Topic: A final thought on Taldren

[Harlequin]

A forewarning.. This is not a 'lets hold hands, sing round the campfire and sing songs' kind of post about Taldren and its demise. If you do NOT want to read anything critical about taldren then please stop reading and move on to another post.



First, I have sympathy for the employees of taldren. I am not sure how many people worked @ taldren in the end but they all have families to feed and its sad whenever any company closes. Certainly my heart goes out to all those newly unemployed.

With that said, at the risk of putting salt in ones wounds, it was not surprising they closed frankly. They put out sub-par project after sub-par project. SFC1 was never fully patched to go work on SFC2, and SFC2 was never fully fixed to go work on SFC3/newer projects.. (see a trend?).

I saw some sales data that showed sfc1 sold more then sfc2 then sold OP then sold SFC3. Why the fall off of sales to each consecutive product? Simple business 101. You cant keep burning your customer base and not expect to loose them over time.

I for one washed my hands of taldren after the sfc2 mess. A broken game missing promised core features, that took months to get a patch out that got the game semi-working. That was the last straw for me and this company, it lost me as a customer. And from the current state of affairs it looks like I wasnt the only one. Thus I find it surprising why there this big awe and surprise they shut down, I, and am sure others, saw this coming a yr or two ago unless they changed their ways as a company.

On a side noteI think they could have taken a few pointers from bioware on how to run as a company. While a few minor features got cut (as expected in any development, game or otherwise) in their massive project neverwinter nights, in shipped more or less as promsied working out of the box. And they STILL, after 2+ yrs, put out updates to tweak, patch and add new content. If taldren learned some lessons for companies like bioware they may still be around. If a company like taldren tried a project the size of nwn I can only imagine the disaster it would have turned out to be. Harsh perhaps, but my honest view point.

With that all said, I do think taldren had some excellent creative minds and give them credit for that. They also were very personable and took care of its community from what I saw, another good trait. But that wasnt enough. You need to have good business ethics and compitancy. Which,  sadly, they didnt seem to have.

In the end I will toast them, for when their game worked it did give me enjoymant, and I have no ill feelings to them as people, just as a compnay who I feel I was taken by.

Good luck to all the ex-taldren employees, I hope you all find safe landing.

Harlequin

http://shadowlands.blogdns.net
irc-shadowland.ath.cx

[SSCF-Rolling]

Just glancing over this post, I feel that you spoke well in expressing yourself.

Your post did not leave me with bad feelings.

I may not agree, but you did it with some respect.

You have bad feelings about what they produced.  That is fine.

I appreciate that you did not come in and talk with a trashy mouth.

Sometimes things do go wrong and things are not like you had hope.

But I do not know their side, I was not there, so I will not judge.

I don't think they sat around a table and said, "Hey!!! Let's do a half job on this and send out a game unfinished!!!"  "Yeah!!! That would be a great idea."

There are always things in the background that we do not see.  I have to give them a benefit of the doubt that they tried their hardest to produce a game worth playing.

That's just another perspective.

I've enjoyed myself here and playing the game.  I'm thankful for both.

But thanks for having class and expressing yourself without the trashing.

Sincerely,

Kimberly

[Don Karnage]

sure the 4th sfc games (sfc1, sfc2 eaw, sfc2 op, sfc3) could have Ben fix fully, mostly sfc1, like many place the stop and concentrate on the new, but when the lunch sfc3 the seem to have made a rush with ti, the did make well design ship but since the only made 4 race the could made more race and do more type of ship, but if the ask the player what to do for the sfc3 we could have told them what we wanted but nook, and since taldren is no longer the will be no sfc4, sure it cost money and time to make a game, but with the help of the comunity the would have made it faster and bether, now if someone do make a sfc4 it might be a bad game since the don't know of the forum and player and or the wont consider what the player's want in a sfc4.

[AgentSloan]

Hello Harlequin,

<snip>

With that said, at the risk of putting salt in ones wounds, it was not surprising they closed frankly. They put out sub-par project after sub-par project. SFC1 was never fully patched to go work on SFC2, and SFC2 was never fully fixed to go work on SFC3/newer projects.. (see a trend?).

I saw some sales data that showed sfc1 sold more then sfc2 then sold OP then sold SFC3. Why the fall off of sales to each consecutive product? Simple business 101. You cant keep burning your customer base and not expect to loose them over time.

<snip>

I completely disagree with you.

I own SFC I, SFC II: EAW, SFC: OP, and SFC III.
I love them all.

I specifically bought SFC: OP to Mod it.
That is the sign of a good product.

