Matthew Medina (Barefoot Matthew) on Reddit

@"MatthewMedina.5419" wrote on Reddit, as u/barefootmatthewhttps://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/aupskj/matthew_medinas_journey_with_arenanet_team_and/ehecwo4/?context=1000Whoa. I didn't really see that I got my own thread! In my defense, I was...dealing with a lot, and checking reddit wasn't at the top of my list.

I just want to thank you all for your support in this thread (and others) now and in the past. Given the sometimes contentious atmosphere of a subreddit, I can honestly say that I've always been treated with respect in my limited interactions here, and I'm grateful for that (even if it was sometimes difficult to read the harsher comments about the GW2 story). I was taught how to look past hyperbolic feedback pretty early on in art school, so as salty as reddit can be, it never stopped me from reading posts here (though due to our communication policy, I wasn't always able to respond).

Anyway, please know I have no ill will for anyone at Arenanet or NCSoft - they made a business decision, one I personally disagree with, but I also don't have all the information which led them to this choice in front of me, so it would be presumptuous to think that I know better.

This is technically the 5th such event in my career, so I will be fine, and I'm handling this well, but I feel more for the people impacted where this is their 1st such trauma, or where Arenanet was their first industry job. I had been SO incredibly proud of the fact that our studio had NEVER been forced to endure layoffs, and I'm saddened by that harsh reality catching up to us finally.

As for speculation that Guild Wars 2 will be worse off in the wake of this. Truthfully, it's my belief that no one can know right now - NCSoft certainly believes it will be better, or I doubt they'd have made some of the restructuring changes that they did. Without breaking my NDA, I can say that, although there were two other unannounced projects in the works - and some of the developers from Guild Wars 2 had moved to work on them, the Guild Wars 2 team building Living World after we shipped PoF was MORE than capable of guiding the game into the future, and I have no reason to think that will change.

The loss of so many devs will obviously impact the game's development in some capacity: the logistical necessity of a major re-org at this point will have to be accounted for, as well as the morale hit for the survivors of the incident (which I know from past experience can be overlooked, and quite potent). However, that impact has as much chance of being positive as it could be negative. How, you ask?

Because Guild Wars 2 is still in the capable hands of the best live-service team IN THE INDUSTRY. All of the things I wrote about in my anniversary tweet thread still apply to the people that remain, many of whom are coming BACK from those cancelled projects to take the helm of Guild Wars 2 once more.

I am heartbroken of course that the place I had come to think of as my second family (and contrary to some of my fellow devs, NO it is NOT naive to believe this, IMO - you just need to be careful with how much of your heart you give to your employer and your team, just as in any meaningful relationship) is changing, and that I will no longer get up each day and walk inside those doors to produce amazing content alongside my good friends. But they will soldier on, and so will I, wherever the future leads.

Thanks again, y'all - now that I'm not a dev there (Oh, hello mods - feel free to strike the Dev flair from my user profile here) I look forward to interacting with you as a player. I won't be going into confidential details because of my NDA but if you have questions that don't require divulging sensitive information, I'm happy to try and field them within reason.

I figured some people who don't Reddit might be interested in one of the longer posts from one of the better known veterans.

Thanks for sharing! No, not a fan of Reddit. +1 from me.

Thank you, very interesting!

Thanks Ilc.. and as expected professionally well thought out, measured and mature response from Mathew.The passion and joy of creating something for others to loose themselves in everyday oozes from this dev and no matter what feedback content received he is professional enough to rise above it, maybe even take something from it and get right back to doing what he does best.. putting heart and soul into delivering more for the masses.

Thank you Illconceived

Cheers for sharing, I don't use Reddit either so never would have seen this otherwise.

Thanks for all your contributions. The forum is a better place with posters such as yourself. :star:

Well, this sounds to me like they delivered PoF and handed GW2 over to the live service people that do the LS chapters and put the rest on these two projects. And now Ncsoft deemed these projects as not going anywhere, so they cancelled them and fired the amount of people that were used for that. Which also implies that they did have the full team working on PoF. I know, I know, there's speculation in there but that's what it sounds like.

And Mike Zadorojny also makes sure to not mention anything related to future expansions in his post here on the forum. It just stands out to me that that's the one thing they're not talking about. I dunno, time will tell of course, but I think it would not be good for the game if expansions will no longer be possible.

