Star Wars Galaxies Developer Commits Suicide
Star Wars Galaxies Developer Commits Suicide
October 3, 2008
A controversial former member of the Star Wars Galaxies development team has taken his own life, reports The Escapist.
Jeff Freeman, 39, was widely - and unjustly - blamed by fans of the Star Wars-themed MMO for a failed 2005 update:
He was unfortunate enough to become the public face of the "New Game Enhancements" update, one of the most infamous debacles in MMOG history... even though his role in its development was minor.
Despite the fact that he continued to suffer online abuse at the hands of Star Wars Galaxies players unhappy with the NGE changes even after leaving Sony Online Entertainment in late 2006, Freeman's brother clarified that his suicide had nothing to do with the game. "I want everyone to know that it was not SWG that led him to take his life," he said. "He has been troubled for some time. There were a lot of personal issues that tore at him."
A memorial service for Freeman was held yesterday in Austin.
Crispy Gamer has more on Jeff Freeman. "Crying Freeman," a terrific 2007 story piece from The Escapist, details how he came to be blamed for the New Game Enhancements controversy.
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Posted 07/04/09 at 01:18pm
Andrew Eisen: Rodrigo - A fun idea but you might want to fix the typos.
Andrew Eisen: Rodrigo - A fun idea but you might want to fix the typos.
Posted 07/04/09 at 12:57pm
GRIZZAM PRIME: Happy 4th of July!
GRIZZAM PRIME: Happy 4th of July!
Posted 07/04/09 at 12:44pm
Yuuri: Happy Blow Crap Up Day!
Yuuri: Happy Blow Crap Up Day!
Posted 07/04/09 at 11:09am
Rodrigo Ybáñez García: I designed this shirt for Jack debate today: http://i44.tinypic.com/2552t89.jpg
Rodrigo Ybáñez García: I designed this shirt for Jack debate today: http://i44.tinypic.com/2552t89.jpg
Posted 07/04/09 at 11:06am
BearDogg-X: There's a one minute and a half preview of the video game episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! up at http://www.sho.com/site/ptbs/home.do
BearDogg-X: There's a one minute and a half preview of the video game episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! up at http://www.sho.com/site/ptbs/home.do
Posted 07/04/09 at 10:08am
Arcanagos: Happy 4th all
Arcanagos: Happy 4th all
Posted 07/04/09 at 09:32am
Firebird: Greetings GP community, and HAPPY 4th of JULY!!!
Firebird: Greetings GP community, and HAPPY 4th of JULY!!!
Posted 07/04/09 at 03:48am
Michael Chandra: I missed out on Jack? =(
Michael Chandra: I missed out on Jack? =(
Posted 07/04/09 at 01:52am
Escanor94: hmm, looks like when someone gets banned all their comments are automaticly deleted
Escanor94: hmm, looks like when someone gets banned all their comments are automaticly deleted
Posted 07/03/09 at 11:46pm
Arcanagos: aww, did i miss the JT party? :(
Arcanagos: aww, did i miss the JT party? :(
Posted 07/03/09 at 11:00pm
Leet Gamer Jargon: Where's the recent JT bullcrap? Which comments section has he vomited on? EDIT: Nevermind; it's in the "Radio" thread.
Leet Gamer Jargon: Where's the recent JT bullcrap? Which comments section has he vomited on? EDIT: Nevermind; it's in the "Radio" thread.
Posted 07/03/09 at 09:17pm
BearDogg-X: I wonder what the Metropolitian Moron of Miami said in response to my comment saying that he got a dose of his medicine on the SGC09 Debate thread?
BearDogg-X: I wonder what the Metropolitian Moron of Miami said in response to my comment saying that he got a dose of his medicine on the SGC09 Debate thread?
Posted 07/03/09 at 06:51pm
Rodrigo Ybáñez García: He gets offended with a bunch of flowers.
Rodrigo Ybáñez García: He gets offended with a bunch of flowers.
Posted 07/03/09 at 06:49pm
GoodRobotUs: LOL He takes offence at the fact he might have *chosen* to be crazy?
GoodRobotUs: LOL He takes offence at the fact he might have *chosen* to be crazy?
