Damnation Developers Laid Off

Several former employees at Blue Omega, developers behind the recent Damnation, have confirmed with Kotaku today that the entire dev team has been laid off following "issues" with Codemasters, Damnation's publishers.

-Kotaku

[RememberThe357]

Is this really a bad thing? I mean I don't want to see any more people loss their jobs but... You what this does suck....

[Sheikh Yerbouti]

I followed this because I liked the steampunk and the character models - hats more than boobs. I dropped it when it kept being delayed and I saw the lead producer was some 20-something wannabe.

[Bnet343]

I feel for these people. Being laid off is no joke.

[Blaze929]

sucks to see people loosing jobs in this economy and more yet loosing a job in a field they enjoy. Sure to us the game may have sucked but until any of us make a better game we can't really talk. To them, maybe the game was fantas.....ok the game seriously sucked -_-; just remember how frustrated I got while playing it.

[dragunrising]

I feel sorry for the devs. Damnation might be a bad game but people tend to forget what goes into making a game: money. Limited budgets are usually the culprit for bad games, not the game makers. Publishers will poor millions of dollars/euros/yen, etc into a game if its a recognizable IP. Damnation however was anything but recognizable. This means fewer resources and less polish. Perhaps the game design was wrong (Victorian Steampunk in the Wild West?), but it was clear that the game was rushed an unoptimized. The best part of the game arguably were the platforming elements and inspired artwork. I really wanted to like Damnation...too bad the game play couldn't match the excitement of the previews :-(

[HarukoHex]

Southpeak, doesn't have a limited buget yet every game sucks T_T

[Syronicus]

Then they looked as though they were trying too hard with the slutty look of the chick in the game and after that it all went down hill from there. Try making a game that takes itself seriously and the devs might have had better luck.

[-MD-]

Make a better game next time.

[Polluted]

They can only really make it as well as their bosses allow them too. If the management didn't hire enough people to do the project, if they allocated too much money to one department, but not enough to another, if they imposed ridiculous deadlines on their staff or if they forced their team to work with sub-par technology for financial or legal reasons, then it's perfectly possible that a great team could make a terrible game.

Those are only a few examples of things that could have gone wrong that are totally out of the dev. team's control.

[Elven6]

...wow, no one in their right mind sets out to make a bad game. Things happen in the development process that cause such a game to be made.

[dogmeat eater]

What do you expect when you half @ss things? Your going to get your sh!t canned.

[Gamer_Politics]

this is what happens when devs make bad games..

[-MD-]

Why do people with the same posts get a different number of agrees/disagrees?

Makes no sense.

[SprSynJn]

Pretty sure it is just you, since most of the time I see you on here you are trying to start an argument. Could be my imagination though.

[-MD-]

Sweet I'm popular.

Well if people love me enough to disagree with a comment they agree with I must be doing something right.

[Syronicus]

The fist being a positive one where folks like to track you and agree with stuff you say because you have a like-minded ness and are genuinely kind. The second is the type where folks track you for the sole purpose of taking your bubbles away whenever they can and hitting the disagree button just for the sake of spite. It's a popularity that most sensible people do not want following them... It's also the popularity that you have gained with your troll like posts and flame bait comments.

Your reputation precedes you here and for that, you get more disagrees than the average user and no, it's not a good thing to have following you.

[-MD-]

Nothing I say is worse then what the PS3 fanboys say. They are literally in every article saying something bad about 360.

If this site was a 360 fanboy hangout I would be getting agrees instead of disagrees so whenever I get a disagree I just assume it's some butthurt fan.

[Syronicus]

Just because the PS3 fanboys do it, does that make it right to do it as well? Two wrongs = a right? The way I see it is if we all just discuss more maturely and more adult like we will eventually discourage fanboys from speaking as they do now. Doing what they do makes you one of them and personally speaking, being one of them is not a good idea.

