[PrivateRyan]

Talking to gamesTM magazine, co-founder Steve Ellis spoke about what could have been when he was asked how he felt when leaked Battlefront III footage was met with a positive reception. "It felt like we had turned a corner as a company," explained Ellis. "We had had a dark period during the development of Haze, we'd had problems with our tech and we'd had some growing pains as we expanded to the size we needed to be, but it really felt like we were finally coming out of the other side intact. "We were making a game with very high ambition. You could start a battle on the ground, jump into a ship and fly into space, continuing on to dock in a capital ship and continue the battle there. We'd had to build all kinds of new tech and overcome numerous technical challenges and limitations but we had done it. "We had a 99% finished game that just needed bug fixing for release. It should have been our most successful game, but it was cancelled for financial reasons. I'm happy that people did at least get to see what we were working on and share the team's enthusiasm for it."

Source: http://www.nowgamer.com/news/1701703..._finished.html

[graywolf323]

seems like a huge financial waste to cancel a game that close to being done which would surely sell well if only based on the license

[Darklord]

So shit like DNF gets picked up and finished but not this? Boo. :(

[Guerrillas in the Mist]

seems like a huge financial waste to cancel a game that close to being done which would surely sell well if only based on the license

Yeah, something doesn't add up.

[Glass Rebel]

I'm sure Disney will pick it up again.

right?

right?!

[randomhugs]

I was planning on having a good day today.

Not so much anymore. :(

[Vinterbird]

I'm sure Disney will pick it up again. right? right?!

But it will be F2P, enjoy!

[Takao]

I do not believe this. Unless the game was a total mess technically I can't imagine Lucas Arts funding an entire game to cancel it because of bug fixing.

[Aquamarine]

Seems like we have a Star Fox 2 on our hands (that game was ALSO practically finished but Nintendo decided to cancel it right before release).

[falconzss]

So you cancel a basically finished game because of financial reasons without, in the worst case, making at least some money back on your investment by selling the goddamn thing?

[ektoll]

But it will be F2P, enjoy!

Still would.

[NoRéN]

Yeah, something doesn't add up.

Maybe someone realized that they accidentally hired the writers for Attack of the Clones to write the dialogue for the game and had no choice but to scrap it.

[Glass Rebel]

But it will be F2P, enjoy!

I'd take it.

I do not believe this. Unless the game was a total mess technically I can't imagine Lucas Arts funding an entire game to cancel it because of bug fixing.

well, maybe they meant 99% as finished as Haze.

[Takao]

Yeah, this has to be bull. LucasArts didn't even announce the game. If you're that close to finishing a game surely it would've been announced by then.

[Vilam]

Sounds like he was saying it was 99% to alpha, not 99% finished. Even once you feature lock at alpha there's generally still months and months worth of work left to do to polish, finish art, squash bugs, etc.

Still, it's a shame and obviously much good work was lost if it was dropped at that point.

[Nibel]

Everything we saw so far was more like 9%

[boutrosinit]

seems like a huge financial waste to cancel a game that close to being done which would surely sell well if only based on the license

Marketing budgets sometimes cost equal to or more than the game.

[Mario]

Marketing budgets sometimes cost equal to or more than the game.

This.

Not to mention the cost and risk of manufacturing stock.

[falconzss]

Marketing budgets sometimes cost equal to or more than the game.

I'm pretty sure you'd still at least lower your losses by releasing the game with few to no marketing at all instead of canning the title.

[Shining Sunshine]

So you cancel a basically finished game because of financial reasons without, in the worst case, making at least some money back on your investment by selling the goddamn thing?

Sometimes games cost more to release than to develop. That's why Activision bailed when it lost faith in Sleeping Dog.

Also, the Star Wars license was probably uber expensive.

[Aquamarine]

This. Not to mention the cost and risk of manufacturing stock.

And licensing costs, distribution costs, and royalty payments.

