Well, did you read the thread? Again, Lair wasn't just a technical disaster, it was a gameplay disaster too. They apparently had projects canceled by Nintendo before they took up Lair (Pilotwings GCN), and afterwards they apparently had trouble getting publishers. There was talk that they were trying to get Nintendo interested in a Kid Icarus project (and had started development on something to show them), but there's no confirmation of that besides the one IGN guy. PS3 development being difficult didn't help, but if fully-funded game made them die, they couldn't have been that healthy to begin with.
Factor 5 has apparently closed down
- Thread starter Megadrive1988
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Well, did you read the thread? Again, Lair wasn't just a technical disaster, it was a gameplay disaster too. They apparently had projects canceled by Nintendo before they took up Lair (Pilotwings GCN), and afterwards they apparently had trouble getting publishers. There was talk that they were trying to get Nintendo interested in a Kid Icarus project (and had started development on something to show them), but there's no confirmation of that besides the one IGN guy. PS3 development being difficult didn't help, but if fully-funded game made them die, they couldn't have been that healthy to begin with.
Lair was garbage not because of technical issues, it was garbage on so many areas i dunno where to begin. Gameplay wasnt great, controller issues, bugs.. Atleast the water looked very nice.
It has nothing to do with the PS3 hardware, and everything to do with bad design decisions made from Factor 5.
PS3 hardware development might have been hard, but lets face it, if your company has to close down AFTER releasing a FULLY FUNDED title, then there is something wrong with your company.
Even though development of Lair itself was funded by Sony, it's not hard to imagine that Factor 5 did a lot of investment in expanding their production capabilities (staff, equipment, facilities) in anticipation of a continuing relationship with Sony post-Lair, producing similarly ambitious titles. How much of this expansion would have been funded by Sony? Further, the continuing cost of maintaining an operation capable of producing titles that were so ambitious without significant revenue from game sales to support it doesn't seem like it would be tenable for most of the independent developers out there.
It's probably not safe to assume that Lair directly killed Factor 5, but it's not unreasonable to believe it is possible either.
One of the problems with development costs today is that as a small developer, you only have to strike out once if your trying to build AAA product, to put yourself in a very bad position. After that if you loose a contract you can be gone.
And once your in a bad financial situation convincing another publisher to throw 5-10 million dollars at you gets increasingly difficult.
And once your in a bad financial situation convincing another publisher to throw 5-10 million dollars at you gets increasingly difficult.
Perhaps the problem then is developers overreaching themselves, being impatient and aiming too high? Isn't the wise thing to produce a number of small titles that are successful and accrue the capital to expand and produce bigger titles with a good bit of safety margin? TBH I'm gobsmacked at the lack of high-quality developers targeting downloads, getting some 'pocket money' on parallel to their main developments, and using the downloads as testbeds for technology. But then I don't know what the real complexities of that would be for a developer.
Ultimately Lair was a poorly designed product and simply a terrible game, you can have shit tech and still manage good gameplay design, and the game might still be well-received, what Lair had was shit gameplay design, without insane hype backed by the media there's no way to rescue a game with shit gameplay design.
Brash going out of business was what killed Factor 5. Lair being a shit game caused Factor 5 further funding from Sony but with their Brash funding falling through the floor dropped out from under them and in this climate there's probably no way for them to get funding. Had Lair not been such a shit game, Sony might have ended up wanting to continue a relationship with them given they have funded much of the initial investment in the tech/assets as well as the IP market since subsequent games might cost them less to bring to the market.
The problem is most developers are run by people who love games, and they don't want to work on GBA games or small download games.
If I were to do the startup thing again, a lot less of my decisions would be driven by the desire to work on cutting edge technology and high budget AAA titles. But it's a hard lesson to learn.
The bolded items are high points for a technical demo, or on B3D, but can't be seriously considered as significant pros of a game.
One can also argue that "7.1 music" is an absurd notion, but that's for another forum
(Music is what remains after you take away all the tech, what you can play on a piano - see FFX's piano score)Unfortunately, this is a common situation. Publishers aren't stupid, and know how much your development costs, and FULLY FUND exactly what they are getting; if after releasing a fully funded title, you have managed to stash away funds for another one, there's something seriously wrong with your publisher
What every sane publisher would try to do with such a developer would be to strong-arm him into cancelling all possible side projects to help expand the scope of the funded project, or even to shorten the term. And in the situation we are discussing, the developer is not in a position to do whatever he wants.
I would also think that most developers are more structured towards having a small number of large teams than a large number of small teams. They are staffed with more people whose expertise is in production vs. project management roles. I guess that with smaller projects you could have one person managing multiple projects and could somewhat even this out, but I don't think that it would necessarily be a seamless transition from focusing on AAA development to multiple smaller projects and back.
You also still face the danger that only some of your smaller titles hit, which would seem to have the same effect as having limited success on a larger project.
You also still face the danger that only some of your smaller titles hit, which would seem to have the same effect as having limited success on a larger project.
nbohr1more
Newcomer
I don't get it at all... Why didn't Factor 5 license their Gamecube engine to Wii developers? The Wii is so popular now, why aren't Developers even slightly interested in using what Factor 5 created? Even if the F5 engine is to specific to the RS games, wouldn't any developers want to put out a 3rd person Space Shooter? or a Wii zapper game that has a "Space Ship" shooting galary? Is RenderWare that much easier to use? Does RenderWare have most of the same capability, Developers simply aren't optimizing it well? If not will F5 have pitty on the Wii userbase and tell RenderWare how to improve their engine and developement tech? -- End rant
It's easier to get a small title that turns out to be a hit or a cult hit, bigger games can't get away with tired ideas and not so polished execution, both of which were Lair's undoing, but the main problem with Factor 5 was that they really haven't grown as game designers ever since the rogue squadron days, no amount of good tech can rescue them from that.
Why should wii developers even relearn a new set of tools? The graphics requirement for the wii is basically the same as the gamecube, if they can get away with using the same tools and assets, they will. An engine being able to achieve great results is not as important as the ability to achieve results easily and CHEAPLY.
On that note, I do wish developers would be more ambitious with the Wii architecture ^^
I was hoping to see more of the work that F5 did replicated. Although some publishers would like to make games as quickly as possible, some thought to the technology their working with would be much appreciated.
I was hoping to see more of the work that F5 did replicated. Although some publishers would like to make games as quickly as possible, some thought to the technology their working with would be much appreciated.
nbohr1more
Newcomer
I guess I'll have to wait for another Nintendo in-house title to see any eye-candy from this system. I just wish F5 would at least re-package RL & RS together, cut most of the ground missions, improve the fidelity a little and put a little plastic Wii-mote add-on that makes the thing look like an Atari Star Wars Arcade yoke... (allow for traditional GC controls as well) I'd buy that in heart beat...
grandmaster
Veteran
I might be wrong, but turning an in-house piece of code used on a 2-3 fairly similar games into a full-on engine/middleware aimed at developers with no familiarity with your code isn't a piece of cake.
I'd agree, but then again, you'd be surprised at what most middleware engines actually are...
Absolutely. It's a credit to their technical skills that their Star Wars games, released as early as their were on the GCN, remain as some of the best looking ones on that platform.
The marketplace is full of extremely bland Star Wars games that sell well.
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