How a small studio's chance at big time died at Microsoft's doorstep

[Machiavellian]

thismeintiel said:

Mr Puggsly said:

thismeintiel said:

Uh...maybe you missed the part where MS wanted a 6hr single-player campaign, but weren't going to give them another dime after the intial $5M.  $5M they had originally agreed to when it was going to be MP only.  Then, it was promised by a head at Xbox to be a ~30 hr campaign.  You honestly don't think asking for some more money to reach that goal is unreasonable, right?

Just because the campaign is 30 hours doesn't mean they have to pour a ton of money into it. A lot of these JRPGs can be longer than that and probably work with that budget. Those games are often considered a success after selling a few hundred thousand.

Some games have mega budgets and are only a few hours all long. Use some common sense, hours of gameplay and budget aren't equal.

Anyhow, I'm pretty sure I read it was supposed to launch as multiplayer only and have the campaign added in later. That's kinda what MS is doing with Killer Instinct. I can play as Season 2 characters, but none of them have their story yet.

Common sense dictates that if you ask a dev to do a MP game for $5M, then ask them after the fact to include a single-player campaign, then say it should be 30 hrs long, they are going to need more money.  That's A LOT of extra work/time that needs to be invested.  As well as extra money that would possibly go towards writers and voice actors.  Bottom line is this is all a result of very poor communication from MS, and there lack of want to invest more money to get more game.

Common sense says if you only listen to one side of a story you only get half the picture.  First stop acting as if you have received all the information concerning the project.  Think about it, most games go in with a contract of work that explicity states exactly what a certain amount of money will net for a project.  Any software company that does not have that statement of work will always come out on the wrong end of a deal.  This is just basic software development for any project.  I have a very hard time believing that this company did not state very explicityly what they would be able to accomplish with the money given for the project. Even if MS stated somewhere down the line that the game will have a campaign, that would have no barrings on the current work that was commissioned.  That would be a new contract and probably based on the success of the current contract.

Here is the thing, we are only hearing one side that will paint the picture that makes them look the best.  Probably in reality there were multiple things that cause the results we see.