Red5 (former?) employee on Red 5. posted on /r/games
reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1tuf3c/this_is_wh...Posted Dec 28, 2013, 4:25 AM UTC
8317
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Verified as a Red5 Employee by r/games moderators.
19
I only came here to say I was amazed at how many high-dollar projects I had no idea existed relating to FF, and even more only slightly related to the studio itself. I opened the picture of the Firefall gaming bus and just kinda stared in amazement.
All arguments aside, this poster was dedicated to getting his words out there- and for the amount of time and energy he spent compiling that post I can only imagine the dozens of others there at R5 who just trudged along daily. Hats off to you folks paying the bills.
15
I actually noticed all the expensive stuff and thought (erroneously) that red5 must've been doing great if they could afford all that stuff. The bus, the cosplay, the Manga, and the live action video trailer and patch notes, complete with an actual background set and special effects.
Looking back, it's kind of sad that they were doing all that stuff instead of working on the game. Hopefully now they'll be able to get more work done.
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1
What a not shocker.
12
Wow...Just wow. That was a hell of a read.
Maybe we'll get a pickup in activity after this though. Seems like a good reminder that game is still around.
10
But if he was the guy that brought the funding, it really could go either way... Either the current investors will jump ship (following Kern or just because they were completely turned off by recent revelations) or they'll get someone competent in as CEO who can guide it to a finished product and be happy continuing to fund development.
I worry that Red 5 will lose investors from this incident though and end up suffering badly because of it. I'd love for the game to succeed because I feel it has a lot of potential, and always has...As long as they get someone who can point them in a direction and follow it straight to the edge of the ocean.
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6
I wouldn't be surprised if it was the9. He was throwing their money in every direction but at the game itself.
6
All things considered, I think the amount of time they took before they voted Kern out to be incredibly generous.
5
Wow I've never seen any of these video content, nor the bus! WOAH!! Wish he would do something else other than 3 hour long youtube videos of uninterested actors playing their game.
5
Welp
2
For the record, while accurate, OP's post lays an unnecessary amount of blame on the video team. And while an accurate explanation for the type of poor money management and bad prioritization that Mark was known for, it's placing a lot of blame on the video team and not enough on the actual game's production.
The yearly salaries for the entire video team were less than half of what the company spent every month. So when I saw a majority of devs playing other games 8 hours a day for several months at a time, because they had nothing to do... that alone cost far more wasted money than the video team could ever have cost. The system Red 5 uses to assign work, and the huge amounts of wasted time it creates, is a far greater enemy than the video team.
Marketing is more expensive than people realize. It's easy to say "let's just buy ads like everyone else" until you understand how much that costs. Conventional game marketing done by big companies like EA and Blizzard cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Money that red 5 simply doesn't have. To market Firefall in the way another company like that does, would cost many times over the entirety of Firefall's development budget.
So when op links to a video that probably cost a few thousand dollars to make that has 2 million views, and a firefall ad at the end, it's actually an example of a an extremely clever and efficient marketing strategy. The videos also had a click-through rate many times higher than conventional banner ads or video ads.
Obviously, many of the videos that mark pushed, like gamechangers or the live action trailer, did not appeal well to audiences due to a number of flaws. And those were examples of Mark trying to play "movie executive" with the video team and disregarding a number of their criticisms and suggestions to improve those ideas. The video team was also subject to mark's A.D.D. like lack of interest in current projects, and meandering demands to start new ones.
But in the end, I think Mark's idea of the marketing was a clever one, and that a number of the game devs were never aware that's what the video team was, marketing. And that the video team marketed the game far more effectively than any conventional advertising could have. In my opinion, the greatest flaw comes from a game that was redesigned over and over many times. "Change everything, create fun" is the company motto. But after "changing everything" too many times, eventually it looks like you don't know what you're doing, and you're not going anywhere. The biggest problem for the video team was trying to market a game that was never ready to be marketed. After something like 7 years in development, gaming audiences are still just waiting for a finished product. And no amount of marketing will help that.
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The yearly salaries for the entire video team were less than half of what the company spent every month
So the company spent about 1/24 of its budget on the video team's salary? I don't know if that's supposed to be high or low honestly.
So when op links to a video that probably cost a few thousand dollars to make that has 2 million views, and a firefall ad at the end, it's actually an example of a an extremely clever and efficient marketing strategy.
The biggest problem for the video team was trying to market a game that was never ready to be marketed.
Good points, really. It's strange that advertising is such a focus when the game is so far from complete. There is no difficult content to keep long term players in the game they are advertising.
2
When those videos have absolutely nothing to do with firefall, and for most of them, not even gaming.... 1/24 is a lot. When you look at the amount of money R5 has had, that's something like $6mil spent on promoting other games more than their own.
2
Funny but I actually own the "change everything" t-shirt and am currently wearing it. From the sound of it Mark is like everyone else, Flawed. but your right. The ideas and execution have mostly been solid it's just been the timing. Don't promote unfinished product, Don't grow an early beta.
I love the way the game works as is. the progression and crafting is fun and exciting. i do hope they cut some of the fat, resources like AMP are fine but things like classified tech vendors are just a pain in the ass to use, they should be dropped like precious metals and gems were dropped.
This is probably a good change for both Red Five and Mark.
1
This game is DOA. Lulz. Good read by the way. Anytime a project takes this long, you just know it will suck.
-8
yeah because we all know team fortress two was down right terrible.
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I'm guessing he knew he was going to get canned sooner or later. Him getting the boot wasn't a sudden occurrence. IIRC, there was a lot of legal issues that had to be... circumvented(?) for lack of a better word. He probably started working on it in the time leading up to his firing.