JoWood have announced that they have cancelled the development of the Stargate-SG1 game, which was being developed locally in Australia:

JoWooD regrets to be forced to cancel the development agreement with Perception, the Australian developer currently responsible for the Stargate-SG1: The AllianceTM license title. “The title in its current form, initially scheduled for an October 2005 release, does satisfy neither our quality requirements nor the fans expectations. We will not release anything that does not do justice to this well known license” says Albert Seidl, CEO JoWooD Productions Software AG. “In recent months we have invested a lot of time and resources in helping Perception finish the development, but we now simply have lost confidence in their ability to finish this project in time and sufficient quality.”
Following the termination JoWooD has asked for repayment of their investment in development and further expenses.
According to our reading of the contract the rights to the title as well as the source code are transferred to JoWooD“. After delivery of the code and assets JoWooD will review the possibility of seeking out developers if it is economically viable to finish the title” reports Michael Paeck, Executive Producer for JoWooD Productions Software AG. “We are, however, not prepared to release anything but a top quality title. Fans of the show as well as gamers would not accept anything less. There are several options to consider, among them potentially moving to next-gen consoles for the title.”

Check out the official statement for more information. promoted/edited forum item

must be something else other than poor quality of the game.

when as poor game quality ever stopped it being distributed.

it actually looked pretty good. but i guess most games look good until u actually play them.

There are some real problems in the IT/Game industry arent there?

Takes soo much time to develop a game, and you have a whole team of professionals working on it, and then it still sucks....makes ya wonder if its the "professionals" or the people designing it.

in other news the latest sg1 ep is out. go go go

Wow that must have been a great contract.. JoWood get back all their money AND they get everything the devs have programmed/created.

Hooray, the industry is saved from another low quality TV/Movie adaptation

of a low quality TV show

Yeah, sounds like someone has been royally shafted...

STFU Hashy, SG-1 is awesome.

That Perception mob seemed dodgy from the start though, I remember reading about them and reading interviews with the guy who owned the company and it sounded like it was just one or two guys with a lot of passion but no real experience making games. I think they'd made a few small games for mobile devices, but thats about it; nothing to prepare them for something as huge as a game adaptation of SG1. I remember wondering at the time how the hell they even landed the deal to make it, the guy in charge must have been one hell of a smooth talker.

Hopefully it gets given to a development company with a clue and continues in some form, Stargate is such a potentially awesome license for a game, they could do a lot with it. The Stargate world is overflowing with content they could use, and if they want to do something new then it can easily fit into the existing universe (I mean, theres still a s***load of planets they haven't been to after all).

Personally I'd love to see a tactical squad based shooter (ala Raven Shield) set in the Stargate world. Probably not so heavy on the tactical side as the Rainbow Six games, but same style of squad based action, taking your team through the gate on missions and stuff. But theres so many other cool games they could make out of it. They could do something in the style of Wing Commander, where you're a pilot that flies X302 fighters on missions out of the Prometheus (or the Daedelus if it uses the Atlantis license), or you could even do something ambitious like a massively multiplayer fps like Planetside (except not gay), where you fight for control of different worlds and stuff. So much potential, and when you look at the game they were making, just your standard every-day FPS with a bit of fan service, you have to wonder why they were given the license in the first place.

I said it before, the e3 video looked like nice graphics but have a look at the 1/2 second of gameplay. It looked so s***.

Takes soo much time to develop a game,

Compared to what? How long do you think a game should take to develop?

and you have a whole team of professionals working on it, and then it still sucks....makes ya wonder if its the "professionals" or the people designing it.

Generally speaking the people who design games are A) professionals, and B) members of the development team. Maybe you are wanting to blame publishers who push out games way before they are ready for release?

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In this case the developer looked suspect from the moment they put their webpage up. It doesn’t surprise me that the game is ass, I am surprised that it took this long for people to announce it.

Damn this sucks, i know a guy working on this game. Not a coder, just a graphics artist/modeller, he mentioned when he put the trailer together he didn't have a lot to work with which is why the trailer doesn't have any ingame footage but i didn't realize things were quite that bad.

last edited by Nailbomb at 11:48:35 07/Aug/05

wtf, the trailer does have ingame footage?

2 seconds worth and its s***

Wow, that trailer would make anybody soft in the pants. No wonder they scrapped the game.

They should get ex-blizzard memebers who worked on starcraft to make a stargate game. RTS all the way!

Nah, Stargate RTS wouldn't work, theres not enough varied vehicles/units in the world to make it interesting.

Stargate was never about any one character (well maybe an episode or two). It was about the TEAM.

