Thief: Deadly Shadows Review

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            Thief: Deadly Shadows

Review by SteerpikeJune 2004

My Words Are Delicious

A couple weeks ago, I waxed glumly cynical in the Thief Retrospective about my low personal hopes for the third and probably final installment in the Thief series. Sudden departures from Ion Storm, obvious tweaks to benefit console players, and the catastrophic PC release of Deus Ex: Invisible War contributed to a somewhat doom-laden sense about this game. Truth is, for people who really love the Thief franchise, there was a lot of emotion riding on this one. Many gamers worried that we’d get little more than the same sloppy Xbox port that Invisible War was.

But every now and then, the glass really is half full. Though not without flaws, Thief: Deadly Shadows is a really good game, deserving of the Gold Star I’m giving it and a worthy addition to the Thief universe. The people who worked hard on it for four years should be proud of what they’ve accomplished, because they have produced a game that’s not only a triumph in its own right, but one that is reasonably faithful to the franchise mythology.

This review is for the PC version, and—from the department of irony—it’s my understanding that the Xbox port is scoring an average of twenty points lower in most reviews. Given all the Invisible War hubbub, that’s a surprise, though not an unwelcome one. Being a PC gamer, I’d much rather the Xbox version sucked.  Well, I’d rather neither did, but I’m selfish enough to say “better you than me” if it has to be one of us.

A warning: Deadly Shadows makes no attempt to fill newcomers in on the considerable intricacies of the Thief plots and characters to date. The first two games encompass probably two hundred pages of fiction, and you’ll be expected to know who’s who and what’s what. You can still play the game if you don’t know who Viktoria is or what the Mechanist Insurgence was, but it might be somewhat bewildering. This is probably one of the reasons that the Xbox version is getting more chilly reviews.

Second Time’s the Charm

Deadly Shadows, like Invisible War before it, employs the mighty Unreal 2.0 Engine, made all the more powerful with the addition of Havok physics. A casual observer wouldn’t see much Unreal beneath Deadly Shadows or Invisible War; they’re not visually very similar. This is a tenebrous, grimy, and altogether less vividly day-glo environment than Unreal technology generally presents. In both of Ion Storm’s recent games, heaping ladlefuls of shader-enhanced lighting and intricate bump maps are added. What’s most impressive is that in the case of Deadly Shadows, the game not only looks astonishing, it’s functional.

I have never seen a game use light the way Deadly Shadows does, nor have I seen such realistic environments rendered on the fly.  For those who can get it to work well on their systems, this is an astounding visual experience. While the previous Thief games depended heavily on a very angular, stylized look, the decision to abandon that didn’t seriously affect the Thief flavor.  From an eye-candy perspective, Deadly Shadows looks like nothing you have ever seen before.

That said, a quick glance at any gaming forum—including our own—demonstrates that for everyone who’s got the thing up and running, someone else has watched in horror as it brought a computer they consider reasonably powerful mewling to its knees. The minimum requirements are similar to what most wags anticipate will be printed on the DOOM 3 box, and some argue that the game can’t be very well optimized if it calls for this much brawn. But they’re wrong.

If you do meet the requirements, Deadly Shadows is a stable, admirable performer—I get a good framerate and have experienced only one or two crashes. With Invisible War, even those well above the recommended specs experienced a frame-a-week snailfest, and I for one crashed out without warning at least five times an hour. That’s not true here; even with all the graphical frosting turned on, within-spec gamers should be fine. Plus the game is breathtaking—it’s clear where the horsepower requirements go. Only Painkiller looks better, and the two are so visually different that it’s unfair to compare them. The one gripe about graphics (two gripes) is that there is visible seaming where some polygons come together—especially on stairs. Also, Radeon owners can expect some blinking shadows if they’re using the Catalyst 4.5 drivers—the 4.4s solve the problem, and no doubt the upcoming 4.6s will do the same. It’s not a dealbreaker either way.

Developers are slowly getting the hang of Havok-enhanced physics, though they’re not quite there yet. In Invisible War, if you brushed against a chair, it’d go shooting down the hall with the force of a bullet. In Deadly Shadows, you have to hurl yourself against a chair to get it to move at all. Perhaps a golden mean between these two can yet be found; still, Havok is so cool, and will bring so much to gaming, that minor problems with its implementation are just that: minor.

Through the Looking Glass

Deadly Shadows continues the adventures of Garrett, master thief and curmudgeon, as he plies his trade in the great mechamystical expanse of the City. He’s approached by the Keepers, who need some stuff stolen but are far too holier-than-thou to do it themselves.

The Keepers, you may recall, are the watchmen, historians, and futurologists of the City, lurking in shadows and recording comings and goings. Garrett himself was trained as one but bolted before full initiation; it’s his Keeper education that fuels his amazing stealth capability. Keepers are strictly observers and maintain a policy of noninterference, which to them apparently means that they interfere all the time in everything.

It would seem that they have stumbled on a threatening prophecy that warns of an impending Dark Age when all knowledge will be lost.  This divination strongly implies that one individual, who may or may not be Garrett, will be the catalyst that triggers the end.  More research is required before they can get a final verdict—they’re not able to translate the whole thing when Garrett first hooks up with them—and part of the reason they ask for his help is to keep an eye on him.

But something is obviously wrong with the Keepers; a few of them are into something they shouldn’t be. And not everyone in the society likes the idea of employing a dropout who’s been as much a thorn in their side as an ally over the years. Add to that concern the fact that there’s plenty of information that the Keepers would prefer he never know, information that might be at risk if he is allowed access to some of their more deeply hidden secrets. As you can imagine, Garrett somewhat inadvertently learns more about the City’s dark underpinnings and even darker future than he was ever supposed to.  At some point he becomes a liability, as the power struggle within the Keeper hierarchy threatens not just the organization but the future of the City itself.

