How Mission Creep Killed a Gaming Studio 131
Nerval's Lobster writes: Over at Kotaku, there's an interesting story about the reported demise of Darkside Game Studios, a game-development firm that thought it finally had a shot at the big time only to collapse once its project requirements spun out of control. Darkside got a chance to show off its own stuff with a proposed remake of Phantom Dust, an action-strategy game that became something of a cult favorite. Microsoft, which offered Darkside the budget to make the game, had a very specific list of requirements for the actual gameplay. The problem, as Kotaku describes, is those requirements shifted after the project was well underway. Darkside needed more developers, artists, and other skilled tech pros to finish the game with its expanded requirements, but (anonymous sources claimed) Microsoft refused to offer up more money to actually hire the necessary people. As a result, the game's development imploded, reportedly followed by the studio. What's the lesson in all this? It's one of the oldest in the book: Escalating and unanticipated requirements, especially without added budget to meet those requirements, can have devastating effects on both a project and the larger software company.
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Why do I need kotaku when I have dailykos? If i want game related reporting I'll avoid gawker media sites..
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yep. fuck those guys.
This happens about... (Score:3)
Re:This happens about... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This happens about... (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is, you have to push back.
We love to make fun of the useless "suits". But that's a situation where you need good executive management and good lawyers. They need to negotiate good contracts up front, and then make sure the contracts are abided by.
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This is actually what I heard about the Federal Obamacare exchanges. Effectively the contracts person at CGI was rolling over as the government kept shifting the requirements and adding extra. And it wasn't so much that more money wasn't provided, but it was the fact that you had a deadline to work against and even if they had added extra resources, the amount of time to get those resources up to speed would have crossed the deadline.
You need people that stand there and say, "You didn't get this in the co
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Exactly. Windows 8.
More like Longhorn/Vista.
Re:This happens about... (Score:4, Interesting)
Or, that the specs meant something very different to the developers than it did to the client. And the client then had to adjust the specification to get the developers to do the work _they actually agreed to do in the first place_. I've been encountering this especially with outsourced projects lately, where "QA the system" means "QA the whole system" to most systems or management personnel, but to the 3rd party QA team it means "test just the new feature". Then when the new feature reaks or hinders another longstanding features, _which should have been reported by QA_, the developers are faced at the last minute with a mad resdesign task that affects _both_ systems and is not stable, to boot. But it passes the very limited test specified to pass that specific bug report, so it is accepted and goes into production.
It's been a difficult few weeks trying to clean up after several messes like that. It pays the bills to do this work, but it's very frustrating to have to clean up _after_ you waned developers and QA of the risks they were taking with the "test only the new feature" approach.
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"Just being good at "management" is not enough."
In this case clearly yes. It doesn't take any technical knowledge to know that in order to deliver anything you need to stop feature creeping somewhere. The only thing that needed to be in plain English was "I have a new requirement..."; everything from that point on could perfectly be in Klingon from all management would care.
Management, specifically product management in this case, is all about setting in stone what the minimally viable product will be and
It can be whim (Score:2)
There are also people who feel they need to be involved so they suggest some wild idea just to prove that they have had input.
Then, more often than you'd expect, there are others that come onboard for no reason other than to sabotage a rivals idea so your project can be in dange
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It's obvious that the reason for those changing requirements is that they lack understanding of how development process works, so they just need technical background to understand what requirements make sense and what don't. Just being good at "management" is not enough.
You don't need any special industry knowledge to know that if someone says "we need to do X, Y and Z in addition to what the original project plan says" then it's going to cost money.
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That is why you have contracts for A,B, and C for $X with a stipulation that additional feature will cost more and will be negotiated separately.
Business that make MS a financial dependency deserve whatever they get.
Re:This happens about... (Score:5, Interesting)
And it's also a situation in which you can get completely and utterly fucked by the people in suits who work in sales.
Many of us have seen what happens when that oily salesguy you'd like to to kick sells something which is complete fiction, and that it is now someone else's problem. His check clears, he gets a new car and a vacation, and everyone else is stuck building a fucking unicorn.
