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UC4 Game Director Justin Richmond Leaves ND (And famousmortimer leaves GAF #1393)

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Snuggles

erotic butter maelstrom
This is why hearsay from twitter shouldn't be treated as news. I know it can generate some thousand page threads, but that garbage doesn't belong on here. Especially when we're dealing with people's lives. Save it for some jank blog on the corner of the internet. It's pretty pathetic that someone would promote faulty information for the sole purpose of gaining attention.
 
Mort is a nice guy, alot of his post is fair and good calming information in a thread that looked like it required it, however as much as I respect mort, he probably should have stopped at personal speculation. Hopefully this is merely a learning experience for him.

Sad to read about Col's personal situation, hope all works out and Big Red Switch is a success... I will be following closely, just checked it out on facebook, they seem to have great appetite and I wish them all the best!

Wish I could say that he'll learn from this, but if the Indigogo thread taught me anything about him, it's that he just cares to cash in on his success as quickly as possible without a care for really bettering the industry and learning from those with past experience.
 

nomis

Member
Mort treads a very thin line between rumour, speculation and fact in his regular post.

sjraC6J.jpg
 

DemonNite

Member
I won't even call them insiders since they don't tell us anything .
Which is okay they join the forum to have fun \ discuss stuff just like everyone else .

actually I joined the forum and then joined Sony... I'm a gaffer at heart :p

also, this thread.. it didn't have to come to this.
 

DarkJC

Member
Why? To me it sound like Mortimer was just speculating about what could have happened? I read the post like he was giving possible reasons for people leaving instead of the crazy conspiracy shit that was going around.

I feel bad Col. Rogers situation but not sure Mortimer should be banned for speculating. Unless he's something as fact, if he was then I stand corrected.

EDIT: read the post again, he sounded damn sure about what he wrote lol.

Yeah, to me it's more about the tone than anything. If you have a reputation for being an "insider" with access to knowledge no one else has, you have to be very careful about how you speculate. People will err on the side on treating it as fact, and I'm not surprised Col felt the need to set the record straight before that rumor spiraled out of control.

That's his professional reputation at risk.
 

213372bu

Banned
Hello, all.

This is my first post on NeoGAF, and whilst I'm not generally one to deal in internet speculation, I have to put the record straight with regard to Pete Dodd's comments above.

Everything he has said with regard to myself and Driveclub is incorrect. It's also libellous.

As Putty (who is a personal friend of mine, and has been for about 25 years) suggests, I left Evo in February for personal reasons. The personal reasons being that my son, who is 4 years old, has been diagnosed with Nephrotic Syndrome, which is a potentially life threatening condition. I live 220 miles (4 hours drive) away from Evolution Studios, and was away from home 5.5 days a week. Given the circumstances, I could not continue to work there.

Driveclub is a great game, and the direction hasn't changed since my departure. This has been confirmed by SONY in various press releases over recent days.

I have no problem in dealing with very large projects, as I've been working in the games industry for the last 19 years, and have worked on some very prestigious titles, so there is genuinely no truth to anything posted by Mr Dodds at all. My departure (and indeed the setup of my 'indie' operation, BigRedSwitch) is 100% driven by family necessity, not some professional failing on my part.

I left SONY on very good terms. There is no animosity there, and I was absolutely nothing to do with the recent redundancies - in fact, the news of those redundancies was probably linked on here before I knew about them.

The games industry is a tough place at the moment. My circumstances with my son mean that I've had to leave secure work in order to try to make my own way in the world. This may entail getting another job. With people who obviously know nothing about the situation blackening my reputation for the sake of internet 'fame', this could be made much more difficult. It's nothing less than trolling.

I've contacted Mr. Dodd on his email address on his site. Due to the factual inaccuracy of his statements, I've informed him that he needs to remove the statements and apologise for the damage they have caused, as posting incorrect information and claiming it's true is quite simply libel.

