Ask Eric - Page 61

silviu_raider · 12-01-09, 20:20

Eric, you truly are a wonderful person!
No matter where you will get hired, you'll do one hell of a job!
Underworld was amazing! It had it's bugs, but they make us sometimes laugh!

Overall, Underworld was a great game and for that I thank you!
And sorry for the Winston thing!

I tried to make a joke but it seems it didn't quite worked out.

**lararoxs** · 12-01-09, 20:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Squamula

Remember, I don't tell lies...if I don't have anything nice to say, I say nothing. But really, much of this vitrol directed at Eidos is misdirected. I'm not happy I was let go on Friday, because I really enjoyed the years I spent at Crystal and I like being able to pay my bills, but I understand the reasons, and I hold no grudges. Life is too messy to oversimplify anything.

And that is what makes you stand out form the rest.

With that sort of attitude, I can guarantee you will be back in the gaming world before you know it.

Good luck and best wishes for the future, not that you'll need it of course!

tampi · 12-01-09, 20:22

Sorry, man. (and the others)
Avoid placing an image of the Goya picture "Saturn devouring his children." It is the image that I came to mind when I read the news.

I've stayed away from here for a few days, but I continued reading all that information has been going on during these days.
I wonder who will take the reins of Lara now.
No more love, all marketing

Edsta · 12-01-09, 20:24

That's interesting Eric, I don't know how to feel about Eidos anymore.
I still kinda blame them for AOD under-achieving because that game really could have been epic. Don't you agree that AOD/Underworld were forced out before their time and if Eidos had given more time they could both be hugely sucessful games?

Don't get me wrong, if I was part of the development of Underworld like you, I would be immensely proud. The game is seriously good but falls short of being truly epic. I'll always love it as my 3rd favourite Tomb Raider though, because I can overlook flaws like bugs and little replay value, so thank you very much

toxicraider · 12-01-09, 20:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by MattTR

And that's why I respect you very much, Eric.

You're a truly honest, humble, and friendly guy and we all deeply realize it.

Thanks again for spending your time here with us, and answering our questions. And sorry about your loss.

so agreed

I deeply appreciate you asking our questions, and spending your own time here answering so many questions.
I'm really sorry for your loss, and i don't think you of all people should have suffered for something that wasn't really your fault at all. I thought underworld was a beautiful game, although the release date, and the rushed feeling did detract, as did the blow of the dlc announcement, but still it was a stunning and epic game. I hope your creativity will shine in any future game projects because you definitely deserve something big

I don't really have any questions at the moment

.

Tomb-Dude · 12-01-09, 20:28

What is happening to this world?
Personally I don't think you should have been given the sack and i'm truely shocked that 30 people did. And it is a shame

I hope you find another job doing something soon, be it gaming or something just to pay the bills are you say.
I think TRF should give Eric a big hug as well as the other 29 people

lol

Anyways I haven't got any questions at this moment in time. As i think most of them have probally been answered but i really don't want to read through all of these pages.
Good luck in the near future Eric

Squamula · 12-01-09, 20:29

Bowie: Troels hired Colon O'Malley, and I was very glad for it. I had a say, but leave those sorts of decisions to others. The biggest things we look for is the ability to take direction, "No, make it more angry, more wistful, more determined..." and to work with interactve forms which need to be more flexible than simple movie scores. Good luck!

bloodstormaoa: Whether I work on Tomb Raider in the future or not, and I hope I will, I'll keep watching because I love Lara and her world.

Ward Dragon: regarding the article you clipped, you can see that I was paraphrased and not directly quoted, and I got garbled. Happened all the time. If it doesn't have quotes around it or contain entire sentences, it isn't what I said. It used to frustrate me all the time, When I would give demos, presentations, or interviews, and I'd see journalists just doen a couple notes but not have a recorder running, and then see articles where they said things that were strange suppositions and not true, or garbling what I said to the point of it meaning something else entirely. Sigh. In fact it's even happening now...other sites are picking up that this thread is happening, and it's being framed as "fired exployee divulges all!" That's not what I'm doing here. I haven't said anything I wouldn't put into a Gamasutra article while still working at Crystal. But sensationalism sells, and if it gets any worse, I might have to stop this...

