Some more info:
http://www.polygon.com/2013/1/18/3892290/layoffs-hit-gas-powered-games-days-into-wildman-kickstarter-drive
http://kotaku.com/5977246/were-hearing-about-layoffs-big-trouble-at-gas-powered-games-days-after-launch-of-11-million-kickstarter
How to help them? Support their Wildman Kickstarter project.
ps
Some background on Chris Taylor's relation to his employees (source):
Do you know he SOLD his licenses to Supreme Commander AND Dungeon Siege to keep the people he loves together? (Look it up) Do you know he has paid people out of his own pocket when times were tough? Do you know that even when the barrel of a gun was pointing at GPG, he made people spend Xmas break with their families? (Maybe not the best call in retrospect) Do you know how much he enforced 40 hour work weeks as much as possible, and extra time off for employees year after year when they could afford it? (there's more... Maternity leave, Top-Notch Insurance, Transportation coverage for Bus and Toll Booths? The List goes on....) Do you know how many under-qualified people he hired because he saw potential in them, and made sure they were challenged and rise to their potential? Do you know the actual amount of work he (and other senior staff who worked at GPG until today) did for Total Annihilation? Are you aware that anyone can change Wiki's? Have you heard him say anything unclassy about a certain recent Kickstarter success (I know unclassy isn't a word.. I just like it). Or did he point fingers at former employees who launched a game that literally has half of the Total Annihilation name in it, and used "Chris", "Taylor", in their Kickstarter search words? (not sure when those search words went away, but I saw them on Day One) Do you have ANY idea how much it costs to run a studio with just 15-30 employees? (300-500k per month... no shit. Companies aren't just the cost of payroll, sodas, and equipment maintenance) Do you know he has never tried to capitalize on any of these facts? Say what you will about GPG games, or Chris' style or vision... The man bleeds for people. (NOTE: I am not exactly impartial here... I owe him a lot, and I'm tired of non-industry people pontificating and throwing daggers). P.S. He and his GPG people have accomplished a just few, tiny things.. Here's just two of them: 1) Continuous Streaming world for the Dungeon Crawler genre... Kinda raised the bar there. (DS2) 2) 20k projectiles being tracked with ballistics - not predetermined, while concurrently running AI that can team up together to overcome your anti-nukes, IF it gets proper intel on you or can make an educated guess (not fake All-Seeing-AI) (SupCom2).
Do you know he SOLD his licenses to Supreme Commander AND Dungeon Siege to keep the people he loves together? (Look it up) Do you know he has paid people out of his own pocket when times were tough? Do you know that even when the barrel of a gun was pointing at GPG, he made people spend Xmas break with their families? (Maybe not the best call in retrospect) Do you know how much he enforced 40 hour work weeks as much as possible, and extra time off for employees year after year when they could afford it? (there's more... Maternity leave, Top-Notch Insurance, Transportation coverage for Bus and Toll Booths? The List goes on....)
Do you know how many under-qualified people he hired because he saw potential in them, and made sure they were challenged and rise to their potential? Do you know the actual amount of work he (and other senior staff who worked at GPG until today) did for Total Annihilation? Are you aware that anyone can change Wiki's? Have you heard him say anything unclassy about a certain recent Kickstarter success (I know unclassy isn't a word.. I just like it).
Or did he point fingers at former employees who launched a game that literally has half of the Total Annihilation name in it, and used "Chris", "Taylor", in their Kickstarter search words? (not sure when those search words went away, but I saw them on Day One) Do you have ANY idea how much it costs to run a studio with just 15-30 employees? (300-500k per month... no shit. Companies aren't just the cost of payroll, sodas, and equipment maintenance)
Do you know he has never tried to capitalize on any of these facts? Say what you will about GPG games, or Chris' style or vision... The man bleeds for people. (NOTE: I am not exactly impartial here... I owe him a lot, and I'm tired of non-industry people pontificating and throwing daggers).
