Deep analysis of the Ashes cricket game

[silverthorne]

They don't think about their own future.


Now they do this, they will have really difficult time trying to find a job afterwards.


Here are some interesting titles they can apply for:


Chief Fraud Officer,
Fake PR,
Rookie Games Developer,
2D Scam Artist,
Poor quality assurance tester

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it's the publisher bit i don't get... what milestones and deliverables where there, and how could they not see pretty early on what the score was?

It is truly bizarre. Did they even check? Did they even do due-dilligence*?
* google for the word due-dilligence.


If 505 games got scammed, 505 games cannot claim ignorance. Both parties are experts on their field.


I do not know the answer. One day, someone will tell the press or do a tell-all book about it.

 

[SpitfiresKent]

Like Ross said, it was a swindle...

 

[MattW]

I don't think it is appropriate to be attempting to 'name and shame' or otherwise reference people who may have been involved in the development of the game. It's especially true when no one can know what work they did do on the game or what pressures they were under.

 

[barmyarmy]

I think we need to avoid naming individuals and speculating about their experience.

 

[blockerdave]

Like Ross said, it was a swindle...

i work in software development, not games, but still software.

if we are doing something for a client, they don't say "here's a wheelbarrow of our cash, we'll see you when the product is finished", we have a lot of milestones from start to finish, and we have to show stuff all along to make sure things are on target and progressing as they expect.

so what did trickstar have to show to 505 throughout the development lifecycle, what did they show and how did 505 miss how bad this was?

ross seems to be very sympathetic to 505, saying they're victims etc. so perhaps it's pretty different in games development, or more likely he knows more about what went on here... did trickstar do a bait and switch with old code? did they script outcomes and pretend to play? did things seem to be "fixable" and the fixes made things worse? WTF happened?

personally, whatever trickstar did to pull the wool over 505's eyes, i think they (505) are certainly culpable as there was obviously a failure of oversight. i don't think it's a due diligence failure per se - trickstar/transmission did have a cricket track record and were therefore a reasonable choice - but the oversight once the project started was clearly incompetent. finally, they made the choice to release it, that should not be forgotten.

 

[grkrama]

I don't think it is appropriate to be attempting to 'name and shame' or otherwise reference people who may have been involved in the development of the game. It's especially true when no one can know what work they did do on the game or what pressures they were under.

I think we need to avoid naming individuals and speculating about their experience.

Point Taken.
Wasnt trying to ridicule them or shame them, rather wanted to point all the experienced Programmers have jumped ship by may 2012.
And group of programmers just out of internship have been tasked for managing a brand sports Title.(for all we know it would have been harsh and difficult for them too and they did their best,probably undercontracted).

guess this is more appropriate.
Im only taking a dig @ Trickstar and 505.

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I don't think it is appropriate to be attempting to 'name and shame' or otherwise reference people who may have been involved in the development of the game. It's especially true when no one can know what work they did do on the game or what pressures they were under.

But is mike an exception ,just asking

 

[barmyarmy]

I didn't even see Matt's post

 

[BigAntStudios]

There is a lot of supposition here, reverse engineering the code cannot lead to many of the conclusions above. The game was in development for a long time, the issues were well and truly known by May.

@blocker I would still maintain that while a fool and their money may soon be parted, a thief is a thief. Once the HUGE license fee had been paid, a record payment for the Ashes, and development was well under way and much of it paid, what could they do? They obviously believed the "safe pair of hands" routine and they did put an external producer on the ground to look after their interests.

 

[blockerdave]

There is a lot of supposition here, reverse engineering the code cannot lead to many of the conclusions above. The game was in development for a long time, the issues were well and truly known by May.

@blocker I would still maintain that while a fool and their money may soon be parted, a thief is a thief. Once the HUGE license fee had been paid, a record payment for the Ashes, and development was well under way and much of it paid, what could they do? They obviously believed the "safe pair of hands" routine and they did put an external producer on the ground to look after their interests.

i guess that's where my disconnect comes from. i'm used to having deliverables that lead to more payments, rather than the bulk being paid earlier, so it would have been easier to kill it sooner. because as you say i certainly don't buy everything looked smooth and suddenly in may they went "huh, maybe something isn't quite right". this thing must have looked like road kill from the beginning.

don't get me wrong, i think trickstar are the "real" villains, there was clearly a massive swindle and they behaved despicably. it's just i know in my industry, something like this wouldn't happen without the client being massively at fault.

we had something similar actually recently, a competitor of ours "went live" with their new product at a client and had to pull it out weeks later - heads are rolling at both ends, at the vendor obviously, but at the purchaser too because the CIO/COO and others failed fundamentally throughout the implementation.

 

[BigAntStudios]

Well the issue with software, as you would know, is that sometimes you have to wait until all of the modules are finished (or near to) before you can judge the result. You can have a gut feel but sometimes you judge the delivery by the historical evidence of previous delivery and trust you have that the developer knows what they are doing.

 

[grkrama]

well think it from 505/s perspective,they have grabbed a cool niche license,have got a developer who has produced 2 solid works of the same license,Release date set to coincide with real game,
what could go wrong?(well everything did)
this is not really their flagship product ,to have their whole attention,even if there were hiccups ,they would have expected trickstar to come through,based on previous works.
were they careless ?yes,were they thieves No

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The game was in development for a long time, the issues were well and truly known by May.

meant may2012

 

[silverthorne]

My conclusion was evidence-based (the sloppiness, the usage of demos, the numerous error messages, weird errors, facts vs. what was done).


I disagree with the facts that @BigAntStudio presented because a team that spends two years, it is not possible that they do this kind of quality and kind of work.


It is fine for both me and @BigAntStudios to disagree on it. Because none of us can agree on something - even the moderators claim to have seen a fully working version, @BigAntStudio states that they think TrickStarGames is better, my analysis of the codes suggests otherwise, - we may never know the answers what happened.


It could be many factors and in an unfortunate turn of events, the lies turned into multiple lies, the schedules kept on growing, deadlines were missed... who knows?


It seems like there was some secret or maybe someone lied and tried to cover it up. It could be that they were played-out, there could have been many factors involved.


What could have happened? I don't know. I will try to keep it non-personal and thus, it is pointless to finger-point at someone. It is fascinating that everyone reaches a different conclusion.

 

[grkrama]

this is what happens when you open the pandora's box

 

[MattW]

How did I not find this before? Ashes Cricket 2013 - The Cutting Room Floor

 

[silverthorne]

How did I not find this before? Ashes Cricket 2013 - The Cutting Room Floor

Looks like someone else found the Achievements (not working), that the game is debug version (not production version)

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@grkrama,

You can use PlayMaker but do realise it is only for simple things. It's like a novice tool and not for serious things.


It's like you have a smaller game, like a 2D game, or 3D game with less amount of work. Simple things -- like smaller version of Temple Run, Frogger and smaller version of Cut the Rope.


Just use it to learn and have an enriched experience with what you can do with it.


I do not recommend it for AAA quality work.