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Stargate SG-1: The Alliance


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Hello. I'm afraid I'm not a fan of the franchise, I just googled for the biggest Stargate fansite on the web. I'm a cost-analyst that works for JoWood; my job consists of working out how much a project will cost, then grovelling to management to try to get a large enough budget. First, let me bring you up to speed on JoWood. Anyone who's bought one of our games knows we make woefully inferior, poorly funded crap; with little to no support after the game comes out. The management are totally clueless, as in completely out to lunch. JoWood has fallen on hard times and are always on the lookout on ways to reduce costs (of course the idea of actually improving our games never occurred to them). Why am I slagging them off? Well I've just got a job offer from a much better company so to hell with them.

Do you know why SG:Alliance was really cancelled? It's because some poor simpleton signed a contract stating that should the project not meet our standards, we reserve the right to renege on the whole deal. What's more, they'd have to reimburse us for all the money we invested and release all the assets associated with the project (i.e. the game). We planned to renege on the contract from the beginning. Don't you see, we have the developer make us the game for nothing. Once the game reached a certain point in development we'd say it wasn't up to spec and now not only do they have to hand over the game, but the developer has to pay us for all the money we spent on it.


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Yeah, I read that this morning. Now WHY does all this sound SO familiar?

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Sydney, Australia, 12th of August, 2005; Perception Pty Ltd would like to rectify certain statements that have been made to the press by JoWooD Productions. To be clear, Perception is the official licensee of MGM on Stargate SG-1: The Alliance. Any suggestion that JoWooD has rights to Stargate SG-1: The Alliance upon termination of the contract is incorrect and not based on commercial or legal fact.

Development on the game will continue uninterrupted at PerceptionÔÇÖs Sydney studio. Perception is committed to giving fans the best gaming experience possible.

Ben Lenzo, CEO of Perception said, ÔÇ£We view it as unfortunate that JoWooD would elect to make such misleading and libelous comments to the media and the marketplace. Over the last 9 months, JoWooD has openly acknowledged being in breach of contract in a number of areas including many legal and confidentiality breaches as well as several financial defaults for work performed by Perception and accepted by JoWooD.ÔÇØ

Perception has tried to work with JoWooD to resolve these issues for months but to no avail. This resulted in several breach notices being served on JoWooD, giving them ample time to remedy. As these newest issues had not been resolved by the August 5th 2005, Perception gave notice that all outstanding issues would need to be resolved by Monday August 8th 2005, or Perception would terminate its contract with JoWooD.

ÔÇ£ItÔÇÖs disappointing to hear of this so called termination via the press on the basis of a ÔÇ£get in firstÔÇØ tactic. This further suggests that JoWooD do not understand the terms of the contract. We are not surprised by their behavior or lack of appreciation for the goodwill Perception has afforded JoWooD on many occasions,ÔÇØ said Lenzo

Perception has begun personal prosecution proceedings against both the CEO, Albert Seidl and the Chairman of the Supervisory Board of JoWooD, Andreas Rudas, for the libelous comments made in their press release and will use all legal remedies available to it for the substantial monies owed to it by JoWooD.

ÔÇ£Perception will not allow its name to be tarnished in such a manner and view such matters extremely seriously and will always protect the reputation of our staff, our products, licensing partners and the company.ÔÇØ

Perception will not discuss any further the outstanding issues with JoWooD in public as legal action is underway. We look forward to the release of Stargate SG-1: The Alliance.


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Spotted over here

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The public exchange of blows goes on between JoWooD and their Austrilian ex-development partner Perception. Now that Perception's CEO Ben Menzo had stated his take on the termination of the contract earlier today, JoWooD's CEO Seidl responded.

Perception's statements are "insubstantial and wrong", Seidl states. The game happens to be in an extremely bad condition, which also was confirmed by an analysis/expertise made by one of the leading publishers (worldwide). The analysis of the PS2 and Xbox version concludes: "Neither version is playable in any kind." JoWooD had the contractual right to terminate the agreement if the product has severe flaws and if the developer was notified of the serious violation of the contract in written form. This notification had already been sent on 06/13/2005. The contract was terminated on 08/05/2005 as Perception had not made any signifcant progress in the meantime.

Also, all financial duties were fulfilled by JoWooD whereas Perception violated the development contract on their side of things due to the product having technical flaws and not meeting the original schedule.

The stocks/shares of the game publisher took a hit as Perception's Ben Menzo noted that they intend to take legal action against JW CEO Albert Seidl and Andreas Ruda (chairman of the board), who has been angered by JoWooD's "financially damaging" statements. [...]


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FYI, the version of the game they had at E3 was complete crap. On the other hand, the trailers look extremely promising...

But I'm inclined to take a developer's word over a publisher's any day... especially in light of the way JoWood's statements are carefully worded. I hope Perception takes JoWood to the dog house with this one.

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Ganked from Blues

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To follow-up on last night's report of a new publishing deal between Namco and Perception for Stargate SG-1: The Alliance (story). The webpage this was all based on reflected Namco's original role in the game's distribution, rather than any new arrangement, and apparently Namco's involvement in this project still hinges on the outcome of the original dispute between JoWooD and Perception (story and story). Apologies for any confusion the erroneous story caused.


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This guy at http://www.stargate-game.com/reviewp1.php has a gameplay review just two or so days old. He was there Friday I believe.

He also conducted an interview which can be accessed via the front page of the link I provided. Sounds like the game is coming along, I just hope the right publisher is found with enough time to finish the game by Dec.

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  • 5 months later...

Well, thats the end of that. They've cancelled it.

From one of the staff members at Perception:

"For the last couple of months, we have had several good offers from interested publishers. They only needed one thing - MGM's approval. Since MGM are the owners of the Stargate license, everything needs to be approved by them, even new publisher contracts. So, when we approached MGM about these contracts...MGM basically sat on their hands and did nothing. They didn't flat out say no, but they didn't say yes either. They expressed concerns with areas of the game. We addressed those concerns. Still no publisher approval. We showed them other offers from publishers, and that said publishers were asking for more information on the license. Did MGM provide it? No, even though contractually they were supposed to.

In the end it was pretty obvious MGM wanted the project canned for some reason that eludes everyone except them, but they didn't want to be the ones to do it. So, they just sat on their hands and did nothing for several months, to the point where Perception could not afford to keep working on the game knowing that they didn't have MGM's approval, and will probably never get it. Developers need publishers to fund the creation of a game. Without the publisher, the developer gets no income. Without MGM's approval, Perception couldn't sign a publisher. So the equation is pretty simple. There's only so long a developer can hold on financially without publisher backing.

As of about Friday the 20th of January 2006, at about 1pm Sydney time, the title "Stargate SG-1: The Alliance" was terminated for all SKU's. This also means the entire development team was "let go". I am now out of a job. After putting blood, sweat and tears into this thing for the last year and a half, and pulling some ridiculous hours on more occasions I can count, it's all for nothing."

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  • 2 weeks later...

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