Note from Ren: This is split from the topic Olifiers Tweet? by Wege.

BOOM! My thread (RSOF QF 133-134-518-59592054) finally got an official response:

Hello everyone.

I can confirm that Henrique no longer works here, but MechScape is still being worked on.

Cheers!

♥Mod Poppy♥
♥Pretty In Pink♥

----------------


Thanks to everyone who posted and bumped to help keep the thread prominent. I'm still hoping for something more thorough but I think this should be some form of newspost etc rather than a simple forum reply. How this alters things is hard to say, but I think that it is clear this was a contributory factor to the Q&A being delayed. The sudden change between the time it was announced to the time it was cancelled suggested something was up and it turns out it was Henrique giving in his notice.

Well what now?

I really hope we get some sort of explanation about what happened. Not just, "oh yeah, he's gone..."

This could also easily explain why the QA was postponed.

I'd like to publicly thank Henrique for all the hard work he has put in over the years and the contributions he has made to MechScape. He is an innovator, and I hope that he enjoys his new job and that it provides him with the opportunity to be at the frontier of whatever field he is in. I guess the question now is whether the Head of MechScape job will go to an existing Jagex employee (e.g. Janaway - who I think would be awesome) or an external applicant.

I was shocked when I heard about this... Mmh... Who could the head of MechScape be now? =S

I wonder what will happen to Stellar Dawn. :(

Who will step up and take over as the new head?

~Jibby

whoever the new guy is i hope he knows what hes doing

Well, I'll miss him - he's done quite a bit for us.

Cheers and good luck Mr. Olifers :)

The best of luck to you Henrique! I cannot wait to see the work you helped put into MechScape! Thank you so much for being a part of the next greatest game in the universe.

*Hands Henrique a space pie*

It's a shame that Mr. Olifiers can't stick around to see his project come to life. Even so, I'm thankful that he was a part of MechScape. He seems to have been the best candidate for the job. Good luck with your next escapade, Henrique

13 User(s) are reading this topic (4 Guests and 0 Anonymous Users)
9 Members: Pliigi, Ren, Xela, PoultryChamp, Dirk, Dizzy, Wege, nthunter, Siganiv Lord

Hi Henrique, can you tell us what happened?

Thanks so much for all the time and effort you've put into the game, Henrique, I wish you the very best of luck for the rest of your career and anything you decide to do in future .

Personally, I'm not getting the best vibes from this. I'm certain there is a very good explanation behind this that we'll find out sooner or later, but the Head of anything stepping out usually has dark connotations. I have not been in touch with Henrique as much as I would like to have been and I can't pass any type of judgment on someone whom I barely know, especially on a game that isn't out. I do know that if MechScape / Stellar Dawn is a success technical wise, we have Henrique and the original team to thank for that.

I'm going to leave the assumptions for all you guys. At least until we know what's shakin' and movin' around in the lair of Jagex.

Hmmm, not good news. I wonder whats up at Jagex HQ..

Good luck with the future, Henrique.

It could reflect a change in emphasis away from innovation in initial development towards the more mundane activities of polishing and then maintaining an MMORPG.

This definitely makes it seem like the game will be a failure...

The head developer steps down, and still no info on release or any details on the game...

Yuh, not good news.

Mod Poppy tries very hard to be feminine.

Yah, gets her male fan club.

I don't like the sounds of this one bit... Who would step down after years of working on what is supposed to be a ground breaking game changing MMO, before even seeing it in action. Something tells me bad things are afoot...

Could also explain any postponement in general?

Bad bad things indeed... I just hope we get some more information about this soon...

This to me means bad news because as people said why would a head of a game leave before the game comes out when the've said it will come out "soon" the reason must've been very serious. (maybe he's leaving uk)

It also means that the new head will waste atleast 2-3 more years changing stuff that he does not like. i see dark times coming, very dark "WOOO".

what i really wonder is why did he leave/get fired etc?

Edit: i just saw Olifiers twitter made 17th september, it points on him working on something to do with PSP GO?

This could be absolutely nothing to do with the game or the company. I've just resigned from a perfectly good job for completely non-work related personal reasons. There's not much point in speculating on the state of game in relation to this news - a job is a job, and for nearly everyone it comes second to their life. Who knows, he may even have simply been offered an even better job somewhere else? The news is sad because Olifiers always seemed pretty fired up about the project, but otherwise it doesn't make me worry about the game itself.

I have to agree with PC here, a shadowy exit isn't the best of signs.

Yay, more delays! [/sarcasm]

Meh, hopefully the new guy doesn't scrap everything to delay it more, but a longer delay is more than likely going to happen.

Not exactly:
"Olifiers Death throes of game retailers faced with the online format: boycott of the PSP Go - http://bit.ly/1610sH - GOgoGO online!!! 10:14 AM Sep 17th"

Ren as new Head of Mechscape pl0x? :O

Ya ren actauly listens to us and would release it as soon as possible.

sorry for double posting but... i was in mod poppys surgery and i asked her what would happen to mechscape. She said 1 out of 50 ppl won't be a problem.