Any Stargate game should be primarily a CO-OP, with single and competative multiplayer as extras.
It should have strong puzzle solving problems, lots of fancy ancient shananigans. It should have strong combat, and lots of cool ancient Tech. It should have strong exploration and discovery. It should be mostly ground combat, with the occasional inter-steller moments. It should have time-travel, it should have lots of referances to real-world icons like the egyptions and so on.
If it dosnt have the above it isnt stargate.

^ you shouold write a letter and take over

Stargate would have worked as an MMO RTS, a cross between Eve, Warcraft3 and something a little more in-depth (say, Mechwarrior/WC Privateer) - there's plenty of content/races for that... and this finite galaxy is big enough...

Perception have never relased a single good game. Everything has been low-scale, low-key, or an absolute bomb. I was so disappointed when I heard they got the contract. And incredibly pleased to hear they'd lost it :)

A shame, I know a couple of dudes working at perception, hope it goes ok for them.

I'm glad they canned it, however it's a load of crap that JoWood get their money back. I wish I could get my money back from the publishers for every crap game that I bought.

Except the position isn't exactly the same, is it?

First of all you haven't spent millions of dollers on one game. Second, you have the ability to wait to see if a game is worth spending your money back. Thirdly, if the game is s*** you can exchange it for something that isn't crap.

Not only that, but here we have one publisher that wants to release only quality games (finally!). Your selfish point of view is to not only punish them but to reward the developers who made a s*** game. based only because other publishers have released s***ty games that you have bought.

Quite frankly I'd be surprised if they can get any money out of the developers. The contract was nearly up, so I'd guess their money was nearl spent. I wouldn't be surprised if Perception goes bust.

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If the game description doesn't match the reality of the game you are entitled to a refund. EB will let you exchange a game for another game for any reason.

Actually Typo, I was thinking their punishment for not making the game up to scratch in terms of quality would be to not reimburse them. Publishers seeing that this would be what happens if they, in future, fail to meet quality guidelines, will mean they're less likely to take on project with expectations they can't handle, or think that they can just do the bare minimum.

The publisher is the one asking for the money back, the developer is the one who fails to meet quality guidelines.

The publisher shouldn't be punished for the developer breaching contract.

Stargate would have worked as an MMO RTS, a cross between Eve, Warcraft3 and something a little more in-depth (say, Mechwarrior/WC Privateer) - there's plenty of content/races for that... and this finite galaxy is big enough...

You're on crack. The humans have a grand total of 2 ships (one of which isn't even in this galaxy anymore), and some fighters. How can you possibly make an RTS where one side only has 2 units? If you did it as a ground-based RTS you could maybe stretch it a little furthur, but the fact of the matter is the humans in Stargate really dont have much variation or equipment compared to all of the other races. They'd be a pretty boring/pointless side to have in an RTS.

I agree with what Toll was saying, it so should be a squad based shooter type game, definately with co-op. And then like in rainbow six you have squad members who are specialised at different things, you could have a squad member who is like the "ancient specialist" ala Daniel Jackson, and can decipher runes and do funky stuff like that. So much potential :(

Still really like the idea of a wing commander style game as well, imagine flying the mission where you have to fight in the battle over Antarctica! OMG I bar up just at the thought.

You could aslo expand it into the tactical squad game (ala fallout tactics, xcom). Both the squad based shooter and tactical squad game would make me jiz clear across the room.

Squad based (anything) makes so much sense for a Stargate game, seeing the entire story line is based around small groups, and interaction between groups.

O....M...G !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have been waiting so long for this game to come out. And finally when it draws near to releasing they go and do this. I think im gonna go and crawl into a hole.

Could be worse, they could have just released a s*** game that would have invoked massive crying.

I think this is a first for a publisher to be more concious of the gamer than the developer

Huh? I am sure publishers can games all the time.

I can understand JoWood wanting their money back, I mean if you'd sunk millions and millions into a project and backed these developers that told you all this wonderful stuff they would do for you, to then find out a few years down the track that they've completely failed to deliver on their end of the bargain, you'd probably be pretty pissed off and want your money back too.

Its not like they invested in the game, and the game was made just the way it was promised, and then failed to sell well and bombed. That'd be something you just put down as a bad business move or a learning experience, but from the sounds of it Perception have failed to deliver what was promised, they failed to live up to their end of the contract, so JoWood basically spent millions of dollars and have nothing to show for it except some code for a half finished game that isn't good enough to release. Its only reasonable that they'd expect some sort of compensation.

typo, It's all relative isn't it? Firstly, how do you know that millions of dollars for publishers isn't the same as $100 for me?

