Editorial The Rise and Fall of Troika

[Claw]

Now you might say "I am too weak!" - well, when continue to enjoy getting raped, because that is what happens to weak people - not just in prison!

So being raped is the victim's fault. Thanks for clearing that up.

 

[LCJr.]

Troika signed the contracts agreeing that they could finish a project in X number of days and for Y amount of dollars. I fail to see how Troika's inability to fullfil their contract(3 times in a row) is the publishers fault.

edit> Now instead of whining about the publishers "ripping their games out of their hands before they were ready". What they should be asking is why did they fail to deliver 3 times in a row. Why were the games not ready? Did they sign shitty contracts? Overestimate their own abilities? Not have all the resources/people they needed?

 

[FrancoTAU]

That's a bullshit criticism too. Any industry that takes on a long term project, be it building a bridge to making video games, don't usually hit their deadlines. You just can't foresee shit popping up that far in advance. Why do you think that big developers, who don't rely on publisher's money, go past their original deadlines all the time and put out the most polished and best selling games?

 

[Vault Dweller]

Troika signed the contracts agreeing that they could finish a project in X number of days and for Y amount of dollars. I fail to see how Troika's inability to fullfil their contract(3 times in a row) is the publishers fault.

Nobody said that *that* is the publishers' fault. The fault is releasing unfinished games. Here is an analogy. You want to build a house. You hire a team and tell them that they have a month to build a house and a budget of 500 bucks. A month later you come to inspect your new house. Surprisingly, it's not ready. Now you have two options. You can say "a deal is a deal" and move into the house or, realizing that the house is obviously not ready, you spend more time and money on it. If you pick the first option, the fault is yours and yours alone.

What they should be asking is why did they fail to deliver 3 times in a row. Why were the games not ready? Did they sign shitty contracts? Overestimate their own abilities? Not have all the resources/people they needed?

The answers are: need more time & money; yes; maybe, maybe not; definitely (but it's a matter of money). Now what?

 

[Kraszu]

Nobody said that *that* is the publishers' fault. The fault is releasing unfinished games. Here is an analogy. You want to build a house. You hire a team and tell them that they have a month to build a house and a budget of 500 bucks. A month later you come to inspect your new house. Surprisingly, it's not ready. Now you have two options. You can say "a deal is a deal" and move into the house or, realizing that the house is obviously not ready, you spend more time and money on it. If you pick the first option, the fault is yours and yours alone.

It is fault of somebody who invest in house and have no idea haw long it takes, but it is also luck of professionalism on the workers side to not point that building house in month for 500$ is impossible. There is no need to accept unfinished house later, it is justifying first wrong decision by following it, making it 2 mistakes. So 2-1 for developers.

 

[Claw]

Vault, your example is flawed because it misses the "publisher screwing over customers by selling unfinished product" angle.

Until the game is released, being unfinished is the developer's fault. The moment a game is released, it's the publisher's fault, too.
And let's not go into detail on the chronical issues of underfunded projects and unmeetable deadlines which aren't limited to software development.

 

[LCJr.]

That's a bullshit criticism too. Any industry that takes on a long term project, be it building a bridge to making video games, don't usually hit their deadlines. You just can't foresee shit popping up that far in advance.

Wrong. Major construction projects require bonds be put up to protect both the contractor and developer. Any contract with a specific deadline to be met will also include penalties to paid by the contractor to developer to cover lost revenue. If you don't have the resources to do the job you don't bid on it.

 

[Volourn]

Know something? Youy know what a publisher *should* do which would teach bvoth developers AND whiny dev fanboys a lesson.

Instead of constantly delaying games or releasing theme arly; they shoudl do the following fair tatic - sue the developer for breech of contract for not finishing the game in the time alotted. That way, they get the money they invested back, crappy unprepared devlopers go udner fromj lawsuits they cna't cover, and customers don't have to worry about buying faulty products that shouldn't have beenr eleased.

Everyone who is innocent (the publisher and customer) wins.

Game over.

 

[OccupatedVoid]

Know something? Youy know what a publisher *should* do which would teach bvoth developers AND whiny dev fanboys a lesson.

Instead of constantly delaying games or releasing theme arly; they shoudl do the following fair tatic - sue the developer for breech of contract for not finishing the game in the time alotted. That way, they get the money they invested back, crappy unprepared devlopers go udner fromj lawsuits they cna't cover, and customers don't have to worry about buying faulty products that shouldn't have beenr eleased.

Everyone who is innocent (the publisher and customer) wins.

Game over.

Get some sleep man. You have more typos than a retarded blind blonde kid with down's syndrome who is high on crack.

In other words, MY EYES!!!!!111

 

[Volourn]

Lack of sleep isn't the problem. Lack of caring is. :D

 

[Voss]

Whoa, let's slow down a bit here. There is no magic compass that will tell you what game is going to be a blockbuster. Originally (remember those old screenshots), Starcraft was going to suck. Bliz took its time and MADE it a blockbuster, by spending enough time and money on it to make it shine. God knows there's been no shortage of RTS games, and yet Starcraft was and still is a great game. If Half-Life 2 was released a year earlier, it would have sucked and would have joined the ranks of the "yet another crappy shooter" legion.

