did you hear they fired brian mitsoda? WHAT ARE THEY THINKING?!?!?
Ok, let’s get serious a moment, here’s some links. Mitsoda and Cluney were fired from Paradox/HSL last month.
VTMB2 presented it as organizational changes and “it was a joint decision between HSL and Paradox”.
Mitsoda is the dude who made VTMB1.
Cluney is the dude who pitched the game and grabbed Mitsoda along.
Paradox and Hardsuit Labs SOLD us VTMB2 as “by the authors of VTMB1″, capitalizing a lot on Mitsoda’s name. As well as Rik Schaffer (the composer of VTMB1, magnificent music, but my guess is that Schaffer wasn’t an employee but a contractor/Freelancer whose job is now basically dine, and he’s not involved in the game making itself).
To get the game out of the door, they’re ringing Alexandre Mandryka, and you can see his CV right here. Alexandre isn’t replacing Brian Mitsoda in and out of itself though, after all the game was on track to be done March 2020 so the story itself should be done already.
"None of Brian's work is being removed, it was an honour to work with him, Alexandre is being brought in to get the game out the door on time and not as a replacement" is basically what Outstar said in some discord servers.
So they’re firing him after having used his name, fame and brand recognition, and still intend to profit off his work and say his content is staying. They’re firing two people in the middle of a pandemic, the two people who carried the project, and now they’re not “useful anymore”, they get tossed away.
Way to go, Paradox/HSL. Congrats on becoming full Pentex.
Brian Mitsoda may have been slowing the project to make it the best it could be, out of masterpiece work ethics. Maybe. But Mitsoda is also the dude who, as an indie dev, pushed a AA game out of the door, in time and on budget (seriously go buy Dead State, it’s a great game). Mitsoda as a creative knows what to cut and what to focus on. VTMB1 has flaws, but the story was basically done. Activision pushed it out of the door way too early, and coders, programmers and writers couldn’t finish what was planned (which is why the last third of the game is kinda bad). Paradox is making the same mistake. This is why I and most others VTMB fans were fine with the delays.
A delayed game can be eventually good. A rushed game is bad forever.
Paradox and HSL have seriously dented player trust, because if the reason displayed elsewhere for the firing was “creative differences”, and the company sided against the creatives for “creative differences”, then this should be shields up moment. This is unacceptable.
Many of us are voting with our wallets (cancelling preorders, speaking up against the shit image it gives, there’s a change/org petition); remember, paradox and hardsuit went full "with the original team!!!" to sell it to us, and breached our trust. It’s up to us as a community to show them that they can’t buy the IP and basically become the antagonists the IP denounces.
What we’ve seen so far has been: (late) ps3 era quality animations (for a game advertised for next gen PS5 stuff, that’s not good), no accessibility, unflattering fan service / appeal to nostalgia, and a serial killer as center piece to be glorified and drooled over. I really want to believe it.
And despite all of this, I do believe the final product will be a fine game. But this is a matter of ethics, a matter of values.
This is the World of Darkness, an IP which is centered around denouncing such shit behaviors, punching up and taking matters into the players' hands, fighting the corruption and facelessness of hard data oriented productivity-bottom-line oriented assholes against artists and creators.
The WoD is about fighting Pentex, oppressive societies, harmful homogeneity, and celebrating individual creativity, making things work on a small scale around yourself and making the world a little brighter for you and those you care about. The WoD IS about activism.
If we, vtmb players, let this slide and still buy it, and still accept it, we’re letting them win.
We’re talking about a political IP about the evils of certain corps running the world and asphyxiating it with greed and horror. They’re not a how-to manual, they’re not to be glorified and followed as example.
Please write to Paradox.
Write to HSL.
Tweet about it.
Tag them.
Comment their videos.
Refund your preorders.
Tell Outstar to be the critical thinking fan she always was and show where her values are, as a newly arrived Paradox employee. Tell Jason Carl to use his influence. Grab Achilli and tell him he’s allowing ghouls to run the thing, instead of the passion franchise it is. Ghouls fully ruining and exploiting the fuck out of creatives for the IP which explicitly denounces this kind of behavior.
Yes, products need to be shipped out at some point, but quality and soul are important. Crucial.
Currently, Paradox has licensed a whole lot of different companies to do WoD work, doing it the Warhammer way and see what sticks, and let failures disappear into oblivion. Make sure you support the products worth supporting, and ghouls need to die off.
Highly recommend supporting the VTES folks, who hire great artists, who support FLGS, who use WORLD of Darkness material (instead of yet-again-another-US-centered thing). Renegade is doing a reskin card game, it’s going to have good mechanics, but otherwise? It’s a consumer product.
