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Greg Black Interview at CNCSaga.de

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Our friends at the popular German C&C fansite, CNCSaga.de, have posted a great interview with former EALA developer Greg Black. In this interview, Greg discuss his roles while working on the likes of Tiberium Wars and Red Alert 3, the difficulties he faced when it came to balancing these games. He shares his thoughts on Command & Conquer 4, that many people should find interesting. going as far to call it a "product of a dysfunctional corporate culture". He also touches on what he's currently working on. Here's part of the interview.

 

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CNCSaga.de: In the past, when you have worked for EALA you have developed some Command & Conquer titles like Tiberium Wars or Red Alert 3. How do you appraise these titles on your own view? What do you think about them? What was good?

Greg Black: This is a somewhat tricky thing for me to answer. In truth I was probably the harshest critic of our games on the EALA RTS team. I got started with C&C back in '95 and was instantly hooked. I loved the story, loved the gameplay, loved the setting, and loved Kane (in a totally platonic way). For me C&C was something of a sacred game and I desperately wanted to do the series justice with all the C&C games I worked on. Unfortunately although we had a very talented team of passionate gamers, EA simply would not give us the time we felt we needed to make a truly great C&C game. In the case of C&C:3 our development cycle was something like 11 months. Compare that to Blizzard or Relic who was spending 3-6 years on their RTS titles. Our longest development cycle was 18 months on RA3, but at that time the team was split in half and added another platform (PS3), so the extra dev time was kind of a wash. EA simply needed us to keep cranking out games to keep the LA studio afloat while many its other teams floundered. So to answer your question I was not happy with how C&C3 or RA3 turned out, our games were always rushed, our engine technology aged and degraded over the years, our path finding was horrible, our online implementations were embarrassing, and ultimately our games did not, in my view, live up to the orginal C&C, or RA2, or Generals (which I also worked on but in a very lowly capacity).

 

I do however have to give credit to the development team. Given the circumstances under which we were making these games, (crappy tech, super compressed schedules) I think what we were able to ship was quite impressive. Unfortunately the gamer who just spent $50 on our games doesn't have any clue how much time we had to spend on them or what the internal politics of EA were at the time, they can only see what is in the box.

 

CNCSaga.de: What do you think about Command&Conquer 4? Many people are saying C&C 4 wouldn't be a C&C. EA wouldn't have made big efforts. But you are a C&C-expert. What do you think about this?

Greg Black: It's unfair of me to pass judgement on C&C4 as I did not work on it nor have I played the final game. I was however at the studio during much of C&C4's development and have played pre-release builds. The important thing to know is that C&C4 was never meant to be a true Tiberium universe canonical game, but rather an experiment in online play. It originally started as out an Asian market online-only version of C&C 3. At some point the company executives decided it made the most business sense to add a single player campaign, call it C&C4, and put it in a box. The team of course protested this change in direction but the decision stood. The team did what they could to make a good game given the realities inside EA, but ultimately it was the product of a dysfunctional corporate culture.

Check out the full interview right here for more. It's also available in German.

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This article is great. It was really sad to see all these internal EA politics going on and ruining the C&C franchise with their crazy money profiting schemes, making hell for these poor developers, fans and all gamers.

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Great interview. But this sounds rather interesting:

 

10. Now you are working with some other famous faces at Zygna. Please tell us something about your new job!

 

Myself and a few other C&C team members opened up a studio in LA for Zynga. We're currently working on an unannounced project for which I am the Lead Designer. Unfortunately I can't say much more than that.

 

I hope it's not a C&C game under Zynga called C&CVille. Maybe it's time we look forward to a small RTS game by Zynga which shall be better than the most popular game on Facebook which is Farmville.

Edited by purplescrin

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Definitely EA sucks!!!!!!!!!!

I can't believe what I'm reading... there were so much things we didn't like from C&C3 and guess why? Because they had to make everything in 11 months!!!!!!!!

C&C4 originally was an online only version of C&C3??????????? With no connection with the cannon????????? A mere experiment???? I can understand, if that game had been finished maybe it would be a good one, but I can't believe this, how you can turn this game into a new C&C canonical game, and one of the most important of them, the END OF THE TIBERIUM SAGA????????

 

I'm shocked and very dissapointed... definitely my hopes for a new good C&C game in the future will never be the same, because I know it will be rushed...

 

Now I understand that EA killed C&C... very sad. There can be new C&C games, of course, but their quality will never be too high.

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Guest Stevie_K

Very good interview. Confirms all the thoughts that have been running through my head about how EA works.