P.S. He and his GPG people have accomplished a just few, tiny things.. Here's just two of them: 1) Continuous Streaming world for the Dungeon Crawler genre... Kinda raised the bar there. (DS2) 2) 20k projectiles being tracked with ballistics - not predetermined, while concurrently running AI that can team up together to overcome your anti-nukes, IF it gets proper intel on you or can make an educated guess (not fake All-Seeing-AI) (SupCom2).
tl;dr He's a good guy!
He also envisions great games, which is just as important when it comes to deciding whether or not to support their kickstarter for Wildman.
Sure, but I guess everyone here knows that already
It'd sure be nice to see the KS succeed and everyone get hired back. I have a feeling it's going to make it.
It is unfortunate that Wildman does not seem at all interesting to me and I normally like arpg games. Maybe if it gets finished I might change my mind after I see trailers, demos and read people experiences. Maybe the hybrid system is what turns me off.
Did you read the second update? After reading it the game appeared more interesting to me.
Ohh crap!
It looks like they are on goal- http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/gaspoweredgames/wildman-an-evolutionary-action-rpg/
I'll be dropping some money down. I loved Supreme Commander, and Dungeon Siege 1.
Chris Taylor is one of the best people I've ever met.
Let me tell you about the man I know and why he deserves everyone's support.
Chris Taylor has run Gas Powered Games in a way that most people claim they wish companies were run. He has always run GPG as a compassionate person who cares deeply about each person he works with. He has tried to run GPG as a place where people could have lives outside of work.
One of the things most people don't know about GPG is that one of the biggest challenges they've had is that for every game project you hear about there's often a project that got canceled that you didn't hear about. That is, big publisher X contracts studio Y to make a game and half way through there's some re-org at the publisher and they kill the game. So what does the studio do with all those extra people? MOST studios would just lay those people off. Not Chris Taylor. He would go to heroic lengths to try to keep everyone he could. He'd find some other project for them to work on even if it meant he personally would suffer financially to do it. He really cares about providing a stable environment for his people. He puts them first over his own interests.
I've seen people online comments (wrongly) that GPG has struggled because of game X or game Y. That's that even remotely the truth. The truth is that their struggles have come from the games you've never heard of that got canceled by a major publisher leaving GPG holding the bag. It's the plight of many studios and it's why there are so few of them left. The fact that GPG has been so successful for the past decade is a testament to Chris Taylor and his management team's skill and frankly, philosophy. Because sometimes, the good guy really does finish first.
Chris Taylor is universally admired and respected in our industry because he's an avatar of what our industry *could* be if we treated our employees, our partners and our customers better. It's easy to stand on the outside and come up with "Well, they did A, B and C!" without realizing that behind the scenes, he was having to choose between terrible terrible options.
I hope GPG is able to keep going. It's non-trivial to put together the kind of talent that Chris has put together over the years. It would be a huge loss to our industry as a whole. Next time you play your RPG as a first person shooter, ask yourself why that is? Because engineers in our industry can tell you why -- the concentration in talent to create next-generation engines is getting diminished every year because of the high turn over rates that have arisen during the consolidation of studios and publishers in recent years.
111% its slowly going up. Thats a good sign (yes its early but still good).
Some GPG employee's commentary - here's the link and then a snippet - http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?f=73&t=61242
GPG Husk
"There are many of us who will be back at work on Monday at GPG. We will not be paid. We believe so much in this company and this project. We believe in Chris and the vision that he has.We will work our hardest to see Wildman become reality, and in the process see the company we know and love saved.Thanks again to all of you for the support. Get the word out!"
Here's a message from Chris about the layoffs, etc:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gaspoweredgames/wildman-an-evolutionary-action-rpg/posts/388863
No, actually it seems even less interesting. If I want to play aRPG I will play Path of Exile who does arpg better then this game will in any way. Probably Grim Dawn will as well. If I want to play MOBA I will play Dota 2 that does MOBA better in any way possible.
