The Collapse of 38 Studios

Or it's an indicator that the Amalur IP is overvalued. I still don't see what's so good about it that another company couldn't do 'well enough' themselves, and most of the companies who want an MMO are pretty good about making their own games instead of buying the remains of a failed project.

I think you can talk about something like Star Wars as being an IP that can attract people, but Amalur is just one fairly generic game/world so far. What value does it have.

I just challenged myself to remember 5 non-generic things about it, names, locations, etc, and couldn't do it. That's how well it stuck in my memory after a fairly good amount of playtime. I couldn't even recall the name of the main fateweaver guy who's with you almost from the start of the game.

Scratched wrote:

Or it's an indicator that the Amalur IP is overvalued. I still don't see what's so good about it that another company couldn't do 'well enough' themselves, and most of the companies who want an MMO are pretty good about making their own games instead of buying the remains of a failed project.

I think you can talk about something like Star Wars as being an IP that can attract people, but Amalur is just one fairly generic game/world so far. What value does it have.

I just challenged myself to remember 5 non-generic things about it, names, locations, etc, and couldn't do it. That's how well it stuck in my memory after a fairly good amount of playtime. I couldn't even recall the name of the main fateweaver guy who's with you almost from the start of the game.

Schilling was the only one to ever say it was going to be unique and he didnt want it to be like other mmos. Doesnt mean it ended up that way.

Scratched wrote:

Something about circles:

I'm getting a "I don't want to go on the cart" vibe from this, and not just from the well of souls. Could they have worked something out, transferred it to another studio, and kept it quiet?

I am sure someone is going to get the rights very shortly. How that plays out is yet to be seen.

fangblackbone wrote:

I am surprised that someone like Nexon, Aeria or Perfect World wouldn't pick it up, convert it to f2p and finish it.

If they don't, I'd wager that is either a good indicator of how far along the development was or how much RI is asking for it or both. I am leaning towards the former as I bet these companies could negotiate the price down to a reasonable amount. It doesn't seem to me that RI is holding all the cards, if any...

those guys are experts at churning out content that looks like a $1 but cost them $.05. Theres no way that they will want to pay RI what RI is believing the property is worth. They could and would rather just invest that $ into an existing property or something new that builds off one of their already proven money makers.

MrDeVil909 wrote:
gore wrote:

I mean really, SWTOR had it all: one of the best loved studios in video games, countless millions in EA backing, and the biggest IP in the world (I mean, they're both kind of bad-IP creating villains to me, but George Lucas is kind of in a different class than RA Salvatore in terms of mass market appeal).

What Bioware's WoW clone did is pretty much the best case scenario for what any WoW clone can aspire to in this market, and it seems hard to imagine investors would be lining up to pick over 38Studios' IP for a chance to swing for... a single.

Yeah, and that's kind of the point I was trying to make. And it supports Squee's initial point. The big tentpole, subscription MMO goldrush is over. I'm sure they won't disappear, and most will probably launch and eventually go FTP a la LOTRO. But ain't nothin' going to catch WoW, not even Titan.

That's what I'm getting at. Established MMOs like FFXI have at this point hit the plateau of their success, and I don't expect any large changes to their subscriber count until they die.

Success is a subjective term. Did SWTOR make a profit? I bet it did. Was it a success? I'm not sure. It seems like they whiffed on a huge oppurtunity to change the MMO game, but on the other hand it could have been a lot worse.

For NEW MMOs coming out (Thanks Q-Stone) I think it's going to be very tough to make money and/or be successful on a big budget subscription model.

Scratched wrote:

I just challenged myself to remember 5 non-generic things about it, names, locations, etc, and couldn't do it. That's how well it stuck in my memory after a fairly good amount of playtime. I couldn't even recall the name of the main fateweaver guy who's with you almost from the start of the game.

I agree that it's not particularly valuable and generally against the best interests of a publisher to pick it up, but I do think there were some unique things about it. The House of ballads and how they reenact legends, for instance.

