CA Developer GOES PUBLIC - Julian McKinlay's Statement

[@Volound]

read it. comment on it. medium.com/@julianmckinlay/total-war-rome-ii-and-creative-assembly-my-statement-ten-years-on-d964f65b0a8f

[@SwordEncarmine]

thats quite the bombshell

[@Folkmjolk]

58 min read is a generous amount, i read it in 35 min. it's definitely worth the time to read.

[@Volound]

@@Folkmjolk watch out guys we got a badass over here.

[@Folkmjolk]

​@@Volound 58 min is a long time. it might discourage some from reading it. the article is worth reading and it shouldn't take more than 40 min to read.

[@imperialcitizen4811]

CA = Constant Apologies

[@smoke12785]

They must have taken bullshido advice from Steven Seagal.

[@Livvvid]

I genuinely think this is planned in their releases. "Implement terrible mechanics or broken game. Claim we are getting death threats to gas light genuine criticism. Apologize later once we didn't hit our sales metrics and claim we will 'do better' 😂😂😂😂😂😂"

[@MasonDixonAutistic]

Constipated Asses

[@Albukhshi]

CA = Creative Aberrations

[@notgoddhoward5972]

Just amazes me how Rome 2 is the Hollywood predator producer of Total war games. People still coming out with stories all these years and it deserves it

[@Septemberl4d]

Blizzard wants to talk to you about that. It also wouldnt shock me if EA had the same issue. Like these mega game companies always breed this incomitance. This is what happens when you rapid expand and try just brute force make games. You get a mess of code and bugs.

[@mscapeh4451]

​@@Septemberl4dand hire dia and actvists instead of skilled real workers

[@iratepirate3896]

I built a new PC for Rome 2. I was furious

[@Volound]

i did too. everyone did lol

[@walternelson2687]

Funny, I remember people complaining about the direction the series was going after Shogun 2's release. At least a newly built PC can still be used for other games. Want a real horror story? I pre-ordered SPORE.

[@owainevans89]

​@@walternelson2687 you poor bastard

[@ayadealjanabi1544]

Same...My disappointment was immeasurable and my day was ruined. Edit. Just to add; Remember when we would build a pc just for a total war game? I remember them times...,...

[@jamessalvatore7054]

I was told to buy a new PC by CA's retarded ass fanboys when the floor in the game vanished into oblivion and ships were sailing through castle walls. Fuck, 2013 was peak retardation for gaming.

[@edding8400]

Creative Disassembly

[@F_Yale]

Must've been incredibly stressful and damaging your psychological health to have been blamed for something you fought an uphill battle to actively amend.

[@notgoddhoward5972]

Goes to show that regular Devs even if they are leading a team shouldn't be out there giving customers feature breakdowns if they know the game is dead on arrival, not worth getting a target on your back. Let the hype man marketers take the hit - it's quite literally their job they get paid to do.

[@Albukhshi]

@@notgoddhoward5972 In his case, he didn't even know the game was dead on arrival. Which is all the more reason not to say anything: if you don't know, say nothing. Safer that way.

[@ulture]

@@notgoddhoward5972 not at CA it's not. at CA marketing's job is to run the studio and tell the devs how they should design and make games

[@TheInverseGentleman]

Paused and read the post, holy shit. It all makes perfect sense but what I can't believe is all these years later it's still possible to make me mad about Rome 2. Feel really bad for this guy.

[@VikingBlonde]

Without Julian, capture points 'aka Baggage Train' would have been mandatory in almost all battles. You are right that even with the whole internet hating him and management not letting us vindicate him, Julian continued to do his damnest to make ROME II the best it could be despite the terrible choices of the command team

[@JB-hp5ii]

Ironically, Warhammer 40K takes place in a universe where there is total tech stagnation, as no one alive knows how systems fundamentally operate or are created. A world of tech and capacity debt - CA should be right at home then. 🙄

[@TheManeymon]

it's hilarious how accurate that is

[@mrhavoc97]

In the off chance McKinlay ever watches the video, hopefully he finds vindication in all of this and that the guy can move on and CA finally get the pan

[@redtsun67]

At this point I don't believe we will ever get a traditional total war game again. Egypt was the last chance and they blew it, wasted all their money and good faith on that and Hyenas, and now it's just finished. Making a traditional total war game at this point probably sounds "too risky" for the marketing team to greenlight.

[@GrubHuncher]

Good. They won’t have a monopoly on these types of RTS battle games anymore. All we’ve had for over a decade is Total War. Now another company will have a chance and we’ll probably get something great.

[@redtsun67]

@@GrubHuncher but are any companies making games on the same scale?

