Interview Another Troika interview

[Vault Dweller]

Tags: Leonard Boyarsky; Troika Games

It's <a href=http://www.gamespy.com>GameSpy</a>'s turn to ask Troika some <a href=http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines/590958p1.html>questions</a> about its unfortunate demise
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<blockquote><i>Troika has been around for several years, and had three good titles under its belt. Why do you think you weren't able to secure funding for your next project?</i>
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I'm not sure, you'd have to ask the publishers. If I had to guess, I'd say it's because triple A titles are costing more and more to make, and people are looking for titles that will appeal to a more mainstream audience than ours have traditionally. In plain English, our games just didn't sell enough units. </blockquote>
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*waiting for the next asshole to say something stupid like "that's because they made buggy games"
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Thanks, <b>Briosafreak</b>
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[dojoteef]

GameSpy: What happens to Bloodlines in terms of support? Were any patches or updates in the works?

Boyarsky: I cannot comment on Bloodlines' support, you'd have to talk to Activision about that. We were not working on any patches or updates - we haven't had a team since mid December.

I'm kind of wondering what that means. Does it mean, Activision made the patch on their own without Troika? If so, that just added points for them in my book.

 

[NeverwinterKnight]

GameSpy: What happens to Bloodlines in terms of support? Were any patches or updates in the works?

Boyarsky: I cannot comment on Bloodlines' support, you'd have to talk to Activision about that. We were not working on any patches or updates - we haven't had a team since mid December.

I'm kind of wondering what that means. Does it mean, Activision made the patch on their own without Troika? If so, that just added points for them in my book.

that also means my game is going to remain buggy as hell.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I'm kind of wondering what that means. Does it mean, Activision made the patch on their own without Troika? If so, that just added points for them in my book.

It means Activision decided to finally release the last build of Bloodlines they got from Troika as a patch.

 

[obediah]

*waiting for the next asshole to say something stupid like "that's because they made buggy games"

Yeah, a publisher checking out a developers previous work is stupid. Troika had a lot going for it, but they also had the considerable baggage of releasing three buggy games and then publicly blaming the publisher for it. Their sales weren't that bad - I think if they had a reputation for releasing solid games on time they would have been in much better shape.

 

[Jed]

This was a really sad interview to read. Leonard sounded so bleak and pessimistic. I really hope these guys find a way to pull it back together.

 

[Screaming_life]

... I'd say it's because triple A titles are costing more and more to make, and people are looking for titles that will appeal to a more mainstream audience

This really sucks!

The game industry needs publishers that will directly support non mainstream games. The music industry has it why can't the game industry?

I guess one reason might be that although we don't like mainstream games we still buy them!

Someone with a bit of motivation needs to start some kind of movement or organisation that aims to raise the profile of small developers or developers with new ideas and generate a market for non mainstream games - games with innovation.

If Troika were given more support and weren't pressured to appeal to the masses then bloodlines could have been much better!

 

[taks]

i don't know, could it just be that troika thinks much more of their own capabilities than everyone else? for god's sake, how naive can they be to think that a lack of "mainstream appeal" is the reason their games failed? denial at it's best.

taks

 

[Vault Dweller]

"Recent" RPG top-sellers: Diablo, BG, Morrowind, KOTOR. What do all these games have in common? No other game, from Fallout to Silent Storm came even close, and not because of design flaws, poor graphics, or bugs.

 

[NeverwinterKnight]

"Recent" RPG top-sellers: Diablo, BG, Morrowind, KOTOR. What do all these games have in common? No other game, from Fallout to Silent Storm came even close, and not because of design flaws, poor graphics, or bugs.

morrowind is mainstream?

 

[Screaming_life]

i don't know, could it just be that troika thinks much more of their own capabilities than everyone else? for god's sake, how naive can they be to think that a lack of "mainstream appeal" is the reason their games failed? denial at it's best.

They were probably just too middle of the road.

They should have been more extreme:

Publisher: we think there should be more action in the last 3rd of the game

Troika: Fuck that shit, we're gonna make the mutha fucking game good, why the hell would we want to go and spoil it?!
Listen 'ear Mr publisher dude, you're gonna sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up! - who the hell do you think is making this game anyhow?!!

 

[Jed]

i don't know, could it just be that troika thinks much more of their own capabilities than everyone else? for god's sake, how naive can they be to think that a lack of "mainstream appeal" is the reason their games failed? denial at it's best.

