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Games Entertainment

The Troika Games Saga 23

Posted by Zonk from the i-miss-torment dept.
GameBanshee has an interview up with Leonard Boyarksy, one of the founders of the late Troika games, describing the last days of the much missed RPG developer. From the article: "It became apparent in January when the last of our possible deals that we'd been pursuing fell through. When we started looking six or so months ago, there was a lot of initial interest but our projects could never seem to get past the marketing department."
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The Troika Games Saga More

The Troika Games Saga

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  • It's not like it was a surprise. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rallion ( 711805 ) on Thursday March 24, 2005 @01:05AM (#12032699) Journal
    You can't make Temple of Elemental Evil and then expect people to ever have any contact with you again.

    Really. It doesn't matter if you've also done good things. Nobody wants to look at a project and determine, based on past history, that it might be good, but it also might be freaking terrible. In fact, determining that it will almost certainly be entirely mediocre is far more pleasant than that.
  • ...I thought it was the I-miss-torrent dept. That might have explained a bit of it, not to mention the old Half-Late--I mean Life delays. Didn't help their Source-dependent game Vampire...

    • Re:Crap... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Propagandhi ( 570791 )
      I don't think it was the delaying of Vampire, so much as it was the rampant bugs that were still present in the game even after the game had been delayed for so long..

      Whether it was Troika's or their publishers (I wanna say Sierra, but I can't remember right now) fault is debatable.. but you simply can't ship a game with that many bugs and expect it to sell well (MMORPGS being the possible exception to this rule).
    • Didn't help their Source-dependent game Vampire...
      Personally, I enjoyed VTM:Bloodlines. Yes, it had some bugs, and plenty of flaws, but it was still entertaining and had a good story behind it.

      I'm sorry to see Troika go.

  • Gave me an idea... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by TrickFred ( 231420 )
    Too bad, I actually really liked playing VtM Bloodlines - partially for the storyline, but mostly because the ambience of the game reminded me a lot of the SNES Shadowrun game. Call me weird, but it just seemed to have a similar 'feel' to it, what with the various missions, social interaction, computer usage and simple combat. Which makes me want a similar treatment for a Shadowrun-based game really bad.
  • I can't say I'll miss them. What games did they make? Most of them (and they were very few) were very buggy. It was a shame to see some of that very talented Fallout team releasing buggy games, but I guess if that's all you're capable of, the success of a title like Fallout can blind you into thinking that you're better than you are.
    • I think that's a very uninformed opinion, because as I understand it this isn't completely Troikas fault. For instance; Vampire Bloodlines was completed months before it was released because of having to wait for HL2. In that time the Troika team tried to get funding to give the game some much needed polish, the publisher however couldn't be bothered.

      Secondly I would like to say that I though Arcanum was a very good game, and I found VtM: Bloodlines very entertaining despite a serious lack of polish.

      S

      • Re:...much-missed RPG developer (Score:5, Insightful)

        by imr ( 106517 ) on Thursday March 24, 2005 @03:55AM (#12033542)
        I'm playing vampire right now and I love it. Yet, to say that it needs only polish is a little too nice.

        The fight system is flawed.
        This is a gameplay design issue. They didnt choose between fps style fight and rpg style fight, tried to blend the 2 of them and failed. You find yourself, if you go with firearms, with a slow aiming target, when you can finally fire, you do hp damages (!!!) to the guy in front of you (let's say, you just unloaded a shotgun at blank point in his head -> he gets 34 points of damage and immediatly shoots back) meanwhile other guys behind you unload their machineguns in your back with an ease you can't dream of. So it's better to go blades or fight but it is quite dull -> third person view, same moves all the time, only damages vary.

        Some quests and dialogues are unfinished, not unpolished, un-FINISHED.
        If they had time before the release as being said above, those could have been taken care of. The whole game world seems less and less finished as you go further. Santa monica, the first map is so much above the other ones, chinatown seems like a 8th of it, with empty side quests, empty buildings, empty NPCs. Empty as in meaningless.