But that's neither here nor there, really. I mean as a publisher, the reason to pick up IP is if you think the IP comes with an enthusiastic fanbase. Amalur did okay for new IP, I guess, but not amazing. The worldbuilding/lore might save you some work, but I think that's largely a wash as you pay a price in that your developers are probably going to be more enthusiastic about working on their own world rather than something that's been handed to them.

those guys are experts at churning out content that looks like a $1 but cost them $.05. Theres no way that they will want to pay RI what RI is believing the property is worth. They could and would rather just invest that $ into an existing property or something new that builds off one of their already proven money makers.

Perfect World bought Cryptic... Stranger things have happened. But you are right, they are shrewd enough to never over pay for the IP. There is no urgency to get it so they have nothing to lose by waiting or passing.

juv3nal wrote:
Scratched wrote:

I just challenged myself to remember 5 non-generic things about it, names, locations, etc, and couldn't do it. That's how well it stuck in my memory after a fairly good amount of playtime. I couldn't even recall the name of the main fateweaver guy who's with you almost from the start of the game.

I agree that it's not particularly valuable and generally against the best interests of a publisher to pick it up, but I do think there were some unique things about it. The House of ballads and how they reenact legends, for instance.

But that's neither here nor there, really. I mean as a publisher, the reason to pick up IP is if you think the IP comes with an enthusiastic fanbase. Amalur did okay for new IP, I guess, but not amazing. The worldbuilding/lore might save you some work, but I think that's largely a wash as you pay a price in that your developers are probably going to be more enthusiastic about working on their own world rather than something that's been handed to them.

I don't think the lore IP is the main draw (to the extent that Copernicus has a draw at all) - yeah, it's got Salvatore's name on it, but the check they wrote to him had to be peanuts compared to the actual cost of, you know, making the tech.

Whether or not Copernicus has any value depends on how close to being finished it really is. If it's basically a complete game, then it would have to be worth something to anybody who can finish it and make it work, since even failed MMOs seem to always end up with a few loyal fans (see: the SOE boneyard). The big question there is whether RI is willing to go low enough to make it actually attractive to anybody, and "low enough" is going to be "pretty low."

If the game isn't close to complete... I don't imagine anybody would touch it at any price, since the resources needed to get it the rest of the way would rapidly approach the cost of simply making something new, with the added bonus of being forced to deal with whatever bad decisions the previous devs made.

I strongly doubt anybody would buy this stuff simply from a desire to churn out some sweet Amalur universe games of their own, although I suppose you never know. Rumor has it that Gearbox plans to do more stuff with the Duke IP, and that's not exactly a winner either.

I agree, Gore, and would assume any purchase would be for the assets, with the lore simply being part of the packaging.

Something I would have thought for an MMO is that the people making it are almost as important as the assets, unless you plan to gut and lobotomise it into a single-player offline game. With an MMO you should be thinking about running servers and the whole back-end for it, how to make more content in the future for it, or how to change it in the future if needs be (changing subscription to F2P, rebalancing, changing classes, etc).

I don't know if Copernicus was using a off-the-shelf MMO engine (Hero, etc) or custom home grown systems, or if it was meticulously documented so that another company could pick it up, but I expect such factors would play very heavily into a company deciding whether to pick up the remains of 38, and how much to pay for it.

It reminds me how big an achievement getting an MMO running is, not just with the bits visible to a player, but the hardware, network, financial, and support (and the other facets I'm forgetting) infrastructure to make it all happen. Does anyone know how close 38 were to launch in terms of setting up partnerships for hosting servers, network provision, customer support, etc?

gore wrote:
ranalin wrote:
gore wrote:

Of course, Copernicus seems to be an unfinished WoW clone in an era where every subscription WoW clone fails to meet expectations, and it seems like it must be a lot harder now to peddle this kind of crap with such a known-to-be-tiny chance of success.

Again if people are looking for some upcoming game to equal or surpass WoWs numbers... it's not going to happen. If by successful you mean make back their money and some sort of profit then there's still games out there that qualify.

Sure, you can find such things if you look hard enough, but there's a huge gulf between where Copernicus is today and where EVE and the other also-ran-but-viable MMOs are. Even that modest degree of success is a lot of work away, and is still a long shot.

The market is filled with the desiccated corpses of countless WoW wannabes, and those odds can't look too so hot for the so not sexy potential reward of "small profit" (especially if you're trying to get there with a game that has already failed to even be built once).

