Company News Bizarre rumours: Troika shutting down?

[Vault Dweller]

According to this info posted at NMA, "Everyone got layed off because Activision pulled the funding"

 

[Surlent]

At the link NMA has leads to mapcore...
http://mapcore.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2073&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Where David Marsh http://www.marshmonkey.com/ tells everyone has been layed off 'cuz Activision didn't pay them.

Shit, I never liked Activision or their games on Commondore 64.
When BL came, I thought they'd changed since then. Dammit, the're still jackasses. >_<

 

[Fez]

Urgh, that's a shitty end to it all. If it is all true, I hope they all manage to get a decent placement after the carve-up.

 

[Volourn]

Fez: Yes, the publishe has to take blame. That isn't the point. It sesms that youa re willing to lay heaps of blaem on publishers; but give them no credit beyond 'copying disc'. You know full well that publishers are way more important than copying discs.

The problem though in Troika's case is the same thing happens no matter the publisher. They get repeatedly screwed supposedly. The apttern should not be ignored. Espicially, since in TOEE's case, they had the same exact publisher BIo did yet the quality of support is vastly uneven. The publisher is the same. The only difference is the dveloper. I think that pretty much illustrates the blame Troika should get.

Now, on to the problem that Troika may be doomed. Well, that sucks to be sure. If true, they just couldn't hack it and deserve no mercy. Only the strong survive in game dvelopment! The weak must be destroyed!

 

[Avé]

It's as much about luck as it is about business savvy in the game world these days for small developers.

 

[Volourn]

No. That is total, and utter bullshit. Luck plays a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, veyr, very, very, very small role.

 

[Vault Dweller]

The publisher is the same. The only difference is the dveloper. I think that pretty much illustrates the blame Troika should get.

As usual Volourn has managed to ignore a truckload of other factors that determined the outcome.

 

[Volourn]

Waaaaa! Biowrae has more money! Waaa! Of course, BIO has all that money becuase they make games people want to play, and they don't over extend themselves and actually support their games.

Not to mention if things aren't working out with a publisher; they kick the publisher TO THE CURB. They don't sit there and take it up the ass.

R00fles!

 

[Fez]

Looks like Volourn is using his big spoon today.

 

[Spazmo]

Kind of hard to tell the publisher to fuck off when they're the ones who have the license you're working with. And BioWare got VERY LUCKY with the Interplay situation because they bailed on IPLY right when the D&D license conveniently was moving over to Atari. If IPLY had maintained a solid hold on D&D through that period and up to today, would BioWare have been as eager to leave the company and be forced to essentially remake their entire game to remove all D&D-ness from NWN or abandon it altogether? Now, they had a solid opportunity to leave and they took it; kudos to them for that. But there's no question that the situation is different for Troika.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Waaaaa! Biowrae has more money! Waaa!

Who said anything about money, my overly ASSumptive friend?

Of course, BIO has all that money becuase they make games people want to play, and they don't over extend themselves and actually support their games.

And that concludes our reportage from the kindergarten. The winner is Volourn, the chubby kid of unknown gender, who said that his/her favourite company is Bio because they make games he/she likes to play and because they have elves.

Not to mention if things aren't working out with a publisher; they kick the publisher TO THE CURB. They don't sit there and take it up the ass.

Wow, them sure is a tough outfit

 

[Volourn]

Spaz: That wasn't luck. That was intelligence, dumb ass. Soemthing you apparantly lack while making lame exuses for Troika. You don't think BIO assessed the situation before they made their move away from Interplay. They knew Interplay was crewing them so they made sure to get out when the getting was good. Interplay still had the rights to NWN. remember, it was BIO foricng them to make an out of court settlement which got the NWN rights transferred over to Atari. Use your brains for once. Luck had nothing to do with it.

Maybe if Troika knew what they were doing they wouldn't be in this mess (of course if they are even in a mess since this is just rumours, myths, and innuendo anyways).

VD: Make yokes all you want; the fact is the only ones to blame for Troika's possible failure is Troika. Period.

