Layoffs at Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City developer
Vancouver-based Slant Six trims a quarter of its workforce with hope to hire back affected workers once additional projects are lined up.
Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City was "a big success" for Capcom, but that hasn't been enough to keep the developer of the spin-off shooter from instituting cost-cutting measures.
A representative for Vancouver-based Slant Six told GameSpot today that more than a quarter of the studio's 96 employees were given the option of taking a severance package or accepting a temporary layoff while the studio looks to take on additional projects. Those who are temporarily laid off will be able to collect employment insurance and retain their extended benefits from Slant Six for 13 weeks, after which point the termination of employment becomes permanent if the studio hasn't been able to rehire them.
"Regretfully, we can confirm that there have been some temporary layoffs at our studio," the company's official statement reads. "We must stress that these are temporary layoffs, which means we are working very hard on new business prospects so we can reinstate every single person affected. As an independent and close-knit studio it is a very difficult but necessary business measure due to the current project cycle demands."
The representative said most of the 26 affected employees chose to accept the temporarily layoff, and the company's remaining 70 staffers are continuing to work on its two current projects. One of them is "a collaborative game venture with a major publisher," while the other is Slant Six's first self-published title, Strata Scavenger. A new intellectual property, Strata Scavenger is a downloadable post-apocalyptic flight sim for PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. It is set for release early next year.
Beyond Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, Slant Six is best known for its work on Sony's SOCOM series of games. The studio created SOCOM: Confrontation for the PS3, as well as the PSP SOCOM installments Tactical Strike and Fireteam Bravo 3.
Brendan Sinclair has been a games journalist since 1999. His tastes are eclectic, though he has a definite affinity for games with arcade roots. He's Canadian, but has also been at home in Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, and San Francisco.
Produced very realistic figure
I guess it is reality that the name does sell, then again the game could have been better. the concept of 2 opposing forces and a third wheel which are the zombies was great
Strata Scavenger sounds awful. Sure it's just the name but when you look at Slant 6's track record...
The hate for this game is unbelievable.
It prooves how much the public opinion is affected by the media and prejustice.
Even before anybody saw it in the US, they ve doomed it and claimed it was horrible.
The choice was already made and the US gamers followed like sheep, just like they did with Diablo 3.
But in Japan, Europe and many other countries the game did well, it is active and is improving, the company is doing well, this lay off is strickly to reduce the uncessary running costs, that have ruined other companies (like THQ) and yet here some fanatics are desperate to defame the game itself, just because Capcom didnt pay the regular tribute to the US media, when they should...
Disgusting...
InquisitorCrox i'm not having a go here but I don't think the media influenced anyones decision on this game, it is bad plain and simple. If anything I'd say it was the other way round in that the media normally hypes up all these games that are mostly mediocre at best so usually if a game gets a bad review in this day and age there's a very good chance it's bad.
but money talks, this game sold because it used the resident evil brand so you can call it a success but only in the short term. Look at dragon age 2, sold loads when it first came out just because dragon age 1 was a great game. The sales of dragon age 3 if they ever make it will be severly hit by the shoddyness of dragon age 2, when a game stinks that bad it lingers in the memory.
dovonob
I was mostly referrin on the hate, which goes beyond at personally disliking the game for any reason.
And some examples of Bias.
From the review:
"Compare this visual design to the infinitely superior Left 4 Dead 2, which provided proper visual contrast and still elicited your innate survival instincts."
Seriously??
We are talking about GS's favourite company, the US Valve, vs an unknown quantity, SS.
From SS noone has any expectations, but from Valve, i do.
L2D2 graphics, have some flaws that cannot be denied, the extremely poor animation, of unnatural movement and the characteristic floating around feel of the series.
Compared to the outdated CS graphic engines, was the thing that drew of this series (apart frpm the pathetic SP of course)
Whatever you do, you cant improve it. In ROC, maybe it was my high contrast LED TV, or ambient light, i dont know, i never noticed the reported issue, which can be adressed anyway with settings tweaking. The graphics on ROC are almost in line with RE5, def next gen, great detail on characters and enemies, great animation, even on wall climbing lickers, their leap, everything feels natural and realistic.
What has to do an invisible barrier, or forbidding you to go the other way that you are suppossed to go in a linear SP, with the MP part?
Seriously, is there a comparison between the graphics of ROC and L2D2? L2D2 feels and looks like it is a game coming from the previous decade.
And yet, its hype and extremely high rating, push it forwards, the fans, doubt it and gave it lower grades than the reviewers, but they dont dare to give it much lower, cause they are affected.
With ROC, the players felt that the game is worthy of higher grades than the reviewers, but again they are affected and cannot give it much higher ratings.