As usual, Garrett wants nothing to do with any it but gets sucked in despite himself. The Keepers initially lasso him by making an offer so rare and so unthinkable that he can’t refuse—but should—and he spends the rest of the game tumbling down an increasingly slippery incline leading straight to the maw of the looming Dark Age.

Garrett’s fundamental problem is that he’s a great thief but a lousy money manager. Every dime he makes on a job is spent buying gear necessary for the next job, so he’s always broke, the rent is always late, and his apartment has as much charm as a toolshed.  When he’s hired for special jobs, he never wonders whether his clients are the sort who can be trusted to pay their bills. His chronically negative bank balance and confidence in his not-inconsiderable capabilities occasionally drive him to very ill-advised career decisions. Seems to me that a few minutes with a Fidelity Investment Planner would eliminate many of Garrett’s frustrations.

The Dark Age problem is the major story thread, and it’s very cleverly written by a team that’s been with Thief since early on.  There’s a whole mess of parallel bad crap taking place in the City that Garrett (naturally) winds up involved with: a hideously deranged serial killer, a ship full of mostly-dead sailors, a haunted orphanage, and the usual criminal goings-on. Much of that is connected to the sharp, witty main storyline, and Deadly Shadows is a terrific narrative experience. This is thanks to both the delicious writing and the stellar vocal talents of the mostly-returning cast.

The Power of the Dark Side

The ability to switch between first and third person is new to Deadly Shadows, and some thought it would be a clumsy console-port hack. Turns out that this feature is gracefully implemented and actually quite beneficial. There are times when you’re positioned in such a way that going to third person grants you the one thing that FPS games cannot: peripheral vision. It’s a tweak that is quite welcome, that could have been done very badly but wasn’t. Garrett’s body is very much apparent in first person, too. If you look down, there are his feet. Look left or right, there are his hands. Most shooters don’t bother with this, leading to a strange visual disconnect from the world and your character.

Thief has always been a very dark game, and Deadly Shadows continues that tradition. You can certainly crank the brightness controls, but that kind of ruins the point. Play Deadly Shadows at night, with all the lights in the room off. If you own a cat, see if you can recruit its aid in walloping you with heart-stopping shocks of terror by getting it to leap onto the back of your chair at the most tense moments.

It’s obvious that Deadly Shadows went through a lot of playability testing, because several tweaks to minimize darkness-related annoyance are present. The gem that indicates how much light Garrett is standing in is much more sensitive. The movement of shadows cast by flame and people is simply stunning (look at the first screenshot over there), and despite the soft realism of the shadows, it’s usually easy to tell where one ends and begins. Perhaps best of all, when in third person, Garrett himself gives off just a slight glow, as though he’s bathed in moonlight—it’s not too exaggerated, and it helps keep you from losing your protagonist in deep shadow.

Sometimes it seems that Garrett wears tap shoes when on a job; when he walks and runs, he makes so much noise that you have to wonder whether he might not be better off in just socks. “Creep,” the third movement mode, is silent but so slow as to be pretty pointless.  And there are bugs in the sound-making system: walk or run and Garrett makes too much noise, but he makes no noise at any speed when crouched or carrying a body. I imagine they’ll fix this in the patch; with luck they’ll also tweak his movement speed too, though you can do it yourself by manipulating the default.ini file in the game directory.

I neglected to mention the sound work of Eric Brosius for the first two Thief games in my retrospective, so his long-overdue props are given here. Thief has always sported innovative sound design, from the low, tonal beats that evoke a chilling spectrum of emotion to the spot-on 3D reverb effects. The ability of ambient sound to create and manipulate emotion is well-documented, and thanks to Brosius, Thief is one of the best at controlling the gamer’s state of mind through audio. The one flaw in the 3D sound system is that in third person, directional sounds come from Garrett’s perspective, not the camera’s; thus, if you’re looking at Garrett head on and you hear something on your right, it’s on his left. Sound should always come from the gamer’s perspective, not the avatar’s.

The only serious Xbox-related gripe is the addition of loading zones: most missions are broken into two distinct areas, and various City neighborhoods are separated in the same way. It’s not that big a deal, as the load times are relatively short, but they’re really not necessary at all—not on the PC, at least. Plenty of titles *cough*Morrowind*cough* demonstrate that a PC game’s world can be almost criminally big and require only the most infinitesimal of load times. Stopping to load a new section is jarring and technically unnecessary on this platform, and it should have been dispensed with. Like so many other courtesies to PC gamers, it apparently fell into the “why bother” box during concurrent development.

The load zones are delineated by a thick portal filled with oozing blue fog. It’s sort of like having a big sign in front of each loading area that says, hey player up ahead is a loading zone so for the next thirty seconds please snap out of your immersion and remember that you’re playing a video game. Come on, people, Thief is about subtlety. No one could think of a less suckerpunchy way to indicate zone separations?

But more serious than the above is that when you leave a zone, time in it stops. If someone shoots an arrow at your head and you hurl yourself into a new zone to evade the hit, congratulations.  When you reenter, even hours later, you’ll get hit in the face with an arrow that waited patiently for your return. This, and the inability of AIs such as guards to move between zones, damages immersion.  It also damages emergent potential, since it eliminates your ability to take action in one zone and expect a reaction in another.

“Did Something Just Move over There?”

The game starts you off with a tutorial mission that walks newcomers through the basics of being the world’s greatest thief. I like tutorials, but I like them skippable—not only is the tutorial in Deadly Shadows required, it’s built right into the game story. It’s just irritating enough to bug those who already know how to play the game.

Deadly Shadows is mission-based, though there’s a little more flexibility in how and when you choose to do missions than there was in earlier Thiefs. Occasionally you’re given a few at a time, you can begin when you want and can do them in whatever order you please. The world is persistent, so items you buy or acquire in one mission remain available in later ones.