I get the sentiment, but I don’t really agree. I worked for a company where the CEO thought of 10,000 dollar routers as the same kind of expense as getting hinges for doors (ie nothing). Yet, he didn’t like it when there was massive short coming in profit and loss tables. Millions of dollars in production costs for a game that has little or no value for 3 years worth of work is a massive loss.

Secondly, wait for what? Reviews? Until I play it myself, I will never know how good or bad a game is and by then I've already spent my hard earned.

Polling review sites can give you a good indication of how a game will turn out. I mean if most places are saying it is like star craft, but note quite as polished, and you really loved star craft, then you have a good indication of what the game will be like.

Lets not forget that many of the games that come out here are a month or two after they come out state side. Which means you get to listen to general users cry about the product well and truly before we get our hands on it.

If you are genuinely surprised at the quality of the game in your hands, then you are not doing enough research on it.

Yes EB exchanges the game, but then again, they are not a publisher.

You don’t deal directly with the publisher you deal directly with the retailer. I don’t see why you would expect, or even want to deal directly with the publisher. Surely, the retailer is in a better position to serve you, seeing you went to them to purchase the game in the first place.

Where could you exchange games before EB was around? Pacific computers? LOL!

I never had a problem returning a s*** game for exchange, even before EB. Then again, I am relatively well informed about the games I purchase.

Ever get your money back for a "bad" meal

This was a bad example to use, people get money back on bad food all the time. If you take a bite or two out of a meal, and then complain about how s*** it is they will replace or give you back your money.

or after seeing a "bad" movie?

I don’t normally see movies without some idea of what it is going to be like. It has been rare for me to walk out of a movie thinking, man I was so jipped I shouldn’t have paid for that, none in recent memory. I have been disappointed with movies, but they have been worth the price of entry. (The only movie in recent memory that I would have asked for my money back was “First Knight” but it was free)

I have gotten my money back because of a noisy and rude audience (I left during the movie). I have also gotten my money back from a theatre piece where the play was horrible.

So who do the publishers think they are thinking that they have a right to getting their money back?

Because they had a contract for the developer to make a product to a certain level of standard before a specified period in time, and they didn’t develop said product?

It's not like they got ripped off, THEY chose the developer now THEY have to deal with the "bad" movie just like the rest of us have to, by putting it down to experience and moving on.

They choose the developer based off of the misinformation provided by the developer. Which, if you attribute that to purchasing a product, they have the right for a refund.

It isn’t like this is just the loss of N millions of dollars here either, assuming that they are going to re-develop with someone else, it is the cost of 2N (not including inflation), and the interest they lost.

Still, this comes down to poor logic; punishing a publisher who wants to do right by their customers, because other publishers publish s*** games.

Secondly, wait for what? Reviews? Until I play it myself, I will never know how good or bad a game is and by then I've already spent my hard earned.

Actually, I have to comment on this one point in singular.

I'm sure you don't have to experiance eating dog s*** to know how bad it is. Why do you have to experiance playing a game if reviewers (professional or amature) are telling you it is s***?

You don't.

It has been rare for me to walk out of a movie thinking, man I was so jipped I shouldn’t have paid for that, none in recent memory.

I can remember one, Alexander :(

I dont remember ever buying a game I hated enough to want to return it before EB existed. I guess games back then just didn't suck as much.

I generally ignore most reviews because they almost always have an agenda to push. Are you really that much of a lemming? "Everyone else says it good, so it must be good".

You dont have to believe every word of a review to get an idea if the game sucks or not. For example, if all the reviews mention its bug-ridden and has horrible graphics and mediocre sound, that gives you a pretty good indication of what to expect. Sure, reviewers may have different tastes in what makes a "good" game as far as gameplay goes, but technical stuff is generally not open to a whole lot of interpretation.

last edited by Khel at 11:09:24 09/Aug/05

Blaming the developer is f***ing stupid, especially blaming the deveoper when you have NO ideas wht actually went on other than that press release.

Before the project started there would have been a schedule and Jowood would have been deleiver numerous builds before the game got to this stage. If the game was so s*** they had PLENTY of time to let Perceptions know about it and/or cancell the title. It would have been pretty easy to tell a long time before nearly gold that the game didn't meet thier standards.

My guess as to what happened is that Jowood conned Perceptions into signing a dodgy contract giving them both rights to the source and the right to get the deveopment costs back if the contract was cancelled. They saw an opportunity to get a nearly finished game for free and they went for it.

