MS acquires rights to Gears of War franchise; Black Tusk Studios to take over series

[Laa-Yosh]

In the first part you were talking about how no artist wants to work on other people's IP. I just gave you an example for the many possible cases where it makes sense; and even artists can see the value in that and make not entirely emotional decisions.

BT may not be in a position that's totally similar to ours, but it can still easily be a situation where it makes all kinds of sense to work on Gears instead. We don't know and probably won't for quite a while longer.

Some fellow artists I know in Vancouver were certainly proud that Gears is now a local project.

 

[Cjail]

Isn't BT still working on another IP that is not Gears?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

In the first part you were talking about how no artist wants to work on other people's IP. I just gave you an example for the many possible cases where it makes sense; and even artists can see the value in that and make not entirely emotional decisions.

Choosing to do someone else's IP is not the same as wanting to do it. It makes financial sense which is why most artists end up working for someone else rather than creating their own works, but ideally they'd want to be making their own creation. Take any artist who works on someone else's work and give them financial freedom, a grant of a few million - how many would choose to work on other people's ideas instead of go do their own thing?

I raise it here because it appears as if BT were working on their own project, meaning a personal investment in it as any creative type wants (that might only extend to the head's of the company though), and they are now working on someone else's ideas. Regardless what financial stability that may bring, even if they were independent, I doubt their artistic interests would greet the move with enthusiasm, even if their practical sense is happy at predictable paychecks and a good reference in their portfolio.

 

[Cjail]

BT will be working on IP that is not his own but that doesn't mean that the artists will have no room to "use their art" or add something of their own.
Working on somebody's else ideas, subjects, still gives room for self expression.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Sure, but no-one was saying otherwise. Working on Gears isn't bad for the artists or a negative experience. There's probably artists in the area pleased at the possiblity of working on Gears as good employment and good for their resumé.

The point is that BT were being paid to make their own thing (taking BT as a gestalt, whereas of course it's a lot of individuals, some with more investment than others), and then a year or two later were taken off that project and put onto something else. How would you feel if you were working on a book or game or painting or musical masterpiece or house extension or kit car or whatever, and someone was paying you to work on that project you wanted to work on, and then a year in with it half finished, took you off that project to work on someone else's project? Maybe if it was some extraordinary opportunity, like working on the Olympic Games opening ceremony, you'd be pleased at the possibility, but in the most realistic terms you'd be miffed. You've spent all this time working on a project that's exactly what you want to do, and now you have to stop and do something else. The very fact that something else isn't of your own choosing means it probably isn't what you want to work on. In this case, unless BT begged to do Gears but were refused, started up their own title, and have now been offered what they wanted to do in the first place, this change has to be a negative for them. It's illogical to have the freedom to make anything you want and to make something you don't particularly like so that a forced changed comes as a good thing!

I'm guessing either their project was shelved because MS didn't like it much, or, more likely IMO, MS assumed Epic would do another Gears as easy money for them and founded BT to create another stellar franchise. Then Epic decided not to continue with Gears leaving MS with the decision to either leave Gears out of their platform or pick it up themselves. They chose the latter, requiring a repurposing of one of their studios.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

We've been making a living for a decade from working on other people's IP.

It's a big difference between:
1 - knowing up front that you'll be working on an existing project
and
2 - giving you the freedom and conditions to create a new project with creative autonomy just to take all that away and get you working on an existing project afterwards

Isn't BT still working on another IP that is not Gears?

No, they're not. News say the former project has come to a full stop.

 

[brasnial]

Has anyone left BT over being asked or told to take over gears ...?
The answer is not yet...
So why is it even being discussed ....?

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Has anyone left BT over being asked or told to take over gears ...?
The answer is not yet...
So why is it even being discussed ....?

If you think people will immediately quit their jobs after the first disappointment at work, you're going to have a bad time.



Regarding all the wild fanboy accusations, you would do well to read the forum rules.
If you have a different opinion on this matter, then by all means you're free to share it.
That doesn't mean you have the right to insult other people with a different opinion than yours.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So why is it even being discussed ....?

Because it was raised as a discussion point here and we went on to discuss it in this discussion forum.

Because those with a agenda are looking for a negative in positive news ...

