Maxis Layoffs Include Outspoken Spore Dev Chris Hecker

@-Skyline-: Voted Crecente 12': Checker was involved deeply in the procedural tech that made Spore work. He did a lot of work for the procedural creature effects, such as the animation engine that allows spore creatures of relatively arbitrary size and features walk on the earth, interact with objects, etc. Like, he built that shit. So, his contributions really were essential to Spore's development on a fundamental level. He was something like a senior engineer, designer, SW architect, but his title was indeed "Technology Fellow".

ludwigk

@Billkwando bought his tickets for Hyde's US tour: Not really. Some point after EA bought Maxis, they put together a "Sims Business Unit", which consisted of a lot of Maxis people, but operates on their own floor of the development wing at the Redwood Shores campus.

The rest of Maxis moved to Emeryville to work on Spore. The point is that the operations of the Sims has no bearing on Maxis, and vise versa.

There was also some other kind of weird subtext that "Maxis" was sort of a carryover of corporate culture that still existed at the Maxis studio, and Sims unit, but that "Maxis" itself didn't exist any more as a distinct entity, since it was considered part of the Redwood Shores campus.

ludwigk

Spore's hype train had little to do with Hecker - and Will Wright himself has explained (in more detail than the accusations probably deserved) that Hecker's contributions to the 'cute vs. science' were more about aesthetics than design changes. http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/11211.page

Hecker was also the guy mostly responsible for the amazing procedural tech that players used to build their creatures. The problem, it would seem, is that once he was done with the core game, there wasn't much of a need for core technical guys.

DoyleDadillac

@RockyRan: One doesn't blame Will for leaving. I'm sure deep down EA and Spore was the final straw.

SexeiAlexy

@Foxstar is in love with Kotaku's two Brians.:

everyone knows the wii is shit, this man just had the balls to say it.

eatsleepdie

@Taggart6
YES! Once word came down the pipes about the DRM --- I was like, no thank you.

@MasterOmega:
Yes, totally agree. Example: "Sucker Punch Games". 50 people, Infamous & Sly Cooper -- enough said.

@Yetanotheruninspiredscreename: nice job leaving out all the quotes from Will Wright himself stating the complete opposite

Will Wright Wrote:

"I see that many of the criticisms about the depth of play in Spore seem to be personally directed to Chris Hecker in particular. This is both ironic and incorrect. Chris was the leading talent behind the voodoo math of the procedural animation system in Spore, the system that brings the creatures you design to life. As the author of this system Chris was quite aware of how flexible and also how unpredictable it could be. I had many discussions with him in particular about how much of the players design decisions would affect the actual performance of your creature in the game world."

"As the lead designer my goal through most of the project was to make sure the gameplay didn’t end up too complex, which resulted in simplifying many of the level dynamics and editor consequences. I felt like we were already asking quite a bit from the players as we took them through the various level genres. This was totally my judgment call and not even part of the agenda of the "cute" team, and certainly not the fault of Chris Hecker. So to make a long story short I’m the one to be blamed for any faults in the gameplay, that’s my job on the team."

"Chris is one of the most talented people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with in the game industry and he takes his craft quite seriously. So it’s been very disturbing for me to read how he has been unfairly vilified for what were in fact entirely my design decisions."

e_tank

The man screwed up Spore, a game that Maxis really needed to do well and develop the type of community around it that Sims had and he shat all over a system that EA is making multi-millions of dollars off of.

GEE I WONDER WHY HE GOT LAID OFF GUYZ.

Hecker announced on his personal site his follow up project, an indie game called SpyParty, which he describes as "a very different multiplayer espionage game" that apparently offers a level of excitement on par with ski jumping away from massive explosions.

No go back and look. He says it is less ski-jumping away from explosions and more about classy espionage spies.

@anduin1:

Well he turned down the hype factor all right just by entering a room and demanding the game be made cute to appeal to casuals.

Yetanotheruninspiredscreename

@WhiteMage:

You weren't reading. Chris Hecker trimmed everything down and got rid of all the interesting stuff to concentrate on making the game cute and was responible for how spore turned out rather then what Will Wright wanted it to be.

Yetanotheruninspiredscreename

@Yetanotheruninspiredscreename: I really doubt that would have the slightest effect on the game being 5 game genres all done poorly, but alright. I'd rather blame Will Wright, who claimed it was some amazing deep experience, then put out a game that would've been just as good if done in flash.

@Billkwando bought his tickets for Hyde's US tour:
not the same studio, doesn't make sense to keep a division if its losing you money, Maxis lost development to that series a long time ago

anduin1

@Taggart6 the punk:

the game was straight wack, it was like playing a game designed for children. There was nothing truly unique beyond the evolution and designing process. It could have only failed hard if it had shipped an empty box.

anduin1

He deserves it, he was complicit in what happened to spore, possibly one of the most overhyped games in HISTORY only behind Daikatana. He deserves to think long and hard about what he needs to do in his life.

anduin1

Well, this is one guy that won't be getting a job at Nintendo any time soon. I feel sorry for him for losing his job, but he probably burned a few bridges while he was still employed.

