Josh Robinson's blog on PS3/XBOX360

[Brimstone]

Interesting... But do you really think he'd have a case over something like this?

Where there's a lawyers will, there's a potential case. I don't think it would matter how weak the claim is, going to court could end being embarasing and a distraction. The problem for Sony now is that Josh Robinson has caught the attention of the gaming community, so the details would make headlines. Sony is already dealing with the root kit on CD's issue.

Once people, their e-mails, and files start getting investigated you never know what might turn up.

 

[liolio]

hardknock, forget about it...
I think you're somewhat right, but it's useless to continue defending yourself.
Lot of knowledgeable persons post less and less (ie Jaws, jawed, Aspink and others...)
Like you i don't give a lot of credit to first party dev, they're financially depend of a given brand.
I'm sad because i'm ignore often while pseudo ******s are given respond some time.
Exemple: in the "does cell have more etc" or "xboxb360 superior to PS3" (i can't remenber)
entropy post a very interessting post about memory archithecture of both system.
in regard to the somewhat limited bandwith to ram of Xenon, i ask if somebody have do test of the bandwith utilisation (to main ram) in current pc game (ie Gubby have done it with a demo of ageai ) i think it could have give us some clue because the bandwith xenos/ram seems nearly the same as what we fing in current pc.

The same in this post i've quote what this guy (r, josh) said about the network code which don't alway exist. I think it interesting since the promise of sony are on par and even greater with what MS offer.
shortly, i'm peaced off by the way the forum console goes...
But i know my english is too bad i just have to stupid...

 

[Hardknock]

Well rabid that's really sad. Nothing i've said in this thread has been out of place. If you disagree with my opinions on the subject that's fine. But to drag trash from other forums here is beyond ridiculous if you ask me.

 

[Hardknock]

hardknock, forget about it...
I think you're somewhat right, but it's useless to continue defending yourself.
Lot of knowledgeable persons post less and less (ie Jaws, jawed, Aspink and others...)
Like you i don't give a lot of credit to first party dev, they're financially depend of a given brand.
I'm sad because i'm ignore often while pseudo ******s are given respond some time.
Exemple: in the "does cell have more etc" or "xboxb360 superior to PS3" (i can't remenber)
entropy post a very interessting post about memory archithecture of both system.
in regard to the somewhat limited bandwith to ram of Xenon, i ask if somebody have do test of the bandwith utilisation (to main ram) in current pc game (ie Gubby have done it with a demo of ageai ) i think it could have give us some clue because the bandwith xenos/ram seems nearly the same as what we fing in current pc.

The same in this post i've quote what this guy (r, josh) said about the network code which don't alway exist. I think it interesting since the promise of sony are on par and even greater with what MS offer.
shortly, i'm peaced off by the way the forum console goes...
But i know my english is too bad i just have to stupid...

Thanks liolio, yeah I'm just letting it go.

 

[akira888]

I wonder if Josh Robinson will sue Sony? I'd assume Sony would rather settle out of court rather than endure a long drawn court case that would make a lot of headlines in the video game world.

Assuming he works out of Sausalito (or anywhere else in California or anywhere in Texas) his wrongful termination suit will likely be thrown out of court almost immediately. If you're fired in any of those states then basically your only hope of extracting damages against your former employer is an anti-discrimation lawsuit in Federal Court.

 

[Hardknock]

Where there's a lawyers will, there's a potential case. I don't think it would matter how weak the claim is, going to court could end being embarasing and a distraction. The problem for Sony now is that Josh Robinson has caught the attention of the gaming community, so the details would make headlines. Sony is already dealing with the root kit on CD's issue.

Once people, their e-mails, and files start getting investigated you never know what might turn up.

Hmmm, never thought about that... Josh could potentially make a nice under the table settlement for them to avoid the bad publicity even if he wasn't fired injustly.

One things for sure, it'll be hard for him to find a job in the videogame industry again. Best of luck to him though.

 

[London Geezer]

One things for sure, it'll be hard for him to find a job in the videogame industry again. Best of luck to him though.

He obviously is a good artist, and that's all he has to do. He said he has lots of experience with low and high polygon modelling, therefore he can work for either the videogame or the CGI industry (movies, commercials anything really). Even freelancing, which can be quite lucrative if you're good.

People will want his talents, if he's good. All the rest is media overheating.

If he's not good at his job, then that's another issue.

