Layoff hits Obsidian?

[WorstUsernameEver]

Like forumites on the Obsidian board.

 

PROJECT FUNCROC.

 

And then he explodes.

[Starwars]

Project funcroc would be awesome. Obviously it would be a detective game.

 

But there are other projects... projects that I might *welcome* being cancelled... *shudder*

[Nepenthe]

Project funcroc would be awesome. Obviously it would be a detective game.

 

But there are other projects... projects that I might *welcome* being cancelled... *shudder*

I "liked" this, but then I started suspecting that you meant me.

[funcroc]

OT: Brandon Adler's LI profile updated

 

Current

Designer/Producer at MEDL Mobile

 

Past

Junior Designer at Obsidian Entertainment

Assistant Producer at Obsidian Entertainment

Quality Assurance Lead at Obsidian Entertainment

Production QA at Obsidian Entertainment

[funcroc]

OT: Frank Kowalkowski's LI profile updated

 

Current

Senior Software Engineer at Blizzard Entertainment

 

Past

Lead Programmer at Obsidian Entertainment

Programmer at Interplay

[funcroc]

OT: CTG programmer Michael Bosley leaving OEI for Robot Entertainment

[Morgoth]

Obsidian keeps leaking and leaking man....

[HoonDing]

Could be they're downsizing in preparation for a string of Kickstarter projects

Edited April 19, 2012 by Drudanae

[C2B]

Could be they're downsizing in preparation for a string of Kickstarter projects

 

It still seems to be mostly connected to the layoffs/cancellation of last month. If you actually checked the link Bosley mentioned he left/moved for personal reasons.

[funcroc]

OT: ex-OEI Technical Artist / Rigger Adrian Rodriguez's video: Warbeast Obsidian Rigging Test

[PoetAndMadman]

It's model from Dungeon Siege 3

[funcroc]

CTG programmer Michael Hamlin leaving OEI

[Undecaf]

Are there still people left to leave...

[C2B]

Are there still people left to leave...

 

Yes, still around 90+. The layoffs were big (Though the last two seem to have happened after those. But they don't have to be layoffs at all), but its not like Obsidian is now a 10 man company.

[Undecaf]

Are there still people left to leave...

 

Yes, still around 90+. The layoffs were big (Though the last two seem to have happened after those. But they don't have to be layoffs at all), but its not like Obsidian is now a 10 man company.

 

I know.

 

Was trying to be sarcastic at the flow of "This person is leaving Obsidian" news against the lack of good news. Every time I come here, it seems, I can read that a handful of people have left, but noone's come in and no positive announcements are made.

[NoMan2000]

No offense, but the console market just isn't going anywhere for a while. iPads, iPods, and lots of iStuff are making a dent on the market, sure... on the "casual" market.

 

The console market is already gone from Microsoft's own report:

 

"

Xbox console sales are down 48 percent for the quarter, according to Microsoft. So even though Xbox is

leading the console market

with 42 percent share, according to Microsoft's latest numbers, the video game console market overall is very soft.

 

http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/23/you-could-have-it-all-my-empire-of-dirt/?grcc=88888Z-1ZwdgtZ0Z0Z0Z0Z0

 

http://parislemon.com/post/21394408259/microsofts-online-operating-loss-improvement

 

Operating losses at 229 million dollars for the Xbox right now. Bing loses at 480 million dollars if it makes you feel better.

 

The "casual" market you refer to is Apple's Iphone business, which is larger than all of Microsoft *combined*. You might really want to think about that for a minute. Then you might really want to think about this. At the rate of increase we're seeing from tablets and smart phone release cycles, even a next-gen super-console is going to be obsolete before the next few tablet releases. All of Microsoft's gains have been on the Enterprise front, not a single gain on the consumer front. Even the Xbox, thus far the only bright spot against Apple, has had poor profits this quarter, shocking Microsoft. So with all of Microsoft's gains coming from one direction, (Enterprise), and all of its losses coming from one direction, (Consumer), you think it's going to go all-in to the consumer market?

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57417863-94/meet-googles-secret-weapon-for-fighting-apple-and-microsoft/

 

<---- That's companies betting that smartphones will entirely replace computers.

 

As any guy who started on the 90s (or the 80s at that), ask any guy who likes to play Halo, Call of Duty, the self-called "Hardcore" gamer (the term on itself is silly, but that's another subject). Do you think they will change their 360s or PS3s for iStuff?

 

Quick question: When the casual gaming market is beating out the hardcore gaming market by a factor of 200 to 1, do you think any hardcore gaming system is going to survive? Where are these hardcore games you speak of? Every game now is super-easy to not alienate the audience, (ME:III, Dragon Age:II), why? Or how about Final Fantasy, which you don't even need to be involved in anymore to win? What happened to all the CRPGs that used to be the big sellers? They're now on Kickstarter because no big company would even think about funding them like that anymore. The guys at Obsidian know this better than anyone on here.

 

Even ME:III, the most successful of the RPGs, had to have obligatory Gears of War combat, dumbed down difficulty, an option to turn off the story in case, you know, all that RPG'ing got in your way, a removal of almost half the story, no places to explore, (All that freaking RPG'ing is killing this freaking RPG!) and a multi-player pack. Why? Hell, even FREAKING NINJA GAIDEN now has a multi-player mode.

 

The short answer is this: No one cares about what a small but vocal minority of users think, every gaming developer out there is going to go where the big bucks are. If you think otherwise, you've ignored thirty years worth of industry trends like how well the Wii sold vs Xbox or PSIII, the losses that Sony has been hammered with, and the complete loss of any consumer market by the Xbox. Show me an investor willing to put his money into that market and I'll show you someone who is fixing to be broke. The answer is that if you like the 'hardcore' games, you're going to be stuck in the same position as people who like the old CRPGs, you better fire that console up and go back to 2000.

