
Ambrosia Software employees report layoffs, but company says it's in business - doomlaser
http://www.tuaw.com/2013/04/10/ambrosia-software-lays-off-its-developing-team-has-reportedly-f
======
mattm
> A tweet from Ambrosia's official Twitter states that the company is still in
> business

I worked at a small consulting shop that had one large client providing most
of the work. There were rumours of problems with this client not having the
funding to continue the upcoming projects. One day a couple people were let go
which lead to rumours that serious layoffs were coming.

The next day the director sent out an email stating how everything was fine
and while, two people were let go yesterday, we shouldn't expect any more
layoffs.

The next week I was let go with about half of the remaining company and
another layoff followed which reduced the company down to a shell.

I really don't think it was malice or lying. Most people are just optimists
and want to believe that everything will turn out.

That being said, if I worked at a place again where I heard rumours going
around I wouldn't wait to start looking for something new.

~~~
derefr
> I really don't think it was malice or lying. Most people are just optimists
> and want to believe that everything will turn out.

I might say that has the sense of a central-bank chairman saying "the market
will be fine" in the middle of a downturn: even though he has information that
clearly states otherwise, saying anything negative will only make the market
_worse_. Consequentialism, pure and simple.

In a business's case, you want to lay off exactly as many employees as are
needed, with the least essential going first. If employees think the ship is
sinking, usually you'll lose _more_ employees than you would have otherwise
laid off, and usually those will be the _most_ essential (the good
strategists, after all, are the most aware of the zeitgeist.)

~~~
toomuchtodo
Once you let _any_ employees go, the barn door is open. Unless the consensus
is that those employees (or employee) were dead weight, resumes are already up
on Craigslist and job searches are in progress.

Only the naive wait for the end.

------
sitharus
I hope this isn't true. I spend so many hours as a teenager in the Ambrosia
community, and I beta tested a decent handful of their products. I still
remember the hours spent downloading Escape Velocity: Nova over dialup.

However, 20 years is a good run for a small software company. I do hope they
get another break though, for old time's sake.

~~~
TomAnthony
I vaguely remember you from the forums!

I too was a beta tester on Nova; I actually won a bet with Andrew and my
reward was a character named after me in the game. :)

I later worked for Ambrosia for several years, and it was one of the best
times of my life. The team then were absolutely great and a lot of fun. I hope
they are all ok.

~~~
andiyar
I remember you both! I hope they're all okay as well; hard to say without some
kind of official word.

I bought way too many ASW games in the day as well as beta'ing quite a few
things. It will be very sad if they're actually going :(

------
meric
When I was kid I spent countless hours on the demoes of each of the Escape
Velocity games... I guess I should've tried harder to convince my parents to
buy it for me...

Publisher of a unique genre at the time. An inspiration for many, including
naev (<http://naev.org>), starsector (<http://starsector.com>), and more.

When I was 6 or 7, I watched my parents play Apeiron and Maelstrom on their
PowerMac.

Multiwinia is fun too, and I actually own a copy. :)

~~~
sitharus
Same here, so many hours. I'm still a moderator on the developer's forum,
though I haven't been active in years.

Nova was also fun, I'll never forget the hours spent downloading the betas
over a 33.6 modem, they were over 70MB!

~~~
ericd
I remember one time I had to transfer the original EV from one computer to
another... using a floppy disk. I learned how to split .sit archives that day
and got a lot of exercise on the stairs.

------
mminer
Like other posters here, I spent many, many days playing Escape Velocity:
Nova. It was the game that made me want to build my own games and inspired me
to learn to program. At the time, multiplayer capability was one of the most
oft-requested features, to the point where mentioning it elicited exasperation
on the forums. It prompted myself and other fans to start work our own
multiplayer space RPG which we named Dawn of Infinity. The project didn't
progress very far, but helping plan it was a blast.

What always impressed me most though was the community that emerged from
Ambrosia's games. The forums and IRC channel were vibrant places to discuss
game ideas and politics alike and the developers of EVN had a podcast before
podcasts were cool [1]. It was a great place for a teenager on the Internet to
hang out. You will be missed Ambrosia.

[1] ATMOS Tonight: <http://at.atmos.com.au/>

------
crusso
Wow, what a blast from the past.

Maelstrom ran on my Mac in my dorm for months, open for anyone who wanted to
sit down and play a game. Friends in the dorm would just come by, chat for a
few minutes, play a game. Good times.

