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Sonic

EA_CIRE Says Goodbye

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Global Community Manager for all things Command & Conquer, Eric Krause has posted his final goodbye message on the Official C&C Forums. Like many of you, he is bitterly disappointed with how things have gone down in the past 48 hours. You can read Eric's full post below.

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Well,

Where to start - I am actually very sad to see my favorite franchise being put to rest, especially that sudden and a game close to launching. Did we do everything right - Hell no! But we were a talented team that made a lot out of what we had. But with your help and those die-hard gamers within the studio, we were trying to influence and challenge more and more of those "given" mechanics - the status quo - to make a game that could wear the C&C badge with pride. The game wasn't there yet and it would have taken a few more month to get the basics to where they needed to be. Our future roadmap looked also much more promising - Crushing would have been added with the patch this monday together with the first part of our movement/pathfinding overhaul and we had announced Campaign Missions at GamesCom.

But well, EA decided that they don't want to continue the project and there are many sides to the story of why exactly they decided to do so. I will not go into the details because i don't know all the pieces and the ones i know are not necessarily meant to be discussed on a public forum.

As most of you know, the whole team has been let go, including long-term C&C Veterans. Unfortunately i don't know what will happen to Command & Conquer. While i hope that the franchise will finally get a worthy new installment to positively overshadow C&C4 and the cancellation of this attempt, i don't think that it will happen any time soon.

I would like to thank our voluntary Moderator team, aka "Apoc's Army", as they busted their butts days and nights to keep this place a happy place. Even though they were a little bit hard on me sometimes when it came down to feedback - I will always remember the day when i told them that Generals 2 has been canceled and we are going to move to F2P - but they always showed the passion i so much love about this community. We have seen so many negatives in the last 10 years, but fans around the world came together and made fantastic maps, mods, videos, contests, art, tournaments and fansites. There is so much potential in this community and it makes me even more sad to think about what we could have been able to achieve if a new and good Command & Conquer game would have made it to the release line. Bottom line is THANK YOU for being a great Community (outside of the typical trolls you find everywhere in modern days).

You are dismissed, Commander/General!

Sincerly,
Eric

PS: CIRE is Eric backwards - Now you know my big secret

PPS: I did not write the blog post that went up on the website - it was pre-written


There are a few other farewell messages from other Victory Games developers as well....

Eric's final post can be found right here.

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PPS: I did not write the blog post that went up on the website - it was pre-written

Wait, they kind of expected this to happen??

 

 

I would like to thank our voluntary Moderator team, aka "Apoc's Army", as they busted their butts days and nights to keep this place a happy place.

"Remnants from Apoc's Recycle Bin" is more like it.

 

 

PS: CIRE is Eric backwards - Now you know my big secret

Yeah, no ****, Sherlock.

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Wait, they kind of expected this to happen??

The big guys at EA told VG what to say.

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Did this guy actually do anything important? Okay, a little mean, I'm sure he did his best...given who he was working for. But man, this is just getting bleaker and bleaker. I'm feeling he wants to say more but guess in this day in age of the gaming industry (and really any industry) you try not to burn any bridges for fear of not finding work again. I'll say this though, lots of ugliness going on in the background for sure and it is slowly going to come to the surface as the weeks go on. Get out the popcorn, folks.

Edited by neojames82

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Did this guy actually do anything important?

True that. APOC did much more in his days.

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The big guys at EA told VG what to say.

There were some EA female executives in that list too. :rolleyes:

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True that. APOC did much more in his days.

Yeah, not to be mean or anything but this guy seemed more like this:

 

Cire: "HEY!! I'm a huge C&C fan!! Can I be the new community leader?!"

EA: "Whatever, just don't say much and what you do say, has to be approved by us first."

Cire: "YIPPIE!!! Whatever you want!!"

 

Don't think I'm too off, am I?

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ex-victory game developer and cnc veterans, better go and join UBER Ent for Planetery Anihilation. the RTS that will kick ass. :rolleyes:

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ex-victory game developer and cnc veterans, better go and join UBER Ent for Planetery Anihilation. the RTS that will kick ass. :rolleyes:

Not a bad idea at all, it will kick ass for sure. :) That or form a new studio called "Victorious Studios" and Kickstart a game called "Oversee and Prevail" and hire Joe Kucan to do writing and bring back awesome FMV sequences....hey it could happen!!! (probably not).

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Eric has done heaps for the community. More than you guys would know. Not everything gets talked about publicly. So for those of who don't know anything it's best that you not false statements. Out of respect for the devs who have lost their jobs.

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Eric has done heaps for the community. More than you guys would know. Not everything gets talked about publicly. So for those of who don't know anything it's best that you not false statements. Out of respect for the devs who have lost their jobs.

Well then please give us some examples and I do feel bad for Victory Games because at the end of the day, it wasn't really their fault.

