For all those people here whining about "Evil EA", get real! The fact is that Pandemic Studios failed to produce a successful game or a drop of profit for YEARS. Years, guys, years.
Face it: Pandemic didn't produce a single successful next-gen title in the 4 plus years since the Xbox 360 arrived. The management at Pandemic openly stated that they were aiming to make games with a Metacritic rating of 85 or higher. So what was the company's track record?
** Mercenaries II arrived after almost 2 years of delays, and got a 72 metacritic score.
** Lord of the Rings: Conquest shipped roughly on time but got a little higher than a 50 score! That's horrendously low.
** The Batman game was cancelled after failing to thrive for more than a year.
** Two other games the studio spent months developing were cancelled.
** And Sabateur is more than *2 years* late, with a huge team bleeding vast amounts of cash every month. And you know what? It's not an A+ title, despite what some fawning previews might suggest. It's a solid but largely unremarkable game.
It's easy to blame the big bad faceless corporation (EA). It's harder to admit that the nice, passionate developers at Pandemic (some of who you met personally and hung out with) made a lot of bad decisions, year after year.
And yet that's the honest truth. And you know what else? After all the money Pandemic spent on its next-gen titles (all of which were started and floundering well before EA bought the studio), Pandemic would have been out-of-business far earlier had it NOT been for EA buying them. EA gave Pandemic more time and more money to produce a hit, and it just didn't happen.
If you can blame EA for anything, it's the company's CEO for buying Pandemic/Bioware at such a steep price. EA severely misjudged Pandemic's value, and blew a huge wad of shareholder money on such a rich deal. That's something you should all be angry about...
"The Saboteur is what they should have been working on. LotR Conquest was the result of EA saying "make this game now"
Brian, just so you know, Pandemic was completely independent when it started working on LOTR: Conquest. In fact, it was more than a year away from being acquired by EA when it aggressively courted EA to do a LOTR game inspired.
Actually, both EA and Pandemic wanted to do the deal quite badly. Pandemic would bring the Battlefront-style gameplay and EA would bring the massive marketing and distribution muscle. Sounded good on paper, but doing Battlefront with swords and melee isn't quite the same thing as doing a shooting game in the Star Wars universe. Also, the game had to be done in almost 1.5 years (initially) due to the fact that EA's LOTR license would expire at that point, which meant a development schedule with no room for errors....
I respect what you are saying, but lets examine the LOTR failure. If EA has all this raw marketing clout why where they not able to secure an extension on their licence for the LOTR franchise so their developer could have time to produce a completed product for their customers? Perhaps EA did not deliver what they promised there? I'm just saying, from the outside looking in there are three sides to every story, what he said, she said, and the truth.
Cliff, extending the licensing deal on one of the most recognizable franchises in the world is not an easy or inexpensive matter. It's not like renewing a loan on a library book, or paying a late fee at Blockbuster. Licenses are secured for YEARS at a time, with multiple products in mind, at great expense. Trying to renegotiate that kind of deal in the 11th hour for the sake of only one game is not practical. Having said that, EA *did* manage to get LOTR: Conquest a few months more development time, and the game was *still* far below everyone's expectations.
The fact is, EA gave Pandemic tons of support and freedom to make the games Pandemic wanted to make. So did Elevation Partners, which funded the Pandemic/Bioware venture for almost 2 years before EA purchased Pandemic. If you knew anyone at Pandemic, you wouldn't hear complaints about their publisher (EA) "meddling" with the games. That simply didn't happen.
Which is why it's ridiculous to see fans all over the internet dump on EA for Pandemic's failings. It's ridiculous because that kind of reaction is largely fueled by a child-like and ignorant fantasy where the fun-loving, creative developers (the good guys) are always oppressed by the faceless, bean-counting corporate suits (the bad guys).
When you guys are ready to put aside the fairy tale, here's what you're left with:
* Pandemic didn't ship a hit game for years, but the budgets and cost-overruns for its games required at least *one* of them to be a hit.
* A massive recession hit the world, and tons of people stopped buying games, even good ones.
* Management at EA had to make sure that EA survives, and the best way to do that is to scale back expenditures and put their resources where they think the winners are.
For full disclosure, are you someone with EA? I'm just trying to understand your perspective?
Listen, what you are saying is not without merit. As I am fond of saying, I'm the son of a Steelworker, trust me, I know the harsh realities of business all too well. I'm just saying when Pandemic made the deal to sell to EA, they probably had some expectations up front as to how that agreement was going to lend them certain resources and perhaps EA did, or didn't come through on that? I don't know with any certainty. What I do know is that by giving up its independence Pandemic did not entirely guide its own fate, and perhaps there is a lesson to be learned here?
