Ex-OEI artist Ron Alpert's post at NeoGAF

[funcroc]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=34840217&postcount=35

I was an environment & prop artist, worked on safehouses (Taipei, Rome, Moscow, Saudi Arabia) and a bunch of level stuff as well across most of those areas: Brayko's Mansion, a bunch of Taipei exteriors & interiors, and a whole load of other stuff that got cut (I believe) plus a bunch of other odds & ends. It's been a long time since I have thought about it The process inspired me to make an absolutely amazing (mostly unrelated) secret agent game which I'd love to do someday, I think it would really stand out due to the gimmick I've got in mind. We'll see what happens..

 

http://www.neogaf.co...05&postcount=46

I made all of that 80s stuff, it was a blast Also the arcade machines were all me, I was disappointed that i didn't have time to make animated gameplay screens but hey - stuff takes tiiiime and I needed to make my deadlines

 

I was on AP for about 1.5 years and then I got moved over to the Aliens RPG, which was why I originally joined up with Obsidian in the 1st place (wet-dream game for a game artist to work on!) By now anyone who knows the score knows the tragic fate of Aliens and when entire projects suddenly die, they have to cut staff, so I will let you draw your own conclusions.

 

As for discussion regarding the production of Alpha Protocol, I've talked about it on a couple of podcasts in the past (I'm an indie developer now) and it's probably no surprise that the game had a bit of particularly hairy points over the course of it's development; anyone who paid attention to the fact that the game was in development for so long (and was postponed for release over the course of a couple of years) can probably suspect that things were troubled. I won't single out Obsidian for being at fault here, this past generation has been particularly tumultuous for many developers both smaller and larger than Obsidian, and a lot of other games and studios have been through a lot of the same political issues, things that just weren't so hard to tackle in previous generations. You used to be able to turn out a title in about a year-and-a-half, have a couple of things going on at once, if a game didn't sell at least a million you'd likely still turn a profit and not face potential studio closure. This gen brought much higher dev cycles, much bigger staff sizes, the deadly spectre of "feature creep" popped up in every game you can imagine (thank god they cut the QTE sequences from AP!) It's been a big miserable mess for everyone really. I am so much happier doing things on a smaller scale, although I do miss the electricity of working in a bigger studio and being a part of it when things just "click" (I was at Neversoft and Left Field prior to Obsidian)

 

Anyway long story short I had had an ass-full of the game (and it's ****ty coverage in the media) when it released, but in hindsight I am proud to say I worked on Alpha Protocol and I am pleased to see it has developed a legacy of being one of the more positively memorable games of this (particularly horrible to develop for) generation

Edited February 5, 2012 by funcroc