[TRENCHES] Thursday, May 15, 2014 - Passive, Then Aggressive
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Passive, Then Aggressive
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/passive-then-aggressive
It’s a Sabotage
AnonymousOne game inside my company was being made by a new and very promising studio it had acquired in the old Soviet Block countries. The brass was really looking forward to them working out when they invested in the studio, and their big game project was ambitious and well designed. The long and short is an Eastern European post nuclear disaster wasteland First-Person quest driven exploration and survival shooter.
Sounds like Fallout 3, right? But this game was designed and even released long before FO3 ever hit the shelves. It was something that could have swept the market and become a smash hit, especially since it would have been easy for the localization for Europe and Russia because of the studio’s location. The guys that tested the game sang of it’s potential, but more often they lamented it’s situation.
You see, the management had a few people they wanted to “dispose of.”
The big brass in the company decided to place people they didn’t like in charge of the new, small, and suddenly under-funded studio and then blame them when the new builds still retained Alpha version bugs and flaws. Every person placed in charge of handling the unfortunate game was held responsible for a lack of progress when they were being actively undermined by their own bosses.
About three guys got discredited this way, the game itself getting older and inching closer to completion during this entire process. With three months until the promised release date, they were suddenly given funding, a new manager that was not being targeted by the higher ups, and a team of forty full time testers, a size only found on flagship projects inside the company. But it was too late. All the bugs that had been in the game since it’s Alpha build were present, and there was only enough time for surface polish and handling the “Game Breaker” bugs, and then the game was forced out the door.
I just now went and checked the old game’s Meta-score, and each review says basically the same thing.
“Great atmosphere, great writing, and immersive. But the bugs kill the fun, so go find something else to play if you can.”
Even so, the game got an 80% rating and additional DLC. But I just can’t help but feel that if those guys in charge hadn’t have been petty assholes to each other then this game would have been the one to define a genre in place of Fallout 3. Instead, they pissed their money away and hamstrung a promising studio for their own personal vendettas.
Bet they would’ve acted different had they known how much money Bethesda would make.
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I feel like we missed half a dozen strips.
Also:
I was almost sure it was S.T.A.L.K.E.R. until DLC was mentioned...
I'm a big fan of Monica's style too, but I never felt like it translated well to the trenches for some reason.
It probably is, sounds like the teller went back recently to check and most people would assume the expansions are a form of DLC since there is not so much talk about "expansion packs" like in the older days of games. Everything in the story points to S.T.A.L.K.E.R., especially with regards to the mismanagement issues and general reviews. I think I remember reading about it on the developer studio's forums of someone posting about why the game had so many issues and seemed partially finished.
It's little wonder this comic is becoming increasingly difficult to follow regularly: It gets passed to someone new every 10 minutes it seems.
Regarding the comic: diggin Ty's art but just the plot has really come off the rails. I don't know what to think anymore, I'm kinda just checking out of habit now which is sort of a sad way to read a comic.
No, they wouldn't, Mister Anonymous. Folks that see nothing wrong in turning a company upside down to feed their egos and who risk the company bottom line to indulge in passive-aggressive maneuvering don't care a thing about money. This sort of thing happens in a lot of industries. If the company is lucky, these egoists eventually get hauled off to prison for doing too many lines during the meetings. Or fired because their superiors realize what the asshat is costing the company. If the company is not lucky, it eventually fails.
Unfortunately, these egoist types are like fleas - they jump ship and find another host. They are very good at surviving, right up to the very end.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2014/05/19/the-state-of-play
Again, I really, really, wish there was a "news" section somewhere on the Trenches site.
I shall venture a common sense (not so common as you might think!) logic and assert that the query may be made publicly, yet the answer must be given in private (message).