If they succeedd; they only have themselves to thank.

 

[Vault Dweller]

VD: Make yokes all you want; the fact is the only ones to blame for Troika's possible failure is Troika. Period.

Not 100%. It's true that Troika could have made a better RT/TB combo in Arcanum, could have turned ToEE into a solid DnD foundation of the company, spitting out a new module every now and then, and could have done a better job with Bloodlines. No doubt about that.

But it was Sierra who fucked Arcanum's release, and that, imo, was a big and decisive blow to Troika. I don't think they could have done anything about that. Atari did fuck up ToEE by not QAing properly and releasing the wrong, earlier build.

Anyway, while I agree with you that Troika is the one to blame for its, so far purely hypothetical, situation, I disagree with your apple-to-apple comparison of Bio and Troika. These situations are too complex for that.

 

[Dgaider]

I would like to point out that the situation between Bioware and Troika is quite different. Until a developer gets some clout with some big hits like Bioware has, you are essentially a slave to your publisher. Most developers live and die based on the funding coming from the publisher for each milestone.

Does that mean the publisher, then, is solely to blame? It's arguable. The publisher has expectations regarding sales for these games, and if those expectations (whether realistic or not) are not met the publisher is eventually going to re-evaluate whether their relationship with a developer is a profitable one. I'm sure there might be other reasons in the mix, but when it comes to a big company publisher you can generally be pretty confidant what their prime motivation will always be (and you can't really fault them for it, that's just the way it is).

I hope the rumors aren't true, myself. I enjoyed Arcanum and Bloodlines and am always interested in what Troika is working on and would rate their end on the same level of disappointment as with Looking Glass Studios.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

I hope the rumors aren't true, myself. I enjoyed Arcanum and Bloodlines and am always interested in what Troika is working on and would rate their end on the same level of disappointment as with Looking Glass Studios.

Aye. You have my full agreement on that one. Losing LGS was a severe blow to the gaming community and, while the impact may not be felt by as wide an audience, losing Troika would be a shame as well.

 

[Volourn]

"Not 100%. It's true that Troika could have made a better RT/TB combo in Arcanum, could have turned ToEE into a solid DnD foundation of the company, spitting out a new module every now and then, and could have done a better job with Bloodlines. No doubt about that.

But it was Sierra who fucked Arcanum's release, and that, imo, was a big and decisive blow to Troika. I don't think they could have done anything about that. Atari did fuck up ToEE by not QAing properly and releasing the wrong, earlier build."

3 different publishers, same story. Sure, the various publishers have to share some of the problems; but no matter what Troika's performances lays smack right donw on them. Mind you, I perosnally don't mind Troika's performance (2 out of 3 games ain't bad and even TOEE had some good qualities to admire); but it may have not been enough.


"I disagree with your apple-to-apple comparison of Bio and Troika. These situations are too complex for that."

The only reason an apple-to-apple comparison cna't be made is because the BIOware doctors obviously know what they ar edoing so they get their slaves ( ) like Monsieur Gaider here to make gams most players want to play and get their QA monkies to get off their lazy butts. People seem to have this ideal version of BIo where they were always big, and rolling in dough. NEWSFLASH! Theyw eren't. They earned thier current status, and not simply by trying to lay blame on the publisher or almost as bad having the fans lay the blame on the publishers for them.

When someone finds a bug in a BIO game they blame BIO.

When someone finds a bug in a Troika game, they blame X Publisher.

That's retarded.

Period.

R00fles!

 

[Sheriff05]

When someone finds a bug in a BIO game they blame BIO.

When someone finds a bug in a Troika game, they blame X Publisher.

That's retarded.

Period.

Call me crazy but wouldn't that be because Bioware does their own in-house QA while Troikas QA is done BY ITS PUBLISHER, I guess those kinds minor factoids are irrelevant in the world of retards and R00fles.

