Another Studio gone..... Propaganda Games

slipsius

No official press release yet... but through the chain has come this info.

Propaganda games closed today.


I wish everyone who was involved a fast rebound from this. Sorry guys.

PixelMasher

yea 3 different people just told me this too. pretty shitty, sorry to all you local Vancouver guys outta work.

mathes

Very rough indeed. You'd think they would finish the PotC game with the new movie coming out.

Gav

Though it does totally suck - how could you not see this coming? Both PotC and Turok2 had tons of money dumped into them only to be canceled...Hopefully everyone lands on their feet and all that jazz.

Justin Meisse

damn, Pirates looked promising, i was hoping for a Fable-like game that wasn't hand-holding easymode.

JacqueChoi

Sucks.

Unfortunately I see Radical following the same pattern.




Sounds more and more like the Vancouver Games Industry is going the way of the dodo. I hope Relic comes out of this aftermath unscathed, they're a pretty kickass group of developers.

skylebones

I hate hearing this since I was working at Disney Interactive at the time this studio was founded. But after the POTC game was cancelled it seemed like trouble was on the horizon. Hope everyone can find jobs quickly! The few guys I met there were very awesome.

ae.

Vancouver industry isn't looking to good right now

Geezus

I wish everyone affected a swift recovery.

KateC

Pirates was looking super pretty; I was sorry to hear about it being cancelled awhile back, but hopefully everyone's on to bigger and better things.

Barbarian

Wow, sorry to hear about another closing. Hopefully other opportunities await.

javi

Hboybowen wrote: »

so when activision lets the studios go what happens to the IPs they made while or before signing to activision. Do they leave with nothing?

Yup, the IP belongs to Activision. For Propaganda, it all belongs to Disney.

Mark Dygert

I might be remembering wrong but doesn't the Toronto area have some pretty big tax breaks and incentives for start ups? If so these closures might be more of a restructuring maneuver than a shedding of jobs? Shut down a studio in Vancouver, start one up in the new tax break zone?

Still... it is the season for pruning as places look at their figures from last year and set a budget for next. We'll probably see a few more studios go under or drop people for the next few weeks, then it will probably even out and places will slowly start hiring again as their projects roll along and grow.

eld

While the startups are a good thing, smaller indie companies and startups will usually only house a tiny handful of persons, even 3-4 of these studios will not be enough to house the company that was shut down.

Mark Dygert

I dunno... if its Disney doing the studio shuffle then they're more likely to pull a Junction Point and start off fairly big by installing some pretty talented people with an eye at growing the studio pretty quickly as the project takes off. It will probably be smaller at first, but it won't be your typical indie start up where three guys make 4-5 iphone games in a studio apartment before they can hire an intern on game #6.

It will be interesting to see what they do moving forward. The last I heard was that Disney was looking to get back into games and to grow Disney Interactive.

I'm just saying that it might not be all doom and gloom, it might be that there are more profitable ways for them to operate and they're shuffling things around... maybe...

haiddasalami

Mark Dygert wrote: »

I might be remembering wrong but doesn't the Toronto area have some pretty big tax breaks and incentives for start ups? If so these closures might be more of a restructuring maneuver than a shedding of jobs? Shut down a studio in Vancouver, start one up in the new tax break zone?

Still... it is the season for pruning as places look at their figures from last year and set a budget for next. We'll probably see a few more studios go under or drop people for the next few weeks, then it will probably even out and places will slowly start hiring again as their projects roll along and grow.

Ever since the Ubisoft Toronto push, provincial government has been trying to get tax breaks to bring more game studios to come here.

Fomori

From Gamesindustry.biz:

"The move seems to reflect Disney's new direction of social and mobile development, which began with a statement to press last November that the corporation would be putting less money into console development in order to maximise profit.

"We've seen a pretty big shift in games from console to what I'll call multiplatform, everything from mobile apps to social networking games, and by putting John Pleasants in to run games, not only will be the focus on turning those businesses into profitability, but diversifying our presence in the business," said Bob Iger, Disney CEO in November."

skylebones

Fomori wrote: »

From Gamesindustry.biz:

"The move seems to reflect Disney's new direction of social and mobile development, which began with a statement to press last November that the corporation would be putting less money into console development in order to maximise profit.

"We've seen a pretty big shift in games from console to what I'll call multiplatform, everything from mobile apps to social networking games, and by putting John Pleasants in to run games, not only will be the focus on turning those businesses into profitability, but diversifying our presence in the business," said Bob Iger, Disney CEO in November."

Pretty much this. Disney purchased/Started a bunch of developers over the past few years to really try and make an impact in the game market. But with the purchase of playdom (for $763 million) by Disney they changed their whole focus. Instead of big console games they are going with mobile/social.

JohnnyRaptor

damn...wasnt this supposed to have slowed down by now? i hear Frontier in UK just start letting ppl go this week as well...damn

d1ver

Sorry to hears. Best of luck in finding the best gig ever for the affected.

Seaseme

This fucking sucks, sorry to everyone at Propaganda! I know it wasn't your fault. Blame the suits at disney!

JacqueChoi

Why blame the suits at Disney? When it's the customers (or lack thereof) that speak with their wallets.

The Toy Story 3 game cost a TON to make, and had over 80% on Metacritic, and was by all means considered a HUGE critical success.... and the sales have been a bit of a flop. Huge open world sandbox game with a high degree of polish that hasn't even broken 700k sales.

Epic Mickey was also another DI game that failed to deliver, despite the involvement of a high profile developer in Warren Spectre.


And if you log into The Chaos Engine, not a single person seemed to have anything nice to say about the Creative Director at propoganda, or his decision to hire a roster of designers heavily hired from EA sports.

They tried making an FPS in Turok, using nothing but designers that only had experience in designing league systems and player stats for various EA sports games, and it seemed NOBODY on the design team had any experience with making a FPS.



Sorry for venting, but the suits are the 'predictable' part in this.

It was creative management that doomed them to begin with.

Mark Dygert

I don't think Epic Mickey failed on any front, it is an awesome game, great art, good story, interesting mechanics and it sold well. I also bought Toy Story 3 and thought it was a good game. I think the expectations where low and nobody gave it much of a 2nd glance being it was a movie tie in but it actually was really fun.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/business/15mickey.html?src=busln
Epic Mickey sold 1.3 million units in North America in December for a retail total of $64.2 million, according to NPD Group.

5th best selling game of the holiday season. Which is saying something for a Wii only game.

JacqueChoi

Wow, had no idea about Epic Mickey! That's great news! (it was very contrary to what I'd heard before the holidays).

The expectations internally were VERY high for Toy Story 3 (considering the successes of various other HUGE movie releases). They dumped a BOATLOAD of money into internal development of Toy Story 3, just to have it become a fiscal disaster.

I believe Disney is now starting to forget about developing high quality products, and is already entertaining 3rd party developers for upcoming movie liscences, who can make it for the cheapest...
...and have a proven track record of shipping on time, under the most ridiculous schedules.

Bigjohn

Also, just want to throw this out there, every time a studio shuts down it makes the news in the industry. There'll be a thread about it, or you'd here about people losing their jobs.

But you will never hear about a new studio opening.

Mark Dygert

I think we get threads like "got a job" and postings in the paid work sections of a lot of forums which isn't as sensational as front page news but they are good indicators of start ups and places looking to grow.

skylebones

JacqueChoi wrote: »

The expectations internally were VERY high for Toy Story 3 (considering the successes of various other HUGE movie releases). They dumped a BOATLOAD of money into internal development of Toy Story 3, just to have it become a fiscal disaster.

That was my last project there. Can't comment though.