Moon-Safari: As far As I know, work wasn't started on DLC until after Underworld was on rails heading out the door.

Zebra: Needing to open doors to increase Lara's strength was not a successful experiment, I don't think. Nor was choosing the wrong thing for Lara to say in a dialog tree and getting shot dead as a result. And I spent far too long climbing in an empty Paris disco just to get up to a doorway... Risks were taken -- no harm in that -- sometimes they hit and sometimes they don't. And I wrote the story for Underworld. What is a professional writer? Someone who has published novelsor comics or has written scripts for movies that got made? These people don't understand games. I have been paid as a writer for many years. Does that mean I'm great. Nah. But I am professional.

Sorry you didn't like the story.

EyeOfHorus: I can't really say what platform I prefer Underworld because I don't look at it that way. At home I'm a 360 gamer mostly, but connecting this to what's going on now with DLC is a coincidence, as I am not a part of those decisions at all.

RAID: Wow, lots of questions... I've already talked about rating as much as I can...and story stuff will come later...we did move Lara into a less cartoony realm, but she is not really realistic enough of a character, or the world she explores, to go too real...she explores things too fantastic to be real...why so short? I'll talk about length along with story. One reason for having medpacks when all you have to do is die is that some people enjoy maintaining the fantasy that they have to stay alive, even when dying doesn't have a big gameplay effect. We did keep gunplay as a spice in the soup and not the stock, because we wanted to make a game of exploration and discovery, not combat. And interaction is a lot harder to do than ledges...we did what we could. The engine was another one of those instances where I was paraphrased and misquoted a lot. I have always said, we couldn't have made the game in three years had we not started with the code base of Legend, but we did a ton of rewriting, refactoring, and a lot of the code in Underworld was written from scratch on top of the code base. Lots of new code, lots of new engine parts, plenty of existing code to build it upon.

marcocatena: We play all kinds of games all the time, and like all "artists" what you see and experience goes into your work. I can't say there are any direct ties between Underworld and stuff we found in other games. I think the most obvious one is that when I worked out the preliminary UI design I was inspired by the menuing of Beyond Good and Evil. And what was it like working on such a great franchise? Well, it was epic...

nickless: yeah, I have kids. They don't play games that much. That's the way it often goes...

But I often bring home games I'm developing and make them playand take notes.

Gizmo: for now, I'm going to answer your questions. Later, I'm going to see what's out there and make my best bet.

Kiss-Bite: I think I've answered a lot of this...but here are some new ones...There were never any plans to put the original costume in Underworld. She has grown up a bit and doesn't where that anymore. (Awwww....) It got added to DLC later and without my knowledge, but as a thing to download that isn't the main game, I'm not aganist it. We talked a lot about realism and how Lara looks, and what you see is what we came up with as our best answer. A lot of how she looks -- and I'm not talking about bustline here -- is not really the way humans look. Her iconography is out of normal human proportions, and that makes her who she is. Scanning a real woman would look weird, or at least to us we felt so. The future may be different. Playtesting smoetimes did result in the puzzles being made simpler, but really, back in the TR1 days, a lot of people didn't finish the game. Exciting for those who did, sad for those who washed out. And also, frankly, there wasn't as much else to do back then but bang your head on Tomb Raider. Today is much faster paced, with more things crying out for attention. I lament it to, but I can't ignore it. I hoped to do more with Player Tailoring, but really I was glad to be able to get in as much as we did. I don't think it's fair to say that trying to hit in between the hard core and the mainstream fails both...because there is no huge hardcore market. If we made an ultra hardcore Tomb Raider, with really hard puzzles and hard to find things, the Hardcore would love it, and we'd sell 400,000 units maybe. These decisions were ours...with respect to content, we had a pretty free hand...no complaints there.

dinahcat: I have an answer for why Alister and not Zip...stay tuned for story stuff later...