Posted 07/03/09 at 06:47pm
Rodrigo Ybáñez García: He warned me to get a lawyer after I called him "crazy by his own choice"... that´s libel for him
Rodrigo Ybáñez García: He warned me to get a lawyer after I called him "crazy by his own choice"... that´s libel for him
Posted 07/03/09 at 06:45pm
HilaryDuffGta: "libel" what did he threaten now?
HilaryDuffGta: "libel" what did he threaten now?
Posted 07/03/09 at 06:44pm
Rodrigo Ybáñez García: Was fun to be threatened for "libel" again.
Rodrigo Ybáñez García: Was fun to be threatened for "libel" again.
Posted 07/03/09 at 06:26pm
HilaryDuffGta: hey so what did i miss??? the usual spam of "crap"
HilaryDuffGta: hey so what did i miss??? the usual spam of "crap"
Posted 07/03/09 at 06:15pm
FlakAttack: Jack ruined his chance to have civil debates with us here. Glad you banned him (again).
FlakAttack: Jack ruined his chance to have civil debates with us here. Glad you banned him (again).
Posted 07/03/09 at 04:04pm
Krono: Unexpected is probably the best word to describe it. Particularly as no decent reason is given.
Krono: Unexpected is probably the best word to describe it. Particularly as no decent reason is given.
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Game Politics and Game Politics logo are trademarks of the ECA.
Game Politics and Game Politics logo are trademarks of the ECA.
Comments
oh lord, that's truly fucked up. and i want to get into video game dev, that scares me a lot!
Jesus Jack Jones Thompson.... is dead... (funeral udruge, followed by Celebrate :D )
I also think it's pretty scary that overly fanatic players kept harassing a developer because they think it's their game being ruined but the article states pretty clearly that his suicide had nothing to do with his job as a game developer.
Fanatic MMORPG players are 10x more whiny and over the line then most other fanatics XD
Not as much as PVP players!
That combined with fanatic sci-fi fans that worship said universe to the point where they give out death threats to an author that killed off a character in a book because the creator of said universe wanted it done..........You do have to admit theres a small percentage of the geek/nerd world that has no life + socially stunted + obsession = metal issues.
They get too many piercings?
Well, coming from someone that played the original, GOOD, SWG, I can honestly say that the hatred and rage directed towards SOE and anybody who works with them is well founded. Plainly stated: the NGE ruined what was and still is the best MMO I've ever played, to this day.
I, personally, wish with every bone in my body that SOE goes under because of what they did to it. Granted, its an unrealistic request, but whatever. This guy became the public face of a company that was going directly against the wishes of 70% of it's fan-base, of course you are going to get harrassed and raged at. If I in that position, I would have seen that coming from a mile away and gotten my ass out of dodge.
Apparently, however, he had more issues than just the game, and it really is a shame that anyone kill themselves.
"Well, coming from someone that played the original, GOOD, SWG, I can honestly say that the hatred and rage directed towards SOE and anybody who works with them is well founded. Plainly stated: the NGE ruined what was and still is the best MMO I've ever played, to this day."
I find your lack of taste disturbing...
Did anyone else notice the horrible, horrible irony of The Escapist reporting a suicide?
For anyone who hasn't played SWG let me tell you, before NGE the game was impossibly hard.
Before World of Warcraft came out and when Everquest took over the mmo theme everyone tried to copy and use Everquest as a basic formula on how to create an MMO. Thus the impossible MMOs let's take forever to do anything model came up and that was SWG.
It literally took hours, days, weeks and months and sometimes years just to advance a little.
And it was also supported by a small fringe of the gaming community who we shall call, the elitists who like to play a hard game and believe everything should be hard and it should take months to do anything. Take a party of six to kill a rat take 12 hours to kill a boss. (Think of another MMO that uses the Everquest Formula, FFXI)
Regardless of the NGE, the game was doomed. They tried to make it more like World of Warcraft and in many ways they improved the game and added an actual main story. Problem was that, it's glitched and its support staff were outsourced meaning if you fell in a glitchy hole, you might as well make anew character.
To become a Jedi it literally took people MONTHS and YEARS to do that. People blame NGE for people leaving, no blame WoW. Besides the only people who stayed were and complained about leaving where the elitists.
