A Reflection on Midway
May 21st, 2009 by Macguffin
I had one experience with Midway, a number of years ago now.
I was working in what was essentially an Associate Producer role at a 3rd party studio in Boston. I had just gotten moved there from being the QA Lead, and I still had some stars in my eyes – I was always interested in meeting people from the publisher, regardless of who they were or what they did.
Midway was in town and talking to our studio about working together; the people there that day were doing the company’s due-dilligence. I wasn’t involved in most of the discussions that day, but did end up having lunch with everyone.
One of the people in the Midway group was an art director on their end. He was always the guy to speak up first in the group, and it seemed very apparent that he had a high opinion of himself. It would become obvious in the months following that this guy was all about console games, and had no appreciation for the sometimes subtle differences between making a game for a console audience versus a PC audience.
At one point during the lunch, I threw out the question, “So, what do you guys think of what’s going on with this independent games stuff?”
His immediate response was, “It’s never going to go anywhere.”
As I digested this little gem and considered a follow-up question, one of the other Midway guys said, “I have a friend who is a small developer and worked with Garage Games. He said he’s having a hell of a time getting paid by them.”
At which point Messr. Art Director looked back to me and said, “Yeah, see. Never going to go anywhere.”
I nodded sagely and shut up. I felt that discretion was the better part of valor in this case. I did make a mental note, however, that this guy was a complete asshat.
In the time that followed, I’ve heard only bad news out of people who had to deal with Midway. And while I’m reluctant to draw broad conclusions about a whole company based on one guy, the fact remains that Midway thought this was a good guy to have evaluate new potential partners. And the overall impression I get from their troubles is that they made poor moves again and again, with matters complicated further by often poor execution. I have to wonder if this guy’s close-minded hubris was indicative of a larger trend.
All these things said, my heart goes out to all the people who have had their lives turned upside down by Midway’s lingering collapse. I’m sure that there were a lot of awesome people there. I just wish there had been more in the right positions.