Obsidian General Discussion Thread

[Nihiliste]

A GoT RPG would have been perfect for Avellone/Zeits era Obsidian. Probably would have made them a boatload of cash, even without the show.

 

[Infinitron]

Yo Anthony Davis, layoffs? https://aw.my.com/us/news/general/mycom-adopts-future-work-armored-warfare

MY.COM ADOPTS FUTURE WORK ON ARMORED WARFARE

Amsterdam, The Netherlands – February 11th, 2017

Developer Obsidian Entertainment and global Publisher My.com are announcing impactful changes to the development structure of Armored Warfare. From today on, the future development and update plans will be carried out entirely by My.Com.

The restructured Armored Warfare development team will be delivering on all of the new features and content previously announced.

“At Obsidian, we are grateful to have had the opportunity to work on Armored Warfare over the last four years. We are happy to hand off Armored Warfare to the talented developers at My.com who, we know, will deliver incredible updates and content to Armored Warfare fans across the world. Our focus at Obsidian will turn to currently announced games such as Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, Tyranny, and Pathfinder: Adventures along with other unannounced projects. We are proud of everything we did on Armored Warfare and want to thank all of our dedicated fans for their involvement and support.“,
said Feargus Urquhart, CEO of Obsidian Entertainment.

“We are grateful for all contributions made by everyone on the Armored Warfare development teams, past and present. The restructured Armored Warfare development team is continuing the current development and update plans and will be dedicated to deliver content to our worldwide players in the most consistent manner.“,
said Yuri Maslikov, Publishing Director of My.com.

It can't be long now before we start hearing hearing about these "other unannounced projects".

 

[Bester]

Another great achievement by Feargus.

 

[Prime Junta]

I hope they've got enough projects. If so, good riddance -- AW felt pretty far removed from Obsidian's core identity.

 

[Sizzle]

I hope they've got enough projects. If so, good riddance -- AW felt pretty far removed from Obsidian's core identity.

This always seemed like regular contractor work. Wasn't it expected that they would some day stop working on it and go back to doing games like they did before?

Don't see how this is necessarily a bad thing for Obsidian.

 

[Quillon]

Don't see how this is necessarily a bad thing for Obsidian.

If they are gonna lay off even more people its a bad thing, so [what Prime Junta said]

 

[Sizzle]

Don't see how this is necessarily a bad thing for Obsidian.

If they are gonna lay off even more people its a bad thing, so [what Prime Junta said]

We've already been over this, but companies rarely stay the same size - they hire (and fire) people according to the needs of the project(s) they're working on.

 

[Quillon]

Yeah but AW team is/was huge.

 

[Sizzle]

Yeah but AW team is/was huge.

Yes, and I'm assuming most of them won't be just laid off, but reassigned on other projects.

Another possibility is that many of them were just in Obsidian to work on that sole project (hence - the contractor bit), and that they knew, and prepared, to look for employment elsewhere when AW was done.

 

[Flou]

Seeing how this came out of the blue as they were still working on the 2.0 balance thingie this means layoffs, uncontrollable layoffs. Community manager from Obsidian already confirmed some layoffs on Reddit.

 

[Latro]

My all-time unfavorite Feargus move is how he turned down GoT rpg before GoT was kool.

It kinda depends though... how freely can they work on the IP. GRRM is highly protective of his material, so is it just the book/tv series done in crpg mode or something completely different? While it may sound like a deal everyone would take in heartbeat (even before the tv series), since we don't know the exact details it's hard to judge him by it. What else did they have on the table at the moment etc.

GRRM has no creative control over licensed products, including the show, though in some cases he was asked for some input, like the RPG and the graphic novel. Feargus said he didn't take the deal because he thought the setting didn't allow "standard role-playing fantasy things".

dumb move

 

[Latro]

A GoT RPG would have been perfect for Avellone/Zeits era Obsidian. Probably would have made them a boatload of cash, even without the show.

Game of Thrones with Obsidian's name on it would have a sold quite a bundle a few years back before both names were tarnished.

Free money they threw away honestly.

 

[Fairfax]

The game's subreddit isn't taking this well. Apparently an article called the "The Long Road Ahead" about the game's future has been removed. Also, according to AW's website, Obsidian was still doing a public test of the major 2.0 update.

So yes, pretty bad news.

 

[Fairfax]

Post by Obsidian's AW community manager confirms layoffs:

Well guys, now that the cats out of the bag I just wanted to say it's been an honor being your Community Manager. I know I speak for Obsidian when I say we truly aimed to deliver something our fans would be proud of and we would have loved to see Balance 2.0 to the end.

With this change many of us from the team must now move on to new projects or adventures. For me and others, it's meant our time at Obsidian has come to a close. I hope to see you all around and I will definitely be keeping tabs on the AW community. I've come to know many of you by name and I will miss reading your comments about the project.

