Artifact Entertainment (Horizons) files for Chapter 11

[Trippy]

As seen on GameSpot:

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/07/19/news_6102981.html

[Soukyan]

Reference to the discussion already underway in Game Development

[Krakrok]

"[Artifact] is also in active discussions with other gaming industry players, with due diligence underway by a seriously interested company that may make an offer to acquire the assets of the company,"

$5 says the interested party is NCSoft. If they can pick it up for a song and a dance they'll have another target 50k/u under their belt.

[NiX]

Freaking crap, I was thinking the same thing. I bet NCSoft could turn that mother into a decent game.

[schild]

A. NCSoft should stay the fuck away from anything tained by David Bowman.

B. I said Horizons wouldn't last a year during beta, looks like I was right.

C. Holy fuck, I come back from home and there are 3 threads about this shit? What the shit did I do to deserve that? Does anyone actually give a flying rat's ass about Horizons? Did I miss something? Were Satyr's the shizzle or something?

As far as keeping the thread on track: Good. I hope Artifact Entertainment goes down in history as showing how not to make an MMORPG.

[Alkiera]

"[Artifact] is also in active discussions with other gaming industry players, with due diligence underway by a seriously interested company that may make an offer to acquire the assets of the company,"

$5 says the interested party is NCSoft. If they can pick it up for a song and a dance they'll have another target 50k/u under their belt.

Actually, the first thing that came to mind was that recent discussion of Turbine getting into the hosting business.

I think parts of their game design were nice, but all the Dawn-esque hype at the begining really did them in.  That, and the Levelquest gameplay.  We really didn't need another PvE fantasy time==levels game at that time.  Or at this one, for that matter.

--
Alkiera

[Comstar]

$5 says the interested party is NCSoft. If they can pick it up for a song and a dance they'll have another target 50k/u under their belt.

Mabye it's David Bowman, who will buy the company, and then have his revenage on the people who still work there....

[Mi_Tes]

"[Artifact] is also in active discussions with other gaming industry players, with due diligence underway by a seriously interested company that may make an offer to acquire the assets of the company,"

$5 says the interested party is NCSoft. If they can pick it up for a song and a dance they'll have another target 50k/u under their belt.

Sounds more like the same old shit coming from David Bowman, but who really has the money and interest?

Given the "good reputation" of the NCsoft at this point, I really doubt they would pick this off for any price.  I think their reputation is worth a hell of a lot more than picking up this mess.  Buy the UO name, buy Mythica, buy the old Origins building yes - take on Horizons, no.  To continue on their path of dominating the industry, half ass games just won't do it.

Turbine perhaps, but why, they already have several very similar games and AC2 to learn their lessons on.

SOE and Mythic - Their plates are full with new games and keeping the old ones alive.  In addition, (ego thing) I don't see them doing anything that wasn't their own idea to begin with.  

MS - No way, they have been burnt so bad they have thrown out the baby as well as the bath water.  Besides when you have VG, what else do you need? /sarcasm off/

Ubi - hmm.  They either need to decide to be a player or get out of the game.  Not sure they want 2 low pop games with issues though.  I still think if they bought Mythica, they would have a reasonably diversified portfolio and be able to give it the attention it needs.

EA, sure, why not, it would fit right in with all their other MMORPG ideas. lol

[Anonymous]

Didn't NCSoft already invest money into Artifact?

From what I'm finding on a casual search, NCSoft dropped Horizons a while back.  I doubt they'd pick it back up at this point.

[Krakrok]

Ok, I surrender. Interplay is going to buy it (all stock deal), re-skin it, and call it Fallout Online.

[Numtini]

I can't imagine anyone wants Horizons for the game. Unless there's something good under the hood and from performance it sure doesn't seem that way, I don't see that the game has any value to an investor.

If they could do a self buy-out like happened with Eve that would probably give them something to build on. But for someone who wants a real return? I don't think so.

[Riley]

Didn't NCSoft already invest money into Artifact?

From what I'm finding on a casual search, NCSoft dropped Horizons a while back.  I doubt they'd pick it back up at this point.

Yeah, I believe NCSoft was the original publisher.  I think they saw pretty early on what a mess the management was at AE and wisely got the hell out of there.

Interestingly, if you read the article they talk about a "key vendor" that is unwilling to negotiate - many people are guessing that vendor is the hosting company.  That if they didn't file for bankruptcy protection, they would have pulled the plug on them.  It wouldn't suprise me to see Turbine at least considering taking the game.  They have to be planning out a pretty big infrastructure for all the games they are trying to launch and HZ sure wouldn't take up much bandwidth in the big scheme of things.  Turbine is also quite adept at running games on a small staff - AC never had a big dev team and even though AC2 was a huge dissappointing flopt, it is still alive and treading water somehow.  Any company that can be making a profit on the meager AC franchise is at least  managing the operation side of the game effeciently.

[Signe]

AE has Horizons and the Evolution Engine, which they are/were developing for license.  I don't know what they're doing with the engine, however.  In all the time they've advertised it on their website, I've never seen the overview change and they don't really give much technical information about it.  They don't list any clients who using the engine at all.  The two partners they list, Atari and Game Network, have nothing to do with this side of their business.  I don't think anything else is running on this engine and, obviously, Horizons doesn't even run very well on it.

Sooo... I suppose if you were to buy AE, you would get a failing game and and an engine no one seems interested in.  I'm not very business oriented but I guess, if the price is right and you are talented in the art of origami, someone could make something from these two bits.  I must say, I am curious to see what happens.

[HaemishM]

AE has Horizons and the Evolution Engine, which they are/were developing for license.  I don't know what they're doing with the engine, however.  

Other than running a really shitty game, not much I'd imagine. The Horizons engine does nothing that I've seen that makes it any more attractive an engine license than the Unreal license, or NetImmerse or Gamebryo. Shit, they'd probably do better licensing the Wish engine (with GOATS!) than trying to shoehorn the Horizons engine into anything useful.

Color me surprised, shocked, DISMAYED even that a game with the quality of Horizons is having trouble making ends meet.

Why would Ubi buy the game? They already have one limping clusterfuck of a game to deal with, who wants two?

[Alluvian]

I still remember being called out as a moron when I posted that Joe and the crew at WTO were insane in thinking that Horizons would be a good game after watching some worthless dragon footage at E3.  But noooo, according to that thread they had the inside information about how awesome the game would be and that it was more than just a neat dragon.  I wish that thread still existed.  It would be good for a chuckle.

[HRose]

From Gamerifts:

Following that news that have announced a partnership with PlayVault, the only approved company for trading virtual goods within MMO Games.

[Venkman]

I think that service is sorta odd.

As soon as everyone goes there, they'll probably see why. UO, Runescape, Horizons, and Earth and Beyond. Woot?