Originally posted by CobraSolidus

 

Nothing implies that the guy was useless. Seriously... When a guy is pulled out of every project he touched and given less and less responsibility, do you think thats because he was an extreme performer, or do you perhaps think it's part of FC's evil masterplan of making every man and/or efficient worker of their team unhappy. lol ..I think we both know that there are several points to raise from your perspective as well as from mine. I think the guy was not a very good performer.

I wount even debate your second point as it is totally idiotic. You start by telling how FC should make games and why they should not try to go for hightech, then you jump to the conclusion that FC take advantage of people. What the hell happened to looking at things from both sides. You can't just pull such an conclusion out of your hat and still expect people to take you seriously. If you looked at things from both sides you would also have to aske yourself, what happens when a devteam consisting of several development clusters and each cluster again depending on every person in that cluster finishing their stuff on time. Well the answer is simple, either everybody gets their stuff done on time or the whole team grinds to a hault. You see if one guy consistently fail in the very fine symbiosis of a devteam, it gets quickly very clear that someone must be changed and/or moved to other projects of lower profile.

Finally, you want to see things from both sides, yet again your entire post demonstrates that you don't. Seeing things fropm both side is not to advocate the MohawkMans case. Seeing things from both sides is as the english kind of indicate, "Seeing both sides of a matter as in trying to see the problems from the perspective of BOTH parties in the dispute".

Finally, I call the guy Mohawk guy because I don't remember/know the name of the guy in that news article. He had a rather special Mohawk haircut though. I figuered it was ok to call him MohawkMan as we this way could somewhat protect his name and at the same time talk about his now public case. It's not like Mohawk is deregotary in any way, come on he has the damn thing on his head. If he had a problem with it in the first place I doubt he would get such a haircut. Anyways, BOTH sides means not to read cheap interview in a news paper word by word and the jump to the conclusion "Ohh big bad corporate monster, what did you do". For christ sake, developing cutting edge software is not something everybody can do. The only problem is most people have a hard time admitting that they "don't have it". Well here is the thing, the guys cranking out that monthly payslip is in charge of handing over that message. And when it happens, it is seldom a pretty sight. You are merely discussing the crashscene without knowing anything of all the drama behind this. BOTH sides!

 

Now you are really something... your mother must be very proud.

Stop tweaking my words and stop dodging my arguments. The only one you fool is yourself.

You know nothing about why he switched from AoC to AO, there could be many many reasons for it. Do you really believe they put all the less talented people on AO? Hillarious.. One of his last responsibilities was to upgrade the AO render engine on his own, is that very little responsibility?

And what about all the other devs and ex-devs that confirm the "mohawk guy", are they all disgrunteled & useless people? Are they all made up? Are my IRL friends from Funcom making this up to trick me aswell? And BTW I never said it was wrong to call him the "mohawk guy".

Did I ever say Funcom should not go for hightech? I said they can do anything they want as long as they do not take advantage of people. What I also said was that I think it is more likely that Funcom is using this Xbox 360 AoC version for hyping the game more to get the stock value up, than them actually releasing AoC on Xbox 360. I base these thoughts on what history has shown us about Funcom, that they are more about hype than actually delivering. And if they deliver, it's usually far over due. Ofcourse I could be wrong and I hope so on behalf of Funcoms workers.

Cheap interview? The guy has a whole union behind him and "Arbeidstilsynet" seems to believe him. That's a bit beyond a cheap interview. To get a union behind you in Norway, you have to provide them proof that back up your claims.

When I hear about cases like these I always try to put myself in the shoes of both sides. I try to understand why things got like they did, but in this case the evidence speaks for itself. So looking at it from Funcom's side in this case does not make it any better. I've found nothing that would suggest that the Funcom management has only done the right things or anything close to that. So it is like Orzo pointed out, who you believe should be a question about liability and not what you want the truth to be. The latter obviously fit you well.

