Free Radical Design closes doors Comments by Games Industry.biz

It's a sad thing indeed, and at a terrible time (as if there were a good time to lose your job). Hope all involved can find places elsewhere quickly.

As for the whole Haze thing, I'm not a subscriber to that being their death knell at all. Plenty of factors go into making games, and just because a company releases one that's not as good as others it doesn't necessarily mean the people behind that game aren't as talented or hard-working as other folks. Influences - often from outside - come to bear and can make things difficult.

Not that I am saying that Haze was fun for me, but merely to say that Free Radical had a good history behind them, and one missed step wouldn't have done them in. Any developer closing is bad for the industry in my opinion, as I'd happily take Haze over no game at all.

I think we can draw one single conclusion from all of this, and that is the fact that if you are a banker or a trader reading this, know that this and everything else at the moment is all your fault, and you should probably kill yourself for the greater good of humanity.

At least they'll be able to go back to Rare.

"lenty of factors go into making games, and just because a company releases one that's not as good as others it doesn't necessarily mean the people behind that game aren't as talented or hard-working as other folks"

I completely agree with that, but it doesn't mean it won't cut off your future investment. There are (were) no doubt plenty of skilled people at FR, but Haze was a costly mistake (whatever the reasons it happened) and I can't imagine getting in new money was made any easier by that.

"lenty of factors go into making games, and just because a company releases one that's not as good as others it doesn't necessarily mean the people behind that game aren't as talented or hard-working as other folks"

I completely agree with that, but it doesn't mean it won't cut off your future investment. There are (were) no doubt plenty of skilled people at FR, but Haze was a costly mistake (whatever the reasons it happened) and I can't imagine getting in new money was made any easier by that.

jesus! similar happened to me.
Got told that the company was gatting shut down and moved to Iceland to give them more jobs.

Think about it the games industry crashed in the early 80s,its slowly going that way again.

The games industry certainly contracted during this period (words I know) - but the period of contraction got rid of a lot of chaff and left the super efficient at the core. I think we are seeing something similar - that is, the industry is contracting and unless you have triple A IP then you may well be part of the chaff. I.e. FRD

The only difference this time is the cost of developing a game - in the eighties, at most 25K - help me someone? - now you are looking at millions for the major games - RE5, Halo 3, GTA IV etc - in this economic climate that cannot last. Konami are already talking about bringing MGS4 to XBOX360 to get back some development costs. We may be seeing a period of safe - middle of the road development for the next couple of years with the only original IP coming from independent devs, distributed via STEAM, XBL.

In any case the industry is contracting in number of standard dev houses.

A damn shame. Second Sight and Time Splitters were brilliant games.

I picked up Haze recently for a tenner. It's actually decent fun in places, they never forgot how to program tight controls and the soundtrack was decent. Unfortunately, the critics were right about most of the rest :(

I still remember playing Timesplitters on the PS2, it was the first decent shooter and had lots of cool challenge modes. Timeplitters 2 was my favourite Gamecube shooter.

Anyway, sadly I don't think we've hit the worst of this recession, I think Q1 2009 is gonna bite hard. Good luck to all the staff laid off.

http://news.spong.com/article/16788/Free...

@retibra

"Dude. You have no idea how wrong you are."

Try again.

"And shame on you for using an occasion where people are losing their jobs to push a "console warz" angle."

What the hell are you talking about? It's simple economics. Small gaming base (PS3) versus huge gaming base (multiplatform). Which is gonna give the best returns for the development effort? You do the maths.

Spong don't know shit.

