Lionhead Re-Organizing, Layoffs Confirmed

[fitbabits]

Thanks to Gamasutra (http://www.gamasutra.com) for the news (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=8385).

According to a report on Lionhead-related fan site The Movies Planet, subsequently backed up by a statement by Lionhead's Community Director Sam Van Tillburgh, a number of layoffs have occurred at the Guildford, UK-based developer of The Movies and Fable, which is headed by Populous designer Peter Molyneux.

The report on The Movies Planet fansite claims that "the decision was taken to downsize the company from 3 [development teams] to just the 2, which means the loss of approx 100 people." But, while neither confirming nor denying the amount or method of the staff reduction, Lionhead staffer Van Tillburgh's statement on the official Lionhead forums was as follows:

"Over the last few months Lionhead has been working on plans for a new AAA world class game. As work on a number of its titles draws to a close, a pool of 100 super talented developers at Lionhead are available to create a new super team at Lionhead. This will be in addition to an existing team which is working on an amazing next generation title."

"This strategy was presented to Lionhead this morning in a company meeting, but sadly it will mean some redundancies. We are still continuing our support of The Movies, with new downloads on the Propshop, an add-on disk in summer, and the announcement of the winner of the Chrysler competition at E3."
I didn't see this coming... Best of luck to those affected by this.

[schizoslayer]

Lionhead have been in financial trouble since before Fable was released. You could tell this was going to happen when their "Satelite" studios got closed and turned into just regular old Lionhead dev teams.

They're basically living off whatever money The Movies has made them because I suspect Microsoft likely stopped paying them for milestones after Fable slipped the first year.

[Sensei-X]

After the buggy mess that was Black & White 2 I can't say I'm surprised. I spent $50 on a game I still can't play and at this point probably will never bother to go back to play even if they squash the remaining bugs that make it randomly crash.

[Apex]

This is could be bad news for me. Im in the process of going through af few job applications with a few studios based in the south east, looks as though their going to go on for a bit. I couldn't compete along side people who have worked at Lionhead :/

[sTubbs]

This reminds me of BC...what ever happened to that game? It had such an interesting concept but dissolved in to nothing after a couple of low key E3 showings.

[Apex]

This reminds me of BC...what ever happened to that game? It had such an interesting concept but dissolved in to nothing after a couple of low key E3 showings.

Not sure if anyone really knows, rumours of the project getting cancelled. Other rumours of development being postponed. It was weird though as they had just got fair bit of funding and had hired new staff at the time.

[sTubbs]

Not sure if anyone really knows, rumours of the project getting cancelled. Other rumours of development being postponed. It was weird though as they had just got fair bit of funding and had hired new staff at the time.

I just read over at GameSpot that development was suspended but there are plans to resume at a later date. Perhaps on the new consoles? They certainly seem more in line with the ambitions of the game.

[Magnanimous Gnome]

I loved Bullfrog back in the day and was sad to see Molyneux leave the company as it was going downhill. I was really glad when Lionhead started up. It seemed to have a lot of promise. Several years later I now see that this company has little promise as they have now shipped several mediocre games and nothing that I would consider to be AAA. I wouldn't really be all that sad to see them go completely.

[Apex]

I loved Bullfrog back in the day and was sad to see Molyneux leave the company as it was going downhill. I was really glad when Lionhead started up. It seemed to have a lot of promise. Several years later I now see that this company has little promise as they have now shipped several mediocre games and nothing that I would consider to be AAA. I wouldn't really be all that sad to see them go completely.

I actually still have a fair bit of faith in molyneux. I suspect the problem might be that he's headed down the same path he went down toward the end of Bullfrog. That he's ended up trying to develop too many projects at the same time and not giving each one enough attention. That was the reason why he left Bullfrog originally, but I think that was partly EAs fault for pushing for more projects. Who knows.

[Spigot]

This really sucks for the employees affected but I can't say I'm THAT surprised.

I like Lionhead in theory. Molyneux has some amazing ideas in that head of his. Sadly, the games tend to reach too far and fall too short. It's just sad that Lionhead never really seemed to live up to the level of quality that Bullfrog had in its glory days.

I agree with Maggie that the last few games, while ambitious, were not what I'd call AAA. Great concepts, but the execution has been lacking. On the plus side, at least they were trying for those out-of-the-box gaming ideas instead of just sitting on their laurels (although B&W 2 was the one Lionhead game that I was angry with myself for buying...)

Best of luck for those who got laid off.

[Ferong]

Pretty sure a spiritual successor to Syndicate would net them a nice chunk of change.

[Spigot]

Pretty sure a spiritual successor to Syndicate would net them a nice chunk of change.
Or Magic Carpet 3 (or 4... I forget if there was a Magic Carpet 3 or not...)

Or a Dungeon Keeper 3.

Or or or...

[Heretic Machine]

Is Moly being fired? Because that's pretty much key to Lionhead ever making money again.

[Magnanimous Gnome]

We'll probably never see a Dungeon Keeper 3. I'm torn on whether or not this is a bad thing. On the one hand, I loved the first game and don't want to see it's legacy dimished - the buggy second game did enough damage IMHO. On the other hand I'd love a GREAT follow up that actually brought the first game into 3D and fixed it's few flaws while remaining true to it. I doubt that will happen though, especially with EA at the helm.