Originally posted by CobraSolidus

 

lol. I am somebodys boss. lol. And guess what I have a fantastic talented team. The real question however is, have I ever had to deal with useless people that never seem to get their stuff done regardless of how long and much they work? YES. How do managers deal with that, well, at end of every quarter we do performance appraisal and when a guy had enough C and D's we kind of ask him, "hey whats the problem dude. We like you and all but hell this is development business man, you have to produce". All I'm just saying is, it's very easy to take the sympatetic role since most of us are all workers and have had experiences related to a crappy boss. Do however, not forget to also try and look at it from the other side. FC does after all try to make a DX10 game with effects that most other developer have not even been able to touch yet. It can't be easy for them to handle too many subperformant people.

No, the real question is not if you ever had to deal with useless people. Nothing that you or I have read about this so far implies that the "Mohawk" guy is useless, far from it.

You argue as if all that matters is creating a game that has great effects, but creating a product is far more than this. If you are not able to create "great effects" without taking proper care of your workers then "great effects" mean nothing.

I am allways trying to look at an issue from both sides\all angles and looking at Funcom from their side does not make their lying and law breaking any better in this case. There simply are no excuses for taking advantage of people (Workers & customers). If you still do not think Funcom has done anything wrong and should not take responsebility for it, well, then you are very blind and ignorant in my opinion.

Originally posted by CobraSolidus

 

Look dude, the guy with the Mohawk was not allowed to work on AoC, then he got angry, started the whine and FC called him into HR office. "Look Mr Mohawk, you are not a good programmer, you are neither producing very much artistic material, and all in all you seems not that happy anymore. Perhaps you should take the retirement package and do something that works etter for you". Now, tell me what is wrong about firing useless employees. Doing hightech development is not for everyone. It is crucial that FC get ridd of rotten apples like that Mohawk guy. And I think we all can see the performance increase in AoCs devteam after FC cleaned a few desks back in September.

Why do you hold such a personal grudge against this "Mohawk" guy? Why are you constantly going after him, but none of the other devs or ex-devs that say exactly the same stuff as him?

I am  sorry on your behalf and you have my condolences. I really hope you are not and will not become anyone elses boss in the future. If anything is useless it is guys like you doing comments like this.

Originally posted by ruslans

 

I am really sorry that you did not get my point at all. Must be my english.

Unfortunately, I don't feel to be good enough at rhethoric to go deep arguing with your, as you have admitted yourself, speculations (btw it's a pity, that you did not call them LIES in the same way as you call a similar things coming from others... that would sound refreshing at least).

Still, your experience with "Funcom as a company" must be not broad enough, otherwise you would know that "impossible" console port was already done there once with the game named Dreamfall, three years ago.

It was ported to Xbox (not 360), even though it seemed to be not very doable at first.

Different people, engine, game, time, platform... still the same company. 

So, as long as you can only see the "company" , not people (and it seems to be the case), it must be a good argument.

I believe I did get your point. I also do not want to argue with you, only discuss, because I want to understand how you are thinking. I find discussing with you interesting as you seem like a rather intelligent person, but with quite different views as myself.

I believe there is a big difference between speculations and lies. So calling me a lier since I am speculating would be totally wrong. Those examples I gave you is not about showing that Funcom are speculating, it's about them saying stuff they know is false.

I did not say porting AoC to Xbox 360 would be impossible. I'm just saying that it sounds like Funcom is hyping something that they probably won't manage to do, just like so many other things they've hyped before. When I speculate that Funcom probably are just doing more of the same old marketing tricks I base that on what the history has shown us. I'm simply saying that people should take what Funcom say with a grain of salt, which kind of proves you are correct also as you said this in one of your earlier comments. ;)

Originally posted by ruslans

 

 

I believe that experience of the people currently working there reflects the real situation better. It does not necessarily mean that ex-devs all lie, of course.

I am sure that Gaute, when telling this "wine vs McDonalds" thing, did not lie at all. That's the way he wanted it to be, and he believed it could be done...

 

I don't think that this discussion is or should only be about how things are at Funcom now at this moment. I'll use an extreme example to prove my point: If an unknown serial killer has murdered 100 people in the past, but has stopped his killing for the time being. Then we discover who the killer really is, should we then just forget about those people he killed and not hold him accountable for it because he is not killing any longer? This is ofcouse put on the edge, but the point is the same. They have weakened many peoples health, etc, and I do feel that the people responsible for mistreating their workers should be held accountable for their actions, or else things will get back to normal after a while.