        The loading time are killers.
        As much as it was bearable in Santa Monica, whith all the side quests and action going on, it is unbearable in Chinatown to have those loading times for uninterresting dull building/quests. It may be an issue with the source engine, i don't know.

        How much are those issues due to troika or to activision, i dont know, but ultimately, it is activision which payed and released the game, and in my mind it is activision which is responsible for releasing a great yet flawed game.
        The worse is that they just have to release a SDK to have all the above fixed. There are a lot of people who loved the game and cried for one, and are ready to develop whats missing for free.
        Man, it would be free PR for both the videogame and the RPG.
        Release the SDK!!!
        please?

    • Re:...much-missed RPG developer (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Jakeypants ( 860350 ) on Thursday March 24, 2005 @10:45AM (#12035220)
      Buggy games... like Fallout and Fallout 2?

      I just played through Fallout over the past month, and there were quests I'd completed that I didn't get the reward for, there's no interface to arm your NPCs (you have to barter with them, and they won't trade with you unless you give them an even trade) or you can steal from them and plant weapons on them. They have no max weight capacity through barter, but they do through stealing (they have a max item count capacity in both). Several dialog options make no sense where they lead you, it started exiting to the desktop every 5 minutes in the military base for me, and from what I hear, Fallout 2 is worse.

      That said, despite the bugs, Fallout was awesome.

  • Much missed? By whom exactly?

    After such amazing "role-playing" classics like ToEE aka kill all monsters and VTM aka kill all monsters once again?

    Arcanum, yes, was pretty good if you got past horrible interface, bugs, plotholes and mediocre 18th century stylization. But all that other stuff was complete hack-n-slash crap.

    And if you can't even get your hack-n-slash crap pass the marketing you'd better leave the industry altogether.

  • TOEE & Vampire (Score:4, Informative)

    by Exitar ( 809068 ) on Thursday March 24, 2005 @05:31AM (#12033859)
    Actually TOEE is based on a D&D adventure with the same name.
    It was mainly an hack'n'slash adventure through a quite large dungeon, so the videogame reflects this.
    Vampire was full of bug, but the story was quite good.
    If you don't consider the bugs, Vampire was probably the best RPG of the year.
    • If you don't consider the bugs, Vampire was probably the best RPG of the year.

      I'd still say it was the best RPG of the year, which means:
      1. That game was bloody great. 2. The competetion sucked.

  • Considering.... (Score:3, Informative)

    by BladesP9 ( 722608 ) on Thursday March 24, 2005 @09:53AM (#12034838)
    One of their main programmers was Andrew Meggs - who by the way was most well known for the whole Myth III tragedy - is it any surprise that there was much "buggy crapware"?

    And according to a bunch of forum posts, it looks like as was in the case of Myth III - Mr. Meggs will find a way to blame everyone save the people deserving of blame for the quality of the produced work.

    This is the second company to fold for him like this. First being the original incantation of Mumbo Jumbo... and now Troika. Perhaps we can get him to go work for EA.

  • Marketing Department?! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    THat's the problem with this f***'ing industry! Marketing types shouldn't be deciding what gets published. Sure I understand the rationale of "If I can't sell it, it's no good", but people in marketing lack imagination. They also lack a sense of risk for fear of losing their jobs. UGH! I hate this.

    This is why we need an entirely new game distribution model. This is why things like STEAM, despite its short-comings, NEEDS to work. We need the bean counters and guys who negotiate ad-space out of the equation.
    • I completely agree. I don't want some stupid ass hole in a suit deciding what I will enjoy based on a financial statement.

      As far as I'm concerned, all these companies pandering to the corporate model who go out of business deserve it for doing business with the devil. They are out to make profits, not games; and art is a jealous mistress. She won't give you access to true inspiration unless your motivation is the craft itself.

      Do what you love and the money will follow. Do what the marketing departmen

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