Split-Screen :: The Game-Geek’s Daily Read

by Ravi Sinha

In the past, whenever a developer folded, its members swiftly found work in other studios. While the small fry came and went, the big guys like EA and Microsoft persevered and eventually thrived. But if this isn’t the year of the gaming depression, nothing is. Respected journalists are resigning, media corps are going bust and of course, the small studios, once thought safe under the canopy of a big name, are now running for cover.

What are the major lynchings and downfalls, which contributed to the walls now crumbling around our ears? Let’s take a look:

- Jeff Gerstmann was fired from Gamespot in November of last year, allegedly because of a bad review for Kane and Lynch. The side-effects passed over into this year as well. The man, many held to be responsible for firing Gerstmann, Vice President of CNET, Josh Larson, was sacked on the 9th of April this year.

- CNET began to encounter other difficulties when fending off a hostile takeover from hedge fund Jana Partners on Wall Street. During this time, 120 U.S. employees were let off.

- Around March, Spot Runner, an ad agency, laid off about 115 of it’s 385 employees. Their VP, Joanne Bradford, also left to join Yahoo. Some say this was due to the collapse of a $550 million deal between SR and Microsoft, in which the latter was supposed to purchase the former.

- On March 5th, Ziff Davis announced that it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after selling its B2B division to Insight Partners. As of now, the firm is in the middle of restructuring with the help of a group of shareholders.

- Games for Windows magazine was closed down in April and the final editorial staff consisting of Jeff Green, Sean Malloy, Ryan Scott and Shawn Elliott were integrated with 1Up.

- The resignation of Tomonobu Itagaki from Tecmo in June caused the greatest ripples, mostly due to the whole public circus of the events. He filed a 145 million yen lawsuit against Tecmo president, Yoshimi Yasuda, for unpaid incentive wages for Dead or Alive 4. This was joined by a lawsuit filed by two plaintiffs on behalf of 300 employees for unpaid wages, amounting to 8.3 million yen.

- As if Tecmo didn’t have it hard enough, president Yasuda resigned on Septmber 1st, citing “personal reasons” for his departure. Did he crack under all the controversy? The gaming media hasn’t heard from him since.

- Jeff Green (still bitter about the GFW magazine’s closure) and Shawn Elliott, resigned in September, resulting in GFW Radio’s final podcast episode on September 17th.

- Ensemble Studios, developer of the best-selling Age of Empires games, was shut down on September 9th. Non-essential staff was laid off and other employees have been given incentives to remain until completing the production of Halo Wars, according to a leaked Microsoft internal statement.

- Electronic Arts has recently laid off 600 employees, about 6% of it’s total work force. What started as a rumour later led to the company confirming the news, along with the fact that $50 million would be saved by this action. Hopefully, Jeff Green still has a job (as he left 1Up to work on The Sims with EA).

- EA’s action seems to have opened the flood-gates. THQ recently announced it was closing five of its studios - Helixe, Locomotive, Mass Media, Sandblast Games and Paradigm - and laying off employees from Juiced (more than a third laid off) and Rainbow Studios. According to a spokesman, THQ is, “Making sure that we’re set up over the next three to five years to be profitable and successful…whether it’s because of things happening to our industry or the economic environment as a whole”

- WildTangent closed its internal gaming studio, laying off around 20 employees as CEO, Alex St. John, resigned. Spokesperson Sean Sundwall stated, “It’s become less incumbent on us to develop our own games to satisfy our customer’s needs.” The company will remain a casual game publisher, for now.

Does the chaos show any signs of halting?

Saboteur has been delayed, possibly until 2010 and it appears we’ve found the reason. Aside from Pandemic’s Lord of the Rings: Conquest, due on the 13th of January, 2009, EA head John Riccitielo, has confirmed a third installment of Mercenaries from the same developer. While not stating this to be the reason for the WWII stealth shooter’s delay, Riccitielo seems upbeat about sticking the sequel tag to EA’s recent blockbusters, first with Dead Space 2 (amongst many other titles) and now Mercenaries 3.

“There will be a Mercenaries 3…and, if I have anything to do with it, there will be a Mercenaries 10.”