I am sure that Gaute wanted to believe that "wine vs McDonals" thing aswell, but that was a rather misleading example. There's been many things the Funcom management have said and are still saying that are plain out lies. A couple examples: 1. Kjetil says there is not and have very rarely been worked any overtime at Funcom, because Funcom can not afford to pay it. (He can't say that Funcom employees are working overtime, since they do not follow Norwegian law and pay their workers accordingly.) Just call him yourself and check. 2. They knew DX10 would not be ready for launch and yet it's written on the box. (This is also not legal in most countries.)  3. Watch any video interview with Erling Ellingsen and I bet you get lots of new lies on the list for each interview.

And then you have this Xbox 360 thing that I saw CEO Trond Arne Aas was pimping on gamesindustry.biz... how will they manage to make AoC run with the Xbox' 512mb of shared memory? (Those megabytes are shared between the system RAM and video memory.) To make AoC run smooth with OK graphics I need 4gigs of system RAM alone and 512mb on my video card. To make AoC run OK with OK graphics I need 2 gigs of system RAM and 256mb on my video card, which is still waaaay too much for the Xbox to handle. I guess it is possible with texture streaming technologies IF you reduce the texture resolutions by A LOT aswell. ( I know that windows take up RAM resources aswell, but it's far from the 1,7gb or so they need to free up.) Now THIS is speculations though, and I am one of those who think anything is possible, but if I am to use my experience with Funcom as a company chances are BIG that this is just more HYPE and\or LIES.

Ruslans: I did not say that you said it was a big success. I was speaking generally, I am sorry for not making this clearer, my mistake.

I believe that people get biased by their experiences and I see no reason for believing devs more than ex-devs.

I base my opinions upon what seems to be the most logical explanations. If you think that I should not believe anything of what people say, then why should I believe what you are saying and if you really mean that why are you even saying anything? (I'm not trying to be rude here btw.)

Originally posted by ruslans

 

Bollocks, the game is fine and is very far from being a failure.

Speaking about overtime and stuff - Funcom did compensate for the overtime with an extra vacation days and bonuses, more or less fairly.

People who have left the company around the release date did not get it, of course.

It's a common practice in game development companies, though.

Frankly, I am sick looking at all the speculations people pull out of their butts here.

Looks like people define failure and success in different ways. It seems some people, like you, think of a game that brings the company profit, even if it's minor, successfull.

Others think of it as not successfull, because it did not live up to it's hype( or\and lies ) and the vast majority of players fleed the game after a very short period of time.

I guess you're all kind of correct and I respect both views, but to call conan a big success would be the overstatement of the year IMO. It is not OK to lie like Funcom has and are still doing, and this have hurt their reputation a lot, which in turn will hurt the sale numbers for their next games. So even though AoC has brought a minor profit, Funcoms value as a company may might as well have declined because of the damage that has been done to the Funcom brand. (Now this is ofcouse educated speculation on my behalf, but sometimes I feel it is needed to further advance the discussion.)

And when it comes to speculations; I guess some are speculating, but there are also a big number of people that are not speculating, they, atleast to me, seem to tell the truth by explaining themselves concisely and logically about their experiences. You just can not put the Dagbladet article with LO: EL & IT in the same category as speculations either. I highly doubt "Arbeidstilsynet" would bother caring about speculations aswell.

There's been many ex-devs and devs that's been saying different stuff about overtime and bonuses and I have no reason to doubt any of them. Looks to me like the Funcom management has been treating them differently, that's all.

Originally posted by ZeGerman1942

 

There was also bonus promised after launch, depending on the sale and subscription of the game - so i'd say that's a game performance based bonus system.

Did you get any of the bonus promises in writing? That would sound like pretty nice proof to have against them, because they are officially saying that Funcom employees do not work overtime systematicly. (sometimes they say that there is no overtime being worked at all, because Funcom can not afford to pay for it.)  Just call HR-Director Mr Kjetil Vaarlund and ask. If they did not give any of you guys bonus promises in writing this is also highly illegal according to Norwegian law, because such deals can easily be broken or not be of the same value they are promised to be.

I guess many employees must think that something is better than nothing though, right? Personally I would kick their butt if they tried such stunts on me, but then again it is easy to say that from the outside.

