B5: Into the Fire Cancelled
WWS
for piling on. This just showed up on rastb5, haven't seen it here yet.
This is really disappointing, as I was really looking foward to this one.
I guess the rumours about the game being in trouble last February were
true.
(reposted from rastb5)
James Ell wrote:
>
> Sierra/Havas has decided to cancel the upcoming Babylon 5 based space combat
> game, Babylon 5: Into the Fire and fired the entire development team:
> http://www.avault.com/news/displaynews.asp?story=9211999-13445
>
> If you're as angry as most of us are over at the Sierra Studios Babylon5
> Forums, get over here and lets get a petition going to save the game.
> http://ftp.sierrastudios.com/ubb/Forum17/HTML/001289.html
>
> - James
--
__________________________________________________WWS_____________
Jms at B5
apparently the problem is two-fold: 1) because Sierra has taken so long to get
the game out, it has become expensive, and the additional million bucks used to
relocate the facility north (and everyone involved) was charged against the
game, and 2) they made a deal with WB for X number of games in Y years, and
they've chewed up most of that time already, and WB is (I'm told, haven't had a
chance to verify this yet) loathe to renegotiate since it's now taken --what?--
three, four years to get this first game out.
There's rumors that another studio might be interested in picking it up and
finishing it off -- it was literally inches from being finished, and it's a
spectacular game -- but again that's only rumor, I don't know anything beyond
that.
(The game would have allowed players to go through all of the major wars of the
B5 universe -- the Dilgar War, the Earth/Minbari War, the Shadow War and the
Earth Civil War -- with a chance of affecting the outcomes and dealing with the
temporal stresses caused by that.)
jms
(jms...@aol.com)
B5 Official Fan Club at:
http://www.thestation.com
Shaz
WWS wrote in message <37E7F04D...@tyler.net>...
Oh dear god!
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON???
It's like everyone suddenly wants to kill anything to do with B5. What did
we all do that so many people hate the show all of a sudden? We spend money,
we are reasonable people (on the whole), and we love the show. Why are they
doing this to us? There are so many B5 fans who wanted to buy it, and we
would have pushed others to get it as a good space-sim. It's not like there
was a limited market. If it's a good game it doesn't matter the basis of it,
and it looked like it was going to be awesome. It just helped that given the
subject matter they had a guaranteed market right from the get go.
I REALLY wanted to play this game. I was ready to upgrade my computer big
time, would have bought it the second the thing hit the shelves and fought
tooth and nail to get it to work properly. And they just axe it????
I rarely play games these days, but for this one I was prepared to make an
exception. It would have been the first game I've bought since Caesar III
(also Sierra). I'm sure I'm not alone in this.
I rarely post here these days (again, too much to do) so the fact that I
have indicates how pissed I am!
What a bunch of....well, I can't think of a word that's appropriate right
now. I'm too angry.
Shaz
Tammy Smith
this stinks. What ELSE is going to happen? :(
Tammy
Back on the Rollercoaster Ride That is B5-Fandom
James Ell
now.
Once it gets going, we need every single person who is at least slightly
interested in seeing Babylon5 to sign it.
And if Sierra won't pick it up, then we need to show another publisher that
it is worth while.
- James
"God I hate MS Outlook as a newsgroup client..."
Shaz
James Ell wrote in message <1yVF3.17545$kO6.40...@news.optonline.net>...
Know what you mean.
Please keep us all posted so we can respond. This really sucks.
:-(
Shaz
Joe Riddle
can head over to the new forum for details... its mainly "rwad between the
lines" stuff, and you'll need to make your own inferences. But, well...
there it is...
Joe
Columnist - Beyond Babylon
http://www.b5mg.com/Beyond_Babylon
Shaz wrote in message <7s963v$s63$1...@lure.pipex.net>...
Pitzerboy
which was created to try & get a mac version of the game created.
thanks
pitzerboy
http://babylon5.acmecity.com/zocalo/68/bab5.html
Lee Hutchinson
> More bad news, as if any more was needed. Someone should get flagged
> for piling on. This just showed up on rastb5, haven't seen it here yet.