It must have had a troubled development process as well. Perhaps Lucasarts wasn't happy with the quality of the final product and felt it would damage the Star Wars brand. Or something like that.

[gumby_trucker]

Might as well quote the whole article. This is the rest

Martin Wakeley, project manager at Free Radical Design during that time, also "As a member of staff I could see our relationship with LucasArts becoming more distant and feared the worse," continued Wakeley. "They had a change of management and a change of direction. I wasn't party to all the ins and outs but we had both our games signed with them, and it became apparent we needed to look for other projects fast. The management were very open and we were kept informed of all developments. We worked hard to try and get some projects signed but it wasn't to be. The writing was on the wall for a long time but people stayed loyal rather than jumping ship."

I'm not saying this makes it any better, it still doesn't add up. But with LucasArts going through managers like a machine gun goes through bullets, it's not impossible to believe some bad high-level decisions were made. Another possibility, based on the quote above, was that FR assumed the project wouldn't be canceled and continued working on it even after they began to receive information to the contrary from LA. They may have done this because they needed the money and thought they could convince LA to publish it if it was closer to completion.

We really need a testimony from someone who was in middle management at LA at the time, and involved with the project.

[mclem]

It didn't particularly look it to me, and the time we at Rebellion spent waiting to get assets from them at FRD hampering development to such an extent that we had to go our own path would suggest that.

Admittedly, I do have to wonder if the problem was the entity in the middle; one thing I don't know is if we get our assets directly from FRD or if they came via LA.

[Shark Johnson]

Bullshit.

How long has Steve Ellis been talking about the great conspiracy against Free Radical and this is the first we have heard about Battlefront 3 being 99% finished? Why haven't we seen more from this content-complete game that only needed some bug fixes? We've all seen the leaked videos by now and they sure as shit didn't look like they came from a game that was basically finished, as they like to claim. I have a feeling that Steve Ellis enjoys the attention he gets for talking about Free Radical and has begun stretching the truth to generate meaty headlines. After all, everyone always wants to believe the big bad publishers screwed the always-innocent little guy.

Here's the most probable reality: Free Radical stretched themselves too thin on too many projects. Haze bombed and was a terrible game and the deal they got with LucasArts was probably bad. LucasArts saw the writing on the wall and bailed out on what was probably a bad product. It wasn't the only time LucasArts walked away from a bad BattleFront 3. I mean, how many studios have worked on it at this point? Three? Four?

Might as well quote the whole article. This is the rest I'm not saying this makes it any better, it still doesn't add up. But with LucasArts going through managers like a machine gun goes through bullets, it's not impossible to believe some bad high-level decisions were made. We really need a testimony from someone who was in middle management at LA at the time, and involved with the project.

If you came into a publisher that had a nearly completed product that just needed one final sweep for bug fixes and shit before it was ready to ship, wouldn't you make that happen and look like a fucking hero to those at the very top? I sure would.

[Canis lupus]

Yeah, this has to be bull. LucasArts didn't even announce the game. If you're that close to finishing a game surely it would've been announced by then.

This, some games get announced before devs even started working on them.

[Forkball]

How hard is it to develop Battlefront III, honestly? Just take BF2, make it prettier, add some new levels, competent online and BOOM you have made a good game. Some people may say "Oh it's just a retread blah blah blah" but it's better than what we got, which was nothing.

[fabricated backlash]

Everything we saw so far was more like 9%

Pretty much. It's hard to take such an extreme statement at face value.

[SirIgbyCeaser]

The last guardian isn't even at 50% and it didn't get canceled :/

But yes i would have enjoyed battlefront 3.. though I believe Dice should develop it.

And I have crysis 2 on PS3 and not once was I able to join a multiplayer match. Even when it was given out to EU playstation +

So free radical you're still making flops this generation...

[gumby_trucker]

If you came into a publisher that had a nearly completed product that just needed one final sweep for bug fixes and shit before it was ready to ship, wouldn't you make that happen and look like a fucking hero to those at the very top? I sure would.