Not to mention this world they made is bland and uninteresting to me. I don't see this game doing well, only reason it got this much money on KS is because they are known game makers. Which means little to me (being known) as the only game they made and I enjoyed was Dungeon Siege 2.
I have a tremendous amount of respect for Chris and GPG, but I'd have to agree that the setting of their IP does not appeal to me that much either. The mechanics they want to implement and the hybrid nature of the game look interesting, and I'm sure the gameplay will be good -- but I think they have limited themselves a bit. Not saying every game should be a high fantasy knockoff or giant fighting robots, but a kickstarter needs to really capture the imagination. Hopefully they make their funding goals and have a chance to surprise us with a great game that we don't yet realize we want to play.
If what Brad says is true about Chris, then he deserves all the support a gamer can give.
However, being nice isn't a recipe for success (I got firsthand experience about that) and I generally don't preorder games anymore.
His kickstarter is failing 5 days to go and not even HALF the money has been raised!
I believe, that just like me, he has to learn not to be such a nice guy. It doesn't work in the real world.
Heh, forgot to talk about the actual GAME ^^
Looks cool. If it becomes good, I'll get it. However, I'm used to Steam sales now so getting me to pay over 20 euro would require something extraordinary. I didn't buy either X-COM, Borderlands 2 or Torchlight 2 when they were on the christmas Steam sale so not gonna get this either until it goes on sale (I know it sounds a bit dickish but it's the cold, hard truth).
A damn shame, seemed like a very interesting game. The layoffs couldn't have come at a worse time for Wildman, not many will support "a loser".
He might be a good guy, but I kinda have a hard time forgiving him this abomination called SupCom2. If it was a proper sequel and not dumbed down, casual, console-orientied trash, he'd have had 50€ from me.
Sup Com 2 changed a game that the majority of its long time players didnt want to have changed (drastically).
Sup com 2 is a good game..... it only has one huge flaw and that is that it is not a Supreme Commander anymore but rather a skirmish commander.
If you dont expect it to be a better version of Forged Alliance and treat it like a average new RTS, it is a above average game.
The sad truth is..... high skill games are not the most popular RTS subgenre. It could imagine that Sup Com 2 outsold Sup Com 1 and FA, at least in the first year or so.
And that is a huge problem for the developer.... FA is a godlike game.... but it didnt sold like one.
Sins has a similar problem. The majority of people leaving the game both SP and MP dont leave because of bugs or balancing issues, they leave because for them a RTS game is something done within 20 minutes.
Looks like they pulled the Wildman Kickstarter and rumor is they have a publisher for some project, but it is not sure it is the Wildman idea. They will release more info later.
Well a bit of an update here:
http://www.bluesnews.com/s/139062/wargaming-acquires-gas-powered-games
I dont think SupCom2 is worse game than FA. But its not better either, but that is nothing new really, sequels of truly brilliant games happen to be better than the original only rarely.
The note about Skirmish Commander, what do you mean by that? That its small scale compared to the original? Cause i think its still the same-scale game, when it comes to unit counts, only the maps are way, way smaller. Obviously to the point, where it changed the way the game is played, at least it seemed that way to me - in SupCom 2, i basically never built those air-transports to move land units over large distances, i simply never felt the need for it. On original SupCom on big maps, it was unthinkable. Actually big part of fun in that game was the setting up of the whole automated transportation system of units to the frontline. In this regard, you have to give SupCom credit for that, it played unlike any other RTS before (well maybe with exception of Total Annihilation, but i would not know, as i played that one only handful of times).
The most annoying thing i personally find about SupCom2 is the concentration of BS. You know, walking and later jumping ships, entire amphibious faction, no strategic bombers and missile subs, but bizzare wacky units with crazy names (in case of Aeon instead...i mean WTF?) I liked the seriousness of original SupCom, and even if it had sci-fi stuff, it was largely anchored in real-world stuff, WW2-like unit classes etc... and then SupCom 2 turned into red-alertesque cheesy bullshit.
So who was to blame for all versions of SupCom Gold being changed to Steam versions, THQ?
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