You might have a point if only Troika thought this. Besides the self-evidence of the notion, I think a lot of other people would agree.

morrowind is mainstream?

How was it not mainstream? Pretty, shallow, action-y combat. THE WINNING FORMULA! It was even on the xbox.

 

[obediah]

*waiting for the next asshole to say something stupid like "that's because they made buggy games"

Yeah, a publisher checking out a developers previous work is stupid. Troika had a lot going for it, but they also had the considerable baggage of releasing three buggy games and then publicly blaming the publisher for it. Their sales weren't that bad - I think if they had a reputation for releasing solid games on time they would have been in much better shape.

Try "if they were making shallow games for morons that sell gazillions..."

Let's see, Arcanum - some fucked up setting that nobody heard of. What's the matter with them, don't they know that nobody wants to play that crap? ToEE - turn-based faithful DnD adaptation. Yeah, that's what we need, a faithful adaptation that forces people to realize that they are fucking stoopid. Turn-based is so yesterday. Who has time to click every minute and think of strategies these days? People want to have a good time, enjoy the show on the screen, clicking occasionally, not to figure out what's work with what. Come on. And then Bloodlines - a game about vampires and without Buffy and Angel. I kid you not. Not even Lestat and that gay shit. I tell you, they've lost their fucking minds at Troika. The truth is that Troika just wasn't serious about doin' business.

You , like Troika, just don't get it - which is infuriating. Looking at Troika's death, we can either save face and say "to succeed you need to make cookie cutter games", or we can take Troika's dick out of our mouth and acknowledge what Troika did wrong. The first option encourages everyone to just make cookie cutter games, while the second gives us a shot at getting games evern better than Troikas.

I personally would rather see the next Troika succeed by meeting milestones, debugging code, and kissing a publishers ass rather than selling out and making a diablo clone.

 

[Vault Dweller]

"Recent" RPG top-sellers: Diablo, BG, Morrowind, KOTOR. What do all these games have in common? No other game, from Fallout to Silent Storm came even close, and not because of design flaws, poor graphics, or bugs.

morrowind is mainstream?

Duh! Daggerfall was a cool game. MW was thoroughly dumbed down to get the approval of the masses.

 

[Kuato]

the pickens is ripe and its time for private investors step up and snatch whole markets publishers are completely ignoring and just sit back and watch the publishers strangle each other chasing that mainstream dollar

 

[Volourn]

"Pretty, shallow, action-y combat."

Good description of Vmapire's combat. R00fles!

And, you can't get more shallow than TOEE. And, only an idiotic fanboy like VD would claim that TOEE was some bullshit 'faithful' D&D implementation. Last I checked, they didn't even allow DMs. Yeah, that's fiathful. Not to mention the HUNDREDS of rule changes. R00fles!

I laugh when he says ALL the former Troika employees wer egreat - I guess he likes the employees who wnated mass combat in the final part of Vmapire, or the ones who prefer the clickity click of the combat in general.

Whatever.

TOEE was trying to be mainstream; but failed; because they simply didn't know what they were doing. They won't even admit that some of the employees sucked. Not to mention the lack of a team manager.

Hahahahahahahaha.

One more time, it's Troika's fault they failed. Period.

 

[Jed]

"Pretty, shallow, action-y combat."

Good description of Vmapire's combat. R00fles!

I was writing in short-hand, so it's not surprising you didn't get it. Should be understood as: Pretty (graphics) -comma- shallow (NPC interactions, ability to affect gameworld) -comma- action-y combat.

And if there's a resemblance to Vampire, maybe that's an actual reason Troika failed: Troika trying to shoehorn a non-mainstream game into a mainstream format, complete with overpriced bells and whistles. Though I'm imagine it wouldn't have been entirely their ideal from the get-go.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Bloodlines was as mainstream as it gets, unless for some reason you think it had deep, challenging tactical combat, which it clearly didn't. The combat was better than Morrowind's, but that isn't saying much considering that Morrowind's combat is pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel. An implementation of combat similar to Jedi Academy or even Beyond Good & Evil would have gone a long way to improving the state of Bloodlines.

TOEE may have been a faithful implementation of the D&D combat rules but it wasn't a faithful implementation of D&D's role-playing structure. Like Saint Proverbius, I took the game for what it was: a dungeon crawler. Dungeon crawlers are as 'mainstream' as any RPG can get when you consider the successes of Diablo, Diablo 2 and the success of Divine Divinity in Europe.

