G&H Postponed Indefinitely. Perpetual Riding Doom Train. Darwin Does Standup.

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G&H Postponed Indefinitely. Perpetual Riding Doom Train. Darwin Does Standup.

So. Let's break this down easy:

1. Gods & Heroes postponed indefinitely, for being a piece of shit.
2. New company forming immediately to make STO. Future Uncertain.
3. Most of G&H team Getting Shitcanned. Some going to STO.
4. Interviews forthcoming. People are packing their bags now.

[QforQ]

Holy shit, I can't wait for the interviews.

[WayAbvPar]

So- the team fucked up one game, and are now being moved over to fuck up another one?

[schild]

No, they already had 2 teams going. Some talent is just being moved over.

[Hoax]

Looking forward to the interviews as well, also curious what point five is referring to.

[schild]

Looking forward to the interviews as well, also curious what point five is referring to.

I was poking fun at other sites that had the story and were waiting for a go ahead. Nothing special. Just fucking with people.

Edit: There, edited out 5 to avoid confusion.

[Montague]

10 bucks says Smed buys the POS and throws it on the Station Pass.

[QforQ]

Here's the article on Warcry which provides some more indepth insight.

http://www.warcry.com/articles/view/breakingnews/2324-Breaking-News-Perpetual-Acquired-Gods-and-Heroes-Likely-Canceled

[Lucas]

Nothing better than some DOOoooM stuff before I jump to bed (3.05am over here).

[Trippy]

You left out the link.

[schild]

Doesn't matter, post has no more insight than mine. It's just longer and padded.

[QforQ]

You left out the link.

My bad, I thought I posted it :/  Its there now

[Miasma]

Guess so.

Loyal and faithful community members and Beta testers, thank you for your support, help, and understanding during the Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising development process.

The development team established some very lofty and ambitious goals when the initial work was started on Gods & Heroes. Recently, we took a step back to evaluate the competitive landscape, the game's current state, and the overall goals for our organization. And while we are truly proud of and pleased with what we have created in Gods & Heroes, we also realize that achieving the level of quality and polish that we are committed to will take a significant investment.

The Perpetual team is faced with a unique challenge of simultaneously developing both Gods & Heroes and Star Trek Online in addition to growing our Online Game Platform business. After assessing all of Perpetual's opportunities, we have made the decision to put the development of Gods & Heroes on indefinite hold.

I want to express my overwhelming gratitude to the community, engineers, designers, artists, animators, and the game services team for the support and effort that has gone into Gods & Heroes.

Moving forward, we're shifting our collective focus, resources and development efforts to Perpetual's Platform Services division and Star Trek Online, thereby ensuring that the game lives up to the high level of expectation set by the dedicated Star Trek fan base.

Again, I would personally like to thank all of the Gods & Heroes supporters who have been with us from the beginning. Hopefully, your continued support will be as valuable to our future endeavors as it was with Gods & Heroes..

Vade in pace,
Chris McKibbin

I just can't imagine doing all that work only to have everything flushed down the toilet.  All those levels, music, sounds, characters and systems gone... holy crap.  Maybe STO will have an extremely large mission where you go back in time .

[Trippy]

I just can't imagine doing all that work only to have everything flushed down the toilet.  All those levels, music, sounds, characters and systems gone... holy crap.  Maybe STO will have an extremely large mission where you go back in time .

Yup, it's very sad.

[Abelian75]

I just can't imagine doing all that work only to have everything flushed down the toilet.  All those levels, music, sounds, characters and systems gone... holy crap.  Maybe STO will have an extremely large mission where you go back in time .

Pretty much my thoughts.  I mean, ouch, it was pretty close to release.  Ouch.

[UnSub]

Their forums is doing something weird and I can't post in their eulogy thread*. Given the 'indefinite hiatus' status of this game (it's dead, Jim!) I feel strongly tempted to make some comments about my G&H experiences. Ethically I don't feel bound by an NDA to a dead game, but I don't want to have schild edit my post so f13 keeps it dev-safe certification either. If I get a greenlight from a mod, I'll post up some commentary.

