privacy.net> once tried to test me with:
>
> >>I'm not so confident in Bethesda either. But I guess a "not sure
> >>loser" is better than a "sure loser." Having said that, the one game
> >>of theirs I am actually looking forward to is that Cthulhu game,
> >>because, hey, they can't break the RPG systems if the game isn't an
> >>RPG. And Morrowind sure was pretty.
> >
> > I thought that the Cthulhu game was going to be based upon the Call Of
> > Cthulhu RPG, or at least Cthulhu d20 ?
>
> Everything I've seen and read about it indicates that it's an action game
> full blown. I don't think it has much in the way of RPG elements if any.
> It's based on the Call of Cthulhu RPG in the sense that it will use story
> elements and background information from that RPG. And the insanity. The
> more you are exposed to the "Mythos" the more insane your character gets
> and the less control over the character you have on the screen. I'm
> expecting some really funky insanity effects.
>

It supposedly uses an RPG system without showing the player any of the
underlying numbers. It sounds like the system will be a lot like the GTA
San Andreas system, ie., the more you shoot at creatures, the better your
character is at aiming.

Hopefully the insanity system has some neat effects like Eternal Darkness
had.
 
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"Knight37" <knight37m@email.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9609136E5F191knight37m@130.133.1.4...

>
> GameSpy: What's next for you?
>
> Boyarsky: I have absolutely no idea. Any suggestions?
>
> KNIGHT37: In a different interview you said something about having plans
> to
> hire a business person to do the business end while you and the other
> founders of Troika acted as lead designers. If that's where your talents
> lie then I suggest hiring on to another gaming developer that needs RPG-
> designer talent.

Yup - that's what they should do. Lots of talent at Troika. I'd like to see
what they could do with enough money to *really* make the project.
 
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Gerry Quinn <gerryq@DELETETHISindigo.ie> once tried to test me with:

> In article <Xns9609136E5F191knight37m@130.133.1.4>,
> knight37m@email.com says...
>> "JWB" <jwb3333__removethissection__@excite.com> once tried to test me
>> with:
>>
>> Boyarsky: I'm not sure, you'd have to ask the publishers. If I
>> had to
>> guess, I'd say it's because triple A titles are costing more and more
>> to make, and people are looking for titles that will appeal to a more
>> mainstream audience than ours have traditionally. In plain English,
>> our games just didn't sell enough units.
>>
>> KNIGHT37: If that's a problem, then self-publish. There IS a market
>> for GOOD computer RPG games. If EA and Atari don't want to touch it,
>> then find a smaller publisher or publish your own titles via the
>> internet. If it is true that the market isn't massive enough for
>> RPGs, then cater to the market that is there in a way that makes
>> money, don't try to make it appeal to the masses who can't even
>> understand the concept of the genre much less appreciate it. This
>> advice is pretty much moot at this point for Troika but for someone
>> else starting a RPG dev team it might not be.
>
> The problem here is that their concept of an RPG may include high
> quality graphics etc. that will cost a certain large amount of money
> to create. If the market is not there, that outlay won't be recouped.
>
> Or are you saying that "real CRPG players don't care about graphics"?

I beleive that quality graphics can be done and that there are enough PC
RPG players to fund the creation of those graphics. What has to happen is
that they have to make sure all the RPG players are on-board, which means
making the gameplay addictive and having good QA.

--

Knight37

The gene pool could use a little chlorine.
 
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On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 14:21:06 +0800, "Ceowulf" <ceo@NOSPAMii.ATALLnet>
wrote:

>> hopefully this will be a lesson to all game studios - don't push out buggy
>> products.

Bugs have nothing to do with it. The lesson is don't put out bad
games. Vampire was the worst game I've seen in years - and that's
saying a lot, because we haven't had anything BUT bad games in years.

>It is still pretty sad... The worst part is though that I found all 3 of
>their developed games to be really lacking.
>
>Arcanum could've been great, but it got repetative, easy and boring very
>quickly.

