Games Brief » Game Over Zone

Dissolved Indie Dev Outerlight on Ubisoft vs Risk: “Digital distribution remains the only sane choice for developers.”

Tom Jubert — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 16:10:32 +0000

This is a guest post by freelance narrative designer, Tom Jubert. Check out his industry blog, Plot is Gameplay’s Bitch, at http://blog.tomjubert.com/

Outerlight – the innovative Scottish team behind The Ship and upcoming spiritual sequel Bloody Good Time – revealed recently that the team was no more in a frank interview with BigDownload.com. Studio co-founder Chris Peck speaks candidly about how the developer’s move from self-financed digital distribution to a traditional boxed copy publishing model with Ubisoft ultimately led to its destruction.

Nicholas talks (at length sometimes) about how publishing is moving into new tiers – the ultra AAA, the mass market / casual, and the hobbyist / indie. Outerlight is/was an independent developer in the most modern sense. The team started out in 2004 by developing their game concept as a mod for Half Life, and using its success as a basis for pursuing private funding. This lead to the critically acclaimed release of The Ship – a risky venture in online games which saw players tasked with assassinating their one target on the cruise ship without giving the game away, or being knocked off by their own would-be murderer. It was a game of performance, and fascinating for it. It cost under £700,000.

By the time their follow up, Bloody Good Time, was announced, the team had been dissolved. What went wrong?

Peck:

“Unfortunately, by that time we had spent two years and 600,000 pounds on pitch materials and demos chasing publishing deals (for a deal on distribution, not even finance!), so Ship sales weren’t enough to fund the next project. Had digital distribution existed when we started up I think we’d be in a different position now.”

He’s pretty damning of Ubisoft and traditional publishing models in general, and while what Peck calls greed Nicholas would call sound business sense, I think they’d probably see eye to eye on where developers like Outerlight should be focusing their attentions. And it isn’t Ubisoft.

Peck’s one compliment of his publisher:

“On a positive note, I can say they had an excellent QA team in Romania.”

He also raises the one obstacle standing in the way of Nicholas’ perceived indie tier:

“However, the independent route still has the key flaw of needing funding. Investors are justifiably skeptical about developers (after all, we usually go bust), and banks don’t lend, despite the public bail out, so where will the development capital come from? At the moment, the main option remains a publishing deal, and while it seems like a lifeline, it’s more like a shackle with a death sentence at the end.”

I’d argue, on that basis, that Outerlight’s real mistake was to confuse which tier they were in. The Ship was never a AAA. It was a fantastic, valuable and successful experiment. Outerlight’s decision to develop Bloody Good Time using a spanky 3D engine at a spanky price point rendered what might have been a £300,000 success a £1 million+ failure. The audience that buys Modern Warfare 2 won’t buy a 2D Agatha Christie simulator. But then they won’t buy Bloody Good Time either. The people that will would much rather it was half as expensive, and its developer stayed in business.

“The team and the office are gone, all that remains is myself working unpaid in the hope to recoup some royalties from the game. It’s been a pretty brutal period, losing the team being the hardest part, as they were the biggest asset for the company, and we shared a lot of good times together. At the moment, the life line for the company is ongoing Ship sales, which have meant we can keep trading until we hopefully see some BGT royalties.”

I’ve pre-ordered my copy. Read the full interview here.

LucasArts confirms layoffs, perhaps as many as 85

Nicholas Lovell — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:41:42 +0000

Kotaku reports swingeing cuts at LucasArts HQ, with perhaps 60 developers and 25 QA staff believed to have been laid off.

Added to the Job Loss Tracker.

Tom Clancy studio Red Storm lays off 38

Nicholas Lovell — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 20:47:59 +0000

Ubisoft has confirmed that Red Storm Entertainment has laid off 38 employees in its North Carolina studio.

More details at GamaSutra.

Added to the Job Loss Tracker.

The official press release about RealTime Worlds job losses

Nicholas Lovell — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 16:09:52 +0000

With so much rumour swirling around, I thought I would just reproduce the official press release from administrators Begbies Traynor about the latest situation at RealTime Worlds.

I’ve changed the Job Loss Tracker to total 194 job losses at RealTime Worlds(37 last week from the MyWorld team and 157 as confirmed below).