Yet another unfortunate member of a discussion board who's against the free discussion of ideas. What the hell are you people here for?? This has nothing to do with MS (at least the aspect about whether BT are happy about the change or not). It's a discussion about a developer changing project, which is a concept completely independent of who's making those choices. If Sony were making Media Molecule abandon their current project to develop God of War or GT or Wipeout or anything else, you'd get exactly the same discussion points. Same with any other publisher.

its positive news for MS keeping a much loved game on there system exclusitive so let's look for a negative even if one doesn't exist .

I'm not even sure how you can call that good news for gamers. Platform exclusives are never good as they require you own different hardwares to experience all the games. 'Good news for gamers' would be Epic releasing Gears multiplatform. The news that Gears is continuing is good for XB1 owning Gears fans, and bad for anyone who was looking for a new IP from BT/MS that was supposed to be 'a Halo beater'.

 

[brasnial]

Because it was raised as a discussion point here and we went on to discuss it in this discussion forum.

Yet another unfortunate member of a discussion board who's against the free discussion of ideas. What the hell are you people here for?? This has nothing to do with MS (at least the aspect about whether BT are happy about the change or not). It's a discussion about a developer changing project, which is a concept completely independent of who's making those choices. If Sony were making Media Molecule abandon their current project to develop God of War or GT or Wipeout or anything else, you'd get exactly the same discussion points. Same with any other publisher.
Spin
I'm not even sure how you can call that good news for gamers. Platform exclusives are never good as they require you own different hardwares to experience all the games. 'Good news for gamers' would be Epic releasing Gears multiplatform. The news that Gears is continuing is good for XB1 owning Gears fans, and bad for anyone who was looking for a new IP from BT/MS that was supposed to be 'a Halo beater'.

Spin doctoring is everywhere .......games are not politics and in my opinion spin should be laugh at and outed for what it is plan and simple a way to turn positive news into a negative and derail or down play positive news

 

[Shifty Geezer]

There's no spin here. The fact you can't see it as general discussion shows your own prejudices in action. You are free to express how you see this as a good thing. Other people are free to express how they see it as a good/bad thing. And everyone is entitled to debate those opinions and question someone's position. (eg. I say I think the devs would be miffed, Laa-Yosh argues against my opinions)

Either post your opinions and run away as people reply ("I think this is great news but I'm not going to discuss why"), or enter the discussion and debate logically with sensible references and evidences as appropriate ("It's great news because x, y, z and I challenge your opinion), or don't engage in the board at all.

 

[JPT]

For MS and XB1 owners this is a good thing, many people are waiting for a new Gears and they are now happy.

But if you are an individual that signed up to work for BT, based on their original vision of creating something new, with a goal of it being a big new shining IP that would rival Halo etc. I would definitely be disappointed on the change of direction. Would I quit, depends on how heavily invested I was in the original direction, how much does this new direction appeal to me and what kind of other opportunities that was available to me. Not related, but I did quit my job after 5 years, since each year was a rinse and repeat of last year. I started my own company and guess what, we do the same rinse and repeat still, but now I decide what should be rinsed and repeated, big emotional and satisfaction difference that.

The worst case scenario, would probably be if a lot of the key people in BT are tied down by contract to stay for x years or to finish a project etc and they basically could not care less about the project. Then we could end up with a subpar Gears.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Whole lot of mind reading going on in here. Let's all intuit what someone else does or does not want to do, and whether they are happy with it.

 

[Brad Grenz]

I'm guessing either their project was shelved because MS didn't like it much, or, more likely IMO, MS assumed Epic would do another Gears as easy money for them and founded BT to create another stellar franchise. Then Epic decided not to continue with Gears leaving MS with the decision to either leave Gears out of their platform or pick it up themselves. They chose the latter, requiring a repurposing of one of their studios.

Yeah, the problem with buying Gears is they need someone who can make a new game in time for it to matter to this generation. At Black Tusk they're probably looking at late 2016 to be optimistic. There aren't really any independent studios of a the size and caliber that Microsoft could trust to make the game on contract (well, maybe Crytek but they probably wouldn't want to work in Unreal Engine 4). The third option would be to build another studio from scratch just for Gears and then they'd be looking at, what, a 2018 release? That would be too late to make any kind of difference in the competition with PS4.