> This is really disappointing, as I was really looking foward to this one.
> I guess the rumours about the game being in trouble last February were
> true.
Since the very beginning, when it was first announced that the B5 game
was going to have Sierra's fingerprints on it, I've been quite skeptical.
Their track record reads like a star athlete, recruited out of college
into the major leagues as the top first round draft pick, had an
incredible career for a few years, then got arrested for posession of
cocaine and has never made it back to his previous position of glory.
Ken and Roberta Williams' rise to fame from their kitchen is the stuff
legends are made of, and I own every single piece of software Sierra
produced from their inception up until the fourth release in the Quest
for Glory series--still on the original media, I might add!
And then, the cocaine addiction came crashing down...Sierra has been
attached to nothing that has interested me since Quest for Glory IV--with
the small exception of Half-Life, which had my hopes up for a short
while, but ended up being Yet Another FPS.
On one hand, the latest axe-job is sad and disheartening and downright
wrong. However...on the other hand, at least I won't have another buggy,
non-standard install procedure to step my way through, another incredibly
annoying on-line registration program to hunt down and delete, and
another copy of the utterly useless and downright idiotic Sierra
Utilities sitting on my drive, clogging up my registry with gobs of
useless keys...
--
Lee Hutchinson
pokr...@texas.net
http://pokrface.home.texas.net
"It's a hundred and six miles to Chicago; we got a full tank of gas,
half-a-pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses."
"Hit it."
Partspmp
more information concerning this game. If you have not seen it yet, it is very
worth your while.
Rob Perkins
really, to cancel a 98% complete product, weeks before its ship date?
I was going to justify the purchase of a NEW COMPUTER with this game. That's
how excited I was about it. For my own sake, I hope another studio (just not
GameTek, heavens no...) will distribute the thing; they'll have my money on
the first-release cycle at $50+, rather than my waiting like I usually do
until the thing costs less than $20.
I hope the rumor is true...
Rob
Jms at B5 <jms...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:19990921193736...@ng-fg1.aol.com...
Brian Watson
> Yeah, I got word of this today from one of the developers on the game;
> apparently the problem is two-fold: 1) because Sierra has taken so long to get
> the game out, it has become expensive, and the additional million bucks used to
> relocate the facility north (and everyone involved) was charged against the
> game, and 2) they made a deal with WB for X number of games in Y years, and
> they've chewed up most of that time already, and WB is (I'm told, haven't had a
> chance to verify this yet) loathe to renegotiate since it's now taken --what?--
> three, four years to get this first game out.
>
> There's rumors that another studio might be interested in picking it up and
> finishing it off -- it was literally inches from being finished, and it's a
> spectacular game -- but again that's only rumor, I don't know anything beyond
> that.
>
> (The game would have allowed players to go through all of the major wars of the
> B5 universe -- the Dilgar War, the Earth/Minbari War, the Shadow War and the
> Earth Civil War -- with a chance of affecting the outcomes and dealing with the
> temporal stresses caused by that.)
>
> jms
Oh my god! When I talked to one of the programmers at GenCont his year, he said
they would be releasing a demo build of the game in a computer magazine in
November! And now THIS? Jeeze.. well I'm going to send a letter to Sierra, and if
they don't finish it, QFG V is the last game I'll have ever bought from them.
Marc & Chrissy Hudgins
I'am/was the lead designer on the game. Yeah, life pretty much sucks right
now and there is a lot of rumor and speculation flying around. If you want
to join the community in mourning/supporting or just plain old rubber-neck,
head over to www.firstones.com and find the link to the forum they set up
today. The messages there point to nearly every article written so far and
provide contact info for various fan groups, developers, etc. not to mention
some very creative use of expletives.Hope to see you there!
P.S. Any one have any job leads?
