Honestly I'd rather have an ambitious open-world game than Wheelman. But at least you are keeping the environment clean by not pumping shovelware. +1 for preventing global sucking.

I have 5 dollars here that say EA will take the project. 10 that say they will give it to DICE. 20 that say it will take them less than 2 years to dump it.

FP_slomo788

The title of this article should totally have been something like "Lay-Offs explained by Booty". Or is that just too low brow, even for kotaku?

Polite Society

Sucks to be them. =/

SanjiX

and there will be a reduction in headcount of about 80 people.

Aw, it sounds so innocent when they phrase it like that.

Then you realize "Shattering the lives of and creating living hells for 80 of our under-appreciated staff members out of nowhere" isn't so cute.

karasu is my homeboy

Haha! Booty!

The Midway guys have the best names. If only they still made games as great as the ones they made in the 90's.

Polite Society

@SnakesSolids:

His parents should have named him harry .

Quazimojo

I do feel sorry for each person laid off. It's not something that anyone should have to go through. And to work on something and have nothing to show for it in the end must be the biggest disappointment of all.

BossVersion1

Outsource everything.

Berith

I can't believe they canceled it. I followed the game since day one. I was hoping to play it soon. What do I have to look forward to now? Game over, man, game over!

BossVersion1

"The Austin studio is important to us... however all the people working there are not.

Grunts, here is your middle finger."

knifey-spoonie

You just gotta love a name like 'Matt Booty'.

You know his parents knew what the hell they were doing.

SnakesSolids

Awesome picture.

ChiZ_MacT

"Boss Booty" should have made its way in there somewhere. Too easy.

On the article, it's terrible that those people lost their jobs. My mother, who works in the land development industry, which is very unstable. When a project is done, the job is done. Clean out your desk. But anyone who is good at their job will get another. It just takes a while.

I can't imagine that the title itself would be very innovative or different. There is only so much you can do in an open world game where you are a criminal. In fact, if they got rid of Saint's Row and Just Cause too we'd be no worse off, and people could put time and effort toward projects that push the envelope in terms of game play or graphics or whatever, instead of just copying it.

e-friend

With a name like Matt Booty, you would have hoped he became a doctor or professor.

hagridore

They've probably been thinking about this since they saw APB.

Spartan1308™

Midway don't think they act without thought.

bondiinsider

You missed the last part of the email:

"Arrrr!"

boopadoo

@Jest: Nevermind my above question. I see you were talking about you.

Jest

@Kyouryuu: "Despite the unfortunate layoffs, at least someone recognizes that the whole "open world sandbox" genre is overrated."

Uh, who is this "someone"?

Jest

Despite the unfortunate layoffs, at least someone recognizes that the whole "open world sandbox" genre is overrated.

At least, that's just my opinion. Every company and their uncle is making an "open world sandbox game" and I'm completely unconvinced that the numbers pan out, much less the development side of things. The truth is, Rockstar has been doing this for years. They've become very effective at it. You're not going to replicate their success on a single development cycle with a couple dozen developers. Some would say that Saints Row is close enough to be a clone, but look at how many other "open world sandbox games" failed to get there.

Critics and executives alike also overestimate what it means to be a "sandbox" game. For many, it immediately connotes enormous cities where the player can "go anywhere" and "do anything." Really "big adjectives" and "big verbs" that marketing teams sink their teeth into.

I don't agree with that. People can argue that Half-Life 2 is a linear game, for example. But, I'm telling you, you give twenty players a Gravity Gun and you will witness twenty different, novel approaches to the same battle. How is that not a sandbox?

Kyouryuu

soldier on Midway!

Awoken

Last month Midway announced the closing of it's LA studio.

Last week Midway announced it's Q2 financial data, and it wasn't very pretty. Net loss was more than double from last year's second quarter to the tune of a little over $34 million. And net revenues were down from last years $31 million to around $23 million.

And Midway also announced last week that two of it's big titles, "The Wheelman" and "This Is Vegas", are both getting delayed into 2009.