However, without the  , I can say that it now seems pretty obvious why SOE pulled back from G&H and what that meant to the game. It sure wasn't PE willingly breaking free of EEEEvil SOE's grasp, that's for sure.

*Just rechecked - the CM, Binky, has purged all but his replies to the eulogy thread and locked it.

[Drogo]

Damn was the game that bad? I mean SOE has Matrix Online and Vanguard as part of the station pass. It seems like such a waste of developer money not to at least do a crappy release and then sell it to SOE for pennies on the dollar to add to their station pass. I mean if SOE will not bail out your crappy game, I can't imagine how bad it really is. I look forward to comments from the beta testers on this one.

[HRose]

PotBS is next, I guess.

[Sauced]

Only thing I know about this game is that a friend with an impeccable CS pedigree got offered a job there.  A dream for him, to build an MMO, he took one look at the place and ran like hell.

[Venkman]

That is a lot of work to just walk away from. The states that Wish and Imperator were in when cancelled politically-correct-indefinitely-held, those you can walk away from. But G&H seemed a heck of a lot further along, near launch, no? Did they realize the cost for distribution was not going to be defrayed by box sales at all? And this is after they made a very near-angry and pointed clarification about just how much involvement SOE had on the project, probably thinking separately PE from SOE was a good thing.

I don't agree PotBS is next.

[Simond]

Nah, it'll be Warhammer.
No, hang on....

[dr_dre]

Isnt aoc "still" around ? :)

[schild]

aoc is "still" arround :)

Try sentences and the spellchecker, newfish.

[Vinadil]

I keep trying to figure out why in the world it is so hard to release a MMO these days.  People try to say that the market is still young... like it is in an experimental stage where spending Millions of dollars on ideas that don't work is natural.  Maybe I am just naive to the life-cycle of a market, but I have been playing games in this one for almost a decade now, and it just does not "feel" that young anymore.

Is there any other market that mirrors the absolute failures we see in MMOs?  I mean it seems like 80-90% of all projects either die before release or release so poorly that a company like SOE can just pick em up for pennies and even then struggle to make a decent profit on them.  Perhaps I am too Western-thinking and just missing all of the money being made by Eastern games and Browser games.

[Mrbloodworth]

I keep trying to figure out why in the world it is so hard to release a MMO these days.  People try to say that the market is still young... like it is in an experimental stage where spending Millions of dollars on ideas that don't work is natural.  Maybe I am just naive to the life-cycle of a market, but I have been playing games in this one for almost a decade now, and it just does not "feel" that young anymore.

Is there any other market that mirrors the absolute failures we see in MMOs?  I mean it seems like 80-90% of all projects either die before release or release so poorly that a company like SOE can just pick em up for pennies and even then struggle to make a decent profit on them.  Perhaps I am too Western-thinking and just missing all of the money being made by Eastern games and Browser games.

Most likely the same thing that is hard about any collaborative development. People.

[Vinadil]

Most likely the same thing that is hard about any collaborative development. People.

True, but I have to think that someone has managed to get people to collaborate in other venues... and so we are not talking about creating something completely new here.  I am just having a hard time figuring out why skilled people (I assume some of the people making MMOs actually have the skill to work on other types of projects and just Chose an MMO) given a LOT of money (yea I still see 10's of millions as a lot) cannot get through a successful design/production phase.  It seems that there is something inherent in the MMO beast itself that kills the process.

[Montague]

Most likely the same thing that is hard about any collaborative development. People.

True, but I have to think that someone has managed to get people to collaborate in other venues... and so we are not talking about creating something completely new here.  I am just having a hard time figuring out why skilled people (I assume some of the people making MMOs actually have the skill to work on other types of projects and just Chose an MMO) given a LOT of money (yea I still see 10's of millions as a lot) cannot get through a successful design/production phase.  It seems that there is something inherent in the MMO beast itself that kills the process.

What stands out to me for MMO's is risk, scale, and commitment. It's difficult enough to produce a good video game (see all the shite that's released every year), then add in the scale involved for any MMO worthy of the name and all that investment money represents a lot of risk. Then once the game is released that company is locked in to providing patches, customer service, expansions, server maintenance, etc.

