Has anyone played it? Is it any good?

You mean the mediocre single player MMO or the MMO that will never happen?

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/05/17/38-st ... e-payroll/

Officially dead in the water. 38 Studios layed everyone off this morning.

The single player game was decent but not groundbreaking. Fablish combat with Diabloish loot drops. The differences between what was promised and what was delivered were far less than those from Fable.

They should have made roughly 60 million off Reckoning and that only came out two(?) months ago. Where did all that money go in two months?

Hahaha, the Gov of RI says that they needed to sell more than 3 million copies of the game just to break even.

Yeah, to break even in the long run... A lot of the loan money was being funneled into the MMO.

They sold something like 1 million copies at 60$ each plus whatever they made from DLC. Even if the studio is only receiving 50% of that they should have had 30 million in cash on hand. Take away three months of loan payments at 1.2 million a month and thats still a sizable chunk of cash to keep payroll flowing. The loan wouldn't have all come due at once so how far in the hole they were is irrelevant to how much cash they should have had on hand.

Where did the remaining 20 million and change go?

interesting blog post...
http://www.brokentoys.org/2012/05/25/th ... usic-died/

one of the linked stories from there said that 38 Studios had something like $75 million in loans from Providence, RI

5 Million went to R.A. Salvatore for doing fuck all. Who knows how much Todd Mcfarlane got for doing nothing and I'm sure the rest went to paying back Schillings personal loans into the company.

The real sad story is the 300 plus people working for the studio who just had their benefits pulled out from under them and are now stuck with now double mortgages in Rhode Island that were supposed to be picked up on the company dime as an incentive to move there and work for the studio.

Wow, that is complete and utter ass. That fact paired with the line about Salvatore and McFarlane...sheesh.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/06/03/ ... -developer


Cool news. Times are tough to be looking for a new job in a competitive field.

I always thought the gaming industry would be an absolutely horrible field to get into. Seems like every week I hear some new story about employees being stomped on or otherwise treated poorly. I guess that's what happens when there's damn near an army of over-eager 20-somethings that want to make a living "playing games" (in their mind).

I think for those that are truly passionate about it, it's more about the journey of creating games. Even if they fail, they're doing something that they absolutely love doing, and that's all that matters. But yea, certainly being absolutely dedicated and driven, moreso than almost anyone else, helps blow past the competition =p Why would life be worth living if people just chose the easy/safe path all the time?

With regard to this story, I'm not sure what those employees were expecting. For the game to succeed? I mean, they charged into something that was doomed from the beginning. No one in the company had shown any evidence that they knew anything about game design. Schilling's complete lack of forethought was evidenced by that big thread on FOHguild at one point. Why did people go when everything was right there in front of them? I don't understand it. When a company props up a couple of people known for previous talent and then hinges everything on them instead of any idea-oriented content, then you know there's a problem.

A couple of heavy hitters doesn't constitute a team.

You mean other than the game designers that were hired to make the game?

Was there any redeeming quality indicative of knowledge of even mediocre game design? I may have missed it.

Taking away the innovation aspect, even, clearly it didn't sell well because of its polish, stream-lined implementation, and addictive nature!

Their big name in the design department was Ken Rolston, designer for Morrowind and Oblivion. For the type of game they were making I'd say that qualifies for above-mediocre.

I dunno, after playing it, I really didn't see much redeeming value. The combat system isn't too bad, even though it gets boring pretty quick after you realize the nuances. The usual console-esque "PRESS B NAOOO!!" followed by near-cutscenes does it no favors. Where it's sorely lacking is the RPG department, which pretty much goes without saying. The most you can say about its RPG aspect is that it has a semi-rich environment.

But maybe you can point me to the excitement that makes it beyond mediocre.

As for Rolston, sure, he contributed to both of those games. But from what I've read about Morrowind and Oblivion's development, their success on the design end was largely attributable to some significant portions of the middle end of the team rather than just Rolston. It was the combined effort of the whole, rather than just one man, as is usually the case(and proven here with this game).

Here's a letter from the wife of a 38 Studios employee to Gamasutra. Pretty heartbreaking stuff.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/1723 ... sutra+News

Heartbreaking? I expected rape and death of children when you use that word. This sucked, but I don't know about "heartbreaking."

So in the end, she blames "teh execs!" Great. Way to pin down the blame, and spare Schilling.

My favorite part is this:



Really? Six months went by, they had all of these horrible signs(which she describes!) about the company being completely negligent, and it didn't occur that anothe, rather important payment, could be mishandled?



Who else was going to pay it? How could someone not expect that to be in the fine print? Pretty standard.

/sigh... I feel bad for the family, because they don't deserve it... but really. I would expect that with this guy's supposed experience in the industry he at least READ the fohguild thread. Anyone who comes out of that thread and says "HON LET'S MOVE TO RHODE ISLAND BIG BUCKS AWAIT" has got to be completely out of their mind. None of Schilling's commentary should have inspired confidence of any kind in his ability to lead a game company. Period. Sad story, but expected.

It was sad, and even got me choked up a little. I really don't think a story has to contain child rape to qualify as heartbreaking.

Stories like that are all too common in that industry. People move out and bank an entire fortune on hopes and dreams. Sigil'd basically. I'm so glad I decided against going down that career path 5 years ago. Nothing wrong with it of course as there is success to be found, (Hi Miggent. Yiour game is seriously the best MMORPG on the market except for Coin Lock) but Jesus I can only imagine how scary it would be to find yourself stranded out in the middle of BFE Rhode Island with a crazy amount of bank loans with no way to pay them back.

That's a pretty glowing review coming from the resident Angry Gamer!

I think what he meant to say was:

"since I play this game this week, it is seriously the best game in the world"

Cynic!

If only I had the time to switch and bitch MMOs every week nowadays.

I downloaded Rift and started giving the free trial a shot not long ago, but it's so hard for me to just play MMO's purely for fun anymore, I have to be all committed and thinking, "am I going to play this for X months/years" and blah blah.

That and with GW2 somewhere out there on the horizon, I don't see myself getting into another MMO just yet. Who knows.

It seems perfectly fun and interesting, though. The souls and whatnot look fun (slightly reminiscient of Shadowbane runes maybe?). Maybe if my wife starts playing it, that'd get me committed, hah!