Why Obsidian may not be designing KotOR 3 or any Lucas Arts projects:

[Achilles]

Well, since you seem so well versed with "business world" concepts, then you are surely familiar with scope creep. You know, like when a publisher originally sets a February release date then later changes it to December. Not to obsolve OE of their responsibility for agreeing to the change (I suppose they could have just decided not to complete the project), but it seems pretty clear that the tail did not wag the dog in this situation. While you certainly have a right to your incessant OE bashing, I find it to be short-sighted and foolhardy. Perhaps you should ponder your position on this one for a while longer.

[Master Kavar]

A deadline is a deadline. If I hired someone who cannot keep a deadline, and produce quality work, they don't deserve to work for me. It is how the buisness world works.

 

And we live in the real world, where quality is directly proportionate to development time. If I owned a programming company and you expected us to produce a product that high caliber in a ridiculously short period of time, you wouldn't deserve to hire me. The business world still exists in the real world.

[Jackel]

Well, since you seem so well versed with "business world" concepts, then you are surely familiar with scope creep. You know, like when a publisher originally sets a February release date then later changes it to December. Not to obsolve OE of their responsibility for agreeing to the change (I suppose they could have just decided not to complete the project), but it seems pretty clear that the tail did not wag the dog in this situation. While you certainly have a right to your incessant OE bashing, I find it to be short-sighted and foolhardy. Perhaps you should ponder your position on this one for a while longer.

I remember reading from someone over at the OE boards (one of the leads on the game if I recall right) about the new release date having no effect on when the game will be finished. It just mean there wouldn't be as much final testing and tweaking that is usually done before release. They were given a certain date to finish which never changed to an earlier date*.

 

To me its not really one side of the coins fault. Both were pretty much to blame. LA for wanting it pretty damn quick, IE for not making sure they got it done in that time frame. Oh well at least we still have the community "fixing" things that weren't fully working / left out etc.

 

(* I think they had a three month extention at one point, not sure though)

[Achilles]

In project management (SDLC, etc) you factor in time for testing and revisions. These always take place before a project is considered to be finished. They could have very well had a project milestone scheduled for November, December, whatever at which they would have considered the game "essentially finished". This would have been followed with testing, etc before the game was shipped for production. To cut time out of the QA phase is still shortening the timeline resulting in a deadline change. I know that's a awful lot of project management philosophy to take in but does that make sense?

 

It's not that I feel like LA is to blame and OE is the victim. I don't agree with LA bashing anymore than I agree with OE bashing. If I had to take a guess, I imagine that the conversation went something like this:

 

LA - "Hey, OE. How's it going?"

 

OE - "Pretty good. You?"

 

LA - "Good. Good. Hey, just got out of a board meeting and the Directors are a little concerned that we might not hit our profitability numbers for the quarter if we don't have a strong Christmas. I know we originally agreed on February, but do you think you could take a look at some things and tell us if a December release is even possible"

 

OE - "Err...well...I don't know. I suppose we could juggle some resources and get you the xbox version by then, but there's no way we could have the PC version finished in time. We'll have to cut some of the stuff we originally sent over for approval and we might not have time to test it as much as we'd like, but yeah we could probably do it. I have to tell you, I'm a little concerned about the quality".

 

LA - "Well if you can't do it, you can't do it, but if you can it would really mean a lot to us. The stuff you've demoed for us so far has been really good. Do you really think quality is at risk?"

 

OE - "Without testing, there's no way to know for sure. We could probably get through some very basic testing, but there's no way we could really hammer on it the way we'd like to".

 

LA - "Ok. We're willing to cut some corners to get this game out early. If you think it's total crap we won't move forward. I know you wanted to do more with this, but we'd rather get a good game out by Christmas than a great game out when the credit card bills start coming and our audience is pinching pennies to recover".

 

OE - "Alright, we'll get you the best game we can ASAP"

 

LA - "Hey, thanks, we really appreciate it"

 

That's the type of thing that happens in business...especially when one of the parties is an important player recovering from a major downsizing in a highly competitive market right before the most profitable period of the entire fiscal year.

[JediMaster12]

I just had a crash course in project management and I hope I understood it correctly. I have to agree with you Achilles because isn't it the nature of any company to test their product thoroughly before shipping,etc? The FDA is a good example of testing blah blah. I understand that companies try to boost their fiscal year if it sufferred a low but I have to wonder, don't they take into account what it would affect on the broad public scale before making a choice like that?

Maybe I misinterpreted because I'm not into that kind of thing and some days it might as well be written in Greek.