I was disappointed to see that the pre-mission cinematics are gone from this game. There are some narrative cutscenes and short opening movies that brilliantly evoke the mythology of the Keepers, Hammers, and Pagans, Thief’s major players as they existed in The Dark Project and The Metal Age, but the collage of Photoshopped stills accompanied by Garrett’s narration that actually define the objectives and challenges of each mission are gone. I miss those cutscenes; they were very good, very well written and appealing, and it sucks that they’re out. They’re not as hard to produce as full motion video or rendered cinematics, and they added a lot to the atmosphere.

There are more difficulty levels available, and AI ratchets up considerably at higher difficulties. On the lower settings, guards will do their job if they see you, or if you leave an obvious clue like a corpse or a spot of blood. On hard and expert, though, they will note if a chair has been knocked over, if a light’s gone out, or (God forbid) if some valuable item is missing from its assigned place. They can be relentless about hunting you down, too—running for help and then returning with bow-armed or torch-carrying reinforcements, poking into corners, and looking for other indications that there’s an intruder.

In the past few days, news of a critical flaw in the difficulty system has trickled out: regardless of the difficulty setting you choose prior to a mission, the difficulty is reset to Normal if you reload your position in-game. In keeping with a long tradition of Ion Storm technical support, they’ve been somewhat ho-hum about this very significant gameplay bug: their official response boils down to “we’ll patch it if we feel like it.” I didn’t notice this bug during the course of my play, but I must admit that in retrospect it explains occasional schizophrenic behavior on the part of game AIs. Despite my references to patchable stuff throughout this review, gamers should be aware that given what’s going on in Austin there’s a chance that this and other bugs will never be fixed, and that Xbox players are almost certainly out of luck barring a major product recall.

Patience and great care are necessary for success in Deadly Shadows, but the levels and AI are designed well enough that you’re never bored by the waiting. There is ample space in which to hide, and guards are not super-sentient—they will give up eventually even if you’re spotted with your hand in the cookie jar.  And you always have the choice of fighting your way out of a situation if you don’t feel like melting into the shadows or hiding in a broom closet.

Surprisingly, Eidos—the publisher—has indicated that Deadly Shadows can be a much more violent, guns-blazing sort of game than its predecessors. Garrett, they claim, actually has a chance of fighting his way out of a tight spot in this sequel … but I don’t see how. If anything, combat seems more difficult in this than the previous installments. This game is high stealth through and through. If you wish to kill as Garrett, you’d better be sure that your enemy doesn’t see you coming—as in the earlier games, an attack from the darkness will kill an unsuspecting opponent with one strike.

You Blew It, Baby

One of the major preview points of Deadly Shadows was the promise of a true, living City to explore. It should have been the most compelling, unique, emergent aspect of this ambitious new game.  A huge City of pockets just crying out to be picked, of homes and businesses begging to be plundered, with an active nightlife and completely realized underworld. Alas, what should have been the most thrilling aspect of the game is in fact the one most desperately botched: the rest of Deadly Shadows is a solid nine out of ten. The City is a two.

It has been made very clear through two previous games that the City is an enormous place: a great, sprawling entity with a dark urban consciousness, packed with districts, neighborhoods, and landmarks.  The City in Deadly Shadows is tiny—smaller overall than a single City level from The Metal Age. Worse, most of the buildings are not accessible. Only a handful of structures can actually be broken into or entered. The rest have doors that won’t open.

City size is one of the biggest failures on the part of this game.  It should have been massive, full of people and activities, with every single building mapped and filled with objects. And lest anyone go squawking that such a thing would be technically nightmarish, allow me to bring up Morrowind again. The technology does exist, it’s existed for years, and because it’s not implemented here, the City is a clunky between-mission irritant, rather than a portion of the game that players will linger in and enjoy.

It’s a devastating visual miss as well. Buildings are squat and ugly. Majestic places like the Hammerite Cathedral that should reach triumphantly for the heavens instead crouch and brood. Little touches like gardens are either nonexistent or crammed into areas the size of a residential bathroom. Ugly 2D sprites are employed for shrubs and trees. And if you’re hoping for a recreation of the joyously giddy, vertigo-inducing Thieves Highway from The Metal Age, forget it—not only are Garrett’s scaling abilities impeded by climbing tools of truly soul-crushing crapitude, but what should be an awesome, sweeping, stone sky-field rooftop vista of a nightmare urban sprawl is instead a tiny, grubby drearville of planking and cobbles.

From an artistic standpoint, stubby architecture and no roofscape are nothing compared to the next crime: the bewildering shortage of the hideous technology that was the basis of the City’s unique and redolent fiction. In the earlier games, it was packed with towering mechanisms whispering of the City’s unnatural symbiosis of magic and technology, all roaring and rumbling and belching smoke. It was a grotesque manifestation of industrial madness. Streetlights didn’t glow; they sprayed fountains of sparks into the air. Huge boilers that never seemed to do anything but boil crouched behind garden walls. Copper tines hurled fingers of blue electricity back and forth. Piping, ductwork, meters, and ticking gauges were everywhere.  You couldn’t go two feet without encountering a bizarre iron monstrosity born straight of Tesla’s worst nightmares. In Deadly Shadows, the City looks utterly generic. It would fit into any bland medieval fantasy game, with just the odd pipe or electric lamp to imply the mechanism-gone-wrong that made it such a creative jewel.

There is ample history of the City to build plenty of great stuff.  We’re not short on landmarks mentioned or visited in the prior Thief games. Yet where is the Haunted Zone? Where are the Bear Pits?  Where’s the marketplace through which Garrett shadowed a renegade, undercover-Pagan constable The Metal Age, or the network of storm sewers from The Dark Project? Where are homes we recognize, the mansions of Bafford and Constantine, or the walled compound inside which thief lord Ramirez lurks? Where is the entrance to the Lost City, the Mages College, the casino fronting for the Downwind Guild, the Necromancer’s Tower? There is nary a hint of these in this game, and as such the City has lost much of its consistency and become something quite frankly pedestrian, dull, and utterly disconnected from Thief mythology.

