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The High Cost of Gaming: Free Radical, Creators of GoldenEye, Close Doors

Posted by John Constantine

Making videogames doesn’t just require ingenuity, artistic talent across a swath of disciplines, taste, and creative vision. It also requires obscene amounts of money. Even 2008’s indie poster child, Braid, took an investment of $180,000 to actually finish and distribute via Xbox Live Arcade. Making games reliant on cutting edge technology (Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and high-end PC titles) costs tens of millions of dollars and we’re starting to see the high cost of development start to take its toll on independent developers and big publishers alike. Just look at Cole’s round-up of the videogame-industry-death-toll to gain insight on just what high development cost coupled with a flagging economy can do.

The latest casualty is particularly sad, however. Free Radical, the studio responsible for the excellent TimeSplitters trilogy, the underappreciated Second Sight, and the critical-commercial fiasco Haze, have reportedly locked their doors. The staff, according to multiple UK press outlets, has been barred from entering their offices without explanation.

This news is tragic. Free Radical was founded by David Doak (pictured), Steve Ellis, and a number of other former Rare staffers responsible for GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark. But Free Radical’s greatest contribution to videogame design was paying its staff overtime. Game publishers and developers have a reputation industry wide for working their employees to the bone to meet milestone and shipment deadlines. Instead of being paid overtime, employees are typically compensated with bonuses, albeit bonuses that they may not receive if the game doesn’t succeed on release. In October 2007, Free Radical decided that this was no way to run a business fueled by creativity, so they started paying all employees overtime wages. One year after instituting this progressive pay structure, their one release is a critical and commercial failure and, as a result, they’ve seemingly had to shut down.

61FPS salutes everyone over at Free Radical. I look forward to seeing your work in the future, wherever you all end up.

(Link: Edge, Eurogamer, CVG)

Related Links:

The Strange Case of Hype
Games Cost Money: Sony Cans The Getaway and Eight Days
The Sky is Falling: Gaming Industry Job Cuts Roundup


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Comments

Roto13 said:

This generation of consoles has been aiming too high. You need a zillion dollars to develop a game for these behemoths, and now on top of killing exclusive games (which are an important part of competition), it has started killing off developers as well. It's ridiculous.

December 18, 2008 7:26 PM

Demaar said:

Man, this is so sad. I mean, it's no less sad than all the other lay offs/shuttings down, but it's definitely disappointing for fans of the company.

Kinda makes you wish they just went and did a Time Splitters 4 on Wii and played it safe.

December 19, 2008 2:29 PM

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John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Hooksexup, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia's prized possession is a certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.


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