EA shuts down Mythic Entertainment
- Thread starter Drakurii
- Start date
They buy talent, that talent then is not competeing with them, that talent creates a shit game because EA doesn't let the talent do its thing. The game does ok at best but still sells enough for EA to get paid, and they shut the studio down because it didn't do as well as it was going to do if EA hadn't messed with it.
There are so many giant ass ifs that have to perfectly fall into place for that to be a viable business strategy that it's not even funny. A dozen pins would have to fall into place without error to make that work.
Palum
what Suineg set it to
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Umm? Am I missing something or is the getting rid of expenses that generate little to no revenue not a pretty typical move for any business?
Quaid
Trump's Staff
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It's very typical. The point is, only a shitty business doesn't realize how it is negatively impacting its own business units with shitty practices.
Jait
Molten Core Raider
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Don't make me put my spectacles on, grab a pipe, and tell sad stories of Origin games like Wing Commander and Ultima. Granted origin fucked up the latter with Super Avatar Bros 8. But fucks sake those were two absolutely critical IPs in PC gaming history.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Same as individual person level - if you judge someone's work is producing less money than you pay them, it's cheaper to fire them than to try and get them to do better. You don't need any tax writeoffs to make that appealing when the bottom line is $$$.
It's sort of a curse of publicly traded companies - doing well isn't good enough, doing fantastically well isn't good enough unless it's even more fantastically well than it was last year. It's the very epitome of 'what have you done for me lately ?'.
Peter was involved in some of my favorite games EVER (Populous, Magic Carpet, Dungeon Keeper), so I don't take credit away from his work. Like all games, it was a team of people, not just 1 guy making it happen, but he was also responsible for some really awful decision making that brought down Bullfrog IMO. EA just took them off life support.
Jait
Molten Core Raider
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Except that he became EA's Vice-President in 1994, and his final game before leaving EA/Bullfrog for Microsoft/Lionhead in 97 was Dungeon Keeper, their biggest success. So...no, that would be complete bullshit and revisionist history.
Bondurant
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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I didn't play DAoC, so to me Mythic is a hit or miss studio, they did DAoC which had its nice reputation and they also did Warhammer which was an infamous MMO wreck medley of amateur game design decisions. Some people said EA went fascist on Jacobs during development, but to my view Jacobs had a shitload of money and ressource to make a nice MMO and he fucked up, probably because he couldn't manage to have the same magic DAoC vibe dev team had. Seeing him begging for money via kickstarter and selling fanservice to DAoC lovers makes me sceptical at best.
zzeris
King Turd of Shit Hill
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I won't defend EA but sometimes long term success is hard to maintain forever right? EA provided money and increased expectations. Most of these guys were very successful developers but maybe burnout was a partial culprit to their fall? Larger budgets, longer development time, increased expectations with every new game. Hell, Mass Effect 3 was a great game and the outrage over what we were owed sent the docs onward as much as anything else. EA allowed these guys to use premium resources to make what they wanted. Of course there will be costs associated with that.
I will say that Mythic had a limited skill-set that no amount of money can change. No Jacobs is also a big difference. With Molyneux and a few others, there is a sense of great loss. These guys...not so much.
I will say that Mythic had a limited skill-set that no amount of money can change. No Jacobs is also a big difference. With Molyneux and a few others, there is a sense of great loss. These guys...not so much.