PRESS RELEASE

BEGBIES TRAYNOR
19 August 2010

JOBS OFFERED BACK TO 23 MEMBERS OF 3D PROJECT TEAM AT REALTIME WORLDS

Administrators for leading video games company Realtime Worlds have announced that 23 members of the 60-strong Dundee team working on the company’s ambitious MyWorld 3D project who were all made redundant earlier this month have been re-employed.
Joint administrator Ken Pattullo, of business rescue and restructuring specialist Begbies Traynor said: “As a smaller entity MyWorld is attracting considerable interest from potential buyers and 23 members of the team who had been working on the project clearly add value to it as a standalone business, hence the fact we have been able to offer a limited number of those jobs back.”
‘Crackdown’ and ‘APB’ creator Realtime Worlds, which went into administration on Tuesday, announced the MyWorld “3D social gaming experience” last month, scheduled for launch in 2011. The team was, however, made redundant only days before Realtime Worlds went into administration.
Yesterday (Wedy) the administrators confirmed that while 53 jobs had been retained 157 employees had been made redundant, in addition to the 60 before administration. Trade creditors in the UK are owed in the region of £3 million.
Mr Pattullo said potential buyers from both sides of the Atlantic have expressed interest in Realtime Worlds which is the subject of a major restructuring designed to create a business that can support APB: All Points Bulletin as an ongoing online service for current future players.
“We want to offer reassurance to gamers that APB will not only continue as an online service but will be improved and supported 100 per cent during this restructuring,” he added.
Both he and joint administrator Paul Dounis today met Stewart Hosie, SNP MP for Dundee East and Dundee East MSP Shona Robison.
Mr Pattullo described the meeting as “very useful” and added: “Overall, we are cautiously optimistic.”
ENDS

Rehires at RealTime Worlds mark good news for a change

Nicholas Lovell — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 10:35:58 +0000

I may have been hasty in adding the entire staff of RealTime Worlds to the Job Loss Tracker.

GamaSutra and GamesIndustry.biz report three bits of good news:

RealTime Worlds has recruited back 23 of the 60 staff who worked on Project MyWorld. Those 60 were laid off from RealTime Worlds last week.
The company has retained 53 staff in the UK
The company has retained 14 in the US.

I had previously tracked a total of 302 job losses at RealTime Worlds: 60 from Project MyWorld, 200 in the UK and 42 in the US.

The current actual figures are 37 for Project MyWorld, 147 in the UK and 28 in the UK, a total of 212.

I’ll update the Job Loss Tracker. Note that I do not expect anyone to save APB, which means that the 67 staff still employed by RealTimeWorlds for APB are likely to be benefiting from a stay of execution, not a reprieve.

Krome Studios on the brink?

Nicholas Lovell — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 10:15:41 +0000

GameSpot reports that the largest Australian developer, Krome Studios, is likely to shut down its Adelade studio and put staff at its Brisbourne and Adelaide offices on notice.

The company has made a series of redundancies recently (which you can see on the Job Loss Tracker), including between 30 and 50 layoffs in April and an unspecified number of staff cuts in November 2009.

The company employed 400 staff a year ago, and the company stated “These times are challenging and as a result, we have put some of our staff on notice pending the outcome of a number of upcoming projects".”

As yet, the Adelaide office is still open, and staff are on a four-week notice period. Given recent trends in the games industry, the outlook does not look good.

Added to the Job Loss Tracker.

Has Cohort Studios slimmed down from 50 to 12?

Nicholas Lovell — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 13:15:00 +0000

Another week, another Dundee studio in trouble?

I’m hearing rumours that Cohort Studios made 38 people redundant in Dundee last week. The company is working on a PlayStation Move title called The Shoot but doesn’t have projects lined up after that.

I’ve added it to the Job Loss Tracker, but if anyone can confirm or deny the rumours of redundancies at Cohort, or point me to a news story about the layoffs, I would be grateful.

Developer n-Space lays off 100 staff

Nicholas Lovell — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:33:25 +0000

n-Space has had to make 25% of its workforce redundant, with the layoffs affecting 100 developers, according to Kotaku.

The company cited “momentary reduced demand” as a result of several projects finishing simultaneously and others being delayed.

n-Space, based in Orlando, Florida, has been responsible for converting many well-known franchises to DS and Wii.

Added to the Job Loss Tracker.

(via GamesIndustry.biz)

RealTime Worlds closes MyWorld team, puts APB staff on notice

Nicholas Lovell — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 11:29:21 +0000

Rumours are swirling that APB-developer RealTime Worlds is making swingeing cuts.

The team behind ambitious virtual world project MyWorld (only publicly announced last month) have been made redundant, with as many as 60 layoffs.

Additionally, VG247 says that an email was sent to staff yesterday saying that “there could be drastic cuts to newly-launched crime MMO APB”.

I wrote a year ago a post entitled: “Dave Jones APB: massive success or an epic fail”. In it, I said “APB from RealTime Worlds is about to become either the games industry’s Titanic or its Heaven’s Gate.”

It looks like it may be Heaven’s Gate, especially as VG247 estimates that the company has spent $100 million on the game.

In a timely post, Diane Lagrange of ICO Partners called the end of the subscription MMO, predicting that most, if not all, MMOs will transition to, or launch as, free-to-play MMOs.

The failure of such a high-profile cheerleader for traditional, hardcore MMOs seems likely to hasten this transition.

Added to the Job Loss Tracker.

20-30 jobs lost at High Voltage

Nicholas Lovell — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:50:24 +0000

Joystiq reports that High Voltage has laid off 20-30 staff.

High Voltage was behind The Conduit and it’s most recent title, Tournament of Legends, was not well received.

Joystiq suggests more layoffs may follow.

Added to the Job Loss Tracker.