Great games are made, not forecasted, and making them takes time and money.

Gods but you're disingenuous in your fanboyism. Are you really saying that you are such a complete moron that you can't tell the big blockbuster before they release? Did you really not know that Half-life 2 was going to sell well? Final Fantasy(once the franchise was established in the US)? Diablo 2? Come on. The bombs, too- Lionheart wasn't going to suck ass?

Sure theres the rare exception, one way or the other, but most games are completely predictable as to which bin they will end up in.

As for Troika, moderate sales seemed likely in each case. (This isn't to say that hardcore RPG fans didn't look forward to them, just sales from the general market and publisher stand point)
Weird ass hybrid RPG thats thats trying to do real time & turnbased + magic/tech? Niche.
TOEE? Well, this could have been bigger just because of the D&D sticker, but it had revamp of classic module and turn based (at the height of Real-Time is the god king of the Industry) dragging it down. Add in looking dated and hella buggy, and a revamp of the moldering Arcanum engine... I can see why the publisher wasn't willing to give it an extra enfusion of cash.
Shooter RPG-lite w/ vampires (yawn), and goth-fag, angsty vampires at that? Meh. Too RPG for the Shooter fans, too Shooter for the RPG fans, and absolutely RAPING the source material for the PnP fans... Moderate sales were the best to be hoped for.

All in all, none of them were games where any reasonable person would expect the publisher to go 'Oh yeah, Have some extra money and time'. And of course, that chance would go down with each game that went 'Ho-hum, fizzle, buggy, blah'.

 

[voodoo1man]

Gods but you're disingenuous in your fanboyism. Are you really saying that you are such a complete moron that you can't tell the big blockbuster before they release? Did you really not know that Half-life 2 was going to sell well? Final Fantasy(once the franchise was established in the US)? Diablo 2? Come on. The bombs, too- Lionheart wasn't going to suck ass?

Sure theres the rare exception, one way or the other, but most games are completely predictable as to which bin they will end up in.

Let's take the 3d Realms example again. How far in advance of their release did you know that Max Payne and Prey would be "blockbusters"? Hell, we don't even have to go that far. I'm sure everybody just knew that the first Diablo was going to be a mega-hit money train. I mean, a dumbed-down Nethack clone with average (for the time) graphics, that's gotta sell!

 

[Mefi]

VD is right. Stop whittering fuckwits.

Anyways, nice little article even if I disagree with some of the fundamental points; ToEE isn't buggy, just not working as designed... yet

 

[aboyd]

Let's take the 3d Realms example again. How far in advance of their release did you know that Max Payne and Prey would be "blockbusters"?

Yeah, until reading this topic, I assumed Max Payne was a failed franchise. The reviews made it sound like a boring FPS (as least, that was my impression). Then I saw boatloads of the Max Payne product in the discount bins. I assumed it would fail, I assumed it was uninteresting, and I continued believing it. So yeah, hard to predict some of these. Especially Diablo & Baldur's Gate, IMHO.

However, Half Life 2? That had fans talking in twitterpated tones from the outset. Diablo 2? Pretty much a given. There are some sequels that just seem destined to do well. NWN 2? Probably going to have amazing sales figures. I bet Oblivion sold gangbusters. The Witcher is difficult to peg. It just depends upon the game.

 

[aboyd]

"Right or wrong, we just needed more time to test and polish the games, and none of our three publishers were willing to give it to us. Each and every game was pulled out of our hands before we were through with it. In all fairness, I have to say that we were late and over budget, but that still does not justify giving the public an unfinished product."

Now that's just funny. So let me see if I got this straight. Troika didn't have the resources/skills to complete projects on time and within the budget. But it's all the publishers fault? I love the redirection of blame angle "Oh the poor public. Those evil publishers.".

Yeah. You know what bugs me about his little admission there is that we all had our suspicions, but they were shot down back then. Now it turns out to be true. I remember thinking "the publisher forced us to release early" was a reasonable defense once but after that it became too much of a cop-out for their own sloppy management. In fact, it appears that I wrote as much, here:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys ... bce?hl=en&

I feel a little vindicated by what I've read here today. Of course, being vindicated is not really what I want. What I want would be for Troika to have managed themselves properly, put more reasonable contracts in place, released more stable games, and still be in business today.

 

[Ladonna]

None of Troika's games would have been blockbusters, no matter how long they took.

Turn based combat. Few cutscenes. Too many choices.

When many of us here played our RPG's on low end PC's, Amiga's, C64's, etc blockbusters were measured in miniscule amounts of sales (That still net a nice little profit for those in the business). These days its moron land. Every dumbfuck and his dog plays games, and so they are now 'the market'. The new RPG 'Movies' are the in thing.