[@thedukeofdeathpt6262]

​@@redtsun67The guy behind the Darth mods for Total war now has his own studio that is making games that are directly competing with Total war, see the Ultimate General and Admiral series of games.

[@redtsun67]

@@thedukeofdeathpt6262 interesting.

[@ghostblackmormor8120]

Yeah also seems like anyone who knew how to work, have long left the company. A common routine in big studios now.

[@MarktheRude]

"After two years of hearing about “human face” we shipped a game that couldn’t render human faces."

[@Albukhshi]

But no game has yet produced a better rendition of goldfish breathing...

[@seileen1234]

"AI’s deficiencies at the time I worked there were by design, which is to say that designers instructed us not to improve it in certain ways, because they believed that players enjoyed being able to dominate the AI and that we shouldn’t deprive them of that." This pisses me off

[@ChrisSmith-mi2zo]

See I like strategy games but I'm bad at strategy games (I'm slightly better in the battle layer). I am the type to set the difficulty low and play a campaign as a total power-fantasy map painter while I'm watching videos on another screen. So basically they're talking about me. But even at that pathetic level, the AI needs to put up some resistance and have the occasional interesting battle. Not the wild extremes of rolling over for you and deathstack turtling single provinces. And most importantly, the way I play is only an option, not the standard for the majority that wants an actual challenge.

[@seileen1234]

@@ChrisSmith-mi2zo And I think a lot of people agrees with you. I find hard to believe that ANY player if asked "you want a game with bad AI so you can win?" will gladly accept.

[@euricoaw1535]

@@ChrisSmith-mi2zo i just played WH3, there is no real improvement, it still the same stupid, cheesable ai, who can't even determined when to stop chasing my cav and when to reserve fresh unit to deal heavy hammer and anvil strategy

[@SeleucusNicator]

The launch of Rome 2 is a mental scar for me. I have friends who used to absolutely love the Total War franchise and Rome 2's launch killed that for most of them. Some played the later historical Total War games (Attila, Thrones, 3K) but others dropped the series completely. It also killed the community on small-medium-sized TW fan forum I used to visit daily. If it wasn't for Divide et Impera, I wouldn't play Rome 2 anymore.

[@mootedtols4865]

I'm sure there are people out there playing an unmodded rome 2, I can't stand it. I can't even stand the UI. We went from scrolls to translucent shimmery crap and a single global tax slider. I'm pretty sure the people making these choices never played RTW. -- it's mad. You take RTW, that was your breakout hit, and that's your model. You make it bigger, better, more men in units, more stuff to fight with, bigger siege battles. // instead they focused on rejigging the campaign. No troops without a general, regions expanded to cover more of the map // a city and its supporting slots now cover most of italy, for example; calling them "minor settlements" is just a fudge. limited building slots, you often have to knock things down to make more space, how stupid is that? I'm supposed to be building a city but I'm just juggling different %'s. etc. Capture points which he mentions, I got one right after launch. at the bottom of a hill. Had no idea, so set my troops up sensibly, a timer came ran out and I lost the battle and all my men died. I exited the game.

[@ddjay1363]

" If it wasn't for Divide et Impera, I wouldn't play Rome 2 anymore." Exactly the same for me. Divide et Impera makes Rome 2 an actual game. Modders have largley been keeping that game alive for a decade.

[@s4098429]

Same here

[@dolamrothknight]

@@ddjay1363 facts

[@Farron6]

Imagine not even being the lead designer, you do one video interview and now you’re the face of a beloved franchise. It flops, badly and you are now the target of enormous online hate. Meanwhile the actual lead designers, management and actual CEOs do NOTHING to protect you or mitigate this outrage. Shame on CA

[@DokturProfesur]

What they dont tell you is Volound and Legend had this dev tied up in a secret hostel somewhere in Turkmenistan, and that he was forced to make this statement at the point of a bayonet. I kid but I imagine somehow Vol will be blamed for this.

[@Volound]

shhhh dont tell anyone

[@obi-wan3916]

They are already saying this on the subreddit. Some people are commenting thinking volound wrote the article I'm not joking

[@BloodwyrmWildheart]

@@obi-wan3916 They are nothing if not predictable.

[@brendanworthington3888]

CA: "Piles yet more evidence that the company is a complete disaster." Reddit: "Don't bully the small family company. Volound did something." At best I expect "well a broken clock is right twice a day.