 

How do I know this? Because I work with a high-end Microsoft computer that has better stats than every Apple computer out there if you spent ten thousand dollars on it. And a lot of guys in the VFX industry couldn't believe that Apple would completely drop support for their high-end workflows by killing the Mac Server, not supporting NVIDIA, (almost all GPU acceleration uses NVIDIAs CUDA rather than AMDs rival OpenCL), and completely gutting Final Cut Pro so that it's now a hyped-up version of Imovie. But that's what Apple did and they've been killing it in profits by doing that. Several people in the VFX field have had to start switching back to using Windows computers, (and whining about it incessantly), just to be able to do decent renders, but Apple doesn't care about what a small minority thinks, they want profits.

 

Supporting one percent of your market at the expense of what 99% are doing, (which brings up another point that many people thought the ARM-processors would lose to Intel's x64 architecture because of the amount of power that Intel has behind it, wrong again), and ignoring how most people use their computers is not going to work as a business model. Sure, you can hope/pray/wish whatever you want, but money talks in the entertainment industry.

 

If you ever talk to investors, here's a quick question for you: Which is a better movie, "True Grit" or "Cars 2"? It's a trick of course. True Grit is a million times better a movie, but Western movies do not sell outside the US. So while it was a phenomenal movie, it was not a commercial success. Cars 2 was a piece of crap, it generated billions in revenue. So for an investor, a crap movie like Cars 2 is always a better movie than something as amazing as True Grit. You want to argue that something amazing like True Grit should by its very nature, because it is so vastly better than Cars 2, not be thought of like this. However, as "right" as that may be in some senses, it's absolutely wrong from a pocketbook perspective. No matter how much more epic ME:2 was as a gaming experience than "Angry Birds", guess which one generated more profits? Actually, guess which of the two is still generating profits? Then take your feelings aside and ask if you could get money for your investment, which one would you invest in?

 

Did I understand this correctly. Microsoft wanted to put out a version of windows which doesn't allow you to install anything from disks, but makes everything an app store.

 

Only for the tablets and smart phones. With regular downloads, the only caveat is that you must have a download digitally signed by Microsoft to verify that it actually works correctly. Many Microsoft crashes are actually the result of bad drivers or other third-party installs, but no one cares if it's not Microsoft's fault. All they know is that they have a Microsoft operating system and it's not working, ergo, Microsoft's fault. Apple maintains stricter quality controls and it's paid off, and it's the same complaint you'll hear in the App marketplace of the Android free-for-all approach versus the very hierarchical and rigid Apple approach.

 

Microsoft is making a much-needed transition so that all of the Win8 architectures run the same, so you get the same experience on any platform. The runtime is much faster and .NET applications now run like native code, and it's faster than almost any other OS with touch screens. It doesn't work nearly as well with mouse-interfaces, which is a broad portion of the market. That's what their trying to fix in the final release before a lot of non-touch screen users are upset at the switch. I don't think it will work for the consumer market though.

[sorophx]

but movies like True Grit are still being released on a regular basis, that means there are people in the movie industry that are willing to "invest" in them. hell, considering the recent success of The Artist, I'd say the movie industry is just more mature (it's been around for much longer than video games, so that's not surprising).

 

don't worry, guys, in 50-60 years...

[Amentep]

Er...True Grit cost $38 Million to make so even though its world wide gross is less ($250 million vs $560 million) the difference in profitability is less than you think compared to Cars 2's $200 million cost. (Based on the common estimate, a movie would have had to make 1.5 - 2 times its budget to turn a profit, so...).

 

However its also fair to note that movie companies have stated they'd rather spend more money for more profit than spend less money for smaller profits. The question for games comes - even though Angry Birds sells more games what are the costs involved. Lets say - for simplicity sake - that Angry Birds retails at $5 (which their website indicated the PC version does), it has to sell 12 games for every one of ME2 (at $60 a unit) to compare the money actually being made. So in this situation, if Mass Effect 2 sells 1 million games and Angry Birds sells 8 million games, Mass Effect 2 actually made more money (~$60 million vs $40 million). Then of course there's development cost, advertising cost and such...the situation becomes fairly muddled.

 

Also fair to note is that most movie companies will try to make 1-2 "prestige" pictures each year with the goal of being to snag awards (with the idea that winning awards leads to larger secondary market interest as well as a trickle down effect for the company). There doesn't really seem to be an "award effect" in video games like there is in movies.

[Rostere]

(Lots of text here)

 

True Grit sucks, otherwise you are right.

[funcroc]

http://www.icanrigit...rigging_011.htm

http://www.icanrigit.com/adrianrigging_012.htm

Edited April 28, 2012 by funcroc

[Gorth]

http://www.icanrigit...rigging_011.htm

http://www.icanrigit...rigging_012.htm

You need password to see anything

[funcroc]

- Programmer Rahul Singh leaving OEI for Trion Worlds

- Ex-OEI programmer Michael Hamlin is working at Turtle Rock Studios.

Edited May 1, 2012 by funcroc

[WorstUsernameEver]

Scott Lawlor left Obsidian for Blizzard (last month, apparently) Sad to hear that, I thought he did a great job on New Vegas' sound design and I appreciated getting the insight of how much changed with Alpha Protocol's sound during the dev cycle from his blog.

 

I don't know if Funcroc already posted about it, but I didn't see it on the forums.

[funcroc]

Nicole Evanich is back?

 

Artist/Animator

Obsidian Entertainment

August 2011

[Alvin Nelson]

yep!