Though i agree he won't find a job at Sony's or affiliated companies any time soone!!

 

[Brimstone]

Assuming he works out of Sausalito (or anywhere else in California or anywhere in Texas) his wrongful termination suit will likely be thrown out of court almost immediately. If you're fired in any of those states then basically your only hope of extracting damages against your former employer is an anti-discrimation lawsuit in Federal Court.

We don't know any details of his work situation and there are many "what if's" involved.

I assume most cases that get thrown out deserve to be thrown out because they weren't good workers. In the case of Josh, it seems he was respected enough to work on a PS3 demo, so I'll assume he does good work. His co-workers might just stick up for him and say he gave nothing but a 110% effort.

I remember not to long ago reading how many developers feel their overworked and treated poorly. If the moral at where he worked at isn't the greatest and they feel Josh got shafted, Sony could be in for a tough fight.

What if his supervisor recieved an e-mail from a upper level executive saying to terminate Josh?

On the other hand if Josh is a dipstick and not liked, he'll have a much harder time.

 

[liverkick]

Beyond the oddly boastful assertion that someone in his position has seen enough PS3 development worldwide to somehow form a consensus that its "just not next gen", there were also several blurbs in that article that seemed peculiarly obtuse for someone in his field. The wacky 1 out of 5 US devkits claim for one... this thing about normal maps being a fad (from someone who works on art assets?!) another. He was also obviously mistaken that his "group" was the only one to demo anything in real-time at E3, but then went a step further with the head scratching by saying... "Even then it was (still) a scripted event. You could not pause the camera and fly around the scene." Huh? If it was actually running "on the box" as he put it, that shouldnt have been a problem. Just a lot of things not adding up.

And beyond breaking NDAs, basically trashing his very own team's project as a “just get it outâ€￾ title couldnt have gained him many good vibes among his colleagues either.

Sigh, the usual suspects saying this is "attacking the messenger". But in this case I think the messenger just comes across as being rather dense. *shrug*

Cest la vie

 

[Shifty Geezer]

And beyond breaking NDAs, basically trashing his very own team's project as a “just get it outâ€￾ title couldnt have gained him many good vibes among his colleagues either.

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if his colleagues agreed with him. It wouldn't be the first time a company, any company, let alone game development, has the management setting deadlines that are too tight to really create something worthwhile. And Josh wouldn't be the only employee of a company to feel he's doing less than the best possible to satisfy the marketting guys and accountants. Less than fantastic launch titles are the norm, which he referred to, and in just speaking his mind, unpolitic as that was, wasn't saying anything anything particularly bad about anyone. So his company was rushing their title - what launch games for PS3 aren't doing similar? What employees of those companies aren't feeling like they want to do more than just a high-end PC game type 'port' but have to follow orders?

 

[Heinrich4]

Ok..

1. The PS3 is behind schedule - PS3 release will be between May and December this year.

2. Launch games will be underwhelming. None of the games he's seen have met the standards of last years E3 "demos" (which he has verified that none but 1 or 2 were real-time).

3. Behind closed doors Sony employees think Xbox 360 is more powerful.

4. Only 5, let me repeat five, final dev kits have been released in the U.S.

So none of this was new and/or interesting?

Only 5 sdks in USA ? But this guy (Klee) talk about 40 sdks alpha for EA before july 2005 (it certain have much more final sdk than only 5 )!

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=564455

" Actually, the original CEB-1020 "Shreck" systems started shipping in very small numbers in the middle of Jan. 2005 and the last Shreck systems were phased out in march when the CEB-2030 "Cytology" kits started shipping in their place.....

The Cytology kits will be shipping to developers until December when the SPCH-CEB900 PS3 Refrence Tools start arriving....


They are currently around 500 PS3 kits in developers hands around the world (EA alone has ~40 or so kits to themselves) and sony will be ramping up the production of kits being shipped out to developers...this month they will be sending out ~100 kits then 200 in August and they say 300 more in Sept and 3000 in Oct...we will see about that, though..."

 

[3roxor]

Maybe he will now be hired by the CIA or something.

 

[Fast]

Maybe he will now be hired by the CIA or something.

And do what? Leak info to the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence?

 

[Farid]

There's only noise in the last 4 pages

Ok, this is way beyond "tolerable".

There's some terrible things in the last pages of this thread.

