6/23/03 New Gems

FATBABY GEMS

With the large number of new visitors to the site since we joined the Portal of Evil network, we were asked to set up a separate page where we could run some of our past Stories, Rumors, and News as a way to recirculate classic pieces.  So this is it, our Fatbaby Gems page.  We will rotate pieces within this area 2-3 times every week with content we think should be re-surfaced.  If you have favorite pieces of info that we have run, mail those in and we’ll run those first.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Ahhh, it's good to be back in Los Angeles.  E3 returned to LA after two years in Atlanta, GA, and boy what a show it was.  Many games made their second, or in some cases, their third E3 showing.  You gotta know that those games showing for the 3rd time are in a world of hurt---perhaps even approaching the much vaunted "Vaporware" category.  At last year's show, I remember it was Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3's 4th showing.  Yes!  This game had the dubious distinction of being at each and every E3 since the show was implemented.  Dominion shipped last summer, only to fall flat and barely sell over 20,000 units.  HELLO!  Anyone could have seen that the game was outdated and, quite frankly, a piece of sh*t.

Here's a few of the PC games showing for the 2nd or 3rd time:
Command & Conquer 2: Tiberian Sun (Westwood Studios/Electronic Arts)
Homeworld (Relic Entertainment/Sierra Studios)
Daikatana (Ion Storm/Eidos Interactive)---humorous Story about this
Drakkan (Psygnosis)
Babylon 5 Space Combat Simulator (Sierra Studios)
Diablo 2 (Blizzard)---got a great story about this one, check out the Stories section

The Big 3 console giants were together under one roof, and Sega seemed to steal the show with their Dreamcast system.  They were showing many more games than this Fatbaby expected to see--approximately 30 games total.  And their sports games look fantastic!  Visual Concepts is the development group on NBA & NFL 2000.  You might remember VC's past projects: NBA Action '98 for the PC & Saturn (released by Sega), NHL Hockey '96 (Electronic Arts), and one iteration of John Madden Football (which one? Eh, who cares).  Look for Sega to have a nice launch this year.

Sony was showing some cheap video of the PSX2--big deal, just a video.  And people were lined up to watch it!  Pretty pathetic if you ask me, and certainly all smoke & mirrors.  Don't get me wrong, if any company can pull off a machine with the specs of PSX2 it's Sony, but it certainly is going to cost them an arm & a leg, and HELLO don't try and position it as a "multimedia" or "interactive entertainment" box either, because Trip Hawkins tried that 7 years ago with the 3DO Multiplayer, and it flopped big time.  Let's learn from history here, folks.  Ok?

Finally it looks as if the Big N is out of steam.  Other than the phenominal craze of Pokemon, there weren't many good games showing for the N64.  Star Wars Racer sucks big time--it's like a SNES game.  The clipping plane is way way too close, and the graphics lackluster.  Also shown were the original Command & Conquer, as well as Starcraft.  I guess the N64 is finally catching up in the RTS arena.  Too bad RTS games don't sell JACK on the console systems.

6/2/99  Demon Dogs!

We all know that Blizzard is going to have another mega-hit on their hands with Diablo 2, but that won't stop me from baggin' on the development.  The game, frankly, did not look any better at this year's show than it did at last year's show.  In fact, it looked EXACTLY the same.  Maybe they were just showing the same build.  ;)

I spoke with the game's producer, who told me it would be released this winter (he's probably worried about the game approaching Vaporware status).  I probed a bit into the development, to which he shared the following information.  This game has 44 team members of which 14 of them are programmers!  Holy too-many-chefs-in-the-kitchen-Batman!  For those of you not in the know, a regular PC development team (one that is well managed, I should add  *snicker*), contains between 12 and 18 TOTAL team members.  Maybe 3-4 programmers, 1 producer, 1 assistant producer, 1-2 designers, 1 audio guy, and the rest artists.  The fact that Diablo 2 has 44 team members leads me to believe the classic business cliche is true:  That 20% of the people do 80% of the work.

Then I inquired about multiplayer status (number of players, speed, scenarios, etc.).  To which he replied, "Oh... We haven't started testing multiplayer yet.  We don't know how many people the game will support."  What the heck!?  HELLO?  You don't wait until Beta before you start implementing multiplayer code!  If what he said was true, we won't see Diablo 2 until the summer of 2000 (at least it will be Y2K compliant by then).

