Why Warhammer failed ? (les coulisses en Anglais)

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Raconté par un futur ex-employé de BioWare Mythic
https://ealouse.wordpress.com/2010/10/12/hello-world/

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Hi everyone,
I would think myself to be part of some noble cause, like the original EA Spouse trying to save her husband from a hellish work environment at EA. That had a happy ending, however, with tons of publicity and a total change of overtime wages and salaries and how they are handled within the company. I do not expect a happy ending, so I’ll be personal and selfish, and this is just for me.
So just call me EA Louse.
I found out recently that I will be dismissed from Bioware Mythic during the next round of layoffs EA coming this November. I’m sick of seeing EA outsource their art and find every excuse to get rid of us and still not achieve anything. Mythic is dying, and its not us who killed him but we’re taking the fall.
But if you want to know what really went down with Warhammer, I’ll tell you right now.
First, the project leaders did not know what they were doing. Jeff Hickman was the saddest excuse for a producer I’ve seen. All he did was drink the Koolaid and suck up to the right people. He was the perfect yes-man, and this reached down to almost all managers.
My boss who will not be named, again and again would tell us that Rob Denton, one of the original owners, said we should “do this” and “do that” and we would say “omg it makes NO sense, please explain A, B, and C to him. “And then he’d come back and tell us, after we thought he had gone to talk with him,” No, Rob wants in this way. Jeff agrees, this is what we’re going to do. Understood? ” They never actually talked back to Rob. We didn’t talk back to them.
Rob said jump, our leaders said, “How high?! And on who?”
So we shut up and did what we were told, by people too afraid to tackle real problems. It is a culture of fear, especially since Mark Jacobs was fired.
Oh, he left voluntarily you say? No, he was fired, and everything placed on his shoulders by those closest to him so they could divide his salary and annual bonus. I bet Rob is enjoying that sweet new Maserati he bought after leaving the knife in his partner of 15 years.
Want to know more? Keep reading. I can keep ranting.
Rob was never there during the development of Warhammer. We always joked about when his next weekly holiday was coming. (Answer? Next week!) Mark was not available, was way too head down trying to design his own contributions or whatever. Rob always handled things. We were told NOT to speak with Mark in person, never, or else we would be explaining to Rob.
The coup began long before Warhammer, and Jacobs did not even realize it.
And yet, this is common gossip in the company, and nobody in this industry seems to get it. So get it! Rob was responsible for the entire project, then blamed Mark when things went wrong.
Ah, but could not do it alone. No, he needed Jeff Hickman, promoted from customer service to produce the Warhammer project. Wait, let me let you have that sink in. The man running customer service, on the theory that the management of a large team of CSRs qualified him to run a game development project, was put in charge of a $50 million project with no previous experience.
And he needed Eugene Evans, the man who brought you the almost non-existent marketing campaign behind Warhammer. We could not even believe how bad they fucked up the marketing campaign. There was almost none. We slaved for years, and this is how we were rewarded for it by Eugene and the people of EA? Being told that Warhammer was not “worth” a lot of money spent on it? LOL. Now he’s in charge of Bioware Mythic.
Oh yeah, and he needed Paul Barnett. You know him as the crazy British dude that appears in random videos at EA to promote his latest bullshittery. We know him as the crazy British dude who we have no idea of how he still has a job. This man was supposed to be the savior of Warhammer’s vision and design. Now all he can do is promote his strange ideas about his little secret project web Ultima game that’s been almost universally criticized by all of us and focus groups. What’s that? You didn”t know Paul loves one of those old Ultima games sooooo much he’s making a literal copy of it for Facebook? Well, the cats outta the bag. Too bad it sucks ass.
So what do they all have in common? All of them failed, badly, in Warhammer, and each of them is in a position of authority in the new company, while the rest of us are facing pink slips. How do they sleep at night? They spin aruond, blame everything on Mark, divide his old salary between them, and never speak about it again. Oh, and they fuck us little guys as well.
Almost makes me congratulate them for having the balls, but after watching them work, it’s obvious they don’t have any. They’re cowards running scared trying to hide under the wing of Bioware, now that Rob has become a general manager of EA.
And Bioware? Don’t make me laugh. They’ve spent more money making the Old Republic than James Cameron spent on Avatar. Shit you not. More than $ 300 million! Can you believe that?
And you know what they’re most proud of? This is the kicker. They are most proud of the sound. No seriously. Something like a 20Gig installation, and most of it is voiceover work. That’s the best they have. The rest of the game is a joke. EA knows it and so does George Lucas,they’re panicking , and so most of Mythic has already been cannibalized to work in Austin on it because they can’t keep pushing back launch.
Old Republic will be one of the greatest failures in the history of MMOs from EA. Probably at the level of the Sims Online. We all know it too ……
Anyway, back to Warhammer. We shouldn’t have released when we did, everyone knows it. The game wasn’t done, but EA gave us a deadline and threatened the leaders of Mythic with pink slips. We slipped so many times, it had to go out.
We sold mor ethan a million boxes, and only had 300k subs a month later. Going down every since. It’s “stable” now, but guess what? Even Dark Age and Ultima have more subs than we have. How great is that? Games almost a decade make more money than our biggest project.
So there it is. Rewarding the incompetent. Firing the competent.
I say it anonymously so I can keep my next few paychecks coming.
So I’m a louse. A big fat EA louse.
Want some more questions answered? Ask away.
Lien direct vers le message - Vieux 13/10/2010, 09h59
Tout un long texte pour couvrir la femme de ménage...

