Comments on: Whatever happened to Middle-Earth Online?

By: Lord of the Rings fan

Lord of the Rings fan — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:17:02 +0000

Curious story. I’ve never heard about the real situation in Sierra, and you post was very interesting to me. My boyfriend told me that his sister has worked in Sierra for a few years, so I’m going to ask her about details.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 01:58:38 +0000

I’m jealous about 5 weeks of “severance” when a big company shuts down. The three “too small” game companies that have cratered under me in my career ended up owing me a total of 5 weeks of pay and another 5 weeks of accrued vacation, with no severance even mentioned.

I should seriously start looking at working for real companies. (Hey, is it considered polite to ask about their severance policy in your resume cover letter? )

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 16:35:01 +0000

If you’re talking about the people from Part 2, I’ll certainly never work for Boromir again. Frodo is still in the industry and we’re still in touch. I even told him the perma-death thing was crazy. I have no idea what happened to Sam, but I don’t really bear him any ill will. He inherited a broken project at a time when his budget was being squeezed. I have no idea where he is these days. I didn’t use their actual names for a reason…

So the only guy I’m worried about pissing off is the guy that I’m not worried about pissing off.

By: Gibberish

Gibberish — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 15:02:23 +0000

I clicked a link accidentally while on another site, i was hitting some lag and had not noticed. When i came back i was here and was not sure, at 1st, how i had arrived. I read a few tid bits then read the whole sierra/middle-earth deal here.
I must say, it seems to be from the prospective of someone out of the loop and who is pretty sure he will never run into or work for some of these people again..i hope you are right

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 31 May 2007 17:17:37 +0000

I think the fall of Sierra actually has more to do with Ken and Roberta Williams leaving than anything else. The company was basically dead at that point… it just took a few years to realize it. Of course that’s all just conjecture. My time at Sierra was after the death throes had started.

Things at FLS are much better. We have a pretty flat structure, and all the decision makers have open doors to talk to anyone. Now we just need to get the game out the door so we can have some revenue.

By: robusticus

robusticus — Thu, 31 May 2007 15:22:06 +0000

I’ve been hanging recently with a bunch of people who used to work at Sierra in Bellevue, who were there when they shut that office down. They’re now scattered at various places like Zipper, BigFish, MS. There’s always MS. A truth that transcends games, even, when it starts to hit the fan in the general tech economy.

A shame about Sierra, though, that’s what happens when business takes over. The people making the decisions are 3 or 5 levels above, and have never met any of the people in the whole group they just canned. Much less participated in the culture, in that case, revolving around Halflife. Just red ink, to them.

Hopefully Flying Lab takes a different route, eh?

By: Psychochild's Blog

Psychochild's Blog — Thu, 31 May 2007 07:58:33 +0000

Frequent relocation

Over at Joe Ludwig’s blog, he posted a bit about the original Middle Earth Online project by Sierra. (http://programmerjoe.com/2007/05/28/whatever-happened-to-middle-earth-online/) He worked on a version that eventually got canceled. His story is a …