A new Magic Carpet or Populous would be great as well.

[Busted_Astromech]

Well I was under the impression that Fable sold very well, actually. When I worked at EB this Christmas, copies of Fable: The Lost Chapters sold extremely well--probably among the top three games.

I can't imagine how Lionhead could be doing poorly, unless our store was an aberration or they got ripped off by Microsoft for payments if the game did well.

I will agree that Lionhead was not the best of companies. While I enjoyed Fable for what it was, it was on the whole a mediocre game at core brightened by the half-implementation of some great ideas. The most fun I had in that game was when I was messing around, not playing the 'main quest,' and the same can be said for Black & White.

Magnanimous Gnome, I was under the impression that Dungeon Keeper 2 was mostly a graphical update of the first game. I enjoyed it very much and never had any problems with it. But I never played the first game, so any clarification of your statement would be nice.

[Grimmjow]

didnt lionhead also do "The Movies"

[Rafer]

Well I was under the impression that Fable sold very well, actually. When I worked at EB this Christmas, copies of Fable: The Lost Chapters sold extremely well--probably among the top three games.


It was a succesful, well received game despite all the bitching on message boards about it, even more incredible is that it sold well the same fall Halo 2 and San Andreas came out (best selling non-sequel, non-license game of 2004). I think that game probably kept them afloat until The Movies and Black and White 2. I hope they weren't counting on The Movies to sell like The Sims.

[Heretic Machine]

Magnanimous Gnome, I was under the impression that Dungeon Keeper 2 was mostly a graphical update of the first game. I enjoyed it very much and never had any problems with it. But I never played the first game, so any clarification of your statement would be nice.

Ya, DKII was pretty much a graphical upgrade of the first game, but it was a new engine so it had new bugs. Bugs that still occassionally crash the game randomly to this day. I still love it, but I do get pissed off at it occassionally.

I hope they weren't counting on The Movies to sell like The Sims.

Why would it? It has half the substance. Don't get me wrong, it's not terrible, I'd say it's the best thing they've put out. But it's still pretty far from impressive. The actual game is little more than a generic Tycoon game, and the Machinma side-feature has very little to offer most people.

[MosBen]

Granted, I just read the blurb posted here, but I didn't see mention of financial troubles in that post and shedding off employees does not necessariy connote financial instability. Again, I didn't really see the whole release, or read terribly closely, so if I missed some mention of financial troubles please forgive me...

[Steele Johnson]

Peter Molyneux should just be a consultant. He's a great designer, but I feel he never gets to completely finish his dream game because of financial burdens and other corporate decisions. I know it's not his designs... it's his budget and time constraints. Taking on wild ideas that have never been done before is usually a recipe for failure unless you're really, really lucky (e.g. The Sims).

[Cubfan]

No doubt there are many developers out there with crazy, creative ideas. They're just more practical about what they can and cannot realistically implement in the final product. Unlinke Molyneux, they don't go the press with every little development whim.

With that said, I though Fable was alot of fun. Much, much more shallow then we were lead to believe, but fun nonetheless.

[Sl1pstream]

by Lionhead's Community Director Sam Van Tillburgh

He should just quit his job and restart console.be, I miss that site :'(

[schizoslayer]

Well I was under the impression that Fable sold very well, actually. When I worked at EB this Christmas, copies of Fable: The Lost Chapters sold extremely well--probably among the top three games.

It sold well yes. But that doesn't offset the amount of money Lionhead will have lost during development. Microsoft will probably have stopped paying for the development costs after the first 6 months of slippage and it became clear it was never going to be an early launch killer-app like they had hoped. By this point Lionhead will have been eating into whatever credit the banks would give them to finish the game which is what probably led to most of the features Moly enthused about in early interviews being cut.

It's a whole different matter when you have to start spending your own money rather than a publishers.

At the best I'd say Lionhead broke even on Fable. However they also wasted alot of money with Minter and BC. They "consolidated" the satelite studios into internal Lionhead development teams and let a fair chunk of those teams go in the process.

The Movies I think actually overran a little (has there ever been a Lionhead game that didn't slip by a huge amount?) and with the flop that was Black and White 2 The Movies was probably their last real significant earner.

It's not going to spell the end for the company. Not yet. But they are certainly not in as good a position as they were 3 years ago.

They've basically wasted alot of money on projects that no publisher wanted and had some incredibly late games which will have come out of their own pocket.

Don't confuse large sales with financial success. In this climate a game could sell ten million units in a week and the developer never see a penny.

It does make me wonder how long it will be before we get the announcment that STALKER has ceased production because the studio has run out of money as I think their publisher stopped paying them a few months ago now.

[Stooby]

I used to love Molyneux, but I no longer like him at all. I guess I am one of the few people who never turned on Black and White. I still love that game. I don't know how they could fuck up Black and White 2 so badly. Some of the changes was good, but many of the changes were completely retarded.

