CCP Hiring Artists in Atlanta Office

[Nigama]

From twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/#!/CCPGAMESjobs http://www.ccpgames.com/en/jobs

Sr. Technical Artist    Atlanta, USA   Art

Lead/Sr. Environment Artist    Atlanta, USA   Art

Animation Director   Atlanta, USA   Art

Kitchen Steward   Atlanta, USA   Operations

Lead Character Artist   Atlanta, USA   Art

Senior Visual Effects Artist   Atlanta, USA   Art


Looks like they've got everything.  Character artist, environment artist, visual effects artist, technical artists, animation director, and also a Kitchen Steward.  Obviously it's a good sign that they are hiring again, especially artists.  So if they're ready to start hanging the meat on the bones, so to speak, it must be that things are smooth with the engine, right?

Nigama

[mouser9169]

It means they're getting close for sure.

You can actually do a lot of the graphical work aside from the engine, especially things like player characters - which typically start out as models using a few million polygons then get baked down to a couple hundred thousand for your computer to render faster.

looking on the positive side, it means they're ready to start the concept art and prototyping the world for sure. Once they've got that down, and I'm assuming the "core" team has been busy hashing out things like game mechanics and lore and storylines, then you grab an engine and go: the graphics team starts importing all their created work and building levels/zones/chunks while the coding team pushes in the all the game mechanics to the engine code.

Depending on how they handle questing, that can be done by anyone from a dedicated team to a few interns. I'm hoping they don't go with full voice overs. Been playing TOR, and they start to get old fast, especially since you can't "skip" any lines and have to wait for them all to play out. Every. Single. Time.

[Rick Gentle]

*crosses fingers for a reasonable - which is to say, blood-drenched and eye-twitchy - Malkavian concept*

[Valamyr]

Its not bad news for sure, but it doesn't indicate progress on the critical aspect, which is the terrible state of the homegrown engine and its inability to support massive multiplayer.

Still its a strong sign that they've truly merely pushed back WOD and not shitcanned the whole thing. Usually any scaling back of a MMO means the death of the project so this was and still is a legitimate worry.

Anyhow, good to see this. But we're a long way from re-establishing pre-purge numbers. There used to be over 125 people working full time on WOD in Atlanta and now its hard to get hard figures but its only (high) double-digit. They spoke of a 20% cut but I have at least one (formerly employed there) source speaking of 30-35%. :(

Ultimately headcount matters less to me than results, and things are fairly grim on that level too, still. But any hiring drive speaks at least loudly about the desire to do better and the will to financially carry on a project, no matter how mis-mananged it has been.

Thing is, I've come to realize that my loyalty to the WOD IP only goes so far. What I really want is a Vampire MMO that plays a bit like Bloodlines did, but with kickass graphics, somewhat innovative gameplay that doesnt place the whole focus on a level and gear grind but leaves some room to inter-player politics, and which is reasonably marketed. I think CCP can eventually deliver two thirds of that (I have absolutely no faith anymore in their ability to market such a product reasonably) - but if a competitor manages to beat them at it, I'll gladly focus on a Korean ripoff instead or whatever.

Given how loyal a WW fan I've been for two decades, even typing this is proof of how mismanaged the project has been :( Then again, the fact I still click on my Vampire Planet shortcut and read and comment on MMO threads shows that despite the bitter disapointments I still care and am hoping for better than what we've had so far. Maybe we'll even get it in due time...

[mouser9169]

Its not bad news for sure, but it doesn't indicate progress on the critical aspect, which is the terrible state of the homegrown engine and its inability to support massive multiplayer.

Hmm... I didn't know they were playing around with a homegrown engine. Hopefully they've abandoned that idea.

You obviously can't use EVE's, since they've just now made it so people can walk around there... Bloodlines is just a run of the mill FPS (engine wise), so if they're going for that sort of look and feel there are very very good engines out there made by people who do nothing else but make and improve full physics modeled graphics engines for game use, with multiplayer support.

Even if they go single shard (which I have no idea why they would), they're still going to instance the zones, so the "massive" part is really not as big of a deal as it was years ago. More than a hundred people in a zone is an anomaly that should for the most part be avoided. Yes, that's still a lot more than co-op in a FPS, but I'd rather have to add the multiplayer support to a solid engine than try to code a graphics and physics sim to a networking platform.

Unreal, Cryengine (with the "real" licenses, not those indie ones) would be good choices. There are a few others out there as well. Hell, see if you can get a license/sublicense from Bioware (License from Hero, then license the changes Bioware made to it from Bioware, or hire Bioware as "consultants") - the cities in that game are astounding, especially when you look at the big 3D maps you fly around in a city world like Coruscant. I know they started with the Hero engine, but I don't doubt they heavily customized the code.

