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Gazillion Confirms Layoffs At Romero-Led MMO Dev Slipgate Ironworks
by Chris Remo [PC, Console/PC]
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October 16, 2009
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Slipgate Ironworks, the California-based MMO development studio founded by id Software veteran John Romero, has undergone a round of layoffs and a change in project focus, as directed by parent company Gazillion Entertainment.
Gazillion confirmed reports of the layoffs to Gamasutra, although the company declined to specify the number of jobs lost. The design and scope of the game has been accordingly pared down.
"As part of our focus on reaching the widest possible audiences with breakthrough MMO entertainment, we decided to change the format of our project at Slipgate Ironworks to better achieve this aim," a Gazillion representative told Gamasutra in a statement.
"The game we'll launch will build on the efforts to date with a smaller core team and the other Slipgate staff are already in discussions around the many open positions across our slate of projects."
Romero, a prominent member of the game development community since his involvement with Doom, established the studio in 2005 soon after leaving Midway. Although certain technical details about Slipgate's planned MMO, such as its usage of the BigWorld development suite, were made public, gameplay details have not been discussed.
Earlier this year, Gazillion revealed its late 2008 acquisition of Slipgate. The MMO-oriented publisher also owns Colorado-based NetDevil (Jumpgate Evolution, Lego Universe) and California-based Gargantuan.
Though weblog Kotaku suggested that around 50 staffers might have been let go, Gazillion's statement today offered no concrete explanation of the company's scope change or plans. But the publisher did suggest it will begin releasing titles next year: "2010 will be an exciting year for Gazillion as we bring several groundbreaking MMOs to markets worldwide," the statement reads.
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http://iwritethings.net/portfolio/graphics/hammers.png
But dunno, maybe it was a stock awnser to people bugging him :P
I agree with you!
In fact I think that Mr. Gomez agree too, he knows that both me and Romero are awesome...
Altough obviously Romero is more awesome than me.
You are so nice, you insult 4 people in a single message! Great! You must be a lovely boss (you are a producer, aren't you?).
IF for some reason I exchanged e-mail with Roberta or people like Richard Garriot, or Chris Crawford, I would think that indeed it is awesome, maybe they don't have recent groundbreaking games, but what they did in the past is already great.
And I have no idea who David Perry is beside that he has several sites and wrote a book (that I want btw...).
I look forward in working with you Mr. Gomez, the guy that made a game that is more awesome and popular than Wolf3D and Doom, since he thinks that he is above Romero. Or he can write better than Roberta. Maybe he made a good book too?
You know, indeed I don't made anything yet, but I think that you have no right to level me with Romero and Roberta, they did great stuff that you didn't (neither me).
And finally, I make my words the words from Mark on the penultimate comment on this thread: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25302
I wish the best for Romero, and would love to see him release something special.
I wish people would think before posting hurtful rhetoric.
And, Gomez. Oh Mr. Crumpett, how I wish you would unveil yourself. It would be nice to have more "real" people here who share similar experience/insights.
Back to topic; Very sorry to hear about the layoff. Affects me too; now i have even more talented people competing with me for a job! :-O But seriously, that layoff is unexpected since i have seen many job descriptions pop up - them hiring regularly --> (been looking for SCRUM Master Producer/PM forever).
One sad thing is everyone is excited to see what is being cooked up. The idea of scaling back, or changing focus (free to play perhapes?!?) is a bummer. I'd like to see what his original ideas were swimming in John's head. Also, he was backed by some big venture capital, so even that seems to have its limits.
He did lots of other games that are unknown to us, like serious, advergames, and that sorts of stuff... I believe that he grab the money from there and use it to make the more marketed AAA games.