[Achilles]

I just had a crash course in project management and I hope I understood it correctly. I have to agree with you Achilles because isn't it the nature of any company to test their product thoroughly before shipping,etc? The FDA is a good example of testing blah blah. I understand that companies try to boost their fiscal year if it sufferred a low but I have to wonder, don't they take into account what it would affect on the broad public scale before making a choice like that?

Maybe I misinterpreted because I'm not into that kind of thing and some days it might as well be written in Greek.

At the heart of capitalism is a fairly basic concept: Business is risk and the reward for succeeding in the face of risk is profit. Some businesses try to negate risk by spreading it out (i.e. incorporating the business and sharing the risk and the rewards with shareholders). When investors buy shares in a company, the company is then ethically bound to make decisions that are in the best interest of their shareholders. Generally this means acting in the best interest of your stakeholders too (not the same thing, although a shareholder is almost always your primary stakeholder), but sometimes managers lose sight of this and you end up with Enron, WorldCom, etc.

 

LEC is a publicly traded company. People like you and me (and some other people not like you and me) may decide that we feel good about the product that LEC provides and choose to invest our hard earned money into LEC so that it can pool its capital and create new products. By doing so we make an agreement with LEC that basically says, "we know that we might not get our money back, but we believe in you and trust that you will use this money to make 'our' company more profitable. Because we are sharing that risk, we also expect to share the profits should 'our' company be profitable".

 

LEC knows that without investors, they take all the risk themselves. Additionally they have to pony up all the capital and if they fail, they go out of business. Companies that aren't profitable don't have many investors, therefore it is always in the company's best interest to remain profitable.

 

It's also no big secret that the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas is the biggest month in retail. The market refers to the Friday after Thanksgiving as "Black Friday" because that's the day that most companies become profitable (accountants use red to signify a debt or a loss and black to signify a profit or gain). There is a lot of pressure on companies during this month because it's the time when most people are out spending money like it's growing on trees. Everyone knows this, so they are all competing for the money.

 

So LEC knows that are sitting on the sequel to the previous year's Game of the Year. As a responsible manager, do stick to your originally announced Feburary release (knowing that January's credit card bills are going to be through the roof because most American's finance Christmas and no one is going to be spending money in February)? Or do you go to your developer and try to convince them to up their timeline a little so you can get in on the action? Maybe there will be a few bugs, but games always ship with bugs. It's a risk, but there's risk in everything and if the risk pays off there will be considerable profit (and in turn, more investors to help finance the next big title).

 

I suppose you could say LA took the shot and missed, but then again they did sell over 1.5 million copies of the game and it was even nominated for some awards. The only people complaining are the die hard fanboys (and fangirls). The people that bought KotOR, played it a few times and liked it enough to buy the sequel aren't up in arms over this. They're going to buy the 3rd installment without ever hearing about cut content or thinking twice about why TSL was released early.

 

I suppose you could also say that if LA hadn't taken the shot, they would have only sold 1 million copies, but they could rest well knowing that they made the safe play. Unfortunately, always playing it safe is not always in the best interest of the company or the shareholders.

 

Did I answer your question or did I miss it entirely?

[Darth InSidious]

On the other hand, delaying the release time only increases anticipation, and the number of people who hear about the game. It allows for more marketing to seep through.

[Achilles]

On the other hand, delaying the release time only increases anticipation, and the number of people who hear about the game. It allows for more marketing to seep through.

Apparently you missed all the references that I made to the psychotic feeding frenzy that is the American holiday (shopping) season, etc. Take another stab at it and let us know what you come up with.

[-JoBo-]

Apparently you missed all the references that I made to the psychotic feeding frenzy that is the American holiday (shopping) season, etc. Take another stab at it and let us know what you come up with.

 

LOL!

It's very true game developers simply love to get there games out around this timeframe hoping to rake in some extra money from casual gamers.Most XBOX players are casual gamers.

 

Personally i don't care when a great game comes out because i would always go out and buy it , even if i had to sell a kidney in order to pay for it.

(erhm ok that might be a little extreme , but it's close lol )

 

Does anyone know what the sales were like for KOTOR II ?

I keep reading it's supposed to have made LA a good bundle, but how does anyone know this?

Maybe the development cost and profits were simply not enough and thats why we still haven't heard anything about a KOTOR III.

 

If a Empire at War RTS game costs less time to develop and rakes in more money then a KOTOR game then it wouldn't be logical for LucasArts to want to make another one.

LucasArts is really turning into a sort of EA, moving away from making legendary adventure games to "shallow" FPS and the like.

Geared for the casual gamer.

[Char Ell]

Does anyone know what the sales were like for KOTOR II ?

I keep reading it's supposed to have made LA a good bundle, but how does anyone know this?

