The man screwed up Spore, a game that Maxis really needed to do well and develop the type of community around it that Sims had and he shat all over a system that EA is making multi-millions of dollars off of.
Hecker announced on his personal site his follow up project, an indie game called SpyParty, which he describes as "a very different multiplayer espionage game" that apparently offers a level of excitement on par with ski jumping away from massive explosions.
No go back and look. He says it is less ski-jumping away from explosions and more about classy espionage spies.
He deserves it, he was complicit in what happened to spore, possibly one of the most overhyped games in HISTORY only behind Daikatana. He deserves to think long and hard about what he needs to do in his life.
Well, this is one guy that won't be getting a job at Nintendo any time soon. I feel sorry for him for losing his job, but he probably burned a few bridges while he was still employed.
"Chris Hecker was having strong misgivings about how appealing all this hard science would be to the wider world. "I was the founding member of the 'cute' team," he says with pride. "Ocean [Quigley, Spore's art director] and Will were really the founding members of the 'science' team. Ocean would make the cell game look exactly like a petri dish with all these to-scale animals and Will would say, 'That's the greatest thing I've ever seen!' and some of us were thinking, 'I'm not sure about that.'"
I can sum up everybody that has gotten laid off in the last year in the game industry...they actually know what the F**k they are doing and get paid a halfway decent wage. It's the same with every single layoff..they are cutting the legs out from under the talent that makes enough to actually support their family, and keeps a bunch of intern amatuers on staff because they work for peanuts.
Good thing about all this, is that hopefullly....just hopefully, these people that get laid off and do like Chris and start their own game devs, smaller so they don't have to deal with jokers like EA and Activision. Benefits: Keep a small staff, keep a focused game, watch the overhead...oh yeah, and just make great, passionate games.
sigh.. Maxis a previosly great dev, now doing sod all, Back in the day the SIM city franchise was so good, it truely saddens me that the Sims sells better that sim city, the game was so damn good that it was used as an educational tool for environmentalism and city planning, now they release hyped crap like spore which in all honesty could have been done in flash just as well
@someone_else: The problem is EA getting their grubby hands all over Maxis now. The Sims has been turned into a mindless cash cow almost to the point of shovelware, and Spore was looking really good until EA came in and made them change the game to a cutesy casual game.
Seriously, look at The Sims 1. Then look at MySims Kart Racing. The series has gone horribly wrong, and it's EA's fault.
I recall browsing jobs on Gamasutra a few months ago and there was a position for a Lead Designer for a "fast paced multiplayer shooter with massive customization" at the Emeryville Maxis studio.
The job is no longer posted so either they filled it and are working on Battlefield Spore or the project got canned.
I wonder if the lackluster sales of spore were in part due to the draconian protection.
Personally I thought the game was okay but the DRM prevented me from buying a retail copy. Even f the game is awesome (IE Mass Effect) I find DRM to be enough of a reason to pass on the game.
Edited by Taggart6 is Tiger Woods Mistress 342 at 08/28/09 4:32 PM
Taggart6 is Tiger Woods Mistress 342 was starred
Taggart6 is Tiger Woods Mistress 342 was unstarred
@Billkwando bought his tickets for Hyde's US tour: Not really. Some point after EA bought Maxis, they put together a "Sims Business Unit", which consisted of a lot of Maxis people, but operates on their own floor of the development wing at the Redwood Shores campus.
The rest of Maxis moved to Emeryville to work on Spore. The point is that the operations of the Sims has no bearing on Maxis, and vise versa.
There was also some other kind of weird subtext that "Maxis" was sort of a carryover of corporate culture that still existed at the Maxis studio, and Sims unit, but that "Maxis" itself didn't exist any more as a distinct entity, since it was considered part of the Redwood Shores campus.
@-Skyline-: Voted Crecente 12': Checker was involved deeply in the procedural tech that made Spore work. He did a lot of work for the procedural creature effects, such as the animation engine that allows spore creatures of relatively arbitrary size and features walk on the earth, interact with objects, etc. Like, he built that shit. So, his contributions really were essential to Spore's development on a fundamental level. He was something like a senior engineer, designer, SW architect, but his title was indeed "Technology Fellow".
08/29/09
GEE I WONDER WHY HE GOT LAID OFF GUYZ.
08/29/09
No go back and look. He says it is less ski-jumping away from explosions and more about classy espionage spies.
08/28/09
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08/28/09
Hey people want to know who dumbed down spore and got rid of all the cool stuff Will was talking about in earlier videos shown off?
It was Chris Hecker.
[forum.spore.com]
"Chris Hecker was having strong misgivings about how appealing all this hard science would be to the wider world. "I was the founding member of the 'cute' team," he says with pride. "Ocean [Quigley, Spore's art director] and Will were really the founding members of the 'science' team. Ocean would make the cell game look exactly like a petri dish with all these to-scale animals and Will would say, 'That's the greatest thing I've ever seen!' and some of us were thinking, 'I'm not sure about that.'"
08/28/09
08/28/09
Good thing about all this, is that hopefullly....just hopefully, these people that get laid off and do like Chris and start their own game devs, smaller so they don't have to deal with jokers like EA and Activision. Benefits: Keep a small staff, keep a focused game, watch the overhead...oh yeah, and just make great, passionate games.
08/28/09
08/28/09
Seriously, look at The Sims 1. Then look at MySims Kart Racing. The series has gone horribly wrong, and it's EA's fault.
08/28/09
I recall browsing jobs on Gamasutra a few months ago and there was a position for a Lead Designer for a "fast paced multiplayer shooter with massive customization" at the Emeryville Maxis studio.
The job is no longer posted so either they filled it and are working on Battlefield Spore or the project got canned.
08/28/09
Spore has matured in the past year and is no longer in need of a full team.
Will Wright moved to SFC, and the upper management of Maxis shifted around a bit.
If they lost 24 people, I'd guess it was just a restructuring.
08/28/09
Personally I thought the game was okay but the DRM prevented me from buying a retail copy. Even f the game is awesome (IE Mass Effect) I find DRM to be enough of a reason to pass on the game.
I wonder if others felt the same way as me.
08/28/09
08/29/09
The rest of Maxis moved to Emeryville to work on Spore. The point is that the operations of the Sims has no bearing on Maxis, and vise versa.
There was also some other kind of weird subtext that "Maxis" was sort of a carryover of corporate culture that still existed at the Maxis studio, and Sims unit, but that "Maxis" itself didn't exist any more as a distinct entity, since it was considered part of the Redwood Shores campus.
08/28/09
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08/28/09
Incredibly broad, makes me wonder what he actually did
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08/28/09
thesircuddles uses PSI Shield Ω to protect everyone!
08/28/09
Sim City 5
*squeee*
08/28/09
08/29/09