[@SplendidFactor]

Ah, I remember the launch of Rome II and the constant patches. All the game-breaking bugs and myriad of issues. The game today sits at a 5/10 for me in the state it's in now. Average Total War experience, I still play medieval 2 over it. At launch it was straight up 1/10, an unplayable mess where almost every mechanic was fundamentally broken (Civil War used to spawn 20 armies on top of your capital, I found it comical). The Divide et impera mod bumps it up to 6 or 7 out of 10 for me. They had also released an apology back then for Rome 2. Rename Creative Assembly to Creative Apology.

[@TheSpearman-vt3nb]

ive been playing med 2 mods real real hard

[@ChristianMihawk]

Divide et impera made it a 8/10 for me and without it.. maybe i would have never touched it again

[@DokturProfesur]

I remember buying this day one and being hyped to hell. As it turned out, the lack of the Seleucids was the least of my problems.

[@King.Leonidas]

​@@ChristianMihawk Yeah if you go and look at kami history is awesome channel you can find out how the game is broken on such a basic level as unit stats.

[@ddjay1363]

Yeh. I never play vanilla Rome 2 as it's just... shite really. I have Divide et Impera which makes Rome 2 an actual game.

[@diggman88]

Notice the trend. It's never a manager getting fired for anything.

[@Александр-ц8к3о]

Jesus christ i know that CA is company with insanly low morale But this... ...IS SHAMEFUL DISPLAY

[@Zombie1Boy]

OUR DEVELOPERS ARE RUNNING FROM THE FIELD!!

[@marcpaulus6291]

Man, all the CA Fanboys doing crunch time right now to hate on you and Legend

[@nikolajelikic7040]

Is there a chance to do an interview with Julian? Would be a blast to openly speak about all of this in a face to face format kinda Would be great if there could be a three way video you, legend, and Julian Fucking box office hit right there

[@jacobscott1433]

I've said for years that the core problem in the videogaming industry is leadership. When it was small teams of passionate people working on projects they loved leadership didn't matter that much, but now that teams are measured in triple digits over the spans of years, with contractors and employees and multiple managing departments spread across a single development cycle, leadership is more important than ever, and what do we have? Corporate middle managers straight out of fucking Office Space that have 0(zero)(nill) clue about videogames and even less understanding of basic leadership.

[@notgoddhoward5972]

"Leadership" with an IQ lower than my shoe size Pushing for capture points on maps so small and empty that an exhausted heavy cavalry unit can cross them in under a minute. Brilliant....

[@millerrotc1]

Seems to me the best thing for Total War would be for Sega to shutter the studio and give the IP to CA Sofia, but rename it. Build it into a full studio and give the people there backing and the freedom to build a new engine for the game from ground up instead of trying to finesse a playable build of a game from so much technical debt. Admittedly that's a huge cost in terms of development time and resources but I don't think the copy and paste and reskin from previous games is working anymore.

[@CAuMOH]

When I go to attached link, it says "Error 410. The author deleted this Medium story."

[@Volound]

thanks, youtube cut off the end of the link and i pasted a broken link. fixed.

[@liaminwales]

I forgot about this, there was a lot of blame pushed on to the AI dev who left. Not sure if it's this time or an older dev who was blamed, it's been so long now. Back then I did not think much about it, just assumed it was hard to replace the dev. Now I am older it strikes me how bad it looks to blame one dev for all the problems with a game, it's management not a single dev who deserves to take the blame.

[@mootedtols4865]

Shogun 2 was solid. The changes made by rome 2 were largely in the campaign - it's almost as though those in charge forgot that these games are about the battles. The campaigns can give setup and context, but the battles themselves are why we play the game. In all honesty what I see lately from CA is just trash/ the battles look and play terribly, a click fest with confetti arrow trails everywhere.

[@liaminwales]

@@mootedtols4865 Shogun 2 is still the TW I play most, when I feel the need it's always the one I instal. Still holds up well today, graphics dont look dated. Well ignoring the LOD ~

[@mootedtols4865]

@@liaminwales yeah my old man played the original medieval up to medieval 2, said he wanted to try a new one so I got him shogun 2 complete. It was an obvious choice. The modern titles are kind of a build-a-bear with dlc/mods -- on top of the other issues! edit: just checked, he's clocked 200 hours so far and says he's starting a new one soon. I made the right choice. He's still got FOTS to play.

[@liaminwales]

@@mootedtols4865 I still have my Shogun 2 box, picked up the gold edition with all the DLC (cool gold picture on black box, the card one not the plastic one they pushed out later). I relay miss the cool boxes Total War games used to have, maps and cards etc. I regret losing my Total War Eras box set, still have most the parts just not the box. I did stat reading the Dev post, I was thinking of the older AI dev who was blamed for Empire's AI. Kind of amazing that both times the AI dev's got to take the heat by management.