I agree it probably wasn't as clear-cut as that. I edited my post in order to add a more reasonable interpretation of the quote.
Another thing worth mentioning is that there is no indication that fixing bugs was going to be a simple, by-the-books matter. FR themselves testify that the tech was new and challenging, and for all we know making it work smoothly may have required a considerable investment from LA.

[Aquamarine]

The last guardian isn't even at 50% and it didn't get canceled :/ But yes i would have enjoyed battlefront 3.. though I believe Dice should develop it. And I have crysis 2 on PS3 and not once was I able to join a multiplayer match. Even when it was given out to EU playstation + So free radical you're still making flops this generation...

The Last Guardian has been a huge moneysink for Sony all the same. Probably way over-budget and years late. Santa Monica is trying desperately to push it out. But Team Ico is effectively dead. Sony can't trust them with a new product now...given how much they've royally screwed up The Last Guardian.

Haze must have been the equivalent for Lucasarts. It was a disaster...Lucasarts must have gotten cold feet and pulled the plug on Battlefront 3 because of that.

[Nexus Zero]

This reminds me that a few weeks ago I was having a conversation with someone who worked on the game and while "99%" is obviously a bit of a throwaway statistic, it did sound like the game was pretty much there and then one day they turned up and were basically told unlucky, go home, you're fired.

[gumby_trucker]

This reminds me that a few weeks ago I was having a conversation with someone who worked on the game and while "99%" is obviously a bit of a throwaway statistic, it did sound like the game was pretty much there and then one day they turned up and were basically told unlucky, go home, you're fired.

Any chance this someone could point us in the general direction of a video or asset from this more complete version of the game?

[mclem]

How hard is it to develop Battlefront III, honestly? Just take BF2, make it prettier, add some new levels, competent online and BOOM you have made a good game. Some people may say "Oh it's just a retread blah blah blah" but it's better than what we got, which was nothing.

From my point of view from the development of the lower-end ports, I think their problem was the whole vertical battlefield concept; new for the series at the time and I got the impression (perhaps incorrectly) that they were having great difficulty pulling it off. At our end it was easy - we just stuck loadscreens in between - but they were supposed to have a seamless transition from ground to air to space to capital ship hangars to capital ship control rooms and - from what I saw - that tech never quite looked there.

[Deepack]

Eurogamer once published an interview with David Doak, Steve Ellis and other key, former Free Radical Design employees.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...s-the-monsters

Quite the interesting read.

Some quotes from the artcile:

Jim Ward was then the president of LucasArts, and his strategy involved a 'reboot' of the company's own IP - hence titles like The Force Unleashed and the aborted Indiana Jones project. Another was Star Wars: Battlefront 3, and LucasArts wanted Free Radical to develop it. "They had good but very ambitious ideas about technology," says Doak. "And they seemed like nice people. We were fairly disappointed with where we were with Haze, and so even though we thought we didn't want to do work for hire as a principle, the fact that the work for hire was Star Wars did make a difference - it's not a bad one. It was also a fantastic tonic for the troops at Free Radical, because you don't have to go very far in development to find someone with Star Wars shit on their desk. It looked like a marriage made in heaven." The studio hunkered down to its most ambitious project yet. "It was going well," says Doak. "They wanted to massively upgrade the scope, and consequently we were being required to be very ambitious technology-wise - when you see those leaked videos of it you can see it looks spectacular."

