Stealing Beauty: A Thief Retrospective, Part 2

            Stealing Beauty: A Thief Retrospective

By SteerpikeMay 2004

—Continued from Part 1—

Where It’s Due

You can’t make a great game without a strong team and a coherent creative vision. Further, those who portray a narrative game’s characters must be fully in tune with the wishes of its authors.

The Dark Project was helmed by Greg LoPiccolo, who left Looking Glass for Harmonix shortly after the game’s release. He, along with Lead Designer Tim Stellmach and Ken Levine—who created the original game concept—were largely responsible for the flavor of Thief. Looking Glass lifer Steve Pearsall took on project lead chores for The Metal Age and worked hard to maintain consistency with the mythos and universe that had already been created.

Multi-hatted Terri Brosius, who is credited merely as a “designer” on both games, was in fact a major contributor to the Thief universe, especially fiction and backstory, and helped write both scripts.  As if that weren’t enough, she designed some of the game’s better missions and voiced the enigmatic Viktoria, which is a tough role to play well.

Fans of the System Shock games may also recognize her as SHODAN, the world’s sexiest evil-but-conflicted supercomputer, and as Marie Delacroix, hapless French inventor of FTL drive and one of SHODAN’s later victims. She also plays the too-weird-to-not-be-on-lithium helicopter pilot Ava Johnson in Deus Ex: Invisible War and has one-line parts in far too many other games to mention.

Terri is working with the Thief 3 team at ION Storm, where her background and vocal prowess will doubtless come in handy. Indeed, this time she’s one of the primary architects of the game plot and script. Given the quality of her creative work in the past, that’s a very good thing.

Actor Stephen Russell plays Garrett—and about nine million other tiny roles in the Thief games—and he’s so good that you simply couldn’t imagine the character sounding like anyone else. It goes without saying by this point that Garrett is a complicated fellow, and a lot of his personality must be conveyed in how he says things.  Sarcastic, dry, slightly amused, but with a sharp edge warning of a capability for shocking violence, Russell’s portrayal of Garrett is spot-on. Listening to actors like Brosius and Russell leaves limited sympathy for developers that cut costs by stuffing janitors and interns in the sound studio and handing them a script.

A lot, but by no means all, of the original Thief crew are working with ION Storm on Deadly Shadows. That is obviously good news because they’re likely to stay as faithful as possible to the existing work, and they have every reason to make it a great gaming experience. This is a group of people who have in some cases been with the Thief universe for eight years, who have a right to see it through to the end, who have worked hard and suffered through corporate malfeasance and publisher bullying, who have always focused on one goal: to make Thief the very best it could possibly be. And they are not necessarily culpable for any shortcomings in the previous games.

Like fans, most Looking Glass alums weren’t thrilled with The Metal Age, and with good reason. By the time the game shipped, Looking Glass was in serious financial hot water. They shipped it before it was ready and they know it—but they did it because they had to. Had it not been for the financial problems, they’d likely have let it slip a bit and shipped it in December of 2000 rather than June.

Equally unfortunate is the fact that Looking Glass didn’t realize its demise was imminent when it released the game. It ends with a staggeringly anticlimactic climax and zero closure—in fact, it ends with a question that was to have been answered at the beginning of Thief 3. But the arrival of Thief 3 would take a lot longer than anyone anticipated. And so the middle of this story is also the end: the oblivion of Looking Glass was near at hand when The Metal Age reached store shelves, and the series was not to be reborn for many years.

Through a Glass, Darkly

Looking Glass Studios was heralded since its foundation as an innovator in gaming. The studio worked hard to promote the notion that games are an entertainment art form. Founded by past employees of Origin Systems and Microprose when those two now-defunct companies were at the height of their glory, Looking Glass games were award winners, critical favorites, academic darlings. And unlike irritatingly pretentious “artsy” games like Galapagos or Eve or Bad Mojo, Looking Glass made art really, really fun.

It was built on the most solid foundation imaginable: the Ultima franchise. In 1992 Origin published Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, a spinoff of the seminal RPG series. It was produced by respected industry vet Warren Spector, whose rap sheet reads like a who’s who of awards and critical approbation. He also helmed the award-winning Ultima 7 Part 2—Serpent Isle and The Silver Seed and served as associate producer of Wing Commander, Privateer, Martian Dreams, and Ultima 6, among others—all before joining Looking Glass in 1992. Given his history with the Ultima games, he was the logical choice to helm production of the studio’s first major release, Ultima Underworld 2: The Labyrinth of Worlds. Both Ultima Underworld games have long been heralded as pivotal moments in first-person and narrative game design.