Couldn't respond to feedback due to communication policy. How very interesting!

Hope he lands on his feet. Deserves better for his loyal length of service

Thank you for sharing. Very much appreciated.

@Gehenna.3625 said:Well, this sounds to me like they delivered PoF and handed GW2 over to the live service people that do the LS chapters and put the rest on these two projects. And now Ncsoft deemed these projects as not going anywhere, so they cancelled them and fired the amount of people that were used for that. Which also implies that they did have the full team working on PoF. I know, I know, there's speculation in there but that's what it sounds like.

And Mike Zadorojny also makes sure to not mention anything related to future expansions in his post here on the forum. It just stands out to me that that's the one thing they're not talking about. I dunno, time will tell of course, but I think it would not be good for the game if expansions will no longer be possible.

That’s the general impression. They moved as many people as possible off of Guild Wars 2 to these random projects. Obviously it was left in capable hands or we wouldn’t have received the updates we have. But to think about what could have been had they not made the decision to place that burden on that few people in the first place, and use the funds from said game to fuel other projects, is sad. Then revenue dips because the people still working on the money generator are undoubtedly struggling to do their jobs as efficient as possible and it leads to budget cuts like this. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect the developer only known for the franchise I support to make that franchise the priority. Needing to diversifying their products or not, it seems a shame to not make the most out of the one good thing you have before placing most of your eggs in other baskets. Maybe it’s just lost interest in the franchise and people decided they just wanted to move on to something different, with the live service team being the ones that cared enough to volunteer to keep putting their all into it.

@"cptaylor.2670" said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:Well, this sounds to me like they delivered PoF and handed GW2 over to the live service people that do the LS chapters and put the rest on these two projects. And now Ncsoft deemed these projects as not going anywhere, so they cancelled them and fired the amount of people that were used for that. Which also implies that they did have the full team working on PoF. I know, I know, there's speculation in there but that's what it sounds like.

And Mike Zadorojny also makes sure to not mention anything related to future expansions in his post here on the forum. It just stands out to me that that's the one thing they're not talking about. I dunno, time will tell of course, but I think it would not be good for the game if expansions will no longer be possible.

As a sidenote, it's not 100 but 143 people that got fired. So that's a pretty big chunk.

Thanks for sharing, there's heap of interesting things to read. (Although now my braing got stuck on what those "super-cool" other projects were about and how I'll probably never know.)

@"anninke.7469" said:Thanks for sharing, there's heap of interesting things to read. (Although now my braing got stuck on what those "super-cool" other projects were about and how I'll probably never know.)

I'm choosing to believe one of them was an open-world sandbox pirate RPG...just because I really like that idea but it's probably never going to happen. Realistically the main reason it won't happen is my version only exists in my head, but I may as well assume some of my favourite developers were working on it and it got cancelled.

Along the same lines I've decided another is a single-player RPG set during the last time the dragons rose, where you play as a seer, forgotten, mursaat, jotun or dwarf and the story actually splits based on your race as it progresses and they each go their own way trying to beat the dragons. It would be much darker than GW2 and provide some interesting background on the world and the dragons, but be strictly a one-shot with no on-going releases.

Back on topic Matthew posted a picture on Twitter where he turned a window into a spreadsheet for job hunting, and I feel like that's one of the most Arenanet things I've ever seen.https://twitter.com/barefootmatthew/status/1100991874913886210

@"Danikat.8537" said:

I'm choosing to believe one of them was an open-world sandbox pirate RPG...just because I really like that idea but it's probably never going to happen. Realistically the main reason it won't happen is my version only exists in my head, but I may as well assume some of my favourite developers were working on it and it got cancelled.

Along the same lines I've decided another is a single-player RPG set during the last time the dragons rose, where you play as a seer, forgotten, mursaat, jotun or dwarf and the story actually splits based on your race as it progresses and they each go their own way trying to beat the dragons. It would be much darker than GW2 and provide some interesting background on the world and the dragons, but be strictly a one-shot with no on-going releases.

Back on topic Matthew posted a picture on Twitter where he turned a window into a spreadsheet for job hunting, and I feel like that's one of the most Arenanet things I've ever seen.https://twitter.com/barefootmatthew/status/1100991874913886210

Those sound really nice.And the job hunting window is simply adorable.

Someone on Twitter called it 'a window of opportunity'. Which I love.