A few years later, I really got into the online tank game, Bolo. Andrew Welch,
the owner of Ambrosia, became a Boloer of some skill. Before a Bolo game gets
going, there was often some down time when players would text chat, plus there
was an IRC channel that had good traffic. I got to know Andrew a bit through
that. He was a good guy. He had started Ambrosia with Maelstrom and grown it
in bits and pieces with new titles. He never struck me as being hugely
ambitious, but he definitely liked owning a little software shop that allowed
him to make a decent living.

It's really sad to see that Ambrosia isn't doing well, to say the least. Makes
me nostalgic.

~~~
geuis
Bolo makes me nostalgic. There was a small but active winbolo community for a
while more recently. No idea if they're still around. I'd love to see a modern
port of bolo for Mac with modern networking and such.

------
asveikau
I remember during college in Rochester, NY I would drive by this unassuming
house on Clinton Ave. Ambrosia Software said the sign out front. I recognized
the name from some games about 10 years prior. I remember wondering what they
were doing in a sleepy town like Rochester, when most important stuff seemed
to happen out west or within a 5 hour drive south of there. But here was a
place that had stuck with the home of Kodak and Xerox (yes, Xerox, and not
that cool Palo Alto office). Offshoot of one of the nearby colleges?

~~~
bvttf
Could be, but apparently a lot was <http://rochestermade.com/>

~~~
asveikau
This is a bit too smug for me.

I know that Rochester used to be a boom town (Kodak, Xerox, Bausch and Lomb,
probably others) and a place of cultural and moral significance (Frederick
Douglas, Susan B. Anthony). It's a nice place, and I spent 4 years there. But
it's definitely a place in decline. The same way that Detroit was a boom town
and now is not. If I made a similar sideshow saying "You're welcome.
-Detroit", would that prove anything?

(It's also ironic that this slideshow assigns Rochester the credit for the
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. Was it not corporate HQ in Rochester who made
the bad decisions not to do more to productize those gains?)

------
nthitz
Dang, they were later known for their utilities, but I was raised on some of
their games on OS9 and X! Apeiron, Bubble Trouble, Uplink, Escape Velocity
(and sequels), Barrack, Swoop and of course Maelstrom. A few were definitely
remakes of classic games, but they made them very well. The RPG simulations of
Uplink (hacker sim) and EV Nova (space sim) were excellent.

~~~
misnome
I don't know about the others, but Uplink was just a port from Introversion -
<http://www.introversion.co.uk/>.

~~~
TomAnthony
The ports were few and far between. Most were made either entirely in house or
with the lead programmer being a freelancer (they allowed people to pitch
their ideas, then would supply artists, their various code libraries, support,
testing etc.).

------
zeitg3ist
The best part of having a Mac in the 90s, as a kid, was Ambrosia's games. I've
spent countless hours on Bubble Trouble, Barrack, Harry, Mars Rising,
Slithereens, Ares and many others, which I got as demos on Macworld CDs. I
even bugged my parents and managed to convince them to send 15$ in an envelope
to the USA to buy the license for Bubble Trouble. My father still plays
Barrack on his PowerMac G5 from time to time (he's still a pro).

But all things end -- and Ambrosia's gaming business has been dead for a
while, unfortunately. I just keep hoping they release the source code for
their old games, so someone can create OS X ports...

------
johnpowell
Andrew Welch used to hang out on MacNN forums and he really wanted the war in
Iraq. So good software and horrific politics.

~~~
acheron
And that is relevant how?

~~~
ttrreeww
Evidence of bad judgement :)

------
digitalengineer
If there was ever a company that would do great on iOS it'd be Ambrosia. I was
addidcted to their games in the '90's/00's. A quick search of the App Store
shows none of these games. There's even dev's out there copying their games
because they're not available: _"Despite being one of the most prolific and
successful independent game development companies for the Mac, Ambrosia
Software has been conspicuously absent on iOS. Independent developer Marc
Guirao Majo has set out to address this issue by releasing his iOS game.._
[http://www.technologytell.com/apple/98534/ambrosia-
softwares...](http://www.technologytell.com/apple/98534/ambrosia-softwares-
swoop-gets-an-ios-remake/)

~~~
TomAnthony
I believe they shifted to focusing more on Utilities rather than Games.

I remember speaking to Andrew (Welch, CEO) about this a while back, and I
believe he felt that the App Store (at least for games) was too unpredictable.

~~~
digitalengineer
Thank you. Such a shame. Their brand was so well known and their games so
loved and addictive. I would have thought it would fit right in the App Store.
Perhaps we'll see someone buying the titles, artwork and team?