And those are just the problems with how it looks.

Everyone on the City Watch knows Garrett and will attack him on sight, an addition almost as outrageous as the decision to make the City the size of a Micronesian fishing village. You have to be as stealthy when running errands in the City as you do when robbing a house. It’s absurd to imagine that Garrett has to creep through the shadows every time he wants to buy a gallon of milk. If the guards attacked only when they saw you commit a crime, or when someone reported the same to them, that’d be fine. Since they seem to know him so well, one wonders why it hasn’t yet occurred to them to crash into his home and arrest the man during the day, when he sleeps.  If Garrett is such a great thief, how is it that everyone seems to know what he does for a living?

Citizens and guards move and behave like special-ed flunkouts.  The people of the City walk in tiny, predetermined paths, making at most an oval or figure eight. Why on earth couldn’t they have more freedom to ramble? To leave work and visit a tavern for a drink, to go home or out to some gathering? With the exception of scripted events, people never deviate from their flight plan. It made me want to run down the streets screaming, “Where is everybody,” surrounded as I was by mindless Stepford automatons that would blithely walk off a cliff if one got in their way.

The enormity of the ball-dropping committed by the designers in the matter of the City is less that it’s grating and bland; it’s how good it could have been. All I can think is how much more incredible this game would have been with a Vice City or Morrowind-type environment where the place really was your oyster, where you would want to spend hours dawdling between missions doing whatever you liked. As it is, it’s your rancid and undercooked mussel, and you will run, not walk, to get your errands wrapped up so you can move on.

Sneaking Around

The City may be a monumental disappointment, but thankfully the missions are not. Each one is well and carefully crafted, with stern attention to detail and realism. They’re all very well-designed and each has a unique flavor and environment—the so-scary-you’ll-scream “Shalebridge Cradle” is a favorite of mine, though the sweeping interiors of St. Edgar’s Cathedral and the looming statuary of the Keeper Compound are equally breathtaking. Most—not all, but most—take a good hour and a half to complete.

There’s a nice mixture of the natural and the un-, too. You’ll explore your share of haunted locales and hide, trembling, from your share of repellent monstrosities (though, sadly, none of my beloved Burricks). But there is also ample opportunity to go for the pure stealth appeal of robbing a house filled only with regular old people. It’s very well balanced on this score.

Because the light and physics in Deadly Shadows are so drastically more advanced than those in the earlier Thief games, even veterans will find that there’s a learning curve: Garrett casts a shadow now, and you’ve got to wrangle it. You must be aware of all the light sources around you, because what looks like a puddle of concealing darkness from one angle may be perfectly illuminated from another—and even darkness is only helpful if you’ve got that peripatetic shadow of yours corralled.

Most of Garrett’s equipment is back. He’s switched from a sword to a dagger, which makes sense given his penchant for tight spaces; the rope arrows have been replaced by moronic and awkward “climbing gloves” that work as though a preschooler designed them. They’d have been a fine replacement if, I don’t know, they had worked in any but the most limited and controlled environments, but they don’t. You can’t round corners, cross material changes in stone walls, even clamber over the tiniest of lips. Frankly, the climbing gloves and the City are the only true and utter failures in the game—but they are failures of crushing and ridiculous atrociousness, bad enough to seriously taint what could have otherwise been a lasting classic.

Some tools have been given a needed polish: moss arrows distribute a lot more moss that’s a lot easier to see; Noisemakers, which I could never get working in the other games, work fine in this one.  You can also employ Garrett’s mechanical eye to zoom in and out in a delightful sepia-toned effect. Flash grenades deafen as well as blind but are no longer a free pass to knock out a guard. Oil flasks, which can be used to trip up pursuers or start small fires, are also a welcome new addition.

The lockpicking is the most significant change to the world. In the old games, it was just a matter of switching between the two tools and holding the mouse button down. In Deadly Shadows, it’s set up kind of like a puzzle, but a simple one. It’s very well tuned and designed for a specific purpose: you want some suspense if someone is approaching as you’re desperately trying to pick a complicated lock. And it works quite well.

“Loot glint” is the slight but obvious sparkle given off by valuables in the game, and it’s a new addition to Deadly Shadows. It’s in there because you can pick up plenty of mundane objects, and the designers decided that it was necessary to add some visual clue to call out items of value. At times it’s unintentionally comical: watching fat people in the City with glowing ears and pockets and wrists is a little absurd. It can be helpful, though, especially when you’re trying to meet a mission objective for loot and you’re running out of places to look. There are so many worthless knickknacks that you’d be picking up and tossing away a lot of plates and candlesticks before you find an expensive one. The ability to turn loot glint off, however, is not present—purists are clamoring for it, so I hope we’ll see this functionality in the patch.

This Just In

Deadly Shadows, despite two major flaws, is a great game.  For those of us who expected the worst, our gameplay fears were unfounded and our consternation ill-advised. This is a meticulously crafted and largely solid gaming experience, and one that doesn’t do anything to shame the revered Thief franchise. Missions, story, acting, graphics, sound, physics, engine, stability: all are a solid thumbs up. The climbing gloves are clumsy and so incompetently designed that they should have been left out; but it’s the City that is the real disappointment, and oh, what a disappointment it is. Were it what it should have been, this might have been one for the history books. They came that close to the rank of near-perfect, and tripped a few yards before a finish line only a few dozen games have crossed.

Good as it is, I do not think that Deadly Shadows will become another Dark Project, played again and again long after its technology is long in the tooth. For the most part, I think gamers will play through Deadly Shadows and then, possibly, revisit it just once down the road, when they’re waxing nostalgic about Garrett and his travails.