[@tomasz9429]

I read through the article, and boy oh boy... The guy just repeats what you've been saying, and what people interested in the video game industry also suspected. I mean people who are interested on a deeper level than buying a new game to play each month or week. I quilte like the final paragraphs of the article, because it contains conclusions casual fans like me drew a long time ago, and just didn't have a confirmation from the inside. Now I do, but it doesn't make me feel any better. Worse in fact. The quadruple A video game industry is screwed beyond human comprehension.

[@honeybadger6275]

Yup, it gets really scary when you realize it isn't just vidya game companies that are like this, its everyone.

[@tomasz9429]

@@honeybadger6275 obviously, but! With video game industry being young, there was a period, a brief one, when regardess if it was a big studio, or a few guys in a basement, they made games because they wanted to. Now we have a suit with his nose glued to an Excel spreadsheet deciding what to make and what to drop. It's a travesty.

[@g00gleisgayerthanaids56]

Been saying it for years, Creative Assembly is creatively bankrupt.

[@Dolfy]

Made me think of TWWH and how people shat on how the sieges because they thought the AI was just too horrible for sieges when they've finally introduced a lot of pretty sophisticated packages which was talked about during the GDC talk back in 2017. But some fucking guy had the thought of just making prefab asset flip single/double/triple wall sieges that makes one question what is the AI supposed to do with all these packages. I know McKinlay moved on by then but it still seems like the design/management hasn't learned lessons.

[@alanywalany6460]

What sophisticated packages?

[@Dolfy]

@@alanywalany6460 kzbin.info/www/bejne/qXnSnZyoictseas Reserves being implemented for once, entry point evaluation so it's not just the AI killing themselves constantly by attacking the same spot which has been a pretty big issue with sieges.

[@funkwolf]

Managerial incompetence is an eternal echoing issue in the gaming industry. The people with passion are working on the games, making sure they work and are cool, while the talentless money interested people grab the managing and top positions and simply steer the ship unto the rock. Super sad for the industry; may sound harsh but these people are like corporate parasites.

[@etienne8110]

That s in all industries. Capitalism suxx the soul out of evrything. You ll find amazing people in industry welders, metal workers, designers, engineers etc.. passionate about the job. But pressured for margins because "shareholders need more returns"...

[@totallynuts7595]

@@etienne8110 "Capitalism suxx the soul out of evrything." No, it's the greed. It's the normie crowd who buy a game that looks good and shower it with praise then drop it after 1 week. As long as enough of them buy the game, as long as the greedy get their pockets filled with cash, the games will stay shit. So don't buy them. Go buy the games which deserve your money, the games made by devs who left CA, by indie studios, etc. The whole point of capitalism is that you can vote with your wallet. And since they got rid of game demos, and reviews are not trustworthy for the most part, I highly encourage people to take to the high seas (safely) and get the games to try them out for themselves.

[@Korvinian4601]

@@totallynuts7595 "The whole point of capitalism is that you can vote with your wallet" Yeah, and the people already have voted, and this is what we get.

[@totallynuts7595]

@@Korvinian4601 And the fact that CA always seems to financially struggle isn't a sign that people don't buy their shit any more? BTW, dunno what happened but I can't see my comment anymore. The one you responded to

[@Korvinian4601]

@@totallynuts7595 "And the fact that CA always seems to financially struggle isn't a sign that people don't buy their shit any more?" Its less to do with people not buying their shit, but generally their own incompotence that led to their down fall. I still see people hyping up over the latests Warhammer 3 DLC. This also goes for the other game comapnies as well min you.

[@Grabacr-pl3wy]

Games used to be by nerds for nerds. Now its an investment dictated by board room decisions and marketing teams.

[@s4098429]

Significant that he doesn’t name names; after his name has been dragged through the mud for 10 years, he doesn’t name the true villains of this sad saga.

[@TheSpearman-vt3nb]

@Volound. as long as you keep fighting, i will stand beside you. i wont give up either

[@jakeparker9624]

I wasn't familiar with the name in the 2009 article so I looked both up. William wilberforce was the leader of an abolitionist movement. A for-profit company actually just used their website to publish the message "we wish we could force our programmer to work on Empire Total War instead of being with his family, but unfortunately we aren't allowed to legally own him as our property anymore so that's why the ai sucks. If you're a genius programmer that wants to help fix what he left us, send a resume." That's absolutely crazy.

[@Volound]

also i think the post was edited because it previously said "pick up where the deserter left off". so it was even worse.

[@willek1335]

Just finished reading it, and wow. That was riverting. The things I noticed prior to ROME 2 realse, turned out to be true. My biggest gripe was interacting with employees of CA compared to developers Riot Games. I could interact with Riot Games employees as they stream as human beings. CA employees reminded me of exiled North Korea citizens.