When most people purchased TOEE they were expecting a "Troika RPG" and not a dungeon crawler, so it didn't fly too well with the multitude of Fallout fans in Poland. If anything, the popularity of an RPG can be gauged by its reception in a market dominated by RPG enthusiasts. So while it was an average dungeon crawler at best, it certainly wasn't much of an RPG. Not of the Fallout variety. Troika had a chance to make a good RPG but they blew it.

Do you know what Troika's biggest problem is? The lack of leadership in every single one of their projects. Hiring someone to take care of the business side of things would have allowed Tim and Leon to focus their efforts on developing the game.


You can't say that Tim Cain wasn't completely "full of shit" in parts of his TOEE interviews, either. Allow me to elaborate. If you followed TOEE from the beginning, you'd know how Bards were probably the weakest class in the game, and how playing "Bard Song" would cause the game to CTD during map transitions. Now, take a look at this interview:

http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/400/400346p1.html

and check this out:

What are a couple of locations you find particularly interesting in the Temple of Elemental Evil module, and why?
I have played the pen and paper module many times, but always as DM, so I am looking forward to playing the game in computer form. I like playing dumb half-orc barbarians and charismatic sorcerers, just to see the dialogue variations. But my stress test for the game will be playing from start to finish with five female halfling bards collectively called the Spicey Girls (individually they are Shorty, Baby, Scarcely, Injure and Slosh). If I can finish the game with them, anyone can finish.

Bullshit. That nasty Bard Song CTD made into the retail release. If Tim really played with the "spice girls" he'd have likely spotted that damn bug. On top of that, unless you cheat, if you try playing the game with 5 halfling bards, you will most definitely die. Take note that this interview was conducted many, many months before the game was released.

 

[Vault Dweller]

And, only an idiotic fanboy like VD would claim that TOEE was some bullshit 'faithful' D&D implementation. Last I checked, they didn't even allow DMs.

I meant the rules, moron.

TOEE was trying to be mainstream; but failed; because they simply didn't know what they were doing.

Yeah, right, a turn-based game was trying to be mainstream. Stop talking out of your ass again.

One more time, it's Troika's fault they failed. Period.

It's so fucking annoying to read 10 times a day "it's all Troika's fault they failed". You are like a fucking child who will repeat the same thing until someone kicks him in the ass. And please don't post your stupid address again. It was lame the first time you did that. Please, get new lines. You are free to post your opinions and disagree with me, but stop repeating the same thing over and over again. That makes you look retarded, nothing else.

 

[Spazmo]

Bards sucking ass is inherent to the D&D rules, and Tim Cain likely chose that party configuration specifically to make the shittiest party imaginable to see how hard it'd be.

And I had a bard who sang all the time in my first ToEE playthrough and I never ran into that CTD.

 

[Volourn]

"Yeah, right, a turn-based game was trying to be mainstream."

Are you saying Final Fantasy series isn't mainstream? Gain a clue.


"I meant the rules,"

That's right. Ignore all the rules that were changed or aborted in the game.


"It's so fucking annoying to read 10 times a day "it's all Troika's fault they failed". You are like a fucking child who will repeat the same thing until someone kicks him in the ass. And please don't post your stupid address again. It was lame the first time you did that. Please, get new lines. You are free to post your opinions and disagree with me, but stop repeating the same thing over and over again. That makes you look retarded, nothing else."

Tough shit. Keep whining.

A. I only repeat that line because moronic fanboys like yourself continue to blame EVERYONE but Troika for their fall. Stop doing that, and I'll stop pointing out the fact, Idiot.

B. You can come kick my ass at 644 Lakeshore Dr Unit 36, North Bay, Ontario, Kanada. I'll be waiting; but I won't be holding my breath.

C. Ahh.. Is that a threat of banning or post editing or better yet the 'dumbfuck' title?

D. As for looking retarded. I may look retarded; but it sure beats BEING retarded for blindly defending your god by blaming everyone BUT them.

Hahahah.. TOOL.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

Troika's not to blame. Society is.

 

[merry andrew]

Troika's not to blame. Society is.

 

[Volourn]

"post editing"

I win.

 

[NeverwinterKnight]

morrowind is mainstream?

How was it not mainstream? Pretty, shallow, action-y combat. THE WINNING FORMULA! It was even on the xbox.

weird, thats what bloodlines was. pretty, shallow, and action-y combat (especially the last third of the game).