Sometimes, in small companies or with overly greedy salespeople they can sell the farm for a couple of magic beans.
And then no amount of effort is going to make it possible to keep up with an unrealistic client with a gold-plated sales contract which doesn't impose penalties for them failing to stick with a coherent design.
Sometimes, it is the suits who get you into this kind of trouble, and then they double down until there's nothing left.
Re:This happens about... (Score:5, Funny)
Scott Adams summed it up nicely. [dilbert.com]
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The irony is that dilbert is right. If you're smart enough to see how this works you should just move into marketing. Being able to talk technobabble in a more plausible way (to everyone) should allow you to dominate.
This is the sad reality of the economy. The other sad reality is how engineers continue to moan about the broken system while simultaneously remaining the hamsters that allow it to perpetuate.
Re:This happens about... (Score:5, Insightful)
Dilbert cartoons are spot-on about a third of the time.
The rest are understatements.
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Well, if we have an article about how a company went under because IT failed to deliver, you can trot this out again.
But, in the context of a company which failed because of ever-changing customer requirements which apparently do not allow for demanding more money ... I'm going to stick with assuming the people who signed the contract were idiots who sold the farm and signed a one-sided contract which sank the company.
So, yes, bad thing happen all the time. But they're not all relevant to this particular s
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"We love to make fun of the useless "suits". But that's a situation where you need good executive management"
Me too.
Well, since just a "me too" seems a bit lame, I was going to say that I don't see this as a scope creeping problem but a bad management one. "But, but... poor me, Microsoft added new features with no more money, buhu, buhu!"
Even with the extra money, proper management would have said "no: we will deliver with our current feature list and done with it; come back for version two, if you want it
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Also do win-win or no deal. (straight from 7 habits of highly effective people by Steven R. Covey)
Yes, because obviously the guys on the other side of the table won't have thought of this too.
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"Contract problem was my first thought when I read the summary."
No, I don't think so. It may look like a contract problem but it usually isn't.
At first it looks like "hey, let's see if I can squeeze out a bit more from my dollars" (which is why it looks like a contract problem) but in the end it results on a broken provider and a customer without a product and quite less notes in their wallet.
You may end with "contract problems" if both parties have conflicting interests, but you don't have "contract probl
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Routine in the games industry especially. I know people that used to work at a studio here, they had Microsoft just up and pull funding from a project that was 90% done, then release the same game with all the same code and assets 6 months later. Publishers are dicks, there's no two ways about it. Devs want to make great games, but unfortunately the publishers will always ask for something stupid halfway through that will blow out all the budgets. When they're pulling the purse strings and your project reli
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Devs want to make great games, but unfortunately the publishers will always ask for something stupid halfway through that will blow out all the budgets. When they're pulling the purse strings and your project relies on their money, you can't push back
You can push back: you can refuse to implement the stupid request or you can pack up and go home. If they're asking you to implement some new feature with no additional time or revenue, they are essentially asking for you to pay for that development out of your own pocket. Maybe your passion to develop great games is strong enough that you're willing to pay for the privilege to work on such a game. The publisher is probably counting on you to have invested so much of yourself in the project that you will
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Then you're accused of not being Agile and fired. The assholes who screwed the project get to keep their jobs, of course.
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If I thought I could get away with quitting I wouldn't fear getting fired.
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If you're afraid of getting fired, then you should quit and find a job where you don't fear losing it.
Fear eats you, ruins your life and no salary is big enough to compensate that for long.
Not all fears are irrational. It is sensible to be afraid of being shot if you're a combat soldier, it makes you alert.
It is also rational to worry about being fired, since there is no such thing as a secure job any more.
Re:This happens about... (Score:5, Insightful)
I work as a mechanical engineer, in the building industry (HVAC) and while this is also quite normal, the word that gets thrown around is variation, obviously to the contract.
