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RIP Pandemic Studios (Confirmed, see post 295)

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
Opiate said:
The obvious problem with this is that today's success is tomorrow's fat. Example? Maxis is on the chopping block. Certainly not being killed entirely, but from what we hear, they'll be taking a bulk of cuts. Maxis. The creators of The Sims, EA's biggest hit in their history. Or you have Westwood studios, who used to produce big money makers with the early C&C games, which have gradually lessened over time. Pandemic was a moneymaker at one point, too.

So unless your company is a revolving door, constantly firing the old (once succesful, now fatty) and hiring the new, there's no way for this to be done in predictable fashion. I don't think the video game industry is set up in a manner that makes this feasible.

Oh absolutely. Which is why EA went from enormously profitable to enormously unprofitable overnight. Acquisitions + new teams in existing studios + team size swell as time goes on + a few faltering old teams = Massive revenue swing.

Maxis is already essentially dead, BTW. Most of the non-design staff got merged in or laid off when Maxis merged into Redwood Shores. I'm not sure what the Kotaku rumour is talking about; maybe they mean cuts at Redwood Shores or cuts of the Maxis design people, no idea.

From the earnings reports we're seeing, it seems abundantly clear that EA would only be seeing favorable profit and growth if literally no inefficiencies existed.

Well, beyond releasing successful games on time and on budget and cutting dead weight, what can a company do? It's not like they're going to say "Welp, jig's up guys. Time to reboot our company and scrap all our IP!"--Majesco, by the way, is the last example of a neutron star publisher. Or Sega before them. Those scenarios aren't going to happen to EA.

Provided those rumours and this one are true, I think it'll be a totally necessary move for EA and return them to the realm of sane business practices. Bummer about the job losses.

Kifimbo said:
Montreal looks safe. EA will take advantage of the subsidies.

Well those kinds of externalities are always worth considering.

Then my instinct would say that EA should aggressively slice off the personnel that aren't working on Army of Two, focus on getting the quality team another IP to play with, and find a niche for the studio.

Their record is very poor.
 
Ravidrath said:
It's true - entire team was told that they would be laid off when C&C4 was finished. My source is my friend on the team. Kotaku reported it, too.

C&C4 is not expected to make money. Every game has sold worse than the one before it, and RA3 just barely broke even, so... if the pattern holds, C&C4 will be a loss.

C&C3 was all kinds of great.

I didn't buy RA3 because of its fuckstupid DRM. EAH cut their own throat with that AFAIC.

I'd be sorry to see this team go down. I have such fond memories of Westwood Studios..
 

RJT

Member
Stumpokapow said:
Mirror's Edge was probably slight loss / breakeven / inadequate ROI, but it was produced a) Quickly, b) Relatively cheaply by all accounts. No developer inside a major publisher would be docked because of the failure of a product, they'd be docked because of a failure of process. DICE has good process.

They're also tech wizards. They've got Frostbyte.

I feel like they're pretty safe.

With BioWare, it's not that they miss, it's that they're set up in such a way that IF they miss, they'd be in trouble. They develop projects with HUGE teams that take a long time to make--the total opposite of something like EA Sports.

I'd say definitely Pandemic, Montreal, and EALA would be cut back or shut down before anything would befall BioWare though.
I see your points. Thank you for the reply.
 
RJT said:
I wasn't talking about being shut down. But I don't know if they will be allowed to take another huge risk in the near future. And I sure hope Mirror's Edge has a sequel. It would be crazy not to make a bigger game, now that they got the hardest part figured out (the perfect control and animations).


EA has made it pretty clear going forward they plan to concentrate on casual and core franchises.

I'm not sure Mirror's Edge really fits very well into either of those two categories. We shall see.

I know a portion of GAF loves the game, but personally I have issues with it, and I don't ever really see it being a mass appeal franchise but obviously they will make whatever call they make with more informed information than I have.
 

Vinci

Danish
Stoney Mason said:
EA has made it pretty clear going forward they plan to concentrate on casual and core franchises.

I'm not sure Mirror's Edge really fits very well into either of those two categories very well. We shall see.

I know GAF loves the game, but personally I have issues with it, and I don't ever really see it being a mass appeal franchise but obviously they will make whatever call they make with more informed information than I have.

Mirror's Edge 2 will feature bald space marines and a heavier focus on combat. There. Instant multi-million seller.
 

Opiate

Member
Stumpokapow said:
Oh absolutely. Which is why EA went from enormously profitable to enormously unprofitable overnight. Acquisitions + new teams in existing studios + team size swell as time goes on + a few faltering old teams = Massive revenue swing.