You Sir, are simply a customer that probably can never be pleased.
Heres a 'wee-tip", never buy anything, then you'll never be disappointed.



AgentSloan

[Merlinfmct87]

Hello Harlequin,

<snip>

With that said, at the risk of putting salt in ones wounds, it was not surprising they closed frankly. They put out sub-par project after sub-par project. SFC1 was never fully patched to go work on SFC2, and SFC2 was never fully fixed to go work on SFC3/newer projects.. (see a trend?).

I saw some sales data that showed sfc1 sold more then sfc2 then sold OP then sold SFC3. Why the fall off of sales to each consecutive product? Simple business 101. You cant keep burning your customer base and not expect to loose them over time.

<snip>

I completely disagree with you.

I own SFC I, SFC II: EAW, SFC: OP, and SFC III.
I love them all.

I specifically bought SFC: OP to Mod it.
That is the sign of a good product.

You Sir, are simply a customer that probably can never be pleased.
Heres a 'wee-tip", never buy anything, then you'll never be disappointed.



AgentSloan

What he said.

Merlin

[Age]

sure the 4th sfc games (sfc1, sfc2 eaw, sfc2 op, sfc3) could have Ben fix fully, mostly sfc1, like many place the stop and concentrate on the new, but when the lunch sfc3 the seem to have made a rush with ti, the did make well design ship but since the only made 4 race the could made more race and do more type of ship, but if the ask the player what to do for the sfc3 we could have told them what we wanted but nook, and since taldren is no longer the will be no sfc4, sure it cost money and time to make a game, but with the help of the comunity the would have made it faster and bether, now if someone do make a sfc4 it might be a bad game since the don't know of the forum and player and or the wont consider what the player's want in a sfc4.

Taldren is still around only in S.Korea and still has a Web site www.taldren.com and I discovered if the source code is released they will not be making anymore SFC games because the programmers in hear can do it.That is why I am opposed to it.Then you would have DL the new game from the programmers web sites and what support will they offer and would have to burn it to CD.If the source code is released that is it for any future SFC series of games that is if Taldren comes out with a new source code possibly more 3D

[Age]

A forewarning.. This is not a 'lets hold hands, sing round the campfire and sing songs' kind of post about Taldren and its demise. If you do NOT want to read anything critical about taldren then please stop reading and move on to another post.



First, I have sympathy for the employees of taldren. I am not sure how many people worked @ taldren in the end but they all have families to feed and its sad whenever any company closes. Certainly my heart goes out to all those newly unemployed.

With that said, at the risk of putting salt in ones wounds, it was not surprising they closed frankly. They put out sub-par project after sub-par project. SFC1 was never fully patched to go work on SFC2, and SFC2 was never fully fixed to go work on SFC3/newer projects.. (see a trend?).

I saw some sales data that showed sfc1 sold more then sfc2 then sold OP then sold SFC3. Why the fall off of sales to each consecutive product? Simple business 101. You cant keep burning your customer base and not expect to loose them over time.

I for one washed my hands of taldren after the sfc2 mess. A broken game missing promised core features, that took months to get a patch out that got the game semi-working. That was the last straw for me and this company, it lost me as a customer. And from the current state of affairs it looks like I wasnt the only one. Thus I find it surprising why there this big awe and surprise they shut down, I, and am sure others, saw this coming a yr or two ago unless they changed their ways as a company.

On a side noteI think they could have taken a few pointers from bioware on how to run as a company. While a few minor features got cut (as expected in any development, game or otherwise) in their massive project neverwinter nights, in shipped more or less as promsied working out of the box. And they STILL, after 2+ yrs, put out updates to tweak, patch and add new content. If taldren learned some lessons for companies like bioware they may still be around. If a company like taldren tried a project the size of nwn I can only imagine the disaster it would have turned out to be. Harsh perhaps, but my honest view point.

With that all said, I do think taldren had some excellent creative minds and give them credit for that. They also were very personable and took care of its community from what I saw, another good trait. But that wasnt enough. You need to have good business ethics and compitancy. Which,  sadly, they didnt seem to have.

In the end I will toast them, for when their game worked it did give me enjoymant, and I have no ill feelings to them as people, just as a compnay who I feel I was taken by.

Good luck to all the ex-taldren employees, I hope you all find safe landing.

Harlequin

http://shadowlands.blogdns.net
irc-shadowland.ath.cx

This was not Taldrens fault it was the publishers fault and you seem new to all this as it has been posted and talked about on Taldrens Boards in several categories and several  threads and I was only a user there for over 5 months so blame the publishers especially Activision.They destroyed all remaining copies of SFC3 after dismal sales after the Nemesis movie did poorly at the box office.You are quite new to all this now is a time to learn.I would use the spellchecker to as my iespell pick up several mistakes.

