Well, there goes that.

[Dyne]

Propaganda Games just fired its Turok team. I'm super depressed. Even my old bosses were fired. And yes, Turok 2 has been cancelled.

So much for wishing to graduate so soon....

[Fox 6]

I assume for economic reasons?

[BreakABone]

I assume for economic reasons?

And cuz Turok sucked...

But yeah, that is terrible. This is just been a hell of a month.
I believe last estimates has jobless in the States at about 200k for the month.
And everyone is being hit hard now.

[The Germanator]

Yeah, this economy is effed. Sorry for the loss, man. It's strange when I feel grateful to be a self-employed college dropout. I'm still not making much money, but at least I can't fire myself. Well I could, but I don't want to.

[Aladuf]

Just saw this on GAF and wanted to come back here and say that it sucks Dyne. You know I had a hell of a time playing Turok with you and was anticipating the sequel. :(

Good luck.

[Teuthida]

Sorry. :(

There will always be more dinosaurs in need of hunting.

[BlueFire]

Sorry, Dyne.
Don't give up, though.

[Bond]

:(

Just remember that down times such as these always create new opportunities!

[Combine 017]

Propaganda kind of sucks anyways.
Maybe someone better will hire the Turok team and make a sequel. Or does propaganda own the rights to Turok?

[thatmariolover]

I actually liked Turok >_>

Much more than I thought I would, anyway. I mean, it wasn't top tier or anything but I thought it was pretty decent.

Sorry to hear about the layoffs, though :-/

[Professor S]

Yeah, this economy is effed. Sorry for the loss, man. It's strange when I feel grateful to be a self-employed college dropout. I'm still not making much money, but at least I can't fire myself. Well I could, but I don't want to.

I don't think you can blame the economy for this decision. Gaming is one of the few areas of the economy that is still performing well.

The truth kind of hurts, but this decision was likely due to the fact that Turok failed to meet expectations either in sales, and apologies, artistically as well. In the end, its a business, and when your profits don't exceed your investment, people lose their jobs regardless of how well the economy is going.

[thatmariolover]

I don't think you can blame the economy for this decision. Gaming is one of the few areas of the economy that is still performing well.

The truth kind of hurts, but this decision was likely due to the fact that Turok failed to meet expectations either in sales, and apologies, artistically as well. In the end, its a business, and when your profits don't exceed your investment, people lose their jobs regardless of how well the economy is going.

I respectfully disagree. I think your interpretation of the data is skewed and that the economy is very much to blame. Gaming is not performing that well as a whole, rather the larger companies are reporting profits (mainly Nintendo and Microsoft, Sony reported a 95% loss of profits in 4'th quarter which they partially have blamed on poor PS3 game sales). Everybody has to explain to their investors what they're doing to protect their investments, and I think smaller studios are going to see more and more cuts.

[Professor S]

TML, the market is still doing VERY well, regardless of who is profiting.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2009-01-15-video-game-sales_N.htm

Its the industry's responsibility to stay relevant in a changing market, and sales were up BIG even in a down market last year.

People are still out there buying games, and the one's that don't sell fail and those who develop those games will suffer. IMO, even if this game was released in a hot economy the sales would have been lackluster at best. It never got any industry buzz and and the consumer base honestly never cared about this game even in development. Thats not necessarily all the devloper's fault, but the publishing side never really ot behind the product and there was no grassroots support.

To me it doesn't matter who makes the games (large or small company), it matters that there is still a market for them so there is no reason to blame the market for a a game that failed.

Not only that, but development teams are blown up like this all the time in the videogame world, even in good economies. The industry tends to be task oriented.

They made a game, it didn't sell, and they lost their jobs. There is no reason to find some convoluted explanation. Its simple math.

[KillerGremlin]

http://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=2937

EA cuts 1,100 jobs.

[Dyne]

Thanks for the thoughts, guys. Also, the official word is that no Turok II had ever been announced.. so my work is safe. :)

Also..

The truth kind of hurts, but this decision was likely due to the fact that Turok failed to meet expectations either in sales, and apologies, artistically as well. In the end, its a business, and when your profits don't exceed your investment, people lose their jobs regardless of how well the economy is going.Sales of the last game had nothing to do with it. It sold over a million across three platforms. They made more than enough - enough to hold two projects at once. However, Disney got greedy with money. (DISNEY of all people.) I think it's just in fashion to ruin people's lives in the Vancouver game industry right now.

Also, curiously, they only fired the artists and level designers. The expensive programmers were kept. It goes to show you, I'm in the right field.

This doesn't exactly mean the end of my career, but it hurts my plan B, which was to get back in Development Support again. But I didn't know if they'd want to lower my wage back down to Dev Support level again since my programming salary was so high. But I might have an opportunity in June again for another Coop.. cross your fingers. :)

[KillerGremlin]

You can always get a job at EA adding new players to their sport games each year while avoiding adding any new innovation. And then you can charge 60 bucks for it and slap a new 'XX on the title.

[Professor S]

Now that EA is laying people off, maybe the economy is finally hitting the gaming industry. The numbers I used as reference were 19% higher for 2008, but that might very well be front loaded from the beginning of the year. Sometimes companies can have pre-emptive layoffs in the expectation of a downturn as well.

And Dyne, I had no idea Turok sold that well. My apologies for making assumptions based on limited and incomplete information.

Maybe the economy is finally hitting the gaming industry after all... sucks.

And IMO, EA has made great strides in diverisfying their product in the past year or so. Their diversitfied product just doesn't seem to sell as well.