Funcom gutted.

[schild]

I'm on a plane so forgive the briefness.

Funcom just canned about 60 to 70% of the US office. Mostly QA and CS.

What happens to Dreamfall? :(

Anyway, best of luck to those effected. More later.

[Signe]

Where you going?   

[IainC]

Where you going?   

To hear the lamentation of their women.

[schild]

If I were at a real computer right now, I'd scold both of you for derailing the thread in nearly no posts. /snarl

[Signe]

Sorry.  Don't make my cry.  I have womanly issues today.  I could cry.  I don't mind if you den me, although I might cry. 

[TheCastle]

Dare I say it..
Lately companies seem to be gutting themselves a lot lately.
I keep convincing myself its just growing pains with the industry and not the economy..
In this case it might have something to do with how successful AOC was.

Its very upsetting to hear such news. I hope I never have to have that sort of thing happen to me.

[Falconeer]

49.30 on launch day, 3.10 yesterday. In just 6 months.

Still, they claim everything's ok. I can't read their financies, but someone told me they look ok.

[Oban]

Well, since they are canning QA and CS I am sure their financial position will improve dramatically.

[Falconeer]

They are launching AoC in Russia in 3 weeks by the way. Just relocating? 

[Nebu]

They are launching AoC in Russia in 3 weeks by the way. Just relocating? 

Relocating QC and CS to Siberia.  Bold move!

[Demonix]

I'm on a plane so forgive the briefness.

Funcom just canned about 60 to 70% of the US office. Mostly QA and CS.

What happens to Dreamfall? :(

Anyway, best of luck to those effected. More later.

After trying AOC, color me unsurprised.  It sucks for those who worked for funcom, but i have no pity for funcom itself.

[Pendan]

49.30 on launch day, 3.10 yesterday. In just 6 months.

Still, they claim everything's ok. I can't read their financies, but someone told me they look ok.

Don't think Funcom is doing that well but it is difficult to find a company without a similar stock chart right now.

[Ghambit]

FC already has a better and cheaper system coming online to replace their QA/CS (at least for AoC).  They're not "gutting" themselves, they're being smart.  Instead of hiring a bunch of idiots to handle QA/CS, they're letting the players get involved voluntarily.  Matter of fact, someone in my guild may be a part of this new system.  Doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure out it's wise to utilize the brightest of your playerbase to help maintain and expand your game.

[Lum]

Congrats, it's very hard to position laying off your customer service and relying on player volunteers instead as a sign of growth!

[Venkman]

Wow, that is the brightest spin I've ever heard put on this.

You do not put your players in charge of QA because you cannot possibly respond at the pace at which your players demand. Your dev team isn't playing the game as much as the players, and certainly not playing it the same way. Players go deep into their class and abilities. Devs go lateral across matrices and interactions. Unless they plan to beef up forum moderation something like 20-fold, this is just a short term lemonade-from-lemons statement while they staff up somewhere cheaper and go back to the way things were.

.
I keep convincing myself its just growing pains with the industry and not the economy..
In this case it might have something to do with how successful AOC was.

The "growing pains" phase ended around 2005. Now we're in the fragmented consolidation phase where sub-genres rally around the dominate representations and we splinter into different factions. WoW is obviously one sub-genre. Eve may become another one if anyone else is arsed enough to make a game like it and work through the years to get it right. The next major pillar has been there all along just not prominent in the West (mtx light-client MMOs). And finally there's the virtual world platform stuff like Kaneva and SL which who knows what will happen.

There is no single genre. If you mean the diku-inspired sub-genre/platform, then it's WoW and everyone else. Otherwise, you're leaving the sphere of that type of game altogether.

[Ghambit]

The game was over-bloated to begin with.  To ME growth is more than just making a profit no matter how dumb your business model is, to me growth also means contracting your model to a more REALISTIC state.  Saying something is "gutted" because they finally grew a brain is a bit extreme.  The whole idea was extreme to begin with, at least now they're having a reality check like the rest of the world is.  It might not be "growth" but it's indeed "growing up."

[kildorn]

FC already has a better and cheaper system coming online to replace their QA/CS (at least for AoC).  They're not "gutting" themselves, they're being smart.  Instead of hiring a bunch of idiots to handle QA/CS, they're letting the players get involved voluntarily.  Matter of fact, someone in my guild may be a part of this new system.  Doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure out it's wise to utilize the brightest of your playerbase to help maintain and expand your game.

I've taken this same direction with my software development, and we also decided to lay off all the developers and let other people do it for free.

Next up is the executive board.

[sam, an eggplant]

Any sources or confirmation for this, or should it be treated as rumor?

[Engels]

The game was over-bloated to begin with.  To ME growth is more than just making a profit no matter how dumb your business model is, to me growth also means contracting your model to a more REALISTIC state.  Saying something is "gutted" because they finally grew a brain is a bit extreme.  The whole idea was extreme to begin with, at least now they're having a reality check like the rest of the world is.  It might not be "growth" but it's indeed "growing up."

