The Rock Star Publisher
I feel like now that the immediate toxic backlash against the ending of Mass Effect 3 is over that it would be topical to talk about the idea of a “rock star developer” so to speak. Now I’ll freely admit that I could have Casey Hudson pegged wrong, but I can’t help but fight this vibe that he was trying to be one. What I took from the “Final Hours” of the Mass Effect 3 was that Hudson felt like this project was mainly his and that the rest of the team was really there to make it a reality, one particular quote struck me that he “faced down a room of developers concerned about the release date”. Again maybe it’s all just a terrible misrepresentation of him and if that were the case I would really feel sorry for him. On the other hand if being a “rock star” was his intent then I would have to say I don’t feel nearly as sorry for his situation.
I really want my dream of working in the video game industry to become a reality and I’ve spent a considerable amount of my time listening to and reading about various producers, their projects and the industry in general. And I feel that the rock star mentality is, quite selfish really, there is a whole team that is making each project a reality from art and sound to of course programming, all these people make these projects that we enjoy a reality so to want your name to be a big attachment to this, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. As I’m writing this I find John Romero and his antics continually coming to the forefront of my mind. While clearly a very talented man, it seems that his ego has crippled him on more projects that one. I find a lot to think about in the stories of Ion Storm Dallas, some stories are hilarious other bizarre and some depressing in a sense. I heard a story that a skylight was installed over the development room and it created so much glare on the monitors that the developers took to putting sheets over themselves and their monitors to keep it under control. On another hand, just to look at the amount of talent and creativity that came and went from Ion Storm that wasn’t Romero is the part that is in a way depressing. “Daikatana” Romero’s brain child of a project, at the time of its development cost somewhere in the tune of $44 million, adjusting for inflation today that game would cost roughly $65 million. That’s $20 million more than Killzone 2 and Final Fantasy 12, $15 million more than LA Nior and $10 million more than Halo 3. It seems like a colossal sum of money to throw at a project simply because of a single name attached to it. Given how well the failure of “Daikatana” has been documented elsewhere it would be pointless to reiterate it here, suffice to say that it was a financial flop. To list some of this talent there was Jerry O’Flaherty who would go on to be the Art Director on the “Gears of War” series. Which like it or not has had an impact on the art direction of so many modern games it would be difficult to overstate. You have the many young developers who were hired on by Ion Storm who quit in mass (along with developers from many other companies) to go form “Gathering of Developers” who would go on to produce an absolute laundry list of classics like Age of Wonders, the first Mafia, Max Payne, Serious Sam, Stronghold ,Stronghold: Crusader and Tropico 1 & 2. And then there is Corrine Yu, currently working on Halo 4 as the Principle Engine Architect and is the first female technical lead in all of MGS (Microsoft Game Studio), her list of accomplishments is as impressive and it would be exhaustive to list it all, and I would thoroughly suggest you look her up because her work is amazing. And then somehow, John Romero was perplexingly in charge. Now the only game that Ion Storm is fondly remembered for, the original Deus Ex was produced by a team unrelated to Romero and, while I have been unable to find a statistic for its budget I’ve been lead to believe that it was nowhere in the realm of the amount of money that Daikatana was given.
I guess to boil this down to what I’m really trying to say is that despite that absolutely insane talent pool that had collected in Ion Storms hands, it was squandered on John Romero. The rock star publisher to me becomes too great of a focus and some really great talent can go unnoticed due to the celebrity of one person, and makes it seem like they are primarily responsible for what is a team effort. And whether or not their celebrity is warranted or not really isn’t what’s in question, that John Romero deserves credit for what he’s done is obvious and that there will be people of more responsibility and importance in any company. But his projects precedence over every other project, even those of his peers is what I find worrisome. I know that as someone who would love to enter this world, that I would want my chance to shine when the time comes, and were I to ever find myself in a leadership position I would feel like a terrible person to deprive another person of that same chance that I so wanted. The mentality doesn’t fit the mold of the game industry. I see this industry and all it produces as team efforts, and while I hate to fall back on the old saying; there’s no “I” in “team”. And the rock star is nothing if not an “I”.
