I used to be an avid firefall fan until I discovered all the shenanigans that Kern was up to. After reading a post on reddit titled:"
What buying back the Firefall IP really means, by Mark Kern "(which is followed by a really long post about what kind of person that Kern [supposedly]really is), I decided to come here and post to find out; what is giving the developers the drive to help Kern create another IP? Did he rage until you finally agreed? How do you (the developer) know that Kern isn't going to wake up on the wrong side of the bed one morning and end up firing your core team? Is it true that he hardly shows up to do any work? Or is he the opposite (like a hardworking buttkisser) when it comes to getting things done?
Before I drop another dime on another one of Kern's creations, I have to know whether or not the money that I am putting into the game is worth the investment. Or if he's like EA games where he creates broken games solely just for the money.
Hi, we'll be moving this thread to the complaints and gripe section, but I wanted to reply.
A lot of the negative stuff that people heard came from one poster on Reddit, Brutal Whimsey. Brutal spun a pretty tight and commercial quality written narrative, combining bit of truth and leaving out a lot of things, to weave a hitpiece out of some kind of grudge, or perhaps corporate motivation (The9 was looking to discredit me to explain to new investors why I left...and I did resign, I was not let go, that is fakenews). I suspect the later, because a year later, when The9 and Red 5 failed to pay employees at Christmas, Brutal slammed employees for leaking their NDAs and told them to shut up (funny, he praised them for breaking NDA when talking about me, odd that). From there, that post was the basis for an article about me on some clickbait game site and the rest of the slander campaign is history.
I have several Ex-Red5 team members working for me (JoeSolo, Michael Bross, Noel Rubin, and three others (2 who just joined) I can't name because they work for other companies right now), which should tell you that a lot of what you heard is selective truths and hyperbole. Also, you don't see people on the World of Warcraft team complaining about me, and I was Team Lead and in the trenches on that project for five years. When I directly manage a product, like WoW or Starcraft: Broodwar, Diablo 2, etc. they tend to go really well. As a CEO, I had less and less direct management of the team as time went on. We were fighting an internal war with The9 and I was often called away to China to say, argue against firing the entire management team, or doing layoffs (unfortunately at one point The9 insisted and we had to do a round of layoffs during beta). During my tenure at CEO we had one of the highest retention rates of employees in Red 5's history. When I left, droves of employees started to leave as The9 took over. I never fired on a whim, gave people 30-60 improvement programs, and fired very few compared to The9 later, who eventually fired everyone but core team to work on mobile and porn games.
My team is motivated by I'm passionate. I'm passionate about Firefall, mechs, anime and Kaiju, and it shows. I strive for a high quality of work and will even do things like remake the Omniframe based on user feedback that it wasn't good enough. They also were there with me and saw things the public did not (or even some team members). They tend to be people I've worked with directly for years, instead of managed by the middle manager of Firefall, so they know me better, rather than 2nd or 3rd hand company rumors. Or they have worked with me the on concept and art for Crixa, the tabletop game, and enjoyed it. I've not lost a single team member on Crixa or Em-8ER .
Did I make mistakes on Firefall? Absolutely. Did I tank the company? No, beta was the highest point and I presided over the "golden age" of Firefall. After I left, they changed the game to WoW with Guns and user concurrency sank rapidly. They had 2 years and changed the game many times during that time to try to make "their vision" of Firefall, which I creatively disagreed with (a source of many arguments, and yes, I would get a little heated sometimes when they wanted to make WoW with guns).
This time I have no investors who want me to "just make WoW again" and my team is small, motivated and loyal. Instead of me being away in China all the time, I'm here working directly on the game, side by side with my team. It's where I'm best, really, as you can see from my history of all my games.
I hope you are here because you are genuinely curious. I'm a pretty open and friendly person, as the community here knows. If this helps you in any way to change your mind, then stay with us awhile and see for yourself how it goes.
- Markus
