资深游戏开发者指责微软未能妥善管理收购的游戏公司

Schelfaniel

http://bbs.a9vg.com/read.php?tid=1267116&fpage=1

FASA公司的创办者Jordan Weisman最近在一次访谈中批评微软，指责他们未能妥善管理其收购的游戏工作室。FASA是知名系列游戏《机甲战士》（Mechwarrior），以 及《暗影狂奔》（shadowrun）的制作者，1999年微软收购了这家公司，不过2007年9月份这家制作室宣告倒闭。他还表示，如果不是自己的努 力，另一家被微软收购的工作室Bungie（《光环》的制作者）恐怕也早就毁在微软的手里。

Weisman称：“微软收购我们的理由有二，其一是他们想收购我们的知识产权；其二是他们认为我们的开发文化很有可取之处。但实际上从我们被微软收购的第一天起，我们自己的开发文化就已经被微软糟蹋得一塌糊涂了。”

他指责微软把FASA工作室原来的60名员工打散后安插到微软的各个部门，而他自己则被安排到一个300人的团队中担任艺术指导。幸运的是，当微软2000年收购Bungie工作室时，在他的尽力争取之下，Bungie工作室没有重蹈FASA的覆辙。

“我试图说服微软把Bungie工作室的办公地点定在原来的芝加哥，而不要让这些工作室的员工和微软的其它员工一起，被关进古板的办公室里办公，"他说：”比起被糟蹋的FASA,在保护Bungie的企业文化方面，我们做得还算不错。“

然而具有讽刺意义的是，微软在收购Bungie时曾声称会”尊重并保留Bungie独特的企业文化和个性“。

FASA公司有关产品的开发权现在又回到了Weisman的手中，目前他们正在开发一款《机甲战士》的续作游戏，不过Weisman称由于微软仍拥有这些游戏的版权，因此他们在开发这个游戏过程中受到了诸多限制。他并表示微软所收购的游戏公司在微软手上几乎都已经被糟蹋得不成样。

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/art ... ent-culture-weisman

Schelfaniel

Microsoft "destroyed development culture" at FASA - Weisman

FASA Interactive founder Jordan Weisman has spoken out about Microsoft's acquisition of his highly-regarded studio, saying that the corporation "destroyed" its development culture and came close to doing the same with Halo developer Bungie.

"When Microsoft bought FASA Interactive and incorporated it into Microsoft... the two reasons they bought us was, one, they wanted the catalogue of intellectual properties and, two, they felt that we had developed a really good development culture. And the reality is that, pretty much from the day we moved to Redmond, that development culture was destroyed," Weisman told GamesIndustry.biz.

"I don't think the studio ever really had a chance. It was destroyed right in the beginning."

And Microsoft came close to repeating its mistakes with Bungie, added Weisman, who was working for the corporation as creative director at the time the Chicago-based studio was acquired.

"When we were acquiring Bungie, they wanted me to sit down with the owners of Bungie and tell them how well the transition went," he explained. "And it was like - 'what planet are you guys on?' This transition did not go well. And actually I became the lead vocal pain in the ass to get things done very different for Bungie.

"I tried to convince them to leave Bungie in Chicago, but not winning that I did succeed in getting them to put them in a walled off room, which didn't follow any of the other Microsoft stuff. We were much better able to defend Bungie's culture than we were FASA's culture."

Weisman established FASA, creators of the MechWarrior and Crimson Skies franchises, in 1980, and the company was subsequently merged with Virtual World Entertainment then acquired by Microsoft in 1999.

In 2007, FASA became one of the first studios closed by Microsoft as part of a series of cutbacks.

The reasons for this are clear for Weisman, who had already left the company to start up new venture WizKids by the time Microsoft pulled down the shutters on FASA.

They moved everybody into Microsoft's standard organisation, he said, and then changed his role so his staff were no longer reporting to him. "I was creative director for the entire group - all 300 people, not just the 60 that came with me from Chicago - so that didn't help either."

Since FASA's downfall, Weisman has successfully licensed some of his own IPs back from Microsoft and today plans to, in turn, licence them out to creative teams and publishers. The venture forms a part of his new company - Smith & Tinker - which yesterday announced it had successfully raised capital of USD 29 million to further fund its first release, Nanovor, and subsequent kids' entertainment projects.

The game designer plans to work with Vancouver-based studio Piranha Games to make a new MechWarrior title - "if we can put a deal together with a publisher - we're operating under some pretty tight restrictions of the licence that make publishing the games kind of challenging."

It's a situation Weisman admits is far from ideal.

"I guess one of the disadvantages to being old is that you outlive your children sometimes. And in this case, my children are owned by different people around the world and so it becomes a different kind of relationship."