[@heathclark318]

DUDE... You have to be tired of the Victory Laps you have been running the last year or more... My Lord its GLORIOUS!!!

[@RemusKingOfRome]

I feel partly responsible for Rome 2 launch problems, I was the one who pushed for "Vinea" siege mobile house. A small hut that attacking soldiers would hide in, moving to the walls. On the forums, I would push for this day after day. When the game was released, it did have a vinea but it didn't work properly, the hut would move faster than the soldiers inside it, leaving the soldiers behind to be shot at. Now I realize devs tried to do what players wanted, BUT we asked for too much, for the limited time they had to release date. Thus Rome2 was a mess. If the Release date was extended 1 or 2 years, many of these problems could have been fixed. ggh

[@notgoddhoward5972]

Don't be. If you order an expensive chocolate ice-cream with a dozen toppings and you get brown mud inside a waffle cone it's not really on you.

[@chrish1657]

YOU MONSTER

[@MasonDixonAutistic]

Don't feel bad: every feature in a game carries an opportunity-cost, and CA made a massive number of completely unnecessary changes to existing features like the battle combat systems, on top of all the new features they were wanting to introduce(some of which were poorly explained by the design team to the programmers that have to actually write it), they didn't leave any room for AI functions to be built for most of it. You're worried about your swamp-ass while CA leadership is leaking out their adult-diapers.

[@totallynuts7595]

My dude, that's why they have managers. It's the managers and leaders at CA who are to blame. And the fact that Total War games stayed shit to this day reinforces the fact that management is the issue. Check the Glassdoor reviews video from two weeks ago if you don't think that's the case.

[@AidanDracole]

While I think it'd be easy to say one player on an internet forum can't influence decisions so easily, I think the point is that even if you were an investor (which you sort of are by virtue of being a paying customer) in CA, you're not responsible for project planning. If things had gone properly, design and programming leads would've had a time and motion breakdown of what adding this feature would need to be added to the game without screwing it over, then, a CM would reply with an explanation that it would take more time and resources to implement than was available at the time and hopefully it can come in a future game or a DLC. Of course, what actually happened was some bright spark saw the coolness of the idea and browbeat the development team to shoehorn it in without appropriate QC because they had no time and did it alongside having to troubleshoot all the other added crap. As a customer, it is your right to ask for features to a product you're paying money for and it is your responsibility to demand it be of a certain quality. It's not your responsibility if you ask for a feature, however zealously, and they sell you a plate they just shat on. It's entirely CA's responsibility to recognise excessive crunch dev periods which will lead to burned out staff and pissed off customers and avoid this by being realistic with what was achievable.

[@mootedtols4865]

The campaign taking precedence over battles is mentioned -- I think this is a running theme with the later games. The earlier games campaigns were simple, but deceptively so. For example medieval 2, the way trade worked and grew felt quite organic to the campaign. In the modern ones, there's lots more to click, but limited building slots. Buildings have been replaced by flat % button clicks through what was once a clever idea for a tech tree, and they've repaced recruitment with the same system in more recent titles. With the regions now being one central settlement and a few 'minors' covering a vast area with armies limited to a general -- just what is there to actually do? Click % this, and % that? edit: they've added complexity in terms of getting 'your build' right, but the map is primarily where you deploy your forces (and build your cities). In the old games where you put your army on the map would be where you would fight on the battle map. The campaigns have been more (needlessly) complex and disconnected from the battles, that's my point.

[@lateralus6512]

Strategy takes place on the campaign map. Tactics are used on the battlefield. I prefer strategy games over tactical ones. I’ve given up on Total War now and play Paradox map games instead.

[@mootedtols4865]

@@lateralus6512 well that's just it, if you really want a map game you just play something else. They've simplified all the stuff to do with your armies while adding more in tech-tress and managing a province with a central settlement. You can't train a few crossbows from your island and quickly get them on a ship to a city nearby, you need a general and tech unlock! It misses the point of what the campaign is about -- as you say, the map is for strategy, and strategy in this game is your units. -- take medieval 2 with the armour upgrades, you'd see it in the battles, it wasn't just a stat boost. That's the real difference, in rome 2 you just take a province with blacksmith and all your units across the map can get +whatever number to their stats.

