Obsidian hit with layoffs, South Park team impacted
Obsidian Entertainment, developers of Neverwinter Nights 2, Alpha Protocol, Fallout: New Vegas, and the upcoming South Park game, has been hit with layoffs.
Obsidian Entertainment, developers of Neverwinter Nights 2, Alpha Protocol, Fallout: New Vegas, and the upcoming South Park game, has been hit with layoffs. While the company has yet to return Shacknews' request for comments, messages on Twitter and the company's message boards appear to confirm the downsizing.
According to a tip received by Joystiq, the layoffs will impact the studio's in-development South Park team. "Approximately 20-30 people from all disciplines, including one person who started yesterday, as well as one who started last week" were axed. Apparently, a "future next-gen project" the company was working on was canceled, which likely led to the sudden cuts.
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replyAndrew Yoon posted a new article, Obsidian hit with layoffs, South Park team impacted.
Obsidian Entertainment, developers of Neverwinter Nights 2, Alpha Protocol, Fallout: New Vegas, and the upcoming South Park game, has been hit with layoffs.-
Wow being laid off on your second day has to be the shittiest thing. Finding a job is so draining. This guy has to start all over again.
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Worst of all, what kind of severance package do you get when you're only there for a day? Are you even eligible for unemployment insurance?
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His severance package was a box of paperclips and an Obsidian coffee mug ...
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The paper clips are worth more than the mug
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Think about it.
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If they cut in the south park team, I'm guessing that they were counting on some of the funding of the cancelled title to keep them afloat if THQ ran out of money before they could ship south park and pick up another project. Sad to see these people out of work but I'm sure that the top guys at Obsidian felt they had to do it to keep the company alive.
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Unfortunately, being an independent AAA developer means that you're at the mercy of many different megapublishers. We don't know who the publisher of this unannounced title was, but if you look at who Obsidian has worked with on their released titles, you see THQ, Square Enix, Bethesda, Sega, and Namco Bandai (who did EU / AU publishing on Fallout New Vegas).
It's the same problem that Rebellion is dealing with now, though Rebellion seems farther into the decline cycle than Obsidian is right now. Rebellion just released NeverDead, which got 60% review scores or worse in most trustworthy publications.-
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Obsidian don't suck. They have released some really great games GIVEN THE TIME AND FUNDING THEY HAD.
Take KOTOR 2. So many great moments and ideas and characters and stories, but the size was small, so much of even the small game was cut (e.g. droid factory, entire planets, much more too), and there wasn't even time for and ending. But that was because Obsidian is much smaller than Bioware and only had a year to develop the game.
If I had fifty million I'd buy Obsidian and make them make the best RPG ever.
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Damn love their work, even Alpha Protocol (go to hell metacritic one conversation in that game felt more interactive and exciting than the entirety of heavy rain).
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The honeycomb quest and dialogue system from Alpha Protocol is absolutely mindblowing, it was probably the best thing about the game if we're being completely honest.
I hope to see the same system implemented in other games.-
I didn't mind the combat too much, stat based shooting is not a terrible idea but even so it wasn't spectacular Stealth was a bit more enjoyable for me (plus for some reason the game had three different aiming icons for each weapon, a tad excessive don't you think?).
I loved the little details though, I replayed the game a number of times and found that the dialogue was really responsive to your choices. make an innuendo to Mina when she likes you a reasonable bit she plays coy, make that same remake when she dislikes you she responds rather less than kindly. Playing an evil/renegade was so fun in that game http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUydx57te9s&feature=related
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Bad news... Fucking Microsoft.
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Wow, not only Microsoft but Bethesda too:
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/03/15/obsidian-missed-fallout-new-vegas-metacritic-bonus-by-one-point/
Seriously, fuck the games industry.
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