Its extremely tough out there for independent deveopers ATM as the publishers have all the power and you have to be a very good businessman to make sure that any deal you sign with a publisher doesnt give them the option to leave the deveoplers in the lurch.

Anyone praising Jowood's actions needs to get a clue.

I can remember one, Alexander :(

Oh, your right. The first half of Alexander was ok because it was intermixed with real blood and guts violence you could just ignore the fagmosexuals at work.

You must be either god or a lemming.

No, I'm certianly not a lemming, and believe it or not I don't think I am a god.
Your argument seems to be build on absolutes (love or hate, god or lemming), when in reality it isn't that. There are a lot of really s***ty games out there, I am more than willing to read up on them before spending my money.

I mean, it doesn't have to change my life, it just has to keep me entertained for a few days.

I dont remember ever buying a game I hated enough to want to return it before EB existed. I guess games back then just didn't suck as much.

I do, "Pro Evolution Soccer 4". And yet, it got rave reviews. Can someone please explain why I am wrong in disliking Pro Evolution Soccer 4 when everyone else gave it such a high rating?

You dont have to believe every word of a review to get an idea if the game sucks or not. For example, if all the reviews mention its bug-ridden and has horrible graphics and mediocre sound, that gives you a pretty good indication of what to expect. Sure, reviewers may have different tastes in what makes a "good" game as far as gameplay goes, but technical stuff is generally not open to a whole lot of interpretation.

I agree 100%. If reviews say a game is bug-ridden then I will generally stay away from it (except for BF2, LOL).

No, I'm certianly not a lemming, and believe it or not I don't think I am a god.
Your argument seems to be build on absolutes (love or hate, god or lemming), when in reality it isn't that. There are a lot of really s***ty games out there, I am more than willing to read up on them before spending my money.

Don't get me wrong, I do read up on reviews, it's just that I would have missed out on many hours of entertainment if I took their word for it. The opposite is also true, where I feel "ripped" because a so called good game didn't meet my expectations, e.g. Pro Evolution Soccer 4. (Give me Sensible Soccer any time).

I mean, it doesn't have to change my life, it just has to keep me entertained for a few days.

Amen to that. However, I can only think of one game that has that kind of impact, Ultima IV.

You start off by saying:

when you have NO ideas wht actually went on other than that press release.

but then go on to make just as many assumptions as everyone else has. Do you have another source of info we dont know about? Because nowhere does it indicate the game was "nearly gold". It says it was supposed to come out in October, but the game obviously isn't nearly gold or there wouldn't be such a violent reaction on Jowood's behalf. If the game was going along well and was about to go gold, why would they pull it and deny themselves profit? Obviously theres a problem there, publishers dont scrap titles and put themselves out of pocket just to be spiteful.

I think he is saying that Jowood intentally created a contract that could be used to smack the developer in the balls.
The publisher pumped $'s in and then when the game got to a decent stage they made up some crud about the game not performing. So pulled the pin, then as per contract they sued the developer into getting most of the $'s back PLUS the source code and game content. Which would in theory be giving to another company, Jowood's good mate Bobwood, who would quickly compleate the game for little $'s and Jowood gets MUCH profit providing they get most of their inital $'s back.


To me it sounds like a little from both extreams. Jowood made a contract that had this option, and the developers probably didnt perform quite well enough for Jowood to make back the cash, so this was the other option of making back the cash.
However as Khel pointed out, we know so little of what is going on that anything we say is opinion and pretty much uselss.

The end result being no Stargate game for now.

I dont know if getting all the source code is really the bonus everyone seems to be thinking it is. I mean, if its as bad as the press release makes out, one would think its not going to much use to another developer who takes over the project anyway. And even if it was useful, it'd still take months to sift through everything and figure out what the hell was going on and how all their code worked. I dare say its a lot more complex than just handing it over to another company and having an instant stargate game.

But really, who cares what the story is, Perception were making a crappy Stargate game that didn't utilise the license to anywhere near its potential, so heres hoping the next guy who gets the contract has more vision.

You're on crack. The humans have a grand total of 2 ships (one of which isn't even in this galaxy anymore), and some fighters. How can you possibly make an RTS where one side only has 2 units? If you did it as a ground-based RTS you could maybe stretch it a little furthur, but the fact of the matter is the humans in Stargate really dont have much variation or equipment compared to all of the other races. They'd be a pretty boring/pointless side to have in an RTS.

They could... I dont know... make up MORE units? It is a game after all.

First off: The game was nowhere near AAA quality at E3, even after playing it for a minute or so you could tell that there was no real direction in any facet of development. JoWood cancelling it because they didn't like it makes perfect sense, and I'd think they'd be crazy not to.