I'm not sure what it was with Arcanum that came up short for me, but
for some reason I just lost interest in it about halfway through. I
can't point to any one thing it was lacking but it just wasn't
compelling enough to keep me going.

>ToEE was doomed to failure the day it was released due to its level 10 cap
>(for all my friends and I anyway)

Doomed due to a level cap? So, Baldur's Gate was also doomed? That's
an... odd... assertion.

ToEE was a fantastic game engine, but the gameplay was pretty dull,
and the game was too short. It seemed more like a big demo than a
game, to me. Maybe somebody else will take that game engine and do
something great with it. Fallout 3 with that game engine would be
pretty fantastic.

>Bloodlines was so great, for the first few hours when after that you
>realised it was just a hacknslash game

Perhaps some of us take longer to notice the obvious than others :p

It's not even a hacknslash game, that is a term that applies to RPGs,
and Vampire is not an RPG. It's an action game. If putting stats on
characters made a game an RPG then Mechwarrior is also an RPG, right?

No, it's the ability to interact with your environment and influnce
events in a meaningful way, through independent action and personal
choices, that make a game an RPG. Character development is meaningless
when you go through the game on rails.

> or it crashed at the end of the Leopold society and you lost all interest
>in having to replay it again.

Speak for yourself, I gave up on the game long before that.

>As cruel as it may be for me to say, im very glad Betheda purchased the
>Fallout license and not Troika.

Oh, great. As far as I know, Bethesda has never put out a decent game
- by which I mean a game that I want to play. Of past and present game
companies, I'd rate Bethesda dead last for that reason alone. The
Fallout license may as well be dead, as far as I'm concerned, because
there's no way in hell anybody at Bethesda has the right stuff to make
a Fallout game I'd buy. Bethesda games are a whole lotta nothing. I
couldn't make a more dull and unimaginative game than Morrowind if I
tried. I shudder to think there are people out there who actually were
entertained by that endlessly repetitive and uninspired garbage.
 
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On 2005-02-27, Knight37 <knight37m@email.com> wrote:

> Online-delivery is the way for a small developer to make money today. I bet
> Stardock is making a pretty good amount on GalCiv and their other stuff
> they are doing at their gaming network site. Same for Jeff Vogel, I am sure
> he's not making millions or anything like that but I bet he makes a decent
> amount and he gets to do it by doing something he loves.

The merits of Galciv and the Avernum series withstanding, neither
of those games require a very large download. In fact, if KOTOR2
was being sold on-line only, a lot of people would not have
downloaded 4 CDs worth of data.

Production value (music, art, voice acting, etc.) are so high
right now that the only way to deliver it properly is to put it
in a box and on a shelf. Publishers are good at this. In fact,
it's the core competency of the publisher to do this.

Troika would have you think publishers are there to do Q&A.
 
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"Knight37" <knight37m@email.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9609D13D31545knight37m@130.133.1.4...
> "James Gassaway" <dtravel@sonic.net> once tried to test me with:
>
> > Well, if they did their accounting like my last employer did then they
> > counted each hour of programmer time as an "expense". Like a lawyer
> > billing his client by the hour, each programmer would have "billed"
> > his time against the project. The more time they spend working on the
> > project, the more the project "costs" the company. And the company
> > only gets a fixed amount from the publisher, so if too many hours are
> > spent working on the product it shows up as a "loss" on the company's
> > books.
> >
>
> Well what the hell else were they doing then?

I'm not explaining it very well. Its the accounting equivalent of measuring
something in units smaller than a Plank length. Think of it as the
bean-counters counting every bean by the atom. And then trying to scrimp on
the atoms in order to save beans. The accounting reaches the point where it
becomes so divorced from reality that it blocks attempts at common sense
acts (like fixing sales stopping bugs). Under that kind of thinking
employees getting paid to sit around doing nothing is better than having
them add to the number of hours a project takes.