Reading the article, particularly between the lines, it appears that the problem wasn't really with the studio; they were trying to get more money out of MS, but MS just decided to kill the project rather than have a cost blowout. While mission creep did kill the game, the studio didn't plan any contingency or mitigation for a cancellation (or more likely it was just sack everyone).
Sometimes you can't (Score:2)
I've seen that in a different industry - a huge client that demands all the resources you have "just in case" and then fucks you over. About the only thing that can help is money in the bank.
There's a certain type of person that decides they need to "own" you, and they can apply a lot of pressure if they are their only client at the time so they make sure that happens.
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I've seen that in a different industry - a huge client that demands all the resources you have "just in case" and then fucks you over. About the only thing that can help is money in the bank.
There's a certain type of person that decides they need to "own" you, and they can apply a lot of pressure if they are their only client at the time so they make sure that happens.
That really just means the company is take on a contract that is simply too big for them in the first place. From what I read no one fucked anyone over. MS wanted changes in scope in order for the game to continue being funded, company said sure but budget will be blown by 40-60%, MS said, no thanks and simply walked away. This is normal business contract negitations, if it killed the company then the company was taking on a job that was far to big for it as it left them with no contingency
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They were working on a contract and MS violated it by walking away.
They will get sued over this and lose.
Moral of the story: Never work with MS ever.
I know an owner of a small SaaS shop who outstanding with DB's.He wrote some extensions to SQL Server and MS licensed it for 1 specific version. They ended up putting it in all their versions and MS paid for it in court.
The idea that the small guy can not successfully fight MS in court is wrong.
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Agreed. I've been writing software for 32 years, and "We've completely changed your requirements, but that shouldn't affect your schedule or your budget any!" happens all the time. The point is, you have to push back. Tell them exactly what every change is going to cost (padded heavily). Unless they agree to add time and money to the project, then just deliver the originally agreed to project. Don't let people make unilateral changes in the contract after it is signed, unless you actually like working on money-losing projects!
When I was a commercial software developer I did this religiously. Once my supervisor told me “I cannot believe that adding a one-day item to the project causes the delivery date to slip by a day.”
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"It's due on June 1st, you want to add an extra day of work, but don't want to miss the ship date? No problem, we'll just do that piece on May 32nd."
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Agreed. I've been writing software for 32 years, and "We've completely changed your requirements, but that shouldn't affect your schedule or your budget any!" happens all the time. The point is, you have to push back. Tell them exactly what every change is going to cost (padded heavily). Unless they agree to add time and money to the project, then just deliver the originally agreed to project. Don't let people make unilateral changes in the contract after it is signed, unless you actually like working on money-losing projects!
Has the frenzy to be a "Game Developer" as created a bunch of "yes" men & women?
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Short story: I took a construction management class many years ago. Knew most of it, but the real take away for me was change control. The presenter made the case that EVERY change must be charged for. Even changes that reduced the scope of the project. Sure, calculate the savings based on the estimate, but don't just stop there. Every change requires at least some time and
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Contracts (Score:5, Insightful)
So the real story is that bad contracts killed a gaming studio?
What idiots signed a contract allowing Microsoft to unilaterally change requirements mid-project with no increase in budget?
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Yup.
It's like the plot of Horrible Bosses 2 - they have an idea for a shitty project and score a deal with some AS SEEN ON TV / SKYMALL type company and are too excited to do the basic business legwork.
(In the movie, the AS SEEN ON TV company said they wanted like 10,000 units, so the guys took out a loan on a new warehouse space, hired staff to crank out the order, etc. The company then pulled out of the order. The guys didn't get a non-refundable down payment for production costs, so they couldn't pay t
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There's just not a lot of funding sources for games--this is likely the only deal they could get of this size.
Unfortunately, it's common for publishers to demand radical changes in game projecgts without any schedule or budget modification. This has sunk many studios--it's one of the reasons why there aren't many mid-sized game studios left. Large publishers always prioritize their internal projects--external developers get the shaft.
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Didn't MS kill Ensemble Studios in a similar manner?
They were one of the few game companies working for MS that produced quality games.