Yeah a little disclosure on your part would probably go a long way towards clearing the perception that you're just an EA shill trying to put out a fire or something
I'm not an EA employee, I'm a Pandemic employee (former, obviously) who had good access to the people guiding the company. And have good respect for them....but not enough to let EA take the blame for Pandemic's demise.
Cliff: You assume that an independent developer guides its own fate, when in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Most independents are highly dependent on the publishers that fund and distribute their games. A publisher could easily make a strategic change that leaves a developer with a big staff and no money coming in....and even pick off the developer's best employees as they abandon ship.
Don't think that scenario didn't occur to the founders of Pandemic! It was to *escape* the uncertainties of being an independent developer that first led Pandemic to contribute itself into a bigger developer....ie, Bioware/Pandemic, (VG Holdings), which was funded by Elevation Partners.
The plan was to become a "super developer" that could actually fund its own titles from start to finish (like Pixar does...or did until Disney acquired them). As a super-developer, Pandemic/Bioware would not be dependent on publishers for milestone checks and other meddling, but on its own deep pockets. It could develop high quality titles on its own, and then shop the titles around to multiple publishers, taking the best possible bid. The publishers would basically take a cut as distributors, but not nearly the lion's share of profits that publishers typically take (since Bioware/Pandemic assumed all the risk of funding the games). Bioware/Pandemic would also own their IP.
Sounded like a good and reasonable plan, and it was one that, again, Pixar practiced well. Unfortunately, a ton of money was spent developing those Pandemic games, and when they went to shop them around, they didn't get a lot of great, compelling bids (there are fewer and fewer publishers out there capable of giving a super-developer the terms they want, and publishers naturally didn't want to create a monster by helping Pandemic/Bioware become a name brand that could set every term and call every shot in the future).
Suddenly, fronting all the money for some very expensive games doesn't look quite as safe a strategy as it once did. And on multiple occasions, EA seemed to be able to provide Pandemic what it most wanted--it made the best offer to distribute Mercs II, it had the license that would let Pandemic make a Lord of the Rings action game (which Bioware/Pandemic would fund itself); it had the clout to get the license to do a Batman game, which Pandemic was very excited to do. Finally, out of all the other publishers, EA also seemed the most interested in Pandemic's Saboteur (there may not have been any credible bidders beyond EA..).
It didn't take long for Bioware/Pandemic and Elevation Partners to realize that joining EA, in fact, might be the best thing to preserve Pandemic's ability to call its own shots. Otherwise, there was a very real possibility of many of those games not getting good distribution, and never recouping their investment. Had that happened, Pandemic's "independence" would only be a fast-track to bankruptcy.
Anyway, you should rid yourself of the notion that being independent means you guide your fate. It doesn't. That's why so many developers *do* opt to be acquired by bigger publishers who have a broad enough product line to weather the ups and downs of one or two game's financial failure.
The problem is: a good developer isn't always good. They may make a hit or a couple of hits (like Pandemic did), but then turn out some big, disappointing failures. That's happened with a lot of beloved developers....through no fault of their acquiring publisher. When a string of failures takes place, a publisher can have no choice but to drop the axe.
For those really interested in why Pandemic didn't make it, you might ask why Mercs II and Saboteur took almost *twice* as long to develop as expected (requiring upwards of $30-$40 million to develop). Is that not an interesting question? You might ask about the engineering nightmares that went on for months on Mercs II, and how a creative director ended up running the engineering team for a while. You might ask about how Pandemic tried to develop a universal world-building tool and engine to base all its games on, and how it just didn't work well for anybody, and each game ended up doing their own thing. Also, factor in the distractions to upper management of 1) contributing themselves to BioWare/Pandemic, and then 2) merging with EA, all within a couple of short years. Ask about some weird power struggles between team leads, which upper management left un-checked because they were busy doing other things.
These and other issues all contributed to Pandemic's games simply not making it through development, or not being good enough to sell well, and all of these issues were independent of EA.
I hope I don't sound down on Pandemic. I'm not. It had great people, was filled with game-lovers, and really strived to make great, big budget A+ games (there really was a passion for that). And the founders really did think outside the box when it came to their Bioware/Pandemic strategy of becoming a super developer.
It's just that great games are actually very hard to make (especially original ones), even for pros. When you come across a great game, you should worship it, because it really is a near-miracle...
I remember the first time i played mecernies 1
you would have to scrap me off the couch to get me to stop playing it
mecernies 2 was an okay addition
needed some more work but whenever EA has a finacial budget that is mostly puting its weight on Pandemic what can you do except release the darn game and hope for the best
i still play mecernies 2 and i will be a lover for Pandemic Studios for a long time
And to you EA mecernies was a great series and to end it with ur bull **** was your own ******* fault
i will keep my ps3 in the back closet with both mecernies 1 and mecernies 2
until you understand your fing fault and recontinue mecernies farewell and good redence EA
Man, I am still pissed they closed Pandemic studios. EA got my vote for worst company in America this year because of that (I realize that is somewhat against the rules but whatever)
Mercs 1 was amazing. Mercs 2 needed to be better. The Saboteur is one of my favourite games of all time.