[@ChrisSmith-mi2zo]

I had to explain this to a friend several years back (not long after Rome 2 release) who is a diehard Paradox fan. He was somehow totally unaware that TW had a battle layer, only saw the relatively simpler world map, agents, and diplomacy, and determined that TW was junk. How I explained it was basically that TW, certainly in the classic titles, was a battle strategy game, and the grand strategy layer is really just a battle generator. It exists to create contexts and conditions for battles to occur. By using a limited set of grand-strategy elements, you have a tool to create the who, what, where, when, why, and how of individual battles. Everything on the world map was relevant to individual battles. Upgrades, terrain, weather are all localized, you aren't stacking factionwide buffs to gain grand world-map advantages, you're preparing to fight battles in that particular region. Diplomacy is how you start or avoid battles. Agents are how you influence battles before they begin. If you want a regional unit on another front, you have to build them in that region and march them over. If you got some kind of upgrade, your armies in the field might have to go somewhere to receive that upgrade. You would disband outdated units to replace them instead of being converted on their own. In Paradox games, all battles are different degrees of autoresolve. You can have more control over this in HoI4, or less control in CK3 or Stellaris, but you aren't commanding individual units in any battle strategy. Everything still provides context to battles, but conflict is a tool to influence the world map, where TW is the other way around, the world map influencing battles. In TW, not every battle will be worth fighting manually, but autoresolve should be treated more like a failure of the world map to generate a sufficiently interesting or challenging battle to play.

[@TeacherTaj]

Those fucking flags, man!!! My soul just wept.

[@Adam-dv2je]

This game got me into PC gaming, I was so excited to get a PC and play this return to Rome. Watching this crash and burn was maddening.

[@datboi7491]

Babe wake up, new Volound video just dropped. I never comment, but I wanted to say that I've enjoyed your videos throughout the years, be it your old Fallout 4 LP or the many Legendary Campaigns for Shogun 2. Keep being based.

[@DerSteppenwolf1979]

Posted your video on steam forums. Let´s see how long will they take to lock the thread

[@zetter13]

Such a scumbag move by CA leadership to not even come Mckinlay's defence when he was taking customer rage for Rome 2, All they needed was to make a brief statement that its never okay to single out one developer and dogpile on them but instead direct their anger onto the Company as a whole

[@timothyoreilly6571]

Someone needs to just make a competitor to TW. They’ve fucked it up they’re incapable of making a good game anymore. It’s probably not a good game for a design heavy team since it’s a technical and needs to function well.

[@yvindlavold5741]

CA would die if Paradox even just tried to make a Real Time Tactics game.

[@totallynuts7595]

I played Myth (the 90's game for the Macintosh) for the the first time recently, and I was wondering why devs don't do this sort of game anymore... Because of management or sheer incompetence. Only way we getting spiritual successors to TW or Myth is indie projects, but the task is monumental. Unreal and unity don't play nice with every game genre, see Homeworld 3 for the latest example, so you'd need a custom engine for that and most indie projects don't go that far... And fuck Paradox, the amount of DLC they have for their games is as insane as GW with Warhammer...

[@Rifqiethehero]

@@totallynuts7595 yeah, they didn't even fix the messes they make in the last dlc for CK3 and now they even announced a new dlc, fuck them, i'm glad I didn't spend more money on Paradox games

[@novitrix9671]

That devs work experience story gives me extra depression, like gasoline on a bondfire. Why did he not come clear sooner. Deepest sympathies.

[@agentduck9285]

Man, everything that we suspected about higher ups ruining games like this is true? No way! We were assured so convincingly before that it wasn't!

[@Kinuhbud]

It's all been downhill since Rome II. Warhammer was just enjoying the mud slide on the way down... feeling *very* dirty after the ride...

[@Coconut-219]

Coming out like this has really regained people's respect for him, a few hundred thousand other videogame & movie company employees & directors that have been thrown under the bus by nonsensical corporate direction should really learn from this example (instead of doubling down and insulting the customer).

[@alexmannen1991]

please have him on as a interview

[@haldir108]

Very interesting article. I hope you reach out to him in hopes of getting an interview.

[@Cynndora]

lookin forward to the future breakdowns.

[@Warmaker01]

CA was just coming off the amazing run they had from Shogun 2 and her DLCs. If you told me in 2012 that after riding that high, CA would excrete out Rome II the way they would, I wouldn't have believed you. Funny enough, I never got into Total War news too much until AFTER Rome II. I bought and played the games. Back when RTW was new I participated in Rome Total Realism oriented forums for history stuff. Outside this, not much, so I never got to associate names with a game. AFTER Rome II's disaster, that's when I got more into the news of it. I had to know exactly why in the hell we got Rome II the way we did. Watching CA stumble through in the years since Rome II has been frustrating.

[@BaxterGT3]

I'm down to watch/listen to the 6 hour version

[@unstablenecrophage278]

Perhaps its because i purchased Rome 2 late but i loved it. When DEI mod come out i still play it 9 years later after my first copy.

