Yeah, or a QA Manager to handle, you know, bugs.
Just saw this thread. Miserable news. I love Titan Quest, and Iron Lore had a great team.
Hey, I work in Kendall. 7CC to be precise. There are TONs of advertisements on the T for programmers and the like. I have a modicum of interest solving those “programmer” questions that they put up for that airline software company (not that I’d ever work there!)
My impression is that if you know a second skill set (I have biology and some computational/statistics abilities) then the Boston area has a ton of jobs for you. I also have an acquaintance at Tilted Mill who seems to be pretty happy with the way things are going around here.
I’ll add my :( here, too, since I already had a say in the big TQ thread.
Ditto. Just want to echo this sentiment for all the devs here.
I am pretty bummed to hear this. :(
One question, though - if I buy Immortal Throne, who gets the money? Is it all THQ’s at this point still?
I noticed at Best Buy the other day that there was a Titan Quest gold edition or some such (I forget the exact name right now) that included the base game as well as the expansion. I was thinking about picking it up even though I have the original game and the expansion already.
From the note that somebody linked to, it sounds like Iron Lore will still exist as a corporate entity (licensing out some kind of middleware software I think it said), they just don’t have any developers any more.
Precisely.
Then why didn’t someone pick them up to develop console games? Clearly Titan Quest was a great game and these guys had some talent, so what really happened here? Yes, PC gaming is doomed just like it was in the previous millenium, but there’s more afoot here than just that.
I recall that Hellgate sold much better out of the, er, gate than Titan Quest. That’s understandable – I’d imagine that the average PC gamer (i.e. kids these days) would be far more interested in a cool demon shooter with a lively multiplayer community that was designed by Bill Roper, vocal and iconic Blizzard veteran, than in another straightforward Diablo clone with a focus on offline play, relatively unknown developers, and a stuffy boring setting.
Personally I loved TQ and the expansion, and I didn’t buy HGL. But that’s because I read early reviews on how unfinished HGL was, I don’t care much for the MMO aspect, and I love isometric action-RPGs and ancient mythology. But I’m pretty sure I’m very much in the minority of potential customers on all these points.
Anyway, shame to see Iron Lore closing. I’m inclined to agree with Shadari, the TQ games should have gone to consoles, perhaps even the PSP. I suspect they would have done much better there.
HGL gets a lot of negative press and I can’t say it’s undeserved but it’s still a fun game that just gets better over time. It’s skill system isn’t near as interesting as TQ, it has less convenience features, and I would rather have the interesting if static scenery than the limited HGL randomization. Yet HGL has that critical online component plus they charge the now infamous monthly fee. That cuts down on piracy even with a pirated single player version and generates extra revenue.
I fervently hope it’s enough to keep them afloat, but only time will tell. I wish even more Iron Lore was still going, and on the PC, but I would have happily taken them on any console too.
Your gear showed up. If you had really cool armor and stuff (dunno if it was an exact representation or more abstracted) your avatar looked way cool.
Terrible news. I’ll be picking up the Soulstorm DoW expansion that Iron Lore developed. Hopefully it’ll sell well so at least some royalties can find their way to the former team members.
Because there are plenty of console developers looking for work too. And unless you’ve made console games, there’s always the question whether you “get” them as a developer.
Good point, but if I’m a console publisher (and I play one on TV), I’d be thinking that the jump from Titan Quest to some console action RPG wouldn’t be too difficult.
I mean, we’re not talking about asking the guys that worked on Silent Hunter 4 to make a Live Arcade shooter or some such. ;)
That’s kind of like expecting a aircraft pilot to immediately be able to transition to a helicopter.
If I’m the Technical Director on the publisher side (which I haven’t been, although I have been from the developer side), and it’s my job to do due diligence on the developer, and they’ve been PC only with no senior technical leads that have relevant console experience? Uh, no. Now, I can’t speak as to whether or not this was an issue for Iron Lore, for all I know they had a bunch of engineers with console experience. Design is a whole different issue of course.
I have an honest question. Where do new console developers come from, then? PC experience doesn’t count. I’ll go out on a limb and assume that experience inside a managed environment like XNA Express doesn’t count. You can’t just run out and start writing console code–the platform owners won’t let you.
You need experience to get the job but you need the job to get experience, even moreso than in most industries. So how do you break the deadlock?
There’s a difference between hiring one entry guy who hasn’t programmed on consoles and funding an entire studio that hasn’t programmed on consoles. I assume that people learn to program on consoles by getting hired by a game company, and some salty old dog sits them down and says “see, boy, this here’s how we do things on the play-box.”
Sounds like the best career decision for a game programmer is to avoid PC development altogether and try joining a console shop, then. I mean, if a game as good as Titan Quest doesn’t outweigh the team’s lack of console experience, then PC-only experience is obviously completely worthless… right?