Layoffs = No Future Patches?

[gunnergoz]

With the apparent imminent layoffs of the development team, can we assume that there will be no future patches and upgrades to the game?

I'll be highly distressed about this if it is the case. I'd been counting upon some "massaging" of the basic game by the development team, perhaps a patch or two with a few tweaks and upgrades...maybe even an add-on disk like the one to Alpha Centauri, that added so much to that game.

Cripes, I hate bean-counters and land-sharks (lawyers).

[Lemmy]

Patches?! The game won't need patches, it will be perfect out of the box!

[Gyromancer]

Well, for one thing, a rumor is just a rumor. It's probably not worth getting upset over, yet.

That said, QS certainly demonstarated their willingness to lay developers off when they gave Emrich (the original designer) the boot.

/begin mostly baseless speculation

It all seems to make some kind of strange sense. Imagine QS going to IG and saying, "Once we release MOO3 we're laying the team off." IG replies, "OK, but make sure the game works well enough. We don't want any bad PR from a buggy game, especially if we can't patch it." QS replies, "OK, we'll spend an extra month or two regression testing it"

/end mostly baseless speculation

[Grumbold]

You don't need a full development team to release patches. Its a sad fact of this industry that when a project comes to a conclusion there simply arent always enough jobs for everyone on other projects to walk into at the same company. Layoffs are an unfortunate but regular occurrence.

A development team usually grows over the course of a project cycle then shrinks back to a core. Look at Civ III. Half the staff were on new projects at Firaxis before we got the box. Only a few were left to patch.

[wervdon]

I doubt the rumor is true given its source, but if it is true the only real significance if you ask me is the prospects for either an expansion pack or sequels to more of microprose's former titles.

[Sarxis]

I bet IG is kicking itself now that it didn't get MoO3 out before the rumor started. Its already got me more suspicious of the game.

[Prairie_Hawk]

Don't be worried about this rumour as it is pointless.

Its a well known fact that as a project closes down there is a shifting of manpower from development to maintenance. In other words, say you had 10 developers (programmers and techies) and several analysts for development Come time for shipping the time product, you will only require couple of developers i.e. programmers say 3 and 1 analyst. So major cost savings happen at this stage as company wants to pay for all its previous development costs and hopefully profit.

So all is cool, its the norm

[TheMaestro]

It is very suspicious if the rumor proves to be true...that does not bode well for the game.

They don't fire people for making good games. Unless politics gets in the way somehow

[jscott991]

Even if the game is good, it is being released at a bad time of the year and might have suffered from cost overruns associated with the three additional months of testing/bug fixing. That could be a reason for the layoffs, despite the quality of the game.

Others will disagree, but not releasing this game before Christmas is going to seriously impact the sales and future support for MOO3. If they truly were fiddling around with MP bugs, then they are going to regret this decision, as they should.

[viciouscycle]

Originally posted by jscott991
Even if the game is good, it is being released at a bad time of the year and might have suffered from cost overruns associated with the three additional months of testing/bug fixing. That could be a reason for the layoffs, despite the quality of the game.

Others will disagree, but not releasing this game before Christmas is going to seriously impact the sales and future support for MOO3. If they truly were fiddling around with MP bugs, then they are going to regret this decision, as they should.

I agree. But I don't think there will be a huge impact on future support. As Grumbold said, you don't need a big development team to release patches.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by jscott991
then they are going to regret this decision, as they should.

No they shouldn't. No developer should ever regret making their software the best they can, with as few bugs as possible.



I can't believe someone would say that about a computer game... do you even plan on playing this game, or do you simply work in retail?

[Corentor]

Don't worry about patching or the possibility of the lack of a patch or patches. It does not take an entire dev team to make patches, some gaming companies dedicate only a person or two who are familiar with the codebase and so long as the game is released without showstoppers, it is sufficient.

As for the rumors, for those of you who don't know, Fatbabies is one of the best sites on the net that dig up dirt on the industry. Unlike major sites which recieve large amounts of advertising dollars from gaming publishers and thus are worried about pissing them off, Fatbabies has no such dependencies and thus posts whatever it wants, whenever it wants, most of it comming from employees on the inside.

The rumor that the dev team is getting laid off is no surprise. Programmers and artists get paid decent money for their work and when a small developement house doesn't have a major project lined up with a publisher (a developer's primary source of funds), people have to be let go. It happens all the time and shouldn't shock or worry anyone.

[Harry Seldon]

They don't look to be firing the entire staff. How many patches do you think this game is going to get? I think MOO1 had one; I don't even remember seeing one for MOO2, although in all fairness I don't think I looked for one. With all the testing they did it should be pretty smooth out of the box. They'll release a patch to balance gameplay and fix some bugs they didn't catch during BT, then probably abandon the title. Hip hip hooray for corporate America!!

[Sarxis]

Originally posted by Harry Seldon
They don't look to be firing the entire staff. How many patches do you think this game is going to get? I think MOO1 had one; I don't even remember seeing one for MOO2, ...

You are talking a whooooole other era in gaming though.

[H Tower]

i have a simple math equation for you:

layoffs=!no patches