I have to wrap this review up with a somewhat bizarre piece of news. Deadly Shadows crept onto shelves nationwide scant hours before some very strange rumors began seeping out of Ion Storm.  I mentioned in the retrospective that Randy Smith, the project lead, had left the company under odd circumstances about two months ago.  Last week, the rumor mill began churning out stories of massive layoffs at Ion Storm—to the tune of thirty-plus people—one day after Deadly Shadows was released. It even looks like the venerated game designer Warren Spector is among the unemployed, though stories conflict as to whether he was shown the door or found his own way.

None of this—nothing—is confirmed; Eidos is insisting that it’s all a big rumor. But there is staggering circumstantial evidence for all of it: the layoffs, Spector’s departure, even the rumors that the studio will adopt a new name and devote itself entirely to console development or, some have implied, shut down altogether.  What this means to the future of Thief I do not know. They’ve always said that this is the last Thief game, a fact made manifest by the ending, but it’s getting good reviews and selling pretty well—which can change things dramatically. Eidos, not Ion Storm, owns the rights to Thief. In fact, it’s been suggested to me that Eidos was actually only interested in those rights when it made the failed last-ditch attempt to bail out franchise creator Looking Glass Studios in 2000.

Ion Storm, I think, is finished regardless. We may have to endure an extended death rattle, but the studio was doomed from the start and it has apparently run out of grace. Failing a clue to what the future holds, I’ll just thank everyone on the team for an imperfect but proud and fitting close to a genuinely magical series of games—games that will always glitter in the hearts of their devotees as the a lantern bearer of the profound and the powerful. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Ion Storm Publisher: Eidos Release Date: May 2004

Available for: Windows Xbox

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System Requirements

Windows 2000/XP (95/98/ME/NT not supported) P4 1.5 GHz or equivalent 256 MB RAM 64 MB video card, Direct3D 9.0, and Pixel Shader 1.1 DirectSound 9 compatible sound card 3 GB free hard disk space 4X CD or DVD drive (DVD required for European versions) Keyboard and mouse

Where to Find It

GoGamer 34.90 (PC)Amazon.com 49.95 (Xbox)

Prices/links current as of 06/08/04Links provided for informational purposes only.  FFC makes no warranty with regard to any transaction entered into by any party(ies).

      Copyright © Electric Eye Productions.  All rights reserved.  No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.

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33 Responses to Goons Loom at Infinity Ward

  • Meho

    So, you make your company a billion in profits in two months. Next thing you know, you’re investigated for insubordination, sued and sacked. Also, your team members are threatened by men looking like thugs yet not wearing uniforms. I guess Pandemic studios are now happy they were acquired by EA and not Activision. They just lost their jobs after making two moderatly successful games.

    Seriously, breaches of contract and stuff, yeah, I can get behind that but having people threatened and reporting “insubordination” sounds like some proper gestapo shit. One would think that after making the fastest selling entertainment product in history, Infinity Ward would be given SOME credit by their Activision Overlords, but I guess Bobby Kottick was serious about the air of fear and uncertainty he wanted to prevail in the Activision cubicle farms. A fascinating story, can’t wait to hear the rest!!

  • Andrew

    Harsh.

    I’m a little wary calling out anything too early but Activision isn’t exactly know for it’s good closure policy of studios, and removal of staff in the past.

    What transgressions they’ve done as publisher-owned, slightly-more-independent-perhaps CO’s – who knows? Will we ever know? 🙁

  • ajax19

    Now that is how you handle insubordination.  Send in security and throw their asses into the brig (i.e., fire them).  I reckon this will be a long and ugly process as most HR-related matters are.  As an attorney, I have had the (dis)plesure of reviewing various HR complaints and matters in my day.  Needless to say the things people do at work simply boggle the mind.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    It is awfully shocking that Infinity Ward, of all studios, would be made an example of with goons and firings. They’re kind of a golden-egg-laying goose.

    Unless of course West and Zampella were actually doing something wrong/unethical/illegal, in which case I’d have to side with Activision. But if some of the tweets are true, and A/B is just trying to bring a rogue studio to heel, there are gentler ways to do it.

  • Meho

    The plot, apparently thickens:

    http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/activision-holding-back-mw2-royalties

    “Website BingeGamer (via VG247) was told by a collection of unnamed sources that not a single penny of the $1bn generated by MW2 has been seen by Infinity Ward. ”

    This is still filed strictly under rumours and speculation but, if it’s true, then it’s fucking bizarre. I mean, I know IW are part of Activision, yet you’d expect their contracts to involve some bonuses on top of the salary should their games do well..

    “The report also states that the “insubordination” IW bosses Jason West and Frank Zampella appear to have been sacked for was caused by secret discussions with rival publishers.”

    Because in corporate America the only secret discussions allowed are those between the senior staff at your company.

    OK, some more linkage:

    http://www.bingegamer.net/2010/infinity-ward-has-not-received-royalties-for-modern-warfare-2/

    Also, just for completion’s sake, a now legendary tweet by Tim Schafer regarding this situation:

    “Getting mad at Activision for this kind of thing is like getting mad at an ape for throwing feces. It’s just how the beast communicates.”

  • Meho

    So, what do we know after one day?

    Activision has indeed sacked West and Zampella. Infinity Ward is supposed to be working on DLC for Modern Warfare 2 as we speak. There will be a Call of Duty title in 2010, made by Treyarch. There will be another Call of Duty title in 2011 although it is not yet clear who is going to be the developer. Infinity Ward is now temporarily headed by Activision’s employees Steve Pearce and Steve Ackrich but Activision also announced that a newly formed studio, Sledgehammer Games will be handling future Call of Duty games and will be “extend(ing) the franchise into the action-adventure genre”. Sledgehammer is headed by former Visceral Games executives Glen A. Schofield and Michael Condrey, which, upon playing Dante’s Inferno, I am not sure is the greatest idea ever…

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    1UP says: “In addition, they have formed a new business unit dedicated to publishing an annual Call of Duty game.”