But like many innovators, Looking Glass was often ahead of its time. It produced highly cerebral game experiences, and early-nineties audiences, still evolving a basic grammar of modern gaming and its fundamentals, weren’t ready for them. This fact was illustrated most sharply with the release of System Shock (1994), a complex genre-bending FPS that combined elements of action, role playing, survival horror, and adventure into a single package.

Revered to the point of gushing by press, players weren’t ready for such depth and complexity in a shooter, which by then had been defined as a mindless blasting platform. Ironically, it wound up posting reasonably good numbers in the end. But System Shock sold so slowly that its tortoiselike climb into the black did little for the studio’s financial stability. The company’s next offerings, Terra Nova and the Flight Unlimited series, also received critical acclaim but didn’t really burn up sales charts.  It was around this time that the Dark Camelot idea was born, and concept discussions for the game began.

Spector left to join ION Storm early in The Dark Project’s development; contrary to popular belief, his role in the production of the first two Thiefs is reasonably limited. Other departures were to follow. Given the revolutionary style of stealth elements and patience-required gameplay, the team wasn’t quite sure that its game was fun, so anxiety ran high. Creative innovator that it was, however, Looking Glass chose to see the project through to its conclusion. Even if the game flopped, they’d have a proprietary engine and probably some good lessons learned. Still, there was some worry about the future of both the game and the company.

But industry press, which had always held Looking Glass in very high esteem, latched onto the Thief concept and generated significant anticipatory buzz in advance of the title’s release.  Thanks to this attention, the one-level demo was widely downloaded, so when The Dark Project arrived in December of 1998, fans knew what to expect and handed over their cash. It didn’t make sales history, but it had been a fairly affordable game to produce, and Eidos—Thief’s publisher—got its money back. Looking Glass, on the other hand, was feeling the crunch of a string of titles that had produced only ho-hum sales. No bombs, but no blockbusters.

Some of this pressure ought to have been alleviated in 1999 with the release of System Shock 2, a game whose history is inextricably linked with that of Thief. Despite an avalanche of coverage from a gaming press still tormented by guilt over its failure to make the original a hit, System Shock 2 didn’t move the numbers it needed to. Nowadays it’s a hall of fame title, a hands-down, flat-out classic—so is the original. But it’s a little late.

To this day, System Shock 2 is considered by many to be the most frightening PC game ever made. Its uncanny ability to terrify and its vivid blend of story, character, and action are direct results of lessons learned from Thief. It’s even built on the same engine.

Looking Glass didn’t directly develop System Shock 2. They had teamed with Irrational Games (later known for Freedom Force) and would continue to work closely with them, swapping employees and intellectual property. This relationship started to crumble later, but during the development of System Shock 2 the studios were so incestuous that it could be difficult to tell where one ended and the other began.

Even as Looking Glass coordinated with Irrational to produce System Shock 2, it was also hard at work developing The Metal Age. Very preliminary ideas for Thief 3 were also being bandied about. Here, however, the cracks really began to show.

The Thief franchise is published by Eidos Interactive, which had sprung into relevance with the publication of Core Design’s Tomb Raider. With mad money rolling in from the Tomb Raider games, in 1996—when Thief was just a zygote—the company went on a shopping frenzy. It was looking for a trophy studio—some prestige deal that would secure it a position among the big daddies of the game publishing biz. It found that prize in the form of a six-game exclusive agreement to publish a new studio that, at the time, was considered the Holy Grail of game development. This new developer was called ION Storm.

This is a drastic simplification, but the relationship of ION to the Thief games was that Warren Spector had once worked for Looking Glass and now worked for ION Storm, and that Eidos was publishing both. We all know what happened (check here for the vicious—but accurate—Dallas Observer column that began ION Storm’s shameful public slide into oblivion), so we’ll only rehash the most relevant details.

By 1999, The Metal Age was deep in development and within budget. Over in ION Storm’s Dallas office, Daikatana and Anachronox were already years late and had sonic-boomed millions of dollars past their respective development allocations. What had once been Eidos’s trophy wife was now its gold-digging albatross. ION Storm squandered so relentlessly that it threatened to empty the coffers of its huge, multinational publisher. Despite that publisher’s heroic determination to cover the burn rates of both studios, after the ION Storm vacuum passed through the Eidos vault, there wasn’t much left for Looking Glass.

