38 Studios is Working on a Game, Apparently, Afterall (Kingdoms of Amular)

[Margalis]

You're an executive in the company. It's December. You see that at your current rate, you will burn through all your money sometime in Q2. You know your game will not be available until 12+ months later. If you don't know that at that point you need to refocus and do massive cost cutting, I don't know what could possibly teach you that lesson.

Honestly I would say soldiering ahead and praying you get some late private funding was probably the best strategy at that point. There's no way refocusing and cost cutting could have saved the game. The game was easily a year out, probably multiple years out, there's no way cutting cost or changing direction was going to somehow create a saleable product that would make any money back.

[HaemishM]

Yeah, you unfuck that kind of stuff at the design/budgeting stage. If you've gotten that far along, with that much of a debt, your planning was wrong from the get go.

[Margalis]

You know, I don't think "we know we don't have enough money to make this game, we're going to wing it and hope we can pick up more investment along the way" is such a terrible thing. That's how a lot of startups work, always looking for the next round of funding. The bad part is employees not realizing that's the ride they were on.

I worked at a place where it was clear that the money could run out at basically any time. But it was clear.

[Abagadro]

I don't know nothin' about birthin' no babies, er birthing an MMO but don't publishers front some of the cost of games against anticipated revenue?  In retrospect the whole thing smacks of wing and a prayer.

[HaemishM]

You know, I don't think "we know we don't have enough money to make this game, we're going to wing it and hope we can pick up more investment along the way" is such a terrible thing. That's how a lot of startups work, always looking for the next round of funding. The bad part is employees not realizing that's the ride they were on.

Five years into development, one state-funded move later and in the same year the company released a successful console game? Wing and a prayer should have been a year or two behind them. At some point, there had to be a budget set on that game that wouldn't require one last round of investment (actually more than one since the investors they were talking about wouldn't have gotten them to the finish line) and the executives should have seen that trainwreck coming 6 months out.

As for the MMOG, it didn't have a publishing deal yet, so there was no publisher to front that money.

[IainC]

I don't know nothin' about birthin' no babies, er birthing an MMO but don't publishers front some of the cost of games against anticipated revenue?  In retrospect the whole thing smacks of wing and a prayer.

Depends on the deal, but yes generally a publisher will fund at least part of the development for the game when they sign on. 38 Studios didn't have a publisher for Copernicus though and it's not clear that they had enough of a game to give a credible vertical slice to a publisher to pitch with. Publishers tend to be very leery about signing up MMOs too early as the costs and schedules are far less concrete the further the game is from launch. EA was apparently absolutely not interested in publishing KoA2 as well so I'm not sure where this 'EA was about to hand BHG a $35m cheque' stuff is coming from.

[HaemishM]

It's coming from Curt's fat gob. He keeps saying the only reason EA backed out of the KOA sequel was because of Chafee's public comments. He's most likely wrong.

[Tannhauser]

My understanding is that the Gov talked after 38 Studios missed a 1.1 mil payment.  I think the taxpayers had the right to know this.

I swear I'm not stalking him, just stumbled across this at reddit.  Looks like someone needs a hug!

http://www.reddit.com/r/Demotivational/comments/v12fi/trying/

edit:  Added link.

[Numtini]

Turns out the board had already decided to file for bankruptcy before Chafee said anything. So Schilling is just talking out his ass.  news.providencejournal.com/breaking-news/2012/06/schilling-woes.html

[HaemishM]

The more I hear, the more of a fucking double-talking coward shithead Schilling is turning out to be. So he knew on May 14th that the company was going to file for bankruptcy on the 14th if the government didn't cough up more money but didn't tell the employees until a week later when they all got unceremoniously laid off?

He may have actually gone above (below?) McQuaid in the "Shithead Boss" category.

[Chimpy]

Oh he is well beyond McQuaid on the shitheel scale.

[kildorn]

McQuaid fired people in a shitty manner.

Schilling appears to have just stopped paying them, then bitched publicly about how the state was fucking them over while knowing privately they were already fucked and just looking for a scape goat.

[Chimpy]

McQuaid's people actually got to see the game they made be released and were able to use it to show prospective employers "see, I worked on that". The Copernicus people can say "I worked on Curt Schilling's pipe dream which will never see the light of day. Trust me, I have experience!"

[Cheddar]

McQuaid's people actually got to see the game they made be released and were able to use it to show prospective employers "see, I worked on that". The Copernicus people can say "I worked on Curt Schilling's pipe dream which will never see the light of day. Trust me, I have experience!"

Who is Curt Schilling?

[Azazel]

Right-wing hypocritical douchebag who got rich and famous from hitting a ball with a stick. Or throwing a ball at a guy with a stick. Some shit like that. Right-wing only becomes relevant due to the hypocrite aspect.

[Malakili]

Right-wing hypocritical douchebag who got rich and famous from hitting a ball with a stick. Or throwing a ball at a guy with a stick. Some shit like that. Right-wing only becomes relevant due to the hypocrite aspect.

Throwing a ball at a guy with a stick.  You would've thought all that time in Boston might've taken its toll on the right winger part, but I guess not.