The smart play would probably be to go straight for F2P, but even so you need some kind of hook to get people in, and you need a game that's finished and actually playable - neither of which is something you can say for Copernicus currently.

While I agree that there are definitely "also-ran" MMOs, games like WAR fit that bill perfectly, but lumping in EVE, which has exhibited consistent growth in subs year on year since launch is not a good thing. There are other issues with using sub numbers as a metric(which it appears you are), but I'll address that in a bit.

ranalin wrote:
MrDeVil909 wrote:
ranalin wrote:
Squee9 wrote:

The market for those kinds of MMOs is mostly gone by now as well.

Totally disagree here. What indicators do you have to support that?

If Old Republic can't do it.

this is a false assumption. Having a drop in subs doesnt mean the game isnt successful. they're still around 1mill subs. They already made their money back. From a business standpoint it's a success. Because they're not at WoW numbers people start mumbling fail without thinking about it for a bit.

This is exactly right. Many other folks have commented on WoW's sub numbers, but it is a horrible, horrible metric. WoW is an anomaly in the market, plain and simple. When you look at MMOs that were successful before WoW, a million subs was excellent. Blizzard stood that on its head with WoW in a way that nobody, not even Blizzard anticipated. I'd wager they were looking at Lineage numbers, which had previously been the big dog on the pile at plus or minus two million subs. Normal for the genre was 500k-750k, in the vein of FFXI, SWG, EQ and DAOC. All of those MMOs, despite having a fraction of the subs that WoW has had at any point in time were most definitely a success.

The best thing any company can do when making an MMO in today's market is to treat WoW like it doesn't exist, in terms of success and profitability. It's a statistical outlier, and significantly so. Learn from their design mistakes and successes as needed, but by and large? I genuinely think that devs would be best served ignoring it altogether.

AnimeJ wrote:
ranalin wrote:
MrDeVil909 wrote:
ranalin wrote:
Squee9 wrote:

The market for those kinds of MMOs is mostly gone by now as well.

Totally disagree here. What indicators do you have to support that?

If Old Republic can't do it.

this is a false assumption. Having a drop in subs doesnt mean the game isnt successful. they're still around 1mill subs. They already made their money back. From a business standpoint it's a success. Because they're not at WoW numbers people start mumbling fail without thinking about it for a bit.

This is exactly right. Many other folks have commented on WoW's sub numbers, but it is a horrible, horrible metric. WoW is an anomaly in the market, plain and simple. When you look at MMOs that were successful before WoW, a million subs was excellent. Blizzard stood that on its head with WoW in a way that nobody, not even Blizzard anticipated. I'd wager they were looking at Lineage numbers, which had previously been the big dog on the pile at plus or minus two million subs. Normal for the genre was 500k-750k, in the vein of FFXI, SWG, EQ and DAOC. All of those MMOs, despite having a fraction of the subs that WoW has had at any point in time were most definitely a success.

The best thing any company can do when making an MMO in today's market is to treat WoW like it doesn't exist, in terms of success and profitability. It's a statistical outlier, and significantly so. Learn from their design mistakes and successes as needed, but by and large? I genuinely think that devs would be best served ignoring it altogether.

Amen brother. The lessons new MMO makers need to learn come from the regular sized MMOs before they become a size 0 like 38 studios.

Lengthy article in Boston Magazine's End Game: Inside the Destruction of 38 Studios.

Really interesting article. It basically retells the story but fleshes out some of the events in between the big things that made headlines. Looks like they were definitely in trouble for a long time and just trying to survive for the last couple of years.

It's a really good article, but some of the things it includes as signs of doom and gloom aren't really. Like, at one point, it says that the game wasn't looking good because the employees were playing other games during lunch. That's not surprising. If you spend 40 hours or more a week working on a game, the absolute last thing you want to do is play it during break time, especially when it's in an alpha state. They also have Curt saying that the game wasn't fun in general. Now, it's entirely likely that the gameplay systems were weak, but it's also kind of standard that games just aren't a lot of fun in early development. It's like looking at a house in the framing stage and saying "You know, it just doesn't feel very homey."