@WhiteMage:

You can blame Chris Hecker for wha spore ended up as rather then what Will Wright imagined. Will Wright's team the science team was overruled on the design matters while Chris Hecker's team which was called the cute team got what they wanted in the game. Seed magazine a science mag had an article detailing where Spore went wrong and Chris Hecker was the prime cause of it.

Yetanotheruninspiredscreename

@Yetanotheruninspiredscreename: I never played spore, but now I hate this man.

Chris Hecker is the rasterization master! dx/dy ftw!

hellokitty808

@Dayvan Cowboy: I don't want to speculate too much, because I briefly spent time at Maxis, but two things have changed in recent past:

Spore has matured in the past year and is no longer in need of a full team.

Will Wright moved to SFC, and the upper management of Maxis shifted around a bit.

If they lost 24 people, I'd guess it was just a restructuring.

ludwigk

@Taggart6: I have no idea what I'm talking about but,:

The DRM was removed. It was the design changes to cutesy up the game and remove the actual science parts plus reducing the size of the game to pretty much the creature creator that didn't work as Will Wright intended (we can blame Chris Hecker for that) that were considered the reason for the backlash by most people who knew about the game from the start.

Yetanotheruninspiredscreename

@Manuel Antony Marcano: He never said Sony didn't have gimmick items.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Hey people want to know who dumbed down spore and got rid of all the cool stuff Will was talking about in earlier videos shown off?

It was Chris Hecker.

[forum.spore.com]

"Chris Hecker was having strong misgivings about how appealing all this hard science would be to the wider world. "I was the founding member of the 'cute' team," he says with pride. "Ocean [Quigley, Spore's art director] and Will were really the founding members of the 'science' team. Ocean would make the cell game look exactly like a petri dish with all these to-scale animals and Will would say, 'That's the greatest thing I've ever seen!' and some of us were thinking, 'I'm not sure about that.'"

Yetanotheruninspiredscreename

Payback is a Bitch.

@MasterOmega: amen

I approve this comment! Now where's a gold star when you need one?

Clstirens has a Na-na-na-Nano

WTF ?! He is one of the pioneers in gaming physics! In 1996 he already was sharing his tips/articles on physics:
[chrishecker.com]
I can guess the Havok physics you all love are at least inspired by his works.

No matter if Spore sucked (maybe he wasn't the designer, ey? ) or he was outspoken about truths on the Wii, he's got great skills as a programmer.

SpyParty doesn't look like it could be fun.

Spore kinda sucked dude.

Emmanuel Goldstein

@The one and only TaggarT6: I did that with battlefield 2142, and boyyyy did i want that game. :(

@sunpop: Its like the weakest link when there are only 3 people left the weak go against the strongest one... (^_^)

@someone_else: The problem is EA getting their grubby hands all over Maxis now. The Sims has been turned into a mindless cash cow almost to the point of shovelware, and Spore was looking really good until EA came in and made them change the game to a cutesy casual game.

Seriously, look at The Sims 1. Then look at MySims Kart Racing. The series has gone horribly wrong, and it's EA's fault.

RockyRan

considering spore was pretty much crap compared to what it should have been this guy needed to get laid off. i feel bad for the people that got caught up in the need to cut costs.

Aw, I was expecting a long tirade on how EA is "a piece of shit" now that he was laid off. He has disappointed :(

RockyRan

@PissedPS3Fan: many of the same things could be said about the ps2 at launch. Heck its still kicking and it was the weaker console 10 years ago. lol also sony is guilty of its fair share of gimmicks...eyetoy, wands etc atleast with nintendo they're fairly original gimmicks or gimmicks that are being recycled.

Manuel Antony Marcano

I've had the idea for that type of spy game for ages.

HarlequinRiot

@thesircuddles: Starman AnalysisDialysis uses Shield Killer! Starman AnalysisDialysis uses PK Bureau Ω to rezone your residences into landfill!

(Starman) AnalysisDialysis

I can sum up everybody that has gotten laid off in the last year in the game industry...they actually know what the F**k they are doing and get paid a halfway decent wage. It's the same with every single layoff..they are cutting the legs out from under the talent that makes enough to actually support their family, and keeps a bunch of intern amatuers on staff because they work for peanuts.

Good thing about all this, is that hopefullly....just hopefully, these people that get laid off and do like Chris and start their own game devs, smaller so they don't have to deal with jokers like EA and Activision. Benefits: Keep a small staff, keep a focused game, watch the overhead...oh yeah, and just make great, passionate games.

