Ritual News

[Mortis]

Ritual Entertainment sent over a press release annoucing that they have named Ken Harward as their new Studio Director. Harward was previously a programmer for the developer for the past few years The press release was somewhat vague on Ritual's plans for the future with Harward quoted as saying, "2007 looks to be a great year as we finish up our current projects and start some exciting new ones.". There was no specific word on the fate of SiN Episodes, their episodic first person shooter whose first chapter was released this past May. There is also no word on why Harward is refered to as a "Studio Director" rather than CEO, which is the title that Steve Nix had at Ritual before heading to id Software. Finally there is no mention at all on the departure of Ritual co-founder and vice-president Tom Mustaine. FiringSquad has sent over some questions to Ritual for clairification on this new press release and we hope to get some answers soon. Update Ritual's PR head got back in touch with us stating that at this time they do not have any further comments beyond what was stated in the press release.

As mentioned earlier, several major Ritual characters have left the company recently (namely, their CEO, their Q&A head and their vice president).

Ritual has always been one of those monasteries of gaming where they have largely produced games on their own ancient terms and thus had a really hard time, all the while maintaining a kind of peculiar identity and integrity.As their latest game - Sin Episodes: Emergence - was entirely self-funded, they were prone to industry issues. Piracy, low sales, you know, not putting out a brilliant game at first.

They promised to release a game every 6 months and it's been 7 now, without any kind of promotion for the next episode. A promised free multiplayer add-on is yet to be seen. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds. I hope another company won't get the shaft just because of the way the industry is right now.

[Mortis]

By the way, the actual game product was interesting enough to a point - I played it right after the release, unpatched, before they had tweaked the user-measuring difficulty adjustment system, resulting in a game experience that was insanely hard for certain play styles. Count me in.

The game received a lot of slack and while there are many things that effectively brought the excitement down (scenario and setting for one), but it wasn't all bad. I'd definitely consider buying the next episode if they have honestly paid attention to the things that dragged the 1st episode down.

It's just a shame how shambling these first forays into episodic gaming were. While Valve's HL2ep1 was fine, it was also short and overpriced, and now with the second episode greatly delayed you can't really talk of episodes at all.

It really feels like they bailed out. Makes you wonder.

[Mortis]

Here's the full list of people that have left recently (approx. last six months):

Doug Service, Director of Technology Development.
Steve Nix, CEO.
Vitaliy Naymushin, artist.
Michael Russel, Q&A Manager.
John "HAL9000" Schuch, Level Designer.
Tom "ParadoX" Mustaine, Vice President

Many do consider this normal turnover (spending more than six years in the same company in an industry like this is normal, and with friends leaving, it's only natural). I also saw a PR person post in the Ritualistic forums reassuring everyone that things are all right: http://www.ritualistic.com/forums/showt ... post174682

Seeing is believing, as usual!

[Mortis]

http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsart ... chid=13440 News on Mustaine's jump:

FiringSquad has learned of yet another high profile departure from Ritual Entertainment. The company's vice-president Tom Mustaine has confirmed to us that he has left Ritual, calling his departure "amicable". Mustaine, who was also one of Ritual's co-founders way back in 1996, told us via an email message, "Currently, I'm taking a vacation, then working on some cool new stuff to be announced." He would not confirm on what might currently be happening inside the Dallas based developer; we hope to get some official info from Ritual on the developer's future very soon.

[Mortis]

Source: http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3148397

Jeff: Sin Episode 2...

Shawn: ...is likely not happening now. A lot of the people from the dev team have left.

Jeff: At Ritual?

Shawn: Yeah, they've gone elsewhere. They now work for other people. Some of the key people. One of the lead programmers. That's not a good sign.

Jeff: That seems like a real world thing that's going to be constantly a problem with any episodic game. How can you possibly ensure to fans or gamers that there are going to be future episodes? At any given point the team might dissolve.

Shawn: And the jury's out on why that's happening, I've personally been trying to contact the head there, Tom Mustaine, and haven't been able to get too much information. What it seems to imply, obviously, is that Sin Episode 1 didn't do well.

Even I don't buy into this, coming in so late! The podcast was reported at Kotaku quite haphazardly, the nature of the conversation was never meant to be news-worthy but purely speculative.