[waffel]

I was excited about this game, but I recall reading somewhere that there was serious keybinding/mouse issues with the PC version. Something along the lines of not being able to change any keybindings. Was waiting for a patch. Guess I can stop 

[Draegan]

I was excited about this game, but I recall reading somewhere that there was serious keybinding/mouse issues with the PC version. Something along the lines of not being able to change any keybindings. Was waiting for a patch. Guess I can stop 

Thats a different game.

[Stormwaltz]

So there was a trailer.

It's on Kotaku. Sorry.

[HaemishM]

Somebody's been watching Game of Thrones. 

[schild]

Haha wow that never stood a chance.

[Soln]

Edit:  

[Chimpy]

Deaf and rebirf!

[Furiously]

So Wheel of Time rip off?

[Merusk]

Oh good, I wasn't the only one who thought the same thing. 

The counter argument is, "well Jordan ripped-off the rebirth thing from Buddhism!" but, no.  Just No.  We all know that's not the case here and that WOT is exactly what Salvatore was ripping-off.  Hell, one of the lines in the trailer is almost an exact rip-off of Jordan's intro to every book.

[Numtini]

“One of the going concerns from Day One – and it was always something that we were cognizant of – is we needed to raise capital,” Schilling said in a radio interview on the Dennis & Callahan sports radio show on WEEI in Boston. “We tried for a long time to do that and it didn’t come to fruition.”

Other than the 75 million the state put in, the 10 million other investors put in, and the supposed 50 million you put in. But yeah, other than that one hundred and thirty five million dollars, the equivalent of US median family income for 3,000 years, you just couldn't raise a dime.

Seriously, this guy needs a severe beating with a clue bat.

[HaemishM]

What I don't get is how that wasn't enough money... I mean, I realize AAA MMOG budgets have gone bonkers lately, especially compared to SWTOR, but you can't make a good MMOG for $100 million? I don't buy that, unless you hired complete fucking morons. Of course, based on how much of a fuckup most MMOG's are, I can see how that's possible, but you have to hire some real muppets.

[IainC]

What I don't get is how that wasn't enough money... I mean, I realize AAA MMOG budgets have gone bonkers lately, especially compared to SWTOR, but you can't make a good MMOG for $100 million? I don't buy that, unless you hired complete fucking morons. Of course, based on how much of a fuckup most MMOG's are, I can see how that's possible, but you have to hire some real muppets.

When you sign an agreement requiring you to have a full-size dev team in place for the prototyping stages of the game, it's easy to blow through that kind of cash. Overheads of $4m a month when you're still at least two years out from launch means that your typical 4-5 year MMO dev cycle is going to be expensive.

[HaemishM]

But are MMOG's typically begging for cash to make payroll a year from release and not even close to an alpha stage? I can certainly see burning through a lot of cash in a month (not $4 million but LOL Schilling), just seems somewhat foolish to be tossing out the hat with so much work already done. Hadn't they already been working on it for 5 years?

[Ingmar]

Well the idea is you don't ramp up to a full slate of employees until you actually need them. When you're prototyping you really only need a handful of people by comparison.

[kildorn]

I have little sympathy because it wasn't a hidden cost they didn't see coming. They accepted N flat income in exchange for Y spending agreement. Flat out, they knew how long they had to get a source of supplementary income or simply not take the deal if the additional money would not improve their odds of release.

[WayAbvPar]

It amuses me that this thread is adjacent to or near the Dishonored thread.

[Stormwaltz]

The MMORPGs I've loved the most cost under $50 million. A couple of them cost under $20 million. The industry is Doing It Wrong.

Also, it's open season on 38 execs:

Creditors at the hearing are generally allowed to ask any question related to the firm’s financial affairs and company executives can generally be compelled to answer questions that they would not normally answer in public..

“It’s a free for all,” said David J. Reier, a bankruptcy attorney with Posternak Blankstein & Lund in Boston. “Everything has to be out in the open. There are no more secrets.”

http://bostonglobe.com/business/2012/07/10/creditors-seek-answers-bankruptcy-hearing-for-curt-schilling-video-game-company/cd2tJ0OmuEgVsp7dZJ4wGL/story.html

[Paelos]

When you sign an agreement requiring you to have a full-size dev team in place for the prototyping stages of the game, it's easy to blow through that kind of cash. Overheads of $4m a month when you're still at least two years out from launch means that your typical 4-5 year MMO dev cycle is going to be expensive.

$4M a month? The fuck? How many people are they actually employing?

[kildorn]

When you sign an agreement requiring you to have a full-size dev team in place for the prototyping stages of the game, it's easy to blow through that kind of cash. Overheads of $4m a month when you're still at least two years out from launch means that your typical 4-5 year MMO dev cycle is going to be expensive.

$4M a month? The fuck? How many people are they actually employing?

They basically took a loan saying they'd try to employ 300-400 people during the entire dev process. This is what we call being blinded by the dollar figure and not thinking "hey, that clause basically fucks us from having any chance ever to accomplish our goals!"

They were doomed the second the ink dried on that loan agreement, because there was no way they could pull this off with that burn rate.