Cog: we have never really said where Lost Island is. I'll talk about the story timeline connections later...

Donnie901 · 12-01-09, 20:33

Hi Eric,
First of all I wanted to say: "Whe have the same name! "
Yes my real name is also "Eric", ofcourse our last name differs.

I am so sorry with the fact that you lost your job, and I do hope you find a new one soon!

I also wanted to compliment you for being so nice, towards the members from the forum, Crystal members and Eidos. You are a very good person.
And an optimistic person, I like that characteristic.
Now I'm sorry to also ask you some questions, but I really hope you will answer these.

First of all I really want to become a game art designer (Making concept art, textures, and do 3d moddeling is something I love!). So I wanted to ask you if it's easy to get a job at a Game studio and if you have any tips for newbies to the game world. (I still have to finish my study, though) Also I´d like to know what you know about the job from a Game Artist (Or how to call it?).

Also I wanted to ask if you've worked with people from the Netherlands, and if so, do you know if it was difficult for them to get a job. Because it is said that Dutch game-schools are very bad and don't get you anywhere.

Thanks for taking the time to read this message.
And say hi to your wife.

Regards,

Eric

TR1CRW · 12-01-09, 20:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Squamula

TR1CRW:
Titan Wars! My first Crystal Project! And Sherlock Holmes. You know when I landed the gig to do Sherlock Holmes I hadn't read any of Doyle, so I stayed home for three days and read everything back to back...it's great stuff, so much better than the movies ever were...thanks for writing!

Hey Eric

Thank you for your response. Funnily enough as soon as I got up later today after finally getting some sleep (praise the Lord!) I had a quick look around at home and found them! Sadly Vista 64bit doesn't seem to agree with Sherlock, wrong era perhaps?

I too read all the books back to back when I was a border in my school days, sadly that was a few years ago now... . The problem with books being made into films are they are shortened immensely to fit 90mins and it all depends on the directors vision and how good the actors are (& of course the budget)! My favourite film/ book is the Hound of the Baskervilles; which I'm sure my one year old Springer Spaniel was in his former life because he howls instead of barks and is a darn right rotter at times!

Sadly I can't find my saturn to have another go on Titan Wars

It's probably in a box in the roof somewhere along with the genesis and Nintendo and the useless R.O.B....

Did anybody get that thing to work?!

toxicraider · 12-01-09, 20:35

This question might seem a bit strange but i wasn't really inclined to just ask questions that bash every aspect of the game.
If you had complete control over the series of tomb raider, how would/should the story progress in your opinion? also is it true that TR9 was to take aspects from TRIII?

Edit; ^ OMG I want one ^_^

12-01-09, 20:22	#603
tampi Tomb Raider Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: in other planet Posts: 20,789	Sorry, man. (and the others) Avoid placing an image of the Goya picture "Saturn devouring his children." It is the image that I came to mind when I read the news. I've stayed away from here for a few days, but I continued reading all that information has been going on during these days. I wonder who will take the reins of Lara now. No more love, all marketing __________________ Retweet #TombRaider Last edited by tampi; 12-01-09 at 20:23.

12-01-09, 20:24	#604
Edsta Inactive Join Date: Oct 2008 Posts: 531	That's interesting Eric, I don't know how to feel about Eidos anymore. I still kinda blame them for AOD under-achieving because that game really could have been epic. Don't you agree that AOD/Underworld were forced out before their time and if Eidos had given more time they could both be hugely sucessful games? Don't get me wrong, if I was part of the development of Underworld like you, I would be immensely proud. The game is seriously good but falls short of being truly epic. I'll always love it as my 3rd favourite Tomb Raider though, because I can overlook flaws like bugs and little replay value, so thank you very much Last edited by Edsta; 12-01-09 at 20:25.