[RustInPeace]

You, my friend, are just bias. All you do is spout trash talk about PS3 and that's it. I never even read anything by you that even talks about the 360. That may be because I don't track people and read every post they ever made, but any time I read something on either a multiplatform game or just a shoddy PS3 game, there you are... If you're gonna trash talk about PS3 and the people who are disagreeing with you, why not take into consideration that, maybe, it's you!

[rockleex]

So you WANT this site to be a 360 fanboy hangout?

I thought people would hope for ALL fanboys to go away.

No wonder why you post a lot of fanboy drivel.

[-MD-]

I don't remember saying I wanted that actually... weird though.

I actually say good things all the time about the PS3 and if you would so kindly notice the only time I talk bad about a console I own is when I'm replying to someone trash talking the 360.

I don't start troll discussions I just reply to the already existing trolls.

[dragonyght]

ya the funny thing is when i watched the video game diary the made sound like the next big thing yet they fail miserably

[Soldierone]

Should of released it as a PS2 game and it probably would of gotten average scores. I was seriously suprised to see just how crappy this game was, there is no way a developer team should of been proud of it and there is no reason a developer should have published it in any way as a next generation game. It sucks to see young "talent" go but this game was just terrible.

[sunnygrg]

Hell, in their respect, I'll at least try Damnation next. Hope they get picked up like Free Radical by someone.

[OhMyGandhi]

on paper, Damnation was ingenious in it's design.
I loved the concept art, just too bad the rest of the team couldn't match the game designer's work.

[Fade_Walker]

It's a shame. I know Damnation sucked, but a lot of new developer's first game sucks.

I wish them the best and hopefully they find a new job soon and take Damnation as a learning experience.

[FantasyStar]

Yup Yup. Guerrilla's first game was KZ1, which is mediocore-universally and they ended up with a pretty good game like KZ:L and KZ2 in the later years. Hope the Damnation devs bounce back.

[Persistantthug]

Not even in the same ballpark.

[Elven6]

Guerrilla's first game was NOT Killzone, I guess you started to follow them recently? Shellshock: Nam '67 was there first game and that did horribly in reviews and sales IIRC. Killzone was their first decent game and Killzone 2 was their first great game.

Edit: That was as Guerrilla of course, before they were know as Lost Boys,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

[Fade_Walker]

Easy people!

I have no idea where Killzone came up but it didn’t suck but it wasn’t perfect either (but I do have to give them credit for what they had to work with). But I see this a lot when a new developer comes around, usually the first game won’t be that great, but as they go one to make more games they usually get better.

[Transporter47]

but yeah i mean the game looks like they only worked on the graphics cause they should of concentrated more on gameplay IMO and maybe the game woudln't have sucked as much as least make everything but the gameplay suck and you will get a game with at least a 7.0 or 7.5 example Prototype... and i'm sorry if you liked that game but the only fun thing about it was the gameplay everything else eh... and that is my opinion so shut it if you don't like it

[Jeff257]

While it sucks they got laid off, the fact still remains that Damnation was a bad game and that is why no one bought it. When i first saw it being developed I was very excited to see if it would turn out as good as it seemed. But it turned to crap which is unfortunate for something that had so much promise. Maybe this will teach other devs out there to take the time you need and make sure you have the money to make games people will buy.

[kaveti6616]

Well, it looks like they had a lot riding on this game, and it didn't pan out for them. Hopefully, they will be picked up by a larger publisher? I remember Guerrilla Games made a very terrible game called Nam 67. It was awful, but obviously there must have been something about the game that Sony thought had potential, and GG got picked up. I'm glad because games like Killzone 2 really push the boundaries of realism, and obviously it shows that GG are very talented developers.

Hopefully the guys who made Damnation will be recognized as having some potential. I read some posts on here praising the concept of the game and the steampunk theme. Maybe a larger company like 2K or Microsoft will recognize that these devs had some creativity behind them. With a decent budget, tools, and a decent amount of development time, I'm sure the guys who made Damnation can make a great game. In life some people get second chances. Hope they get theirs soon.