Slashing CS and QA is considered 'growing up'?

[TheCastle]

I was referring more to how game development houses structure themselves in general being responsible for some of these types growing pains. But yeah, I agree that as far as genre life cycles, especially in the MMOG, games are being designed around their dominate representation more often than not. Sorry I was possibly misleading with my original statement.

[Soln]

Player: "It's a bug"
Dev: "No it's a feature"

Yeah, I can see where this is going.

Whiner: "Nerf X, I have charts and tickets"
Dev: "Okey Dokey"

 

[Lantyssa]

Any sources or confirmation for this, or should it be treated as rumor?

Schild's pretty good about getting the lay-off stuff right.  I'm sure he heard it from multiple people in the know.

[Arthur_Parker]

FC already has a better and cheaper system coming online to replace their QA/CS (at least for AoC).  They're not "gutting" themselves, they're being smart.  Instead of hiring a bunch of idiots to handle QA/CS, they're letting the players get involved voluntarily.  Matter of fact, someone in my guild may be a part of this new system.  Doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure out it's wise to utilize the brightest of your playerbase to help maintain and expand your game.

Why are they idiots?  Why will players working for free do a better job than someone who was paid and hired at (I guess) a face to face interview?

[Lantyssa]

Pixie dust.

[d4rkj3di]

Shut the fuck up, Ghambit. You're out of your element.

[Tale]

I think we're going to see more of this, because it's the financial crisis biting the industry. Debt is doom. Time is up for any project that has not yet worked. Businesses are battening down the hatches, focusing on their key strengths and trying to survive.

Funcom's strength is using games for storytelling. I like the way they deliver a backstory better than their games. I hope they survive.

[TheCastle]

FC already has a better and cheaper system coming online to replace their QA/CS (at least for AoC).  They're not "gutting" themselves, they're being smart.  Instead of hiring a bunch of idiots to handle QA/CS, they're letting the players get involved voluntarily.  Matter of fact, someone in my guild may be a part of this new system.  Doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure out it's wise to utilize the brightest of your playerbase to help maintain and expand your game.

Why are they idiots?  Why will players working for free do a better job than someone who was paid and hired at (I guess) a face to face interview?

The only possible thing I can see is that they felt they are in great need to suddenly think out of the box to keep things going. Maybe they believe that since mod communities have been successful in other games that under some new radical structure they can make that work for AOC. Problem with this is that mod communities have always worked through a Darwinist approach toward mass prototyping over the coarse of years. Often at times producing success through total conversions that had little to do with the original product.

Depending on faceless employees, when mass prototyping and natural selection have no place, would be nothing short of Russian roulette.

Or pixie dust sounds about right too...

[sam, an eggplant]

I think we're going to see more of this, because it's the financial crisis biting the industry. Debt is doom. Time is up for any project that has not yet worked. Businesses are battening down the hatches, focusing on their key strengths and trying to survive

Mass market entertainment traditionally does quite well in a recession. You can't beat MMOs for entertainment value. They blow everything out of the water. I expect this to be a time of plenty for WoW. Everybody else is of course screwed.

[Zzulo]

what a shame to hear it is going so badly for them

AoC was really fun up to level 40 before the game ran out of content (i hear they fixed that now)

I was kind of hoping that the game would mature so I could re-visit it in 2009

[Wasted]

Its the fact they they think CS and QA is expendable is what was part of the problem for AoC all along.

[Falconeer]

Shut the fuck up, Ghambit. You're out of your element.

That never gets old. Oh, love.

[Khaldun]

I think we're going to see more of this, because it's the financial crisis biting the industry. Debt is doom. Time is up for any project that has not yet worked. Businesses are battening down the hatches, focusing on their key strengths and trying to survive

Mass market entertainment traditionally does quite well in a recession. You can't beat MMOs for entertainment value. They blow everything out of the water. I expect this to be a time of plenty for WoW. Everybody else is of course screwed.

I think I need to hunker down in the coming week or two to see just how true this old saw about mass market entertainment and recession actually is. I have a sneaking suspicion it's largely based on the fact that Hollywood continued to develop and put out product during the Great Depression, which strikes me as having a lot to do with the technological and economic maturation of the cinema independent of general economic conditions. I really wonder if it's true that in terms of hard numbers performance, mass market entertainment did markedly better than any other economic sector during subsequent recessions. I also wonder if there's really any comparison between mass market entertainment circa 1981 (for one previous recession example) and the current market.

One thing I am sure of: Age of Conan and Tabula Rasa and their parent companies would be suffering right now economically regardless of the general circumstances.

[schild]

Any sources or confirmation for this, or should it be treated as rumor?

The last 4 or so times news like this broke, I was the source.

>_>

Anyway, more QA and CS were let go overseas as well. It seems they weren't completely shafted, but in this economy there isn't much of a grey area. You're either fucked or not.

Some folks seem to have been let go from Norway, but

[SnakeCharmer]

but wut.

[WindupAtheist]

It's really annoying when he