Hero's another that's gone semi-indie friendly. I don't think you get any source code access, but a single license for a team of up to 99 for 30% of revenue.

[Radical21]

Senior lead positions

Means that they want to start building new teams and the ideal way to do this is to get a team of awesome experienced guys who can later be in charge of and guide others.

So while it is a good sign I think they want to get a head start on this because , I don't know about other artists/developers but i'd be worried about dropping everything and relocating to Atlanta to work for a company that may or may not tell me to pack my bags a few months in.

Still looks like they are taking things more carefully this time by recruiting the senior positions instead of trying to expand all over the place, I just hope their street cred was not too badly damaged from what happened last time.

[_username]

There seems to be some confusion as to which technologies are being developed for the project.

Eve and WoD share the same engine.  It was developed for that very purpose.  Of course, making a flexible modern MMO engine from scratch is no easy task, which is part of why WoD (and the WiS feature in Eve) have run into so many delays.  On the up side, since Eve gets the tech first, it will give CCP ample opportunity to tweak and polish the engine before WoD's launch.  It wouldn't be fair to compare this to the Valve/Troika disconnect with Source, since (unlike Bloodlines and HL2) WoD and Eve engines are made by the same organization.

The Unreal engine is very popular.  That's why CCP chose to use it for Dust 514.

[Radical21]

I think the reason for choosing Unreal is its high portability across platforms (aside from PC CryEngine only proven on Xbox so far) and is only rivaled by Unity (though unity is still inferior for not supporting DX11) and since they also have plans to port DUST for PSPV and so on it may be a desired quality.

Looking at UDK's code might also inspire them with ways to improve their homebrew engine.
However going with Unreal is not really ideal if they intend on eventually selling said homebrew engine.

Because its the same as getting a house, you can rent a house which means you have to pay rent and can't make any decisions on your own in regards to changing things or you can build your own house, own the asset and eventually rent it to someone else , harder to achieve but in the long run can be more worthwhile.

[Valamyr]

Hmm... I didn't know they were playing around with a homegrown engine. Hopefully they've abandoned that idea.

You obviously can't use EVE's, since they've just now made it so people can walk around there... Bloodlines is just a run of the mill FPS (engine wise), so if they're going for that sort of look and feel there are very very good engines out there made by people who do nothing else but make and improve full physics modeled graphics engines for game use, with multiplayer support.

Sorry, I tend to assume everyone here is up to speed on the basics. CCP decided to build a 3d engine for this years ago; Incarna became CARBON, which is indeed what is deployed in its basic state in EVE right now. The "walking in stations" thing which is indeed very new is all there is. Obviously their in-house build may be in better shape, but its still years behind what they need for this project and they aren't showing any signs of just liscensing an engine, not after 5 years of work on this. The core team they kept in Atlanta are all the engine coders. All the non-core jobs are pretty much out because they know this thing is still awhile away.

Even if they go single shard (which I have no idea why they would), they're still going to instance the zones, so the "massive" part is really not as big of a deal as it was years ago.

This is also old news and speculation is unneeded. What they're actually doing is best called 'linked-shards'. Basically they'll build one city in as much detail as possible and then shard it, but theyll allow unlimited movement between these shards and give them all city names. So every 'city' will be a clone of each other. Thats not quite instancing as you wont be able to magically warp from one to the other, youll have to make travel arrangements to move between them and furthermore, we can safely expect that any titles you earn and such through politics will be bound geographically to one shard to create a sense of local politics and community. Its closer to a traditional sharding model than a true single-shard approach; at least theyll be able to scale the world easily depending on how popular the game becomes.

Unreal, Cryengine (with the "real" licenses, not those indie ones) would be good choices.

Preaching to the choir, but that ship sailed in 2007. Lets keep in mind, CCP may have EVE under its belt but its brand new to 3D 1st/3rd person MMOs and likely made several bad decisions and underestimated hurdles. If pretty sure they'd do things differently if they were starting all over, but now they've made their bed and got to sleep in it. Too many millions of dollars and thousands of manhours have been put into the three successive attempts at getting this shared platform built. They ultimately have little to show for it, but theres no way theyll just give up on the idea now. Axing the game would be far more likely than axing Carbon and licensing externally.

[mouser9169]

This is also old news and speculation is unneeded. What they're actually doing is best called 'linked-shards'. Basically they'll build one city in as much detail as possible and then shard it, but theyll allow unlimited movement between these shards and give them all city names. So every 'city' will be a clone of each other. Thats not quite instancing as you wont be able to magically warp from one to the other, youll have to make travel arrangements to move between them and furthermore, we can safely expect that any titles you earn and such through politics will be bound geographically to one shard to create a sense of local politics and community. Its closer to a traditional sharding model than a true single-shard approach; at least theyll be able to scale the world easily depending on how popular the game becomes.