And the day after that came the news of Midway's Chicago studio Boss resigning along with a few other of the studio's high-level employees doing the same.

Things are not looking very good at Midway right now and haven't been for sometime. I have the feeling that it won't too long before we see a possible acquisition by a larger publisher; or a sell-off of some of studios in hopes to stave off the inevitable shuttering of the company. I think Midways days are numbered.

coalhalo

In the end , this is probably a good business decision. It does suck for the people working there though.

Even if this game came out and was decent, it probably would not have sold well enough to justify the cost. Outside of game industry followers, it would have been a GTA clone (regardless of whether it really is or not). There are too many open world type games that focus on the controlling a character who can be good or bad. And let's be honest about it: open world doesn't make it a good game. Fun stuff to do in the open world makes a good game.

Indiedog

@coalhalo:... which may potentially mean "Mortal Kombat vs. DC" may not see release?

I don't know how to feel right now.

beantastic!

Btw, bad taste for anyone to be sending out confidential info. It's like someone just wants the slightest amount of fame by being able to say "Look, my email's on Kotaku!" Lame. I would have expected better professionalism from whoever sent this to Kotaku.

benderbendingrodriguez

Looks like it's "Black Friday" over at Midway.

Doomstink

@beantastic!: MDvDC is absolutely being released, no worries :)

benderbendingrodriguez

@coalhalo: The LA studio was a branch off the San Diego studio. Once they wrapped their game, they moved back to San Diego, what's so bad about that? Why fund two studios, one in MOORPARK of all places, when you could have one in San Diego. Makes perfect sense to me.

Holding titles off is a good thing, would you rather they crap out garbage? Many studios do the same thing and are applauded for it. Funny Midway doesn't get the same accolade.

benderbendingrodriguez

@benderbendingrodriguez: Hmm, well for some reason I'm guessing morale is at an all time low over there.

kidko

oh gimme a break, nice "4" 10 minute delay :P haha! Oh well, so there you go :)

benderbendingrodriguez

@kidko: Weird, it didn't post my response... Anyhow, long story short in case it's just a very long delay and don't want to repeat myself :P Morale is actually extremely high. 90% of what you're seeing on Kotaku is very old news people have known about between 2-4 weeks now.

benderbendingrodriguez

@kidko: Actually it's not bad at all. JV left internal production for a marketing job weeks ago. Everyone knew about the other marketing departures and the other "senior" guys mentioned in other posts. It's been a long time in coming, people have had these new jobs lined up for a long time and they announced their departures a long time ago. This is all old news. The Austin layoff was sad, but not entirely unexpected given what people inside the company know about their internal projects. It's actually an extremely positive turnaround for Midway. The "Old Midway" would have funded the game until it bled the company dry. Layoffs happen everywhere, and don't necessarily indicate the health of a company. Sometimes a project or satellite studio is doing poorly as a whole and its better for the company to cut its losses. It's painful to be part of the layoff (I've been through my fair share like anyone in the industry) but it happens.

benderbendingrodriguez

Dear Matt Booty,

Thank you for proving exactly how either out of the loop, or completely un-fucking-caring you are about the product development that goes on in your own company.

First, 'Career Criminal' has not been the name this project has been known by since, well, about 2005. Anyone who has the slightest interest, or even a cursory idea of what happens within their own company tends to know the names of their own products, even if they are only internal code names. What's your excuse?

Secondly, the core tech IS fucked, or in the very least, it's a large reason why projects that should take 2.5 to 3 years at most are taking far longer to complete. When there's a mandate that the core tech HAS to be used, so a dev team is left having to wait for the core tech group to write a chunk of it, and a large part of a project is dependent on that code, so dependencies stack up behind that missing chunk of code, something is fucked. Central tech is not necessarily a bad thing, but it helps if the people mandating and implementing it have a goddamned clue as to how to make it work for the people needing to use it. The fact that the people left in Austin are turning to an unmodded (that is to say, not using your precious core tech) version of the Unreal codebase to develop on, there's something wrong with your central tech.