They made a game about a god with a creature be less about being a god with a big creature. I uninstalled the game the second I found out on the third island that the size my creature was is the biggest he will get. He was tiny and he couldn't even step over the tiny walls to my city. On top of that, you didn't fight enemy gods with enemy creatures which was gay as hell. Finally, creature combat was retarded. Everything to do with the creature was retarded. The creature AI was worse than in the original, the creature was tiny compared to the original and the screenshots they showed us, the creature was a pussy that couldn't even pick up small rocks, the creature would get owned by enemy armies, training your creature lacked any depth whatsoever because it showed you exactly what your creature was thinking.

The sequel to Black and White, in my opinion is a game that should have been impossible to fuck up. You make it like Black and White except with armies that your ENORMOUS CREATURE can stop into the ground. Voila! The game is fun to play.

[motor]

This is could be bad news for me. Im in the process of going through af few job applications with a few studios based in the south east, looks as though their going to go on for a bit. I couldn't compete along side people who have worked at Lionhead :/

I just got done interviewing a guy from Lionhead...I wouldn't worry about it.

Fable was a very poorly written piece of software and took a huge amount of help from Microsoft to get it out the door. The only reason it sold well was because of the huge amount of PR it recieved and the vaccum before Halo 2 that it filled. It also, to me, marks the beginning of a very bad trend in Games, huge advertising budget and a huge amount of PR about the initial sales, for what was in the end a solid 7.5 game. I hate that the industry is becoming more and more like the movies, where they don't give a damn about how you feel about a movie after you've watched the first 5 minutes and can't walk out to get your money back.

[Spigot]

Maybe it's me, but I still find it funny that 7.5 is concidered a horrible score, game-wise. Sure, it's not a AAA score, but I'd definately give a game that got 7.5 a try.

I guess I've just been around so long that I remember when bad games were given scores like 5/100 (http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/919220.asp), not 7.5/10.

Not that this has anything to do with the discussion...

[fitbabits]

Maybe it's me, but I still find it funny that 7.5 is concidered a horrible score, game-wise. Sure, it's not a AAA score, but I'd definately give a game that got 7.5 a try.

I guess I've just been around so long that I remember when bad games were given scores like 5/100 (http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/919220.asp), not 7.5/10.

Not that this has anything to do with the discussion...
Such is the premium that publishers put on higher scores, unfortunately. I feel the public in general has been conned into thinking that anything less than 7/10, 70%, 7.0, 3.5/5, etc. is not worthy of their time. I've got heaps of 'average' games that I've really enjoyed; sometimes more than high scorers.

[Spigot]

Such is the premium that publishers put on higher scores, unfortunately. I feel the public in general has been conned into thinking that anything less than 7/10, 70%, 7.0, 3.5/5, etc. is not worthy of their time. I've got heaps of 'average' games that I've really enjoyed; sometimes more than high scorers.
After my previous post, I went and looked up the reviews of Chibi-Robo, which is currently my favourite game of the year. It's sitting squarely in the mid-70's, if not lower, on most review sites, yet I've enjoyed it more than any game I've played in recent memory.

I'm just glad I picked it up before reading the reviews. Had I followed the advice of these reviewers, I would have cheated myself out of a great gaming experience.

[fitbabits]

After my previous post, I went and looked up the reviews of Chibi-Robo, which is currently my favourite game of the year. It's sitting squarely in the mid-70's, if not lower, on most review sites, yet I've enjoyed it more than any game I've played in recent memory.

I'm just glad I picked it up before reading the reviews. Had I followed the advice of these reviewers, I would have cheated myself out of a great gaming experience.
Yeah, I've noticed that about some niche games. Mostly the ones that the reviewer didn't 'get' or wasn't all that interested in in the first place. Who to trust? That seems to be the big question these days when it comes to reviews. I may pick up Chibi-Robo when it drops in price - the premise appeals to me.

[Spigot]

Yeah, I've noticed that about some niche games. Mostly the ones that the reviewer didn't 'get' or wasn't all that interested in in the first place. Who to trust? That seems to be the big question these days when it comes to reviews. I may pick up Chibi-Robo when it drops in price - the premise appeals to me.
It's definately worth it. Think of an adventure game, like Zelda. Then replace the combat with scrubbing floors and picking up trash, the enemies with dysfunctional family members, add some puzzles and platforming elements and coat the entire thing with a coat of paint from the Katamari series.

And then crank up the absurdity a few notches.

Mr. Slim & I are going to be doing up a review this week, so stay tuned.

And now back to your regularly scheduled topic.

[fitbabits]

It's definately worth it. Think of an adventure game, like Zelda. Then replace the combat with scrubbing floors and picking up trash, the enemies with dysfunctional family members, add some puzzles and platforming elements and coat the entire thing with a coat of paint from the Katamari series.

And then crank up the absurdity a few notches.

Mr. Slim & I are going to be doing up a review this week, so stay tuned.

And now back to your regularly scheduled topic.
You've sold it to me. I'll pick it up used and give it a try some time soon. Looking forward to the review, but remember - anything below 3.5 Evil eyes and you will have condemned the game to the svap heap.

So anyway, Lionhead suck. :rolleyes: