My encyclopedic, borderline obsessive compulsive brain allows me to notice trends and related material, even if I can’t exactly remember when it happened or what that related material is (if my brain was encyclopedic, no one bothers to put the books back in alphabetical order, and someone keeps drawing on the pages). So when I saw that Funcom has been given a grant for development on a new MMO, I had to check my own archives to make sure I wasn’t having a brain related event, or confusing companies.
Lo and behold, I find it quickly: Not only quickly, but because it happened just in the past couple of months. In late September, Funcom announced that they were laying off 20% of their workforce. The company’s move to Montreal not only resulted in a downsizing, but I couldn’t help wondering at the time if firing one in five employees would cause disruption to the company’s two live titles (Age of Conan and Anarchy Online) and their title in production: The Secret World.
The answer was a half yes. The layoffs are not affecting work on Anarchy Online, nor are they affecting Age of Conan and its upcoming expansion Rise of the Godslayer. The Secret World, not so lucky, and somehow was delayed despite not having a set release date. Current (September 2009) speculations place The Secret World somewhere between late 2010 and early 2011.
So when I heard that Funcom is now working on a NEW MMO, I had to wonder: did they rebound from the layoffs already? A fifth of your workforce is a lot of people, and considering you just delayed one project in development, adding another to your pile is nonsensical at best, stupid at worst. Not only that, but what is the product?
“social MMO focusing on the world of extreme sports”
“First and foremost we will be focusing on snowboarding, with the possibility of adding different sports later. We also want this to be a social world rich with different types of media content and pop-cultural elements such as music, video and even fashion. It is definitely exciting, and we look forward to revealing more on this later.”
-Erling Ellingsen
Now how is it that a company with two MMOs live and one in development can fire a fifth of their staff and delay a game, and then a little of a month later say “We have a new project!” Are Funcom’s priorities truly that far down the drain that they can’t get The Secret World, a game that is still on a TBA release date, out without a delay?
I’m just one person, but even I know that trying to balance two blogs, three jobs, five college classes, a book, and a different project is too much. So I quit one of the jobs and put the book on hold for a while. If there is anything Funcom should be delaying at this point, it is the free to play extreme sports MMO. In fact, find whoever proposed such a premise for an MMO, and add them to the list of layoffs from September.
MMO Fallout 