Marc Hudgins
www.marchdesign.com
Sergey Bukhman
WWS wrote:
>
> More bad news, as if any more was needed. Someone should get flagged
> for piling on. This just showed up on rastb5, haven't seen it here yet.
> This is really disappointing, as I was really looking foward to this one.
> I guess the rumours about the game being in trouble last February were
> true.
>
It's not the game, it's the whole company. They've canceled many other
awaited games (Middle earth being one of them). To tell you the truth, I
haven't the slightest idea what kind of businessmen run that company.
they give zero promotion for the game, it still garners good to great
previews, it's part of a franchise, it has a story, the FMV scenes have
already been shot, the game is almost done and they just cancel it? That
just makes very little business sense.
It's also a very cruel and inconsiderate decision after making the dev.
team move up north just to keep working on it, they fire 105 people. I
really don't understand what's going through the heads of the managers
of Sierra (or Havas, or whatever division they had. They are
re-organizing again too). By canceling both Middle Earth and B5
(franchises with devoted, active and mostly relatively intelligent fans)
they've alienated a large number of gamers from any of their future
projects. I must say, that it'll take a mighty feat of game wizardry to
get me to buy anything with "Sierra" on it. I don't have all the facts,
but it seems like they've really really dumb decision.
Funny thing is, I'm almost sure the game will get picked up by another
publisher. It just has too many things going for it. The only thing it
lacks is Hype, to get people to know about it and talk about it.
Ironically, this is just the event to get the game maximal free
exposure.
So, do not despair! This is a game, it does not need actors or sets.
Well, not any more, anyway. All it needs is a distributor to pick up the
tab for finishing the game (probably for buying it from Sierra as well)
and putting it on the shelves. What we have to hope for now are good
previews by magazines and high exposure of the whole affair.
--
Sergey
Sergey Bukhman
advise any B5 fans with unused stores of Crusade rage to transfer their
energy into saving this game.
WWS wrote:
>
> More bad news, as if any more was needed. Someone should get flagged
> for piling on. This just showed up on rastb5, haven't seen it here yet.
> This is really disappointing, as I was really looking foward to this one.
> I guess the rumours about the game being in trouble last February were
> true.
>
> (reposted from rastb5)
>
> James Ell wrote:
> >
> > Sierra/Havas has decided to cancel the upcoming Babylon 5 based space combat
> > game, Babylon 5: Into the Fire and fired the entire development team:
> > http://www.avault.com/news/displaynews.asp?story=9211999-13445
> >
> > If you're as angry as most of us are over at the Sierra Studios Babylon5
> > Forums, get over here and lets get a petition going to save the game.
> > http://ftp.sierrastudios.com/ubb/Forum17/HTML/001289.html
> >
> > - James
>
> --
>
> __________________________________________________WWS_____________
--
Sergey
Brian Watson
> I hate to ask self-answering questions, but what kind of idiot does it take,
> really, to cancel a 98% complete product, weeks before its ship date?
>
> I was going to justify the purchase of a NEW COMPUTER with this game. That's
> how excited I was about it. For my own sake, I hope another studio (just not
> GameTek, heavens no...) will distribute the thing; they'll have my money on
> the first-release cycle at $50+, rather than my waiting like I usually do
> until the thing costs less than $20.
Hell.. I already BOUGHT a new computer for this game. I was looking forward to
the demo that was SUPPOSED to be coming out in November as a disk in a computer
magazine. I've played the game multiple times at various shows, and it IS the
best space flight sim I've EVER played. NOTHING comes close, and now these
jackasses have cancelled it??? What are Roberta and hubby up to???? If they
don't complete the game and get it out, I will NEVER purchase anything from
Sierra again. HELL, I'll PREORDER the game and they can charge me NOW if
they'll just finish it and send it out.
Richard Lueck
>
>Yeah, I got word of this today from one of the developers on the game;
>apparently the problem is two-fold: 1) because Sierra has taken so long to get
>
SNIP
I cannot tell you how saddened I am by this news.
I have been playing computer games since pong.