    Isn’t that just so Activision?

  • Andrew

    Oh! Oh! I can name them! Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: 2010 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: 2011! 😀

    Oooh, wait, but we need other genres, wow! so much chance to have the “Call of Duty: ” namers busy for ages 😀

    Sigh.

  • Mat

    That’s abit unfair, Andrew.

    Aren’t you forgetting “Call of Duty: Modern MMO” and “Call of Duty: Panzer Tankz Mini Kartz Racer!”?

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Kotaku’s really trying to help Activision out: new titles and box art.

  • Toger

    I’d play the Wolveriiiiiiiiines version! 😀

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Hey, the Keeping The Peace version has my childhood neighbors on the cover!

  • Meho

    Modern Gwarfare has practically infinite potential for cross marketing!!!

  • lakerz1

    Call of Duty: Corporate Clusterfuck

    LOL

  • Mat

    http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/infinity-ward-bosses-suing-activision

    This isn’t looking like a story that will go away anytime soon.

  • Meho

    No, it won’t. More info:

    http://pc.ign.com/articles/107/1074524p1.html

    and

    http://pc.ign.com/articles/107/1074657p1.html

    Choice quotes:

    “The lawsuit states that in the wake of Modern Warfare 2’s success, Activision refused to honor the MOU or the Emplyoment Agreement with West and Zampella, and instead launched a “pre-textual investigation against West and Zampella to create a basis to fire the two co-heads of Infinity Ward before the first Modern Warfare 2 royalty payment.”

    “”West and Zampella were interrogated for over six hours in a windowless conference room; Activision investigators brought other Infinity Ward employees to tears in their questioning and accusations and threatened West and Zampella with ‘insubordination’ if they attempted to console them.”
    ”

    Anyway, after reading the court document, I’d say it’s ironic that West and Zampella are fighting to retain control over Modern Warfare brand even though I imagine they are sick to death of it by now…

  • ajax19

    It’s not so much ironic that they are fighting to retain control over Modern Warfare brand even though they are likely sick to death of it by now, but rather very tactical.

    According to the court papers and West and Zampella’s side of the story, this MOU gives them control over “Modern Wafare” and rights to certain royalties that were due in the next few weeks based on the sales of MW2.  Control over MW is their biggest bargaining chip here.  They file a law suit asking for that and the money and then when it comes to time for settlement talks they use their (alleged) leverage over one leg of Activision’s admitted three-legged stool as a way to get more money from them. 

    They are suing for $36 million worth of damages, if they “agree” to give unfettered control of the MW series to Activision, they stand a better chance to see more of that $36 million.

    Complains in law suits are often like this.  They ask very everything and anything, because it’s much easier to amend and pare things down than to amend and try to add things be it damages or additional claims.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    I honestly wouldn’t have expected THIS level of greed, even from Activision. I mean seriously, the game made TWO BILLION DOLLARS, people. There’s enough to go around.

    Infinity Ward is wholly owned by Activision, but I imagine all of its employees will probably quit in the next several months. I also wouldn’t be surprised if West and Zampella start a new studio and hire them all back. Doubtless all employees are bound by non-competes, but those are notoriously difficult to enforce, especially in the games industry.

  • Mat

    The overriding feeling I get from this is is that, not for the first time, Activision are just swinging around their weight like some 500lb Gorilla, and whoever gets caught out by it.. well, tough luck.

    This whole situation just smacks of arrogance. Arrogance that they’ve become no strangers to in recent times.. such as slapping a £55 RRP on Modern Warfare 2 in the UK (that thankfully few if any retailers actually stuck with).

    With all this re-structuring (read: milking) I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s afew concerned faces at Treyarch, too.

  • Bowbe

    Ok…aside from all the nerd rage that the “awesome” management of Infinity Ward got fired by their owner corporation lets analyze a few facts.

    Infinity Ward was successful at creating a pretty good fairly engaging and scary single player game. That grossed an estimated 1.5-2.0 billion dollars in the first two months of release. About the third month we realize that the monolithic statue that is Infinity Ward has feet made of clay (about January 2010) when their various patches for the multi player FAIL to stop all sorts of hacks/cracks/cheats that absolutely ruined the game.

    In November 2009 the entire games industry is hailing them as the 2nd coming (again). Their reviews are 9.5+ on every site.

    Now its March 2010 and metacritic fan ratings push the game to a 5.5.

    This same management everyone has hailed were also grossly negligent in releasing multiplayer that was hacked/cracked/and full of about as many horrible cheats as I have ever seen in more than a decade of online gaming. The managment that allowed their code to be accessed by hackers to “look for bugs”. The same hackers who have destroyed the multiplayer experience. I’d fire them too. They really aint worth that much $ in the grand scheme of things and if they broke contract or NDA with another company/entities they DESERVE what they get.

    As for that billion plus it is just a gross. As someone who works in games publishing let me clarify how this works. 60msrp. Retailer keeps $30.00 of that to keep the lights on in their store. Microsoft and Sony have licensing agreements for their perspective consoles that pay them around 1/3rd of the profit up till a game makes “platinum” status then the rate goes down. Its like a movie studio. So of the $30.00 left over after Walmart, Microsoft/Sony get $10.00. Uncle Sam/the Queen/your National Tax Collector gets $10.00 in varied corporate tax, leaving Activision/Blizzard $10 to divvy up as they chose to the creative studio (Infinity Ward). So a big chunk of change but not a Billion dollars. More like $167 million. A very decent chunk of change for sure. But when you consider blizzard/activision gets to keep about $32 million a MONTH from World of Warcraft, its not that impressive.

