leroy hacker
Member
CartridgeBlower said:
Retro has been falling apart since before they ever released any games.
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Key Metroid Prime Staff Leave Retro Studios
- Thread starter Lost Fragment
- Start date
Retro has been falling apart since before they ever released any games.
highspeeddub
Member
GrotesqueBeauty said:
Why do you single out Tanabe? I know he is involved with a lot of '2nd-party' development, but is there any reason why you think he would be a bad influence?
Femmeworth
Banned
That's a shame to hear. 
koam said:
Depends on the job. I deal with some very confidential information, as soon as I give my two weeks notice I will have all my access revoked and will be sent off the property (still will get paid the two weeks though).
Metroid is probably the only AAA I do not have for my Wii, so not a huge loss for me. I haven't played since back in the NES days
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
a somewhat uneasy news, but on a second thought, i feel confident for both the guys moving on *salutes* and for the future of prime; both the original prime and corruption were closely directed by the vision of nintendo's high design echelon, echoes being the one exception where retro were given more room, and we all know how it ended - the brighest jewel in the series with the blankest-stare market reception. my belief is that that same market, being the ultimate judge, decided the fate of retro's autonomy to a large degree back then. anyhow, it's always better when the parties move on. good luck to all.
It disturbs me how it at least appears that so many companies do so little to nurture their talent. The industry is known for eating people then spitting them out after a short career and it just isn't how things should be.
If these guys are talented, which they obviously are, Nintendo should spend some of their 75 katrillion dollars on increasing Retro salaries and quality of life. Hell, give them more creative freedom while you're at it. Some losses of talent are inevitable but these certainly sound like they could've been prevented.
If these guys are talented, which they obviously are, Nintendo should spend some of their 75 katrillion dollars on increasing Retro salaries and quality of life. Hell, give them more creative freedom while you're at it. Some losses of talent are inevitable but these certainly sound like they could've been prevented.
GrotesqueBeauty
Banned
Primarily because he was always trumpeting the shooting aspect in interviews during and following the development of Echoes, Hunters, and Corruption. He's sort a late comer to the series who champions the parts of the Prime games that leave me so disheartened as a Metroid fan.highspeeddub said:
beelzebozo
Jealous Bastard
salute, gentlemen. you made some masterful games.
jay said:
Do you have some kind of inside information here? Because I far as I can tell, no-one outside Retro knows dick about why these guys are no longer at the company. They could have been sacked for running a child porn ring on company computers for all we know. Not to mention that it's only three guys and Retro has plenty of talented staff still onboard.
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
1. I wish those guys good luck and we all know they'll land on their feet.
2. Retro will be fine.
3. Metroid, hopefully, will be put on ice for a while.
4. Hopefully some of the comments about Nintendo's heavy-handed "you make casual gamez" thing is limited to the trolls here and doesn't become reality.
2. Retro will be fine.
3. Metroid, hopefully, will be put on ice for a while.
4. Hopefully some of the comments about Nintendo's heavy-handed "you make casual gamez" thing is limited to the trolls here and doesn't become reality.
Polari said:
No, I know no more than has been posted here. Perhaps lamenting the state of the industry is premature in this instance but whatever the outcome what I said still makes sense...it's just possibly irrelevant to this thread.
blu said:
Yet when I come home from work playing Okami is so much more satisfying than contemplating Capcom's finances.
Bluemercury
Member
rakka said:Worst news i've heard recently
Hopefully they didnt leave because of Nintendo wanting even retro to work on shitty casual games.
I really have a hard time believing that....i mean Nintendo avoiding creativity....well Retro did say they wanted to do new things.....if i were forced to do the same thing over. i would saturate too....
GrotesqueBeauty
Banned
Blah, blah, blah... it's the same stale false dichotomy that gets regurgitated every time. Metroid is not any more unique nor does it offer more entertainment pound for pound by increasingly aligning itself as a generic first person sci-fi game with a heavy emphasis on shooting. Emphasizing strafing and button mashing and making enemies shoot at you regardless of whether they're Space Pirates or bugs or plants isn't some incredible innovation. It's possible to expand on the basic elements of a franchise without latching onto hackneyed conventions seen in a million other titles. That's why I'm pissed off. Super Metroid offers a great template to expand upon and progress, not dogmatically copy. What they've done with the series instead is far less unique in the industry than if they had remained more faithful to the foundation of the IP.HK-47 said:
P.S.- I'm an individual poster, not GAF incarnate, but thanks for opening your post by being a dismissive asshole to us both.
highspeeddub
Member
I wonder if the people leaving will continue to work with the wii hardware or if they'll get involved with something else.
Bluemercury said:
Ever read a Camelot interview or the story of Miyamoto nixing all the games Rare was working on before Prime? I don't mean to say his judgment was off but it sounds like if you want to be creative you need to really blow Nintendo execs away with your ideas. As for the Takahashi's, they've made it clear that if you are assigned a Nintendo franchise then there are very strict rules to follow. They made a Capcom golf game because they felt too constrained by Nintendo. A golf game!
x3sphere said:
No, it was premature of me to imply it. Still, turnover at Retro has supposedly always been high so something tells me Nintendo could be treating people a little better.
AceBandage
Banned
Firestorm said:
*facepalm*
Bluemercury
Member
Firestorm said:
Well, NOA has been in the worst state since lincoln left....i havent any initiative from NOA since those days....because for all purposes Retro Studios is part of NOA right?