It’s very important to point out here that the ION Storm of that time was essentially two studios: the Dallas office was the fiscally irresponsible one unable to complete a game on time or within budget.  The Austin office, beavering away at Deus Ex under Warren Spector, was financially stable and firing on all cylinders. ION Austin had little contact with the Dallas office and wasn’t culpable in any of the press debacles that hounded the company’s implosion.  Only the Austin location exists today, and it shares nothing but a name with the cataclysmic flatline of the past. Gamers must realize that to associate a negative connotation with today’s ION Storm is unfair and inaccurate.

Shortly after The Metal Age shipped, the Looking Glass board met and confirmed that there was no money left in the kitty. Rather than endure a torturous, humiliating, and almost certainly hopeless bankruptcy reorganization, the privately held studio laid everyone off and locked the doors.

Many opine that Eidos didn’t do enough to save Looking Glass, and also that it was ION Storm’s fault the company went under. Satisfying as it would be to assign villainy, neither allegation is true.

Eidos loyally covered Looking Glass’s burn rate despite the studio’s history of great games that neither flopped nor flew. ION Storm, meanwhile, had no vested interest in the failure of Looking Glass.  The only way it could be perceived as “their fault” is if one blames them for wasting Eidos money that could have been spent saving the other company.

The press release announcing the fall of Looking Glass ricocheted a collective gasp of shock through the industry. No one had appreciated the studio while it was alive. Only its death rattle alerted us to the fact that it had represented the spirit of something we needed: a spirit now vanished, dissipated, never to return. It was the lantern bearer of the games-as-art concept, and it was gone. Those who comprehended the scale of the loss understood that the demise of Looking Glass Studios would scar the face of the industry forever. Every artistic medium has to suffer its blackest day. The Beatles broke up, RKO went under, Welles was fired, Van Gogh committed suicide, Poe died penniless and loathed. Video games had to endure the breaking of Looking Glass.

Back to the Future: Deadly Shadows

And so the series hit an unexpected snag. The Metal Age ended with little closure in anticipation of a sequel, but with Looking Glass out of business, the rights to Thief floated in limbo.  Many Looking Glass employees wound up back with Spector at ION Storm Austin, and in 2001 that studio nabbed the rights to the Thief franchise and began work on Thief 3, which was originally to be subtitled The Dark Age.

ION Storm has been mum on Deadly Shadows details until very recently, when a new website and a blizzard of press releases amped up the buzz on this game. Where The Dark Project was a Pagan story and The Metal Age was a Hammer story, Deadly Shadows closes the circle by focusing its attention on the third major City power: the Keepers. They’ve stumbled upon an apocalyptic prophecy and Garrett—in a revelation sure to infuriate him—figures prominently. Once again he’s dragged into other people’s problems, as his alma mater recruits him to help uncover the meaning of the grim divination. As he gets too close to certain secrets meant to stay buried, however, the Keepers turn on him, and he’s on his own.

We can expect a more persistent world in Deadly Shadows. It looks like the game will remain mission-driven, but Garrett apparently will also have access to the City along with his various story targets.  Among other things, a new living economy model implies that you’ll be responsible for making your living as a thief—picking pockets, robbing houses, and so forth, then fencing what you steal for cash to buy equipment. Most tools of the trade from the old games will make a return appearance, along with some interesting new gadgets that will make life as a possessions redistribution operative that much easier.

The Havok middleware physics engine will be employed to great effect in Deadly Shadows. As studios get more and more comfortable with the awesome power of Havok—which most gamers first saw in Max Payne 2—it will become possible to build increasingly realistic physical models. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that Havok will change the way we play games forever. Overall, buzz coming out of ION Storm is that Deadly Shadows is an improvement in every way to its technical predecessor, Deus Ex: Invisible War.

Project lead Randy Smith, who started his career in gaming with Thief as a junior designer at Looking Glass (he is responsible for the pants-wettingly scary “Return to the Cathedral” mission), has generously made himself accessible to fans and members of the press alike. He donated some of his time to speak with me at the Game Developers Conference last March.

Regrettably, many of the questions that deal with the ION Storm/Looking Glass/Thief collective are unpleasant, and some are downright rude. Alas that the most insolent question of all was the one that, in the context of a Thief retrospective, I most had to ask.