~~~
TomAnthony
I don't have any inside information on the news, and NY is still asleep.

However, their PR guru has tweeted from his own account saying they are still
up and running. It is clear something has happened; I don't want to speculate
but my hope is that the core team is still there and they will live on and
support their products and move forward.

As to whether they sell the rights to others for App Store versions, that is
an interesting idea and I'd like to see it happen as they have some great
products.

------
intended
As many of the posters here can attest, EV Nova was a brilliant game and one
of the first games that I spent money on.

It looks that iOS port will never happen after all.

What happened?

edit: Were they so niche that a kickstarter for EV wouldn't have helped? Or
did they lose all their game coding expertise?

~~~
sitharus
All of the EV series were developed by external companies, so they never had
that expertise in-house.

That said, I probably would have bought an iPad/iPhone version.

~~~
TomAnthony
That is somewhat, but not entirely accurate.

The lead programmer on all three games was Matt Burch, a freelancer; he was
responsible for the main engine. Ambrosia supplied and adapted their large
array of libraries (Sound, Graphics, Licensing and more).

For EV Nova, a team under the name ATMOS in Australia were developing a
complete rewrite of the story/graphics as a mod. Ambrosia brought them on
board (as an external team) and supported them. Matt was still programmer,
whilst ATMOS did copywriting and graphics.

So yes, a lot of the work was done by two external teams, but Ambrosia
contributed heavily towards the code, support/testing and perhaps most
importantly they helped guide the production.

That was a model Ambrosia used on many of their games (though normally
Ambrosia were also doing the artwork); they solicited pitches for game ideas
from people who had an idea and needed support. It was a great model and lead
to same fantastic games!

------
granata
I was an Ambrosia super-fan as a kid. Loved reading The Ambrosia Times (helped
me discover Arizona Ginseng Iced Tea, the cobalt bottle). Also had a good time
doing some beta testing. I hope they can pull out of the rut.

------
floor
Escape Velocity and Escape Velocity: Nova were a really great games. RIP.

------
geuis
Such a shame if true. I lost count of the number of hours I spent playing and
modding Escape Velocity. For a long time from the mid 90's through mid 00's
there was an incredibly active community around that family of games. I still
have my two Ambrosia shirts A. Welch gave me at their booth at Macworld in
2008. Good, good times.

~~~
TomAnthony
The modding was the best part about the whole series. It created an awesome
community and infinitely extended the playability of the games. You could even
replace all artwork, ships, missions, planets and create a whole new world -
which is exactly how EV Nova came about.

It is a shame that there seems to be less games created with that sort of
spirit in mind nowadays.

------
furyg3
The first thing I think of when I hear ambrosia software is harry the handsome
executive...

~~~
intended
For me its being the chosen one, and spending endless hours getting the load
out for my ship just right, or more likely pirating and capturing the most
powerful ships I could find.

------
ryanisinallofus
I spent countless hours playing EV Nova on my first mac. Such a great game.

------
swix
I would kill for a fresh version of Escape Velocity (MMORPG style)

:)

------
hipsters_unite
I have no idea how much time I lost to playing EV Nova as a teenager... I hope
they don't fold after all this.

------
patrickgzill
I am embarassed to say I spent many hours with Pop-Pop when I should have been
doing something else! <http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/pop-pop/>

------
lachlanj
I remember wasting hours on Maelstrom. Believe it or not this game actually
fit on a 1.44MB disk. There was another one of their games that was addictive
called Escape Velocity. Man that was a awesome game.

------
laurent123456
The original title has been updated with "...but company says it's still in
business". We should probably update it here as well.

~~~
RyanZAG
Just because the company is still in business, doesn't meant that the title is
incorrect. Fairly standard milking.

------
seivan
There is no such thing as Job Security. If Job security is an argument why
you're not quitting to freelance or do your own thing. Then... I am not sure
what to say.

~~~
coldtea
Then ... you don't have a family or children.

~~~
seivan
You're right, I don't. But it feels like most places who use job security as
an argument are pretty much lying.

~~~
coldtea
Nowadays more so, but back in the day it was a more stable job environment.

That said, while nothing is 100% certain, there are jobs and companies that
are more stable than others. Even in trendy companies, not just IBM-style
monoliths. You don't often here about massive layoffs at Apple or Google, do
you?

~~~
seivan
IBM is probably not a good example as they are constantly laying off Americans
in favour for cheaper HB1 abusable indians.

