Working Designs closes it's doors... :(

[Ed Oscuro]

Edit: LOL @ ME

Ferricide is (was? I don't keep track of these folks that well...after reading the article, no he wasn't) with GameSpy as a reviewer/article writer. I think I'm gonna mosey over to GameSpy Forums and write something about this.

Edit: Sigh, I guess not. Actually, the points about the profitability of the releases are right on, and should be underlined.

[zmweasel]

oh hey, I was just reading about this (http://www.livejournal.com/users/ferricide/204521.html?view=972009) the other day. Funny!

It's cute that the only poeple that are really going to miss Vic's company are the select vocal few he somehow never manged to alienate and piss off with this laughable antics and poor buisness sense.

C-Nutt's a decent fellow, but this particular blog entry has some faults.

#1: Most of the "inside" knowledge he has is from former employees who were still bitter when they discussed their experiences with him, so he didn't hear much about the good times.

#2: Why does Christian *care* about how Victor ran his business? How does it affect his gaming experience one way or another? This is as confusing as the complaints about the delays. Why is he so angry about Victor's desire to give RPG fans a killer anthology? This kind of inside-baseball stuff is interesting to jaded journos and fanboy haters, but not to the vast majority of people who just wanna play good games. Victor served those people well.

#3: Christian sure does have an awful lot to say about successfully running a video game publisher, for someone who's never been employed by a video game publisher. (Quite ironic when he states "gamers on the web just don't understand business.")

#4: Christian projects an awful lot of hatred at WD's localization style.

Most of Christian's stated facts are true. It's just an unusually hostile piece, seemingly written to amuse Christian's jaded-journo friends.

I mean, in one of the responses to his post, Christian states that "Vic can be a bitch and worse." That crosses the line from game-journo opinion to fanboy hatred, and Christian is much better than that.

As for you, Mr. X, I don't know what Victor did to upset you so much. Since you told Christian that his piece "brings back some very fond (and not so fond) memories from the old IRC days," I assume your sum total of knowledge about WD comes from what you read in a chatroom, and I don't need to tell you about the dubiousness of such a source.

In any case, it's time to let go and move on. The company that brought so much evil into your world is dead. Your heavy psychological burden has been lifted.

And now that I've achieved *my* closure, it's time to move on from this thread.

-- Z.

[Ed Oscuro]

Hmm, maybe my initial thought was more correct, then.

This line concerned me, however:

#2: Why does Christian *care* about how Victor ran his business? How does it affect his gaming experience one way or another?
Well, the obvious answer is that Christian wanted WD to be around, but it's also apparent his quarrels with the designer went deeper. He has strong opinions on other unrelated areas of WD's workings; I guess he feels that WD was a fanservice company and as such there must be deep issues with it as it didn't satisfy his every whim.


This is as confusing as the complaints about the delays.
I agree; I don't get complaints about delays.


#3: Christian sure does have an awful lot to say about successfully running a video game publisher, for someone who's never been employed by a video game publisher. (Quite ironic when he states "gamers on the web just don't understand business.")
Also ironic when he said WD wasn't really a publisher. Aye, I did notice that he claimed the large amount of pack-ins were enormously expensive, then later on doesn't end up having the numbers. However, I also noticed that he mentions the non-LE version of one of WD's later games ended up outselling the LE one 2:1. I think Ferricide's looking at this more from an outsider's perspective, one whom would be less happy about paying the $20 extra for an "old" game with "useless extras," rather than being concerned about its harmful effects on WD's bottom line (so far unproven).

It also does not stand to reason how one can call Victor's committment to giving gamers more bang for their buck - the games were not the newest, after all, and he was making up for that - "dogmatic." I think Victor was looking for an extra selling point with his games, knowing full well that people shiny things.

[Six Switch]

you know,weasel is the only person here who knew the man,for a long time too.maybe we should listen to him?

just a thought.

[Ed Oscuro]

Aye. I'm having to scratch my head in that Zach spent a lot of time being negative about the time, which goes contrary to what's being said now. I like the guy and don't think he's trying to mislead us, but I wonder if some of the more negative posters (OP of the Classic Gaming "WD is finally dead post," RCM, roushimx...etc) took a cue from previous discussions.

[Richter Belmount]

RIP WD , You really went out of your way to please your fans .


>_> (hopes microsoft picks them up )

[videogameoverdose]

Whatever any one says about WD, they will always be in my heart.
When my 3 yr. old broke one of my Magic Knight Rayearth discs, I called the company for a replacement and at first was told they had no copies left, but an hour later, I got a call and they found the last copy, I sent in the $13.00 and the busted disc and was a happy camper.
Since then, I made it a point to purchase every game that they put out for the systems I own, and I have not been dissapointed with the quality of the products.
Will any body step up to take their place?
I'll miss the great packaging and conversions?
Hail the mighty dollar. :(

[jdc]

Yeah, Working Designs actually made stuff that you looked forward to. There was no other feeling than arriving home with your new 10 ton Working Design package and plundering all of the cool loot inside. It took ages just to look at it all. It's a crying shame that WD had to be disolved. Any company that takes that many pains over book binding detail is special indeed.

The Vanguard Bandits hardcover manual absolutely was the best. I cherish mine.

[Xexyz]

Will any body step up to take their place?
I'll miss the great packaging and conversions?
Hail the mighty dollar. :(

Minus the extra pack-ins and stuff, Atlus, Nippon Ichi, and Hot-B are doing a decent job at satisfying the Western niche gamer.

[j_factor]

The problem with WD is that they had stopped releasing games. When Growlanser came out, it had been well over 2 years since their previous release. That was when I knew they were dead.