Free Radical is being kept open with a skeleton staff of 20-30 people to make it easier for the administrators to sell their assets. The vast majority of staff (85%) lost their jobs. For all intents and purposes, Free Radical has ceased top be a functioning game developer.

thank fuck i got out of the games industry when i did in 2001.

it was clear to me back then that the industry would split into cheap and cheerful casual titles and mega budget blockbusters.

it was obvious there would be no middle ground.

for the smaller devs, the choice was simple, get out or starting turning out casual stuff.

smaller developers don't have the time or resources to compete with the mega budget block busters. so they have to gamble that their own technology and brands can remain huge sellers when compared to the block buster titles with mega budgets.

with the smaller developers being highly dependent on publisher's milestone payments (without the luxury of large royalty checks rolling in from past titles) they are at the mercy of their publisher and pretty much living a hand to mouth existence.

if the publisher turns sour on them for whatever reason, the industry is so risk adverse that it would be impossible to find replacement project in the time before the next round of bills and wages arrive. it can easily take 6 months or more just to negotiate contracts even with a working prototype demo to show to puiblishers. if the developer has decently skilled staff, they're probably easily on 30k-40k/year per person, those outgoings can and do mount up very quickly.

so for smaller developers with just one title in development, they really are walking on a high wire with no safety net. one foot wrong and it's all over for good.

i wish the ex-staff of free radical all the best in their current and future endeavours.

I sort of knew (or close to it) that they would go under after releasing Haze. I'm not a game developer but when you see a game and straight away you can see real game design problems and major irritations you wonder how competent a company is. Their game engine was weak and they obviously hadn't achieved much with the ps3 hardware compared to other developers. I loved Timesplitters 2 and enjoyed future perfect. They had a quirky charm that added to the gameplay immensively. I shall probably fire up timesplitters 2 over the christmas break and raise a glass to the people at free radical. At least they achieved something in their live with timesplitters 2 and 3. Haze was soo totally uninspired its shocking. I've yet to play the full game as I'm waiting for it to reach £4.99 before buying. I missed out on the comet deal at that price.

Free Radical people remember your strengths, humour, quirky and interesting level design and ideas. You should have looked at timesplitters 2 and improved on what was right about that instead of throwing it all out of the window and doing some irritating, poorly programmed halo wannabe.

Well they did release their last game as a ps3 exclusive spending most of the time battling technical issues instead of making a good game..

If making dissapointing games made you go bust, SEGA would've dissappeared as soon as they went multi-platform.

Whilst we all already know is the most expensive in term of resources needed to complete the title ready for the market, I actually think the single stinker title which missed the needed sale target by a big way is going to be enough to send that Dev under.

Even if owned by a big publisher umbrella thingy, look at Ensemble Studio, they were not protected by being more costly and cost/profit ratio DOESNT justify to the execs to keep them going.

Haze SUNK Free Radical but it alone is not the reason, I think Haze shown up some of generational transititional issue which would have been pretty much forgiveable if released during the first quarter after launch rather than stand on its feet against the better products.

Also marketing wasnt good, with unknown franchise going against the stronger stallions, I was appealed due to the backstory and the premise of the drug addiction and necessary use balance and was damn well disappointed that it wasnt well used.

However I support the sentiment that its not the time to use this to support our agenda with regards to consolewarz, but questions needs to be answered as to why they fallen under as they did.

Sad news. Thanks guys...Timesplitters series were the defining multiplayer games of PS2. Loved them.
It's such a shame we can't look forward to Timesplitters 4 anytime soon...

"Some of the big studios out there NEED to keep making big titles just to pay the lrent on their offices."

If you mean that if you're a big studio you need to create a title that sells a shit load just to recoup cost, than you're right. The question is however whether the old model of creating games which are for 99% focused on graphics, will be economically viable in the long run. Development cost have exploded and they're not offset by a bigger rise in revenue. And then there's a machine released that doesn't require astronomical investments in game assets and has the biggest installed base of the current gen consoles. You'd be awfully stupid (the tunnel vision effect should have been gone by now) to invest most or your best resources in the projects that are the least likely to generate a positive return.

"Spending big money isn't the problem, if its spent in the name of making equally big profits."

If the profits you make are equally big, you break even. That's not that great of a return (0% or less, depending on the timing of the cash flows). :p

Sorry to hear that, FR folks.
Hope the new year brings better news for you all.

It's a crying shame. I hope the developers continue to work in the UK games industry, because it's one of the few industries Britain can be proud of. And Free Radical had some of the best in the business.

So long guys... and thanks for all the fish!

Hope you all get jobs at the new arty-farty EA!

Dr Doak I LOVE YOU MAN!

