News is out that Electronic Arts is shutting down Pandemic Studios, half of a $775 million purchase that also included BioWare, putting up to 200 people out of a job.
Not to detract from what the people out of a job are going through now, but is it any wonder what happened to Mythic and WAR, knowing how EA treats its studios and developers? Origin Systems, creators of the incredible Wing Commander series, was acquired by EA and then shut down in 2004. Chris Roberts was the man that first got me heavily interested in computer gaming (and lit the spark that got me into programming)… EA’s “touch of death” killed them off not long after Wing Commander 4 (the only one in the series produced under their influence). Westwood Studios, creators of the venerable Command & Conquer series, was gutted in 2003. At least EA allowed any willing employees to assimilate under EA Los Angeles. Now, another studio is going under and I can’t help but think Mythic is next on the chopping block. They’re losing 40% of their staff, up to 80% of which is content developers.
I knew it was a bad sign when Mythic announced the EA buyout, as did many others. I knew it was a bad sign when shortly after, Sanya Thomas left the studio. More recently, Mark Jacobs left EA after the BioWare acquisition. I can’t help but feel that Mythic, as well as Warhammer and DAoC, would have been much better off if they simply stayed independent and true to their vision. It may have meant a later release of WAR, but given how things have turned out under the (mis)management of EA, it certainly could have meant a much better game as well.
Here’s hoping BioWare doesn’t come under the death-ray gaze of EA’s (mis)management in the future. Dragon Age may have been a huge hit, but it seems that as soon as a studio has a mediocre release the chopping block comes out.
~MikeR.
Posted on 20 November '09 by mike, under Computers, Sigh..., Video Games. No Comments.
Sometimes I have a lot of faith in humanity, and what we are capable of accomplishing when “reaching for the stars” so to speak.
Then there are times when I shake my head sadly and wonder how society has gotten so far with so many stupid people around. Apparently there are actually people out there who believe that the movie 2012 is real and are concerned for their future. An astrobiologist at NASA has even gone so far as to post a FAQ on his NASA blog answering questions and assuaging fears from the unwashed masses. What has me most concerned is that people are questioning whether they should off themselves and others prior to the year 2012 so that they won’t suffer.
My god, the stupidity here is almost corporeal.
~MikeR.
Posted on 17 November '09 by mike, under Sigh.... No Comments.
Q: What do you do when you have a cluster of servers, and one node becomes a homocidal maniac, feeding the other nodes a poison pill?
A: You kill it completely, nursing its victims back to health.
Yesterday, three of our four main cluster nodes continually rebooted themselves at random intervals. It took me a while to find the problem, but apparently when a cluster node receives a garbled cluster packet that it doesn’t like it will choose to kill itself for the good of the cluster. Too bad it doesn’t necessarily mean that the services provided remain available. Fortunately I was able to get the cluster back up and running properly by noon.
I like it when work is a learning experience; it keeps me from being bored. Plus, I enjoy visions of a server maniacally and brutally destroying its fellow servers in a rack.
~MikeR.
Posted on 6 October '09 by mike, under Job, Sigh.... No Comments.
No, I don’t mean the remake of Quest for Glory II (or the original).
Yesterday I rolled in to work to something that I didn’t want to see; our server monitor was showing one of our server sites with a downed email server.
Great
I SSH in to the server to try to fire up the mail server. Failed. Not much to go with in the logs, so I figure rather than running the init script to start it, I’ll work with the executable itself. It at least gives me some more information; it can’t locate one of its .db files on the MAIL volume. Ok, no big deal, I’ll go poking around in the volume and see what’s up. Next discovery, no MAIL volume. In fact, no volumes at all.
WTF
Checking the disk partitioner shows that the EVMS container no longer exists. Long story short, I spend half the day rebuilding a broken partition table on a live server then recovering the lost data from backup tape. I learned a lot, and can honestly say I feel a fair bit more comfortable administering these SLES servers out in the field.
On a bit of a tangent, I don’t think I’ll be getting Bloodbowl. It seems that despite an earlier projected September release date for the XBox 360 version, it’s not coming anytime soon. If the October release date is more on target we’ll have other things to spend money on at the time, namely stuff for the house such as wall decorations and other neat things (Lisa took me to Home Sense this week and I really like some of the stuff they have). Besides, Dragon Age: Origins is coming out in November and it’ll be hard enough juggling my games with that. Oh yes, I do intend on getting it and I think Lisa is looking forward to it as well.
Speaking of the house, the basement is poured, dried, and level so I believe things should really move along. All of the trim around the doors and windows are up and stained, and the baseboards were laying in the kitchen when I was there on Monday. The sales agent with Qualico has a meeting with the site supervisor tomorrow and should be letting us know a firmer possession date either Friday or this coming Monday. I really hope it’s good news, such as “You can move in 3 weeks from now”!
Finally, Lisa and I have moved on from Warhammer. Too many people are leaving (Venustus and Beargrim from Royal Dwarven Marines are heading to Champions Online and Fallen Earth respectively, and I haven’t seen many guild mates in CoF on lately at all) and the Tier 4 experience seems to mostly be getting run over constantly since there are so little Order players out and about willing to actually defend anything. It’s really just getting frustrating seeing less and less people out and about, and reading blogs that used to be very much about WAR either coming to and end, or moving on to other things because the bloggers are done with the game. It’s sad because Mythic had such potential with WAR, having learned from mistakes made in DAoC and it just seems they blew it with any changes and fixes coming out being viewed as too little too late by the ex-playerbase. We’re now playing EverQuest 2 again, so you can find us as Sslizk and Kovanya on the Antonia Bayle server. I recommend giving the 14 day trial a shot, Sony has really made a lot of changes to the game to make it more friendly to new and returning players alike.
~MikeR.
I spent much of the day looking forward to playing WAR with Lisa tonight. I gladly and patiently waited, while spending time with our daughter, eating dinner, and having fun in the early evening. I turned on my computer once we were ready to log in and fired up Warhammer. Since Lisa wasn’t ready to log in quite yet, I figured I would create an item article on HammerWiki for the new epic 2-handed axe I got for my Slayer from a Land of the Dead public quest. As I was looking to Lisa’s laptop at the HammerWiki Item Template, I saw my monitor go blank. My computer shut itself off.
W…T…F…
Turns out, my video card was overheating. Why? The fan decided to no longer spin. This is the exact same goddamn problem Lisa’s computer had not long ago, and we had to spend $50 to get a new aftermarket cooling fan for it (the OEM fan was going to take up to two months to replace, the aftermarket took a week). I fully intend to take this computer back to the small shop I bought it from and try to demand a video card replacement, since it’s a little ridiculous to have the same problem twice, with each computer bought from them.
Never trust the computer salesman that tells you he can give you a good deal on a slightly used video card that was only swapped out after a week because the original customer insisted on nVidia.
It’s a trap.
~MikeR.
Posted on 30 June '09 by mike, under Computers, Sigh.... 1 Comment.
