SegataSanshiro said:
It's fact not opinion. Again how many times must I point out MS has been doing this all this gen. Let's start with Phantom Dust. MS told Darkside they want a single player game with a huge aspect of Multiplayer on 5 million dollars. Darkside said they cannot do this on that budget. MS said tough make it work. Darkside tried and again told them won't work on 5 million dollars. MS said Fuck you it's cancelled and shut down the studio. Same thing with Scalebound MS wanted this huge multiplayer aspect that began as a single player Wii title. Platinum could not properly get it working and MS would not help them so they said fuck you it's cancelled. MS has a habbit of this. They give a list of demands and want everything but don't give the proper budget time or management. |
I am going to give you a hint why Darkside failed. First and foremost in the software contract game anything that is asked of you by the customer outside of the original scope of the project is considered a change order. The only way that MS could tell Darkside that they must include additional stuff without Darkside coming back to MS and giving them a price on how much it would cost for the addition would be a major fail on their business end. The reason for this is that contracts usually state explicitly exactly what the vendor will do and any additions usually will result in a change order to the project for additional fees. Its very hard for me to believe that Darkside would just sign an open contract that allow the customer to change up the scope anytime they please.
I read the Kotaku article and working as a software developer that article does not add up. There is no way management would just say "OK MS, we will add a single player to the original scope and we eat the additional cost". Before Darkside would do any additional work on this single player component, they would have hashed out a changed order with MS, have them sign it before any work would be done. If not then it would be incredibly stupid to do the work knowing it would result in additional cost and expenses to your business. Reading that article sounds absolutely crazy because if MS actually did ask for all these additions, that should have been a boom for Darkside not the other way around. They should have been quoting to MS all types of additional prices for each new component they ask for and if MS stated they would not sign a change order for those additions, it would have been an easy no. Darkside would cut their loses with the work they did and charge MS for that work done.
So here is my thing, you can blame both parties on this one. I would even believe you can say that Darkside was very naive giving how much additional staff, resources and manpower they gambled on when it was very clear they did not have the balls to get MS to sign for that additional stuff early in the project. This is a clear sign of mismanagement. Customers will always change the scope if you do not push back and hold true to your contract. This is the sole reason you do contracts because it protects both parties. The fact that Darkside waited until after they hired all those people, did all that work found out they came up short and then went to MS for the money is complete bonkers.
As for Scalebound, I do not have enough info on what went down on that project to form a solid opinion just yet.