Ok, a number of points:

1) It's very sad to hear of any company going bust in the industry tbh - and nobody wants to see companies of their pedigree go down, regardless of whether or not it was inevitable.

2) Off-topic as it may be, or tangentially related to the topic, we dont really need grieving widows in here crying "For God's sake, these people now HAVE NO JOBS!". A comments thread like this is always going to contain some mourning, but it doesn't need to be its sole purpose.

3) That said, I'm pretty tired - as I'm sure many people are - of fanboys turning everything into a battleground. Some people liked Halo, some people liked Timesplitters - maybe there were even a few who liked Haze. Personally, I prefer mouse and keyboard for my FPS games. This is a point of view. You might not share it. That's fine too. This thread is about 70% knee-jerking.

4) The games industry is unlikely to collapse alongside others based on a global economic downturn. More expensive forms of recreation such as holidays will probably take a downturn, but many theories suggest that it will affect the games industry very little, and people may even turn to cheaper passtimes such as gaming in lieu of more expensive options.

Meh, I want to say more about the futility of aligning your loyalty to one particular faceless corporation or another, but I'm preaching to a mix of converted, and people shouting so loudly they can only hear the sound of their own voice. My loyalty lies with the games.

One bad business decision and it's game over. Look at Pivotal - they only really made one bad game and it took the company down.

And as for FR coders going back to Rare... I'm not sure that company is entirely on safe ground at the moment.

@Les

All very true. On the subject of heavy investment in graphical prowess, its a tough cycle for any dev to break 'cos we the gamers keep demanding everything in the same basket. We want the original ideas AND the tight gameplay AND the awesome graphics... and we want a shop price that isn't too high and development time that is short.

Some devs are finding ways to make games in half the time for half the money, that still turn out well and sell in high numbers, but its not easy. Some devs just aren't set up that way, and if they suddenly started trying to make Cooking Mama et al they would probably end up throwing away their money.

"You'd be awfully stupid (the tunnel vision effect should have been gone by now) to invest most or your best resources in the projects that are the least likely to generate a positive return."

Man, sometimes I wonder if the games industry hasn't been doing exactly that for the last 10 years. Certainly when we went through that period 5 or so years back when a third of UK studios closed down, it did seem to result in part from the fact we were all spending shed loads on high risk titles that occupied the same customer space.

There will always be a place for Valve and Epic to turn out the sorts of games they make, but maybe the demise of FR will act as a warning sign to other devs that they need to start finding new genres to work in that carry less cost and less risk. I suppose iof they do that they can STILL pay their large electricity bills.

Nothing unusual is happening here.

To be honest if I turned up for work and found the doors locked with nothing but a note, I'd consider it pretty fucking unusual.

Gah, was looking forward to Timesplitters 4 :(

That really sucks, I liked most of Free Radicals games and the Timesplitters series will be a big miss. Sure Haze was utter balls, but Second Sight was fun and Timesplitters was one of my favourite shooter series.

I liked the way Free Radical had all their game saoundtracks up for free download with CD art and everything while other companies make you pay for them. I downloaded the one for Future Perfect a while back but downloaded the TS2 score yesterday before their site inevitably goes down.

Wild West (TS2), Anaconda (TS2), Scotland the Brave (TS FP) and Like a Robot (TS FP) = 'nuff said.

Timesplitters 2 and 3 where great addictive games. Loved the challenges where you could win trophys. I didnt stop until ive had platinum on everything. Good times. Probably the place MS got their achievements idea from btw.

I'm no fanboy. I own every console of the last generation and this.

Let's look at the evidence:

1. Hero with face covered by visor making his identity your own. Check.
2. Vehilce sections to traverse large distances. Check.
3. Rubbish opening level. Check.
4. The same group of enemies repeated every five minutes with the same attack pattern. Check.
5. Four letter title starting with "Ha". Check.

Apart from the excellent vehicle handling and the regenerating shield, there's nothing about Halo that makes it worth recommending.

Wow talk about clutching at straws.

Moron.

Definitely worth getting the timespliters and second sight mp3 downloads while the free radical site is still up.

This is what happens when you're a relatively small third party developer and you make a platform exclusive game that after numerous delays turns out to be not very good.