I'm sure you can all appreciate just how difficult things are for myself and my family at the moment. I'd genuinely appreciate it if you can take my statements as word from the origin, and realise that there has been no big cover-up when it comes to my departure from SONY/Evo.

Thanks, all.

Col.

It's sad when "insiders", (regardless of their truthfulness,) go to the point where a person feels the need to clarify misinformation spread about them. Especially with the fact that it has to do with his son having a potentially fatal condition.

Wish you the best in your endeavors!
 

Shinta

Banned
Wish I could say that he'll learn from this, but if the Indigogo thread taught me anything about him, it's that he just cares to cash in on his success as quickly as possible without a care for really bettering the industry and learning from those with past experience.

Have a link to that thread? I guess I missed all that. Kind of curious and I have some time to kill.
 

msdstc

Incredibly Naive
All Sony first party developers are disbanding and the workers are heading to Riot.

Sony will crash and Microsoft will buy the PlayStation brand and control the whole market.

In all honesty if it were to happen I would love samsung to snag it.
 
it might need to for awhile

it's gotten ridiculous, I think we are down to demonite and gopher

They hardly even mention anything, I wouldn't say we're down to those two.

The internet is a fickle mistress, look no further than the cboat incident. Leaked a lot of stuff throughout the ps3/360 years, only to start fumbling around this past year. You know how that turned out.

It's a good thing people are getting exposed, because some folks clearly couldn't see that these people would be wrong once in a while.
 

Wizman23

Banned
I feel bad for the people suckered into putting forth money to Pete Dodds kickstarter/website. Hopefully they get their money back.
 

makatk

Banned
if a game gets delayed is the game director is to blame?
at least part of the blame falls on him , as for morts post it might have been speculation , or he got a bad info from his source, with every insider post there comes a huge salt packs to sprinkle .
what truly is disgusting is people trying to start a witch hunt against mort.
 

LevityNYC

Banned
Hello, all.

This is my first post on NeoGAF, and whilst I'm not generally one to deal in internet speculation, I have to put the record straight with regard to Pete Dodd's comments above.

Everything he has said with regard to myself and Driveclub is incorrect. It's also libellous.

As Putty (who is a personal friend of mine, and has been for about 25 years) suggests, I left Evo in February for personal reasons. The personal reasons being that my son, who is 4 years old, has been diagnosed with Nephrotic Syndrome, which is a potentially life threatening condition. I live 220 miles (4 hours drive) away from Evolution Studios, and was away from home 5.5 days a week. Given the circumstances, I could not continue to work there.

Driveclub is a great game, and the direction hasn't changed since my departure. This has been confirmed by SONY in various press releases over recent days.

I have no problem in dealing with very large projects, as I've been working in the games industry for the last 19 years, and have worked on some very prestigious titles, so there is genuinely no truth to anything posted by Mr Dodds at all. My departure (and indeed the setup of my 'indie' operation, BigRedSwitch) is 100% driven by family necessity, not some professional failing on my part.

I left SONY on very good terms. There is no animosity there, and I was absolutely nothing to do with the recent redundancies - in fact, the news of those redundancies was probably linked on here before I knew about them.

The games industry is a tough place at the moment. My circumstances with my son mean that I've had to leave secure work in order to try to make my own way in the world. This may entail getting another job. With people who obviously know nothing about the situation blackening my reputation for the sake of internet 'fame', this could be made much more difficult. It's nothing less than trolling.

I've contacted Mr. Dodd on his email address on his site. Due to the factual inaccuracy of his statements, I've informed him that he needs to remove the statements and apologise for the damage they have caused, as posting incorrect information and claiming it's true is quite simply libel.

I'm sure you can all appreciate just how difficult things are for myself and my family at the moment. I'd genuinely appreciate it if you can take my statements as word from the origin, and realise that there has been no big cover-up when it comes to my departure from SONY/Evo.

Thanks, all.

