What Happened to the The Design Republic?

[viper]

Does anybody know why TDR didn't design the graphics etc. for Wipeout Fusion? I think Fusion is the best one yet, but it could have been that little bit better if TDR had doen the designs. TDR's excellent style really made the other Wipeout games for me, I couldn't have thought of a more fitting design for the game.

I don't know why TDR weren't chosen to do Fusion, but I think it shows, the other games had a good continuity between them. TDR designed everything from the weapon logos, team logos, packaging, to even the H.U.D. The designer for Fusion has obviously tried to emulate TDR's style but hasn't quite achieved it, maybe because they wanted to add their own touch.

Eitherway, it doesn't effect the game that much, its still brilliant, but I think it would have kept with the theme of things.

[infoxicated]

The Designers Republic chose not to pitch for the Wipeout Fusion project. They were asked to pitch and replied with words to the effect of "We do not pitch for jobs, we either do them or we do not."

Hence, they did not.

Welcome to the site. :)

[viper]

Excuse my ignorance, but what do you mean by "pitch"?

[infoxicated]

Like, if you're a plummer you give an "estimate", with an outline of what the work will entail.

If you're a creative company, like a publisher or a graphic design company, it's called a pitch - you create mock ups of the design you have in mind for the contract and if the client likes your "pitch" then you'll talk money, or you'll alter your designs and come back again with another pitch tailored to the clients' liking.

TDR presume themselves to be too good at what they do to pitch to a client. i.e. - the client should hand them the contract in the blind faith that TDR are the experts and will design whatever they think suits the job at hand.

:)

[AmishRobot]

What arrogance! I love it!

And this from a company that started out doing album covers for Pop Will Eat Itself. :lol:

They probabaly should have been given the job.

[infoxicated]

I was initially glad to see them gone, however, GT made a bit of a hash of it in the end, so I don't think it would have been too bad a thing if TDR had done Fusion after all.

Still, at the end of the day (for me anyway) it would have been a bit like dressing up a pig in a Versace outfit... might have looked much prettier, but it would still be a pig underneath ;)

(I use the above in reference to the craft handling, shortcuts and gimicky weapons... not the AI, course design and special effects... which were more like nice jewelry on said pig, but could not save it from being a pig.)

[viper]

Never heard it called a pitch before, I'm training to be a graphic designer, but then again I don't know much of the designer talk. I suppose its only natural that a client will want to see an idea of what you are going to present to them before you give them the job. As for Fusion and TDR, well they should have just let TDR do it, I mean they already designed 3 of the other Wipeout games. Obviously they'd have followed the same lines as that for Fusion.

Maybe TDR just said to the Fusion team, "look at the other 3 games, theirs our pitch" which would have been fair enough, why waste time and money designing another pitch for Fusion?

As for the pig thing, well they are one of the most intelligent animals you'll find, more intelligent than dogs and monkeys, so that would tie in with the good AI. But at the end of the day they are still pigs, and they don't have aposable thumbs so they can't play Wipeout Fusion, or even switch a PS2 on, they'd probably just eat it, pigs will eat almost anything.

[surf466]

i must agree about fusion compared to the earler wipeouts especially 2097 and 3 SE its pants, i was totally dissapointed with it its slow, the graphics jump the whole game slows even more when you are in a group of ships the handling is rubbish the tracks are poor and very very tricky especially when the ships turn so poorly very sad end to a brilliant series that i think brought a lot of people into the video/console game market and the announcers voices god sounds like they are in serious need of some medical attention personally i bought the ps2 for two reasons fusion and gt3 lets just say i have played fusion for a couple of hours since i bought it and that was 6 months ago poor effort sony you should have payed the money you make enough!

[Nathan Adams]

Pitching is involved when there are multiple companies being considered for the same job, and generally is restricted to much bigger projects, such as corporate identities for large companies, or ads and so forth.
The idea is that each company prepares conceptual ideas, to show the direction they think they would take with the project, and the company then chooses who they think is best for the job.