Internal forces at LucasArts had lost faith in Ward's 'reboot', not helped by new IPs like Fracture failing to make an impact, and on 4 February 2008 he left the company. "That was worrying," Doak continues, "but it didn't seem like it would be a bad thing. We still thought we'd done the right thing. And then we went from talking to people who were passionate about making games to talking to psychopaths who insisted on having an unpleasant lawyer in the room." The appointment of Darrell Rodriguez as president of LucasArts was announced on April 2nd 2008. He wasn't the only new face. LucasArts was making sweeping changes as part of a new strategy, the first step of which was cutting their outgoings in half. Huge numbers of staff were fired, an entire layer of management was removed, and countless projects were canned. "For a long time we talked of LucasArts as the best relationship we'd ever had with a publisher," says Ellis. "Then in 2008 that disappeared, they were all either fired or left. Then there was a new guy called Darrell Rodriguez, who had been brought in to do a job and it was more to do with cost control than making any games. And the games that we were making for them were costly." The conversations with LucasArts became incredible, wars fought from different perspectives, and an internal video lampooned the attitude Free Radical was facing. Funny as that is, it's gallows humour - the effect on the studio would soon become no laughing matter. Any ally Free Radical had, like LucasArts' own UK producer, soon exited. Battlefront 3's development remained ongoing, and despite talks over the release date Free Radical was delivering on milestones.

"LucasArts hadn't paid us for six months," says Norgate "and were refusing to pass a milestone so we would limp along until the money finally ran out. They knew what they were doing, and six months of free work to pass on to Rebellion wasn't to be sniffed at." Part of the eventual agreement between LucasArts and Free Radical saw certain assets passed on to Rebellion Studios. For a time LucasArts was tempted by the thought of a hastily put together Battlefront 3, but nothing came of it. When presented with the allegations put forth by this investigation, LucasArts said simply that it does not comment on rumour and speculation.

LucasArts wanted to find an exit, and the balance of power swung firmly in its favour. "What we found out in 2008 is that your contract is only worth as much as how far you can pursue it in court," says Steve Ellis. "Say the contract is, 'If publisher wants out, they have to pay X million pounds to developer.' Well, what if they don't? What are you going to do about it?" LucasArts presented Free Radical with a choice. "The amount of time [court] would take was more than the money we had left," says Ellis. "So in practice the publisher wants out, and what they do is offer a fraction of that amount. And you either accept a smaller payment and hope to pull through one way or another, or you don't accept the payment and go out of business quite quickly." Free Radical had no choice at all.

Highlited what I found interesting. Be sure to check out the entire article! A great insight into the demise of one of the UK's greatest studios. Great read.

[Nexus Zero]

Any chance this someone could point us in the general direction of a video or asset from this more complete version of the game?

Very very unlikely as from what I heard it was pretty unceremonious, but at some point I'll try to have a proper conversation with him about it because I don't remember the details (never played a Battlefield so wasn't particularly engaged). So all I remember is that bit and that apparently Steve Ellis is a bit difficult for.

[PairOfFilthySocks]

Free Radical also thought Haze was 100% finished.

[Zeouterlimits]

Edit: Just saw the above. Horrible stuff.

[Glass Rebel]

Eurogamer once published an interview with David Doak, Steve Ellis and other key, former Free Radical Design employees. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...s-the-monsters Quite the interesting read. Some quotes from the artcile: Highlited what I found interesting. Be sure to check out the entire article! A great insight into the demise of on the the UK's greatest studios. Great read.

The last quote sounds terrifying. That should be illegal.

[ScreenSplitter]

This makes it even more of a crime that what remains of Free Radical has become a homogenized Crysis multiplayer dev. Somewhere, in an alternate universe, we're all playing Battlefront III and Timesplitters 4. Haze never existed.

[Aquamarine]

'I've seen some people saying how can they cancel something that was finished,' says Doak, 'And to be fair [Battlefront 3] wasn't finished, but it was very far from a car crash and had interesting ideas. They had some edict from above about restructuring, had to save a certain amount of money per year, and there you go. Game over.'

Okay, this proves it. Battlefront 3 WAS NOT 99% finished when it was cancelled. Steve Ellis is full of nonsense.

[gumby_trucker]

Okay, this proves it. Battlefront 3 WAS NOT 99% finished when it was cancelled. Steve Ellis is full of nonsense.

