I think working for an “independent” game development studio like this is just always risky. They seem to operate on a project-to-project basis, where a publisher gives them some money to make a game, but they don’t have huge amounts of extra cash sloshing around. So if they can’t line up a new game while they are working on one game, that’s it. I don’t know how big Iron Lore was, but given that modern AAA games seem to take over 100 people, their burn rate must have been crazy.
Indeed.
It should be said, as well, that PC-only game developers had the perfect transition platform to learn the ropes of console development: the Xbox 1.
Not worthless, but you have to unlearn a lot of assumptions and habits if you didn’t grow up in the 8-bit world or on, say, the Amiga.
But was the Xbox 1 at all friendly to small, independent developers? (Another honest question.) My impression from the outside has always been that if you’re not a major, major developer backed by a major publisher, then you won’t get access to console development environments, period. Is that a correct impression or is it just a myth?
Again from the outside, as a software (but not game*) developer, the console game development world has always seemed extremely insular. If you’re not already in the club, you’re not getting in, because the people in the club believe (rightly or wrongly–I truly have no idea) that what they do is so specialized and different that skill transfer from other schools of development is basically zero. It’s always seemed to me that this kind of thinking more than anything else leads to the homogenization of games we find ourselves complaining about on platforms like the Xbox. That is pure speculation on my part, though, which is why I’m asking these questions.
*It’s probably worth noting that this is all genuine curiosity on my part and not any bitterness at not being a game developer, myself. I like my well-paid job with regular hours that lets me live in a region with a reasonable cost of living.
The bar to getting access to console hardware has traditionally been “prove you are going to be able to publish the game.” This means that either the small publisher demonstrates that it has the financial means to go through the process as well as the technical chops, or that the developer has a contract with a publisher who has those means.
You’d think that, but it’s about limiting risk when deciding where to make your $10 million bet.
Let’s assume it’s your job to make the decision what to fund. Do you go with an experienced PC team that might be able to pull of a console game, or do you go with an experienced console developer who you know has done multiple console games? One is safe; the other… not so much. It also may cost more if they have tools and tech designed for PC; porting it to a console isn’t cheap.
And if the game fails and you went with the PC team, guess what they’ll probably blame? “Didn’t have console experience.”
That’s probably true to some extent, though some specific areas of programming may be useful regardless of your platform experience. (AI, tools, things like that.) I’m not a programmer, so I’m just guessing.
But publishers don’t really look at individuals when making these decisions; they look at the company and its history. When pitching a console game, a long history of strong selling PC games may not be enough to overcome the “they’re a PC-only shop” reputation.
That has been the case for much of the console development timeline, but there have been exceptions. If you were a commercial PC game developer with any kind of track record, it was not difficult to get Xbox developer status with Microsoft. They were interested in growing the platform. Amusingly, they also “inadvertently” made it cheap to develop on as the test boxes could be used as dev kits, you really only had to have one person at most with the expensive box.
Now, that isn’t to say it was easy to get a development contract, but I would still maintain that the Xbox 1 was about as good a transition path into the console world as PC-centric developers could have ever hoped for: x86 architecture, Win32 kernel, DirectX based APIs and Visual Studio as the development environment.
IronLore’s co-founder talks a bit about the closure at GameBanshee. Backs up everyone’s theory that they just got caught between titles and had no funds to continue to operate. Boo that.
The fact that there will never be another TQ bothers the hell out of me. Or might it be made by another developers? In any case, I think I’ll play today as an homage to a great developer that made a fantastic game.
I think Mike Fitch’s post about piracy really deals with this. He acknowledges that all pirates won’t buy the game, but if only 10% of the people who pirate a game would’ve actually bought it, then that might be the difference between a studio living or dying.
So suppose the bean counters at THQ say, “If TQ sells X copies, then it’s worth the investment to fund TQII.”
Now suppose that TQ didn’t sell X number of copies but it was pretty close. So close, in fact, that if only 10% (or maybe 5%) of the rough estimate of how many copies were pirated would’ve put it over the magic number and THQ would’ve funded TQII, then the sheer frustration over watching Iron Lore go down because of such a small shortfall would’ve prompted Mike to post his rant.
Because the question nagging me through that whole thread was asked, but never answered. Why didn’t THQ save Iron Lore and fund their next project? Mike works for THQ and obviously thought Iron Lore was a great studio, so it was someone higher than Mike that made the decision not to fund the next project. Which would be why Mike didn’t answer the question.
Note that this is all speculation on my part, but it would seem to fit.
Did Iron Lore announce a new project after TQ? I wonder if sales of TQ improved abit after the gold edition was released and the awards(if I remember correctly) they won from last year.
This is what they did to tide themselves over for a bit:
Iron Lore Entertainment is working with Relic Entertainment on the next expansion pack to Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War. Soulstorm will add two new races including the Dark Eldar, as well as new units for each existing race.
Wasn’t enough.
I’m playing TQ again right now. It did a lot of things right, some not. It’s unfortunate they won’t get a chance to improve on it.
I understand Fitch’s frustration and feel like that thread unfortunately got derailed. I hope that the fallout from that thread doesn’t keep him from posting. It’s nice to get his perspective to round out the discussions.