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When they protested, the Microsoft representative was quoted as having said, " I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further. "
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I am extending the deal. Pray I don't extinguish it altogether.
(which they did, of course)
Re:Contracts (Score:4, Interesting)
So the real story is that bad contracts killed a gaming studio?
What idiots signed a contract allowing Microsoft to unilaterally change requirements mid-project with no increase in budget?
Three theories:
1) The execs were idiots for signing the contract.
2) If the execs didn't sign the contract Microsoft would just go to another studio and they'd just have died a slower death.
3) The contract didn't really matter, Microsoft always had the option to walk away and if that happened the studio would die.
I'm guessing some combination of 2 and 3.
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Unilateral negotiations suck. I imagine they got into the same mess as GT Advanced did with Apple. The reality is that in these situations you have to be prepared to just walk. If you've really got something they want then this will allow you to start negotiating properly. If you don't then the reality is you are just a commodity and you would never have gotten a fair contract. If you do get a contract under these conditions then make no mistake - the MBAs at companies like MS aren't stupid and will ensure
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To me this seems like a classic case of a big player playing a game of extorsion with a small supplier.
It's as old as the street. Typical example: big retail player (think Wall Mart) says to small supplier: OK this is your big break. You can start delivering your product (say canned beans) to us. The initial order will be around 100 tons/month at 5c per kilo. The small supplier can't believe his luck and starts investing in its production facilities massively to be able to cope with the enourmous volumes.
As
Re:Contracts (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, as an ex-game-developer (and my s/o worked for game company funded by MS), I'm going to take a stab at reading between the lines and guess that they had a series of tiered project milestones that MS got to approve/disapprove for pretty much any reason they liked. So the developer is under the gun to make them happy however they can, or else the money tap gets shut off at the next milestone. A lot of companies are sufficiently near the edge (it's a very boom-or-bust industry) that they take a "hail mary" shot, betting everything on the score with the big company. It's basically the dark side of Pascal's Wager.
But the subtext does read to me like some pretty poor management on the part of the developer company. I've seen that a lot at game companies (weak or really inexperienced "management"). The good managers I've seen that made some money immediately parachuted out of the industry to something more predictable.
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You can't follow the water fall method with games and gather all the requirements up front. This is because the number one requirement for a game is that it's fun to play and there's really no way to know how fun it will be early on. You need to get a large part of it working just to know what works well and what doesn't.
If it's no fun to play 1/2 way in something (requirements) needs to change. Maybe LOTS of things. True, they should have asked MS to support changes up front but if it starts costing so muc
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what the lacked seemed to be an project manger\customer manager who could set his foot down and had probably a very bad written contract
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I agree. It sounds like the moral of the story is not to get in bed with Microsoft. It is well known mission creep kills budgets.
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Was it this one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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While the company is burning down around these guys are making cash up front from the contract signed
And that's the problem. Don't pay sales guys a bonus for signing a contract, pay them a big bonus related to the profit that the contract brings in once you ship it.
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" In smaller companies where IT is a support, I can understand when CEOs and Execs who don't know IT make the mistake over and over again."
No, it doesn't matter. Though I sometimes think smaller companies are better than large companies as you can button hook the owner/CEO in the hall and talk to them. While in a large company the CEO may neither be a technical person, perhaps even starting in Sales, or accessible. There is no special wisdom in large companies.
What's the lesson in all this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like it truly is one of "the oldest ones in the book": Working with Microsoft is a bad idea.
Haven't we heard of multiple companies being screwed in partnerships with them over the years (long before Nokia)?
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Yeah, no one remembers those Bungie guys, or that Ensemble group, or Lionhead...