 

[Volourn]

"Call me crazy but wouldn't that be because Bioware does their own in-house QA while Troikas QA is done BY ITS PUBLISHER, I guess those kinds minor factoids are irrelevant in the world of retards and R00fles."

That's Troika's fault for passing the buck, and not doing the QA themselves. And, don't whine about them not having enough money. Sob stories belong in Dear Abby columns; not the Codex.

 

[Sheriff05]

That's Troika's fault for passing the buck, and not doing the QA themselves. And, don't whine about them not having enough money. Sob stories belong in Dear Abby columns; not the Codex.

Oh I see it's passing the buck?, I thought it was because publishers want to use their already established QA teams instead of paying development studios additional money to do their own in house QA, By chance do you know ANY development studio (other than Bioware) who actually does do their own QA at the expense of their publisher?

 

[Mangler]

So Troika goes down. Yeah a big loss, but Arcanum had its problems. ToEE I've never played (I guess eventually I will, but look at all those patches) and VtM:B is too much game for my puny PC to handle.
I would not characterize their games as flawless masterpieces. More like a flawed and ill cut jewel. Pretty but ugly at the same time. Like a Masterpice painting made by a Novice, fantastic if you stand back and look... but up close its another matter.

I think the game industry (large corperates) hates gamers, especially hardcore-gamers.

Why else would they torture us with all these metric assloads of horrible games, one after the other.

I guess, True gaming 'Art' is risky to sell.
So they better sell the gaming equivalent of comics instead.
Besides what was the last good painting made by a large buisness. Has there EVER been one?
Games have always been a peculiar fusion of buisness and art. I guess buisness won afterall.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Half-Life 2 did have a stutter and I'm guessing it's a similar issue in Bloodlines, given it was built on what must have been an earlier version of the engine (presuming Valve continued to tweak the engine on their end and that not all tweaks made their way to Troika). That said, I didn't have any issues with Bloodlines what-so-ever. I even patched mid-game (at about Grout's Mansion). To me, the 1.2 patch didn't make any noticeable differences. Gameplay and performance were the same before and after. Maybe a quest or two got tweaked but there was no noticeable performance difference. The opening cut-scene was fine even before the patch.

I think Bloodlines "failings" however, are three-fold.

1. System requirements on the box should've stated more RAM. People don't complain when the box clearly says it requires it. That said, I also understand it's more of an issue to do with some people's windows swap file and free HDD space available to create the swap-file. The problem is that RAM makes sense to people. Changing an obscure setting in Windows config doesn't.
   
2. RPG. RPG's are notoriously hard to pull off "right". All that dialogue is hard to implement. If Troika weren't considered as the ones who can make an "RPG right" this wouldn't be a problem. Would people complain if BioWare released what amounts to a combat clickfest with some dialogue added? What about if BethSoft released a game where there was only one solution, the entire game ran on a linear path and the ending was purely combat with a boss monster? I feel that Arcanum's reputation of lots of quests probably back-fired on Troika. Being the creators of "Fallout" doesn't help either.
   
3. ToEE's reputation. That HURT. As soon as one game is released as being buggy and Troika gets associated with that at every opportunity, the bugs in their next release are potentially over-emphasised (though really, what's with all the typos in Bloodlines? Arcanum didn't have that many surely?).

I don't think Troika have an ego either. They have to tout "the creators of Fallout" in order to get a publishing deal. There are plenty of other small time companies who can't even dream of pulling off what Troika have managed to do. Release 3 games in 7 years, two of which were based on widely-acclaimed licensed products. EvoG would be a happy puppy if he just got a publisher for Phoenix, let alone pull off what Troika have.

As for whomever said "oh noez where are teh 17 othar clans in VtmB"... who cares?

Troika's loss (if they die, God please don't let them die) would be a sad one indeed. Hey, they're a new developer working on cutting edge technology. ToEE was a miserable failure but it's evident Troika clearly learnt from that as can be seen in the *excellent* voice acting and in-depth story of Bloodlines. Oh sure, it's not the RPG we always wanted but Troika have quite clearly got the guts and talent to make it happen. What they don't have is time and money.

