Irrational Games shuts down

    So sad for Irrational people, Bioshock was a slap in my face for months : Smoothest gameplay ever for a FPS and awesome Art direction !


    With the succes of the team and its talent, I'm sure people will find new jobs or create smallers studios !

    Yeah didn't really see it coming either but if you add up the numbers it makes sense I guess Very sad! I haven't really played a lot of their games but I still have Bioshock 1&2 in my steam library and now it'll be a blast from the past when I get down to it :/ Weird shit.


    Hope y'all find a place but that's a lot of employees that are suddenly out of work

    Well to be honest, it might not be a bad thing in the long run? Don't get me wrong, it sucks for everybody affected, it really does. But I think I get it. I obviously don't know the whole story and I bet there's more to it than what has transpired so far but I can understand his position. When the studio you created turns into a bloated corporation far from its origin, when the company culture changes, when you don't have as much control as you would like to (publisher, tbig team, etc...), when everything takes longer than you want to (because too many people, too many decision makers) I can understand that you might want to start afresh. Now I guess he could have just left and the studio could have carried on, but Irrational probably would never be the same thing. I personally saw that happening at Starbreeze which went through pretty much the same thing. When the creative guys (now at Machinegames) left it definitely left a void that was hard to fill, the image of the company, the culture, the games, everything becomes different when the vision goes. I'm not saying the name should have died and I'm sure the Overkill guys will continue to do a great job but there'll never be a 'real' Starbreeze game ever again. Irrational will always be remembered for the games they made and maybe that's a good thing? Better than seeing them turning into Rare?(again, I'm not trying to justify his actions, and it's crazy to see so many talented people on the market, just saying it might make some kind of sense)

     

    Quote from dkm

    I personally saw that happening at Starbreeze which went through pretty much the same thing. 

    When the creative guys (now at Machinegames) left it definitely left a void that was hard to fill, the image of the company, the culture, the games, everything becomes different when the vision goes. I'm not saying the name should have died and I'm sure the Overkill guys will continue to do a great job but there'll never be a 'real' Starbreeze game ever again. 

     

    Irrational will always be remembered for the games they made and maybe that's a good thing? Better than seeing them turning into Rare?

    (again, I'm not trying to justify his actions, and it's crazy to see so many talented people on the market, just saying it might make some kind of sense)

    You are more than correct on what you said and i'd add id software to that list too. They are never going to be as popular as they were in the past with the people they had onboard.Rare was close to my heart since a kid and i was sad to see them get bought by Microsoft at the time. However, i later learned that the most talented people, nearly all of them, had already left Rare before the sale.

    I think Irrational Games has the similiar story behind it. We just have to wait for it to come out.

    I think most people makes this mistake. Its very easy when you're small to think that if you just hire some more people you'll get games done faster. But it is up to us to learn from these mistakes now and always argue against mass hirings. Especially when you finally land a publisher and gets some million dollars to create the game. Just try to hire slowly, and if you have to hire someone fresh out of school then only one at a time.

    The mass firing/hiring is happening again and again and it only brings pain and misery to the people you eventually end up firing. I don't think it is possible to name a single big studio anymore that hasn't fired at least a dozen people once or twice. Growing too quickly too fast is just bad practice. Hell, even Blizzard had to let loads of people go at some point because their WoW team just got too bloated (mostly QA/localization/moderators etc). And I bet that the old timer devs at Blizzard are the ones behind Hearthstone. They probably ended up needing to create their own little team within blizzard in order to create Hearthstone. I mean, they didn't even bother involving the engine team and went with Unity3d.

    Quote from Skjalg

    I think this is a change that we are bound to see happen more in the industry as we shift from large 100+ sized teams into more manageable 15-30 sized teams. There's three reasons why I think this.

    A lot of companies strip down to a core team once a game is out. It's why I've not seen another full-time position since I first entered the industry 7 years ago - everyone is on contracts now so you can get rid of them at the end of the project and avoid scary headlines.

    Also, here's something fun: https://twitter.com/visteps/status/436100945668096000


    Edit: Clarity

    Perhaps some of the people from the Core that worked there (Vivi that I known of) could post what kind of job they're looking for? We can then all keep an eye out for them. Heck, we could even help with looking.

    We were three, all laid off in the first round of economic layoffs that happened in September last year. Patrick_H is no longer on Mapcore I think, vivi, and myself. All level designers.

    As for talking about what happened, we can't so don't ask

    Quote from Furyo

    We were three, all laid off in the first round of economic layoffs that happened in September last year. Patrick_H is no longer on Mapcore I think, vivi, and myself. All level designers.

    As for talking about what happened, we can't so don't ask


    Any particular country in mind? I'll start looking for you guys.

    I've been interviewing a lot lately, so I'm pretty much set for the time being. Get in touch with vivi over PM to see if he needs some help.

    If you're looking to help outside of Mapcore, please go on Twitter and use the hashtag #IrrationalJobs to see all of the great talent recently let go

    Quote from Taylor

    A lot of companies strip down to a core team once a game is out. It's why I've not seen another full-time position since I first entered the industry 7 years ago - everyone is on contracts now so you can get rid of them at the end of the project and avoid scary headlines.

    Also, here's something fun: https://twitter.com/visteps/status/436100945668096000


    Edit: Clarity

    Yeah I know, and I don't think its healthy for the company, workers or the industry as a whole that big studios keep doing this.


    We need to be smarter and hire less or scope down projects if the current team cant handle the work load.

    If you manage to lie your way into a big contract that you cant fulfill with your current work force then you've literally fucked a bunch of employees over in the future because at some point you need to cut back because you probably wont land another big project at the end of your current one. And neither does your work force (probably) want to work on yet another big game that was a grind to finish.

    That twitter account doesn't belong to anyone who worked at Irrational Games. It's a kid trying to troll everyone. For the sake of less exposure you might want to remove it from your comments.

    Quote from generalvivi

    That twitter account doesn't belong to anyone who worked at Irrational Games. It's a kid trying to troll everyone. For the sake of less exposure you might want to remove it from your comments.

    Yeah, I know. I think it's clear from the link it's not someone from Irrational.

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