Is the PC version of Thief 3 going to be the disaster that the PC version of Deus Ex: Invisible War was?

For the record, I didn’t phrase it quite so bluntly when I spoke with Randy at the GDC, but I was pretty damn blunt and he had every right to end the conversation there. But he didn’t, and he answered my questions—rude and otherwise—with tact and candor. I thanked him privately then and do so publicly now, not only for his frank responses, but for his willingness to answer my questions in the first place.

Before we get to his answer, let’s look at why it needed to be asked.

ION Storm released Deus Ex: Invisible War for PC and Xbox last December, and few will argue that the PC version of the game plays like a clumsy afterthought—an afterthought so egregiously ill-conceived and poorly executed that it took five months, two patches, a fan-made texture pack, and an avalanche of default.ini tweaks whose complexity approaches that of brain surgery to make the game what it is today: vaguely playable on hardware so powerful that only the most up-to-date gamers have a chance at running it acceptably.

This applies to Deadly Shadows because like DX:IW, it’s being developed simultaneously for both platforms. Also like Invisible War, it uses a massively retooled and Havok-enhanced Unreal 2.0 engine. While other Unreal 2.0 games—Unreal 2 and UT2K4 come to mind—look glorious and run fine on the PC, ION Storm’s mods to the engine are obviously focused on maximizing play experience on the Xbox with little if any regard for the needs of PC gamers.

DX:IW, with its massive HUD, claustrophobic periphery, repellent aliasing, and jiggling textures, is designed for optimal viewing from about ten feet away—that is, from a couch, looking at a relatively low-res display powered by an Xbox.

PC gamers play from no more than eighteen inches away and look at a very high resolution display, and what works on one doesn’t generally work on the other without significant tweaking. ION Storm didn’t do this tweaking for the PC version of Invisible War, and as such released a nauseating abortion of a game for that platform. It is still riddled with bugs (my personal favorite: it refuses to run if your My Documents folder is on a network share) and unplayable by many; I only got it to run at an acceptable level in the last few weeks. It’s a pity, because beneath the patina of crap, Invisible War —all 12 frames a second of it on my Athlon 2800+—is a terrific game with an engaging story, gorgeous visuals, and a lot of promise for the franchise.

When I asked Randy the rude question above, he told me two things.

First and foremost, he reminded me that studios are often trammeled by the wishes of their publisher, who want games they can sell to the largest possible consumer segments. Given how difficult it can be to return a game in today’s retail environment, there’s little reason for a publisher to wait until it’s done before compelling the developer to release it. It is by no means inconceivable that Eidos forced ION Storm to release Invisible War on both platforms in time for Christmas, regardless of known technical issues.

Eidos has already insisted that Deadly Shadows be more violent, more action oriented, less intensely cerebral, and more forgiving of a nonstealthy approach. According to Randy, the designers responded with a game that supports either play style—a move intended to appease both Eidos brass and lovers of the franchise.

He also said that they are testing it equally on PC and Xbox, and that in his opinion, the PC version of the game wouldn’t be the tragedy that Invisible War was. This, coupled with the fact that much of the original Thief team is involved with Deadly Shadows, implies that its creators will work hard to make the game good. The only variable is the publisher, who might yet force ION Storm’s hand.

So when Randy—who because of his willingness to chat with gamers and his long association with the franchise has come to be seen as a sort of Thief messiah in fan circles—said that he didn’t think we’d see the same complaints about Thief 3 as we did about Invisible War, I didn’t have a hard time believing him.

There’s only one problem.

The Problem

Randy Smith left ION Storm in early April, scant days after my conversation with him at the GDC. His departure came at the same time as another high-profile exit: Harvey Smith (no relation), project director of Invisible War, also split. It’s been all over the industry grapevine. Exits like this are bad, bad press and leave Warren Spector running a studio with no project leads when one game is about to ship and another (Deus Ex 3) is in high concept.

I haven’t asked Randy why he left. Partly because it’s not my business; partly because as a Thief fan I’m not sure I want to hear his answer. The fact is, project directors don’t voluntarily unemploy themselves when a game they’ve worked on for years is literally weeks from release. Project leads who bolt under such circumstances are either forced out or are not happy with the game as it is and unwilling to put their name on it. An official comment from ION Storm—that Randy left because they’re in bug-squashing mode and he’s “not needed” for that—is little more than a press smokescreen.

