Rumor: How Dylan Jobe Averted Disaster and Saved Warhawk

A former employee of Incognito Inc. sheds light on just how dire the situation was after many of its workers left to form a new gaming studio, Eat, Sleep, Play. Amazingly, only 6 remained behind to finish the game and keep Incognito alive.

"Starting about 8 months ago the entire art staff and almost all of the programmers, (including every single network programmer,) walked out of Incognito. Scott Campbell took about 12-15 people and started Eat, Sleep, Play, and the rest, (about 30 people,) went primarily to Salt Lake City's Disney Studio. As of today the only people left at Incognito are Dylan Jobe, Bruce Woodward, Evan Christiansen, Lars Devore, John Crocker, and Nate Robins. Three are programmers and two are animators. Kirk Baum, the lead network programmer walked out about one week before they went gold. About a year ago there were close to 70 employees there. As you could guess, they have a significant problem on their hands."

Hit the jump for more info.

[cloud360]

Huh am kinda stupid. and this is so confusing...

What the hell are they talking about and so sudden and whats goin on

[Meus Renaissance]

Then I hope Eat, Sleep, Play or whatever it's called dies. I can't believe they'd walk out on this project in their droves. Was there some kind of disease in the office or something?

[SofaKingReetodded]

devs we're paid off by MS, does MS know no shame?

[SofaKingReetodded]

Just admit that Bill Gates is the devil's child and the PS3 is baby jesus , ok?

I mean let's start making sense here.

[scheme_a]

Eat, Sleep, Play is a company formed by former Incog staff and David Jaffe, the director of God of War, and they are creating PSN Downloadable Games right now.
So I'm guessing MS is not involved in anyway for this.

[LeShin]

It's a shame, but looking at how great Warhawk is and the recognition Incognito is going to get from this game, they should see staff flock to them! They deserve it as Warhawk is truly brilliant.

[Rowe]

i feel sorry for those 6 guys, the number of people complaining and the pressure to get it all fixed must have made it incredibly hard, i think we should be saluting them for keeping everything going and at the same time fixing it

[crck]

If this is true he and his crew of a half dozen deserve alot of credit.

[Vojkan]

I really like Dylan, he is true great Jew.

[TheExecutive]

so what does this mean for future expansion packs? I hope they find more people. I am glad warhawk is a success, I hope they get more employees... I dont think they will have a problem though.

[Vertius]

We've been promised future downloadable content, including new vehicles and maps. There was also a hint of a much larger, ambitious amount of content that could be called an Expansion Pack.

[Lord Anubis]

nothing happens, because Incognito is in reality Sony Santa Monica they can leverage stuff, that is the reason all of the warhawk fixes are being done by the Santa Monica studio.

People did leave incognito but they also left Santa Monica. THere's a high profile programmer that left Santa Monica to join eat sleep and play , I suppose they all share Jaffe's idea of buying big houses and lots of cars.

[Kleptic]

yeah when Campbell opened the door to some of the lesser employees at Incog, they probably left to work directly under Jaffe...who will probably bring in the bigger development budgets and profile...overall probably more money for them...and this isn't the first time this happened...Singletrac fell apart when Jaffe and Campbell formed Incognito (more campbell than Jaffe, but Jaffe was a lead game designer for Incognito on TM: Black)...and nearly all the Singletrac peeps ended up at Incog several years later...

Incog should be fine though...Sony recognizes the amount of money Warhawk is bringing in...and probably understands how many people would spring for the DLC (although Jobe has confirmed numerous times that they will not nickle and dime us, and that at least some of the additional content will be free of charge...my guess is that will be the first wave of maps)...the success of one game can keep a developer out of trouble for quite a while...it was simply that Incognito had all their chips in on Warhawk...if the game flopped, so would Incog...but that obviously is not the case so far...

[HandShandy]

Yeah warhawk seriously will require DLC in the future in the form of new levels and vehicles.

Incognito are a one of these sub sony devs that come under the santa-monica studio. Sony probs drafted in their own dev teams to help the game out through to completion.

I remember at one point Ingognito were in serious turmoil regarding their dev teams and relationship with Sony. It's like activision all over again!

[kalistyles]

I hope everything works out, cause Resistance is such a great game and I would hate to see a decline in the following game.

Oh. very confusing. My bad.

[SofaKingReetodded]

you mean Insomniac, although if the two merged they could be called Insomniac Incognito, pretty nifty. lol

[TheExecutive]

I get the confused sometimes too.... but thats a pretty sweet idea...

[junk56]

incognito didnt make resistance, but since warhawk was a huge success, incognito will probably be revived

[RussianSniper]

You guys seriously can't believe that there's six people at Incog, come on now.

Sony is the main publisher, you think they would just let 6 people work on their AAA game?!