The worst case scenario, would probably be if a lot of the key people in BT are tied down by contract to stay for x years or to finish a project etc and they basically could not care less about the project. Then we could end up with a subpar Gears.

I can't imagine the employment laws in Canada are so bad people couldn't leave if they wanted to. Even non-compete clauses are really difficult to enforce. Any contractual bonuses that might encourage people to stay would be tied to eventual game sales/metacritic scores so switching projects just puts those further off than ever (remember how ReSpawn began because Activision wouldn't pay out the contractually owed bonuses for one game until Infinity Ward delivered the sequels they wanted? yeah...).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Whole lot of mind reading going on in here. Let's all intuit what someone else does or does not want to do, and whether they are happy with it.

The arguments have been spelt out. If the logic is false, it can be challenged, but to dismiss it because 'we don't know' is to fob off all intelligent discussion. It's no different to discussing what may or may happen regards a hardware design, only instead of evaluating knowledge of hardware components, we're evaluating human behaviour. You don't need to be a mind reader to know a hungry guy is going to be thinking about eating food when some is waved under his nose. That's obvious. IMO it's only slightly less obvious that an artist (game developer) is going to prefer working on his own stuff than someone else's, especially when he's been working on his own stuff for a year.

If people accept that notion, then the argument that BT aren't particularly happy about this change is fairly sound. If people disagree with that notion, there ought to be a logical reason why a game developer who's had freedom to create their own stuff for a year would prefer to drop that and work on someone else's IP. I've even presented one above. But presently the discussion is mostly "BT probably aren't too happy about this" vs. "we shouldn't even be talking about this".

 

[Billy Idol]

I hope they create their own engine and give the game a new look. This would be quite cool and I guess the first "this gen" entry would be a good chance for a visual fresh-start...

 

[Cjail]

The point is that BT were being paid to make their own thing (taking BT as a gestalt, whereas of course it's a lot of individuals, some with more investment than others), and then a year or two later were taken off that project and put onto something else. How would you feel if you were working on a book or game or painting or musical masterpiece or house extension or kit car or whatever, and someone was paying you to work on that project you wanted to work on, and then a year in with it half finished, took you off that project to work on someone else's project? Maybe if it was some extraordinary opportunity, like working on the Olympic Games opening ceremony, you'd be pleased at the possibility, but in the most realistic terms you'd be miffed. You've spent all this time working on a project that's exactly what you want to do, and now you have to stop and do something else.

Ok this is a different thing.
I was replying to your statement: "Pretty much every artist or artistic type I know wants to create their own work"
Now, to answer your question, I personally would probably feel "unhappy" if I was forced to leave my current project/work for another one, especially if if had devoted years of my life to it.

 

[Cyan]

For MS and XB1 owners this is a good thing, many people are waiting for a new Gears and they are now happy.

But if you are an individual that signed up to work for BT, based on their original vision of creating something new, with a goal of it being a big new shining IP that would rival Halo etc. I would definitely be disappointed on the change of direction. Would I quit, depends on how heavily invested I was in the original direction, how much does this new direction appeal to me and what kind of other opportunities that was available to me. Not related, but I did quit my job after 5 years, since each year was a rinse and repeat of last year. I started my own company and guess what, we do the same rinse and repeat still, but now I decide what should be rinsed and repeated, big emotional and satisfaction difference that.

The worst case scenario, would probably be if a lot of the key people in BT are tied down by contract to stay for x years or to finish a project etc and they basically could not care less about the project. Then we could end up with a subpar Gears.

Maybe the previous project wasn't good enough yet, and in fact there was some restructuring of the studio iirc, this was long time ago before the Gears announcement.

I heard on the grapevine that Black Tusk is Microsoft's spoiled child, so maybe they are treating them really well.

@Billy Idol, 100% agreed. New engine would be welcome.

 

[AlNom]

The interview made it seem like they were using Unreal Engine; I do somewhat recall they were hiring folks for UE experience.

hm...

 

[Cjail]

OK I read this article and apparently MS has not yet decided what to do with BT new/previous IP.