Col.

To prove libel, you need to prove willingness to cause harm, and a willing ignorance to a fact.

good luck.
 

Pennywise

Member
Props to Col for responding to famousmortimer. I honestly think the mods should look at banning him too. If Derrick got perma'd by repeatedly stirring up threads then there's precedent for applying the same to others.

Wait WHAT ?

Seriously, the comparsions and doubtful people in this thread are going nuts.

Even though he should have avoided the topic about Col or he should have clarified, that's what he heard from one of his sources, nothing more or less.

You renember what this topic was about ?
The carnival of stupid that happened after some recent departures at Sony.
Mort shipped in to shed some light on various people, and his message behind it was simple.
It's nothing unusual for the industry, and for everyone there's a basic explanation.

Col is nothing different, people speculated their asses off and the game was doomed once again and even though the circumstances of Col department might be different that Famousmortimer was told, it's nothing unusual.
He never had the intention to speak badly about Col...he offered what he heard, that's what he always does.

Now, people are already going wild again and asking for a head....
What a joke, seriously.
Even insiders who're working within the industry haven been proven wrong, that happens...



@Col Rodgers
As I already said above, he never meant to speak badly about you, however just take a look into this thread, people went beyond any level of sanity and it happened with every departure lately.You of all people should know that these things happen...
He gave a basic explanation of reasons, as he was told.
I can understand your anger and frustration, since you left Evo for your son and reading something different is frustrating.

Your departure topic.
 

SHADES

Member
Hello, all.

This is my first post on NeoGAF, and whilst I'm not generally one to deal in internet speculation, I have to put the record straight with regard to Pete Dodd's comments above.

Everything he has said with regard to myself and Driveclub is incorrect. It's also libellous.

As Putty (who is a personal friend of mine, and has been for about 25 years) suggests, I left Evo in February for personal reasons. The personal reasons being that my son, who is 4 years old, has been diagnosed with Nephrotic Syndrome, which is a potentially life threatening condition. I live 220 miles (4 hours drive) away from Evolution Studios, and was away from home 5.5 days a week. Given the circumstances, I could not continue to work there.

Driveclub is a great game, and the direction hasn't changed since my departure. This has been confirmed by SONY in various press releases over recent days.

I have no problem in dealing with very large projects, as I've been working in the games industry for the last 19 years, and have worked on some very prestigious titles, so there is genuinely no truth to anything posted by Mr Dodds at all. My departure (and indeed the setup of my 'indie' operation, BigRedSwitch) is 100% driven by family necessity, not some professional failing on my part.

I left SONY on very good terms. There is no animosity there, and I was absolutely nothing to do with the recent redundancies - in fact, the news of those redundancies was probably linked on here before I knew about them.

The games industry is a tough place at the moment. My circumstances with my son mean that I've had to leave secure work in order to try to make my own way in the world. This may entail getting another job. With people who obviously know nothing about the situation blackening my reputation for the sake of internet 'fame', this could be made much more difficult. It's nothing less than trolling.

I've contacted Mr. Dodd on his email address on his site. Due to the factual inaccuracy of his statements, I've informed him that he needs to remove the statements and apologise for the damage they have caused, as posting incorrect information and claiming it's true is quite simply libel.

I'm sure you can all appreciate just how difficult things are for myself and my family at the moment. I'd genuinely appreciate it if you can take my statements as word from the origin, and realise that there has been no big cover-up when it comes to my departure from SONY/Evo.

Thanks, all.

Col.


Thanks for taking the time to clear that up Col & I wish you & your family all the best at this distressing time, I myself have a life limited son (hypoplastic left heart syndrome) who's just turned 4 so I can well imagine what life is like at present.

Hope all goes well with BigRedSwitch.
 

Hagi

Member
This forum has a wide reach and personally i find because of the enthusiast atmosphere we're apart of added to general internet behavior people tend to latch onto things these members viewed to be "in the know" say all too easily.

