STJV: Quantic Dream's 'Star Wars Eclipse' still in Complicated Development as Cancelled 'Spellcasters' Spent 8 Years in Dev + Mismanagement disaster and 95 jobs at risk
Key Quotes
>"One quarter of the company’s workers are under threat: this adds up to 95 lost jobs."
>This project, started 8 years ago and led by Guillaume de Fondaumière, David Cage and Grégorie Diaconu, was supposed to be a “reasonably-sized” project and was planned for a much earlier release. Over all these years, nobody questioned the business model or how the game was to become profitable. Catastrophic project management resulted in iteration after iteration, exhausting the team and leading production straight to disaster.
>It’s sad to say, nobody is surprised by this outcome. Worker representatives have sounded the alarm about the project’s colossal risk level numerous times. In front of employees, management arrogantly explained that success was a given for Spellcasters Chronicles, thanks to “30 years of experience” of the decision-makers. In front of the workers’ council, management refused to consider other scenarios and to plan accordingly. Failure was never an option, never thought about, never planned for: incompetence led us here today. Workers pay for management’s misguided ways.
>Management is trying to lay off the entirety of the Spellcasters Chronicles team, and pretends that this team’s skills have no link at all with those of the Star Wars Eclipse team – even after training.
>The same causes lead to the same problems: Star Wars Eclipse entered production at the same time as Spellcasters, with the same directors, and its development is proving just as complicated.
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