Maybe the development cost and profits were simply not enough and thats why we still haven't heard anything about a KOTOR III.

Hmmm, perhaps if you had taken the time to read what Achilles wrote a mere 3 posts before yours...

I suppose you could say LA took the shot and missed, but then again they did sell over 1.5 million copies of the game and it was even nominated for some awards

The 1.5 million copies of TSL sold comes from a statement made by Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart in an IGN interview. <link>

I'm not sure what number constitutes "successful" sales for a video game as the number may vary depending on how much it cost to develop and market the game. In the music business however if an album sells over 1 million copies it's considered pretty successful. I can't see how the video game industry would be much different in that regard. I've never been able to find any dollar figures for what LucasArts made from TSL. I don't think LA makes that information available to the general public.

 

EDIT: Regarding the question of why LA hasn't announced KotOR 3, IMO there could be a number of reasons like market conditions, next-gen console availability, deciding on a developer for the game, in-house political machinations. In other words, unless you've got access to LucasArts decision makers we can only speculate.

[Darth InSidious]

Apparently you missed all the references that I made to the psychotic feeding frenzy that is the American holiday (shopping) season, etc. Take another stab at it and let us know what you come up with.

 

No, I did get the point, thank you. I was simply making an observation. Do you want to be any more aggressive, or shall we descend into an all-out row right away?

 

Darth InSidious, you are also coming off quite agressive yourself here. Achilles may have been slightly sarcastic with you, but this kind of argumentative response is unwarranted. -RH

[The Source]

And we live in the real world, where quality is directly proportionate to development time. If I owned a programming company and you expected us to produce a product that high caliber in a ridiculously short period of time, you wouldn't deserve to hire me. The business world still exists in the real world.

 

You wouldn't get the job.

The developing world keeps evolving. What use to take 10 hrs takes 2 hrs. The unfortunate side affect is the lose of those companies that can't keep up with the speed and changes of demand. I want to hire a company that can develop high quality products in a short time period. This is true in advertising and game development. If my client changes the date and time, I am still required to deliver the same quality that it would be if I had more time. That is just how it works. Non one said it was fair.

[lukeiamyourdad]

No, I did get the point, thank you. I was simply making an observation. Do you want to be any more aggressive, or shall we descend into an all-out row right away?

 

Well, you certainly didn't think about it a long time before posting did you? To claim that Q1 2005 will sell more the Christmas 2004 is pretty foolish.

 

You wouldn't get the job.

The developing world keeps evolving. What use to take 10 hrs takes 2 hrs. The unfortunate side affect is the lose of those companies that can't keep up with the speed and changes of demand. I want to hire a company that can develop high quality products in a short time period. This is true in advertising and game development. If my client changes the date and time, I am still required to deliver the same quality that it would be if I had more time. That is just how it works. Non one said it was fair.

 

And no one said they (OE) can make miracles happen.

I might have been budget problems. If you want to make things faster, you need more people. They could have been short-handed when the release date was moved and couldn't afford to get more staff. Who knows...

You're forgetting one major point here. What used to take 10 hrs now takes 2 hrs, correct. However, it took 10 hrs for a group of 20 person, while it takes 2 hrs for a group of 100. There's a lot more people now then back then. That's the reality.

If you really want to pull it off with a small group, you have to increase productivity, but there are limits to everything. You've probably never seen how it is to manage anything.

Was Obsidian capable of pulling it off? They thought so, but the product certainly did not lack quality, what it did lack was polishing.

 

Frankly, the incessant OE bashing is getting quite old, especially since it really doesn't do anything anymore. It's been over a year and that's all. The fact is, I'm pretty sure that only a very small minority have even heard of the cut content. They sold 1.5 million copies. How many out of that do check out internet forums for cut content and the such? 50 000 maybe? Just a wild guess.

So what's the point? If OE is chosen to make K3, how many will actually care? Does anyone think that LA will care if 50 000 forum goers are not happy out of 1.5 million?

[LORD SPARTAN]

Well I have to admit that TSL was a deception to me. The got a whole bunch of new characters and cool jedi robe, but the global render and storyline are weak. I didn't felt the embiance in TSL as I did in K1. Also the interaction with party memebers is borring and feels like getting no where. What I am saying it's that it takes too long to accomplish something interresting and the force in this game became too about isoterism. In shorter, I didn't beat or close to resemble the feeling we got in Kotor 1.

 

I also heard about those rumors about Bioware not doing kotor II or III game. But I can say one thing, they read in theire forums and they saw all theire fans wishing Kotor III to be made by Bioware. I also saw something saying by one of the Bioware's representant saying that Bioware is not rejecting any thing about Lucasart Kotor III, but no decision has been taken by any corporations. Even Lucasart didn't made the choice to officially anounce a third sequel and I will try to findback those articles.

