mystafyi wrote on Jan 10
th, 2015 at 11:31am:
Interesting history of turbine.
Thanks for posting this. It is great stuff. It probably resonates with me because in 1993 I almost co-founded a gaming company.
I was working for my corporate employer, on a project I really didn't want to be on. (I got assigned to the project after completing my prior project. Normally, my employer let people interview for new projects until they found something they wanted. In this case, my new project was some exec's favorite toy and the project managers had free rein to Shanghai anyone they wanted, and my choice was to (a) do the project or (b) quit my job.)
A decade into my career, I had never had to work on something which I found boring, and I was quietly doing (a) while investigating (b).
One of my new co-workers invited me over to his house one night after we had worked together for awhile. I soon got to see his work exit plan. He had prototyped a graphical game on his PC. He had done everything (including the art work, which clearly was not his calling in life.) Aside from the art work, the game was rudimentary but not bad. (He had been so obsessed with the project that he completely trashed his marriage and got divorced soon after.)
His vision was to run the game over the internet (Mosaic, the first web browser, had just been released), and the project certainly was more interesting than my boring corporate project. Between the two of us, we came up with the names of 3 other people we knew (all from the same company as us) that could fill in the missing skill gaps. Soon, we were hijacking corporate conference rooms on Saturdays to craft our business/technical plans.
It was all going fairly well, until the fateful day when the rubber met the road and we had to talk about financing this start up. It soon became apparent that I was the only one who had any meaningful amount of money to fund the company. I calmly stated "If I am going to be the sole source of funding, then I am going to need a lot more than 20% ownership of the company."
That conversation was animated, to say the least. After several hours, we decided to adjourn until the following Saturday so we could more calmly consider what we wanted to do.
That meeting never happened, at least not with me in attendance. The middle of the next week, some other, more powerful corporate exec, wanted his toy project staffed, and I got a call from a friend of mine telling me he could get me on THAT project "if you think it sounds more interesting than what you are currently working on."
Sold, done deal. Life in corporate America.
Oh, and the game (and the start up company) never came to fruition.
DropBear wrote on Jan 10
th, 2015 at 5:48pm:
I wonder how JM looks back at Turdbine post 2010 after the WB takeover?
I do wonder if the culture and mgmt of today can be acribed to those quaint beginnings?
Well, I have to think that "JM" looks back on Turbine with some pretty fond memories. Not only did it make him rich, it also consumed quite a few years of his life. I think he likely gets nauseated by what WB has done to his creation.
On the flip side, I doubt that it comes as a complete surprise. Corporate America is notorious for overpaying for start ups. The people behind start ups live and breathe their companies. They understand them better than any group of corporate accountants ever could. When founders sell their companies, it is either because 1) the companies are under duress, or 2) the companies are at a peak and are primed to unload. $160 million. Ka-ching!
And yes, the current corporate culture at Turbine sounds like the same kind of laid back management approach that it always has had. That approach worked in the beginning because the employees were self motivated, driven individuals. It fails today because the employees are caricatures of corporate drones who only care about cashing their pay checks.
Pages: 1
a history of turbine w/ photo's (Read 7210 times)
