“ They got one game out – Deathtrap Dungeon – and then we left to start Black Cactus, taking Warrior King and some troops with us, but then went bust in the end. “ Eidos just ran out of money and their internal development model just wasn’t working,” Jamie says flatly. Either way, their bosses had only been lukewarm to the MMO idea initially and now that resources were dwindling for Eidos the situation reached crisis point. Jamie is less happy when he looks back, saying that attempts to overhaul were met with failure and that it would have been best to start from scratch.
#Fabled lands ching software
There was no real software process, and rarely much of a plan beyond, ‘The game will be ready when it’s ready.’ It wasn’t solely the teams’ fault, the milestones they were being given were often dictated by people who wanted to see eye candy rather than real under-the-hood progress.” “ Many games in the late 90s were being developed without a design.
Eidos was now in a shaky financial situation and standards were starting to slip – a slide which reached its nadir with Angel of Darkness in 2003 and which, financially at least, has only really looked like stopping with the recent buyout. The change of pace and style that came with a shift from gamebooks to computer games wasn’t easy either. Leaving Eidos, Dave and Jamie salvaged one game, which they released as the award-winning Warrior Kings “ I should have fired that bastard lead designer when I had the chance,” Jamie says, jokingly, I think. Asking Dave exactly what he and Jamie were responsible for on the project suggests a lot of authority overlap between Lead Designer Dave, Project Lead Jamie and the rogue managers beneath them. The role of team members was hazy too, which can’t have helped. “ So, after tinkering about with extremely ambitious concepts for months, Jamie quite rightly argued that we should move more towards a kind of 3D Diablo for starters, maybe even as a solo RPG to get the brand established.” “ My usual approach is, ‘Let’s bypass the moon and go straight for Mars,’” Dave admits. Ambition was unrestrained and their plans didn’t always line up nicely with the reality of what was feasible – the longer development went on, the more compromises were made. It’s going to be about giant battling robots now.’”Īs well as problems with the team as a whole, Dave and Jamie had organisational problems of their own from working on a number of different projects – Deathtrap Dungeon and Warrior Kings, as well as the Abraxas MMO. “ To start with, we had a project manager we’d hired who led a sort of coup! We turned up one day and he told us, ‘The team has decided not to do a fantasy role-playing game. Lost in Translation“ Well, it was all pretty convoluted,” Dave says, a little sadly.
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