(Yes, I am that old)
And I have never looked forward to a game as much as this one.
Not only did it look like a promising space combat game, with a really interesting
engine,
it was set in the Babylon 5 universe.
What more could a boy ask for?
This news is almost as depressing as the end of Crusade.
For news and info visit www.firstones.com
I have emailed all of those suggested.
I am dissapointed beyond words.
Z
Tyler J. Wagner
> now.
>
> Once it gets going, we need every single person who is at least slightly
> interested in seeing Babylon5 to sign it.
>
> And if Sierra won't pick it up, then we need to show another publisher that
> it is worth while.
Think out of the box. If Sierra won't finish it, get them to open source
it. Several game companies in the recent past have given away their source
as public domain (not even GPL!) after going belly-up. Sierra is probably
too money-grubbing to do it, but it's worth a shot.
Tyler
.--------------.
__/ Tyler Wagner \____________________________________________________
| tjwa...@polymail.calpoly.edu | http://www.csc.calpoly.edu/~tjwagner |
| I don't know what your problem is, but I'll bet it's hard to pronounce.|
WWS
http://www.agn3d.com/
It may help to let companies know just how many people are
interested in the game - this is a fairly well known and
widely watched gaming site.
Richard Lueck wrote:
>
> In article <19990921193736...@ng-fg1.aol.com>, jms...@aol.com says...
> >
> >Yeah, I got word of this today from one of the developers on the game;
> >apparently the problem is two-fold: 1) because Sierra has taken so long to get
> >
>
> SNIP
>
> I cannot tell you how saddened I am by this news.
> I have been playing computer games since pong.
> (Yes, I am that old)
(me too)
> And I have never looked forward to a game as much as this one.
> Not only did it look like a promising space combat game, with a really interesting
> engine,
> it was set in the Babylon 5 universe.
> What more could a boy ask for?
>
> This news is almost as depressing as the end of Crusade.
>
> For news and info visit www.firstones.com
--
__________________________________________________WWS_____________
Alyson L. Abramowitz
Rob Perkins wrote:
>
> I hate to ask self-answering questions, but what kind of idiot does it take,
> really, to cancel a 98% complete product, weeks before its ship date?
>
I don't know the exact details here but I do understand a lot about why
folks cancel products when they are 98% done. Some of them are:
- 98% done in software can take *years* to get to 100%, if ever
- the product had low priority (which is why it took this long) and they
really were just looking for an excuse to kill it anyhow
- ROI is not acceptable and the expectation is it will never be; cut
your losses now
- as a company we only have the resources to make X products in the next
Y years and still remain financially viable; we currently have X+Z
products in the pipeline; which won't have the biggest ROI or likelihood
of fruition
- we don't like you Mr/Ms Manager and this is a good excuse to remove
you (generally a political decision; there does seem to have been at
least some mismanagement if a product took 3 years to get out the door)
- new management at a higher level doesn't understand the product
- we don't have an angel in the executive suite
Generally killing a product is a combination of political and financial
reasons. It is ugly even if it is the right decision (which I am not
claiming is the case, here; I don't know the facts). Many projects
which are killed go out not through their own fault but higher level
inaction which has predictable results.
Unfortunately this is all too common in the software field, which does
resemble a Dilbert cartoon far too much on its good days. There are
times I wonder how *anything* actually gets shipped.
Best,
Alyson
E. Mark Ping
Sergey Bukhman <ser...@netropolis.net> wrote:
>
>
>WWS wrote:
>>
>> More bad news, as if any more was needed. Someone should get flagged
>> for piling on. This just showed up on rastb5, haven't seen it here
>> yet. This is really disappointing, as I was really looking foward to
>> this one. I guess the rumours about the game being in trouble last
>> February were true.
>>
>
>awaited games (Middle earth being one of them). To tell you the truth,
>I haven't the slightest idea what kind of businessmen run that company.
>they give zero promotion for the game, it still garners good to great
>previews, it's part of a franchise, it has a story, the FMV scenes have
>already been shot, the game is almost done and they just cancel it?