[Mortis]

Source: http://www.romsteady.net/blog/2006/12/e ... point.html
Now, does this mean that a certain title is going away? Not my place to say. I can say that I was doing some work related to it prior to my untimely departure, but not what you might think.

And with that, I wash my hands of the title in question. You want more information? Convince certain people that silence isn't a viable PR strategy.

I'm |-| far from spamming that quote all over the Ritualistic forums >_<

[Mortis]

Russell, again the voice of reason, comments on a different blog:

Source: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea ... =206553031
Regarding testing on "SiN Episodes," a sub-1% tech support contact rate is something to be proud of, especially with only three testers (myself included).

And two editors of GfW Magazine assuming a game is cancelled does not make it so. That said, if I only had the information that was available to them, I'd be thinking the same thing.

[Mortis]

He immediately quieted concerns that this marked some sort of end of the company, calling his and other's departures "coincidental." In his case he said, "at the ten-year mark I wanted to do something else." He noted having made big moves in the studio around his fifth year there as well, and feeling the need to get focused.

These guys really suck at PR though,

(Note: 1UP requested comment from Ritual regarding the status of SiN episode 2 but as of this time it has not responded.)

[Mortis]

Source: http://www.romsteady.net/blog/2006/12/nerve.html
I'm glad that you want to finish the game.

However, the issue you are encountering was introduced by the pirate group Provision when they broke the Steam copy protection on the game.

If you want to finish the game, please purchase a legitimate copy. If you purchase over Steam, it is available for $14.99, or if you want a copy at retail, it's $19.99.

Perhaps if more people had bought the game instead of pirating it, I wouldn't have been laid off from Ritual.

Sincerely,
Michael

Stuff sucks, but that sucks a lot.

[Mortis]

I'll have to go back to dealing with the GfW podcast, which has recently been spreading like wildfire first over to Kotaku, bit-tech, develop and finally over to Interlopers...

Quite peculiar (actually, I'm beginning to be irritated over seeing it reported everywhere) to see mere speculation end up posted as real news (as long as it first goes through several news sources, that is).

In the words of Russell (again),

And two editors of GfW Magazine assuming a game is cancelled does not make it so. That said, if I only had the information that was available to them, I'd be thinking the same thing.

[Mortis]

MumboJumbo(TM), a leading developer of premium casual games, today announced it has acquired Ritual Entertainment(TM), a veteran game development studio with expertise in game design and artistic quality. In addition to the strategic importance of the deal, which strengthens MumboJumbo’s(TM) ability to deliver the best games to the casual gaming audience, the acquisition further solidifies the company’s presence as one of the largest casual game studios in the industry.

The saga continues!

[Mortis]

If there's an opportunity to have them do something on the SiN episodes, we would look at that, but that will not be the focus of the company. The combined companies will focus exclusively on casual, unless opportunities present themselves that we think are strategic from a business standpoint... Again, I wouldn't close the door on [traditional games] but that's not the primary focus.

All right, that's it then

[Mortis]

The sad part of this was that the first episode was a success. It sold well enough to pay for the burn rate for the team for the second episode...but not well enough to cover the remainder of the team. It's ironic that for all of the companies that died because of a commercial failure, this one was mortally wounded by a game that could have been considered a success in spite of itself.

Finally someone spills the beans! The only person you could count on some information has been Russell and he hasn't worked for the company for a while even.

[Mortis]

What we plan to do right now, both Ritual and MumboJumbo, is establish ourselves in the casual gaming market with strong new franchises and then return to SiN at a later date. We love SiN, make no mistake, and we definitely want to return to it.

Episodic gaming and casual gaming have a lot in common as models, and I think SiN will find a home here at the new Ritual. I find it interesting, actually, that we were taking a large, AAA title like SiN down in size, and casual games are right now growing in their size and scope!

[Mortis]

Time's passed and I still stand behind how I defended Ritual to several news outlets - I still think they jumped the gun and possibly even contributed to Ritual's early demise. What have we heard of them ever since? Nothing! Absolutely nothing!

Still - there's one single bastion of SiN still alive and that's Unofficial SiN Episodes Multiplayer, by Sarkie and Michael Russell (who is the man).

[Mortis]

Ritual is deader than dead, USEMP is dead, Michael Russell is no longer the man and this thread is locked