Think about it, not to mention Dylan said he had 2 extra offices working on Multiplayer patches in San Diego and Santa Monica on the Playstation boards...

[shysun]

Theres like Two people making Littlebigplanet.

20 now true, but that's still not a lot of people.It just goes to show that these devs are putting their heart and soul into these games.For two people to make LBP's demo is just a testament to that.

[GamerMan]

There was 2 people that came up with the idea. They have now grown to 20 people and the most they will grow to is 30 people but at this time they are no longer 2 people that are making littlebigplanet.. the idea and start was 2 people originally though.

[yocdub]

I guess they will be hiring soon....I might apply!

[Whoooop]

It's always rewarding to get positive results from something after people leave you hanging..

They didn't give up and they gave 110% to bring us this game..

They deserve the success of warhawk.

[SRuN4]

Just shows what kind of people they are if they are willing to walk out on this game to go work on a rehash of Twisted Metal for the PS2, they could of atleast waited until the game was gold before they left. Props to Jobe and the guys there for doing what they have these past few days with the limited amount of man power, but like someone else said Sony San Diego and Santa Monica are helping them now so I think they will be fine.

[no_more_heroes]

I want Warhawk to break sales records just for that. I hope the people who left cry themselves to sleep every night after they see how well this game did, knowing that they turned they're back on it!! (sorry, I love "getting revenge" type situations).

[btkadams]

are u saying theres like 5 people that are working on fixing the bugs in warhawk? this is gonna take forever... i really hope they have more than that.

[THUNDERMARE]

I'm pretty certain that Sony will help them out.

[DJ]

there's a lot of "Additional ________" credits, almost equal to the amount of normal credits. There's also only one lead for each position (rather than the usual two or three). I'm sure at one point in the project that there were very few people left at Incognito, but they were obviously replaced with very dedicated and talented people thanks to both the efforts of both the remaining members of Incognito and SCEA.

Hopefully Incognito will be able to release maps and skins for free in the near future (as a bonus of sorts), as well as paid content later on.

[ATLRoAcH]

Talk about worries.

[xplosneer]

Whoops I see imsomniac made that Nvm

[PimpHandHappy]

the ppl left will get one big christmas bonus!

Can say enough about this game

truley fun and intense

[junk56]

well warhawk frickin rocked and its the fastest selling ps3 game to date so yea, suck that people that left incognito.

[satanDaddy]

I think a lot of people are elevating jobe to some sort of messiah here,or a mighty mouse type of character who somehow "saved" HIS OWN game, where in fact he is just lucky. lucky his 20 million dollar plus epic didn't cost him his job. lucky it's selling as a stripped down multiplayer version of the original idea, and lucky he's got fanboys in forums to defend him after he arguably brought down an entire studio. he might be the luckiest game designer/producer ever.
think on that.

[Urr]

Another unsaid fact is that Sony sent in their own producer from the Santa Monica studio a year ago to “Avert Disaster and Save Warhawk,” named Eric Koch. He took the project at that point and made sure that they had a shippable title and stayed with it to completion. I actually felt bad for the poor guy when I left.

[Slugmeat]

The real story here is WHY did all the

[Slugmeat]

The real story here is WHY did all the talented people at Incognito that busted ass on this product leave?? I guarantee it would be very enlightning to hear the reasons why all but 6 people left.

[lacticass]

Having worked in Salt Lake for a time I can tell you that Incognito has a very poor reputation as a place to work. It seems to be the place people go when all other options are spent and there are lots of viable studios in they area who are far more successful than Incognito.

[Urr]

I think that Slugmeat is on to something. The question that is not being asked is why did Incognito implode and there is only 6 people left. As a person that has worked in this industry for some time I can tell you that large numbers of people don’t usually walk away from a good thing. The proof is in the pudding so to speak. 6 people, think about it, you guys aren’t dumb.

[Urr]

Ok ok, I was there, and reading these comments has been very painful/amusing. It’s funny that if people think that if the game is great that working on the game must have also been great.
I will keep this to the point, I work with the people that left. I talk to them every day, they are my friends. No one who left Incognito is looking back and feeling like they made a mistake. Leaving was not a betrayal of Sony or of Incognito. It was escaping an awful situation. I would go into more detail but I really don’t wish anyone ill. On another note work out the math on the project and you will realize that Warhawk has almost no chance to be anything but a financial flop. Game development is big money. We’re not sitting in our basement clicking a button that executes a command that auto builds a great game. 6 years of development is easily 3X longer, (that’s generous) than it should take to get this game out the door. That makes the break even point astronomically high. Again I wish no one ill but try and see the situation from another perspective.

[DeadA]

Another person to thank for everything that went RIGHT with Warhawk is Kirk Baum. He's largely the reason multiplayer is really FUN!