 

For my part, I also wish Bioware taking the third sequel, so I wouldn't be bored again by a cheap incomplete storyline. I also would like to remind that what I said was true of what I saw but until I fingback some proof, it's not an official statement ecept for the part wich I say I didn't like TSL very much and got bored with it before getting to the end.

[The Source]

OE Bashing? I fail to see anything that I personally said that would be considered bashing. I never once attacked the company personally, but I did make statements about how they handled business. Try to keep on topic please.

[Achilles]

Please explain to me how your negative commentary on their organization does not constitute "bashing". I could be wrong, but from where I sit you appear to be someone that understands very little about business but feels inclined to offer feedback on how others run their's. Also, I note that rather than address any of the points that I made in post 26, you chose to respond with "I'm not bashing". If you would like to have a serious discussion about business practices, I'm right here.

[Jae Onasi]

The computer field has certainly made tremendous strides, and that's allowed companies to increase productivity simply because the computer can do more of the work. I remember watching Phil Vischer describe how the changes in technology affected the production of VeggieTales and how much faster and better they could make the shows in '02 compared to even '97 with the same people.

 

I thought OE had a number of people hired from Bioware who had also worked on Kotor, so the shift from Bioware to OE didn't seem as unusual as I first thought.

Whatever the specific problems were, if OE was in a position to fix those problems and then followed through on that, then they might be in a decent position to do K3. I wouldn't blame LA for going with someone else, however--no company likes being made to look bad by another, and I certainly would be far less inclined to hire someone who had publicly made my company look bad. The problem between OE and LA was a 2 way street, though. When OE was taking a lot of heat, LA could have stepped in to do some positive PR instead of letting OE hang out in the breeze. I would respect both more if they'd be honest and just admit that they both did things that contributed to the rushed game and both were committed to fixing the problems as quickly as possible instead of publicly squabbling with each other on who was to blame.

[Achilles]

--no company likes being made to look bad by another, and I certainly would be far less inclined to hire someone who had publicly made my company look bad.

What, specifically, are you referring to here?

 

instead of publicly squabbling with each other on who was to blame.

Link please. To date, I am unaware of any public (or otherwise) squabbling between the two groups.

 

I do think you're right on one point though: they both contributed to the quality of the final product. I think they both acknowledge this and that's why we don't see any finger pointing. Similarly, neither party sees the need to come to the other's defense. I'm sure that both groups have better things to do with their time.

 

I, for one, hope that OE gets a shot at K3. I just hope they get more than a year to make it

[Azuth]

According to this 1up.com article entitled "PlayStation 3: Everything We Know from 1UP.com" Obsidian's next game will be a "third-person action-RPG using the Unreal Engine 3", for the PS3.

 

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=5&cId=3148332

 

Project New Jersey

Publisher: TBA

Developer: Obsidian Software

 

Obsidian, who recently worked on Star Wars: The Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, is currently working on a third-person action-RPG using the Unreal Engine 3, for next-gen platforms.

 

Project New Jersey web page at 1up.com: http://www.1up.com/do/gameOverview?cId=3148441

 

I should also point out that Joseph Bulock on the OE forums said that:

Joseph Bulock,Jan 14 2006, 06:05 PM:

[. . .] PNJ is our own IP as has been stated else where.

http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php?showtopic=39422&st=0&p=528437entry528437

 

For those that don't know IP=Intellectual property. That statement means that it can not be a Star Wars game, as Star Wars is an Intellectual property owned by Lucas Arts for consoles and computer games.

 

Azuth

 

edited for spelling

[The Source]

Please explain to me how your negative commentary on their organization does not constitute "bashing". I could be wrong, but from where I sit you appear to be someone that understands very little about business but feels inclined to offer feedback on how others run their's. Also, I note that rather than address any of the points that I made in post 26, you chose to respond with "I'm not bashing". If you would like to have a serious discussion about business practices, I'm right here.

I just read your posts again. Do people get successful by being kind? Even though I may like someone, I am going to fire them (or break a buisness relationship with them) for not doing the job at A+ quality regardless about the deadline.

 

I submit to the notion that the problems with LA and OE are based upon a two way street. Obsidian Ent. released a magazine article that did set blame onto Lucas Arts. Therefore, they did play a blame game. Plublicly. I will see if I can find it, for I have seen a link to it online somewhere.

[Achilles]

I just read your posts again. Do people get successful by being kind? Even though I may like someone, I am going to fire them (or break a buisness relationship with them) for not doing the job at A+ quality regardless about the deadline.