12-01-09, 20:33	#608
Donnie901 Historian Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Netherlands Posts: 416	Hi Eric, First of all I wanted to say: "Whe have the same name! " Yes my real name is also "Eric", ofcourse our last name differs. I am so sorry with the fact that you lost your job, and I do hope you find a new one soon! I also wanted to compliment you for being so nice, towards the members from the forum, Crystal members and Eidos. You are a very good person. And an optimistic person, I like that characteristic. Now I'm sorry to also ask you some questions, but I really hope you will answer these. First of all I really want to become a game art designer (Making concept art, textures, and do 3d moddeling is something I love!). So I wanted to ask you if it's easy to get a job at a Game studio and if you have any tips for newbies to the game world. (I still have to finish my study, though) Also I´d like to know what you know about the job from a Game Artist (Or how to call it?). Also I wanted to ask if you've worked with people from the Netherlands, and if so, do you know if it was difficult for them to get a job. Because it is said that Dutch game-schools are very bad and don't get you anywhere. Thanks for taking the time to read this message. And say hi to your wife. Regards, Eric __________________ 日本語を勉強しています。

12-01-09, 20:35	#610
toxicraider Relic Hunter Join Date: Jul 2008 Posts: 8,978	This question might seem a bit strange but i wasn't really inclined to just ask questions that bash every aspect of the game. If you had complete control over the series of tomb raider, how would/should the story progress in your opinion? also is it true that TR9 was to take aspects from TRIII? Edit; ^ OMG I want one ^_^ __________________ We, the people, are idiots. Please, for pity's sake, ignore us more often.

12-01-09, 20:20	#601
silviu_raider Tomb Raider Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 11,077	Eric, you truly are a wonderful person! No matter where you will get hired, you'll do one hell of a job! Underworld was amazing! It had it's bugs, but they make us sometimes laugh! Overall, Underworld was a great game and for that I thank you! And sorry for the Winston thing! I tried to make a joke but it seems it didn't quite worked out.

12-01-09, 20:28	#606
Tomb-Dude Professor Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Devon, Plymouth Posts: 3,289	What is happening to this world? Personally I don't think you should have been given the sack and i'm truely shocked that 30 people did. And it is a shame I hope you find another job doing something soon, be it gaming or something just to pay the bills are you say. I think TRF should give Eric a big hug as well as the other 29 people lol Anyways I haven't got any questions at this moment in time. As i think most of them have probally been answered but i really don't want to read through all of these pages. Good luck in the near future Eric