Maxis is already essentially dead, BTW. Most of the non-design staff got merged in or laid off when Maxis merged into Redwood Shores. I'm not sure what the Kotaku rumour is talking about; maybe they mean cuts at Redwood Shores or cuts of the Maxis design people, no idea.

Sad to hear. I'm very sorry I haven't been able to keep up with financial news in the industry as I been previously accustomed to doing: I've been promoted at work, have a steady relationship, and all the typical activities that tend to take away time from these conversations. I'm very appreciative that others can keep me in the loop, however.

Thank you very much, Stump.

Well, beyond releasing successful games on time and on budget and cutting dead weight, what can a company do? It's not like they're going to say "Welp, jig's up guys. Time to reboot our company and scrap all our IP!"--Majesco, by the way, is the last example of a neutron star publisher. Or Sega before them. Those scenarios aren't going to happen to EA.

Oh, I'm not suggesting they should, and I absolutely agree that EA's current approach is the right one for them to take. I'm just not convinced it will work, because I believe EA's problems are systemic (and it sounds like you agree, at least to an extent). In other words, I think EA's current approach is the least shitty of a lot of shitty options.
 

RJT

Member
divisionbyzorro said:
Mirror's Edge is the only time I've ever seen achievements ruin a game. They bragged on and on about how you could beat the game without ever killing anybody, and then made a high value achievement for it. They basically said that you were doing it wrong if you used a gun at all. If you played the game like a real person would have (using everything available to survive, including guns), it was a much better game.
Mirror's Edge is all about time trials. It didn't even need a story mode...
 
Vinci said:
Mirror's Edge 2 will feature bald space marines and a heavier focus on combat. There. Instant multi-million seller.

While we joke there is something to be said for games that actually have wide spread appeal. A game still has to have wide gameplay appeal unless it is targeted to a very well established niche.
 

sflufan

Banned
I wonder if EA is now going to look more heavily towards its EA Partners Program as a means of product development?

I know that they have a sure-fire hit with Valve and L4D (though not so much with Double Fine and Brutal Legend). Unfortunately, RAGE will be the only id title that will be part of this initiative.
 

Vinci

Danish
Stoney Mason said:
While we joke there is something to be said for games that actually have wide spread appeal. A game still has to have wide gameplay appeal unless it is targeted to a very well established niche.

I'm actually not joking so much. Take Mirror's Edge and merge it with a little Army of Two and you've got a game that'll sell well. The gameplay is good - just need something more easy to relate to for people to really grab hold to it.

And frankly, most folks like shooting shit.
 
Vinci said:
I'm actually not joking so much. Take Mirror's Edge and merge it with a little Army of Two and you've got a game that'll sell well. The gameplay is good - just need something more easy to relate to for people to really grab hold to it.

And frankly, most folks like shooting shit.

Well the gun play was definitely poor in ME. That's going to be a problem with a wide audience. Especially when your new mechanic is platforming in first person. Something not a lot of people are comfortable with.
 

Vinci

Danish
Stoney Mason said:
Well the gun play was definitely poor in ME. That's going to be a problem with a wide audience. Especially when your new mechanic is platforming in first person. Something not a lot of people are comfortable with.

All in all, ME was simply too unique. They need to homogenize the hell out of it if they want it to be big. I'd like it less, but it'd have a better chance at mainstream success.
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
sflufan said:
I wonder if EA is now going to look more heavily towards its EA Partners Program as a means of product development?

I know that they have a sure-fire hit with Valve and L4D (though not so much with Double Fine and Brutal Legend). Unfortunately, RAGE will be the only id title that will be part of this initiative.

EA Partners is good because it's low, fixed costs, steady revenue, and no bloat. Just what EA needs.

On the other hand, because they don't promise anything to the partners beyond a game-to-game basis, they also run the risk of having them stolen away. iD is one example, but it could have been much worse. Hell, EA only needs to look at Microsoft's losses of Bizarre and BioWare to separate publishers to see the consequences of only being able to feed a team one game at a time.
 
Vinci said:
All in all, ME was simply too unique. They need to homogenize the hell out of it if they want it to be big. I'd like it less, but it'd have a better chance at mainstream success.

I had issues with the game myself as I said and I don't nearly like it as much as GAF did. I think having good gunplay should sort of be fundamental in any game where you actually introduce a gun.

That being said, if they want to pursue the route they took with the original, it honestly seems more like an XBLA/PSN release rather than a full fledged $60 release you buy at the store. Sort of like Portal. Just my two cents. I'll stop as I'm getting a bit off topic.
 

sflufan

Banned
Zuhzuhzombie!! said:
As long as Saboteur still hits next month I'm happy.