Sir, what is your point? Again you show a general lack of knowledge of project management. It appears that you want to argue philosophy when philosophy is not the matter at hand.

 

I wasn't in the room so I can't speak from 100% certainty. What I can say is that it looks pretty freakin' likely that LEC scope creeped the hell out of TSL. OE has admitted that they weren't able to do some of the things that they wanted to do, but I'm pretty sure every game developer has those feeling about every game they make. If you want to talk about something, talk about that.

 

I submit to the notion that the problems with LA and OE are based upon a two way street. Obsidian Ent. released a magazine article that did set blame onto Lucas Arts. Therefore, they did play a blame game. Plublicly. I will see if I can find it, for I have seen a link to it online somewhere.

I sure hope that you are not referring to the post-mortem published Game Developer magazine. Surely someone with your business background knows that port-mortems are a best practice in project management. Interestingly enough, I happen to own that article and have read it more than once. I do not recall anything remotely close to LA bashing; in fact, I'll quote you part of the article summary:

 

"Without the high quality engine and toolset from Bioware and the extensive support from LucasArts, a game of this calibur would not have been remotely possible in little more than 14 months'.

 

This hardly sounds like bashing to me.

[The Source]

Achilles:

I am going to repectfully drop the subject.

[Achilles]

MacLeodCorp,

 

That is perfectly acceptable. If you bring it up again in another thread, please expect me to pick up right where I left off. Just so we're clear.

[Jae Onasi]

I just read your posts again. Do people get successful by being kind? Even though I may like someone, I am going to fire them (or break a buisness relationship with them) for not doing the job at A+ quality regardless about the deadline.

 

I submit to the notion that the problems with LA and OE are based upon a two way street. Obsidian Ent. released a magazine article that did set blame onto Lucas Arts. Therefore, they did play a blame game. Plublicly. I will see if I can find it, for I have seen a link to it online somewhere.

 

I saw something on it, too (hence my comment above). However, Achilles, (and pleasant conversation mode is on here, not sarcasm!) I didn't file that reference away because it honestly never occurred to me that I might have to cite my sources on a game forum. I imagine I'll have to go hunt that down sometime this weekend. While I do have a decent ability after all my years in college/grad/professional training to sift through fiction and rumor to get to fact, every now and then I'm going to believe something someone credible says which may in fact be rumor. I'm susceptible just like anyone else. However, I promise you all that I will never resort to intellectual dishonesty. I'm not that kind of girl.

 

Sure, LA and OE don't have to go "Rah, Rah, we love each other!"

I do agree with Macleod that if a company doesn't produce, they shouldn't get repeat business unless they can demonstrate an improved track record. I will say that if LA pushed up the deadline on OE, that's not exactly fair to OE, either.

However, these 2 companies partnered together for the game, and they're in the same boat. What one company does or does not do on the TSL project definitely affects the other. I am not attempting OE bashing here, either, since I was, overall, satisfied with the game. It just appeared to me that LA was conspicuously silent when lots of people complained about the cut content issue, though I'll be the first to say since I have a lot of reading to do for work, I don't have the opportunity to read gaming articles nearly as often. Granted, since OE is the dev, they take the most responsibility. However, LA still has their name on the box, too. Presenting a united front as soon as problems were discovered and saying 'hey, we don't want people who are just 'satisfied' with the game, we want people to be really happy with and excited about this game. We're going to investigate and fix the problems right away' might have been better for both. However, hindsight is 20/20, and neither company can undo what has already been done.

Since OE is intimately familiar with what goes into a Kotor game, it makes sense to me for them to do K3 also, as long as both OE and LA have identified the real cause(s) for the rush release and have dealt with it appropriately so that it doesn't happen again. If only one of them acknowledges what the problems might be or what to do about them, or if one of them has unreasonable expectations, then both companies are probably better off going their separate ways. If they can't work together reasonably well, the probability of a good quality K3 project is lower.

[The Source]

It just occured to me that we are arguing over a bloody game. We could be debating about the crisis in Iraq or other politics, but we are arguing over a piece of entertainment. Yeah. I am not an expert at buisness, and I plainly posted in the first post that this was based upon a theory.

 

At the end of the day, what in the world did we accomplish here? We don't agree? I hope we don't all have the same opinion. If the world was made up of people with similar opinions, we will all be in some major trouble. Ever read the book Fahrenheit 451?

 

I thank you Achilles for the debate, and for some insight to your side of the facts. Harrassing people until they see things either way is wrong. Self included.

 

(Edited:: I forgot the tittle of the book, so I had to look it up.)