Whatever the reason, it’s (naturally) resulted in forum discussions of apocalyptic proportions. Randy’s departure has been seen as everything from the ignition of western civilization’s collapse to a sad fact that won’t seriously affect the quality of the game. Forums are a terrible place to look for gospel information, but they do give you the complete—and often highly amusing—buffet of human opinion.

Based on some things I saw at the GDC, there is another potential explanation for Randy and Harvey’s sudden exit. Both of them are aggressive supporters of the emergence movement in gameplay—emergence being a process by which players can cause reactions not immediately foreseeable based on their predicative actions. Emergence encourages player improvisation and unexpected behavior in approach to game challenges. In fact, both men support emergence to the detriment of linear, developer-driven narrative, on the not-implausible logic that how individual players approach and solve game challenges should drive the game’s story forward. Invisible War is certainly a very emergent game.

Until recently, Warren Spector believed more or less the same thing, but fan reaction to Invisible War seems to have affected him in a very profound way. At a GDC lecture on game narrative, Warren strongly implied that he now sees significant value in carefully implemented developer-driven linearity. The latter technique allows game developers a great deal more control over how the game is experienced but sacrifices some player freedom to accomplish that. The phrase “it didn’t work” escaped Warren’s mouth more than once in connection with Invisible War, and it may be that he has changed his viewpoint to accommodate more developer control over the game structure—and, by extension, less emergence.

Both views have strengths and weaknesses, and neither is wrong or right. They are merely different approaches to game making, the equivalent of realism and formalism in cinema. But they are not mutually compatible, and one can imagine the sort of sparks that might fly in a game studio when the boss is questioning a philosophy that his lead designers espouse. It’s possible that these oil-and-water viewpoints just couldn’t coexist any longer.

Invisible War and Randy’s departure notwithstanding, to flatly condemn Deadly Shadows based expressly on rumor and forum chatter would be ill-advised. All fans of the franchise would rather it be a good game than a bad one; barring outlandish success, it is almost certainly the last in the Thief series and by far the most ambitious. Questions of its quality will be answered in a few weeks when it comes out, but uncommitted gamers might want to wait on this one and read some reviews from trusted sources.

Thieves’ Tools

You’re in luck if you missed the Thief series the first time around and want to check it out before Deadly Shadows ships.  Thief Gold and The Metal Age—and, to a lesser extent, Thief Platinum and The Dark Project—are all available both at retail and various online sites. If you shop around, there’s a good chance you’ll find any or all of these games for nine bucks or less (check the CompUSA bargain wall) either by themselves or as part of a larger shovelware pack.

Moments like this are when we should all stop what we’re doing and whisper a collective thanks for DirectX. Think what you will of Microsoft, but by forcing an industry-standard gaming API on developers, it all but guaranteed older compliant titles at least some minimal level of compatibility with future operating systems.  Thief and its spawn are all DirectX games, and there’s a good chance they’ll work for you out of the box.

If not, you can find a helpful technical FAQ here.  Through the Looking Glass is dedicated to preserving the Looking Glass legend and discussing those games and studios it sees as Looking Glass’s creative or spiritual successors. This is a fan site, created and maintained by civilians, so don’t assume that anything posted there is official or condoned. Still, it is a dedicated community of friendly people, and they’ll certainly be happy to welcome new Thief converts into the fold.

The games get a little cranky if you try to install them on NT-based operating systems, including Windows 2000 and XP, because the NT kernel, as Thief sees it, doesn’t support DirectX. The games run fine on these systems, however, and a simple switch will bypass the OS check altogether: just type x:setup.exe –lgntforce, where x is your CD-ROM drive, to begin the install routine.

The other major technical gripe people have is that the cutscenes sometimes won’t run, or work at first and then stop. Thief uses the Intel Indeo video codec to control its mission briefings and some game movies; oftentimes this codec isn’t installed or becomes corrupt on modern machines. Check the forum above for instructions on making a .bat file that will solve this problem. If you’re not comfortable with that kind of surgery, post your problem at the forum or get in touch with me by email and we’ll set up a generic copy of the file here.

You might have trouble running Thief without patches, and some of its patches are a little hard to find. Enterprising fans have collected the most important ones and made a few of their own to fix some of the bugs that never got hammered out by Looking Glass.  Additionally, since the Dark Engine is kind of long in the tooth these days, graphic snobs may wish to download some fan-made texture packs that hi-resify the meshes and textures in the game. You can find such patches and enhancements here.  Thief enjoys a pretty hearty online cult following, so a bit of Googling will usually reveal what you need.

