14 DAY TRIAL // A few days ago we found out that Harvey Smith, former Deux Ex lead designer commented about the latest game he worked on as a designer, Blacksite: Area 51, to be a "F****d up" project, that went gold straight from the alpha stage. Freedom of speech? Nope: Midway studio head Denise Fulton has made an announcement that Harvey Smith departed the studio.
According to her, Smith left Midway "by mutual agreement between Harvey and the studio." While no other comments were made, this statement is a little hard to believe, having in mind that all the mutual agreement happened a short while after Smith made the comments regarding Area 51, which were also made less than 24 hours before the game's European launch. Everything was just too fast!
Recently, as you probably know, there has been a big fuss regarding Jeff Gerstmann, executive editor at Gamespot, who has been fired after a negative review of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. Now Harvey Smith seems to follow him after saying his own mind. Now we just wonder... is anybody there who can speak their own mind without being afraid of getting fired?
Now, we don't say that it is OK for people to talk rubbish about their own projects or just for the sake of creating some big waves around them, but as long as they are 100% positive that what they say is exactly the same thing they are thinking, they should be allowed to do it. Blacksite: Area 51 probably isn't F'd up and Smith also said that he thinks the game was underrated (he would have given it an 80 points out of 100, while the reviews are somewhere around 69). But big video game companies should know better what is to be done and how to treat their employees. We're the gamers, we want thrilling action and great gameplay - implemented in the games, not subtracted from real life events.