Troika Closed
Over at No Mutants Allowed you can find a message from Leonard Boyarsky of Troika Games, who confirms rumors that the developer has shut down. Troika developed the recently released Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, as well as The Temple of Elemental Evil and Arcanum.
As many of you may have already heard, Troika has laid off all of its employees and is closing its doors due to our inability to secure funding for future projects. We have not yet made the decision as to whether Troika Games as an entity will regroup and pursue future projects or simply cease to exist.
We want to thank all of our fans for their support these past seven years, it has really meant a lot to us that there were people out there who enjoyed our games enough to create fan-sites and follow our progress as a company. But we especially want to thank all of our employees - we had the pleasure of working with the some of the most dedicated, hard working, creative people in the industry, and we really appreciate all that they did for Troika. Thanks for everything, Tim, Leonard, and Jason
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bozer
replyWell that sucks. I guess Vampire didn't sell so well?
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yeah, but still, the combined sales of the games y ou mentioned are less than one good console titile.
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Ah, no, the combined sales of Half-Life 2, Doom3 and World of Warcraft are definately NOT less than a good console game. A SUPERB console game (or rather, mega-selling), like something in the GTA or Gran Turismo series, might have sold more than those three PC games combined, but 500.000 units is considered a good sales figure for most console games. World of Warcraft alone has sold way more than that.
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http://philsteinmeyer.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=8
"PC game sales (inflation adjusted) have fallen by 49% since their 1999 peak. The sales slide has been steepest since the current generation of consoles hit its stride in 2001, with a 42% fall-off in just those three years. For those who think this is just a cyclical drop related to the console lifecycle, please note that during the previous console generation (the PSX launched in ‘95, N64 in ‘96), PC game sales flattened, but did not fall."
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I think it'd sell better if they had released it during the gaming drought last year before all the big titles were released.
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heh... I bought it and wish I hadn't.
All those bugs and the talk about the horrible performance outside of buildings sure didn't help those sales.-
I only experienced 2 bugs and they were both superficial. I patched it before i got to the society of Leopold, though.
As for performance, I wouldn't know, my computer is pretty shitty.-
The game was really wierd that way. It ran perfectly for some, and terribly bad for others. Someone with a system not as good as mine had no performance issues at all in outside areas... while I got 5 fps on average...
I was always hoping for some kind of patch... but now... heh-
I should probably mention that i tweaked it quite alot. It helped some.
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:( I was one of the lucky blokes.
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Managed to finish it without the patches and thought it was a pretty decent RPG. But it could have definitely stood with a bit more polish. The indoor scene by the giant water wheel in the temple crushed my frame rate.
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Uh.. they weren't allowed to release it before Half-Life 2.
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True, but to release it at the same time as HL2 was, well, stupid.
I guess they were kinda screwed. They had to wait for HL2 as per their source code arrangement. But then HL2 was not only delayed a year but was released in November - really late in the year. Not sure if it would have been able to ship on September 30, 2003, but if they waited until, say, now they would have missed the Xmas buying season. Not that it did them much good.
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piracy is hurting pc developers more than anyone cares to admit.
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I bought vampire, tribes: v, far cry, savage... I've shown developers that aren't getting the attention but are doing something good that they deserve my bucks. I think the problem is that there's not enough hardcore pc gamers anymore... only softies who want the mainstream megahit.
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I don't think piracy is any worse than it was eleven years ago when DooM was released.
What's really changed in the last 10 years is that people aren't buying new desktop PCs (perfectly equipped for hardcore gaming) any more. All the growth in the PC marker is in notebooks and, to some degree, mobile phones. With the lack of kick-ass system being sold to the public, the game market is suffering in general. As great as HL2 is, it probably won't approach the number of units as the original HL.-
I disagree. Slowing the development of desktop systems will level out the playing field that developers have to work with. With the PC hardware market stagnating, the specs for the average system rises which allows developers to target a more narrow range of systems.
What is hurting the PC game market, imo, is the lack of original, fun titles. Can you imagine what the market would be like if there were more Tron 2.0's, more Deus Ex's, more Morrowind, more Painkiller type games? Instead, we gamers are treated to an endless parade rehashed ideas and concepts. Developers are killing the PC market by not taking a chance on a new idea and publishers are killing the PC market by not promoting development houses that do take that chance.
In my mind, you can make a budget AAA title with a good idea, some time and the right people to bring it to life. Painkiller, to me, embodies that. A fantastic game, but it wasn't marketed well and didn't sell well.
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