Dyne
10-15-2010, 02:34 AM
F'in brutal. I hate middle management.
http://kotaku.com/5664021/rumor-pirates-of-the-caribbean-game-canned-as-layoffs-hit-propaganda
A good 90% of my friends were laid off. The remaining 10% are fine though, I should probably go visit them soon.
As for me, I finished off with QA for good and I'm a Cinematic artist at EA now. I left Propaganda about a month ago - scary thing is, I left a month before Turok 2 got cancelled too. Same shit - back then, Josh Holmes, the studio head, left in December due to "creative differences with management", and then Turok 2 was cancelled in January after I had returned to school. Josh Holmes is now Creative Director of 343 Industries/all things Halo.
This time, Dan Tudge, a great guy from Bioware, was our creative director. Propaganda was aligning to become the Action-RPG studio for Disney - and it was all going to be driven by Propaganda's own PG Tech engine. Pirates was on track to start Alpha in September and push for a December submission. I submitted my two weeks and things started going to shit - Dan Tudge resigned, and Pirates was INDEFINITELY postponed. See, there's this bullshit rule Disney has that says you can't release a video game about a property within 3 months of a film. Pirates: AOTD had to be released in February so that it wouldn't touch this boundary for Pirates 4 in May. Same went for Tron, and that's why Tron: Evolution is releasing in January.
Anyways, the day after I submitted my two weeks, the producers announce that Pirates: AOTD is postponed to at least 3 months after Pirates 4 comes out in May. I laugh and laugh - good luck, I say. "The next Duke Nukem Forever". Pirates has been in development for over 3 years - why can't they push it out? I leave the week after and it's been quiet for a month. The entire Pirates team got a week off - calm before the storm? And then the knives came out. The entire Pirates team was cut, and the PG Tech engine is cancelled. Looks like they're on track to do Tron 2 with Unreal.
This is a sobering lesson for my future endeavors in the game industry: if the producer positions are like revolving doors, and your game mechanics are being outdone by competitors and you can only sell on name alone, it's time to GTFO. You need to "find fun", build a game around it, and then push it out. Building giant adventures without good mechanics are stupid. AOTD's ship gameplay was truly unmatched but there was barely any progression to go along with it because they just stuck the mechanic in a giant ocean. Finding fun is a principle I'll stick with from now on.
Anyways, enough rant for now.
http://kotaku.com/5664021/rumor-pirates-of-the-caribbean-game-canned-as-layoffs-hit-propaganda
A good 90% of my friends were laid off. The remaining 10% are fine though, I should probably go visit them soon.
As for me, I finished off with QA for good and I'm a Cinematic artist at EA now. I left Propaganda about a month ago - scary thing is, I left a month before Turok 2 got cancelled too. Same shit - back then, Josh Holmes, the studio head, left in December due to "creative differences with management", and then Turok 2 was cancelled in January after I had returned to school. Josh Holmes is now Creative Director of 343 Industries/all things Halo.
This time, Dan Tudge, a great guy from Bioware, was our creative director. Propaganda was aligning to become the Action-RPG studio for Disney - and it was all going to be driven by Propaganda's own PG Tech engine. Pirates was on track to start Alpha in September and push for a December submission. I submitted my two weeks and things started going to shit - Dan Tudge resigned, and Pirates was INDEFINITELY postponed. See, there's this bullshit rule Disney has that says you can't release a video game about a property within 3 months of a film. Pirates: AOTD had to be released in February so that it wouldn't touch this boundary for Pirates 4 in May. Same went for Tron, and that's why Tron: Evolution is releasing in January.
Anyways, the day after I submitted my two weeks, the producers announce that Pirates: AOTD is postponed to at least 3 months after Pirates 4 comes out in May. I laugh and laugh - good luck, I say. "The next Duke Nukem Forever". Pirates has been in development for over 3 years - why can't they push it out? I leave the week after and it's been quiet for a month. The entire Pirates team got a week off - calm before the storm? And then the knives came out. The entire Pirates team was cut, and the PG Tech engine is cancelled. Looks like they're on track to do Tron 2 with Unreal.
This is a sobering lesson for my future endeavors in the game industry: if the producer positions are like revolving doors, and your game mechanics are being outdone by competitors and you can only sell on name alone, it's time to GTFO. You need to "find fun", build a game around it, and then push it out. Building giant adventures without good mechanics are stupid. AOTD's ship gameplay was truly unmatched but there was barely any progression to go along with it because they just stuck the mechanic in a giant ocean. Finding fun is a principle I'll stick with from now on.
Anyways, enough rant for now.