MindsEye Studio May Die with a Whimper After One Last Layoff Wave
Anyone who’s been even slightly plugged into the gaming scene in the last couple of years has probably at least heard the name “MindsEye,” though I wouldn’t especially blame you either if you’d already forgotten…
Anyone who’s been even slightly plugged into the gaming scene in the last couple of years has probably at least heard the name “MindsEye,” though I wouldn’t especially blame you either if you’d already forgotten. Published by IO Interactive, it was slated to be an extremely ambitious open-world action game, propped up as a genuine “GTA-killer.” It was not that.
The launch of MindsEye was one of the most legendarily awful in recent memory, with heavily negative player feedback, low critical reviews, and scores of reported bugs and bad design choices. It was a complete and utter mess, and its studio, Build a Rocket Boy, took the damage head-on, with large swaths of staff being laid off in June of last year.
To be completely honest, I didn’t even know the studio had anything left to lose after such an unmitigated disaster, but it turns out that it does! And it’s apparently about to lose that, too! Today, the studio’s principal talent acquisition partner, Dan Hawkins, announced on his personal LinkedIn page that both he and his colleagues at Build a Rocket Boy are facing redundancy (i.e. being laid off), and pretty clearly implied that the company as a whole won’t be far behind.
I Sincerely Didn’t Know There Was Anything Left to Lose
In his LinkedIn post, Hawkins announces that, “With a very heavy heart I raise my green banner, along with the rest of my colleagues at Build a Rocket Boy. I am 'Open to Work' actively looking for a new adventure."
The “green banner” refers to the banner on a LinkedIn profile page announcing to others on the platform that he is currently open to and looking for a new position.
After talking up the studio and how much he learned there, Hawkins added that he “will be seeing BARB through till the very end, helping wrap things up here in the HR department.”
“With a very heavy heart I raise my green banner, along with the rest of my colleagues at Build a Rocket Boy.”
This could be read in a couple of ways: either he’s passing his role in the studio’s HR department onto someone else, or the department, and by extension, the studio as a whole, is getting shuttered. Lending credence to the latter reading is that two other Build a Rocket Boy employees posted similar messages on their own LinkedIn pages, including 3D weapon and prop artist Adam Ridsdale and release manager Michaela Emslie.
Hawkins concluded his post with a request to his professional network about any other potential opportunities in the game industry.
The Real MindsEye was the Jobs We Lost Along the Way
Given how MindsEye ultimately panned out, it’s not especially surprising that things at Build a Rocket Boy ended up this way. The studio had a hybrid MMO and game engine called Everywhere in development, but prior to MindsEye’s release, all mentions of Everywhere disappeared from the studio’s website, with Leslie Benzies noncommittally claiming it would “return soon,” which it didn’t. With no games in development and, apparently, no butts in seats, it doesn’t take a genius to read the writing on the wall for this studio.
Even if things weren’t actively falling apart at the moment, Build a Rocket Boy did a pretty excellent job of tanking its reputation following MindsEye’s release, so the odds of it ever getting new employees would be low even if it weren’t laying them all off. Following the aforementioned poor reception to the game, the studio came under fire for allegedly using bot accounts to inflate its review score, while Benzies baselessly claimed that the game’s failure was actually the product of industrial sabotage.
Just this past July, Build a Rocket Boy attempted to hold a fan gathering at the studio’s HQ, despite the fact that MindsEye was over a year old by that point, its reputation long-since solidified. Rather than with fan support, this was met by overwhelming protest from developers who were laid off following the game’s launch, in a second round back in March, and in a third round in May.