However, the "pay back milestone checks" part of the contract strikes me as a little fishy, since it's an absurd proposition as a default clause. If you're swarmy enough to convince a publisher you can make a AAA game when you have no experience and no staff, you're smart enough to get that pointed out if it was explicitly in the contract.

In a normal development process, the money from those milestones would have been used to pay salaries, and a "pay back" clause would be simply not feasible. The fact that JoWood are asking for money back implies that the swarmy higher-ups might have done something with the money besides "paying business costs".

On the upside, at least it wouldn't be the first Australian developer to do so recently.

1. Since when has JoWood seemed to care about quality before? every other game published by them is of quite a low standard... making their claim seem very iffy, and seem to be an attempt to kill off perception, get the money they invested back, and thus get the game for free.

Or exactly how broken the product was.

They could... I dont know... make up MORE units? It is a game after all.

Then it wouldn't be SG:1, it would SG:Greazy is a fagot. I don't know why, but the latter doesn't sound so appealing.

;)

Thats a good point actually, it was actually Perception that secured the rights I think. But didn't they secure the rights based on the alliance they had formed with JoWood? Like, wasn't that part of their initial pitch? They come to the table with a full development and publishing solution ready to go, so without the publisher or the developer I wonder if either party will even be allowed to keep the rights...

Perception seem to be very, very quiet about the whole thing though, that doesn't cast them in the best light. You'd think they'd be making their own press release asap stating their side of the case, and yet, still nothing...

alexander was s***!!!

Only those involved truely know what's going on, but if it's as stated above that perception holds the rights to the stargate lisence, not Jowood, and perception wants to or is continuing to developer the game, then jowood have every right to pursue getting financial returns from their investment if perception plan to ship the game to another developer. They've forked out millions (the original deal was for something like $8 million, but that could have been several games) to develop a product, and then if they weren't happy with perceptions performance they would except some sort of reimbursement for the money spent developing it.

However if they expect to get money from perception AND gain the source and assets to the game, I reckon they're dreaming. You can't pay someone for doing a job, and then ask for your money back cause the job wasn't done good enough, but you wanna keep the results of the job anyway. It'd be like going to maccas and buying a burger, having it cooked and brought to you, deciding you didn't like the look of it, but still wanted to take it home and put real cheese on it...just not pay for it.

However if they expect to get money from perception AND gain the source and assets to the game, I reckon they're dreaming. You can't pay someone for doing a job, and then ask for your money back cause the job wasn't done good enough, but you wanna keep the results of the job anyway.

The person who is paying for the work owns all of it and they must believe that perception misrepresented themselves which is how they expect a court to give them back their money.

I have seen artists contracted to build statues of something, produce something really s*** and been forced to pay back as much of the money as they can and the company gets to keep anything they did before.

I can understand your point with that, but if perception owns the rights to the stargate name and likenesses (we have no idea what the terms of their agreement are), that's a different situtation. Perception may be trying to ship the game to other publishers and any agreement they come to with another publisher would most likely cover reimbursing jowood of their investment to gain rights to the assets and source created by perception. I guess it all depends on the contract perception signed, and what they're liable for and where their rights lay.

The one thing we can all safely agree on is that JoWood has some s***ty web developers. If anybody should be forced to pay back money, it should be their web devs ;p

The Perception website hates Firefox as well, the formatting all goes to s***.

They surely where a match made in heaven

Just thought I'd not on the Eurogamer forums a guy who reckons he works for Jowood as a consultant (tell them where to cut down on $$). Said that they expected this to happen from the start, they managed to get the dev to sign the contract saying they would have to give all the cash back and the complete assets of the game thus far.

He said that it probably means that the dev's will not be in million dollar debts.

Gotta love when the big boys f*** the little boys.... the little boys should do their research.

Ohh well ^_^

According to this interview Perception is determined to finish the game, as well as developing a second Stargate based game.

The fact still stands though that their Stargate game, at this point in time, doesn't look like anything special.

The fact still stands that any game based on such a long-running movie/television franchise is NEVER going to meet expectation.

The fact still stands that any game based on such a long-running movie/television franchise is NEVER going to meet expectation.

Sure, but the game also looks like pure s***.

awesome bump Joe

"A few pages old" might just be the understatement of the year. I didn't even remember making my post on the first page this thread is so old (I was seriously about to reply with something similar until I noticed I already had).

You get:
WORST FIRST POST EVER AWARD

i have written an outline for a Stargate RTS

/me putting my eternal sceptisism aside
What engine you planning on using or do you plan on starting from scratch?