MasterOmega

On a loosely related note - never liked Hecklers. I think comics should just be allowed to do their thing without someone interrupting them, ya know? I mean - come on - why are you at a comedy show if you don't want to just sit and listen? If you're so goddamn funny, get up there and do a set. Frickin' armchair quarterbacks.

PixellatedViscera

@paulrenzo: I am a fan of the PS3, yes, but not a "fanboy".

And just to clarify, there's a matter of free speech. The man is entitled to his opinion. Just because his, or mine, or anyone else's disagree with yours, that doesn't make them a "fanboy".

I beleive the Wii is a very underwhelming piece of hardware that could have been much better, with a bit of foresight on Nintendo's part.

I mean, no high resolution graphics capability, no hard drive, an abyssmal online system, and a fucking rat's nest of wire required for the thing. about the only thing the did RIGHT was the backwards compatability with GameCube games. Sure the motion control is sometimes cool, but more often than not it's just gimmicky. There's a reason "waggle" is a four-letter word in the industry, now.

PissedPS3Fan

sigh.. Maxis a previosly great dev, now doing sod all, Back in the day the SIM city franchise was so good, it truely saddens me that the Sims sells better that sim city, the game was so damn good that it was used as an educational tool for environmentalism and city planning, now they release hyped crap like spore which in all honesty could have been done in flash just as well

ah, I thought he was the cute team guy, or whatever that was called, which is supposed to be the "culprit" of what Spore is.

salaminizer: Fact

I'm curious exactly which team had the layoffs...

I recall browsing jobs on Gamasutra a few months ago and there was a position for a Lead Designer for a "fast paced multiplayer shooter with massive customization" at the Emeryville Maxis studio.

The job is no longer posted so either they filled it and are working on Battlefield Spore or the project got canned.

Dayvan Cowboy

@(Starman) AnalysisDialysis:
Sim City 5
*squeee*

@TaggarT6: I bought the game. Day of release the CE version
Managed to start playing it the next week.
Finished it a week later. Was okay, but rather lackluster.

@(Starman) AnalysisDialysis:
thesircuddles uses PSI Shield Ω to protect everyone!

@thesircuddles: /Bulldozes you all with nonexistent SimCity 5.

(Starman) AnalysisDialysis

Hmm the guy is a brain, he developed techs on Spore, and is now fired. This story seems a bit strange, I suppose (after the Wii statement he made) that he have a very strong personality and that it might have been a factor here. Still this is sad since his work on Spore is remarkable and innovative. Maybe is new project could be a very good thing after all.

slimky

That guys sounds like a douchebag

@BryanH: AND MY JAR OF PEE

Christopher thinks the wii is piece of shit?

No, really he does?

Peter has thought so for much longer than Christopher has and yet nobody has paid notice; perhaps they should.

PC is the best system too.

peterpanpiper2

Why do the good devs get fired sure spore fucked up but this man kicks ass and sees the wii for what it is.

@BryanH: And my 3D Max

I wonder if the lackluster sales of spore were in part due to the draconian protection.

Personally I thought the game was okay but the DRM prevented me from buying a retail copy. Even f the game is awesome (IE Mass Effect) I find DRM to be enough of a reason to pass on the game.

I wonder if others felt the same way as me.

@paulrenzo: I was a Nintendo fanboy until the Wii. I agree with this man, and I hate the PS3.

@BryanH: AND MY AXE

@hot_heart: You have my coding.

Aren't Maxis the same people who keep churning out Sims games? Like that shit doesn't print enough money for EA? Bullshit.

@-Skyline-: Voted Crecente 12':

Probably something shockingly similar to my Japanese teacher, who claims to have worked for the NSA.

Sheogorath

Called it.

@thesircuddles: One does not simply march into Maxis. You need a fellowship.

@thesircuddles: Say's he is a "Developer" in the link to the Wii Story...

Incredibly broad, makes me wonder what he actually did

-Skyline-: Voted Crecente 12'

@thesircuddles: Well I hope non of the Graphic Guys got fired...

Meeeh: PC gamers don't have to buy DLC, they buy expansions

Wrong, it says it is not like jumping away from an explosion. "At a high level, the game is about giving you less of this:"

marcus1060

@thesircuddles: Yeah that's not even a Senior Fellow.

@deanbmmv: Spore was ridiculous.

It was nice in concept, but it ended up being 5(6?) mini-versions of various genres, none of which was done properly, and all of which were simplified into "Make friends by playing rock paper scissors".

Very disappointing. :\

@deanbmmv: Bwuahahahahahah !! funny 'cause it's true !

@PissedPS3Fan: says the fanboy.

paulrenzo

Ignore this, I didnt see my post posted.

EtisArap

And Spore was a peace of shit too.
And thus balance to the universe is restored

Noone should ever have to appologize for calling the Wii a "piece of shit".

PissedPS3Fan

Hope all of the laid off employees find more work soon.

EtisArap

Is Technology Fellow his job title? Man they really were slacking off over there at Maxis.