Non sérieux c'est quoi ce post? Au vu de ce que j'arrive à lire (mais je peux me tromper) y clash pas mal de gens non?
Lien direct vers le message - Vieux 13/10/2010, 10h02
Je pense qu'il a posté ça sous le coup de l'énervement et que ses propos sont probablement exagérés mais du coup j'ai hâte de voir ce que va donner the old republic .

300 millions de dollars...
Lien direct vers le message - Vieux 13/10/2010, 10h56
L'avenir de war me laisse quand même septique, avec ce genre de propos même s'il faut les prendre avec des pincettes, quand on sait que les serveurs ont fermé en Asie parce que Ea n'en a rien à cirer des coréens en n'envisageant aucun développement pour son jeu d'après eux, ou parce qu'EA n'a aucun plan cohérent pour l'avenir (ce qui semble plus crédible), sans parler de ce rvr pack franchement pas bandant plutôt qu'une "vraie" extension qui ne nous prenne pas pour des rigolos.

Pas de quoi fanfaronner en ce moment avec war et l'avenir ne me dit rien de bon pour ce jeu et ne m'encourage pas à persister, ça fait pourtant 2 ans que je tiens le coup. Dommage.
Lien direct vers le message - Vieux 13/10/2010, 11h33
Impossible de prendre le message pour argent comptant mais ça me semble crédible.

Je dirais quand même qu'il y a encore des gens qui se battent pour faire des évolutions en jeu mais avec les moyens microscopiques qu'il leur reste.

Pour Old republic on vera bien, mais j'ai déjà un bon début d'avis sur le sujet.
Lien direct vers le message - Vieux 13/10/2010, 12h14
Citation :
Publié par Ulfyrg
Mouais... Vu les circonstances qui ont amené l'écriture de cette confession, je vois mal comment lui accorder du crédit.
C'est a dire ?

ps; Quelqu'un pour un traduction ?
Lien direct vers le message - Vieux 13/10/2010, 12h41
MDR il en prend plein la tronche Paul "Awesome" Barnett :P
Lien direct vers le message - Vieux 13/10/2010, 12h56
Citation :
Publié par Mrtoky
C'est a dire ?

ps; Quelqu'un pour un traduction ?
Le mec vient d'être viré d'EA donc il en profite pour balancer sur le développement de WAR et la gestion d'EA/Bioware de manière générale. (On apprend dans les commentaires suivants que les objectifs d'EA cette année sont une réduction de 25% des effectifs au niveau mondial)

En gros il dit que pour WAR, la seule ligne de conduite durant le développement était de faire un WOW 2.0
Peu importe le savoir faire de Mythic et les retours des beta testers.

En gros.
Lien direct vers le message - Vieux 13/10/2010, 13h03
Citation :
Publié par Fudo Myoo
Le mec vient d'être viré d'EA donc il en profite pour balancer sur le développement de WAR et la gestion d'EA/Bioware de manière générale. (On apprend dans les commentaires suivants que les objectifs d'EA sont une réduction de 25% des effectifs au niveau mondial)

En gros il dit que pour WAR, la seule ligne de conduite durant le développement était de faire un WOW 2.0
Peut importe le savoir faire de Mythic et les retours des beta testers.
WOW 2.0. et rien d'autre.

En gros.
Ok sympa, par contre j'avait cru comprendre qu'il venait d'apprendre son futur licenciement ! qu'il était encore du staff non ?

Par contre ca annonce la tendance pour swtor ahahah mdr wow3.0?
Lien direct vers le message - Vieux 13/10/2010, 13h05
Il annonce simplement ce qui s'est passé avec le rachat de Mythic par EA et petit à petit le remplacement des grands pontes locales par les géants.
ça parait véridique comme histoire bien qu'on comprenne pas tout ce qu'il annonce, vu qu'on connait pas toute la hiérarchie dans la boite.

Toutefois je doute pas que tous les petits programmeurs/graphistes ont dut en chier, j'espère qu'ils recréeront une société digne de Mythic à l'avenir

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Par contre ca annonce la tendance pour swtor ahahah mdr wow3.0?
ça annonce plutôt une release AOC
Lien direct vers le message - Vieux 13/10/2010, 13h07
Oui il bosse encore chez EA, mais il fait partie de la prochaine charrette de licenciement en Novembre.
Lien direct vers le message - Vieux 13/10/2010, 13h07
Citation :
Publié par Ryth
Toutefois je doute pas que tous les petits programmeurs/graphistes ont du en chier, j'espère qu'ils recréeront une société digne de Mythic à l'avenir
A ce propos y a un commentaire intéressant sur les conditions de dev de WAR vu par un ex dev de Mythic

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Ex-Mythic Working Retail says: October 13, 2010 at 2:52 am


I hear through the grapevine that the shit is hitting the fan over this, hope things turn out well enough for you. I know many people who want to shake your hand, after dealing with this.


While I do not know about the more recent events described, sounds like what was going on when I was there.


You didn’t even get into the Tool Support for devs, or the lack there of!
The items team had to manually make the items before the release (spread sheet, cell by cell) until it was clear they were not going to be done by the 3rd (or was it the 4th?) attempt at release. The guy they had to make a tool to help had 1 month to make it, and after that month, it was crashing, and making broken items.
I, on my own time off the clock, wrote a replacement tool in less than 12 hours (over 3 days after work) The day I finished the tool, I was fired for ‘not being early’ because of the same management BS you described.


They were still using MY tool a year later.

Ca fait peur ...
Lien direct vers le message - Vieux 13/10/2010, 13h11
Ça sent surtout le bon gros fake ce truc dans le sens ou n'importe qui peux écrire ce genre de texte sans avoir mis un seul jours les pied dans la boite qu'il attaque.

Bref ça sent le Hate boys hoax.
Lien direct vers le message - Vieux 13/10/2010, 13h33
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