[@Liberater4589]

Damn I remember that interview way back when

[@jamessalvatore7054]

Holy shit... Julian Mckinlay... a name I havent heard for a long ass time following the AI of the millenia

[@LegendaryAbysss]

I had friends that played TW and were so disappointed and I was also upset

[@Robertseley]

Imagine how Rome 2 would have been received if it dropped as the DEI modded version, I love Rome 2 with DEI, I think it’s the pinnacle of historical TW. It’s a shame modders had to fix it in the first place!

[@rebidiom2578]

So in reality Empire was a point where TW stopped improving massively and rome 2 is the TW from which the series regressed and only positive income holds them in this toxic cesspit. Heh.

[@TheBigSlimySnail]

Great video. This is KZbin at its best

[@lcdcstudios]

going to sleep but now I can't

[@cyllananassan9159]

how is it possible you and legend have the same video 2 hours apart??? , do you collaborate together? , regards

[@decay7883]

First I want to express my sympathy towards Julian, receiving that amount of backslash was unjustified, and the way he handled it was professional and worth an excuse from the community. Second good job Volound for bring it up, it's a very good read, at least for people who lived those times. Third the article makes a lot of sense on the big question in the mind of TW players, "what happened?". Finally years of suspicions are corroborate from an insider. In the end I feel that CA can't change, if empire rome2 saga arena warhammer3 and yenas have happened it's because mistake were never addressed and the list it's too long to believe "this one" or "the next one" will bring them.

[@SuziQ499]

This comes as no shock people have been saying it for years after 2013/14 when the people who really cared about CA left and the Suits took over especially in the boardroom , The more money CA make the more money they get on top of their wage as a bonus and the easy way to make money is cut corners cut jobs and hire cheap labour while inflating the price of your product with no competition.

[@wulfgarpl]

Honestly, out of every dev studios right now I think only GGG has proper management structure. They move actual passionate gamers though company ladder. Mark "Neon" is best example. For other studios I have this feeling that you end up in managment role after some leadership course and on the first day of the job you figure out two thing out. How to make things worse and who will take the blame.

[@GhenTuongHB]

By the way, is the future hardware that Attila was developed for exists yet?

[@notgoddhoward5972]

I'm from 2077, Skyrim 3 has been re-released 7 times and we also got a new Half Life game but no, we still waiting to get Attila ready PCs. Only Emperor Elon Musk has a computer to run it at medium settings...

[@druzillakay945]

Cant say im surprised. Poor guy.

[@fartz3808]

It really looks like CA is the most ruthless cutthroat company in game development, perhaps moreso than the likes of Blizzard even.

[@Mr.BlueOfficial]

I remember seeing this young guy being posted on this interview and knew the game was going to fail.

[@SpudCommando]

a lot of CA's leadership problems also echo with sega live service team problems at PSO2 in Japan. they go back and forth with their stupid management lol

[@gavinohtg]

Honestly not too surprised. Seems like even if we get medieval 3 its not going to be worthwhile. The company has been cooked for years, the rot set in, and now its leaking out.

[@pigspigs76]

On launch you could rack up tons of frags with a pike unit with very little effort … today in 2024 you can glitch rampaging elephants to rack up tons of frags with very low effort 😂

[@1001Balance]

There should be CA fraction in warhammer 4, just trolls and witches

[@alexmannen1991]

these people need to call out the managers by name. these narcissist cant keep tanking games and getting promotions by throwing someone else under the bus.

[@razorback9999able]

So, this is how creativity dies, with complacency and pickyness.

[@huyhuy9611]

Should I blame it for AGILE philosophy? I think waterfall should be used as "standard" application development process especially game, operating system,... Abusing agile with SaaS is making games so much worse now.

[@totallynuts7595]

I heard the agile term before, checked it out to make sure what it meant. I think the biggest problem is how it's implemented. It works for small studios with early access games, since the whole playerbase basically does QA work for them. In big budget, due to management pushing for cash flow, you end up with large patches and dlc, making a full price AAA game seem worse than indie. One thing in Agile absolutely doesn't work for either AAA or indie: "Working software over comprehensive documentation". Design documents are essential for laying out the vision for the game. Starfield is a game made with no design doc and it shows, the quest designers didn't know what mechanics would end up in the game and followed the rule of "every mechanic is optional" so they made quests around the most basic ones that the player can't opt out of. The effect being that everything in the game is basically optional and so you have no incentive to engage with any of it.