Open world games ARE difficult to make, you're right about that. But when the clueless bastards in the Ivory Tower are telling teams on vastly different development schedule to use the same tech, instead of creating what they need when they need it, they become damn near impossible.

Also, when the mandates to make these open-world (read: Pale imitations of GTA) games are coming down from Midway corporate because the corporate thumb-suckers don't trust anyone to develop their own games, but also don't have the creative brain-power that God gave a retarded stoat, well, let's just say I don't think your understanding of the difficulty of the development process is exactly something you have a firm grasp of.

How exactly are you solidly behind and supportive of the talent and the leadership at a studio when you fucking fire all of the talent and leadership at the studio? I'd email my lead about this quandary like you requested, but, well shit... he's gone.

Also, I hate to point this out, but I found a small error in the email. Where you say, "we are invested in developing frontline, competitive games, and we are committed to supporting our teams and studios," I think it's supposed to say, "we haven't managed to make a game worth a shit since the PS1, and have managed to lose 700 million dollars in about the last eight or so years, but someone needs to take the fall for this shit, and it sure isn't going to be me." I can understand how you'd make that mistake though; semantics are a bitch.

I'm sure you'll sleep just fine tonight. After all, this is probably helping your stock go up a half point per share (is MWY back to three bucks a share yet? Yeah, didn't think so), and you'll probably get an obscene bonus at the end of the year because of your dedication to the fucking stockholders instead of the people who do the work that gets you and your ilk the undeserved paychecks you cash every month. The rest of us will go on to something better, and run by people who aren't completely clueless.

You, and your company can go fuck yourselves sideways, you useless prat.

TheGallBladderisOptional

Poor Midway. I fondly remember using the Beastie Boys to just destroy Hillary Clinton in NBA Jam Tournament Edition.

/still loving the SNES

SnakesSolids

@coalhalo:
@TheGallBladderisOptional:
Someone correct me if I am wrong, but Midway has not had a profitable year since 1999. Is that right? 1999? Close to... ten years of no profitability?

Nakko

Yo Benderbendingrodriguez, you are totally wrong about the team seeing it coming btw. Nobody wants to be unemployed. Logic says that if you did see it coming you'd get a new job. The Friday before, people were telling Criminals at Midway about jobs at other studios and the Criminals were talking about their future with the company and shipping the game. All but a few people were completely blindsided on Monday. The entire team was clueless about this up to a week prior. Booty talking about Criminal being cancelled because of the huge scope of the project- well he is full of shit because they had just brought an extremely scaled back plan to corporate that led to corporate to cancel it. Midway wants to do big things so they bet big in the past, made some poor choices (particularly not listening to those who are actually making the game until it was years too late), lost big, and still want to bet big with what little they have so they can get their money back. If morale is high at other Midway studios it's because A. they work on MK, or B. they are blinded by the bs from corporate just as the Criminal, Blacksite, Ballers, (etc.) teams were. Tell me a game that Midway has shipped anytime recently that could be considered a "quality" title. None. Not because the teams aren't talented or working hard but because it is more profitable for corporate to pull it out just before it's ready. That extra polish, the thing that gives a game that mark of quality, doesn't make them extra money in the stock market. It just makes them a more reputable developer to knowledgeable consumers. They bet on the majority of their consumers not knowing/caring when they pick the game off the shelf that Midway is going to cheap them on that game. Some of the game teams at Midway are just extraordinarily good at mitigating that castration at the end of the project so you end up with things that are full of bugs (because corporate is jacked up and doesn't give them time to fix it) but still shine in their own right- Stanglehold. Four months ago corporate "fully backed" Criminal and the Austin studio. The project only got better since then because it became realistic. Corporate didn't like what realistic looked like because realistic was bite sized not GTA. Criminal was never going to be GTA and when corporate saw that, coupled with new IP they said (ehem 18 million dollars later) "not worth it". That project could have been amazing because the team that got laid of was amazing. None of those people will ever work there again and they will forever trash talk that company. ZERO FORESIGHT- just like there last round of uh, what was it, "routine layoffs".

holymoses