In fact most evened up joining WoW and they are the ones now complaining that they are lowering the EXP requirements, always whining about making a game easier.
You know what, gamers like that deserve there own MMO, how bout a dungeon or torcher game were it takes them literally days just to advance in the next couple areas and torcher for anyone else to play!
I do my fair share of complaining, but those people are freakin' scary.
Are you sure you were even playing the same game?
The game far from "impossibly hard" as you put it. You could change your character's skill tree's and master them in 3 days or less if you wished. Also you could kill almost anything solo, unless it was a theme park, event, etc... In fact out of any MMO that I have played I could get the most done in SWG as a casual player that I could do anywhere else.
The NGE didn't fail because it was bugged. It failed because gameplay was dramatically changed trying to emulate another game, while losing almost everything that set it apart in the first place; and also going against 70% of their player base. The bugs were the icing on the cake.
With that said I don't don't place all the blame on SOE, LucasArts deserves more than their share of blame. However SOE could have put forth more effort into designing something appealing, and retaining what they had that worked. The focus should have been taken off of changing the base game, to trying to rework other features, such as the GCW (Galactic Civil War), smuggling, bounty hunting, Jedi system, etc...
Jedi should have taken as long as they did pre-NGE. They were a symbol showing that you put forth the time and effort to do so. Why shouldn't those people be rewarded? Not to mention opening that up from the start as the NGE did would go against Star Wars canon.
Too the average lover of the Everquest formula, hard is not fighting for 12 hours in a boss battle or spending the first month killing rats and rabbits which might take a party of four to defeat one wererabbit.
Star Wars Galaxies was doomed before the change. The only people it upset where the hardcore fanbase of the EQ formula. Everyone else was looking at better sights with World of Warcraft.
SWG, FFXI, Matrix Online, Everquest 2 and many others tried to stay with the old forumla and some even though they were right before WoW they refused to change.
Now FFXI, they made it more solo friendly and changed some of the core gameplay I think they would have an increased membership. Fact is, they don't want to add things every month like World of Warcraft. They want to keep releasing expansions but honestly all those games you see listed, in there exansions how much content have they released?
Fact is, each WoW expansion it releases huge amount of content and honestly one patch of WoW ususally adds more content then each one of these games so called expansions. The only thing that keeps these games long is the impossible game play think FFXI and there 24 hourboss battles.
Even though these games dont have much members they still claim some that your membership might not be there if you dont play for awhile. Bull, WoW turned that theory upside down and lets everyone keep there memberships!
May he rest in peace... There are many of us in the industry that have a lot on our shoulders, and I really hope many people wake up and realize we can't let life get us down like this. Yes, it is life, it sucks, but we have to accept that that is just how life is, and we have to focus on the good in our lives, even when there is little good, and expect the worst possible result in all cases and hope for the best, and then you will be happy no matter what the result is and okay if it is worst case...
Best wishes to his family... Things like this happen in this world unluckily.
Three words come to mind. "Holy," "fucking," and "shit." Do they come to anyone else's mind?
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I AM DOOMED TO HAUNT JACK THOMPSON'S DREAMS UNTIL HIS CRUSADE AGAINST VIDEO GAMES ENDS.
Sad stuff..
It's right though, he has nothing to do with the NGE yet he takes flack as well, when it was Smedley and Torres who were primarily responsible for turning an open-world economy-based MMO like SWG into a WoW clone.
Back when the NGE was released, I too was telling people not to verbally assault good developers like Rogue13 (SWG art dev + Polycount.com founder), but to take the complaints to the brains behind the NGE. But you know, the cool kids keep on shouting at anyone because it's "in" to do it, instead of doing what's right..
And that's why my SWG forum accounts remain closed forever. No one with any respect for honest people - or themselves - would stick with that pile of crap, much less STILL complain to said honest people about lead idiocy committed so very long ago..
bad graphic...
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http://www.tala-karincayagi.com
*facepalm*
YOU FAIL AT LIFE.
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I AM DOOMED TO HAUNT JACK THOMPSON'S DREAMS UNTIL HIS CRUSADE AGAINST VIDEO GAMES ENDS.
Delete this plz