NBA Elite Being Moved to Tiburon, EA Canada Hit by Layoffs (Not Confirmed Yet)

[Dalsanto0026]

EA's clueless management and lack of vision amazes me. It would be nice if they actually let a plan realise it's potential for once, assuming this will be another reboot for the franchise.

In all honesty I didn't like their vision for Elite anyway, but if you're going to mention 3 year plans it would be nice if you actually stuck to it for once. LOL This is comical.

[Boilerbuzz]

This is a good move in my opinion. I'm sure the guys at EAC can find work. Ubisoft is hiring and some of those guys are already interviewing there from what I hear. Some of the team can also transfer within the company. So, I think the people will be OK. No offense to Canada, but I've wanted Live out of EAC for a long, long time. It was time for a change and change was only going to come with this reset. Tiburon's football sucks in my opinion, but their tech and Tiger Woods is pretty good. What I do know is that there are smart guys there. They just need to find good basketball people and put them in a position to truly drive the game. Otherwise, you'll have the same issues - non-basketball people making a basketball game.

And EAC isn't going anywhere. They have Jam, Fifa, and NHL on the sport side alone.

And for the record, EA didn't own VC. VC was pretty much fired as a non-first party developer for EA.

Of course none of what we say really matters if this isn't confirmed...

[blues rocker]

this is what's wrong with America. The executives make a terrible decision which ruins a perfectly good product, then they blame the hard working people who were following their orders. they get rid of the workers...meanwhile the executives (who are truly the ones at fault) get to keep their jobs and probably get a raise.

[LucianoJJ]

I feel sympathy for anyone losing their jobs. Layoffs are terrible, no matter who, no matter when. EA Canada has proven they can make good games like FIFA and NHL. I don't find fault with Tiburon's workers, either. The games' engines are in place, a roster update is all we are really entitled to now, right? Let someone write new code in some third world country, because those guys are cheaper.

The only answer for the higher ups is to cut heads. Everyone out there with an MBA wants to do more with less, and tries to scare workers into doing better jobs, or else heads will roll, while they roll in expensive cars with huge bonuses. If enough American (and Canadian) workers get sacrificed, this economy is never going to bounce back.

[jadert]

I don't mean to go against the grain here, but lets stop with all of this “managment this and management that” rants. Ultimately, it was David Littman (creative director of NHL series) who approached management with his idea of changing the “Live Series”

Here is an excerpt from a gamespot interview:

GameSpot: How did you come to be on the NBA Elite 11 project?
David Littman: NHL and NBA have been working together for a while since a lot of features are similar such as Dynasty mode, Season mode, and Online Team Play. But we wanted to take it one step further. NHL has been incredibly successful over the last few years, and the NBA franchise could greatly benefit from the learnings we have had on NHL. I had a vision and design for what I thought the NBA game could be both on and off the court and brought that vision to a few other people at EA. We got a prototype up and running, and it really caught on internally.


The management team trusted him with his vision and it failed. Now we can talk about the three year plan, but the fact is that developers (graciously) came on this site and had the ultimate confidence in this flawed product. I didn't post (because I didn't want to be negative without playing the demo) but I was thinking that if the producers thought that this game was going to revolutionize basketball, then maybe either they were crazy or I was crazy. So I didn't post about it.

Now, after the fact its easy to blame the management, but the developers stood by their product and to this day will defend the animations, unrealistic jumping, graphic quality and other areas. And that's before we get into the Jesus Glitch.
So I understand your frustration with EA, but lets not make it seem like the developers aren't to blame as well as the management. Even if they are nice enough to interact with us on a regular basis.....

[Pared]

Quote: Originally Posted by blues rocker

this is what's wrong with America. The executives make a terrible decision which ruins a perfectly good product, then they blame the hard working people who were following their orders. they get rid of the workers...meanwhile the executives (who are truly the ones at fault) get to keep their jobs and probably get a raise.

The irony of your post is that all this happened in Canada.

Or did it? We don't even have confirmation. Hmm...

[Hooe]

As much as I hate to see developers lose their jobs and I hope they all land on their feet elsewhere, this is an known and accepted consequence of working in the commercial sector. You don't finish a product, the money to pay you for producing that product disappears. EA had to offset the loss of not releasing an NBA game somehow.

[sroz39]

Quote: Originally Posted by jadert

I don't mean to go against the grain here, but lets stop with all of this “managment this and management that” rants. Ultimately, it was David Littman (creative director of NHL series) who approached management with his idea of changing the “Live Series” Here is an excerpt from a gamespot interview: GameSpot: How did you come to be on the NBA Elite 11 project? David Littman: NHL and NBA have been working together for a while since a lot of features are similar such as Dynasty mode, Season mode, and Online Team Play. But we wanted to take it one step further. NHL has been incredibly successful over the last few years, and the NBA franchise could greatly benefit from the learnings we have had on NHL. I had a vision and design for what I thought the NBA game could be both on and off the court and brought that vision to a few other people at EA. We got a prototype up and running, and it really caught on internally. The management team trusted him with his vision and it failed. Now we can talk about the three year plan, but the fact is that developers (graciously) came on this site and had the ultimate confidence in this flawed product. I didn't post (because I didn't want to be negative without playing the demo) but I was thinking that if the producers thought that this game was going to revolutionize basketball, then maybe either they were crazy or I was crazy. So I didn't post about it. Now, after the fact its easy to blame the management, but the developers stood by their product and to this day will defend the animations, unrealistic jumping, graphic quality and other areas. And that's before we get into the Jesus Glitch. So I understand your frustration with EA, but lets not make it seem like the developers aren't to blame as well as the management. Even if they are nice enough to interact with us on a regular basis.....

You're being too nice to management, IMO. Those guys are paid to make decisions. If I go to my boss with a revolutionary, crazy new idea on how to do something that was working anyways, and he decides to go along with it, gets all my co-workers on board with this vision, and it fails miserably, is it my fault for suggesting it, my co-workers' fault for doing their job or my boss' for going with the idea? At the end of the day, it's my boss' job to decide what works and what doesn't and if he decides one of his employee's ideas is good and it fails miserably, the blame should fall on him I would think.