I never heard DR getting hissy over being asked to pitch, as I know that they have pitched for jobs previously (such as Nike - who they later, quite famously, "fired" )

It was more a case of believing that the evolution of wipeout had gone as far as it could go without it falling into rehashing and losing it's freshness (a point GT proved very well)
It wasn't so much because they were asked to pitch, they didn't want to pitch because they didn't want to do the project full stop.


A tip in future about pitching though - say NO to free pitching. There are many companies out there that will ask you to free pitch, and if you want to be paid, you will miss out on that job - a kind of blackmail if you will. Really - do you really want to do a heap of work, and get paid $0 for it? The fact that some people actually accept these free pitches means that it will continue, and it takes the majority of the industry to step in and say no. I highly recommend you take this path for the good of yourself (both money wise and your integrity), and for the good of the profession.

[Myke_AG_Sys™]

Amen Nathan!

TDR are very well established in the industry and yeah, I guess they do have quite an elitest attitude....so being pitched was not an option. I think when you pay for TDR to design something for you, you know what to expect and that is quality design. They could be very flexible I'm sure but many companies and music artists are just like "Oh, can you do it in the usual 'TDR style'. Not so with the new Supergrass album artwork, which was, OK, I guess. They designed the artwork for the album before that and it was really cool....anyway, I'm deviating from the topic.

I don't like Fusion's artwork, period.

Myke.

[JABBERJAW]

nathan, you should be happy. this would have tarnished dr's image forever(the gameplay that is). A good design will not help a bad game(not really bad, but bad for being called a wipeout game)

[Nathan Adams]

that's true in a way
as stefan sagmeister said, good design + bad cause = bad

ok, so he was referring more to the moral side, rather than designing for a bad product - but you could in a way warp that to say that fusion was a waste of a lot of fans money and destroyed a lot of people's faith in something they previously believed could do little wrong...... (i think i'll end this rather odd diversion now....)

Although, I would argue doing fantastic design for a sub-standard product would in no way tarnish the reputation of the designer. They still did there job, and did a fantastic job at it too. If I was to design an absolutely fantastic ad for Sony say, but the camcorder it was advertising was a pile of shite (remembering this is hypothetical) - that really has no bearing on the quality of my ad, nor my reputation. It only bodes badly for Sony themselves (and perhaps the repercusion is that I must now work harder to restore brand loyalty via future ads and so on and so forth... but yeah)

[Nathan Adams]

about good design not helping a bad product

2 ways of looking at it

1. the design as advertising - of course good design is going to help sell more product, thereby helping. however, this doesn't make a bad product better - it just sells more of it

2. the design as part of the product - this actually ads value to the product - good design here can make a mediocre product somewhat better. Of course to the degree this happens depends on the product. good industrial design makes say Apple computers and Dyson vacuum cleaners an even better product than if they were wacked in an unassuming case - as these not only add value, but also improve the performance and usability of the product.
Same can go in graphics. A well designed brochure works the same way - especcially in regards to how the typography is set - how legilble and readable it is.
A game this is not so important though, especcialy one of arcady nature (no pruning your eyes through hundreds of menus, reading wads of text, and adjust stats for hours on end) - however, even in Wipeout it still has bearing - and I think it would be safe to say that better design would have made Fusion better somewhat - but not enough to save the game from the firey pits of hell.

[DJ Techno]

All I can say about the Designers Republic is this

They were first to design or create Wipeout Anti Gravity Racing
for six years
Wipeout
Wipeout xl/2097
(maybe) Wipeout 64
Wipeout 3
Wipeout 3SE
I will give my devotion points to them.

Studio Liverpool, on the other hand, turned Wipeout completely around.
Faster, Smoother, Really, Really nice game.

Designers Republic
I am with you all the way
thanks for creating the little cartoon characters
Curly
Lady
Dr. Angryman
Thanks for making a game that included Electronic music (Techno) with fast, very fast vehicle racing.
Thanks for making a picture of the future of Racing and the future of human beings.

[jmoid]

psygnosis studio liverpool did all of the game design for wipEout and 2097, TDR's input was elements like the team graphics, lettering etc.

team leeds did w3/w3se and TDR's input was the same.

TDR obviously had a very big influence on the game, but as for actually creating it - that was studio liverpool.