Originally posted by Lieven

About stock options, I don't think anybody got those, at least not for working over time. We did have a lot of bonus programs though, where we got some extra money depending on the amount of overtime we worked.

But I don't think anybody at Funcom really worked as much as they did because they wanted to get more money, or because they wanted to get promoted. The thing was that working overtime was just kind of the default, and you really had to be quite rebelious to just go home at 6.

 

According to my Funcom friends they said that not everybody got bonuses. You, the render coders apparently had much better bonus deals than the rest. While other teams had other kinds of deals or nothing at all. This is why you were told not to mention your bonus system to anyone else in the company or outside the company, because it was really unfair aswell as highly illegal. The bonus deals were often very bad aswell, only worth 10-30% or so of what it would mean to you to get a minimum of 40% extra money for each overtime hour, like the law sais. In Funcom you did not even get basic pay for the overtime hours themselves, so that makes it 140% less than what you should have gotten. If you were one of the "lucky" ones to get any of these deals they would have such a nature that it did not matter how effective you worked, what mattered was how long you stayed at work, what you actually did was not of any matter.

Can you confirm this or is it false?

Originally posted by Gurtelrose

At this point it seems to me that things are taken out of proportions. According to my sources most people are very unhappy with their job at Funcom, and things are getting worste every day regarding overtime and such.

Yeayea.. You're trying to say that anyone can spread rumors. When stuff get printed in newspapers and lots of people confirm it and explain themselves logically about the same things it can hardly be called rumors any longer, in contrast to your comment. Or did I misunderstand you?

Just to be clear: What Gurtelrose is saying is false, Funcom is changing for the better now. The LO, EL & IT Union said it themselves. That does not mean everything is fine and that they do not deserve to get bitch slapped for what they've done and are still doing. There is apparently a lot of problems there still, so I don't think the pressure should be lessened just yet. It's in Funcoms\AoCs\TSWs\etc best interest that the problems are solved, so I think both the AoC\Funcom lovers and haters should be glad that this is getting focus in public, because these problems could apparently not be solved without external pressure towards the management.

Originally posted by Crashloop

Originally posted by Yucko55

Crashloop: If proof is what you want then just read the text on your Age of Conan case about DX10, massive siege battles, etc. It does not say it is PLANNED to be in there, it says it IS in the game. Or view som of the interviews with Erling Ellingsen.. The list goes on. How many times must people be shown proof to actually see it? Some people treat Funcom as if it they are the creators of their own delusional religion.

I have the collectors edition so I don't have that written on my box, but accordingly to others it says enhanced for directx10. Massive siege battles was a joke, but that I assumed before I bought the game. I'm not blind to the fact that they promised a lot, but guess what so have most other MMO's I have seen done. And at launch half the features doesn't quite work at all, or they will ahve to be redone to improve them. If anyone thought siege battles would be awesome when they hadn't even tested them during beta other then internal testing, well then I want those people to raise their hands so I can sell them some Coca Cola bottles with oxygen in.

Constantly basing their opinion about the game on how it was at launch rather then how it is today is stupid, wait no it is retarded at best. Yes the game had huge flaws at launch, no doubts there, but hello you can't redo the past, it ain't frickin possible.  Yes Funcom faled royally to live up to the hype they created, they fell and burned for it too. The tide however has turned lately the game has improved a lot, but people are still hung up in what the box says rather then how the game is today. But if people want to live in the past rather then move on I won't deny them that fact, but the 100% true fact is after Craig Morrison took over as GD the game has improved a ton. And it will continue to do so as long as Funcom releases the same quality patches we have seen lately.

 

I find the argument that most other MMO makers have lied, so it's ok for Funcom to lie a bit weak.

However, I am not about frying Age of Conan, I believe the game will only get better as time goes. But people should be aware of the lies certain individuals in Funcom are pouring out to the masses and to their workers. I am disgusted when people defend such obvious liers. I think the negative posts and threads, which have real substance to them, will dissapear with time if Funcom really puts a stop to their nonsense. So lets hope they will continiue to support Obama and his quest for chaaange like they seem to do now that the pressure against them have been turned up a notch! ;)

EDIT: Please don't turn this thread into a another WOW vs AOC players thread. This thread is about Funcom as a company and how it might affect AoC from now on.