Troika made a mistake with their 18 month deadline for ToEE which they said they could do the game in. Troika made a mistake when in the end, they tried to do too much in ToEE and ended up with too many bugs (I can still remember the interview where Tim or Leon said "we had only planned for 50 spells but in the end, added up to 250"). ToEE was ONE mistake though. ONE mistake. Arcanum was GREAT as a first release from a new developer. ToEE was a disappointment but showed they could do fantastic graphics and great TB combat too (a lesson learned from Arcanum). Bloodlines continued the licensed product trend and proved that ToEE was just a bad mistake.

I'd really hoped someone would buy their Post-Apoc idea, I really did. The screenshots looked good and I had hoped that Troika have learnt enough that when it came time to do their own "un-licensed" product ALA Arcanum, it would be the first jewel in the beginning of a long game industry career for Troika. I hope they're still able to pull that off one day. I don't think they'll ever give up their hope to do a "proper RPG".

 

[asa]

Well I can't say I'm surprised based on the problems with ToEE, and all the unjustified crying about bugs in VtM:B (mostly from people with substandard peecees).

I've noticed a fair amount of astroturfing for Troika on this board (a good thing) but then I've seen some of the **** posted by Exitium and others criticising Bloodlines; maybe enough to disuade people from bying it.

Troika is the last real CRPG dev out there IMHO, and this is very sad news indeed. While I'm glad David Gaider stopped by to express condolences, I won't be lining up to buy the next Bioware Xbox co-developed title -- now why is that? Well these companies realized that they had to dumb their product down in order to reach the main stream (hint: this is not RPG Codex) -- And nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people, as the saying goes.

Troika failed to understand this -- that the market has moved on, that the GenX RPG'ers who grew up in the 80s playing PnP are now too busy with marriages and careers to dedicate large blocks of time to computer gaming.

So who buys CRPGs in the 21st C. ? The same idiots who keep Blizzard in business. And they are definately not going to buying the high brow product Troika delivers.

 

[Sol Invictus]

I would like to point out that the situation between Bioware and Troika is quite different. Until a developer gets some clout with some big hits like Bioware has, you are essentially a slave to your publisher. Most developers live and die based on the funding coming from the publisher for each milestone.

Does that mean the publisher, then, is solely to blame? It's arguable. The publisher has expectations regarding sales for these games, and if those expectations (whether realistic or not) are not met the publisher is eventually going to re-evaluate whether their relationship with a developer is a profitable one. I'm sure there might be other reasons in the mix, but when it comes to a big company publisher you can generally be pretty confidant what their prime motivation will always be (and you can't really fault them for it, that's just the way it is).

I hope the rumors aren't true, myself. I enjoyed Arcanum and Bloodlines and am always interested in what Troika is working on and would rate their end on the same level of disappointment as with Looking Glass Studios.

It's true, that game development can sometimes be difficult for unestablished developers like Troika who leave much of their fate in the hands of publishers. Troika should have established themselves as producers of polished titles, just as Bioware, Valve and other established developers have. The producers (Leon, Tim, etc) should have tested their game more throughly before signing off on it into the hands of their publishers.

Troika's mistake was to establish itself as a company that developed only buggy, unpolished titles. Troika took a very hands-off approach when it came to game development, unlike Bioware which invested their own money into their titles to ensure that the games came out well and polished. Even if they weren't bug free, they were at least patched in a very short span of time, and support was given to those titles for years. Activision had to push Troika to work on a patch for Bloodlines. Yet, many critical bugs still remain, and EAX still doesn't work. The performance is horrible compared to Half Life 2.

Troika's demise is the fault of poor management, not because 'publishers are evil'.

Oh I see it's passing the buck?, I thought it was because publishers want to use their already established QA teams instead of paying development studios additional money to do their own in house QA, By chance do you know ANY development studio (other than Bioware) who actually does do their own QA at the expense of their publisher?