That's a bit one-sided, don't you think?
What about this part:

The studio hunkered down to its most ambitious project yet. "It was going well," says Doak. "They wanted to massively upgrade the scope, and consequently we were being required to be very ambitious technology-wise"

To me that sounds like Jim Ward or other high-ups at LA had a vision for the game, and FR were the ones put to the task of realizing that vision.
It's not their fault that the new management thought the vision was unattainable or too costly...

edit:
here's a hypothetical: Let's say it's early 2001 and Rockstar are deep in development of their most ambitious game ever, that is built upon new, untested tech in order to achieve a first in gaming - a living, breathing, seamless city with no perceivable loading in between areas.
Obviously this is a long term project that has years of research invested into it, and is planned as such from the very start, and approved by then current CEO. At this point there is a rough and fairly buggy version of the game GTA3 running in real time, most of the voice acting is probably missing and maybe some effects and story missions are incomplete. Still, the fundamentals are there and they work, and there is clearly a fun and original game there that needs polishing in specific areas in order to be consistently AAA.

Getting this far from the birth of the project has probably taken the team years, not just developing the engine, but designing the gameplay, writing the story and so on. For all intents and purposes, from the team's point of view, most of the work is done; The light at the end of the tunnel is clearly visible, and morale is high.
Yet from the publisher's point of view there is still close to a year of development and there is no sure guarantee the product will give a significant return on investment since it's so risky. If the publisher is also struggling financially after a series of failures, and a new CEO came into the company at that point and decided not to complete GTA3 for fear that it would sink them even deeper, could you really blame him? In hindsight we know this would have been a shit decision but it's not unbelievable that a publisher would feel this way in LA's situation.

tl;dr basically what I'm saying is it's possible both sides of the story are fairly accurate.

[Metalic]

I am having a hard time believing this, I mean there are tons of unfinished games on the market, why this one is the exception ?

[scytheavatar]

To me that sounds like Jim Ward or other high-ups at LA had a vision for the game, and FR were the ones put to the task of realizing that vision. It's not their fault that the new management thought the vision was unattainable or too costly...

The onus was on them to sell their "vision" to LucasArt, if they failed to do so what rights do they have to complain about LucasArt not being willing to invest more money on the game? The guys at LucasArt saw what FR had done and found themselves unimpressed, I don't see why they don't have the rights to pull the plug in the project.

The Eurogamer article made it clear why Free Radical is dead: they were arrogant, made games which lack commercial appeal, was told how to add commercial appeal to their games but showed little respect to those advices, and most important of all flunked the transition from the PS2 to the PS3/360 era by underestimating the amount of work it'll take to stick to their technology. They have no one but themselves to blame for the dead of their studio.

[Aquamarine]

That's a bit one-sided, don't you think? What about this part: To me that sounds like Jim Ward or other high-ups at LA had a vision for the game, and FR were the ones put to the task of realizing that vision. It's not their fault that the new management thought the vision was unattainable or too costly...

It's always important to consider the publisher's side on any issue. That Eurogamer article is written from the point of view of the shunned developers...developers who probably still hold grudges and resentments. I'm sure if we got the story from the other side of the fence, it would be a bit different, and it would highlight more issues within Free Radical that Doak / Ellis are too stubborn to admit.

[PansenHansen]

The devs should put the game online so we can play it. Fucking industry. It's all about the money nowadays

[ScreenSplitter]

The devs should put the game online so we can play it. Fucking industry. It's all about the money nowadays

Hm.

[gumby_trucker]

It's always important to consider the publisher's side on any issue. That Eurogamer article is written from the point of view of the shunned developers...developers who probably still hold grudges and resentments. I'm sure if we got the story from the other side of the fence, it would be a bit different, and it would highlight more issues within Free Radical that Doak / Ellis are too stubborn to admit.

did you intend to quote my edit?
because it looks like we are basically in agreement. The publisher had to make a judgement call based on what they thought the game would sell, and decided it wasn't worth it.

