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I don't know anything about the game or how it failed, but what you describe reads like a classic caricature of an engineer's wet dream: lots of fancy tech that

I don't know anything about the game or how it failed, but what you describe reads like a classic caricature of an engineer's wet dream: lots of fancy tech that's fun to build but not very useful to the end user, while comparatively boring but useful features (autosave) gets passed over. Sure, management also failed (any failure is by definition a failure of management since they're supposed to be responsible for the project) - but textbook? You hardly made the case for that.

pavel_lishin 12y ago
Management letting engineers build whatever cool toys they want instead of features customers want and need sounds like it ought to be a textbook example of what not to do. Maybe you can't herd cats, but you can at least train them to use the litter box and not scratch your television.
- stickfigure 12y ago
  Maxis (and EA in general) doesn't really work like that. The producers and game designers are in charge; engineers may have some input but there are professionals running the show. And those professionals screw up a lot. It's a hard business. Maxis in particular suffered from the problem of having a bright, famous designer who produced two major hits. This gave him license to make dozens of failures. Unfortunately, Maxis started "betting the farm" on his last couple creations, with budgets into the high tens of millions. You don't get to roll the dice many times at that price.
Shivetya 12y ago
pretty much explains Master of Orion III. to expand on that, likely the person in charge of a feature which consumed so much resources was untouchable. Considered too good to fail or have, gasp, a bad idea
joeld42 12y ago
There's some really cool prototypes from the making of of spore that got put online. It's fascinating stuff: http://www.spore.com/comm/prototypes http://www.spore.com/comm/prototypes I would say that every part of Spore was fun, or at least could be, but they never were able to get them to mesh together in a cohesive whole.

pavel_lishin 12y ago

Management letting engineers build whatever cool toys they want instead of features customers want and need sounds like it ought to be a textbook example of what not to do. Maybe you can't herd cats, but you can at least train them to use the litter box and not scratch your television.

stickfigure 12y ago
Maxis (and EA in general) doesn't really work like that. The producers and game designers are in charge; engineers may have some input but there are professionals running the show. And those professionals screw up a lot. It's a hard business. Maxis in particular suffered from the problem of having a bright, famous designer who produced two major hits. This gave him license to make dozens of failures. Unfortunately, Maxis started "betting the farm" on his last couple creations, with budgets into the high tens of millions. You don't get to roll the dice many times at that price.

Shivetya 12y ago

pretty much explains Master of Orion III. to expand on that, likely the person in charge of a feature which consumed so much resources was untouchable. Considered too good to fail or have, gasp, a bad idea

joeld42 12y ago

There's some really cool prototypes from the making of of spore that got put online. It's fascinating stuff: http://www.spore.com/comm/prototypes http://www.spore.com/comm/prototypes I would say that every part of Spore was fun, or at least could be, but they never were able to get them to mesh together in a cohesive whole.