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Have some sympathy for him, people. CIRE/Eric is a great guy and I can attest that he was doing a lot behind the scenes for the C&C community. Remember that a PR guy's job is to represent a company, even when that company does things he disagrees with. I think Eric was a real fan genuinely working towards a good F2P C&C game. But like C&C4 and Tiberium, marketing probably made some bad decisions for this game and pushed them onto the developers. Besides that, there's things that are beyond EA's control too - the industry as a whole is giving a lot less attention to retail PC RTS games. The mobile and tablet game markets are taking a chunk of consumers away from PC and consoles. And many PC game developers are losing their jobs in the U.S and Canada. Some of those jobs are gradually being shipped to places where workers are paid less and do not question the tasks given to them.

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Wait, they kind of expected this to happen??

 

 

"Remnants from Apoc's Recycle Bin" is more like it.

 

 

Yeah, no ****, Sherlock.

 

Reading comprehension much?

 

1. It was not the team's writing, but PR spin from above.

 

2. What do you mean by "remnants from Apoc's Recycle Bin"?

 

3. It's a joke.

 

 

And Eric has done plenty.

The whole Feedback process from the community to the team, the pressure from the community the dev team felt, bringing in community testers early and even inviting the likes of AGM into the team to further push in the direction the community wanted to - all Eric's doing.

Not to mention the amount of work he did for CommandCom and other C&C presences at conventions...

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2. What do you mean by "remnants from Apoc's Recycle Bin"?

Ask Tethis.

3. It's a joke.

I know, but it's pretty bad and redundant at that.

Not to mention the amount of work he did for CommandCom and other C&C presences at conventions...

I'm sorry, but I don't seem to understand how he can be praised for that when any other person could've done that if he/she was in a CM position. What we got as a result from all those conventions were templated interviews that had no difference between each other as if they were answered by robots. Also, he and his colleagues made the word "feedback" completely useless - they mentioned it all the time, giving the impression that they didn't know what that even means, as from what I hear (NDA's down, closed alpha forum is, I guess, ok to talk about now), the initial closed alpha build was not different from the Dec 2012 build at all, and they needed the community to add input instead of using all of the material they had as the legal successors to WW and EALA. And why the hell did he need an assistant CM if all he ever did was look at the official forums and post stuff on Facebook and Twitter, and he wasn't even available for contact on Saturdays and Sundays? He also didn't sound very convincing at any given time, take a look at his posts, the official trailers and interviews.
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Plokite_Wolf, I think it's rather rude and extremely bad mannered of you to criticise and insult the man who is now out of a job. You don't know the full story, you haver met the man, so I suggest you make no further comment.

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Plokite_Wolf, I think it's rather rude and extremely bad mannered of you to criticise and insult the man who is now out of a job. You don't know the full story, you haver met the man, so I suggest you make no further comment.

PW, I know you're dissapointed in a lot of things like everyone else but Sonic has a point. You can't react with such apsolute criticism towards a person you have never met. You can't truly judge the situation as a whole without knowing the whole story along with the very individual you criticise based on what you think he has or hasn't done. You haven't been in his shoes and don't have first hand experience on how things at EA work. Think about it, maybe he's done a lot of good for the community behind the scenes that you don't know about. This is the very reason you don't see me judging people based on what I read or hear about them around the community. It's one thing to be a critic regarding one's forum duties and the direction C&C has taken, but it's another to keep a man labeled as a larger failure. Try not to judge people like that and ask yourself how you would feel in a similar position.

 

And just so we're clear, I'm not defending nor attacking anyone with this comment, but trying to provide you, Plokite_Wolf, with a broader perspective. I may not have a fondness for Cire, but you don't see me putting him to the sword every two comments. :whistle:

Edited by AZ-Stalker

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I don't see PW offending him, maybe rude but not bad mannered.

It's a corporation, when you work in such place you have access to many privileges, at least information.

When things comes down, you get criticized along with the rest. And if you're in a public position, you gotta have in mind that you'll get criticized even if you don't loose the job or the project doesn't fail. If I would have a game studio today I would be willing to interview this guy, because now he has something important, experience. So, it's really part of the job and not the end of the world.

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don't forget : it's very difficult to judge a CM before the game come out. Apoc starts for BFME and have "support" 5 games and 3 add-ons.You can not compare them.

Edited by tchutch
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Ask Tethis.I know, but it's pretty bad and redundant at that.

I'm sorry, but I don't seem to understand how he can be praised for that when any other person could've done that if he/she was in a CM position. What we got as a result from all those conventions were templated interviews that had no difference between each other as if they were answered by robots. Also, he and his colleagues made the word "feedback" completely useless - they mentioned it all the time, giving the impression that they didn't know what that even means, as from what I hear (NDA's down, closed alpha forum is, I guess, ok to talk about now), the initial closed alpha build was not different from the Dec 2012 build at all, and they needed the community to add input instead of using all of the material they had as the legal successors to WW and EALA. And why the hell did he need an assistant CM if all he ever did was look at the official forums and post stuff on Facebook and Twitter, and he wasn't even available for contact on Saturdays and Sundays? He also didn't sound very convincing at any given time, take a look at his posts, the official trailers and interviews.

