'Free Radical vs. The Monsters' - Eurogamer article

[Fraki]

but sadly, it is too late.

*cries*

[Godman]

Here's a thought - if FRD was having so much trouble finding a decent publisher, why couldn't they just publish the game themselves? Valve (who made things like Half-Life, Team Fortress and Portal) publish all of their games themselves, and they're all brilliant. I know FRD was small, but if they had done that, they would have bypassed this problem completely.

I think Lucas Arts owned it, so they took it with them when it was canned. FRD didn't have any of it to finish.

[chrismafuchris]

Here's a thought - if FRD was having so much trouble finding a decent publisher, why couldn't they just publish the game themselves? Valve (who made things like Half-Life, Team Fortress and Portal) publish all of their games themselves, and they're all brilliant. I know FRD was small, but if they had done that, they would have bypassed this problem completely.

The reason that Valve is able to self-publish whereas Free Radical could not have is that all of Valve's publishing is done online. Because Valve has already made the Steam platform, any further overhead simplyammounta to the cost of maintaining servers, which is not especially expensive to do. Free Radical couldn't have put their games up as a download because they were a console developer and must ship a game in a box, meaning that distribution and pressing, both incredibly expensive, are required. The reason you still see Valve games on shelves is because they partner with distributors just to put out their game, which they are able to do because their games are almost guarunteed sellers.

[hungoverontues]

Here's a thought - if FRD was having so much trouble finding a decent publisher, why couldn't they just publish the game themselves? Valve (who made things like Half-Life, Team Fortress and Portal) publish all of their games themselves, and they're all brilliant. I know FRD was small, but if they had done that, they would have bypassed this problem completely.

valve has a ton of money + steam

[Lord_Chanticleer]

The story of FRD is getting so much coverage at the moment. This one talks to Doak, Ellis and Norgate. It's a massive article, and you're probably better reading it at its original source:

Here's hoping that the martyr tale of our beloved studio will make the gaming community at large finally come around. May it prompt them to give a mighty shake at the pedestal of the creativity-throttling monstrosity that is the modern gaming industry.

Make sure to watch this video too:

This once again goes to show that Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw wasn't too far off the mark when he called LucasArts a "bunch of chimps with Down Syndrome".

[XUnit]

The YT Vid got more than 13k views already.

[Drifting]

The YT Vid got more than 13k views already.

Oh wow, it has. It had about 200 when I looked at it.

[DrkSnpr14]

This was an excellent read, providing a great insight into what really went down behind the scenes.

[lazyhoboguy]

Found even more info about this. Graeme Norgate posted the question/answers Eurogamer asked him. Most of it didn't appear in the article:

http://graemenorgate.blogspot.com/

Interview questions by Rich Stanton




    1. You were one of five folk to leave Rare in early 1999 to make up the new Free Radical Design. Why?

            Why did I leave Rare or why did I set up Free Radical Design ?
            Why did I leave Rare... it wasn't an easy decision to make... and I was yes and no to the whole idea for a long long time..  I went back to work on 1st Jan 1999 with the
            firm decision to stay and make a go of it and fate dealt an impressive hand that day and completely switched my decision.

            Also, it was the perfect window of opportunity. Rare were at the top of their game in the 90s, Goldeneye was the game that the man on the street knew about and
            Perfect Dark was highly anticipated. We (as in the five folks) had the bargaining power to open doors and cheque books.           


    2. Did you get to build your dream studio as part of the deal?

            Hehe... no.
            Unless my idea of a dream studio was sharing a cramped room with 9 other guys in the blistering heat without A/C... then yes, it was all I ever wanted and more.
            We moved offices 6 months later, and things slightly improved some what.           
            Also spending wise... in the early years at least, we were quite frugal with our money. We didn't want to be the company that crashed and burnt after spending the publishing
            advance on ridiculous cars and gold offices.

    3. I visited Free Radical when they were in Sandiacre – I remember it being pretty high tech, and noting the presence of fresh fruit (still not very common in developers' offices). What was it like as a working environment?

            The fruit was an odd one... The government makes it expensive to keep the workforce healthy... they wanted to tax the fruit as a benefit in kind. We could however feed our staff
            pizza without any such taxes....

            Work wise, things improved the more we progressed. In the early years when we went from 20-30 people to over 200... it took a while to adjust to such a change, losing the small
            family environment to such a huge outfit but it was a joy to work at. So many creative and talented people under one (or four) roof.
           

    4. From April '99 to the release of the first Timesplitters was a year and a half – what can you remember about that time? Was it all about hitting the PS2 launch from the start?

            Not in April. At first we were working on Second Sight, that was the game that we set up Free Radical to make. However, a few months down the line, Dave had an idea that
            pretty soon, we'd have a very playable multiplayer element. How about going for broke...making a fun, fast and arcadey multiplayer game for launch... Eidos thought this was
            a fine idea indeed.