Crashloop: If proof is what you want then just read the text on your Age of Conan case about DX10, massive siege battles, etc. It does not say it is PLANNED to be in there, it says it IS in the game. Or view some of the interviews with Erling Ellingsen.. The list goes on. How many times must people be shown proof to actually see it? Some people treat Funcom as if it they are the creators of their own delusional religion.

Originally posted by CobraSolidus

 

Do you mean as in they ask you ok mister project manager, whats the time required for project A, and then you sit down and say B after a while. However when some time passes and B start to creep up on you and you realize that you are fare behind your deadline. You damn right thats pressure, but it's the kind of pressure any project manager have to deal with. You are not supposed to be late. Did you know that? You see this whole thing about AoC patching that got delayed and delayed over the summer was not really acceptable. And I am glad FC obviously have started to do something about this. A project manager is responsible for his project!

Hmm, CobraSolidus = Pål?

You can stop being ignorant now and stop saying that anyone who mention anything bad about Funcom are lazy and stupid. It's not their fault it's been a long time since you got layed.

I think it's great that people who have been done wrong to like this give the ones responsible a hard time, it's not fair if they have to keep it all inside and just deal with it on their own, while the bad management people just keep on hurting more and more workers.

Originally posted by Krogan

Not like it could get any worse, the game is closing down within the year anyway.

Nah, I don't think so. I hope that the people responsible for the things that have been unveiled to the public lately will be replaced, (looks like that process is atleast started, with Gaute fresh in mind.) because I know there are a lot of talented and great people in Funcom, and they do deserve better.

Lieven: Where can I read the full story when it is done? Maybe you could make a blog somewhere? ;) I'm sorry to hear what you've been through though, must have been pretty tough... You got in trouble with the very same Technical Director that interviewed me, and my first impression of him was'nt exactly OK. They should fire people like him, that cause trouble for the honest people in Funcom.

One of my friends in Funcom told me about the methods they use to "fire" people:

It is very hard to fire people in Norway, or.. maybe not hard, but you need a proper reason. And since the bad management people in Funcom seldomly have proper reasons they harrass or spread lies about the ones they don't like until they leave. Or if they look upon them as a threat (like: they have many friends in the company, a good reputation or know stuff that can cause trouble for Funcom or they simply have opinions that dont fit that well with the management.) then they give them a nice package. It is hard to say no to such a package, because you understand when you get it that they don't want you there and you get an "easy" way out. Who wants to be somewhere where you are not wanted anyways? 

BTW: CobraSolidus: You talk about people being disgrunteled, but I've never seen such a disgrunteled guy as you before. Congrats. You're obviously a big crap talker so I won't even bother replying to you.

I also need to point out that Osman did not get fired, he willingly left himself.

Originally posted by CobraSolidus

 

But you sure as hell take a great confidence in the Mohawk guy that got fired from FunCom. You know, people can even get fired in Norway for incompetancy. Of course he's disapointed because they just fired his useless ass. End of story. I would not use a disgrunteled ex-worker's story as referance for your arguments.

LOL. He is not only using this story as reference for his arguments, he is mainly using his own experience in the company.

However, I happen to know a couple of Funcom guys that know the "Tomahawk guy" aswell as "Theodor" and from what I hear they are both talented people that give everything they've got to their workplace. Osman revamped the AO engine, made it look a lot more up to date, added some really nice features on his own initiative in his spare time and after that his bosses took the credit for all of it. Useless?

I've been following Funcom for a while now and I've counted 20 or so different devs and ex-devs that says mainly the same stuff. Coinsidense? How many more must there be that has experienced the same stuff, but just don't talk about it in public?

Originally posted by Lieven

I'm in the process of writing down my own story, which l'm gonna send to Erik Bråten. I'll probably post it here as well.

Can't wait to hear it! I heard you got in trouble with the former Technical Director, the very same Technical Director that I heard is the least technical guy at Funcom, is this correct? I was in a job interview with him once, but he acted like an asshole so I thought I'd better not work at Funcom. He made me feel like they did not really want to have any new employees there and that I was not good enough for them, so why the hell did they want me to take an interview in the first place? Cunts..

I actually think Erling would do a much better job at being an HR director than Kjetil. Erling does atleast not seem mean. ;)