[Mog]

Age, Harlequin is far from new lol. I certainly remember him from before D2 being released, and, if you'd actually read his post and understood it, you'd realise that too. As for telling him to use a spell checker - lmao.

[Johanobesus]

With all due respect to the creative and undeniably talented folks who worked on these games, Harlequin  has a very valid point.  Even if the fault lies largely with Activision, the SFC games were frustratingly buggy.  I don't know that I was ever able to finish the Romulan campaign in the first game.  The simple truth is that if you have a program that frequently and consistently crashes for no evident reason, you do not have a quality product.  I quit playing SFCI shortly after I bought it precisely because of the crashes.  I got back into it and bought the sequels when I discovered modding, and truth be told, I have spent far more time playing with the shiplist and kitbashing models than actually playing the game.  I never bought SFC3 because of the complaints, both of bugs and of dropped or dumbed down features.  I'm not going to blame Taldren; for the sake of argument we can assume it is all because of Activision's greedy deadlines.  However, the fact remains that the games were never quite the solid, quality products I, and no doubt many others, wished for.  The games still make for very entertaining play, and I have no regrets about buying them, and I am as always in awe of people that know how to use lines of code to create such complex things, but I am sometimes saddened to think of what could have been if the circumstances had been different.  Even if it is all because of contractual ties with Activision, Harlequin is probably right that the continual troubles with the games were probably part of what destroyed Taldren, or at least a symptom of the real problems. 

[AgentSloan]

<snip>

I got back into it and bought the sequels when I discovered modding, and truth be told, I have spent far more time playing with the shiplist and kitbashing models than actually playing the game.  I never bought SFC3 because of the complaints, both of bugs and of dropped or dumbed down features.
 

How much time have you spent kitbashing 3d starship models?
Did you enjoy it?

Well?


AgentSloan

[SSCF-Rolling]

I am so proud of you gentlemen!!!!

A lovely debate with taste and class.

Although telling someone they need a spell checker is a rather low blow.  <snicker>

Very nicely done in keeping the respect for each other and their opinions!

Kimberly

[Chris SI]

Many companies won't even answer requests for patches or improvements.

Taldren kept at it for years, and I know from my own experience, almost NO games come out that don't need to be patched, its the nature of PC games.

Maybe SFC series wasn't perfect, but you could do a lot worse than Taldren as far as customer support.

Just my two cents.

[Harlequin]

>Just glancing over this post, I feel that you spoke well in expressing yourself.

Thanks

> Sometimes things do go wrong and things are not like you had hope.

I wont dispute that. But neither should I suffer for the ills of someone else, especially when I put down $50. for a product.

> But I do not know their side, I was not there, so I will not judge.

Then I am confused.. you said you dont agree with me but then admit you dont know all the details. How is it you dont agree with me?

> I don't think they sat around a table and said, "Hey!!! Let's do a half job on this and send out a game unfinished!!!"  "Yeah!!! That would be a great idea."

Rarely is that the case. But the end result is all that matters, everything else is just excuses. And look where their excuse after excuse got them. The buying public will only put up with so much.

> There are always things in the background that we do not see.  I have to give them a benefit of the doubt that they tried their hardest to produce a game worth playing.

I have little doubt they tried. My issue is they bit off more then they could chew and their product didnt improve nor did they learn from past mistakes. In that way, the blame can fall no where else but on their shoulders.

> But thanks for having class and expressing yourself without the trashing.

That would have served little purpose. I got over my anger at them long ago.

[Harlequin]

> I completely disagree with you.

Why? what did I say that was not accurate?

> I own SFC I, SFC II: EAW, SFC: OP, and SFC III.
> I love them all.

You are entitled to, didnt say otherwise.

> I specifically bought SFC: OP to Mod it.
> That is the sign of a good product.

One could say a 'good' product is one that works as advertised. Not one that has a bonus feature.

> You Sir, are simply a customer that probably can never be pleased.

On the contrary, didnt I say I was very happy with bioware products? I am pleased when a product works. SFC never fully got fixed/working. Especially when it was broken out of the box after shelling out $50.

> Heres a 'wee-tip", never buy anything, then you'll never be disappointed.

Full of teen angst are we? *chuckle*

[Victor1st]

Lets face it, they didnt get any help with Acti - Lack of - Vision being the publisher.  STCD and STGD has had numerous run in's with them regarding the poor stance they have in trek gaming.  Back in the VERY old days of trek gaming (something not a lot of people can remember) you had the classics like Starfleet Academy, Klingon Academy, the original SFC.  All this was due to some friendly compeition between the major publishers...Simon & Schuster, Activision, Spectrum Holobyte (MicroProse) and Interplay.