 

They should have kept C&C4 as an online-only C&C3 multiplayer experiment :( When it comes to making decisions about future C&C games, profit should be chained to quality, not quantity and super compressed schedules.

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This article is great. It was really sad to see all these internal EA politics going on and ruining the C&C franchise with their crazy money profiting schemes, making hell for these poor developers, fans and all gamers.

Without going into to much detail..... the good news it what Greg described in the interview is a thing of past. The culture is changing and they are listening to devs. The next C&C game will not be rushed. I can't say anything more.

 

I hope it's not a C&C game under Zynga called C&CVille. Maybe it's time we look forward to a small RTS game by Zynga which shall be better than the most popular game on Facebook which is Farmville.

No other company can make C&C games. And please drop the entire C&CVille/Farmville/Facebook crap right now, because that's not where C&C is heading. Ever since it was mentioned, as an example, in the Jon Van Caneghem interview from Gamasutra everyone jumps to the conclusion that this will be the future of C&C.

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I can't believe what I'm reading...

Really?

 

I'm shocked

Really??

 

 

Now I understand that EA killed C&C... very sad. There can be new C&C games, of course, but their quality will never be too high.

Hi, welcome to 2004. You're a few years late to the party.

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Really?

 

Really??

 

Hi, welcome to 2004. You're a few years late to the party.

My thoughts as well... This isn't new news, it's merely confirmation on something we already knew.

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This article is great. It was really sad to see all these internal EA politics going on and ruining the C&C franchise with their crazy money profiting schemes, making hell for these poor developers, fans and all gamers.

 

I'm with Mal on this one, thanks for writing this one which I'll be telling the same. ;)

 

In my opinion, quality is more important than money. If only EA follow the examples of Blizzard & its will be 100% beautiful Starcraft 2 game (Including the way how they market the game, not to mention Starcraft 2 pictures on Korean Air jumbo jets)

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It's always interesting reading the opinions of people involved, but I always take criticisms of former employees with a grain of salt. I'm not saying I agree or disagree with any of the comments it's just that I expect former employees to talk bad about their previous position.

 

I'm more interested in the current bosses and employees and their forthright admissions.

So far I like what I'm hearing from the new crew. It's a new day for C&C and I'm optimistic for our CNC future.

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Well the opinions they speak after they are no longer employed are not spoken out of fear that they'll be fired, so I expect that they're more honest. Maybe not totally honest, or not totally unbiased, but more open than while employed.

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Yeah, for those who have been keeping up with all the post-EALA C&C news, this is merely a confirmation of what came before, and some of the communities' suspicions. I think even before C&C4 was released, we knew it was a skunkswork project, and a day after its release, Sam Bass said that they had slapped this "C&C finale" idea onto this game to finish up the Tiberium storyline. I wish C&C4 was just a Generals game; the massive gameplay changes and canon screwups would have made a lot more sense that way.

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My thoughts as well... This isn't new news, it's merely confirmation on something we already knew.

Yup. It's nice to finally hear it come from the inside. Greg Black is a good guy. :thumbsup:

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Yup. It's nice to finally hear it come from the inside. Greg Black is a good guy. :thumbsup:

Truth.

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Hmm well this merely reinforces my previous opinions on C&C4.

 

I live in hope EA will get its **** together. I mean they are trying, or is it just that other companies have become even bigger douches that EA appears good these days? :o

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Disgusted with EA all the more...

 

They are like digging their own graves in expense of short term profits.

Edited by spark

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Hmm well this merely reinforces my previous opinions on C&C4.

 

I live in hope EA will get its **** together. I mean they are trying, or is it just that other companies have become even bigger douches that EA appears good these days? :o

Activision is the new EA.

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Just as I had thought...What a shame.

I even heard a rumor that at one point before or after C&C3 was released, Blizzard wanted to buy C&C, but EA wanted too much so Blizzard didn't buy it.

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Just as I had thought...What a shame.

I even heard a rumor that at one point before or after C&C3 was released, Blizzard wanted to buy C&C, but EA wanted too much so Blizzard didn't buy it.

 

Now "THAT" is interesting....

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C&C franchise may be in good hands if Blizzard took over in an alternate reality.

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Well we knew how EA was handling the franchise. This is just confirmation. Anyways as for the Black's new Zynga project, they might be going main stream with an RTS. I sure hope that's the case or a browser based RTS which i don't really like.

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Just as I had thought...What a shame.

I even heard a rumor that at one point before or after C&C3 was released, Blizzard wanted to buy C&C, but EA wanted too much so Blizzard didn't buy it.

WOW, just when you think you have heard them all...... that is biggest load of crap I've heard in year in terms of C&C rumours :rolleyes:

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