 

PK, I find you extremely rude. APOC's Recycle Bin? Really must you go there? Every moderator has done a good job over at the C&C forums. Eric has done lots for the C&C community that's not very publicized. PK, again the attitude you've shown is very rude and you've shown this same type of attitude on the C&C forums and I called you on it and if I recall I gave you a timeout for it once.

 

PK Just by your demeanor alone, you'd rather present false statements without the facts in front of you and disrespect the situation without a care in the world for where the insults are directed.

 

Ask Tethis? Sorry with great respect to the current situation I will not divulge certain things at this time.

 

You need to remember something and it widely publicized. It's very hard to survive in the games industry these days let alone get a game off the ground and break even. In the course of 2013 alone many studios have been shuttered and it's been publicized everywhere. You cannot fault the developers for trying to get a game out the door for any given circumstances presented to them.

 

I will say this though. When Generals 2 made the switch to F2P and it was shared with the moderator team before anyone else. "Morale" on the developer side hit a low point after Generals 2 got cancelled in favor for F2P but they continued on because of their love for C&C.

 

Personally, I feel EA has grown extremely impatient over the years with certain franchises. If EA management wasn't pushy with certain agendas we wouldn't have had C&C 4 and now this new C&C cancellation and studio closure. I completely understand EA needs to make money but you cannot just rely on BF series, Sims, NFS series, Mass Effect Series, Dragon Age series, Madden, PGA Golf and Mobile F2P games.

Lastly, which I stated on the C&C forums before and I reiterate here, Games are getting too complex to develop and require more man power than ever before. Back in 2004 you could get away with a team of 30 members to get a game out the door now it's 100+ developers on any given game project these days. If EA management felt they can't compete with Starcraft 2 then shame on them for giving up but yet they still want to overtake Call of Duty with Battlefield games.

 

I've said enough for now but go ahead and digest what I've said.

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Ask Tethis? Sorry with great respect to the current situation I will not divulge certain things at this time.

I don't think there is any point in keeping things hidden now. The game's **** canned and I think some more in-depth info is needed as to why. Though it is pretty damn telling with you saying that the morale went down the toilet when General 2 became F2P. Of course, even though they probably hated the idea they forged ahead and I commend them for that, though they did not have much of a choice. What were they going to do? Refuse to work on it? If they did they would have shut them down...which they did anyway so....man, really makes you hate EA more and more, doesn't it?

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I don't think there is any point in keeping things hidden now. The game's **** canned and I think some more in-depth info is needed as to why. Though it is pretty damn telling with you saying that the morale went down the toilet when General 2 became F2P. Of course, even though they probably hated the idea they forged ahead and I commend them for that, though they did not have much of a choice. What were they going to do? Refuse to work on it? If they did they would have shut them down...which they did anyway so....man, really makes you hate EA more and more, doesn't it?

 

Sorry, some stuff is better not being elaborated on.

 

By all means get a petition going and attempt to gather 2 million sigs to show C&C still has interest and further prove EA made a mistake.As much as I hate petitions the fans can try at least.

Edited by CNC_Tethis

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Guest Rabbit

Sorry, some stuff is better not being elaborated on.

This basically means "I'm trying to look like I know something."

 

We don't need any high horses in here. You're just a forum moderator, not the go to guy on what should and shouldn't be said to the public. If you know something, spill it or keep the fact that you know it to yourself, instead of giving false hope to people that "the real answer is out there, it just doesn't need to be explained."

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At the beginning when EA_Cire became global CM, the German C&C community criticized him of his past actions when he was named as Gambler in Germany as C&C CM. But to this day, they were wrong.

 

One of the good feats I have seen from him is bringing in a good C&C forum with a better forum software. If he had done anything wrong with his team, I would have seen it through. Although he isn't as great as Apoc, he did try his best to help out the community and the VG team.

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Guest Stevie_K

I completely understand EA needs to make money but you cannot just rely on BF series, Sims, NFS series, Mass Effect Series, Dragon Age series, Madden, PGA Golf and Mobile F2P games.

Yes they can, and in the end that is probably the reason this C&C title and the studio got wrapped up.

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Yes they can, and in the end that is probably the reason this C&C title and the studio got wrapped up.

Yeah, EA's last couple of quarters were not so great and most likely why a lot of shifting and reorganizing at the top happened as of late. So when new brass comes in, they start cleaning house and cutting the fat and I'm guessing C&C was probably a huge chuck of fat they felt they didn't need.

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