If you are going to move from discussing rumors about games to the personal lives of those developing them instead, you should damn well expect to be held accountable for it.
 

nomis

Member
if a game gets delayed is the game director is to blame?
at least part of the blame falls on him , as for morts post it might have been speculation , or he got a bad info from his source, with every insider post there comes a huge salt packs to sprinkle .
what truly is disgusting is people trying to start a witch hunt against mort.

Why is it disgusting for people too call him out as inconsiderate of the ramifications his unsubstantiated claims have?

He spoke without a hint of reservation in his post about Rodgers. He speaks matter-of-factly at all times because that's the aura he wants to project.

Only a handful of people actually said the word "ban", he mostly just needs to do some self reflection on what he's willing to do to prolong his 15 minutes.


1294.gif
 

Solal

Member
Wait WHAT ?

Seriously, the comparsions and doubtful people in this thread are going nuts.

Even though he should have avoided the topic about Col or he should have clarified, that's what he heard from one of his sources, nothing more or less.

You renember what this topic was about ?
The carnival of stupid that happened after some recent departures at Sony.
Mort shipped in to shed some light on various people, and his message behind it was simple.
It's nothing unusual for the industry, and for everyone there's a basic explanation.

Col is nothing different, people speculated their asses off and the game was doomed once again and even though the circumstances of Col department might be different that Famousmortimer was told, it's nothing unusual.
He never had the intention to speak badly about Col...he offered what he heard, that's what he always does.

Now, people are already going wild again and asking for a head....
What a joke, seriously.
Even insiders who're working within the industry haven been proven wrong, that happens...



@Col Rodgers
As I already said above, he never meant to speak badly about you, however just take a look into this thread, people went beyond any level of sanity and it happened with every departure lately.You of all people should know that these things happen...
He gave a basic explanation of reasons, as he was told.
I can understand your anger and frustration, since you left Evo for your son and reading something different is frustrating.

Your departure topic.

This. 100 times.
 

MormaPope

Banned
if a game gets delayed is the game director is to blame?
at least part of the blame falls on him , as for morts post it might have been speculation , or he got a bad info from his source, with every insider post there comes a huge salt packs to sprinkle .
what truly is disgusting is people trying to start a witch hunt against mort.

How can anyone be surprised by this fact right now? Mort either made up info that fit a narrative hes trying to spin or got really bad info from a source, no consideration was given to Col in this entire process. For all the talk about caring about consumers and the people that make these games, Mort didn't seem to give a shit about what he says hurting others.

I wouldn't be surprised if his posts in this thread are poorly constructed without much basis.
 

DarkJC

Member
You do know its various others why to contact somebody than twitter correct?

What? I don't understand what you're saying here. I don't really care that he posted it on Twitter, but not apologizing to Col and the offhand dismissal of the whole thing just rubs me the wrong way, sorry.
 
Terrible attitude there, mort. This isn't about your 'leaks', which many of them are appreciated.

You've fully admitted before that you are not infallible when it comes to your sources, so if you're wrong, and in the process, you caused damage to someone... you need to make up to that person.

He spoke without a hint of reservation in his post about Rodgers. He speaks matter-of-factly at all times because that's the aura he wants to project.

Only a handful of people actually said the word "ban", he mostly just needs to do some self reflection on what he's willing to do to prolong his 15 minutes.

Pretty much.

This isn't about any ban, that's nothing more than forum etiquette/rules.

This is about the things he've said that are harmful to someone else, his responsibility and what he needs to do in regards to that first and foremost. After that is whatever it is that compelled him to comment on this issue. ( not going to speculate on this )
 
Lessons learnt today :

Don't put too much trust in what Mort has to say
All Game creators are not leaving sony out of any ill will
The industry is having changes with people going in and out
 

Palocca

Member
I think people her need to stop making ridiculous statements as well whenever a dev leaves as well.

