Rumour: Free Radical shutting up shop? [Update]

Gosh, was Haze really this year? It seems so long ago now.

On the plus side, that’s hopefully the last we’ll hear of Rob ’1000-page screenplay’ Yescombe…

Any details on why they lost the Battlefront project? Doesn’t bode well if Lucas Arts lost confidence in them!

I feel bad for the poor fellas there…but what can you expect when you’ve made games like Haze, Timesplitters, Second Sight.

You gotta make good games that sell well to make money and stay alive. =/

Hey, man – Second Sight was great!

The TimeSplitters series was great airdom, little is the number of people that think otherwise.

http://www.edge-online.com/features/source-free-radical-locked-up

A bit more details from Edge.

And this too from a Twitter:

http://twitter.com/dan13l/status/1064980821

Edge have lots of insider rumours.

From Edge:

“Doak reportedly “officially” left the company early this month, and Ellis has set up another company called Pumpkin Beach, which already has a placeholder website registered under his name. The two are reportedly working on this project together and will “hand pick” Free Radical staff to join them”

I hope those ‘hand picked’ employee’s tell them to go fuck themselves.

Unless they don’t have any idea of how difficult it’s very likely to be to find a job in the industry over the next couple of years, I seriously doubt that they would.

@ Blerk & @Gekidami

sure maybe the games were good, but if the sales aren’t there to back the games financially, then it is really unsuccessful =/

“Unless they don’t have any idea of how difficult it’s very likely to be to find a job in the industry over the next couple of years, I seriously doubt that they would.”
Can you prove this is going to happen? We’re still recruiting and I know we’re not the only ones.

Yeah, but I’m sure that you won’t be recruiting everyone in the country, will you??

We’re talking about all of the unemployed experienced staff who are already looking, then any experienced staff from any studios that might suffer the same end as FRD, then all of the most talented experienced staff who are in work who are looking for something new. Then all of the top graduates, then all of the other graduates who didn’t get the top grades and are willing to work for next to nothing. Then all of the ones from related industries like graphic design/IT/web development who have lost their jobs and are looking at a new industry.

Then on top of that, don’t forget all of the belt-squeezing from even the top publishers such as EA, Take Two, etc.

The hard times for the games industry are on the way, and FRD closing is just the beginning, I’m sure…

Eh? We’re recruiting. Plenty of other people are recruiting. As far as I can see there isn’t a crisis in the games industry this year that is any more drastic than it was last year. Developers go pop all the time, large and small. The scenarios that you describe existed last year and they’ll exist next year.

Do you have any experience of what you’re talking about or are you just guessing?

Edge have updated their article with details of the meeting: http://www.edge-online.com/features/source-free-radical-locked-up

^^
Which is why the UK Govt. need to pull their finger out of their ass on some tax incentives pronto before what’s left of the UK development industry fucks off to Canada or Asia. If Free Radical can get products from established franchises like Battlefront canned it could be other work for hire studios like Kuju or Rebellion next, through no fault of their own.

Of course throwing lots of money at talking about age ratings is much more important right now as far as they’re concerned

@Deft:

Yeah but the videogames industry just simply isn’t as important politically or culturally is it?

No, but it’s potential to generate revenue for UK.biz is rapidly diminishing so given the massive loan they’ve got on their back you’d think they would want to take some steps to halt that particular decline. It would probably have cost a fraction of what the pointless VAT cut has to match the incentives they have over in Montreal.

I think we should be investing in it from a political standpoint. All of the devs I’vwe spoken to have said that going abraod is hjghly viable from a creative and economic point of view.

It’s a fucking disgrace how our games indiustry is treated by central government when the film industry is backed to the hilt – at least games make a profit – unlike the film industry.

@ Truk:

No, the situation is nothing like last year. Where have you been over the last few months? Not noticed the whole world is suffering from the continually worsening credit crisis?

That means that money’s going to be a lot more difficult to come by next year.