Battlefront 3 will just need to move on to someone else.

Battlefront 3 has moved from Pandemic (dead) to Free Radical (dead, absorbed by Crytek) to Rebellion (not dead...yet).
 
Bioware :lol , if EA for some ungodly reason had to lay off the staff of Bioware I can only imagine Sony or MS would send a fucking bus to pick them up and drop them off in front of their HR Dept. that same hour. :lol
 
Hero of Legend said:
Speaking of EA Montreal, you know what EA IP I want them to revive so badly? Cel Damage for Wii. Ace game that was apparently getting a sequel but it was just for Xbox and PS2 but not for the GC as well oddly, but the game looked HORRID, it even DITCHED the very cel shading that the the whole fucking IP was named after. :/ And yep, Pseudo was behind it as well.
Is this true? I had no idea that there was going to be a Cel Damage sequel outside of the upgraded port with online they released for PS2 in Europe, let alone that EA owns the franchise (I always thought it was owned by Pseudo, since wasn't Microsoft originally going to publish it as a launch title for the original Xbox before dropping it?). I don't think Cel Damage has held up in the least, but I'd probably check out a sequel.

Back on topic, though, count me in with the "sympathetic, but not surprised" crowd. It really sucks that these guys lost their jobs, but they've been horrifically sloppy since the first Mercenaries came out. When you get sloppy and can't put out a successful enough game, you go under; it's not fair, but it's just the way things work. That said, I'm still pretty interested in Saboteur barring it gets good reviews.
 

RJT

Member
Stumpokapow said:
It already did.

Multiple times.
Man, you should move to your old avatar. You're one of those guys that shouldn't be allowed to change it (other than small revisions).
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
RJT said:
Man, you should move to your old avatar. You're one of those guys that shouldn't be allowed to change it (other than small revisions).

hahaha

which one, the NES one, the SNES one, the DuckTales one, or the Where's Waldo one?
 

Chittagong

Gold Member
RJT said:
Can't DICE be hit by their relatively unsuccessful new project (Mirror's Edge)? I love the game, but it wasn't a success with the public or the critics. They're basically milking the Battlefield franchise...

BioWare, on the other hand, doesn't miss. I'm sure they'll allow to be just the way it is.


Unlikely. What companies look when axing teams is that "can we trust these guys to deliver quality product on time an cost?". This means that given the right charter they can do profitable projects. DICE yes, Pandemic no

The team EA really needs to fire is their portfolio management team who seems to have greenlighted too many projects which are not appealing to general public. Just a fee years back EA was really good in taking pop culture and making games out of it (Fast & Furious => NFS Underground). Today it seems their portfolio is not in touch with pop culture any more. Fire the suits, bring in the shameless marketeers.
 

KareBear

Member
Sho_Nuff82 said:
I've thought about this for a while.

Hard to make money as a company when you spend 2billion (I know Bioware was included) to buy a company that doesn't make hit games. Hopefully these guys land on their feet, but EA was never going to see a significant ROI from these guys, especially after cancelling TDK and Battlefront.

2 Billion?Can someone please tell me how much Bioware and Pandemic cost please.I see different numbers thrown around.
 
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3176965
Rumors begin circulating earlier today that EA would be shutting down Pandemic Studios, the developer behind Mercenaries, Full Spectrum Warrior, Star Wars: Battlefront, and Destroy All Humans. They were currently at work on The Saboteur, which is set for release on December 8. Kotaku reports that The Saboteur IP will be moved over to EA Montreal, the team responsible for Army of Two, Skate It, and Spore Hero.

1UP has confirmed with an anonymous source at Pandemic that the rumors surrounding the studio's closure are indeed true.
 
Chittagong said:
The team EA really needs to fire is their portfolio management team who seems to have greenlighted too many projects which are not appealing to general public. Just a fee years back EA was really good in taking pop culture and making games out of it (Fast & Furious => NFS Underground). Today it seems their portfolio is not in touch with pop culture any more. Fire the suits, bring in the shameless marketeers.

And honestly this is the real truth of the matter (Along with their bad structure). It all just sort of caught up to them and they sort of lost the touch on being "hip" and current which was their bread and butter. Their stuff seems just a step out of touch. Their franchises just seemed out of place. Stuff like Medal of Honor, The need for Speed stuff, the "Street" stuff when they had that going. It all seemed corny.

The first sign for me was when somebody thought doing The Godfather was a good idea and then throwing masssive resources at it. That is not a product that is viable for the target audience.