Troika would have been one of the Kings of RPG's back in the days of Ultimas, Wizardry, etc, the problem is they came on the scene too late, or didn't work from their garage, which is about the only way you can make a decent, deep RPG with turn based combat and still make a quid.

Or I could be wrong of course. :D

 

[made]

Exactly. Troika made RPGs for a niche audience. The majority of gamers doesn't want to read excessive dialogue (actually, they don't want to read at all, that's why the blockbusters feature full voice overs) or a complex world full of choices and consequence. Those gamers want easily accessible games that they can pick up and play casually for 1 or 2 hours without putting much thought into it. Bethesda and Bioware realize this. Troika RPGs were oldschool, that's why they didn't sell.

Btw, notice the Troika logo:

See how that guy is pushing the lever all the way from code, over art, to design? At least they had their priotities right. The games were often buggy, but the beautifully designed game world more than made up for it, at least in my opinion.

 

[Micmu]

Amen, brother.

 

[Grifman]

That's a bullshit criticism too. Any industry that takes on a long term project, be it building a bridge to making video games, don't usually hit their deadlines. You just can't foresee shit popping up that far in advance. Why do you think that big developers, who don't rely on publisher's money, go past their original deadlines all the time and put out the most polished and best selling games?

Can you provide evidence of your assertion abov e that most companies don't make deadline? I'm afraid if that were true, alot of companies wouldn't be around any longer. Most companies/project I have experience with in the working world build time into their projects for unforeseen issues, so as to provide some cushion. But to say it is common that most deadlines aren't met I don't find accurate based upon my experience.

You can't compare bridgebuilding to designing and building a video game. We know how to build bridges - they're built all the time, using the same materials, according to engineering specifications. But almost every game is different, using a different graphics engine, different game engine, new art, different features, etc.

And there's the issue of game "features". There are things in games that are "optional" - how many quests to put into an RPG, how deep converstations are, how many NPC's, etc. Far more things are optional in a game than a bridge. And there's much less standardized in the gaming industry than the bridgebuilding industry.

Overall, I'd say games are late and overbudge because of these factors, along with the fact that most game designers aren't very good project managers - they know how to do games, they just don't know how to manage projects. How many have had any training in this field for example? I suspect very few. Yet what major corp would hand over a major project to someone with no formal training? Few, I suspect,again, based upon my experience.

 

[Volourn]

"Exactly. Troika made RPGs for a niche audience."

Bullshit.

 

[FrancoTAU]

That's a bullshit criticism too. Any industry that takes on a long term project, be it building a bridge to making video games, don't usually hit their deadlines. You just can't foresee shit popping up that far in advance.

Wrong. Major construction projects require bonds be put up to protect both the contractor and developer. Any contract with a specific deadline to be met will also include penalties to paid by the contractor to developer to cover lost revenue. If you don't have the resources to do the job you don't bid on it.

Oh, than that explains how the Big Dig was finished on time....

 

[FrancoTAU]

Know something? Youy know what a publisher *should* do which would teach bvoth developers AND whiny dev fanboys a lesson.

Instead of constantly delaying games or releasing theme arly; they shoudl do the following fair tatic - sue the developer for breech of contract for not finishing the game in the time alotted. That way, they get the money they invested back, crappy unprepared devlopers go udner fromj lawsuits they cna't cover, and customers don't have to worry about buying faulty products that shouldn't have beenr eleased.

Everyone who is innocent (the publisher and customer) wins.

Game over.

Oh sure, and how many developers would you see signing up with said publisher? That's awful business sense.

 

[Volourn]

"Oh sure, and how many developers would you see signing up with said publisher? That's awful business sense."

LOL You ar estupid. Isn't the constant whining here about Troika's demise is that they basically signed stupid contracts giving the publisher all the power because theyw ere so desperate? LMAO This would just be another thing a desperate dev would agree to in order to get a contract. Devlopers would most assuredly still sign contracts. The smart ones would, of course, demand to be given more time and wouldn't over extend themselves. The dumb ones like Troika would just take it up the ass and sign whatever contract is set before them 'cause they have no ballz.

 

[FrancoTAU]

Volourn, no major developer would ever have anything to do with a contract like that. If publishers are in a hurry to go out of business and push every major developer into self publishing and/or online distribution than that's the sure way to do it.

And I doubt even small desperate companies like Troika would sign up for that. They ended up closing shop because they couldn't get a decent publisher to sign them AND they didn't want to start losing money after being mildly profitable. I'd assume after hearing the Troika guys talking that they would've just closed shop earlier if they thought a contract might cause them to go bankrupt.

 

[Volourn]

Nonsense. It's alreayd 'well known' that contracts between devs and pubs are usually deeply in favor of pubs anyways. Why wouldn't this new, and FAIR ploicy addition not be okayed by desperate devs who just wnat to make games and will pretty much sign anything.

Afterall, the only thing the contract calls for is to finihs the game ON TIME. How horrible!!!