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Re:What's the lesson in all this? (Score:5, Insightful)
I was working for a videogame company that essentially went under because Microsoft canceled our next anticipated contract. This was one of two businesses to drop out from under me during my career. I've had a couple of cancelled projects as well, which are also somewhat disheartening. One was, oddly enough, also at Microsoft while working as a contractor. They put together an entire team before someone crunched the numbers and realized that the licensing for the game we were working on was so expensive, the project would likely not make any money. Seriously, no one did this before they actually hired an entire dev team? I spent about a week doing nothing while waiting for a computer to show up, and then worked for about a week. Then the project was cancelled. The project manager felt pretty bad about that, so kept me on for another few weeks as a makeshift "severance", as well as buying me and the other contract programmer an Xbox and a few games to go with it, which was pretty nice of him.
This sort of thing happens all the time in this industry. I suppose you just sort of have to roll with the punches with that sort of thing. Fortunately, after you've got a few years under your belt, it's not too difficult to find another job, especially if you're willing to relocate. I'm fairly lucky that way, being in an area with plenty of great companies to choose from.
I wish all the displaced devs at that company the best of luck. I've definitely been there, and know it's not a lot of fun to suddenly find yourself searching for a new job. Fortunately, studios are always anxious to grab experienced development talent, so hopefully they'll all land on their feet.
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Such as Spyglass who were to get a decent percentage of every copy of IE sold instead of getting a decent up front price for their web browser.
Mythical Man Month (Score:2)
This is why I hate the business. We never learn.
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"read the damn contract"
Of course yes, but it is not as if it would make any difference in cases like this. You should understand that (business) contracts only mean something when both parties are of similar weight. When that's not the case, it is not the letter of the contract what will save you but your ability not to paint yourself in the corner before signing (not always possible) and your negotiating abilities before that.
As someone else already cited, when making business with a big fish you are al
Check your contracts (Score:3)
Probably good to have something like "if you change requirements after XYZ and don't provide additional fund, we can take the money and not deliver anything"
Or run on time + materials, so you get paid for time, not deliverables.
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Yup, that is a good thing.
However, there aren't that many options. And sometimes the only one is pretty shitty.
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Nice in theory.
In practice, try that with a company the size of Microsoft and they won't even bother telling you to go pound sand. They'll spin round, walk out and go to the outfit down the street - or on the other side of the world.
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Devastating effects (Score:4, Insightful)
Escalating and unanticipated requirements, especially without added budget to meet those requirements, can have devastating effects on both a project and the larger software company.
Not to mention the company's workers, who are likely to be burnt in the process before getting lay off
I wouldn't be surprised (Score:1)
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That won't work for big games.
WoW cost something like $80 million for the initial release.
You aren't going to get kickstarter funded for anything but simple games.
Management (Score:3)
This is why having good management matters.
Good management keeps this from happening.
Words are cheap, reality expensive (Score:2)
GOOD (Score:1)
Fuck all reboots. Make something new.
What's the Lesson in All This? (Score:2)
Kill competitors early by hiring them yourself, then jerking them around until they die. When you're big and they're small, you're bound to have better lawyers.
Just space out at your desk and hack the payroll (Score:2)
Just space out at your desk and hack the payroll system in the 15 min of work that you do each day.
Kickstarter (Score:1)
Yeah. That sounds like MS Gaming. (Score:2, Insightful)
Basically, if it isn't XBox and a big name, Microsoft has NO idea how to handle it.
So all the schmucks in their gaming divisions play ego games and try to fuck with the studios as much as they can.
What a studio needs is strong enough leadership to tell these little pissant middlemen to fuck the hell off and go right over them whenever they attempt to interfere.
Like any other software project, you stick to the spec you're paid for. Changes require more money. PERIOD. No discussions.
Imagine if that happened in Government (Score:2, Interesting)
Ex. The No Child Left Behind Act
B.S.-marketing from Microsoft (Score:3)
What did the game studio think? That stuff would magically work itself out? It sounds like they waited too long to review the actual features versus the Marketing hype with Microsoft.
Not a problem with scope creep... (Score:2)
The company didn't fold due to scope creep, the company folded because the people in charge were not willing to say "No".
You can argue that it's one and the same.
The difference, at least in my mind, is that scope creep simply causes never ending projects. Requirements are allowed to expand because there is no good reason and, thus, no political will to deny the request.