Once Activision got all the licenses the following happened...

Armada 2, Elite Force 2, Starfleet Command 3, ConQuest Online.

Now i personally think Armada 2 is a good game, its lacking in some aspects, but i still personally like it.  Elite Force 2?  Complete and total disaster...MP only had one map and there was issues with games and the amount of people playing them when in GameSpy Arcade.  ConQuest Online was another disaster, it was Pay For Play (yes, there was a PfP trek game) which was basically chess with Star Trek pieces, there was a lot of strategy, but guess what?  Activision pulled the plug on the whole lot 9 months after it was released.

Then of course we have SFC 3...mixed results.

You take out the competition between the punlishers and the good games die.  You will still get buggy games, that much is certain.  SFC 3 is based on the OP engine and that game has taken soooooo long to patch up, SFC was bound to have issues.  It doesnt help with Activision being the publisher.  A publisher who probably knew that they would be suing viacom by that time.  The one bain is the slow release on patches which has happened all the way through the SFC series.  

As trek gaming goes on though Paramount themsevles are taking a greater interest in what is happening right here, right now.  They are continuing to visit the STGD and STGU central forums and they are posting away to let people know that they do still care.  STGD itself will be holding an interview with Harry Lang of paramount in the very near future.  There is also something happening in the background which may see the return, at least partially, of the old Trek gaming official message boards and site, a lot of new gamers are buying the game and going to the official gaming section at www.startrek.com and seeing nothing, STGD has asked for the return of the official gaming boards for the support and interest of the new Star Trek gaming players...plus...its a good place to spam... *cough* advertise

[Harlequin]

> This was not Taldrens fault it was the publishers fault

yes..yes.. first rule of PR.. deflect the blame.

> and you seem new to all this

I was around since SFC1 on interplay boards. I am far from 'new' to this topic. I just washed my hands of it after getting burned twice. At the risk of sounds combative, your the newbie.

> I would use the spellchecker to as my iespell pick up several mistakes.

LOL.. is that sorta like using proper puncuation and grammer too? Does 'run on sentance' mean anything to you kiddo? .. pot.. kettle.. black..

[Bonk]

I cannot disagree with the bulk of your initial post, well said.

The only thing I really disagree with is comparison of NWN development to SFC development. NWN strikes me as glorified warcraft/starcraft/diablo - a much simpler development situation - not based on a paper game with a 300+ page ruleset...

[Harlequin]

> Many companies won't even answer requests for patches or improvements.

There a minority acually, unless your talking bargin bin products. What would be better is if they didnt take MONTHS after the game released (SFC2sprcificlye) to get semi-working, and still then MONTHS more for the full multi-play features to get rolled out. By then they alienated a good chunk of their player base when it takes a 3-4 months to get a semi-working game with most of the promised featuers. Lets not forget the dynaverse did NOT ship with SFC2. It was added 3 or 4 months after it was released if I recall correctly.

> Taldren kept at it for years, and I know from my own experience, almost NO games come out that don't need to be patched, its the nature of PC games.

I expect a game to be patched. Thats not the issue. The issue is all 3 games of the series shipped broken/missing core promised features and tooks months betwwn patches and was finally abandoned beofre it got fully working to work on the next project. In essence leaving all the players to holding the bag. You think thats a mark of a good company?

>Maybe SFC series wasn't perfect, but you could do a lot worse than Taldren as far as customer support.

Lets be honest, you can do a LOT better as well.. fraxis, impression games, bioware to name just a few.

[Harlequin]

> I cannot disagree with the bulk of your initial post, well said.

Thanks

> The only thing I really disagree with is comparison of NWN development to SFC development. NWN strikes me as glorified warcraft/starcraft/diablo - a much simpler development situation - not based on a paper game with a 300+ page ruleset...

Have you seen the manuals for 3ed edition D&D? 300 pages covers about 2 manuals out of about a half dozen or so. NWN has a server, dm client, player client, tool set and single player element. I'd say much more complex. Plus its a true 3d game with 360 degree camera. And has the ability to easily add custom content and has a c+ based scripting language built in.

Over all I'd say more complex then SFC. Certainly you can disagree.

[EmeraldEdge]

Actually wasn't the D2 added after about 6 months after release?  After months of "We will only release when it's ready", but then dumped it out there just before heading off to E3 to unveil Orion Pirates, and it was in a horrid state?