If the development phase of a project has finished then perhaps you don't need a head of development. They have said that the new game (unlike RS) will not grow organically and that future expansion was predetermined.

Still - a bit odd that this news should leak out like this. Perhaps the game is now very close to going live.

It's suppose to be 70 people on Mechscape
Well, good luck to Henrique with his new job and I thank him for being generous with Mechscapeworld.
Hopefully they pick someone that has been working on the game since it was conceived, or long enough and that they really care about the game like Henrique.

Also, Henrique never got his proudest moment

Henrique - I think my proudest moment is still to come, is where I've released my first big game here in Europe, and there's so much momentum being built around this project I've been working the past two and a half years, I think seeing that game coming together, and the stage it is right now, being playable and people enjoying it, but it's about to be released and open to the world. I'm starting to feel that this is my proudest moment. I am almost in the clouds, walking in the sky,

Nope, you usually have a Head of Content till the game dies (I assume). Not sure about it growing organically, cause I don't know what that means and I don't know what you mean by future expansion, so can't say otherwise. I'm confused, sorry lol haven't ate yet!

How bizarre - and disconcerting! Hopefully this hasn't seriously impacted development - I mean, of course it's continuing, but surely losing the Head guy is going to set them back a little bit. I wonder what happened? Did he get a better offer (hard to imagine), or were things just not working out? So many questions, and only one answer -_-

But of course, I wish Mr. Olifiers the best in the future. Only wish we could get some light shed on this since, as has been said, he made a rather shadowy exit...

Even if this doesn't delay the game, it definitely can't speed it up. =/


Well it's not like MechScape is going to be released in his lifetime anyway.

Henrique, what happened? I'm not getting a single good vibe from this. He's worked on the game for how long, only to leave now? I really hope that they stay on track and don't change the plans entirely.

I'm quite shocked. Although I never got the chance to talk to Henrique, I respected him greatly and always valued what he had to say. I enjoyed following him for the past good amount of months and it's a shame to see him go. I hope whoever gets the position will follow in Olifiers footsteps and do a great job for MS.

I just don't want the game to be delayed anymore. It's realllllllly starting to tick me off.

Ah this is gay, I really liked Henrique..

Well I wish him good luck in whatever his new job is.

Nice to see nthunter checking out the thread :) Good luck to you in the future, and hope you have a nice shiny new job to enjoy!

I don't expect to hear from him though, I guess he is now bound by a NDA which would be par for the course.

Given that there is now a vacancy as head of mechscape, I wonder what development is currently ongoing. If they promote internally then that would be the smoothest transition, but if they get someone from outside, then who knows what visions they would bring to the game and whether they would want lots of changes to what Henrique oversaw.

This thought takes me back to why he left in the first place though, I can't get this idea out of my head:

(Note: this is a work of FICTION none of the people or events are real ;) )

Henrique has what he believes is a finished game ready to go through polishing and release. So he shows it to some of the other big cheeses at Jagex. They play through the game for a bit, but each one feels that this isn't quite the blockbuster they were looking for. So they drag the game back to the drawing board and give Henrique a list of things they don't like about the game. He takes this rather badly as looking through the list there are several game changing items that show that they really didn't understand where he was coming from with particular aspects of the game design. Henrique tries to stand his ground, but the others refuse to sanction the game in its current state and demand the re-writes they proposed. Henrique decides he would rather walk away than compromise on his vision of what the game should be, he also thinks that they are heavily undermining his position as *head of* mechscape and submits his notice.

That is imo the worst case scenario as we would end up (eventually) with a game that is a mashup of several game designers views on what it should be. It would end up being a bit of everything but lack a core.

So what's the best case scenario? Well that is what Ren outlined, the game is complete and there is one years worth of content in the pipelines. No more designing is required and the mundane world of overseeing an active mmo title doesn't appeal to Henrique, so he is off to make more groundbreaking designs elsewhere!

Personally I hope for the best while being prepared for the worst.

Uh oh.

That would be the worst case scenario, but before/unless we're told anything, it's only going to depress us more to speculate so darkly. I'm going to go with "they parted amicably" until I'm told otherwise.

i've gotta say they were really rude in not providing a full proper response as to why he left and such

Neither side can probably say what the situation is. Funny things the contracts in the Games Industry - in most cases there is a claus that states you can't work for another company for anything up to 2 years after leaving one studio. It's kinda glossed over and ignored but it's there in black and white. Like I said, funny contracts guys and girls.

GG all sources of MS...

Makes you wonder if we are waiting for something that will be a failure...

"so close it hurts"

aww, that sucks. hope he quit, and not getting fired. that would be a bad sign for mechscape

It's doubtful that he quit because he hated the place if that's what you're trying to say. He worked his ass off on Mechscape, something tells me there's a lot of politics behind this move.

Either way, he isn't there for one reason or another. Which ever option it is (quit or fired) it doesn't look good for MS. I doubt he'd be like "Yeah I've spent ages on this game, I'm sick of it." and quit. Things aren't looking up for Mechscape. Pretty sure we can add another year to "soon."

I agree with John.