We love it when other people fail. "Tragedy," said Mel Brooks, "is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall in an open sewer and die."
Each week we publish letters sent to us regarding previous issues and highlight particularly interesting forum posts. If you'd like to comment on an article directly, send your letter to editor@escapistmag.com.
"When Majesco shut down Taldren Inc. in 2003, illegally attempted to recruit talent away from the studio and stole source code using planted 'assistant' developers, I asked everyone I knew to never touch anything with a Majesco logo on it again.
"This is a story about big against small, about corporate espionage and a man-child producer with a thing for Stevie Case. This is a story I have been waiting years to tell."
"The game was a money loser for Microsoft. Additionally, Microsoft was diverting marketing dollars and manpower from Allegiance to support another space game, Freelancer. Allegiance was subsequently thrown to the wolves. Understaffed and rife with bugs, cheaters began exploiting issues they knew wouldn't be fixed. 'Microsoft Research and The Zone just got fed up with people ruining it for everyone and always felt one step behind' says Alderman. Eventually, Microsoft gave up and pulled the plug."
"Early reports said Heartland would be a game that could make you cry - the Holy Grail of game developers from EA's early days to Steven Spielberg today. 'On one hand, it was supposed to be emotional,' says Jaffe. 'We wanted players who are sensitive types like myself - that cry at Hallmark commercials - we were hoping that those types would actually cry, and that other players would still feel something that came close to an emotional response.'"
"'Peter [Molyneux] was making it seem we were all going to be super rich and making these fantastic games - which I think he believed at the time. [Mucky Foot] just threw away those share options. ... You could have at least sat it out for three or four years and have made lots of money.' I'm talking to the Mucky Foot primaries, 11 years later. There's an audible pause. 'If I'd stayed there, those share options would have been worth half a million pounds,' Mike Diskett sighs. 'We'd have been wearing hats made of money.'"
"It might come as a shock, however, to discover that programmers are generally stubborn when it comes to learning how best to handle new technologies. 'Programmers are very resistant to change,' says Albrecht. 'They're generally very intelligent people - game developers in general are very smart - but programmers just don't like change. They like their standard environment. They like their standard compiler. They like what they're used to, and they have a lot of momentum behind their beliefs.'"
"When Majesco shut down Taldren Inc. in 2003, illegally attempted to recruit talent away from the studio and stole source code using planted 'assistant' developers, I asked everyone I knew to never touch anything with a Majesco logo on it again.
"This is a story about big against small, about corporate espionage and a man-child producer with a thing for Stevie Case. This is a story I have been waiting years to tell."