I seen this in each and everyone of these topics.

Yeah, it's gross.

An unannounced game gets cancelled, and a group of people cry foul as if it was cancelled just to spite them. These things happen; we have no indication that the game is any good and yet people still clamor for it like it's the second coming of videogames. Let's be honest - even if we hypothetically had our hands on the game right this second, we would still find something to complain about.

A handful of higher-ups leave their respective studios, for probably different reasons mind you, and those games are automatically destined for the bargain bin. I get that creative developers leaving in mid-development is a cause for concern, but people need to realize that these games are developed by dozens of talented workers. It's not like they're just twiddling their thumbs on their desks with confused looks on their faces after a resignation announcement's been made.

The real unfortunate part of all of this is the timing of it all. Really does give the image of Sony being a sinking ship, I admit.
 

msdstc

Incredibly Naive
Wait WHAT ?

Seriously, the comparsions and doubtful people in this thread are going nuts.

Even though he should have avoided the topic about Col or he should have clarified, that's what he heard from one of his sources, nothing more or less.

You renember what this topic was about ?
The carnival of stupid that happened after some recent departures at Sony.
Mort shipped in to shed some light on various people, and his message behind it was simple.
It's nothing unusual for the industry, and for everyone there's a basic explanation.

Col is nothing different, people speculated their asses off and the game was doomed once again and even though the circumstances of Col department might be different that Famousmortimer was told, it's nothing unusual.
He never had the intention to speak badly about Col...he offered what he heard, that's what he always does.

Now, people are already going wild again and asking for a head....
What a joke, seriously.
Even insiders who're working within the industry haven been proven wrong, that happens...



@Col Rodgers
As I already said above, he never meant to speak badly about you, however just take a look into this thread, people went beyond any level of sanity and it happened with every departure lately.You of all people should know that these things happen...
He gave a basic explanation of reasons, as he was told.
I can understand your anger and frustration, since you left Evo for your son and reading something different is frustrating.

Your departure topic.

See you're only seeing one side of it. To me I see "doom and gloom sony is fucked", and then the other side "LOL hyperbole sony fine!"

People keep saying this happens all the time, and yet I haven't seen a single link to an article of this amount of people leaving one company at one from different studios. It's all linked to WWS and within a month of eachother, obviously something big is happening.
 

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
Full disclosure: I was probably going to be a writer for Pete's site once it got up and running. I'm trying to decide if I still will be after this.
 
Hello, all.

This is my first post on NeoGAF, and whilst I'm not generally one to deal in internet speculation, I have to put the record straight with regard to Pete Dodd's comments above.

Everything he has said with regard to myself and Driveclub is incorrect. It's also libellous.

As Putty (who is a personal friend of mine, and has been for about 25 years) suggests, I left Evo in February for personal reasons. The personal reasons being that my son, who is 4 years old, has been diagnosed with Nephrotic Syndrome, which is a potentially life threatening condition. I live 220 miles (4 hours drive) away from Evolution Studios, and was away from home 5.5 days a week. Given the circumstances, I could not continue to work there.

Driveclub is a great game, and the direction hasn't changed since my departure. This has been confirmed by SONY in various press releases over recent days.

I have no problem in dealing with very large projects, as I've been working in the games industry for the last 19 years, and have worked on some very prestigious titles, so there is genuinely no truth to anything posted by Mr Dodds at all. My departure (and indeed the setup of my 'indie' operation, BigRedSwitch) is 100% driven by family necessity, not some professional failing on my part.

I left SONY on very good terms. There is no animosity there, and I was absolutely nothing to do with the recent redundancies - in fact, the news of those redundancies was probably linked on here before I knew about them.

The games industry is a tough place at the moment. My circumstances with my son mean that I've had to leave secure work in order to try to make my own way in the world. This may entail getting another job. With people who obviously know nothing about the situation blackening my reputation for the sake of internet 'fame', this could be made much more difficult. It's nothing less than trolling.