[@jamie_d0g978]

The only redeemable quality about Rome 2 total flop is DEI

[@mootedtols4865]

They need to go back to where they were at FOTS, or even Medieval 2. A lot of things just work so much better in those games. Unless some of the design and formula changes made for Rome 2 are reversed, just don't bother with total war. It's not going to get any better. I say that as someone who has even played a heavily modded rome 2 quite a bit, and even with years of patches and modding -- I'd recommend shogun 2 over it to someone who wants to get into total war. Any day. The further forward you go from there (attila was the last real attempt) the worse it gets, only made somewhat fun by warhammers crazy units. -- The 'campaign focus' they've claimed to have for more recent titles seems to me just fluff. The battles have had no substantial improvements -- in fact, they've gotten worse, as you clearly demonstrate in your videos. The campaigns look boring, lots of things to click but very little to do. modern total war

[@MasonDixonAutistic]

The article confirms one thing I've actually been right on(I was wrong on many other things): decision-makers at CA are sensitive narcissists that can't have adult business and work discussions. "Well run company is well run" doesn't make news headlines as much as "top company built upon failure: latest scandal!", but most companies that exist for more than a few years are definitely run well enough and are motivated to keep going, and avoid being defunct. The kind of 'business sense' which can afford to treat people as outright disposable, is rare, because it's sociopathic.

[@FinDan07]

Damn. I remember McKinlay from the rome 2 hype campaign and the guy looked extremely sleep deprived with his sunken eyes. later everyone including me made fun of him for the shitty AI the game had despite his big promises. now a decade later i see this and feel sorry for him. fuck CA

[@adamnoturfuknbusiness2367]

I like r2 🤷🏿‍♂️ im not a ca apologist, i hate every other tw since then but r2 is fine. Though yeah i understand it was beneath trash at launch. I hadnt even played r1 at that point

[@willek1335]

@volund Can we please name and shame the leadership / lead design, so no future game / humans ends up like this?

[@dgmetalhead]

It's insane how much hate you got over the years when your were right. Every single time.

[@lancehandy6648]

rome 2 was a birthing of a huge wave of games that were on their way to making the same mistake in a multitude of ways over the next decade. the biggest problem for video games is their popularity.... because now they're marketable. now the people that don't give any flying fucks about video games or any sort of playability or a realistic approach to how a gamer goes about choosing a game they enjoy and willing to spend money on are in charge and the demand of a games release with absolute disregard of the state it's in (seemingly for the most part). there were definitely disappointing releases prior to rome 2.... but prior it's almost expected a game isn't really playable upon launch. the state the industry is in isnt at all CAs fault, but they certainly didnt help anything and only stoked the flames.

[@phantomjoker5]

LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOO

[@zombiefolklore]

This does explain alot of how total war warhammer 3 was such a botched job and still is to a certain extent. I've noticed an ongoing trend with the leadership at CA designing gameplay features or making changes in patches to specifically discourage people playing in manners they don't like.

[@tymeksam1976]

True

[@thoronirgros188]

Still have nightmares about how terrible that game was on release.

[@cyllananassan9159]

So how is Rome 2 TODAY ? ... worth pirating?

[@zulazhar1259]

yes

[@KingTiger10588]

Look at how they butchered my Rome 😢

[@Renyth]

Shave Foam Display

[@alexmannen1991]

you are complicit in this if u didnt pirate the games

[@AbdulHannanAbdulMatheen]

👏🙂

[@redjacc7581]

..................and rome 2 is still shite.

[@Frank-ru5im]

Rome 2 still is my all time favorite total war by far. they turned it around.

[@totallynuts7595]

Why?

[@marcosgonza]

I stop wachting the video because he doesn't says anything. Just flamming CA without giving any relevant info. Maybe later he says.. but I am tiring of flammig. And it is boring.

[@MrRIIISEN]

Rome 2 was the first and last Total War I ever bought.

[@byshopwilliams8256]

Damn man, talk about bad luck I cant imagine Rome 2 being my first Total War game. I would probably have quit video games all together 😂

[@GrandAdmThrawn]

HistoryLegends in recommended, nice 👍

[@WTF2BlueTiger]

Ill finish the video but in the opening statement idk why hes trying to imply that rome 2 is by any means a bad game right now, it did indeed have a terrible launch but theyve reworked the game enough now for it to be a genuinely worthy successor, he can talk all about his experiences and mismanagement but I think its kind of silly to even add this part of his statement given that rome 2 now and rome 2 release are incredibly different games

[@Volound]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/hqnIlKZjn82jhaM kzbin.info/www/bejne/ooOnmoSuj7-Ko8U and then kzbin.info/www/bejne/h2PVdqR4g9OBj9k kzbin.info/www/bejne/a33al6l4rK6jbMk