Artists and Engineers vs. Beancounters and MBAs: The Saga
By Arclayn on January 17th, 10 under General, Mac, PC, Technology,Cross posted to Arclayn's Livejournal.
I present an epic tale of conflict and sorrow where great men and women do battle against their misguided rulers for freedom and principles!
Sounds like a cheesy pitch to promote the latest RPG, eh? Hehehe... read on.
A buddy of mine who lives in California USA was recently telling me about a new game called Torchlight, which is made in the tradition of Diablo. For me, this is intriguing as the Diablo series has been and continues to be (despite its ancientness) the best hack-and-slash video games ever. What's even more intriguing is that this new game is made by "ex-Blizzard employees". As the Diablo series was created by Blizzard's subsidiary studio, Blizzard North, that note caught my attention.
A few weeks later, I download a demo of Torchlight just to see if it lives up to all the fuss. The short and simple is: no it doesn't. Before I move on, I want to make one thing absolutely clear: Torchlight is a decent game, despite my upcoming scathing summary. That scathe starts out noting Torchlight's complete lack of originality. Torchlight would be borderline plagiarism of the Diablo series if not for the key fact that the development team is largely comprised of people who did work for Blizzard North, and thusly had created Diablo! Despite the developers' best recycling efforts, the game is lacking a few things. It lacks originality (can't stress this enough!), it lacks multiplayer, it lacks some polish, and except for veteran voice actress Lani Minella -- it lacks good voice acting. Torchlight is very lacking in comparison to what placed the Diablo series at the pinnacle of awesomeness. But with all its flaws, Torchlight is not a bad game. It is not awesome, but it is competent. I suspect that Torchlight's mere competent outcome was held back by lack of project funding and time, not lack of talent. I'll get back to this soon.
But this epic tale or cheesy pitch isn't really about Torchlight. Rather, Torchlight intrigued me to read about where this story has its beginnings -- the "ex-Blizzard" employees. Seems at around the year 2003, key people within Blizzard North (a subsidiary studio of Blizzard Entertainment) had a difference of opinion with the beancounters and MBA stiff-suits within Blizzard's parent company, Vivendi.
The nature of this disagreement eludes me, but it is clear that the differences were significant and the two parties couldn't find enough common ground in whatever the dispute was. My significant other suspects it was some labor contract dispute. I suspect the disagreement stems from the philosophical differences and cultural divide common between workers and business managers in the USA. Or perhaps both. Regardless, that is all speculation. What is not speculation is that many people who were key to Blizzard's success resigned and went different ways.
At my time providing IT tech support at a General Electric manufacturing plant, one thing I observed about American business culture is that the stiff-suit managers often fail to understand that workers are the lifeblood of the company. No workers equals no product. No product equals no business. It is a pretty simple concept, really. In the case of Blizzard, that paradigm gets even worse as video game developers (the workers) are highly educated and talented people. They are visual artists, musicians, writers, mathematicians, computer scientists and engineers, etc. These are not your "warm-body" work-drones. No no! Video game developers are a unique and rare breed! Angering this kind of workforce is a potentially bad idea!
I have read that the numerous resignations forced the cancellation of a "Blizzard North kind of game" and the closure of the entire Blizzard North studio. Here we have proof of what I just said: "No workers equals no product. No product equals no business." Therefore, Blizzard North becomes defunct. But where did all those people go?
Some of the people who left Blizzard North wound up forming ArenaNet and created a new game called Guild Wars. My buddy in California played this game for some time, but I felt the game amounted to very shiny rubbish. Technologically speaking, the game was marvelous. As for game design, I had no use for it. It is a clear case that "shiny" alone does not make a good game. Despite my negative opinion, Guild Wars became a popular phenomenon known for large scale multiplayer play without subscription fees. Seems today, though, that most of the bluster surrounding Guild Wars has died off, and although a Guild Wars sequel was announced two years ago... it is still missing in action.
I list Bill Roper among my most favorite video game developers ever. He is the man responsible for the success of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo, and he was among the "key people" who left Blizzard North. After leaving Blizzard North, Mr. Roper founded Flagship Studios and created Hellgate London. I haven't played Hellgate so I cannot comment on how good or bad the game is. I have read that Hellgate has a metacritic average of 70%. That's not great, but that's not bad. Unfortunately, Hellgate ended up a commercial failure and as a result, Flagship Studios dissolved and the Hellgate intellectual property now lies in the hands of Korean game publisher, Hanbitsoft.
These days, Mr. Roper works for Cryptic Studios. He is overseeing the production of Champions Online, an upcoming MMO game based on the Champions paper-and-pencil hobby game. Supposedly, Bill Roper loved playing Champions as a child, so in the end he winds up doing what is likely a really nice job for him. Kudos!
And now we come to Torchlight's origins. Other "key people" who left Blizzard North helped to found Runic Games. Runic Games is also, in part, a studio built upon the ashes of Flagship Studios, although without Bill Roper. Runic Games was founded in 2008, and a year later they published Torchlight. A single year is pretty quick development time! And considering that Torchlight is a decent game, it says something about the talent of these developers: They know what they are doing. Given more time and funding, I expect that Torchlight would have climbed to the summit of Mount Awesome. However, considering the development tools they used, it becomes obvious that funding and time were not on their side.
Torchlight is built on a kludge variety of free-and-open-source technologes (OGRE 3D and CEGUI) and inexpensively licensed technologies (Particle Universe and FMOD). Certainly this selection of tools is not state-of-the-art like Unreal Engine 3 or Blizzard's own custom in-house development suite. The end result is a lightweight game that would have been very impressive maybe four or five years ago. However, for what Runic Games had, Torchlight does play slick and smooth and the visuals are good enough. To start with something substantially less and still come out with something competent is the work of true talent, and Torchlight is existing proof, when one looks deep down, that these guys have talent.
As for Blizzard Entertainment, the loss of Blizzard North means they are lacking many of the original talents that made them awesome in the first place. I can't say, but I want to think that the stiff-suits in Vivendi learned something from this experience as they had a lot of talented and experienced people to replace in order to keep Blizzard Entertainment successful. Afterall, game developers can't be plucked from a tree. Even so, Blizzard's main office managed to keep their momentum in the realm of awesome. Since the collapse of Blizzard North, World of Warcraft became an instant success the following year. Plus, Blizzard now has two more games on the horizon: Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3. Despite not being backed by the original talents, both games still look like they will be outstanding when they go gold!
For the fans who love Blizzard games (such as myself), things are looking up. For Bill Roper, things were shaky for a while but it looks to me that he's got a good gig now. I hope that Torchlight, despite its complete lack of originality, does well enough so that Runic Games can properly fund a real project and show the world just how good they really are. And finally, time will tell if this cheesy, epic tale has a happy ending for all.
Arclayn MoonSword