The modding community for Thief has been a busy group, producing a number of user-created levels and episodes. The Thief level editor, DromEd, in addition to being one of the most buggy, obtuse, frustrating, and user-unfriendly creation tools in existence, can be downloaded here or is available on both the Thief Gold and Thief 2 installation discs. If you want to learn more about DromEd and how to be frustrated by it, visit this FAQ. Lots of keen user-created missions, including Episode 1 of “The Circle of Stone and Shadow,” a major fan-built original Thief story of novella proportions, can be found at this site.

The final trouble spot is a trickier one to deal with. Once you get Thief up and running, you might find that the game plays so fast it’s nigh-uncontrollable on a modern PC. The original required only a Pentium-class CPU; today’s gigahertz systems might be as much as fifteen times faster than the base requirements to run the game. If you experience this problem, your best bet is to visit the advanced settings tab in your Windows display dialog and crank all your video card’s special effects up to the maximum. Essentially set your card to run with a level of quality that would make your computer explode if you tried it with a modern game. This usually solves the problem.

It does beg the question, however, whether the Thief games will survive the march of progress. CPUs may hit five gigahertz by the end of this year and will almost surely reach 10 GHz by 2007; even turning up your video settings won’t be enough to throttle a Dark Engine game back down at that point. Serious gamers who want to observe older titles in their natural habitats have to maintain snapshot systems from various milestones in computing history. It’s frustrating and unfair, but there’s no one to blame except Gordon Moore. Still, the thought that Thief may one day be forgotten because technology has charged too far past it is a depressing one.

Stealing Beauty

May 26 will be the swan song of the Thief universe. Whether or not Deadly Shadows is successful, it’s highly unlikely that we’ll see another Thief game. The idea of Garrett toddling off into the silicon sunset is a melancholy one, because in a way it means that the final whisper of Looking Glass Studios will also vanish. The City, with its lush history and superbly crafted environment, the Keepers ever lurking in the shadows, the Hammers with their do-as-I-say morality—these are but sparks of the true depth and beauty of Thief. The realization that there are at least twenty more pages of material that I’d like to cover is testament to how incomprehensibly vast and towering this achievement truly is. Going on and on about Thief is not dissimilar to waxing poetic about a true love. There is always more to say.

The Thief series transcends mere “game” and has become something that to its devotees is an emotional conduit to manifested dreams.  You don’t “play” Thief, you experience it. As Wagner James Au notes, “You must become Garrett … or die.” And so you must: to merely play Thief is to miss some of the tapestry of its richness.  If you squirm when it is suggested that computer games can be profound, can be truly meaningful, Thief is probably not for you.

This is the reason that anticipation and dread alike run so high for Deadly Shadows. For those who cherish Thief, those who really got it, describing what it means to them is nearly impossible. There are simply not the words, and the chance that an ill-conceived sequel might diminish that which has been so meaningful is frightening indeed. Only a handful of games reach this point, when players cease to be fans and become disciples. To look at Thief, to experience its symphony of enchantments and subtleties, is to touch the divine future of gaming. The End

The Lowdown

Developer: :Looking Glass Publisher: Eidos Release Date: December 1998 (Thief); 2000 (Thief 2)

Available for: Windows

Screenshots

Thief

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Thief 2

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System Requirements

Thief Pentium 200 MHz (with 4 MB SVGA video card, no hardware acceleration) Pentium 166 MHz (with 3D hardware accelerator card, minimum 4 MB on-board RAM, 100% DirectX 6.0 compliant) 32 MB RAM Windows 95/98 Mouse DirectX 6.0 (included) DirectMedia (included) Intel Indeo video codec (included) 100% DirectX 6.0 compliant sound card 4X CD-ROM drive 60 MB free hard drive space

Thief 2 266 MHz Pentium II or equivalent Windows 95/98 48 MB RAM DirectX 7.0 compliant 3D accelerated video card DirectX 7.0 compliant sound card DirectX 7.0 or higher (included) 4X CD-ROM drive 250 MB free uncompressed hard drive space Keyboard and mouse

Where to Find It

GoGamer 14.90 (Thief Gold); 14.90 (Thief 2); 39.90 (Thief 3 preorder)

Prices/links current as of 05/15/04Links 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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