On the other hand, accepting new requirements when you don't have the budget for it, and where you are betting the farm, is a completely di
This is how big companies work (Score:2)
"Escalating and unanticipated requirements, especially without added budget to meet those requirements, can have devastating effects on both a project and the larger software company."
No, this is not it at all. What this should say is:
"The customer (Microsoft) will always demand more than is agreed to, while simultaneously refusing to pay for it, and expect the vendor (Dark Side) to foot all of the expenses to meet the additional demands."
Big companies will dangle a huge carrot (or suitcase full of money) i
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They could have given them $3M ($8M in total) more, and still had nothing to show for it.
Keep in mind they only spent $2M of the planned $5M by the time they cancelled the contract. Darkside agreed to the scope changes one week after signing the contract. As far as Microsoft was concerned, it was fine. Darkside showed they couldn't deliver what they agreed to in the budget agreed upon, why give them more money? They'll just fail to deliver again.
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They could have given them $3M ($8M in total) more, and still had nothing to show for it.
That's true any time you contract anyone to do anything.
Keep in mind they only spent $2M of the planned $5M by the time they cancelled the contract.
The "bunch of money" I referred to microsoft losing was the $2M. It was 40% of their total budget.
Darkside agreed to the scope changes one week after signing the contract. As far as Microsoft was concerned, it was fine. Darkside showed they couldn't deliver what they agreed to in the budget agreed upon, why give them more money? They'll just fail to deliver again.
I don't recall claiming that Microsoft should give them the money they asked for.
Sure, it makes sense for microsoft to pull the plug if they genuinely felt that continuing the deal was not going to be productive, but it also indicates that giving them the first $2M was a huge mistake.
My point is that I don't think this is a case of Microsoft being evil.
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Microsoft asked Darkside if they could deliver the changes requested in the original budget. Darkside said yes.
As soon as Microsoft found out that was no longer the case, they pulled out. Being stupid would have been giving Darkside more money.
Also, Defense contracts would be slightly more than $5M, Auditing alone would cost more than that.
Darkside had a good reputation before all this. They had reason to believe they could do what they said they could.
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Microsoft asked Darkside if they could deliver the changes requested in the original budget. Darkside said yes.
And what I am saying is that Microsoft being a big and experienced company might have been able to realize that it wasn't going to work out well.
What did microsoft gain by getting Darkside to agree to a new product and price that they couldn't deliver? I'm sure they were hoping to gain a wider profit margin, but instead it's just a big loss.
You keep saying that Darkside would have just wasted the whole $8M, but that's just speculation on your part. It seems like everything would have been fine if microsof
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And yes, darkside was excited and promised more than they could deliver to microsoft
I know this is heretical on slashdot, but surely that is not Microsoft's fault?
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Not only am I *not* saying that it's Microsoft's fault, the point I am trying to make is that this situation should not even be looked at from the point of view of fault.
The point of view "We figure out who's at fault, and that party should then compensate all parties that were damaged, and there will be an incentive to be responsible." breaks down as a viable strategy for this situation because Darkside can't cover the losses. Microsoft could try to demand that they be reimbursed for the $2M they invested
in short (Score:2)
Not Microsoft's fault (Score:3)
I actually RTFA.
Microsoft changed the requirements just a week after signing the deal. Not a nice thing to do, but Darkside hadn't spent all the money then, and could have simply said no. They agreed to the change with the hope they could convince Microsoft to give them more money later.
Microsoft decided they didn't want to throw more money than what they wanted to at it and did the smart thing [wikipedia.org] and cancelled the contract. They had already spent $2M, the studio wanted up to $3M more than they budgeted for to complete the project. Cancelling the project saved them $1M and all of the risk involved.
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"Not Microsoft's fault"
"I actually RTFA."
Kids these days...
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Microsoft is experienced enough to know that Darkside couldn't do it, but they allowed them to continue on.
It is like morons trying to take all the blame off the banks for giving home loans to unqualified people.
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