12-01-09, 20:29	#607
Squamula Hobbyist Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: California Posts: 31	Bowie: Troels hired Colon O'Malley, and I was very glad for it. I had a say, but leave those sorts of decisions to others. The biggest things we look for is the ability to take direction, "No, make it more angry, more wistful, more determined..." and to work with interactve forms which need to be more flexible than simple movie scores. Good luck! bloodstormaoa: Whether I work on Tomb Raider in the future or not, and I hope I will, I'll keep watching because I love Lara and her world. Ward Dragon: regarding the article you clipped, you can see that I was paraphrased and not directly quoted, and I got garbled. Happened all the time. If it doesn't have quotes around it or contain entire sentences, it isn't what I said. It used to frustrate me all the time, When I would give demos, presentations, or interviews, and I'd see journalists just doen a couple notes but not have a recorder running, and then see articles where they said things that were strange suppositions and not true, or garbling what I said to the point of it meaning something else entirely. Sigh. In fact it's even happening now...other sites are picking up that this thread is happening, and it's being framed as "fired exployee divulges all!" That's not what I'm doing here. I haven't said anything I wouldn't put into a Gamasutra article while still working at Crystal. But sensationalism sells, and if it gets any worse, I might have to stop this... Moon-Safari: As far As I know, work wasn't started on DLC until after Underworld was on rails heading out the door. Zebra: Needing to open doors to increase Lara's strength was not a successful experiment, I don't think. Nor was choosing the wrong thing for Lara to say in a dialog tree and getting shot dead as a result. And I spent far too long climbing in an empty Paris disco just to get up to a doorway... Risks were taken -- no harm in that -- sometimes they hit and sometimes they don't. And I wrote the story for Underworld. What is a professional writer? Someone who has published novelsor comics or has written scripts for movies that got made? These people don't understand games. I have been paid as a writer for many years. Does that mean I'm great. Nah. But I am professional. Sorry you didn't like the story. EyeOfHorus: I can't really say what platform I prefer Underworld because I don't look at it that way. At home I'm a 360 gamer mostly, but connecting this to what's going on now with DLC is a coincidence, as I am not a part of those decisions at all. RAID: Wow, lots of questions... I've already talked about rating as much as I can...and story stuff will come later...we did move Lara into a less cartoony realm, but she is not really realistic enough of a character, or the world she explores, to go too real...she explores things too fantastic to be real...why so short? I'll talk about length along with story. One reason for having medpacks when all you have to do is die is that some people enjoy maintaining the fantasy that they have to stay alive, even when dying doesn't have a big gameplay effect. We did keep gunplay as a spice in the soup and not the stock, because we wanted to make a game of exploration and discovery, not combat. And interaction is a lot harder to do than ledges...we did what we could. The engine was another one of those instances where I was paraphrased and misquoted a lot. I have always said, we couldn't have made the game in three years had we not started with the code base of Legend, but we did a ton of rewriting, refactoring, and a lot of the code in Underworld was written from scratch on top of the code base. Lots of new code, lots of new engine parts, plenty of existing code to build it upon. marcocatena: We play all kinds of games all the time, and like all "artists" what you see and experience goes into your work. I can't say there are any direct ties between Underworld and stuff we found in other games. I think the most obvious one is that when I worked out the preliminary UI design I was inspired by the menuing of Beyond Good and Evil. And what was it like working on such a great franchise? Well, it was epic... nickless: yeah, I have kids. They don't play games that much. That's the way it often goes... But I often bring home games I'm developing and make them playand take notes. Gizmo: for now, I'm going to answer your questions. Later, I'm going to see what's out there and make my best bet. Kiss-Bite: I think I've answered a lot of this...but here are some new ones...There were never any plans to put the original costume in Underworld. She has grown up a bit and doesn't where that anymore. (Awwww....) It got added to DLC later and without my knowledge, but as a thing to download that isn't the main game, I'm not aganist it. We talked a lot about realism and how Lara looks, and what you see is what we came up with as our best answer. A lot of how she looks -- and I'm not talking about bustline here -- is not really the way humans look. Her iconography is out of normal human proportions, and that makes her who she is. Scanning a real woman would look weird, or at least to us we felt so. The future may be different. Playtesting smoetimes did result in the puzzles being made simpler, but really, back in the TR1 days, a lot of people didn't finish the game. Exciting for those who did, sad for those who washed out. And also, frankly, there wasn't as much else to do back then but bang your head on Tomb Raider. Today is much faster paced, with more things crying out for attention. I lament it to, but I can't ignore it. I hoped to do more with Player Tailoring, but really I was glad to be able to get in as much as we did. I don't think it's fair to say that trying to hit in between the hard core and the mainstream fails both...because there is no huge hardcore market. If we made an ultra hardcore Tomb Raider, with really hard puzzles and hard to find things, the Hardcore would love it, and we'd sell 400,000 units maybe. These decisions were ours...with respect to content, we had a pretty free hand...no complaints there. dinahcat: I have an answer for why Alister and not Zip...stay tuned for story stuff later... Cog: we have never really said where Lost Island is. I'll talk about the story timeline connections later...