I really hope that studio gets back together one day.
Comments
Face it: Pandemic didn't produce a single successful next-gen title in the 4 plus years since the Xbox 360 arrived. The management at Pandemic openly stated that they were aiming to make games with a Metacritic rating of 85 or higher. So what was the company's track record?
** Mercenaries II arrived after almost 2 years of delays, and got a 72 metacritic score.
** Lord of the Rings: Conquest shipped roughly on time but got a little higher than a 50 score! That's horrendously low.
** The Batman game was cancelled after failing to thrive for more than a year.
** Two other games the studio spent months developing were cancelled.
** And Sabateur is more than *2 years* late, with a huge team bleeding vast amounts of cash every month. And you know what? It's not an A+ title, despite what some fawning previews might suggest. It's a solid but largely unremarkable game.
It's easy to blame the big bad faceless corporation (EA). It's harder to admit that the nice, passionate developers at Pandemic (some of who you met personally and hung out with) made a lot of bad decisions, year after year.
And yet that's the honest truth. And you know what else? After all the money Pandemic spent on its next-gen titles (all of which were started and floundering well before EA bought the studio), Pandemic would have been out-of-business far earlier had it NOT been for EA buying them. EA gave Pandemic more time and more money to produce a hit, and it just didn't happen.
If you can blame EA for anything, it's the company's CEO for buying Pandemic/Bioware at such a steep price. EA severely misjudged Pandemic's value, and blew a huge wad of shareholder money on such a rich deal. That's something you should all be angry about...
Brian, just so you know, Pandemic was completely independent when it started working on LOTR: Conquest. In fact, it was more than a year away from being acquired by EA when it aggressively courted EA to do a LOTR game inspired.
Actually, both EA and Pandemic wanted to do the deal quite badly. Pandemic would bring the Battlefront-style gameplay and EA would bring the massive marketing and distribution muscle. Sounded good on paper, but doing Battlefront with swords and melee isn't quite the same thing as doing a shooting game in the Star Wars universe. Also, the game had to be done in almost 1.5 years (initially) due to the fact that EA's LOTR license would expire at that point, which meant a development schedule with no room for errors....
I respect what you are saying, but lets examine the LOTR failure. If EA has all this raw marketing clout why where they not able to secure an extension on their licence for the LOTR franchise so their developer could have time to produce a completed product for their customers? Perhaps EA did not deliver what they promised there? I'm just saying, from the outside looking in there are three sides to every story, what he said, she said, and the truth.
The fact is, EA gave Pandemic tons of support and freedom to make the games Pandemic wanted to make. So did Elevation Partners, which funded the Pandemic/Bioware venture for almost 2 years before EA purchased Pandemic. If you knew anyone at Pandemic, you wouldn't hear complaints about their publisher (EA) "meddling" with the games. That simply didn't happen.
Which is why it's ridiculous to see fans all over the internet dump on EA for Pandemic's failings. It's ridiculous because that kind of reaction is largely fueled by a child-like and ignorant fantasy where the fun-loving, creative developers (the good guys) are always oppressed by the faceless, bean-counting corporate suits (the bad guys).
When you guys are ready to put aside the fairy tale, here's what you're left with:
* Pandemic didn't ship a hit game for years, but the budgets and cost-overruns for its games required at least *one* of them to be a hit.
* A massive recession hit the world, and tons of people stopped buying games, even good ones.
* Management at EA had to make sure that EA survives, and the best way to do that is to scale back expenditures and put their resources where they think the winners are.
It's really that simple...
Also, you know someone is uninformed when they say this:
To which those of us who <i>do</i> know people in Pandemic say: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
For full disclosure, are you someone with EA? I'm just trying to understand your perspective?
Listen, what you are saying is not without merit. As I am fond of saying, I'm the son of a Steelworker, trust me, I know the harsh realities of business all too well. I'm just saying when Pandemic made the deal to sell to EA, they probably had some expectations up front as to how that agreement was going to lend them certain resources and perhaps EA did, or didn't come through on that? I don't know with any certainty. What I do know is that by giving up its independence Pandemic did not entirely guide its own fate, and perhaps there is a lesson to be learned here?
Cliff: You assume that an independent developer guides its own fate, when in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Most independents are highly dependent on the publishers that fund and distribute their games. A publisher could easily make a strategic change that leaves a developer with a big staff and no money coming in....and even pick off the developer's best employees as they abandon ship.