I've contacted Mr. Dodd on his email address on his site. Due to the factual inaccuracy of his statements, I've informed him that he needs to remove the statements and apologise for the damage they have caused, as posting incorrect information and claiming it's true is quite simply libel.

I'm sure you can all appreciate just how difficult things are for myself and my family at the moment. I'd genuinely appreciate it if you can take my statements as word from the origin, and realise that there has been no big cover-up when it comes to my departure from SONY/Evo.

Thanks, all.

Col.

Mort my homie, I hate it had to be him.

Sorry to hear about your son.
 

Corto

Member
Going on a witch hunt is no better. :/

Absolutely. We have excellent moderatorship. Let them deal with these as they see fit. Otherwise we're nothing but a horde that just changed the object of its ire.

And just commenting on insiders and leaks It's time that everyone understands that insider leaks are nothing but gossip or hearsay at best or PR controlled and deliberated spread of info with ulterior motives at worst. Start treating them as such and stop giving them more value than they are worth.
 

Falcon511

Banned
Its never anyones business to know why such and such left said company. I do feel sorry for the people of that post and wish them all the best.

As i said before, quit while you are ahead.
 

ghst

thanks for the laugh
i'm sure those who want a daily dose of sony angled rainmaking can find it in spades on mortimer's charity funded blog.
 

msdstc

Incredibly Naive
Mort is a nice guy, alot of his post is fair and good calming information in a thread that looked like it required it, however as much as I respect mort, he probably should have stopped at personal speculation. Hopefully this is merely a learning experience for him.

Sad to read about Col's personal situation, hope all works out and Big Red Switch is a success... I will be following closely, just checked it out on facebook, they seem to have great appetite and I wish them all the best!

Why is his baseless speculation more fair then the opposite?
 
Col is nothing different, people speculated their asses off and the game was doomed once again and even though the circumstances of Col department might be different that Famousmortimer was told, it's nothing unusual.

True. People leave game studios all the time.

He never had the intention to speak badly about Col...he offered what he heard, that's what he always does.

Well, I have to say that I don't appreciate the stuff he posted:

famousmortimer said:
The director of Driveclub doesn't deliver the game on time. Given more time the game still needs work. He is replaced.

Wouldn't you replace him? ...

Col Rogers (driveclub) is about failing to deliver.

Factually incorrect, speculative and way too personal. Hence my need to put the record straight.

I'm not calling for a witch hunt for Pete Dodd. Whatever issues we have are between he and I. What I am doing is protecting my professional integrity by correcting comments which ended up being posted as news on games industry websites. Websites that are read by my potential employers. Really, I'm not too worried about people talking about me on forums - my work has been praised and criticised over the years by loads of people - what I'm concerned about is when posts on forums become personally damaging.
 

PBY

Banned
Yeah really all he has to do is apologize that his source was wrong on this. He isn't even doing that
Did he even have a source? Rereading it in light of the facts looks like wild speculation.

That's just my thoughts tho. Just really crappy for that dude to have his rep smeared when he's dealing w this family issue.
 

Vizzeh

Banned
Thats a bit too passive agressive for my taste.

You will unfortunately always get the personalities on any forum that go on a witch hunt and call for peoples head. What would have been ideal would be, first Mort perhaps not speculating to the point of personal negativity and 2, quelling the flames before they rise, he may have his reasons as to why he said what he did, he may even have a source. He should get involved and say what he needs to.

I would take a stab in the dark and assume he is pretty pissed at the minute, judging by his tweet, either at himself for causing direct friction with Col or a combination with that and the people in the thread that have had their tampon's set on fire.

There is genuinely sometimes a need to relax. Mort's post was initially useful and had a calming influence, he made a lot of sense, we need people here to radiate that sometimes and give rational explanations but im sure he will admit now he should have put the full stop after the blanket statements.
 
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