  • Bowbe

    Likewise since West and Zampella were dumb enough to allow their code to be distributed onthe net I wouldn’t trust them to put out another game that wouldnt be just as messed up as this one was. There were high school kids playing MW2 two weeks before it came out for peets sake. Whent hey logged in after “buying a copy” all their perks were still there. All their points were still there. Now invariably when you play you will see hundreds of players with prestige 10, earned through boosting. The boosting service is SOLD FREELY for about 2000 microsoft points or 3 months live subscriptions.
    My point is, Activision’s strongest case is that someone willingly let a flagship game of their Christmas lineup be hacked and passed about for free diminishing its value and that its value continues to diminish. Someone has to staunch the gouts of blood because quite honestly, folks who prefer a clean multiplayer game will never trust Infinity Ward again. If West and Zampella couldnt or wouldnt find the person(S) responsible for all that out and destruction of their lucrative multiplayer IP then Activision has every right to punish them financially and legally for ruining their good name. You notice the hacking and cracking is very difficult on WOW, it is strictly enforced and checks and balances are put in place to protect the fans. Infinity ward didnt do this or has thus far failed in its obligation ot the fans. Someone has to pay. Simple as that.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    We’ve all seen that pie chart, Bowbe, but I doubt the studio leadership was fired for shipping an exploitable game.

    Are you actually suggesting that Activision fired senior management because of problems with free DLC? Or that Activision cares that there is cheating in the game? Activision sees no revenue from online play. They could care less whether or not it works.

    You’re free to be an apologist for Activision if you like, but your analysis of WHY Zampelli and West were fired doesn’t seem very plausible.

  • Bowbe

    What isn’t plausible about shopping your parent companies Itellectual Property to hacker sites to look for bugs? Thats pretty cut and dried and thats what they did. That would be me posting up chapters of a book for WOTC/Hasbro on a torrent account while also submitting it for publication. You do that in any job you get fired. I’m not apologizing for Activision, I’m pointing out issues of corporate and leadership related negligence that will get you fired.

    Gay bashing. Infinity Ward had two instances of that with this game, once with the youtube vid, 2nd with the in game “joke” about don’t ask don’t tell. Did I think they were funny? Sure because I have a sense of humor. If you work for a big ass company (Bank of America being one) and make a similar joke even on your facebook page outside of work guess what? Fired. Thats corporate culture now like it or not. Unless your a rapper that is.

    Activision may not “make” the dough off the online play as you say but lets call an apple an apple shall we. How many people actually bought the game PURELY to play the 10 hour single player game? 1/10th of the sales maybe? You buy COD games for the online experience. Their negligence ruined the online experience and tell me it hasn’t been ruined after you’ve been buried in three dozen care package strikes. COD MW1 didnt have those issues. This one is rife with them. If your sitting with friends and 8 out of 10 of them agree the online blows and you were on the fence about buying it for yourself are you still going to buy it for full price? No, you’ll pick it up used and Activision certainly doesnt get any $$ off a resale. Check your worship of Zampelli and West at the door please.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Please. I didn’t know Zampelli and West existed until last week. As for the grammatical wasteland that are your comments, if you worked in game publishing then you would know that once a game is bought it’s bought, that its tail is going to be about six weeks, shorter for a game like this because door busters see around 85% of the profit on Day Zero and Day One. You’d also know that as consumers, gamers are mind-bogglingly stupid, and will cheerfully buy games despite warnings of issues just because they’d always planned to.

    Given that Zampelli and West are now suing, insisting that Modern Warfare is their IP, I’m guessing that they probably didn’t knowingly damage it. But who knows? Maybe Activision, a company that has spent the last five years exploiting franchises, closing studios, firing people without reason, arbitrarily raising prices, making stated company policy that an atmosphere of skepticism, pessimism, and fear was desirable at their wholly owned subsidiaries really is the affronted party here. Time will tell.

  • ajax19

    I don’t think anything is “cut and dry” here.  I don’t think anyone is worshipping either of these guys either.

    The only thing we’ve seen to date are Zampelli and West’s allegations set forth in their complaint and the brief, vague comments by Activision about “insubordination”.  That term is incredibly vague and can mean just about anything in the corporate/HR world. 

    Given that this is now in litigation, rumor and speculation is all you’re going to get until more papers are filed.

    As for their claim for damages, the $36 million they allege includes far, far more than just the royalties they think they are owned.  It’s a combination of things.

    As for the value of MW2 and the money Activision made off it, Activision has already announced that the game was incredibly successful and one of the main reasons behind its success last year.  Regardless of the exact total revenue Activision saw as a result of sales (I’m sure it’s easily found in their public filings) it was a significant portion of their overall revenues.

  • Bowbe

    Haha Steerspike. The only point I was trying to make is that if a parent company wanted to axe these guys they have ample reasons to use as their excuses for termination, most of which would stick.

    Thats ALL I pointed out.

    Leaked versions of the game two weeks before release showing you have no control over your own in studio employees or you willingly leaked the game (Check).

    Inability to control the rampant cheating on multiplayer with 2 patches that did not work resulting in dillution of your IP(Check).

    Use of illigitimate 3rd party hacker sites as “sub contractors” to your IP (Check).

    If this was done without the knowledge of the parent company that (Also) could result in a clause for breach of contract.

    Negotiation in private with a rival entity (Allegedly in this case EA?) for re-entry into the EA fold? Didn’t these bozos pull a similar stunt with EA to break from EA and go to Activision in the first place? Thats the big stinker here according to a lot of other sites that are just as informed as the rest of us.

    The rest of us meaning… people who were not in the meeting. I cherish every time someone allegedly or directly affiliated with the “fired side” tries to win the court of public opinion with their lame twitter and facebook updates.