Where in the single-game world if a company makes a stinker it's easy to say "Alright, the game sucks. Let's polish this turd the best we can, sell some boxes, make back some of our sunk costs and move on", it's not possible to do that with an MMO. It doesn't help that Blizzard has set the bar extremely high (which overall is a good thing, IMO)

[Hartsman]

Most likely the same thing that is hard about any collaborative development. People.

True, but I have to think that someone has managed to get people to collaborate in other venues... and so we are not talking about creating something completely new here.  I am just having a hard time figuring out why skilled people (I assume some of the people making MMOs actually have the skill to work on other types of projects and just Chose an MMO) given a LOT of money (yea I still see 10's of millions as a lot) cannot get through a successful design/production phase.  It seems that there is something inherent in the MMO beast itself that kills the process.

(Disclaimers: Personal opinions here only, unrelated to SOE.  I haven't even remotely been involved with G&H or Perpetual in any capacity and don't know a thing about their game.  My comments are speaking entirely in generalities.  Dealerships negotiate their own prices.  Beware of falling rock.)

A few observations from past MMOs:

#1: MMOs are still really young.  To a lot of the people working on them, it very much is creating something entirely new.  Compare to movies or single player games, for instance.  It's less of a challenge to staff those types of projects up with people who've worked on them before, in all of the right positions.  Doing the same on a high-budget MMO remains next to impossible. 

I don't mean "key management" or "leads" like you see in studio announcements and press releases all the time.  I mean everyone other than a small number of entry-level folks.  Until you've done it once, you have no idea what you're getting yourself into. 

I don't know of a single high-budget MMO that's been staffed with that kind of experience throughout, simply because those people just plain don't exist yet in sufficient numbers.  We're just now at the point where it's starting to become possible to build teams like that.

Just a guess, but I'm betting that you don't hear from the $100m movie set: "Yeah, Bob the Key Grip has done this once before, and he picked out some really sharp guys from a construction site downtown to do the rest.  He'll teach 'em what to do." 

Leading to...

#2: The things that make for a great demo and pitch that get you funding, publishing deals, et al, are a much smaller part of making a great MMO than they are of making any other kind of game, and it's easy to lose sight of that. 

This is painful for MMOs in particular because of the unique (huge) number of critical, non-sexy things that you have to succeed at, where failing at any one of them can entirely sink your game:

- Pipelines
- Tools
- Infrastructure
- Stability   (again, doubling the work - the client and all the servers)
- Scalability
- Stability
- Performance  (optimize both that client and all those server processes)
- Oh, and..Stability

In any development effort that has a finite set of resources ($$$ + time), the more you invest in the flash elements, the less you can invest in the far less sexy parts. (Core files aren't sexy.)

Which, in turn, leads to...

#3: Wild misscoping.  It's a common newbie (and overly-optimistic-veteran) mistake to scope far too optimistically, as the schedules end up based mostly on the flash elements and end user features. 

If a person is new at making one of these (especially noted with people from non-MMO games backgrounds), they tend to be more likely to focus on scoping dev time out with more of an emphasis on the visible features than the budget will end up allowing, and not enough on the critical, non-visible features.  Those, coincidentally, end up taking far longer than anyone ever predicts.

The team who scopes 80% of their time on the visible features and 20% on the rest is going to make a far different game than the one who scopes 25% features, 25% tools/pipelines, and 50% stability/scalability/infrastructure.

If your timeline has some elasticity, you can make up for misscoping by stretching the schedule, and still go on to make a great game.  If you can't, Bad Things happen.


There are plenty more things that go wrong, and from all different angles, but from the production "why can't people seem to get these out the door?" angle, these are the ones that've been the first to jump out at me.

