THE BORE
General => Video Game Bored => Topic started by: Borys on November 17, 2009, 01:02:00 PM
-
`
-
I don't get the Mercs 2 hate. I played it early this year on the Xbox360, it was fun and I don't remember coming across any major glitches or bugs.
-
800 million dollars.
-
800 million dollars.
:(
That must suck paying almost a billion dollars for a company, paying them salaries for a couple of years to put out two bomba games and then fire them all. Poor EA :(
-
I still can't believe there wasn't an investor or board revolt over that deal (the $860M Bioware acquisition). John Riccitiello's sweetheart deal (as EA CEO) with the capital firm Bioware and Pandemic were formerly owned by and that he was involved in was shady as all hell given the huge price paid for it.
Anyway Pandemic got no worse fate than most developers in that kind of position. Being wholly owned by a big gaming publisher isn't job security at all.
-
Really sad. Although it seems their best days were BEFORE getting bought, oddly enough.
-
They should have made some good games. I wanted to get Mercs 2 until I read the reviews.
-
Oh shit, I know someone at Pandemic LA.
-
EA bought Pandemic for EIGHT HUNDRED MILLION?
-
EA bought Pandemic for EIGHT HUNDRED MILLION?
Pandemic/BioWare, yeah.
-
Ah okay. Maybe they can look back at it as "we bought Bioware for $800m and got Pandemic for free"
-
They brought us among other things: Mercenaries, Star Wars: Battlefront, Full Spectrum Warrior and Battlezone 2.
lol good fucking riddance
-
What's going on with Battlefront? Were they working on one? A next gen Battlefront would sell a fuckton. It's so obvious that if they weren't working on one they deserve to be shut down.
-
That's too bad. I've heard they were a fantastic place to work.
-
Well the mere fact that we're this far into this console cycle and haven't seen another BF game is a mark of shame on anyone who has any association with the series at all. Seriously. The Force Unleashed was a bland ass piece of crap and it sold extremely well. The Star Wars love + online third person shooting sounds like a no-brainer multi-million seller.
-
ok, never played a single game they made
Me neither (surprise surprise)
-
They made one of the only Army Men games worth playing: Army Men RTS.
-
They made one of the only Army Men games worth playing: Army Men RTS.
Haha, I forgot all about that series. They need to resurrect it and bring out the monthly releases!
Did these guys do the original Battlezone remake? I never played Battlezone 2 but the first one was awesome.
-
I hope everyone who is laid off lands on their feet. Saboteur looked really good too. :(
-
It all makes sense now: Bioware bought Pandemic as a poison pill to fend off acquisition by EA. But it backfired on everybody.
-
A douchey guy from my work left to work there. I don't feel too bad. I had to clean up all his code that he hacked together.
-
It all makes sense now: Bioware bought Pandemic as a poison pill to fend off acquisition by EA. But it backfired on everybody.
:rofl Like Romeo and Juliet?!
Seriously, when this deal went down, Elevation Partners was looking at a lot of targets. When Pandemic and Bioware joined forces, there were not many naysayers around. When Riticello came back to EA with Bioware/Pandemic in-hand, a lot of people said inequivocally that it was exactly what EA needed, since the main studio seemed so disinclined to pursue original IP. And the first Mercs game was the first GTA-killer that lived up to the moniker.
But looking at their most recent titles, it's not surprising: Mercs 2 tarnished its own brand, Destroy All Humans 2 was poor (but so was the first game), the Batman movie tie-in was a parade of bad decisions leading to a cancellation (http://kotaku.com/5132660/why-pandemics-batman-game-was-canned-and-how-it-killed-pandemic-au), and Middle Earth Conquest was DOA. Basically everything Pandemic did post-acquisition failed. We'll never know if it was EA's influence which led to this, or if it was turnover from within the studio.
-
So I guess Pandemic Studios is not going down.
Pandemic Studios Announces ‘Mercs Inc’
All—New Entry in Popular ‘Mercenaries’ Franchise Begins Development at EALA
Pandemic™ Studios, a division of Electronic Arts Inc., today announced that an all-new game in the studio’s popular Mercenaries™ franchise is in early stages of development at EALA. ‘Mercs Inc’ (working title) is the latest entry in the action series first made popular by Mercenaries in 2005 and most recently by Mercenaries 2: World in Flames™. Mercs Inc will be the first Pandemic game to be developed by the studio at its new home in Playa Vista. Mercs Inc will also be the first Pandemic game released after the launch this December 8th of the award-winning World War II action-sandbox game, The Saboteur™.
“We are very excited to announce a new instalment in the popular Mercenaries series because it demonstrates our continued commitment to Pandemic’s rich catalogue of intellectual properties,” said Nick Earl, Senior VP and Group General Manager at EA. “From the studio at EALA, a core creative team is forging new ground and conceptualizing new ideas for this exciting franchise.”