Last year FRD could probably have walked into a bank, shown a manger an early build of TS4 and walked away with enough of a loan to keep them ticking over for the next few months.

Not so now.

It’s the same with the publishers who pretty much every developer relies on for money.

People are being a lot more careful now, and the fact that not even a single developer dared to take a chance on TS4 speaks volumes.

Even Ghostbusters got dumped before Atari took it on, because it wasn’t seen as enough of an exploitable franchise.

As for me, then yeah, I’ve worked in this industry for around 8 years now. I’ve suffered redundancies and studio closures in that time, so I know the way of the industry, and I know how hard it is to find a job even when almost everyone is recruiting.

The fact is that there are simply a massive amount of people looking for a few jobs in an industry that’s about to start being very careful where it invests its money over the next couple of years.

Last update. Looks pretty much like case closed.

You can add to the above the fact that Free Radical recruitment adverts have been almost omnipresent on GamesIndustry.biz the last couple of years. With the team sizes you need now to get a AAA product out the door there’s almost a boom/bust cycle where a studio ramps up the numbers for production on project and then cuts right down when it comes to pre-production on the next.

So the fact that there might be lots of recruitment going on for what is green lit isn’t *on it’s own* an indication of a healthy development industry. What I think we will see over the next couple of years or so are a few more projects canned because they can’t guarentee a return on investment. It’s going to be a bit of a horrendous time to get any new IP out the door that’s for sure.

And like G1GA says, credit facilities for more or less anyone are fucked.

“Last year FRD could probably have walked into a bank, shown a manger an early build of TS4 and walked away with enough of a loan to keep them ticking over for the next few months.”

That wouldn’t help. No one wanted to publish TS4. And the LA project was stripped from them. Therein lies their problem.

“People are being a lot more careful now, and the fact that not even a single developer dared to take a chance on TS4 speaks volumes.”

Why would a developer take on TS4?

“Even Ghostbusters got dumped before Atari took it on, because it wasn’t seen as enough of an exploitable franchise.”
But Atari took it on. Atari seem to know what they’re doing.

“The fact is that there are simply a massive amount of people looking for a few jobs in an industry that’s about to start being very careful where it invests its money over the next couple of years.”

Thank fuck for that. This industry needs to start being careful. Too much carelessness costs jobs. Being careful creates them.

I don’t know who you work for or know, but everything I’ve experienced and heard from others is that it’s hard to find good, experienced staff in the UK. I’m certain the good staff from FRD will walk into jobs.

“I don’t know who you work for or know, but everything I’ve experienced and heard from others is that it’s hard to find good, experienced staff in the UK. I’m certain the good staff from FRD will walk into jobs.”

I think this is still true seeing as there appear to be a lot of people coming out of the plethora of Games degrees the Universities are pushing who most developers don’t fancy touching with a barge pole. Experience etc. will always win out over them.

But I don’t see all of the FRD staff walking into jobs straight away so I don’t view the possibility of it becoming much much harder to find a job in 2009 as that unlikely either.

“Why would a developer take on TS4?”

Publisher… I meant publisher, obviously.

“But Atari took it on. Atari seem to know what they’re doing.”

Yeah, right… Atari know what they’re doing??

Just like they knew what they were doing with Alone in the Dark, eh?

“I don’t know who you work for or know, but everything I’ve experienced and heard from others is that it’s hard to find good, experienced staff in the UK. I’m certain the good staff from FRD will walk into jobs.”

I’d like to know who you work for… If I start seeing stories over the next two years about your company struggling, you can remind me and deftangel about just how safe and secure our industry is.

Let me know, you can hit me up on LIVE if you want. My gamertag is obviously G1GAHURTZ.

Abit vindictive there Giga?

Not at all.

I just expect a lot less from the games industry than Truk. It’d be interesting to see who is the better judge of the state of the industry between us, that’s all.

Just for fun.

Like picking a winner at the beginning of the football season.