As Winston Churchill so aptly put it:

"This is not the end, this is not even the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning."

Until next time folks.

-Spunky

 

[Flou]

Another great achievement by Feargus.

You are special kinda retard, aren't you?

 

[santino27]

I hope they've got enough projects. If so, good riddance -- AW felt pretty far removed from Obsidian's core identity.

To be fair, sometimes having to do/work on something wildly different can help give fresh perspective when coming back to your usual workload. I don't want them doing non-rpg stuff all the time, but it's a good way of keeping flexible vs. devolving into utter stagnation like Bioware.

Edit: Except when the people involved all get laid off, and therefore bring absolutely fuck all back to the main team. My condolences for those who have been laid off. It feels like layoffs are at this point a standard part of the gaming industry (and even the larger tech industry, as a whole), but it still sucks every time it happens.

 

[Prime Junta]

We've already been over this, but companies rarely stay the same size - they hire (and fire) people according to the needs of the project(s) they're working on.

Yeah fucking late capitalism. There used to be a certain loyalty between employees and employers, back in the day: an understanding that if you as the employee did your best and stayed loyal to your bourgeois overlord, he in turn would do his best to do right by you. Among other things by having a fairly high bar to laying you off.

Layoffs are very corrosive of morale and, through that, effectiveness. A company that retains its employees and is loyal to them will reap a lot of hidden benefits. Employee turnover is a bad thing and good companies do what they can to avoid it, even today.

 

[Jarpie]

We've already been over this, but companies rarely stay the same size - they hire (and fire) people according to the needs of the project(s) they're working on.

Yeah fucking late capitalism. There used to be a certain loyalty between employees and employers, back in the day: an understanding that if you as the employee did your best and stayed loyal to your bourgeois overlord, he in turn would do his best to do right by you. Among other things by having a fairly high bar to laying you off.

Layoffs are very corrosive of morale and, through that, effectiveness. A company that retains its employees and is loyal to them will reap a lot of hidden benefits. Employee turnover is a bad thing and good companies do what they can to avoid it, even today.

Dirty commie, world is tough place, especially business world and if the product/game isn't profitable then company might not have other course of action than layoffs. Feargus comes off as someone who wouldn't want to layoff people unless it was necessary. I doubt we'll find out exactly why the russians are changing things but one of the reasons might be that their bean counters have done calculations and come to conclusion that Armored Warfare won't be good enough success to cover the expenses paid to Obsidian.

"Life sucks, get a fucking helmet"- Doctor Denis Leary

 

[Flou]

Dirty commie, world is tough place, especially business world and if the product/game isn't profitable then company might not have other course of action than layoffs. Feargus comes off as someone who wouldn't want to layoff people unless it was necessary. I doubt we'll find out exactly why the russians are changing things but one of the reasons might be that their bean counters have done calculations and come to conclusion that Armored Warfare won't be good enough success to cover the expenses paid to Obsidian.

"Life sucks, get a fucking helmet"- Doctor Denis Leary

Them Russians managed to alienate plenty of the community with endless premium tanks instead of actually focusing on new free content that would have kept players actually playing the game. That and the fact they basically had no marketing at all in Europe/NA made it impossible for the game to be a massive hit. Youtubers and random social media stuff just isn't enough against WoT.

Apparently the Russian servers are doing fine though, but then again they've had actual marketing in Russia.

 

[Flou]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ArmoredWarfare/comments/5thjdv/armored_warfare_what_went_wrong/

Someone with a bit/lot of inside information just posted that on Reddit

 

[Roguey]

Russian mobsters sure love their shovelware.

 

[Sannom]

Who's that Felix guy who keeps being mentioned in the thread?

 

[Iznaliu]

Obsidian needs to stand up for themselves if they want to be successful. They have a stellar reputation; every RPG made by Obsidian has a cult following and every RPG fan on Reddit/SomethingAwful wishes that the sequel to their franchise be made by Obsidian. They need to leverage that and use their reputation to give them enough time to make truly great games; almost every Obsidian game to date has been rushed and has came out worse for it.

 

[Infinitron]

Maybe they already have.

 

[2house2fly]

Obsidian needs to stand up for themselves if they want to be successful. They have a stellar reputation; every RPG made by Obsidian has a cult following and every RPG fan on Reddit/SomethingAwful wishes that the sequel to their franchise be made by Obsidian. They need to leverage that and use their reputation to give them enough time to make truly great games; almost every Obsidian game to date has been rushed and has came out worse for it.

I'm skeptical that they really have a stellar reputation. I mean, a few years ago when Feargus Urquhart did an RPS interview they literally asked him to apologise for making buggy games.