So I decided to do a little digging into the background of the producer, and how could he let this game get so far into the shitter.  Get ready for this... The guy hasn't shipped a game since his days at Epyx!  (You know, the company who did Summer & Winter Games for the Apple II and Commodore 64 computers!)  After Epyx, he was at 3DO for 3 years, where he worked on "3DO Games," which was never shipped, and tried to kick-start "toon fighter," which apparently got $500,000 into production before it was killed as well.  3DO ended their own pain by cutting him loose after 3 years.  So he ends up at Blizzard and has been on Diablo 2 ever since.  In an industry where "you're only as good as your last game," he's in a world of hurt.  Sorry bub, but Apple IIe experience isn't going to get you very far these days.

(Producer's name conveniently left out to protect the guilty.)

6/2/99  Sega's Dream Casted?

Sega's head man, Bernie Stolar, could be replaced prior to the launch of the Dreamcast system.  Apparently Bernie's employment contract is up this July, and there are rumors a-flyin' that he might get his walking papers.  Sega of Japan has NOT been happy with Sega of America's inability to sign up key developers (like Electronic Arts), nor has it been happy with the internal product development efforts...

Recently Sega let go nearly the entire Geist team.  SOJ's displeasure was apparently right on the mark--Geist had been the Starfox-style rip-off that had been in development nearly 3 years and costs were rumored to be nearing the $5 million mark!  To cap it off, there wasn't even a fully playable level yet, either.  I hate to say it again, but HELLO!  The producer in charge was one of those marketing guys turned producer--obviously without any development experience, and the art & technical leads were hacks without any completed games under their belts.  The whole set-up was a recipe for disaster; doesn't take a genius to figure that out.  Can you say, "clue-less?"  Word had it that the Geist team was put together by Mister Stolar himself.
Anyhow, most of that team was either let go or has quit.  It was a $5 million failed experiment.  

GT Interactive has been on a rollercoaster since getting a new CEO, Tom Heymann, back in late February of this year.  As a little background, GT is a company spread out with offices in New York, Salt Lake City, Scottsdale (Arizona), and San Francisco.  Tom had been the president of the Disney Stores for 8 years, so him & his family were located in Los Angeles.  In his extreme arrogance, rather than move his sorry ass out to New York, Tom dictated that the entire company would be relocated to the Los Angeles area (supposedly, in his words, the "bastian of multimedia talent").  Duh!  That makes sense... "Instead of one guy having to move, let's force over 1000 employees and their families to move to me!"  He had thought at least 30% of the staff would join him in LA, but word on the street is that almost 95% of the current staff had said they would quit instead of move.  Tom has apparently now re-thought his position, and is keeping the current offices intact, with the plans for the big LA move on indefinite HOLD.

By the way, how hard is it to slap Mickey Mouse on a shirt and sell it anyway?  With Disney's strong movies, brands, and characters, any joker could head up any of the Disney divisions and be successful.  Just one Fatbaby's opinion...

At the recent E3 show, I was searching for the Interplay booth---they were found in one of the hole-in-the-wall halls way off to the side.  And to top that off, they had a closed booth.  While talking with a recruiter friend of mine, she was embarrassed for them, stating one of her candidates who was applying for a job at Interplay, asked her to withdraw his resume from them after he found out Interplay was located in the tiny hall... His concern was he didn't want to work for a loser company.

Come on Interplay!  Shape up!  A closed booth doesn't gain you anything except a lack of respect.  Supposedly there are some great games coming out from your dev. teams, namely Star Fleet Command, Klingon Academy, Descent 3, Freespace 2, and Giants.  Of course, I'm not going to mention Messiah here, but look for it on the Vaporware list.  :)

Paul Grace, EA's Executive in Charge of Production for the Janes series of games, has recently left the company after more than 10 years of service.  He has since surfaced as a new Vice President of Development at 3DO.  However, sources indicate he departed EA on a sour note.  Apparently, EA had laid off Producer Ed Gwynn (who had been at EA over 10 years himself--Producer of Jane's Israeli Airforce, Jane's Fleet Command, and many others) without any prior warning.  One day, Mr. Gwynn received a pink slip on his chair and was told to be out by 4pm.  The stickler here is that Gwynn was let go on a day that Paul Grace (Gwynn's direct manager) was not in the office!  Talk about HR getting bold!  Paul resigned in protest.

Way to go Paul!  Now that's the kind of manager I'd like to have--after all, if he'd put his job on the line for his staff, you know he's got to be good.