>That just makes very little business sense.
I can only think of two reasons to do this:
1) Embezzling
2) Insider trading
The fact that they moved the company (pouring $1 million into that) and
then kill the group they moved makes me wonder if someone had tracks to
hide.
Orcs and Bab5 were both scheduled to be realeased really soon. If they
were that close to release, it would more sense to release the game and
try to recoup some losses.
--
| "If hard data were the filtering criterion
Mark Ping | you could fit the entire contents of the
ema...@soda.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU | Internet on a floppy disk."
| - Cecil Adams, The Straight Dope Tells All
Diane K De
One of the developers has a very detailed and illuminating discussion at
http://www.firstones.com/forums/Forum1/HTML/000210.html
He confirms what Alyson says. The rumors that it was "98%" done and ready to
ship out the door are overblown. He goes into great detail about what was left
to do and says that there was decent chunk of money required to finish it.
He also talks about the management issues that effected the progress of the
progress.
It's a good read.
DD
Dwight Williams
>
> > Were trying to organize a petition to show fan support for Babylon 5 right
> > now.
> >
> > Once it gets going, we need every single person who is at least slightly
> > interested in seeing Babylon5 to sign it.
> >
> > And if Sierra won't pick it up, then we need to show another publisher that
> > it is worth while.
>
> Think out of the box. If Sierra won't finish it, get them to open source
> it. Several game companies in the recent past have given away their source
> as public domain (not even GPL!) after going belly-up. Sierra is probably
> too money-grubbing to do it, but it's worth a shot.
I can think of one other reason for Sierra/Havas to not "open source"
the game regardless of their own interests and desires: Warner Brothers'
rights in the matter might well preclude their being able to do so.
Mind you, not knowing the contract terms and not being a lawyer by
trade, my advice might well be worth less than nothing. But the concern
is worth airing, I think.
--
Dwight Williams(ad...@freenet.carleton.ca) -- Orleans, Ontario, Canada
Maintainer/Founder - DEOList for _Chase_ Fandom
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Joe Othello
>Yeah, I got word of this today from one of the developers on the game;
>apparently the problem is two-fold: 1) because Sierra has taken so long to get
>the game out, it has become expensive, and the additional million bucks used to
>relocate the facility north (and everyone involved) was charged against the
>game, and 2) they made a deal with WB for X number of games in Y years, and
>they've chewed up most of that time already, and WB is (I'm told, haven't had a
>chance to verify this yet) loathe to renegotiate since it's now taken --what?--
>three, four years to get this first game out.
Sierra moved again? They make gypsies look stationery.
>(The game would have allowed players to go through all of the major wars of the
>B5 universe -- the Dilgar War, the Earth/Minbari War, the Shadow War and the
>Earth Civil War -- with a chance of affecting the outcomes and dealing with the
>temporal stresses caused by that.)
That's a complex game, since I take each war has it's own fighter
craft/ ships that are unique to that battle. That's a lot of
programing just to get the fighter stats right. Sounds good thought.
(What about the telepath war, since no one seen the way that turned
out as an added bonus) not to mention after seeing the Warlock class
destroyer I want one!
> jms
Alyson L. Abramowitz
Diane K De wrote:
> One of the developers has a very detailed and illuminating discussion at
>
> http://www.firstones.com/forums/Forum1/HTML/000210.html
>
> He confirms what Alyson says.
>
> It's a good read.
Thanks for mentioning this, Diane. I quite enjoyed the read. It shows a
lot of insight about what was/is happening in the company. And, really,
Marc [the developer who posted the background mentioned above] and I
never have talked. It is just I work with companies going through
change for a living. What I posted is generic to all high technology
(and probably all) companies. I think (from Marc's message) they hit
all but one possible item on my list.