First, a few things to note, about the "truth" J.Robinson exposed.
You have to know that his career at SOE didn't go as well as he could have expected (I'll just say that...).
One should not forget that he's an artist, not a developer, none of the coding guy at SOE think like him, so much about the "Sony developers think this and that".

Now, about the personal attacks and consorts, this has no places here.
Same thing about the discussion regarding people's supposed agenda, and supposed reasons behind threads rating.
I won't expand on why it's not contributive to this forum, seeing that you all know why.

Now, the noise:signal ratio have to go up. And it will.

 

[Nite_Hawk]

Vysez: Do you work for Sony?

Nite_Hawk

 

[Farid]

Vysez: Do you work for Sony?

Hell naw!

But I know people who work for SOE,. That is, if you're asking me why I know what's going on there.

 

[ralexand]

Hell naw!

But I know people who work for SOE,. That is, if you're asking me why I know what's going on there.

Cool, we have another insider.

Let's just wait till February assuming we get playable stuff.

 

[NavNucST3]

Luckily the govenment doesn't quite work the same. I cannot tell you guys some of the things that I do in the military. But I can give an opinion of the military in general. He did something incredibly stupid, which was give an opinion of something he does in his job, not his opinion in general. I may not work in the same feild as you guys, but rest assured there are things that I just can't comment on. No matter what my opinion is of them.

I am actually suprised that he was "just" fired. In my line of work disclosing, we shall call it sensitive, information would land you straight in jail. For a while....

No company has a document that supercedes the U.S. Constitution either, whereas the military does, that document, of course, being the UCMJ. Always remember the gov't makes the rules, but they do not apply to the government itself.

I relate NDAs to something akin to Clearances, maybe SOE had something like confidential, where you can almost mention anything, while the other divisions have something like TS. Clearances are tricky because, just because you have Top Secret doesn't mean you can automatically share that information with another individual with TS.

As an aside, I have read the comments from the devs, and let me say as former, military team lead, stand-point it is often better to keep the people who have been through a shit storm or who have screwed up royaly before, because they can then relay that information to other members of a team. When we look for experience its not always about looking for the great experiences, its about looking for the ones that have defined someone. I would venture to say that if someone were to hire this person that they may actually get MORE out of him then he previously delivered. Even if the only reason is that now he stays locked in the studio with no internet access. Instead of putting him on the mental do not hire list, maybe you dock his pay, ask his straight out "WTF were you thinking?" listen to his repsonse and then make the determination. This whole one strike and your out deal seems over the top to me.

I'm sure I could relate story after story of guys and ladies who FUBAR'd something in the NAVY that kept their jobs. The most recent that sub capt who crashed into the mountain (I feel he is a scapegoat for a shitty civilian job, but I digress). Over beers, I could go on for months about our Intelligence agencies......

As a matter of fact the Armed Forces ski weekend is rapidly approaching here in Colorado, can't wait until I can rant with my brothers who have been there.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

As an aside, I have read the comments from the devs, and let me say as former, military team lead, stand-point it is often better to keep the people who have been through a shit storm or who have screwed up royaly before, because they can then relay that information to other members of a team. When we look for experience its not always about looking for the great experiences, its about looking for the ones that have defined someone. I would venture to say that if someone were to hire this person that they may actually get MORE out of him then he previously delivered. Even if the only reason is that now he stays locked in the studio with no internet access. Instead of putting him on the mental do not hire list, maybe you dock his pay, ask his straight out "WTF were you thinking?" listen to his repsonse and then make the determination. This whole one strike and your out deal seems over the top to me.

Good attitude. I know some people who have screwed up in ways that have landed them in prison, and as a result taken a good hard look at themselves and made an effort to grow into better people. Compared with plenty of normal folk who don't go through a critical introspective process, these 'criminals' are better people. Looking at a person's past actions as only indicative of their future actions ignores the possibility that they've actually learnt and changed. One strike alone isn't enough to determine whether someone's a good batter or not. One exam paper isn't enough to determine whether someone's capable of certain activities or not.

 

[BTOA]

In my line of work disclosing, we shall call it sensitive, information would land you straight in jail. For a while....

Court Marshall?

No company has a document that supercedes the U.S. Constitution either, whereas the military does, that document, of course, being the UCMJ. Always remember the gov't makes the rules, but they do not apply to the government itself.

I think you're confused.

The U.S. Constitution only applies to government agencies, while the private sector has to obey government regulations.