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
Firestorm said:
really?
leroy hacker
Member
jay said:
I think you mean Retro there, but the story is different than what you are sketching. Retro was horribly mismanaged by Spangenberg and Barcia. Those guys were total goofballs. There's a reason you don't hear about them anymore.* It wasn't just a disagreement about game concepts, it was the quality of the production, of not having anything close to releasable projects. Four projects were cancelled. Only one of them was the car combat game questioned by Miyamoto.
Barcia was devoting most of the company resources to making Raven Blade trailers. In the end, there was not a Raven Blade game that was cancelled, there was a game project that was going nowhere.
*It's a shame about Barcia since he created classic games like Master of Magic. Another great designer who is terrible as a manager.
PantherLotus said:
Hey, I've seen them put great marketing behind games like Gears of War, Bioshock, and Mass Effect. None of them are owned by MS, but exclusive contracts with MS seem to work out pretty well. Metroid Prime was one of my favourite single player experiences of last gen, it is my favourite Metroid game (sorry Super), it is an example of EXACTLY what I want to see games do with regards to narrative. I want these geniuses at a company who gives a shit.
mentalfloss
Banned
Firestorm said:
Worked for Rare..
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
Firestorm said:
I guess i missed the article where they revealed that nintendo didn't care about narrative so they decided to fire these guys?
Spirit Icana
Member
Hey guys! Remember surfergirl's earlier rumor that stated Retro Studios was working on a Zelda spin-off? Sounds like a franchise that could cause conflict internally by the big man. Hmmm....
leroy hacker said:
I don't doubt it made sense for Nintendo to do what it did to the projects. It is more what was said about them that worries me. Had Miyamoto said "these game ideas are shitty, cancel them all," it'd be fine but to look at shitty projects and specifically make the complaint that cars with guns on them are dumb is just bizarre. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but Nintendo seems very hard to please.
leroy hacker
Member
jay said:
What makes you think he didn't say that too? Retro employees whose feelings had been hurt would obviously only want to repeat the least justifiable criticisms.
evilromero
Member
I remember all the shit we heard about lead designers leaving even before Prime released. The company fired one of their co-founders (Moon?) and canceled several uninspired projects (car combat, action-RPG, football, yawn).
MisterHero
Super Member
Oh you mean they should start their own studio then.Firestorm said:
You'd be sacrificing access to a lot of resources. I imagine with MS' middle-of-the-road market position they'd be offering their resources [MONEY] to devs.
If I had such a choice to make I'd hang on to be being a Nintendo 1st-party dev.
D.Lo
Member
Retro was supposed to be a great place to work since around 2001, according to some gamasutra article about a year ago.jay said:
And we have no idea about the situation - maybe they were stealing industrial secrets, maybe they were using work time to do proposals for other companies?
how do we know the Retro guys werent at fault here? Everyone is so quick to place the blame on big bad bully nintendo as if these employees are completely innocent of any wrongdoing. How do we know they didnt do something? And if we dont know, why are we assuming that Nintendo is just treating them badly? If anything nintendo took this company from the brink of closure to a successful and well known and respected developer of one of their beloved hardcore focused properties. Retro is great now because of nintendo, not despite it.
uhh... if that is true about Nintendo's game design rules, they need to change their management at NCL.
their series barely progress because of their rigidness. it's as if only gameplay matters and that's it. i would like to see the characters in most of their games get more development but they instead reuse the same ones always and don't do any development at all (why can't we have a game that involves Luigi, Daisy, Waluigi, etc in an adventure or something? why is it always "Mario, Bowser stole the stars, get them back"?). same would apply for like 90% of their series.
hopefully Retro won't go the way Rare did.
it looks like Nintendo has extracted most of the juice out of them at this point.
their series barely progress because of their rigidness. it's as if only gameplay matters and that's it. i would like to see the characters in most of their games get more development but they instead reuse the same ones always and don't do any development at all (why can't we have a game that involves Luigi, Daisy, Waluigi, etc in an adventure or something? why is it always "Mario, Bowser stole the stars, get them back"?). same would apply for like 90% of their series.
hopefully Retro won't go the way Rare did.
it looks like Nintendo has extracted most of the juice out of them at this point.
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
Firestorm said:
I'm not sure how me being an enthusiast about last-gen games makes your comment valid (or less made up)?
Spirit Icana
Member
Case said:seeing the sales of said golf game, maybe they should have listened to nintendo
I'm not sure what happened internally. The Takahashi bros only tells us in interviews that working on Mario poses limits. They had to scrap an earlier build of Mario Tennis GCN because it was too deep at one point, according to the Takahashi Bros. The development schedule on that title grew very tight before release. That explains why transferring the GBA content was left out.
As an extra: Surfergirl says Golden Sun is coming back. That makes me giddy. It better be the best game ever.
I would prefer they nail the gameplay before worrying about anything else. I dont play Mario or Metroid for the story. the only game I actually pay somewhat attention to the story is Zelda by the nature of the kind of game it is. Otherwise, it doesnt really matter to me.Osuwari said:
AceBandage
Banned
Osuwari said:
Funny, most of us would rather NOT see that... Shadow the Hedgehog anyone?
Their next project is close to being finished and these guys want a different opportunity with another company...or their next project was a clusteruck.
Going by this...
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1570214/20070920/id_0.jhtml
Going by this...
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1570214/20070920/id_0.jhtml