Hopefully by then, EA won’t have seized all the world’s major petrol pumps in a bid to take their past ad experiment to the next level. But you have to admire Riccitielo’s faith in the marketing potential of the Mercs franchise. Especially when World in Flames under-performed and under-delivered in every conceivable way.

You have to hand it Hideo Kojima. After managing the Metal Gear Solid franchise for about 10 years, across three generations of Sony platforms, he brought everything to a thunderous and more importantly, conclusive finish, with Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots for the PS3. We think that makes him famous, if not, eligible for a long break. Even so, Konami’s man has been unusually mum about his next project after MGS4’s release.

However, speaking to popular Japanese magazine Famitsu at the Tokyo Game Show, he gave specific hints, regarding the unveiling of his new game. Most specifically, by next year.

“So, yes, there are products on which I’m acting as designer at the moment. I think I’ll be able to announce it next year, so the next game’s release shouldn’t be too far into the future. In addition, there are other games that I’m doing various work on.”

Does this mean we’ll see the much rumoured sequel to the Metal Gear franchise? Could it be a new Zone of the Enders? Maybe…a new Boktai? Kojima knows how to keep us guessing - and once again, he’s given us plenty of time in which to do so.

Xbox Live is still receiving exclusive downloadable content for games such as Fallout 3, Grand Theft Auto IV and Tomb Raider: Underworld, peeving many a PS3 gamer. After all, who wouldn’t want to play the same great game in new (mileage can and does vary, though) and exciting ways? In an interview with Videogamer.com, Sony UK managing director, Ray Maguire, had some interesting takes on DLC exclusivity and extra online content in general:

“One thing to remember, nothing is ever exclusive. Things get wrapped up for a period of time for a large amount of money and if it’s a strategic decision by competition to do that then we have to live with that. Obviously, what we have to do is make sure that our business plan is adhered to and we have the amount of money to invest in games rather than investing in stopping other people making games and progressing. So I would much rather that we were investing money into making sure that we’ve got great R&D and we start producing games like LittleBigPlanet rather than paying other people a huge amount of money to stop people playing their product.”

As Maguire puts it, games can last longer but they can’t last forever. Sure, it’d be nice to have some extra downloadable content (if they’re free, and exclusive of the game disc). But if I had to choose between paying for Fallout 3 DLC and a brand new title six months down the line, I’d go with the latter. What about gamers who take both?

“You have to remember that most third-party publishers of course have a business proposition that covers all platforms. With our own of course it’s different because our investment would purely be on our own platforms, and that’s the same as any first party. That’s a small part of the overall offering nowadays, and the days of big exclusives, I think they were over a couple of years ago but they’re certainly over now.”

Not quite rejecting extra content, but not over-playing its importance. The official Sony DLC stance? It’s all about the games, and they have no problems creating new titles over prolonging the old ones. The real question is: Do you?

How do you surpass Epic’s Gears of War 2, the hotly anticipated and already much raved about third-person shooter? Or Far Cry 2, Ubisoft Montreal’s follow-up to the FPS that took Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 by surprise? What about Resistance 2, said to be nearly 420 hours long? But that’s a one-on-one comparison. Could Treyarch’s latest possibly best them all? Activison’s senior producer Noah Heller seems to think so.

“There’s a lot of competition this year, but I feel very strongly we have the best shooter this Christmas. There is a lot of people new to the Call of Duty franchise following COD4, and they won’t be disappointed with Call of Duty: World at War. I’m looking forward to Gears of War, Far Cry and Resistance 2, and I’m sure they will be great games, but I am confident the consumer will come back to Call of Duty.”

Serious predictions indeed, but considering CoD4 has been flawless on every major platform, won several awards and is currently the most popular game on Xbox Live, they may come true. Thankfully, neither company is letting their previous success influence World at War’s standing.

“Along with the ‘why are you returning to World War II?’ questions, we’ve been asked ‘how are you possibly going to follow up COD4?’ And the answer to that question was not to focus on the previous game, but to make our own game on our own merits and our own strengths, and show people what we can do.”