- Scott

[Zodiac]

- Pipelines
- Tools
- Infrastructure
- Stability   (again, doubling the work - the client and all the servers)
- Scalability
- Stability
- Performance  (optimize both that client and all those server processes)
- Oh, and..Stability

I assume in "Infrastructure", you include to be able to run the service. That is something that a ton of studios don't take into account for, or "the publisher will take care of that". Fact of the matter is, unless you are integrating into an existing already-running-service (e.g. Station or NCSoft), this is a big puzzle to solve and not something people think about. It's true that you need a good product regardless, but if you can't even bill people right (and there are many titles out there that can't right now, or at launch), you can't be successful. Not to mention all the e-Commerce elements, alpha/beta management, reporting on player metrics/behavior to continuous tweak the game. Add into CS and Ops tools, the snowball just gets bigger and bigger.

These are all, non-sexy work. The service platform (everything that surronds the game itself) of which the game stands on must be as solid as the game design/code itself. This is not something a single player game needs to think about at all.

And guess what, stability and performance apply there as well. So try quadrupling your work :)

[Ixxit]

I think another factor is that there is so much good stuff out there at the moment accross all platforms and all genres (not just mmos) the people are overloaded with choice and the reality is that people can invest only so much time sampling and playing what electronic gaming has to offer.

You now have HD consoles and games that look fantastic and cutting edge computer hardware that is starting to blur the line between what is reality and what is rendered.  Games aren't for just geeks and kids anymore and are starting appeal to the mass market with record setting sales for both old an new franchises.

I think WoW introduced the masses to the joys of gaming in general, not just mmo gaming so eventual spill-off from that monster won't necesserily be scooped up soley by other mmos but by other popular genres as well.  So Bob in the next cubicle who you raided with over the last year may just pick up a 360 and Halo 3 so he can frag with you over Live because that is what everyone is talking about at work, and he has seen all the attention it has been getting in the main stream media. I think that part of the success with WoW wasn't just  that  it was a mmo, but it had the social components in place that made it both an ongoing shared expericence and a constant source of chatter around the water cooler.

I used to be of the mind to try every mmo I could, at least for the free month but with Halo 3 and the Orange Box released,   and Mass Effect, GHIII , Jericho and Hellgate London (etc etc etc etc etc) on the horizon  I can't even imagine  at this point investing another minute in a tradtional mmo.

XBox Live, Bungie.net and the new Steam Community  with their stats and social tools are making it fun to network  and game with both  real life and virtual friends and you don't have to be a floppy eared elf to do so or put up with all the exclusivity (sp), and nonsensical time sinks to try to find the fun. It's not even that I am jaded or burnt out on mmos it's just that there is just so much quality choice these days with both single and multiplayer games  I simply don't want to invest the time.

Tabla what?  WAR? Pirates of the Burning Sphincter? meh.  Conan is on my radar though,  only because I have been a big fan of the comics, books and movies for years.  I think if mmo companies are developing games to collect Blizzard's backwash, they really need to rethinktheir strategy.  I think in the next 5 years we will see the failure of many games and perhaps even the shrinking of the tradtional mmo  market (at least those in the  traditonal mmo form).  I think though, the popularity and market  of online capable games  will continue to grow indefinately.

[Jobu]

After assessing all of Perpetual's opportunities, we have made the decision to put the development of Gods & Heroes on indefinite hold.

Does anyone else hate that phrase, "indefinite hold". Screw that corporate double-speak. It was cancelled by ether you (PE) or SOE, stop beating around the damn bush.

[schild]

Why do people keep blaming SOE?

Man, the internet is full of fucking tin foil.

[Falwell]

My personal guess is Perpetual came to the hard conclusion that they had too many irons in the fire. They had to ditch one of the projects, and it sure as hell wasn't going to be the one that has a fanatical and large fan base.

I do hope someone else picks up on the squad combat theme though. I was digging where that was going.

[Hoax]

Why do people keep blaming SOE?

The guy who goes out of his way to bash the Wii nonstop doesn't get to talk about other people having bullshit targets for their ire imo.

[schild]

Why do people keep blaming SOE?

The guy who goes out of his way to bash the Wii nonstop doesn't get to talk about other people having bullshit targets for their ire imo.

IMO, I'm in the know on both subjects and have a Wii that's been sitting there and know exactly what it's capable of, not capable of, and what it's doing to the industry.

Meanwhile our boy Jobu is just throwing knives in the dark.