Gas Powered Games out of gas - Total Layoffs

GarageBay9

http://kotaku.com/5977246/were-hearing-about-layoffs-big-trouble-at-gas-powered-games-days-after-launch-of-11-million-kickstarter

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Always hoped we'd be able to get another real Dungeon Siege sequel (3 didn't count).

Best of hopes to everybody there for soft landings and clear horizons.

oXYnary

Here is hoping the kickstarter pays off and they can hire most back. Chris is one of the better CEO's in this industry.

reverendK

I heard that their Kickstart campaign was "betting the company" but i figured they'd at least wait a little longer to see how it finished. Awful news. There anybody here from GPG?

GarageBay9

oXYnary wrote: »

Here is hoping the kickstarter pays off and they can hire most back. Chris is one of the better CEO's in this industry.

Chris is one of my idols in the industry, but I remember him mentioning that in the looking glass of hindsight, they made a couple of pretty disastrous business decisions with the way they invested in engine dev for both Dungeon Siege games and then with Supreme Commander.

But Demigod supposedly did decently...?

I figured they'd managed to get their feet solidly under them with AoE Online... guess not so much.

I've got a couple friends over there - if he's still over there, one of them is a guy I knew all the way back in the Total Annihilation modding days who went amateur-to-pro because of his TA mod work. I hope everything turns out okay. Chris is a great guy and I would never believe he'd done something shady or cutthroat to bring this about. I'll cross my fingers for everybody.

Muzzoid

oh wow, Crazy....

The success of this is all going to come down how they handle the bad pr surrounding it.

nyx702

I am sorry for everyone effected.

It's been a few months without any major studio layoffs. I guess I should have been expecting some soon. That's it. I'm finding a different career.

ScottP

Honestly, I think the Kickstarter video could have been done better. It did a good job interviewing artists and showing the art style, but it didnt really talk about the game itself and had alot of comedy `fluff` which i didnt personaly think helped sell the concept.

Edit: NVM update 1 showed some gameplay, looks cool!

I do hope it hits it goal though and people get there jobs back. Sad to see this happen.

D4V1DC

wow, sry to hear this, best of luck to those.

Anyone mad yet? not at GPG but the over all employment situation.

d1ver

so said to see GPG take such a hit.
best of luck to everyone caught up in this. I hope you land on your feet in no time

System

I know Sonia has reached out already put Ill plug this just in case. .
http://suckerpunch.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=91

Andreas

D4V1DC wrote: »

Anyone mad yet? not at GPG but the over all employment situation.

You mean in the industry in general? You're 3/4 years late to that party heh.

nick2730

they made alot of bad calls with supreme commander 2 and dugeon seige that probably killed GPG. I hope they can get back they are of the better devs left

JacqueChoi

bad news for the games industry as a whole.

BoBo_the_seal

Backed! How often do we as individuals get the opportunity to actively help a struggling studio in our industry? Every time we have a thread about lay-offs or studios closing I see a lot of blame thrown around and anger about the situation. I agree it sucks but honestly it happens. The entertainment industry is a gamble. I wish it could be more stable but it isn't.

I know my little donation isn't much in the grand scheme of things, but hopefully they hit their mark and this Kickstarter is enough to get going again.

Malus

BoBo_the_seal wrote: »

Backed! How often do we as individuals get the opportunity to actively help a struggling studio in our industry? Every time we have a thread about lay-offs or studios closing I see a lot of blame thrown around and anger about the situation. I agree it sucks but honestly it happens. The entertainment industry is a gamble. I wish it could be more stable but it isn't.

I know my little donation isn't much in the grand scheme of things, but hopefully they hit their mark and this Kickstarter is enough to get going again.

^This.

Backed.

Blaizer

Nobody remember Total Annihilation?

RyanB

BoBo_the_seal wrote: »

The entertainment industry is a gamble. I wish it could be more stable but it isn't.

One way to create more stability is to create more indie studios with smaller projects. This would reduce the variance without requiring more overall investment.

This is already happening over time but the process could be sped up. Instead of giving multi-millions to companies like 38 Studios through hand outs and reduced taxes, we could give those same funds to dozens or hundreds of smaller studios.

Lowering variance also means lowering the opportunities for huge profits (and huge losses) so there won't be much support from the systems in place.

Wesley

If this Kickstarter doesn't fund successfully can we see headlines saying, "Gaming community closes down Gas Powered Games"? And then later on we can see flame threads about how gamers are an evil publisher for closing down a good dev?

Anyway, backed! How often do you get to back a cool looking game and and awesome studio?