    5. Timesplitters 2 – the character R-107. Clearly a Kraftwerk tribute, anything to do with you?

           
            Not guilty. That would be from the mind of Ben Newman. Although for TS:FP I did translate the first line from Kraftwerk's Robots for his pick animation.
            Ja tvoi sluga (I'm your slave), Ja tvoi Rabotnik (I'm your worker)

    6. The years of Timesplitters and Second Sight saw FR scoring commercially and critically with every release, and the studio steadily increasing in size. You were being nominated for BAFTAs, lauded as one of Britain's big upcoming tech companies, and making great stuff. What was it like to be a part of something like that?

            As you can imagine.. amazing. You don't realise what you had until the time has past of course. After every game, I would angrily make lists of all the stuff that had gone wrong,
            but if you don't do that, you'll never improve and there is no time for resting on laurels in the video games industry, you've got to be constantly moving and improving.
            Looking back though from a purely selfish point of view, I am incredibly proud to have been nominated for Bafta's for TS2... even though I didn't win haha.

    7. The feel of Second Sight was something new for FR, and I adore the eerie score you came up with. Everything about it is different – was this a consequence of the material, or was it more about seeing what freaky distortions you could tease out of synths?

            What can I say, I like the dark stuff! Second Sight was perfect for me from a scoring point of view. I wanted to make playing the game feel like watching the Shining.   

    8. Haze is missing lots of stuff that was intended to be in it. From the outside, with the switch from cross-platform to PS3 exclusive and the development delay, it looks like a pretty chaotic development. What was it like on the inside?

            Slow.
            Trying to get anything into that game was a battle of wills. Another audio guy said that trying to get sounds into the game was like wallpapering a wall whilst the rest of the house was
            burning down.
            New consoles, a completely new engine written from the ground up, written by too many people and not under enough control made it a bit of a wild ride that was no fun and everyone
            wanted to get off.
            Haze had high ambitions and potential but the engine killed it.
            We should have kept the TS engine... which was resurrected for Timesplitters 4 (as it was back then) and was looking fantastic. Running at a constant 60fps and with more lighting
            effects than we could even dream of in Haze.... too little too late unfortunately.
           

    9. Everyone's seen the footage of an incredible looking Battlefront 3 that FR were working on. I've been told that Lucasarts dropped it because Rebellion gave them a cheaper quote (which they couldn't deliver on). What do you remember of this time? Is that something you'd ever experienced before in the industry?

            You're have to ask those fine gentlemen the Kingsleys about that. I only know what I heard from inside Rebellion but it would be cheap and nasty to tell tales,
           

    10. It is generally thought that the poor reception of Haze did for Free Radical. Would it be more accurate to say that it was losing the Battlefront 3 contract?

            Absolutely.
            There are so many things that could have happened that may have changed the course of Free Radical, if Haze had been better or sold better, Ubisoft would have wanted a sequel
            (there had been some planning for a second), if a publisher had picked up Timesplitters 4 or Wii Self Defence. If Activision had given the Goldeneye remake to us instead of Eurocom,
            and who knows what else I've forgotten. Ultimately though... with a company of 250 staff... you need a lot of money per month to keep it going. Lucas Arts hadn't paid us for
            6 months refusing to pass a milestone by changing the deliverable content so we would limp along until the money finally ran out. They knew what they were doing, and 6 months
            free work to pass on to Rebellion wasn't to be sniffed at. Lucas Arts had gone through some restructuring and we were told that, they had suffered, now it was our turn.

    11. The news of administration came as a surprise, and I recall on the morning of it FR staff turned up to a locked office – clearly the company knew it was in a tough spot, but was the decision to enter administration its own or forced?

            We took legal advice and wanted to do the right thing. We could have carried on regardless, not paid people and hope that people would carry on working for free until the money came
            in... illegal but not uncommon according to our administrators who then have to pick up the pieces.

            We did it by the book and everyone involved had one of the shitest Christmases ever.

    12. What words would you like to see in FR's obituary? (apart from 'loads of us are still here under a different name!')


                They made some nice games then it all got a bit hazy.

[Drifting]

Hold on a second.

There are so many things that could have happened that may have changed the course of Free Radical, if Haze had been better or sold better, Ubisoft would have wanted a sequel (there had been some planning for a second), if a publisher had picked up Timesplitters 4 or Wii Self Defence.

FRD was making a Wii Self Defense game?

[FezzyBear]

Thanks for posting that. Good to read the proper interview with him.

FRD was making a Wii Self Defense game?

Well, we've finally discovered why they took out the copyright name thing on 'Self Defense' all that time ago.