One thing companies really don't do well when killing a product is tell
you (even internally) why they are doing so. They hint around but don't
actually walk employees through the numbers. That is partly because
internal politics and management errors are not publicly aired. It is
often not even aired explicitly between the players making the
decisions. There is also an assumption that the budgeting numbers are
secret/competitive information, too.
If you understand how these decisions are made you may still not agree
with or like the decision. You will, at least, understand it. The
comments like not meeting ROI make sense despite millions of game
buyers. That provides a degree of control as does the ability to
(potentially) influence the next one. If you don't know the rules of the
game you are playing in, you will never choose. You'll only face the
consequences.
By the way, you can play this "game" with integrity and morals, too. I
do. Sometimes it means I don't get my way. It won't change my views. I
use the be the oil which prevents the problem unless you truly mean to
be sand at this time approach.
In the B5 game case, my take from reading Marc's message is that it
seems like the writing for this game was on the wall a long time ago.
That it wasn't killed earlier is because of some other things that were
happening at Sierra. Like Morella's Prophecies, there were probably
places where different decisions and consequences could have been made.
The present is way too late for any but the current decision. Maybe
someone should make a training tape using Londo as a case study?
Best,
Alyson
Iain Rae
One of the developers posted on firstones covering this, basically they
have spent most of their time developing a gaming engine which would allow
them to model a whole series of spacecraft. They'd always seen the B5 game
as more or less a loss leader for a series. What seems to be most annoying
is that if Sierra had told them that they needed to tighten their schedule
they could have and presumably released the basic engine (say the starfury
/fighter bit) much sooner. There also seems to have been the type of
mismanagement the JMS talks about in the TV industry (i.e. things go over
budget because of last minute changes or bad logistical planning).
This definately looks like being one of the longest Septembers on record :(
Mac Breck
everybody will live in motor homes, and that's all we'll own.
Mac
Joe Othello wrote in message <37ea301d...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>...
>On 21 Sep 1999 17:40:05 -0600, jms...@aol.com (Jms at B5) wrote:
Justin Bacon
<Pine.HPX.4.03.990922...@monet.artisan.calpoly.edu>, "Tyler J.
Wagner" <tjwa...@polymail.cpunix.calpoly.edu> writes:
>Think out of the box. If Sierra won't finish it, get them to open source
>it. Several game companies in the recent past have given away their source
>as public domain (not even GPL!) after going belly-up. Sierra is probably
>too money-grubbing to do it, but it's worth a shot.
I doubt WB would let them even think about it for half a second.
Justin Bacon
tr...@prairie.lakes.com
Justin Bacon
writes:
>I rarely play games these days, but for this one I was prepared to make an
>exception. It would have been the first game I've bought since Caesar III
>(also Sierra). I'm sure I'm not alone in this.
While I pick up *a lot* of computer games (I consider them a valid artform)
this would have been the first Sierra game I would have picked up in close to a
decade. Oh well. I guess they didn't really need my money anyway.
I think I'll give Team Fortress II a pass as well.
Justin Bacon
tr...@prairie.lakes.com
Laura M. Appelbaum
>
> One of the developers has a very detailed and illuminating discussion at
>
> http://www.firstones.com/forums/Forum1/HTML/000210.html
>
there to read. Anyone have the correct link or were the posters forced
to take it down due to legal reasons?
LMA
Diane K De
>Date: Sat, 25 September 1999 01:11 AM EDT
>Message-id: <37EAE9...@mindspring.com>
I can't find it anymore either. The firstones website does say they are having
an upcoming chat with the developers, though.
DD
Vesa Juusola
> I just tried to go there and was told it was a dead link; ie, nothing
> there to read. Anyone have the correct link or were the posters forced
> to take it down due to legal reasons?
If it's the link to Marc's "unofficial press statement", he sayed he took it
off the board as a precaution. So in a sense you're right ... there's also
been a request the remove the article on any other websites, too.
Vesa Juusola
B5SCS Finland
Marc & Chrissy Hudgins
from HQ. Best to just leave it alone. I need the severance money more than I
need to complain. Check back with me in June.
Marc