10tacle Studios Belgium closed - TOTEMS R.I.P

Bioshock also is the example of the game where 90% of the studio quit the company and started a new one because they couldnt stand working with the lead gamedesign director anymore after the experience they had with Bioshock.

Ofcourse you cannot plan everything up front, but taking into account the opinion of a lot of the people when they say that something is not gonna work or gonna be fun to play instead of just trying it anyway, then seeing indeed it doesnt work and trying something else takes a big part in the frustration that gets created and the time being lost on a project. There is nothing as bad as having to work on something you know up front wont work, just to prove your point.
Same thing the other way around, if you know that you will absolutely need X or Y in the game, or it wont work as expected, it is not very funny having to wait until they actually encounter problems that require X or Y to solve them, instead of actually being listened to.
If the "modus operandi" is that "we dont anticipate much up front, we just go and when we hit a wall we take 2 steps back, see what the problem is, fix it and continue" one day you will hit a wall so hard you cannot get up anymore ....

As you can understand I cannot go into lots of specific details "on the record", before i get my ass sued Laughing

Then again, who comes to Belgium and buys me a beer? Laughing

	ex10tacle wrote:
	Bioshock also is the example of the game where 90% of the studio quit the company and started a new one because they couldnt stand working with the lead gamedesign director anymore after the experience they had with Bioshock.

Is that so? Never heard a thing about developers leaving Irrational (what is it now, Take2 Boston?).

	Quote:
	If the "modus operandi" is that "we dont anticipate much up front, we just go and when we hit a wall we take 2 steps back, see what the problem is, fix it and continue" one day you will hit a wall so hard you cannot get up anymore ....

That's indeed no good and extremely frustrating. Case of bad leadership, I'd call it. Strangely enough, the exact same thing was mentioned as a huge obstacle in the development of Outcast 2!

http://www.gamespot.com/news/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=26073506&page=4

:'(

I live in belgium and I am a student in computer science in a University. Next year (2009-2010) I have the possibility to make a short job in an office ( be an intern). Last month I thought that I could apply to 10tacle belgium. It seems that it will be too late Crying or Very sad

Could someone call Ulukai to stop this?

	Quote:
	Then again, who comes to Belgium and buys me a beer? Laughing

No problem, where, when?

PS: sorry for my bad english skills, I speak french...

Hrmm... damn.

I lack of vision bit is interesting though, I'd never imagined this by looking at the art and what we know about the game. The general direction seemed okay. But as said, assumption is the mother of all f-ups. Rolling Eyes

But I do wonder, how much of it is a... I don't know what it's called in English... a witch's circle... where the beginning causes the end and other way around.

*Sigh*

So, now what?

The following statement is not actually a quote, but a summary of some info I got from a key person of 10tacle Studios Belgium. It is not my opinion, but I think it is interesting for you, because it shows another point of view on what happened:

Messiah wrote:

The fact that Totems (or parts of it) couldn't be delivered on time is not exactly correct. I was told that 9 months before the end of the original release date (end 2007), 10Tacle extended the project till the end of 2008 and later on, they extended it again till mid of 2009. One of their reasons was that the game encoutered more competition (assassin's creed etc.) and more effort was put into Totems to make it successfull on the market. To accomplish the ambitious goals the developement time was extended.
As a side-note: I was told that indeed not everything in the company was running rosy and that there were problems especially in the management, but this ultimately didn't cause the bankruptcy of the company. It was 10tacle germany which stopped paying salaries...

Again I am sorry for everyone who lost his/her job.
I wanted to share this info with you because a lot of things are still very clowdy and not known.
Personally I wasn't there in Charleroi. I don't know what really happened, but I do believe that NOT everything was messed up - there were problems and mistakes were made. But that doesn't imply Totems wouldn't have been a great game. I still hope it will be finished!
I am open to every persons opinion. Everyone is free to say and believe what he/she thinks. But take care with drawing assumptions too quickly...

Hi there,

We have received a new batch of screenshots and a video of Urban Race (still work-in-progress), the spin-off project that 10tacle tried to self-fund before closing its doors. They are currently still looking for publishers, so please spread the news all around the world.

Also, there is a small making-of video of Totems. Makes one hope that they will get back the rights and be able to develop the game!

Yeah, just saw this on GT. Dunno...got mixed feelings about it. Mainly because of the overall animations an unrealism to it. I mean, if you're gonna make a game about parkour then it should have all of the realistic elements to it, imo.

Anyway, did anyone notice that the female free-runner looked a lot like Gia from Totems?

	c00lz wrote:
	Yeah, just saw this on GT. Dunno...got mixed feelings about it. Mainly because of the overall animations an unrealism to it. I mean, if you're gonna make a game about parkour then it should have all of the realistic elements to it, imo.

Yeah, I agree. The first thing I noticed was the relative lack of physics in the running. The characters didn't seem to have any inertia, I didn't like that, especially for this type of thing.

	c00lz wrote:
	Anyway, did anyone notice that the female free-runner looked a lot like Gia from Totems?

So, it wasn't just me. Yeah, looked kinda similar. Sorta cool, I guess. Very Happy

About the lack of physics/realism in the video, an ex-10tacle employee told us that this is because:
a) The game was still at a very early stage (3 months in development)
b) Some movement trees were still from Totems and not yet fully adapted for Urban Race
c) The netcode was not yet optimized, which causes the movements of other players to be lagging

Therefore, you have to remember this was a very early video, probably made in order to seek funding (you'll notice that there is no 10tacle BE logo on the video, it's only the Elsewhere Entertainment logo).