Sheriff05 said:
Well VD's right publishers are a major reason for Troikas problems, specifically BUT those publishing problems are symptomatic of the problems with the industry. You can't have one without the other, it's a fucked up marriage of convenience that in reality rarely works out. Troikas publishers in each instance of their releases did some really stupid shit, in turn Troika either agreed to some really stupid shit in the first place that got them into a postion were they couldn't do what they needed to get past said stupid shit. Not exactly a recipe for success.
This is the post that hits the proverbial nail right on the head of this thread. In all instances, both the publishers
and Troika have dropped the ball in more than one way. Troika's first mistake was accepting the clauses in their contracts without properly thinking things through, or hiring good lawyers to deal them a good hand. They were dealt a poor hand of cards in their contracts, made do with it, and screwed themselves as a result.
Their other mistakes include:
Arcanum
Coming up with bad ideas and gimmicks for Arcanum: TB/RT for Arcanum (I'm not sure if Multiplayer was their idea or Sierra's). Poorly designed character generation system. Inherent gameplay imbalance between magic/melee and technology. Non-existent in-house QA to find imbalances and problems within the game design. The Producers (Tim Cain et al) should have handled this themselves, from the fucking drawing board before putting the game into development.
TOEE
Poorly conceptualized game design in TOEE: Basic storyline, Gary Gygax's barebones TOEE module with little to no additional story, feature creep, conversion from 3.0e to 3.5e in a poorly projected amount of time, non-working/poorly implemented spells, and lacklustre AI. The voice acting.
Bloodlines
Poor performance, poor game design - respawning monsters, linear ending, inherent imbalance between skills and abilities, blah blah blah (I've gone over this a thousand times). Did Troika take too long and too much money to develop Bloodlines? What happened to Multiplayer? 3 possibilities:
1) Activision and Troika had to cut it because they were already spending too much time and money on the single player game with too few results.
2) Troika cut it to focus on the single player game, and because it was deemed 'unnecesary' to the retail release, as they claimed.
3) Activision cut it because Troika proved themselves inept at developing the multiplayer portion of the game.
The Publisher's mistakes:
Sierra
Localization screw-up. Pressuring Troika for Multiplayer (again, I'm unsure about this).
Atari
Releasing the wrong gold candidate. Poor QA. Taking forever to QA and release the patches. Poor marketing.
Activision
Poor QA, or rather, forcing the game out the door before it was done. I have to wonder, though, if Activision forced Vampire out of the door to recoup losses incurred during the game's development. This would have happened, if Troika took longer than the projected period to develop the game and Activision was unwilling to extend the development period. Did Activision screw Troika over because it was convenient to do so, or did Troika incur it upon themselves?
Another possibility is that Troika having management/financial problems unrelated to Activision. This is clearly a possibility, and Andrew Meggs
clearly hinted as such when he stated I was 'way off the mark' when I brought up the possibility that Activision had cut funding to Troika's development of Bloodlines. This can only mean one (or several) of the following possibilities:
1) Troika was squandering its money somehow with poor internal financial management. Overpaying staff for too little work, or making poor financial investments with company money.
Overpaying staff happened with the company that developed Horizons. One of the bosses was upping his salary, with money that should have been going into the development of the company rather than his personal bank account. I am
not going to speculate that this ever happened with Troika because this would be
clearly fucked up. I do not think something like this happened because it is far fetched and speaks poorly of the very talented individuals at Troika but other forms of poor financial management are clearly possible.
2) Putting all their eggs in one basket by investing solely in the development of the PA Tech Demo and engine. Perhaps they invested too much time and money on this project with the expectation that they would have managed to purchase the Fallout 3 licence, and furthermore sign a contract with a publisher agreeing to finance the company and publish their game. Because they failed to acquire the licence, whatever pre-deal they might have made with the unnamed publisher (I'm guessing Activision) would have collapsed, crushing the basket and all of its eggs.
Hey, with any luck, Troika might pull through with whatever deal they're trying to establish and they'll survive to hire a new team of game developers and work on the PA RPG. Assuming luck exists.
edit: Volourn is
wrong if he thinks Troika's CEOs had complete control over matters, like with which publishers they could choose to sign on to. Troika never had the clout, nor the business aptitude to demand such things. Troika was never as capable in the business as Valve or Bioware. (If anyone says Blizzard, you're a fucking moron. Blizzard is a wholly owned subsidiary of VU. I'm tired of stating this shit on Blue's News.) Not having the clout or the aptitude for business as the two aforementioned companies,Troika had to make compromises to get their projects to market. Sheriff said this, so I'm not going to repeat everything he said.
However, is Troika at fault for being inept at business, and poor at developing its company image and clout? Yes, it is completely Troika's fault. They didn't even have a message forum or a PR department, for crying out loud. Even having one guy for community, public, and press relations would have helped them out a lot. Instead, they chose to let their publishers handle these things. I remember how the RPG Codex couldn't even get a proper interview with Troika on Bloodlines, even though the RPG Codex comprised one of the largest Bloodlines fanbases on the Internet. Most of the fan websites didn't even have working forums.
End note: I think that Troika are more at fault at this than any of the publishers or 'luck' they've had in the past. Ave and anyone else can call me a fucking flip flopper if he wants to but he would be
wrong, because this has
always been my stance even when I stated that Activision may have withheld payment to Troika. I did not state that Activision was 'evil' or that it had a 'vested interest in fucking Troika over'. I merely provided a possibility as to what happened - a 'what', but not a 'why'. The 'why' of the matter is up to speculation, and the 'why' could simply be Troika's fault, not Activision's.
It was their choice to sign those agreements without negotiating the clauses, that may or may not have resulted in them being screwed over. As Dojoteef said, publishers have a vested interest in producing quality titles to ensure that their company does not receive a bad reputation or reduced sales. If publishers can get away with having bugs in the game, they probably will if it means saving money by cutting costs on QA, but when bugs cause sales to plummet, it isn't something they will gamble with. QA doesn't cost much, either, so I highly doubt that is the case.