Make no mistake, if the reviewers were biased and game a false 9 to Resi ROC, the players ratings would be near 10 and most of the players cursing this games here would be praising it.
In L2D2 the unrealistic high speed, animation and action orientation, are treated like advantages, because the game is judged like that. ROC is penalised because of the very same elements, just because the fans wanted a horro game, despite the fact taht this is not what spin off is about.
To include some, there is this realistic approach of the spare ammo, trademark of the series, that indeed of being appreciated by the reviewrs, it was made yet another disadvantage, only because its unlike their golden Valve standards...
Another clear example is D3, a game really unplayble, unlike ROC,
in ROC, you are allowed to play SP whenever you want, faulty as it is, but at least you can savor it, as you want and WHEN you want. In D3 when the servers wont let you log in, there is nothing you can do with tweaking.
Seriously, which is worse, try to be objective! Which is the most unfinished game, the ones that needs tweaking and patching, or the one that wont even boot ??
And have many of its core promised modes, locked a month after its promised time schedule?
In ROC you dont get lag, even in MP modes, when more than 4-5 creatures appear, let alone in SP.
In D3 there is lag in every dungeon.
The horror elements may be in the back seat in ROC, but it still is somewhat atmospheric, unlike the cartoonish, WoW-like approach D3 took. And D3, is not a spin off...so they should be more demanding, let alone that Bliazzard is not SS, they have virtually unlimited cash and monthly fees, it is unacceptable to make such huge compromises.
im a loyal resident evil fan and i wasnt getting it regardless of the media perception i just knew it was a run and gun game i didnt want to buy it because of the way the RE IP was used
no wonder....
top 10 horrible games of this gen...this piece of trash is in
It was a "big success" that cost them immeasurable fan loyalty, even if Slant Six did make it, it bared the RE title.
Cliffy B won't be bailing out Slant 6
In what world could they consider a game that took a survival horror game and made it a mindless shooter... a "big success?" I miss the fixed camera angles that added suspense... and the need to organize your inventory.
Rakshee Although American gamers were not impressed the game was a massive hit in Japan and was one of the top ten selling games in Japan. It's pretty much the sales revenue that ranked this game in as a huge sucess. Its alot like Final Fantasy XIII, not very many fans were impressed but the game was still considered a huge sucess because of it's sales. So instead of getting the highly anticpated Final Fantasy XIII Versus game, We ended up with the pathetic FFXIII-2.
RE ORC was a terrible terrible game..bad story, bad gameplay mechanics, bad character designs and bad level designs aside, the worst part about the game was camera..developers couldn't even get most of the camera angles right..cause that game made me dizzy as hell and i am a veteran Gears 3 and Uncharted player not to mention i play FPS games too and i don't get dizzy at all..second game in my life that made me dizzy and it's a freaking third person shooter..
post-apocalyptic flight sim?
While I don't like the term "lay off", this could be a good thing for the industry as a whole. While these people were paid for their services making this game, now that they are laid off, perhaps some other studio will see the opportunity to expand it's knowledge base from those with the experience of making this game and hire these talented, people with their experience.
Mayleene As refreshingly optimistic as your comment is, I don't think anyone who's worked on this game should put it on their CV when applying at a different games studio if they want future employment :)
There's more people out their clambering for these jobs than there is jobs available, you have to stand out from the crowd in a positive way if you want any chance of getting a job within the games industry. I think these people may be best off looking at a career change if any of the games they've made previously are anything to go off.
My simpathies to Slant Six - it's always a shame when this happens. I personally thought their more recent game, RE:ORC, was a decent shooter, and I'm sure the developer will bounce back.
I'm sorry but ORC was a horrible game which we all know. Instead of admitting to it they call it a commercial success. I feel no pity for them.
LOL! Yeah a "big success" for Capcom because it sold a lot but at the cost of Slant Six's reputation. Provided they weren't the best company around but know they're laying off people and publisher aren't so eager to sign them up because of this ugly blemish that is RE:ORC.
Look, it had its moments and I'm sure some of us had fun with it for a bit but when you think about it, it was a terrible TPS. Man, I hope the people who get laid off will find a job, especially with this economy. (And with RE:ORC on their resume.)
Capcom makes a huge profit from the game but they developer has layoffs =/ something seems fishy here
mav_destroyer Publishers get most of the money from game sales while Developers get a mere pitence. It's the same way in the music industry.