--
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shadows <shadows@whitefang.com> once tried to test me with:

> On 2005-02-27, Knight37 <knight37m@email.com> wrote:
>
>> Online-delivery is the way for a small developer to make money today.
>> I bet Stardock is making a pretty good amount on GalCiv and their
>> other stuff they are doing at their gaming network site. Same for
>> Jeff Vogel, I am sure he's not making millions or anything like that
>> but I bet he makes a decent amount and he gets to do it by doing
>> something he loves.
>
> The merits of Galciv and the Avernum series withstanding, neither
> of those games require a very large download. In fact, if KOTOR2
> was being sold on-line only, a lot of people would not have
> downloaded 4 CDs worth of data.

A lot of people ARE downloading KOTOR2 actually. They just aren't giving
any money for it.

But you are correct, a 4-CD game at this point in time isn't going to sell
as many copies online as it can through retail.

> Production value (music, art, voice acting, etc.) are so high
> right now that the only way to deliver it properly is to put it
> in a box and on a shelf. Publishers are good at this. In fact,
> it's the core competency of the publisher to do this.

Production values might have to be sacrified for a small-time developer
catering to a niche market.

> Troika would have you think publishers are there to do Q&A.

Heh. No arguments there.

I do not honestly think the PC Industry is ready for download-only for
every game made. I think it's a good option for certain niche genres.

But there's no reason you couldn't do an RPG with decent graphics in under
500mb. You'd have to toss full-voice acting and you might have to drop some
texture resolution.

The thing is, though, you can do some stuff online that you can't do very
well through retail. Like Episode gaming, where the gamer downloads a
portion of the game, plays that, then the next, etc. Problem is so far it
seems a lot of developers have been rather greedy about what they think a
small "episode" is worth. Bioware is doing it right with the 'bite size'
downloadable content for a price for the NWN engine. That'd be another way
to do it, a small developer could put out a good engine that they then
release content to continuously. And of course updates for the engine to
keep it reasonably modern. And every 3 or 4 years a major revision that
requires another large download. Hmm that's sounding a lot like EQ...

--

Knight37

The gene pool could use a little chlorine.
 
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"James Gassaway" <dtravel@sonic.net> once tried to test me with:

> "Knight37" <knight37m@email.com> wrote in message
> news:Xns9609D13D31545knight37m@130.133.1.4...
>> "James Gassaway" <dtravel@sonic.net> once tried to test me with:
>>
>> > Well, if they did their accounting like my last employer did then
>> > they counted each hour of programmer time as an "expense". Like a
>> > lawyer billing his client by the hour, each programmer would have
>> > "billed" his time against the project. The more time they spend
>> > working on the project, the more the project "costs" the company.
>> > And the company only gets a fixed amount from the publisher, so if
>> > too many hours are spent working on the product it shows up as a
>> > "loss" on the company's books.
>> >
>>
>> Well what the hell else were they doing then?
>
> I'm not explaining it very well. Its the accounting equivalent of
> measuring something in units smaller than a Plank length. Think of it
> as the bean-counters counting every bean by the atom. And then trying
> to scrimp on the atoms in order to save beans. The accounting reaches
> the point where it becomes so divorced from reality that it blocks
> attempts at common sense acts (like fixing sales stopping bugs).
> Under that kind of thinking employees getting paid to sit around doing
> nothing is better than having them add to the number of hours a
> project takes.

BOGGLE. I'm pretty sure that isn't going to happen in a company as small as
Troika.



--

Knight37

The gene pool could use a little chlorine.
 
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Shadows

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May 2, 2003
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Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg (More info?)

On 2005-02-27, Knight37 <knight37m@email.com> wrote:
> shadows <shadows@whitefang.com> once tried to test me with:
>
>> On 2005-02-27, Knight37 <knight37m@email.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Online-delivery is the way for a small developer to make money today.
>>> I bet Stardock is making a pretty good amount on GalCiv and their
>>> other stuff they are doing at their gaming network site. Same for
>>> Jeff Vogel, I am sure he's not making millions or anything like that
>>> but I bet he makes a decent amount and he gets to do it by doing
>>> something he loves.
>>
>> The merits of Galciv and the Avernum series withstanding, neither
>> of those games require a very large download. In fact, if KOTOR2
>> was being sold on-line only, a lot of people would not have
>> downloaded 4 CDs worth of data.
>
> A lot of people ARE downloading KOTOR2 actually. They just aren't giving
> any money for it.