Fortunately for them, they slowly seem to be crawling back towards relevance. Visceral games seems to have the right approach they should be adopting. (Even though I'm not as in love with the idea of Dante's Inferno).
 

ymmv

Banned
KareBear said:
2 Billion?Can someone please tell me how much Bioware and Pandemic cost please.I see different numbers thrown around.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ea-acquires-bioware-and-pandemic

EA acquires Bioware and Pandemic

Electronic Arts has announced an agreement with Elevation Partners to acquire VG Holding Corp., the owner of both BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios.

"These are two of the most respected studios in the industry and I'm glad to be working with them again," said EA CEO John Riccitiello.

"They'll make a strong contribution to our strategic growth initiatives on quality, online gaming and developing new intellectual properties. We also expect this will drive long-term value for our shareholders."

Riccitiello formed Elevation Partners in 2004, shortly after leaving EA. In 2005, his new company made a bid for Eidos, which it later withdrew.

Riccitiello returned to Electronic Arts as its CEO in early 2007.

EA will pay up to USD 620 million in cash to the stockholders of VG Holding Corp. and will issue up to an additional USD 155 million in equity to certain employees of VG Holding Corp., subject to time-based or performance-based vesting criteria.

EA will also assume outstanding VG Holding Corp. stock options and has agreed to lend VG Holding Corp. up to USD 35 million through the closing of the acquisition.

The Pandemic and BioWare teams will join the EA Games label currently run by Frank Gibeau.

BioWare is currently developing Mass Effect, which will be published by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 in November, and is in the early development stages of a massively multiplayer online game. Pandemic Studios is developing the upcoming Mercenaries 2: World in Flames and Saboteur.

The two developers employ roughly 800 people across four studios located in Edmonton, Canada; Los Angeles; Austin, Texas; and Brisbane, Australia.

PDF
 

Linkified

Member
Doesn't this stem back to the fact that EA flooded the Market with too many new ips that didn't have enough marketing behind them.
 

Madman

Member
Stoney Mason said:
And honestly this is the real truth of the matter (Along with their bad structure). It all just sort of caught up to them and they sort of lost the touch on being "hip" and current which was their bread and butter. Their stuff seems just a step out of touch. Their franchises just seemed out of place. Stuff like Medal of Honor, The need for Speed stuff, the "Street" stuff when they had that going. It all seemed corny.

The first sign for me was when somebody thought doing The Godfather was a good idea and then throwing masssive resources at it. That is not a product that is viable for the target audience.

Fortunately for them, they slowly seem to be crawling back towards relevance. Visceral games seems to have the right approach they should be adopting. (Even though I'm not as in love with the idea of Dante's Inferno).
Please clarify what you are suggesting, because I want to be sure of what it is before I say anything. ;)

Oh, and Pandemic obviously had talent and made what I consider one of the best open world games of all time with Mercenaries 1 (along with plenty of other decent to good games) so them closing is a bummer.
 
Such a rising star with Full Spectrum Warrior.


Well, the Pie-man was able to ride them and personally make billions when he got EA (which he was CEO of) to buy Pandemic/Bioware from an Equity fund he had a big ownership interest in.

If this is true, this is such a slap to the shareholders . . . . "You mean that developer you made the company buy from yourself for a huge premium is so crap it needs to be shut down?" But hey, he got the other *cough* "independent" *cough* directors to approve.

Yeah, and people wonder why executive compensation is so totally out of control in this country?
 
Stumpokapow said:
Mythic: Keep the tech guys that are useful for the Star Wars MMO, axe everyone else, close DAoC and Warhammer Online. Sorry.

It's probably almost always better to pare down an MMO team to a rump that manages ongoing content and takes in money until the userbase slowly flits away than to just cut your losses all at once, but they definitely aren't ever going to get a new project, yeah. EA already laid the groundwork for this with the MMO shakeup earlier this year.

BioWare: Many teams, all large, all working on long development cycle projects. To be fair, I'm sure every game they release in the end is profitable, but it's probably worth maybe cutting back a bit or geographically centralizing this team.

EA's already basically repurposed Bioware Austin as their MMO team now that Mythic clearly can't cut it. The only real redundancy here is the Quebec team and I honestly have no idea why that team exists in the first place.
 

tino

Banned
Chittagong said:
Unlikely. What companies look when axing teams is that "can we trust these guys to deliver quality product on time an cost?". This means that given the right charter they can do profitable projects. DICE yes, Pandemic no

The team EA really needs to fire is their portfolio management team who seems to have greenlighted too many projects which are not appealing to general public. Just a fee years back EA was really good in taking pop culture and making games out of it (Fast & Furious => NFS Underground). Today it seems their portfolio is not in touch with pop culture any more. Fire the suits, bring in the shameless marketeers.