Kevin75 yup. musicians are royally screwed by labels, but now with the internet you can do it on your own..
glimpus I know and I'm happy for them because the artist deserve to be treated far better than corporate culture treats them.
lol @ people saying "y u expekt 2 make teribul game and this no happen?" when Operation Raccoon City was a commercial success. The sad thing is that after the quality of ORC, publishers looking for potential dev's are probably thinking "This studio has made nothing but third-person shooters and a good number of them were pretty broken out of the box. Not only should they have been considered lucky to get the rights to work within another big franchise, there's no excuse for the product that went to store shelves", since it wasn't even a stretch outside of what should be their comfort zone. In all honesty, I've seen Half-Life total conversions that were further from the original game than ORC was from SOCOM.
I usually feel bad when this happens, but am i alone in not feeling anything for slant six at all? lol
brownpriderider Nah I'm pretty stoked that companies that produce bad games go under. It is market forces punishing them.
I'm actually sad about this, i loved SOCOM Confrontation , i have put about 700+ hours into that game. It was simply amazing doing gamebattles with other clans back in the day. Sure the launch was horrendous but they kept patching and patching and adding new stuff untill the game was nearly perfect in my eyes. This is a bummer i hope everything works out for them!
Big success? BIG SUCCESS?
Name sells, this game was a mess and a BIG MESS.
Sad to see these people losing their jobs :/ but at least its from a company that isn't known for producing quality video games.
Step 1) Get an education Step 2) Search for job Step 3) Get hired by developer Step 4) Work for 1-2 years on a game Step 5) launch game Step 6) Get laid off. Step 7) dust off resume Step 8) go back to step 2.
Serious yeah i probably should've done more research but i graduated about 6 years ago...it's really crappy that they cut their employees loose like that...and it happens all the time. it's basically all freelance. now i'm looking more into those military simulations companies since they are always getting contracts from the government.
or i could look into zynga, maker of amazing games like farmville...crappy, simplistic concepts with no innovation, but they seem to be doing well enough..
unfair, but sadly true
When I was younger I thought going for gaming. Thank God I read an article 3 years ago about internet security being a growing field. I have to wonder that all of these article about laid offs are going to put a lot of potential gaming designers away from the field.
While it's always sad when people are let go, at least the studio seems to care about their employees.
It's sad to see anyone get laid off. But with that said. Creating games is a difficult process. But damn was SS a pretty terrible studio.
Okay you want made a spin-off,,
you can add "Action" but don't forget the intensity of "Survival-Horror"
that's what made Resident Evil a big franchise,
embrace newcomers but stay true to the original formula,
rather than raping newcomers with "not actual RE Games"
and killing your original fans with "not RE Games at all"
It's the easy way to kill their business.
The basic idea actually is easy??
Why Developer / Publisher can't figure it out??
slant six butchers any IP they get their hands on. hopefully that wont happen again
I'm selling my copy of Raccoon City today, I haven't played it since it came out...time to get rid of this coaster.....also I'm selling RE5, didn't get into that like I thought I would either......I'm going to be really picky what zombie apocalypse type game I buy next......even more picky what horror themed game I buy next........
It seems that Capcom is applying the concept of telling a lie too many times that it might become a reality. This shows when they consider Racoon City as a "big success". It only sold because people thought it would be good. But it turned out as a terrible game. Serves them right.
If the game is @#$% then the company will go to @#$%. Great job, those bastards didn't need to develop games anymore anyway.
Lets see suffers from:
1) On disc DLC - check
2) Made for consoles - check
3) Bad PC port months after console release - check.
4) Firing many clips into bullet absorbing rag dolls that just won't die - check
5) Cut game content out for DLC - check
They pretty much killed it before it left the door. People are smarter then capcom thinks and it's about time they stop trying to copy activision and go back to making good games instead of buggy, untested cashins.
eric_neo3 All of the Resident Evil games were "made for consoles", so that's not really a negative. But I agree with every other point you made
c0kemusheen Well it's a valid point since the game is a shooter
They deserve it for making such an awful game. sad to see but still, should have gave more effort to make a good game, especially with the Resident Evil license
XxTerryHxX it's not their first time butchering a games license. they gotten pretty good now at getting a lovable IP and pissing all over it.
that game looked beyond terrible and like it came out 10 years ago.
slant 6 sucks
why don't all the people apply at R* and then they will be with a winner ? or SE ?
GOOD GOD YA'ALL !
They cashed in on the RE name and made a few bucks. It was terrible and now its time to pay the price for misleading fans of the series. No, I didn't fall for the marketing but so many fans sadly did, adding to their undeserved sales :/
"Additional projects"?
If Raccoon City is on their resume, the hope for new projects should be diminished.
That said, there are always layoffs after a game is released. Then folks are re-hired when new projects come on board. Then laid off once a project ships. Ebb and flow. Comes with the territory.
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