I don't want to turn this into a discussion on piracy, but you do
realize those people downloading were never potential sales in
the first place. A very small fraction of people will pirate to
save money and they quickly realize it's not saving them much
after all the hassles they go through.
 
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In article <Xns9609783FE421Aknight37m@130.133.1.4>, knight37m@email.com
says...
> Gerry Quinn <gerryq@DELETETHISindigo.ie> once tried to test me with:

> > The problem here is that their concept of an RPG may include high
> > quality graphics etc. that will cost a certain large amount of money
> > to create. If the market is not there, that outlay won't be recouped.
> >
> > Or are you saying that "real CRPG players don't care about graphics"?
>
> I beleive that quality graphics can be done and that there are enough PC
> RPG players to fund the creation of those graphics. What has to happen is
> that they have to make sure all the RPG players are on-board, which means
> making the gameplay addictive and having good QA.

But you were talking about self-publishing in the absence of funding
from a big publisher. Are all those 'on-board' RPG players going to pay
in advance of development?

- Gerry Quinn
 
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In article <8dm121t1o4361ll6t5qaaacrrp1asdhftb@4ax.com>, spectre911
@hotmail.com says...
> On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 14:21:06 +0800, "Ceowulf" <ceo@NOSPAMii.ATALLnet>
> wrote:

> >As cruel as it may be for me to say, im very glad Betheda purchased the
> >Fallout license and not Troika.
>
> Oh, great. As far as I know, Bethesda has never put out a decent game
> - by which I mean a game that I want to play. Of past and present game
> companies, I'd rate Bethesda dead last for that reason alone. The
> Fallout license may as well be dead, as far as I'm concerned, because
> there's no way in hell anybody at Bethesda has the right stuff to make
> a Fallout game I'd buy. Bethesda games are a whole lotta nothing. I
> couldn't make a more dull and unimaginative game than Morrowind if I
> tried. I shudder to think there are people out there who actually were
> entertained by that endlessly repetitive and uninspired garbage.

Each to their own. Loads of people *love* Morrowind.

- Gerry Quinn
 
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Knight37 wrote:
>> Under that kind of thinking employees getting paid to sit around
>> doing nothing is better than having them add to the number of hours a
>> project takes.
>
> BOGGLE. I'm pretty sure that isn't going to happen in a company as
> small as Troika.

Heh, you wouldn't think so, but it all depends on the mentality and
background of the BIC--beancounters in charge. I've seen some pretty
amazing things, that until I got out of the construction industry weren't
even aware existed.

--
chainbreaker
 
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Thusly "James Gassaway" <dtravel@sonic.net> Spake Unto All:

>Under that kind of thinking
>employees getting paid to sit around doing nothing is better than having
>them add to the number of hours a project takes.

Sounds like normal accounting to me.
There's been accounting sillinesses like that on every company I've
ever worked.
One company I worked on, with 1700 employees, even bankrupted because
management didn't understand that internal budgeting results do not
reflect reality.

--
"Forgive Russia. Ignore Germany. Punish France."
-- Condoleezza Rice, at the time National Security Adviser, on how to deal
with european opposition to the war in Iraq. 2003.
 
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Mean_Chlorine wrote:
> Sounds like normal accounting to me.
> There's been accounting sillinesses like that on every company I've
> ever worked.
> One company I worked on, with 1700 employees, even bankrupted because
> management didn't understand that internal budgeting results do not
> reflect reality.

Amazing, ain't it? :)

As I said above, I wasn't even aware such a mentality existed until I got
out of construction.

--
chainbreaker
 
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