It's definitely passing the buck, and that's definitely what Troika did. The producers (Leon, etc) should have been more thorough at testing their own titles before signing off on them to the QA teams of the various publishers, who mainly concentrate on hardware compatibility, not the software side of things. I don't see how difficult it is for someone to play the game and take note of a few bugs. As it was, it looks like they didn't even bother to test their own scripts.

It's arguable whether Troika could afford its own in-house QA team but is it really out of the question for the producers to play their own games? It's a part of their job description. Their job isn't to sit back and relax while everybody else works. Hell, it's not difficult to have the writers and artists play the game, too, because that's what they should be doing. It is their game, after all, isn't it?

Why should Troika be the only company to rest on its laurels and expect the publisher to discover all the bugs? Most other development studios in the business test their own products in-house, even if they're unpaid to do exactly that. It's just a part of the development process and if they care about seeing their game achieve some decent sales, they'll sacrifice their free time to ensure that it comes out in a polished state.

 

[dagobach]

The producers (Leon, Tim, etc) should have tested their game more throughly before signing off on it into the hands of their publishers.

Troika's mistake was to establish itself as a company that developed only buggy, unpolished titles. Troika took a very hands-off approach when it came to game development, unlike Bioware which invested their own money into their titles to ensure that the games came out well and polished. Even if they weren't bug free, they were at least patched in a very short span of time, and support was given to those titles for years. Activision had to push Troika to work on a patch for Bloodlines. Yet, many critical bugs still remain, and EAX still doesn't work. The performance is horrible compared to Half Life 2.

Troika's demise is the fault of poor management, not because 'publishers are evil'.


It's definitely passing the buck, and that's definitely what Troika did. The producers (Leon, etc) should have been more thorough at testing their own titles before signing off on them to the QA teams of the various publishers, who mainly concentrate on hardware compatibility, not the software side of things. I don't see how difficult it is for someone to play the game and take note of a few bugs. As it was, it looks like they didn't even bother to test their own scripts.

It's arguable whether Troika could afford its own in-house QA team but is it really out of the question for the producers to play their own games? It's a part of their job description. Their job isn't to sit back and relax while everybody else works. Hell, it's not difficult to have the writers and artists play the game, too, because that's what they should be doing. It is their game, after all, isn't it?

I know it's really easy for you to come to those conclusions by looking at what happened after the fact, but I have to emphasize that you really cannot know the circumstances under which things happened, and the reasons behind them. It takes a lot of assumptions to complete those few paragraphs you just stated, assumptions about how the publisher/developer relationship worked, assumptions about Troika's intent, and assumptions about what kind of powers Troika held legally and in general in each situation. I'm not going to tell you that you are wrong, but I would just like to offer some alternative points of view to some of your statements, in case you might be willing to consider them:

"The producers (Leon, Tim, etc) should have tested their game more throughly before signing off on it into the hands of their publishers."

I know that the first response that jumps to mind when you see a bug in the game is "wow, how could they have missed that?" Now something that you have to consider, is that the testers AND the developers have spent countless hours playing the game, many many more hours than you have - and 95% of the time, they HAVE seen the bug and they did flag it to be fixed. Then why didn't they fix it you ask? Well, at the end of the development cycle, the game enters what is called asset lock or code freeze. During this time, any change made to the game has to be okayed by the publisher, wether it be to fix a typo every knows is in a dialouge - or a large bug in the animation system. The publisher at this stage wants only the most important changes they deem are neccesary so that they have time to test what they feel will be a reasonable game in time to put onto the shelves. Believe me, the developers see every bug, and it breaks thier hearts when the fixes for them don't make it into the game. They have pride in thier work, and they want it to be the best that it can be.

In addition, it is almost never the case that the developer "signs off" on content before it goes to the publisher. The situation is almost always that (unless you have a boatload of money) that you have to send stuff to the publisher, and THEY have to sign off on it. If they don't sign off on it, then your company does not get paid. The choice is between giving content to your publisher, or packing up and going home.