[gumby_trucker]

The onus was on them to sell their "vision" to LucasArt, if they failed to do so what rights do they have to complain about LucasArt not being willing to invest more money on the game? The guys at LucasArt saw what FR had done and found themselves unimpressed, I don't see why they don't have the rights to pull the plug in the project.

They have every right to pull the plug, which is what they did. There are two parts to this discussion. One is a creative discussion and is more ambiguous but as you say is ultimately up to the publisher. The other part is a legal discussion, and going only with the information in this thread, it looks like LA were clearly in the wrong on that front.

The end result of the creative issue is no BattleFront 3.
The end result of the legal issue is no Free Radical.

So it seems a bit one sided. We may not have the complete picture, maybe we even have some wrong information as well. But as it is it looks like FR got punished for LA's mistakes.

[gumby_trucker]

The Eurogamer article made it clear why Free Radical is dead: they were arrogant, made games which lack commercial appeal, was told how to add commercial appeal to their games but showed little respect to those advices, and most important of all flunked the transition from the PS2 to the PS3/360 era by underestimating the amount of work it'll take to stick to their technology. They have no one but themselves to blame for the dead of their studio.

Sorry for the multiple posts, but I want to bump this thread because I don't think the discussion is over.

Do you mind backing up some of your claims with quotes from the Eurogamer article?
I haven't read it all yet, but so far here are some of the things I came up with, and they don't seem to agree with your point of view:

This article began with the question 'Did Haze Kill Free Radical?' But after speaking to every key figure in the company's history, the story turned out to be much bigger than the poor reception of one title. It's about how big publishers sometimes manhandle the developers they work with, and how badly they handle change. It's about how they asphyxiated one of Britain's finest independent developers, and drove an industry legend out of the games business.

And the story here isn't just about Lucas Arts either:

"In retrospect, what happened after TimeSplitters 2 was that EA saw the Metacritic and came to us," says Ellis. "I don't actually think they'd looked at the game very much." The publisher demanded Future Perfect have a strong lead character in order that it appeal to the US market. "EA turned up with this stuff that was supposed to help us," says Doak. "And it was just big boards with pictures of Vin Diesel on them. Wesley Snipes was on one in his Blade outfit." Future Perfect ended up with Cortez, a cowardly and dumb marine whose catchphrase falls flat every time: "It's time to split!" Future Perfect had the longest development of any TimeSplitters game, and there was a sting in the tail. "We had quite a frank conversation with EA," says Ellis. "Where they told us they weren't going to bother trying to market it very much. Because at the time they had their GoldenEye game [GoldenEye: Rogue Agent], and they said that for every dollar they spent on marketing that game they would get more dollars back. It didn't match up with their original promises." "Throughout the development of Future Perfect we had EA people all the time coming to us saying 'yeah your game's alright, but not as good as this GoldenEye we're making.'" says Doak. "Continuously! 'Yeah I saw GoldenEye, it's awesome, you Brits had better raise your game!' And we asked to see it. 'No, no, you can't see it'. We killed ourselves getting Future Perfect done, only to find that they had made a total balls of GoldenEye to the extent they had to throw more money at it to market it, the money that they might have spent on Future Perfect. I mean, it's like fiction that it's a GoldenEye game, isn't it? I don't think the irony of what they were doing ever occurred to EA." GoldenEye: Rogue Agent came out late in 2004 to a muted response, receiving a flat 60 on Metacritic. Future Perfect was released in March 2005, and while it received a warmer reception [84 on Metacritic] EA didn't push it, and it didn't achieve better sales than the series had under Eidos. "The problem is they never really got it," says Ellis. "That summarises it. And because they never really got it they tried to change it into something that they did get."

[Guerrillas in the Mist]

And the story here isn't just about Lucas Arts either:

I knew that Cortez was supposed to be a parody of the Vin Diesel Action Hero, but I didn't know EA initially wanted it to be serious. It's a shame nobody in the industry "got" FR's sense of humour.