Kotaku
Late last week Climax LA sacked half of their employees in a move GameSpot called a "tweak", but at least one insider says was really just an attempt to salvage the disastrous development of Silent Hill Origins for the PSP and keep it under Climax's umbrella. The project has been transferred to Climax's Solent studio in the UK.
While the 16 employees who were laid off were given ample warning that another shoe was about to drop last week, the problem with development of the game apparently started back in December when work on the game first started.
Early on management in charge of the game's development made a bad call that lead to the team not getting their hands on a working engine until June of this year, according to a mole.
The same managers were reluctant to hire new employees despite that poor planning and employee treatment were causing the company to "hemorrhage" employees, including the lead designer and lead artist, according to the insider.
Because of those setbacks, the mole says, the game had been cut extensively to try and meet the increasingly unrealistic deadlines. Origins, once envisioned as a robust PSP game that would take eight hours to complete, has been shriveled down to a handful of much smaller levels and three to four hours of gameplay, the mole says.
Many of these difficulties were hidden from publisher Konami by management until a few weeks ago, when they were finally told the truth. Konami was understandably disappointed because the project would miss fiscal 2006 entirely as a result of the needed delays, and employees were told there were "no assurances" that the Origins project would continue. Last Wednesday, employees were told there would be lay-offs and given envelopes with an appointment time. In those appointments they were told whether or not they would have a job by the company's CFO, which most had never met.
The laid-off employees, some of which had only started a week prior, were each given a week's severance. Some of those who remain will help transition the now hobbled version of Origins to Climax's Solent studio in the UK, where expectations are the game will continue to suffer, the source said.
The rest will then wrap up their development of Steel Horizons and the studio will likely be effectively shuttered, leaving only a shell office for meetings with LA-based publishers, according to the mole.
While the company told GameSpot that there was a third project in the concept phase, the mole says none of the employees were aware of it and that even current staffing couldn't develop a new game.
Comments
Well, I can't imagine playing a Silent Hill game on this small PSP screen anyway. Plus the screens do not look promising at all...
I want Origins badly. Damn management. Should be buried alive.
Ouch. I liked the original Silent Hill but couldn't get into it, what with the weird motion sickness it caused in me. I always wanted to know what happened.
man, i wanna play that game...get it done!
i still never played SH 2-4, but i have them on my PC
I was really looking forward to that title and was going to pick up a PSP to play it. Now I'm not so sure.
Question. Does this news, combined with the other mishapps in the industry, evidence that something has gone horribly wrong with video games?
One week's severance? That is even worse than I'd expect from EA! You can rest assured that management like still have jobs, much to the detriment of the industry.
Answer. No. It's a management fuck-up. Rumours suggest that these may also occur in other industries...
It's a pity... I loved the series, even though 4 was really weak. Anyhow, I was looking forward to experiencing it on the PSP and it seems that even if it arrives one day, it is going to be poorly conceived and short. Bad luck.
I love this headline. I drafted a post to make fun of Crecente on the back-end, called "Rumor: Orgasm Cripples Tomb Raider." Text was: "Florian Eckhardt blamed, according to mole."
Man I actually kind of hope the game gets cancelled. It looked really bad from the trailers and seemed to miss the entire point of the Silent Hill franchise. That the development was going so disasterously comes as no surprise to me.
Can't say I'm surprised, nor am I in the least bit disappointed, by this news. This title seemed like a bad idea from the get-go.
Well, seens like that when they turn de development to ocidental studios, the Silent Hill series turns intro crappy stuff... :P
I hope that it turns into an OK game at least, since I love the series.
Now Konami, where's the remake for silent hill 1? ;)
Nah, don't remake Silent Hill 1, its perfect as is. I am disappointed at this cock-up though. It may have been the only reason I would buy a PSP. I agree though that some of the videos from TGS looked pretty lack-luster.
Also, SH4...what is everyone's problem with it?? It was, admittedly, my first foray into Silent Hill and so I have some of that, but it stands up just as well as the rest. I mean I liked SH2 a lot more and SH3 had its great moments, but everybody hates on SH4 like it was some pariah.
I can't say this is the case for everyone, but as a Silent Hill Fan I didn't like 4 mostly because it was just essentially not a Silent Hill game, just slapped with the name (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Hill#Silent_Hill_4:_The_Room_.282004.29). Perhaps because of that, the plot felt like it was attached to the established storyline with scotch tape.
SH fandom aisde, the game itself is rather irritating to me because the second half is just repeating the first half. Sort of boring, as part of the previous 3 games' novelty was not knowing what to expect.
I was't expecting much from Silent Hill Origins as it's not being made by my beloved Team Silent... but I was still looking foreword to using my PSP for something again.
the game we all know as SH4 was actually going to be a seperate series. Konami thought that they would have a much better chance of selling it if they slapped the Silent Hill name on it and added some random references to the town in the game.
The first time I played the game I recognized that some things didn't seem right with the game but I tried to ignore them and just enjoy it. After learning about the original concept for the game it became obvious that this game was not supposed to be part of the SH series.
The game has a completely different feel from the others in the series: environments are full-lit (no flashlight), the game plays in stages that must be traveled through several times, and the town of Silent Hill (old or new)is nowhere to be seen. I still think SH4 was a decent game, but I dont really consider it part of the mythos.
As far as this PSP version goes, I was pretty excited for it, but after learning about the issues its having, I'm pretty skeptical..
Firstly, the originating Gamespot article cites 14 people laid off, not 16. Second, it's mentioned that Climax is planning to add 70 people to their other two studios (closer to home, easier to manage). As a former employee of a Euro developer with a failed studio in the USA, I can attest that this sort of thing isn't unique. The problem stems from poor mid to upper (studio) management 99% of the time. Deadlines are made without proper input from the teams, communication breaks down and the preliminary tech docs for the game fail to accurately evaluate production needs.
However, a rather good looking and playable version of this engine was posted on Gamespot as early as August 23, so the statement about the 'team not getting a working engine' until July is somewhat odd. Who was actually developing the PSP engine for the game if not the US studio programmers..?
Too often 'moles' are simply pissed-off former employees looking to make their alma mater look as bad as possible. I know the feeling - I've been laid off before. Most of us in the industry have, at one time or another.
I have this sneaking suspicion that the dire language here describing a 'hobbled', 'shriveled' and 'disastrous' project are somewhat colored by that sting of ego. And even if it is, the game's being handed off to the UK. If the major problem is level construction and gameplay length, that sounds like a pretty easy problem to fix if they throw some level designers and a few artists at it. *shrug*
Still looking forward to this (and the other upcoming PSP titles), regardless of how vogue it is right now to associate any Sony product news with doom & gloom.
The whole situation sounds like a sham. Being a huge fan of the Silent Hill series I was looking forward to getting my hands on Silent Hill Origins.
This news appears to be from 2006, and no new news has emerged or has it? well I can tell you something new about Silent Hill Origins. The same people who made Ghost Rider for the Playstation 2 are now working on Silent Hill Origins. News is good, but this is bad news, as most of us already know, Ghost Rider sucked in a big way.
@pixelator "Climax is planning to add 70 people to their other two studios"
Your talking rubbish. Their main studio can only hold about 20 more people at a push, and their London studio, which is located in Kingston and not London is so small, they would be lucky to squeeze 10 etra people in there, let alone 70 more people.
Actually your the one mistaken Megaman... The game was shut down because of a mistake made in the Sans Studio, the Uk one is making the game! Its also true that the UK studio IS expanding due to much success and there is room for at least double the amount of people working there already. Im not talking about the London Studio either. Stick to facts and ignore silly rumours and dam moles.
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