Troika's mistake was to establish itself as a company that developed only buggy, unpolished titles. Troika took a very hands-off approach when it came to game development, unlike Bioware which invested their own money into their titles to ensure that the games came out well and polished. Even if they weren't bug free, they were at least patched in a very short span of time, and support was given to those titles for years.

I don't know why any company would willfully set out to establish themselves as a company that only developed buggy games, that does not seem like a very smart srategy. Maybe it's the reputation it earned, but it was not willingly, or on purpose. I'm not sure how you can take a "hand's off" approach to making a game. The cold hard fact is that Troika never had enough funds to invest in thier own titles, so the option to have control over said games untill they were polished was never there. Maybe you can fault them for not having money, perhaps if they had persued some more mainstream titles like Bioware has - then they would have had the capital to have a say on when their games were polished enough to ship. Support for games years after they have ship requires a lot of funds.

Activision had to push Troika to work on a patch for Bloodlines. Yet, many critical bugs still remain, and EAX still doesn't work. The performance is horrible compared to Half Life 2.

Again, these people had pride in thier work, and I am one hundred percent certain that the only thing they wanted to do was put out a patch in order to put some more polish on the game. You don't work for three years on a project and then when it gets put out in a buggy state just give up and say "oh well, we tried." and forget about it. You do not know the internal situation between activision and troika in relation to the patch. You also are making the assumption that there were even employees there to work on the patch after the game shipped. There is a month or more gap between when work is halted on a game, and when you actually see it on shelves. If these rumors about Troika are true, then it would be safe to assume that they never got any additional funding after the halt of progress on the game, and had to let people go. It's funny looking back now at people who might have accused Troika of beeing greedy for wanting money to make a patch if they indeed are about to go out of business months later.

It's arguable whether Troika could afford its own in-house QA team but is it really out of the question for the producers to play their own games? It's a part of their job description. Their job isn't to sit back and relax while everybody else works. Hell, it's not difficult to have the writers and artists play the game, too, because that's what they should be doing. It is their game, after all, isn't it?

I don't think it's arguable wether Troika could have afforded it's own in-house QA team, I think it's pretty obvious that they couldn't. Troika has been a small company from day one, and it requires a big hit of a game to come into the kind of funding where you can establish your own QA team. I highly doubt that anyone was sitting back and not playing thier own games, indeed - the last part of the development cycle most often consists of the entire company playing the game over and over - since thier portion of the game is already done, and they have nothing to do but test the game. This again comes around to the fact that at that stage in the development cycle, you can't fix every bug that you see, simply becuase the publisher won't accept it if you make changes they have not approved. At that stage ANY change that could concievable change the game at all, and cuase the publisher to go through testing the game from beginnnig to end all over again is unacceptable when they already have it in a state they deem as shippable.

I know this is a long spiel, I just find myself compelled as someone from the inside of the industry looking out, to make a case for why some things occur during the development of some games . . . I'm not telling you that you are wrong, I'm just offering my take just as you are offering yours. Even if all the things that I suppose were true, you are right that it could not be entirely the publisher's fault. But on the other hand I do not think it could be either parties fault completley. Almost always the fault lies somewhere in the middle, there are always things either party could have done much better at or avoided in hidnsight. To say it was entirely one parties fault I think is unfair.

I know that these reasoning cannot consitute an excuse on Troika's fault, obviously when a buggy game ends up in the hands of a consumer, they are so far removed from the process that they cannot be held accountable to understand any hardships or roadblocks that occured during development. I just hope that maybe for some of you that are more than just the end consumer, maybe these words could serve as some extra food for thought in your discussion about the business of games. At least one point stands out in the end: That if Troika was always the first in line to offer excuses for faults in thier game, then they must care what you guys, the RPG gamer's think. How many companies care enough about the opinions of thier audience to even acknowledge faults in thier games, much less try and offer an explanation for them? Even if they were trying to shift the blame away from them, it was becuase they cared what you thought.

 

[Sol Invictus]

I have but one response: If they had such pride in their work, their games wouldn't be so fucking shitty.