MS nearly destroyed FASA and Bungie
Microsoft destroyed our studio culture, says FASA Interactive founder, who says the same nearly happened to Bungie.
"When Microsoft bought FASA Interactive and incorporated it into Microsoft... the two reasons they bought us was, one, they wanted the catalogue of intellectual properties and, two, they felt that we had developed a really good development culture. And the reality is that, pretty much from the day we moved to Redmond, that development culture was destroyed," Weisman said in an interview with GI.biz.
"I don't think the studio ever really had a chance...It was destroyed right in the beginning.," said Weisman, who eventually saw FASA closed down by Microsoft in 2007 as part of a series of closures. By that time Weisman had already left Microsoft to form his own new venture, WizKids.
Weisman comments that he was also bought in to help with Microsoft's acquisition of Halo developer Bungie Studios - and that the same thing nearly happened there too.
"They wanted me to sit down with the owners of Bungie and tell them how well the transition went," he explained. "And it was like - 'what planet are you guys on?' This transition did not go well. And actually I became the lead vocal pain in the ass to get things done very different for Bungie."
"I tried to convince them to leave Bungie in Chicago, but not winning that I did succeed in getting them to put them in a walled off room, which didn't follow any of the other Microsoft stuff. We were much better able to defend Bungie's culture than we were FASA's culture."
Weisman says he is currently involved with the new MechWarrior game, but adds that getting a publishing deal for the title may be difficult.
"We're operating under some pretty tight restrictions of the licence that make publishing the games kind of challenging."
Have you ever seen your company ruined by a ham-handed buy-out, or are you solely interested in how this affects the next MechWarrior? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyI loved the first 3 Mechwarrior games. Then MS came and it wrecked a good series. They need to get back on track with the novels and restart the series.
@Talladega: EA's well known for buying up IPs and not producing games. They're locking out the market and letting classics die.
Oh yeah, Bullfrog : (
No, we are the ham-handed buy out company... :)
Actually it isn't quite that simple. We're merging many of our sister companies into us, but this is all at the direction of our parent company (which one way or another owns all of us) so in this case we're just the middleman. As we incorporate them into us, they will be required to follow the corporate standards which many don't like. All along they were required to do so but most got away with ignoring that directive for a number of years.
So, for the rest of the year we get to make life miserable for a bunch of other people all because their upper management wasn't willing to make the necessary changes years ago when they should have. On the other hand, if we weren't going in and taking them over, with the economic hit they took, I think they would be shutting their doors instead.
I'm certainly not defending MS here and I think that with any merger or acquisition, you have to openly evaluate the differing processes and adopt the one that makes the most sense even if means you change instead of them changing.
will never forget in 1994, origin coming out with wing commander 3, the first game that felt like you were in an interactive film where your actions determined what happened. the graphics engine, the game and film production value. would love to see what they would have produced on current gen hardware.
its weird how sony's and nintendo's first party studios are keeping their consoles from being a failure whereas the 360's success has been driven mainly by 3rd party. if microsoft could back that up with more successful 1st party studios without ruining them they would be streets ahead
Little guy? what little guy? :-p
Im a bit perplexed at large studio buyouts. Surely the reason for buying a dev studio is because there profitable or the games they make show promise. They they go in and break a thing that is working by making the studios do things there way. Why not leave them alone, and once in a while send someone along to make sure they are not going compleatly batshit crazy.
... one word Management... There is always a guy responsible for the 'Streamline Integration' of the new dev's in the company, (who can't do what they do) but has to justify his existance/fat paycheck to his boss.
Because he's Management it's all about the promotion for him, so he does what he knows best... buzzwords, mission statements, cost analysis and all that....
Guess how many Dev's give two hoots about Mission Statements?