The most imminent release from Pandemic Studios is the action sandbox game, The Saboteur which ships on December 8, 2009. The Saboteur stars Sean Devlin; a street-tough Irish race car driver trapped behind enemy lines in 1940s Nazi-occupied France. Motivated by revenge, Sean fights, climbs, and races through open-world Paris, sneaking into the heart of the Nazi operations and sabotaging their every move. The Saboteur will be available for the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system, the Xbox360® video game and entertainment system, and the PC. The Saboteur has been rated M by the ESRB with the following as descriptors: blood, intense violence, nudity, sexual themes, strong language. More information about The Saboteur, can be found at http://www.thesaboteurgame.com.
Platform(s) and ship date for Mercs Inc not announced. This game is not yet rated by the ESRB.
-
Weird.
-
I guess it comes down to ea not wanting to finance another mercs bomb that drops to $20 in a month or two
-
The Pandemic brand still exists but is really a small division of EALA made up of a "core ip team" composed of those who didn't get fired.
Read: Shacking up with the higher-ups.
-
To keep a good job?
-
Woah. I skipped over the division of EA part.
Hey good for them & wtf is EA doing putting out another Mercenaries game after the last one bombed?!? Are they really aiming to be bankrupt in another year or two?
-
Woah. I skipped over the division of EA part.
Hey good for them & wtf is EA doing putting out another Mercenaries game after the last one bombed?!? Are they really aiming to be bankrupt in another year or two?
I think Mercs 2 sold about 2 million. Not exactly a blockbuster, but I wouldn't really call that a bomb either.
-
Yeah, and it's not like it's a hopeless IP anyway. You blow shit up, with big bombs and vehicles. There's some basic appeal there.
-
Woah. I skipped over the division of EA part.
Hey good for them & wtf is EA doing putting out another Mercenaries game after the last one bombed?!? Are they really aiming to be bankrupt in another year or two?
I think Mercs 2 sold about 2 million. Not exactly a blockbuster, but I wouldn't really call that a bomb either.
I think most of those copies sold at $20 though. It was one of the fastest dropping games of last year. I got mine for $10 less than 6 months after it came out.
-
According to some early info from Giantbomb (I think, it's on teh GAFs), Mercs. Inc is going to be a multiplayer-focused title.
-
The Pandemic brand still exists but is really a small division of EALA made up of a "core ip team" composed of those who didn't get fired.
I think you got that right.
I don't think this is going to be on the same level as Mercs 2. I think this might be a budget-priced title.
Pretty sure this is wrong, though.
One of the reasons EA bought Bioware/Pandemic is that they had a proven track record of generating original IP. At that time EA was performing with really lackluster results in original IP arena. In a sense, they were buying know-how. However, with the troubles Pandemic had with the canceled Batman game, and the Mercs 2 game sputtering onto the shelves in a half-finished state, it became clear that they weren't consistently able to deliver. An acquaintance who worked on both titles said the first one was virtually a dream project, very intelligently handled, and the sequel was clearly a clusterfuck from the word go.
Mercenaries was a huge IP boon for EA, and can be again if they don't fumble the execution. The marketing push was huge for Mercs 2 at the outset, and suddenly petered out just prior to launch. They knew it was going to ship buggy and untuned, and likely decided to cut their losses with that iteration. Doesn't mean 3 will be that way.
The Saboteur may turn out to be a profitable IP for EA, at which point they may want to leverage not only the game title, but the Pandemic brand as well.
Whatever portion of original Pandemic personnel may remain is irrelevant to EA's ownership of the branding and intellectual property they purchased when they bought Bioware/Pandemic. There may be one person from the original team, or a dozen or zero -- EA can still call a team "Pandemic Studios" with just as much right as they can make a Mercenaries sequel, the same as they've done with all the Westwood Command and Conquer stuff. It may yet turn out to be a PR disaster to close an entire studio, let go of 200 employees, and then announce that the three remaining employees on the core team are "Pandemic Studios" -- we'll see.
-
Fuck California.
-
Time to start moving studios to Michigan
-
Fuck California.
It really is stupid expensive to live there. I worked there in reasonably high positions in California game dev for 7 years; at any given moment, despite raises I was always about 10~30% behind the income needed to buy a house. I took a pay cut to move to Japan, and was able to afford a house... without one of those exploding party-favor mortgages that sank the world's economy. :usacry :japancry
-
CA will be better someday. After the fall prices got a lot more affordable. There aren't any jobs though and our government is broke, so yeah maybe not.
I'm thinking about moving to Oregon or somewhere cheap. I won't really miss the beaches or heat, but I will miss the women a bit
-
California is an amazing place to live culturally but the cost of living, especially for housing is just stupid insane.
-
I always have this idea of California being some great place to live with so much culture and many wonderful places to sightsee. However the only places I ever end up visiting are either LA or San Francisco (game conferences) and those places are serious shit holes.
San Diego is nice!
-
I always have this idea of California being some great place to live with so much culture and many wonderful places to sightsee. However the only places I ever end up visiting are either LA or San Francisco (game conferences) and those places are serious shit holes.
You forgot the homosexuality and mehicans
-
I redirected all cultural ignorance of the D.C. area to the flogging topic of random talk in the Real Talk forum.