That's actually a good point. I loved NFS Underground. I can't remember the last new EA IP I give a shit about (not counting the BioWare stuff.)
 

Chittagong

Gold Member
Stoney Mason said:
And honestly this is the real truth of the matter (Along with their bad structure). It all just sort of caught up to them and they sort of lost the touch on being "hip" and current which was their bread and butter. Their stuff seems just a step out of touch. Their franchises just seemed out of place. Stuff like Medal of Honor, The need for Speed stuff, the "Street" stuff when they had that going. It all seemed corny.

Corny is exactly the right word. If you are corny, you are bang on the money with pop culture. Medal of Honor was another great example - riding on Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers etc. And Street stuff obviously too. It's corny to us, but "cool" to the general public.
 
Chittagong said:
Corny is exactly the right word. If you are corny, you are bang on the money with pop culture. Medal of Honor was another great example - riding on Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers etc. And Street stuff obviously too. It's corny to us, but "cool" to the general public.

I think it was rightfully and correctly "cool" for a short time. The problem is when that is your approach you have to move on to the next cool thing because today's "cool" is tomorrow's played out and corny. They couldn't move on. They keep doing the same thing and it just became corny. You can't ride Britney Spears forever. That stuff has a limited life span of being relevant.

Madman said:
Please clarify what you are suggesting, because I want to be sure of what it is before I say anything. ;)

I think it's the right approach in the sense of taking popular and relevant genres and making good games. It's a bit early to say this of course with only Dead Space being out at the moment but I think both Dead Space and Dante's Inferno are good potential franchises for them. They need much better marketing though imo which is another general problem with EA. Their marketing is less effective and less relevant than it use to be for whatever reason. The old EA could sell shit in a box. The new EA has a rough time selling some of their genuinely good games.
 

Archaix

Drunky McMurder
Sucks to hear. They may not have been "great" games, but I enjoyed Destroy All Humans and both Mercenaries games as much as I've enjoyed any other open world games. Saboteur looks at least entertaining.
 

Shiggy

Member
Zuhzuhzombie!! said:
As long as Saboteur still hits next month I'm happy.

Battlefront 3 will just need to move on to someone else.

5955873_280x152.jpg

:( :( :(
 

FoneBone

Member
Stumpokapow said:
Majesco, by the way, is the last example of a neutron star publisher. Or Sega before them. Those scenarios aren't going to happen to EA.
What do you mean by "neutron star publisher"?
 
FoneBone said:
What do you mean by "neutron star publisher"?

He means a publisher that just implodes.

He is saying EA won't be that because while they are not profitable they have steady and large streams of income unlike Majesco or Sega.
 

Opiate

Member
FoneBone said:
What do you mean by "neutron star publisher"?

Assuming it's a direct simile with the actual phenomena, it would be an absolute collapse of a publisher down to the bare essentials. All extraneous matter (protons and electrons, or for publishers, unprofitable studios) are evacuated.

Stoney Mason said:
He's saying they won't implodes.

Neutron stars don't implode. Nor did Majesco or Sega. Explosion is actually what's going on here, and I'd argue it's a meaningful distinction. Just sayin!
 

Solo

Member
Stumpokapow said:
Consider downsizing:
BioWare: Many teams, all large, all working on long development cycle projects. To be fair, I'm sure every game they release in the end is profitable, but it's probably worth maybe cutting back a bit or geographically centralizing this team.

Dont see what your basis is on this one. Every game Bioware makes is very profitable, not to mention that of the 3 studios they have, 2 of them have opened in the last 3 years (Austin in 2006 and Montreal in 2009, with Edmonton being home base since 1995). Bioware seems to be growing if anything.
 

Opiate

Member
Solo said:
Dont see what your basis is on this one. Every game Bioware makes is very profitable, not to mention that of the 3 studios they have, 2 of them have opened in the last 3 years (Austin in 2006 and Montreal in 2009, with Edmonton being home base since 1995). Bioware seems to be growing if anything.

High risk. Long development cycles with large teams. The second Bioware goes out of fashion -- it has a bomb, or a cancelled game -- you go straight from "profitable" to "huge losses."
 
What do you expect? They made too many crappy games in a row (Mercenaries 2, LOTR) and that isn't acceptable. EA has plenty of other great divisions like bioware and redwood studios (dead space, dante) so pandemic wont be missed. They should have stuck with Lucasarts and done Battlefront III
 
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