    Is Activision trying to get out of paying their 10% to Infinity Ward? Probably. In this economy anything is possible, especially where stock splits and shareholders are concerned. Certainly not painting them as good guys here, just pointing out several “grounds for termination”.

    You say cool stuff like “Do you honestly believe Activision cares about cheating” Maybe “Activision” doesn’t but the Blizzard wing sure seems to when it comes to cheating in their flagship product.

    You also swing around big numbers like 2 billion dollars and then when I point out the number they recieve is much smaller you go in with the “We’ve all seen that pie chart…” and “Doorbuster specials”. So which is it? They made 2 billion or they suddenly lost their ass on the first two days of sales while Walmart and Uncle Sam reap the reward of Infinity Ward’s valliant effort? Maybe everyone hasn’t seen that pie chart.

    Sorry dude but I’m not trying to sell a bunch of conflicting stories to win an internet argument with you. Note that when combing through my “gramatical wasteland” I again only point out reasons Activision could use to get rid of anyone affiliated with Infinity Ward that they wanted to, and all would be good and legitimate reasons in my book.

    Infinity Ward started with great IP and the potential of a great product with this one. Single player was amazing, but I buy COD games for the online play. So do a lot of other people. I ain’t the greatest at the game but I finish in the top 5 on most rounds and thats good enough for me. CODMW (the first) played for about 6 months solid, had few errors, but bad lag during certain times of the day. There were almost no cheats except for a few wierd places on a couple maps where you could walk the sky and the game was frequently patched and regulated. That was in the day of “good Infinity Ward” They were unshackled by those evil opressive bastards at EA and they were out to make a good name for themselves right?

    This new game was a mess from the get-go that benefitted from lots of hype, fat reviewer scores and millions of dollars in advertising. My friends and I played for about two months almost nightly till all the care package nonsense and the modded guns started showing up everywhere.

    Even in the beginning there were the “turn invisible cheat” in the Afgan map and “unlimited ammo cheats” and “hide down the smokestack and rack up a million kills cheats to get all your nuke patches and what not. Allowing prestige points in private matches? Wow, a booster’s paradise. Thats horrible game design right there. All that is on Infinity Ward and not Activision. They are the studio they designed it, put it out flaws and all as a finished product.

    Too cheap for dedicated servers with that “2 billion dollars” your talking about? Way to piss off the PC gamers and console gamers alike. I should have known something was up when the “online agreement” page flashes by faster than a booster on crack with all run/sprint/knife/akimbo shotgun choices selected. Is that crap Activisions fault or Infinity Wards? Probably a combo of blame in that reguard.

    We waited and checked status of updates/patches and all that came up was “oh we’re working on it,” all the hack tools were available for it before it even launched. Youtube has had daily exploits posted up. People send you messages to you in game wanting 2000 microsoft points or 3 months subscription to LIVE in exchange for 10th prestige.

    All the bells and whistles that should have made the game great are meaningless now thanks to the cheating. All that stuff you strive for as a gamer went up in smoke almost overnight once the non-stop care package exploits were in full swing. I don’t blame Activision for that. I blame Infinity Ward for allowing that to happen on ALL platforms of the game and will likely never buy a game from them or another entity run by Zampelli and West again. IW ruined its reputation with this gamer for sure. I can buy $60 worth of real bullets and have an awesome afternoon at my local gun club instead.

    You are right about one thing though. Gamers are dumb and will knowingly buy a game that is going to break their heart because they “hope” that all the bs will be fixed the next time they play, or when the next version comes out but just like Madden, it never is.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Now THAT’S a good response, Bowbe! I don’t agree, but I respect the use of logic and the lack of bile.

    Allow me to rebut…

    Blizzard can care about cheating until the universe dries up; the position on one game (where cheating might impact PAYING customers) doesn’t dictate company policy. I didn’t intend to imply that Activision doesn’t care about cheating regardless of game, only that they don’t care when it comes to MW2.

    Never argued that Activision couldn’t produce reasons to fire West and Zampelli. Particularly if they were talking to other publishers – which wouldn’t surprise me. Total breach of contract. I never said Activision was acting illegally. The only point I wanted to make was that if I were Activision, and I was faced with losing a studio that just made me *coughcoughcough*illion dollars (no need to incite you further), I might have approached with a different tone…

    along the lines of…

    “Hey, guys, I know you’re looking and I don’t want you to leave us.  How can we work this out?”

    Instead of sending thugs to the office and firing the leads.

    As for the litany of exploits you list, yeah, it’s a broken game. Most games that ship are broken. But the industry doesn’t care about quality – on account of the gamers are stupid thing. All they care about is dollars, and MW2 made a zillion of them. They’re not selling Toyotas, you know. No one dies if a game is shitty.

  • Mat

    The bug issue with MW2 is an interesting one for sure, particularly when you consider what the reaction to so many glitches and cheats would have been if this was Treyarch’s year on the job. I was late onto the World at War scene so barely experienced much of the multiplayer myself, but I noticed the game received one hell of a tough ride from the community about the bugs in the multiplayer. I can’t recall many if any of them being as high profile or consistent as some of the floods of MW2 glitches that have appeared.

    Infinity Ward didn’t come up with anything like Nazi zombies either, and if COD4 is any indication, are nowhere near as supportive of their products with DLC either as Treyarch.

    Still, I don’t really think this is about calling Infinity Ward “awesome” or siding with them against Activision for the sake of it.. or “nerd rage”. IW might have published a buggy as hell game (serves them right for being arrogant over not releasing a beta) but this is just one in an increasingly large number of PR balls up’s by Activision. As Steerpike says, there are surely other ways of dealing with stuff like this other than sending the heavies in and coming out with comments about “subordination” and the like. This is video games development, not an episode of 24.

    Just as an aside, I’ve pretty much called time on Modern Warfare 2 myself now, although that is less to do with the games bugs than it is to do with the simply awful “community” that follows that game around..

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