This sounds a lot like "districting" - featured in ToonTown and used in games like Everquest 2 (Antonica fills up, Antonica 2 spawns). If that's the case, titles and such would be the same no matter what district you're in, as they are all in fact identical copies of one another.  Unless you mean each "city" is really it's own zone and they're just being lazy and making identical copies. In that case, I don't know what to say other than I think it would get old fast...

Sounds like they should have (and still could) go the Runic Games route. Those guy have always had making an MMO as their goal, but they realized they didn't have all the know how and money to do it right off. So they made Torchlight to a) create the world and start the lore and b) make some money.  Work is still going on the MMO but they need to get the networking and stuff down so they're making another non-MMO in the same world (Torchlight 2) to advance the story and increase the lore, hopefully get their networking capabilites up with solid multiplayer and, of course, make more money.

If CCP think they have too much invested into an idea to change, then they deserve to fail.
You can't stay married to ideas forever in any business and expect to stay alive.

[Valamyr]

This sounds a lot like "districting" - featured in ToonTown and used in games like Everquest 2 (Antonica fills up, Antonica 2 spawns). If that's the case, titles and such would be the same no matter what district you're in, as they are all in fact identical copies of one another.  Unless you mean each "city" is really it's own zone and they're just being lazy and making identical copies. In that case, I don't know what to say other than I think it would get old fast...

Thats not quite it, I guess I didnt explain it right? What youre describing is simply instancing and thats not it at all.

Think of it like all the cities are WoW servers, but instead of having to pay 25$ to transfer to another server you can do it in game for 25K worth of in-game currency to cover 'travel costs'.

In physical terms, each city/shard would thus be its own server cluster and youll never be expected for gameplay purposes to move a different shard/city.  I hope that's clearer. Overall its a system that's quite similar to traditional sharding, just with easier transition between shards. It has nothing to do with instancing / zone-based copies.

Of course all this is based on last September's Grand Masquerade info, and may have changed / is subject to change in the future. But given how tight-lipped the devs are, I assume what they do let through the cracks is stuff they're fairly set on.

[VampireBill]

I'm hoping they don't go with full voice overs. Been playing TOR, and they start to get old fast, especially since you can't "skip" any lines and have to wait for them all to play out. Every. Single. Time.

Ermm... hit the space bar. That skips a line at a time. Also, you can hit Esc to exit out of the dialogue if you don't like how your dialogue choice panned out/is panning out, and then do it over again. That said, I find questing in SWTOR to be a thousand times more enjoyable than any other MMO where you just grab quests and go through the steps to completing them, not ever bothering to read the story or caring about any of it. But then I play it as a single player game and have not even really felt like grouping yet at level 32. I even quickly turned off "general chat" because it's mostly obnoxious and breaks immersion. Meanwhile in EQ2 or EVE I would always end up bored to tears soloing everything, and it being hard to ever find groups anymore in EQ2 is why I left. EQ1 had a GREAT community atmosphere back in its hay-day, and it was almost entirely grinding with very few quests.

[Claudia Vonigner]

I'm hoping they don't go with full voice overs. Been playing TOR, and they start to get old fast, especially since you can't "skip" any lines and have to wait for them all to play out. Every. Single. Time.

Ermm... hit the space bar. That skips a line at a time. Also, you can hit Esc to exit out of the dialogue if you don't like how your dialogue choice panned out/is panning out, and then do it over again. That said, I find questing in SWTOR to be a thousand times more enjoyable than any other MMO where you just grab quests and go through the steps to completing them, not ever bothering to read the story or caring about any of it. But then I play it as a single player game and have not even really felt like grouping yet at level 32. I even quickly turned off "general chat" because it's mostly obnoxious and breaks immersion. Meanwhile in EQ2 or EVE I would always end up bored to tears soloing everything, and it being hard to ever find groups anymore in EQ2 is why I left. EQ1 had a GREAT community atmosphere back in its hay-day, and it was almost entirely grinding with very few quests.

Totally agreed, hit space. Like in Bloodlines:)

[Porphyria]

Kitchen Steward   Atlanta, USA   Operations

Enough said. If they feel the kitchen steward is an integral member of the team it means they are doing fuck all. LOL

[Rick Gentle]

It could also mean there are enough people on-site that hiring a full-time kitchen person is a necessity to keep them all fed. It also means they're done hiring the "integral" guys, and can now hire the "comfort/non-essential" personnel.