Don't think that scenario didn't occur to the founders of Pandemic! It was to *escape* the uncertainties of being an independent developer that first led Pandemic to contribute itself into a bigger developer....ie, Bioware/Pandemic, (VG Holdings), which was funded by Elevation Partners.
The plan was to become a "super developer" that could actually fund its own titles from start to finish (like Pixar does...or did until Disney acquired them). As a super-developer, Pandemic/Bioware would not be dependent on publishers for milestone checks and other meddling, but on its own deep pockets. It could develop high quality titles on its own, and then shop the titles around to multiple publishers, taking the best possible bid. The publishers would basically take a cut as distributors, but not nearly the lion's share of profits that publishers typically take (since Bioware/Pandemic assumed all the risk of funding the games). Bioware/Pandemic would also own their IP.
Sounded like a good and reasonable plan, and it was one that, again, Pixar practiced well. Unfortunately, a ton of money was spent developing those Pandemic games, and when they went to shop them around, they didn't get a lot of great, compelling bids (there are fewer and fewer publishers out there capable of giving a super-developer the terms they want, and publishers naturally didn't want to create a monster by helping Pandemic/Bioware become a name brand that could set every term and call every shot in the future).
Suddenly, fronting all the money for some very expensive games doesn't look quite as safe a strategy as it once did. And on multiple occasions, EA seemed to be able to provide Pandemic what it most wanted--it made the best offer to distribute Mercs II, it had the license that would let Pandemic make a Lord of the Rings action game (which Bioware/Pandemic would fund itself); it had the clout to get the license to do a Batman game, which Pandemic was very excited to do. Finally, out of all the other publishers, EA also seemed the most interested in Pandemic's Saboteur (there may not have been any credible bidders beyond EA..).
It didn't take long for Bioware/Pandemic and Elevation Partners to realize that joining EA, in fact, might be the best thing to preserve Pandemic's ability to call its own shots. Otherwise, there was a very real possibility of many of those games not getting good distribution, and never recouping their investment. Had that happened, Pandemic's "independence" would only be a fast-track to bankruptcy.
Anyway, you should rid yourself of the notion that being independent means you guide your fate. It doesn't. That's why so many developers *do* opt to be acquired by bigger publishers who have a broad enough product line to weather the ups and downs of one or two game's financial failure.
The problem is: a good developer isn't always good. They may make a hit or a couple of hits (like Pandemic did), but then turn out some big, disappointing failures. That's happened with a lot of beloved developers....through no fault of their acquiring publisher. When a string of failures takes place, a publisher can have no choice but to drop the axe.
For those really interested in why Pandemic didn't make it, you might ask why Mercs II and Saboteur took almost *twice* as long to develop as expected (requiring upwards of $30-$40 million to develop). Is that not an interesting question? You might ask about the engineering nightmares that went on for months on Mercs II, and how a creative director ended up running the engineering team for a while. You might ask about how Pandemic tried to develop a universal world-building tool and engine to base all its games on, and how it just didn't work well for anybody, and each game ended up doing their own thing. Also, factor in the distractions to upper management of 1) contributing themselves to BioWare/Pandemic, and then 2) merging with EA, all within a couple of short years. Ask about some weird power struggles between team leads, which upper management left un-checked because they were busy doing other things.
These and other issues all contributed to Pandemic's games simply not making it through development, or not being good enough to sell well, and all of these issues were independent of EA.
I hope I don't sound down on Pandemic. I'm not. It had great people, was filled with game-lovers, and really strived to make great, big budget A+ games (there really was a passion for that). And the founders really did think outside the box when it came to their Bioware/Pandemic strategy of becoming a super developer.
It's just that great games are actually very hard to make (especially original ones), even for pros. When you come across a great game, you should worship it, because it really is a near-miracle...
Thank you for the insightful reply.
you would have to scrap me off the couch to get me to stop playing it
mecernies 2 was an okay addition
needed some more work but whenever EA has a finacial budget that is mostly puting its weight on Pandemic what can you do except release the darn game and hope for the best
i still play mecernies 2 and i will be a lover for Pandemic Studios for a long time
And to you EA mecernies was a great series and to end it with ur bull **** was your own ******* fault
i will keep my ps3 in the back closet with both mecernies 1 and mecernies 2
until you understand your fing fault and recontinue mecernies farewell and good redence EA
Mercs 1 was amazing.
Mercs 2 needed to be better.
The Saboteur is one of my favourite games of all time.
I really hope that studio gets back together one day.
Yipes!
Haha, so good.
I feel like prime is the new insanity wolf right now
I can't take credit for the bompz, it was shown to me
Gee, thanks Brian.