Ghost Recon: Commander cancelled, staff laid off
Ghost Recon: Commander has been cancelled, and developer Loot Drop laid off its staff.
Ghost Recon: Commander, an isometric Facebook tactics game from industry heavyweights John Romero and Brenda Brathwaite, has been scuttled. As a result, developer Loot Drop laid off the staff behind the game. The title connected with Ghost Recon: Future Soldier and even won an award recently, but apparently failed to gain a sustainable audience.
A note on Facebook (via PC Gamer) announced the cancellation, and asked for help from fellow studios to find work for their displaced employees. "Today, Ghost Recon Commander was cancelled," it reads. "As a result, we laid off a team of awesome developers. If you have openings, especially in SF, ping me, or add your info after this post. Coders, artists, amazing assistant designer, and awesome QA guy." The game recently received a runner-up Golden Joystick award.
Ghost Recon Commander is still playable as a beta, but this news would seem to indicate that it won't receive further development efforts. Loot Drop's next project was set to be a Kickstarter-funded old-school RPG called Shaker, but it too was scrapped recently.
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replySteve Watts posted a new article, Ghost Recon: Commander cancelled, staff laid off.
Ghost Recon: Commander has been cancelled, and developer Loot Drop laid off its staff.-
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This is John Romero's team, right?
Sucky month for him. He canceled his kickstarter for lack of interest and now their project got dropped.-
Yup, it's John and Brenda's company.
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John Romero needs to talk to that shacker that called out GeorgeB3DR on here.
John Romero is not relevant anymore. duh.
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Another one bites the dust, this has been a really bad generation for smaller devs :(
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Well I would argue only for facebook games. Indy devs are growing like crazy ACROSS THE WORLD thanks to the likes of xbox arcade, steam and iphone.
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I for "smaller devs" I meant stuff like Double Fine sized, most indy studios I would call "Micro" and then there are the behemoth AAA studios. Its been a great time to be an Indy, everyone else not so much though the AAA studios are still doing fine.
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Seriously. I wonder if the company will pull through. (Do they have any other projects or games in the works?)
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I'm not looking forward to the newest Tech Bubble bursting. The costs associated with building a game have gone up so much due to SF wages. Guys making 120k/year as a mid level developer is just stupid. And it only gets worse the higher the job is. I wish all these guys the best of luck with finding new work, but I hope they are saving for the hard road coming. It's not sustainable. And if you think this is just a problem in SF area, it's not. People vying for jobs are using SF as a base for their pay. Especially tele-commuters. The bad thing is there is a lot of big money investments still, but it's going to crash once those investors see the fruits of their labours are dying out. While I like this Kickstarter movement, something worries me about it because it seems to me that the investors are searching for ways for companies to show they have something viable. No more dumping money on ideas, unless you can also generate 500k+ in citizen investments. Once that goes, what's left. Investors finding better areas to invest in.
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You have a pretty warped perspective of what salaries are like in the north american games industry. For one, I can guarantee you that the majority of game programmers in San Francisco working at startups are making nowhere near 120K (and artists/designers are making less). Most get to choose between two options, equity + scraping-by-salary or below-market pay - choose one.
The games industry is not a place to get rich. I could have added 30k to my annual pay with better benefits and more job security at a Google or Microsoft, but chose not to in order to program for games. Traditional, core games remain as cheap as they are because their is seemingly always a generation of young developers willing to sacrifice for a chance to make them.-
I don't think so. Those start-ups, if they are proper start ups are not hiring joe blow programmer, they hire the guys that know what's up to do their shit and get their start-up...up ASAP. I'm going to guess you work/live in a smaller market like Austin. I would imagine your salary to average about 60k there, maybe less depending on your position/exp. I can also say that if you have 5+ years exp, and you are selling yourself short, even in the games industry. I know a high level programmer at Lucas, he's probably pulling in 200k. I know others in the SF area making 140, and a guy that bounces around a lot to different companies but makes 150k and gets headhunted constantly. I also know a non-game industry guy living in San Antonio in his 250k house making 120k a year working for a company based in SF. The issue however is still the same, companies investors are turning cautious, and that will mean big layoffs unfortunately when those investors turn from cautious to non-existent. And I see this Kickstarter system being the start of it. Not the cause, I actually like it a lot, but it speaks to a whole issue if big name dev companies are needing this cash to get investors to say ok.
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Remember the original Ghost Recon? That was such an awesome game.
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This makes me wonder if the seminal game designers of the 90s and early 2000s have been unable to adapt as much as they should have to accommodate more modern tastes?
Especially looking at iD Software, Raven, and guys like Metzen.-
When you do that you have to look at Blizzard, Valve, Eidos. Bethesda and Bioware too.
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I dunno, Bioware seems to be falling behind the times with DA2, ME3, and SW:TOR, and Bethesda's essentially rehashed Morrowind twice (Fallout 3, Skyrim).
I also don't know if I'd call Eidos "Eidos" anymore; Eidos Montreal and Nixxes made DX:HR. It's essentially Eidos Montreal, Crystal Dynamics, and IO Interactive now.-
Sorry; by "Morrowind" I should've said "Oblivion".
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