It sounds like a lot of the problems came down to Curt both wanting to be very hands on, wanting very badly to succeed, and having very little practical experience and firmly believing that sheer determination could bring the thing home. Totally not surprising given his professional background as a ball player, but absolutely the wrong way to think about making a big game like this.

Chaz wrote:

It's a really good article, but some of the things it includes as signs of doom and gloom aren't really. Like, at one point, it says that the game wasn't looking good because the employees were playing other games during lunch. That's not surprising. If you spend 40 hours or more a week working on a game, the absolute last thing you want to do is play it during break time, especially when it's in an alpha state. They also have Curt saying that the game wasn't fun in general. Now, it's entirely likely that the gameplay systems were weak, but it's also kind of standard that games just aren't a lot of fun in early development. It's like looking at a house in the framing stage and saying "You know, it just doesn't feel very homey."

True. It does make me wonder what they were doing for gameplay, though. The best way to design something like this is iteratively, with a lot of cheap prototypes to nail how the game is going to play. Now, it could be because no one is talking to the designers (they had game designers, right?) but I get the impression that they didn't bother with a lot of gameplay preproduction and jumped right into art production.

Now, the reason that most of the assets that have leaked out have been static graphics and environments is obvious, but I've never seen anyone be clear on how the game was supposed to play or (as mentioned above) how it was supposed to be any different from any other MMO. What was Copernicus's unique selling point, gameplay-wise? That Curt doesn't articulate it first thing furthers my impression that he didn't have much grasp of how business in general works.

It actually makes sense that they were putting a lot of effort into the art from the early stages. While I agree that iterative gameplay design is definitely the smartest thing to do, if you're trying to land big money investors from day 1, you need to have something flashy to show them. While investors familiar with the game development process will understand what prototypes look like, if they were taking as many meetings as the article suggests, they were talking to a ton of non-gaming investors too, and they're more likely to be enticed by pretty art than stick figures hitting each other in a gameplay prototype.

That just goes back to the fact that they needed to start smaller so they wouldn't have needed to try and get money from anyone with a check book.

I forgot, I was also impressed (if it's true) that Curt's motivation behind the whole thing seemed to be to make a ton of money so that he could do a lot more charity work. Obviously, he went about it the complete wrong way, but that's a noble goal.

I think the article makes it clear that the Development team was a huge mess.. since after almost $100M the best they could scrape together at the end was a flythrough trailer with zero gameplay. At $100M in you should have way more assets completed by then.. at that point your deep into content creation.. most of your general gameplay is complete and ready for tweaks to the underlying "mechanics"

Yup. Of course, you also don't generally want your staffing decisions to be made based on a timetable laid out by the government entity providing you with money. The whole thing sounds like it was done backwards at every step of the way.

Chaz wrote:

It actually makes sense that they were putting a lot of effort into the art from the early stages. While I agree that iterative gameplay design is definitely the smartest thing to do, if you're trying to land big money investors from day 1, you need to have something flashy to show them. While investors familiar with the game development process will understand what prototypes look like, if they were taking as many meetings as the article suggests, they were talking to a ton of non-gaming investors too, and they're more likely to be enticed by pretty art than stick figures hitting each other in a gameplay prototype.

That just goes back to the fact that they needed to start smaller so they wouldn't have needed to try and get money from anyone with a check book.

I forgot, I was also impressed (if it's true) that Curt's motivation behind the whole thing seemed to be to make a ton of money so that he could do a lot more charity work. Obviously, he went about it the complete wrong way, but that's a noble goal.

A noble goal, but a common human tendency is to say that if I just had a little bit more money I'd donate it or do all these good things with it, but when people actually get the money only the ones with an already-established generous habits follow through. Not to slag on Curt, because it's very common, and for all I know he was already donating generously elsewhere, but it doesn't get him off the hook for playing with peoples lives.

You can get investment from concept art, or even very focused production art, but I'd want to have the design nailed down before blowing $4M a month on production. Now, they might have something that they're not talking about, but that points to a marketing failure if they really thought they were launching next year.

It doesn't cost anything to get together with some designers for some beer and pencil gameplay concepts on paper napkins. This should absolutely be done before any artwork is done. (unless a particular part of your world is the central focus that everything else springs from)

It sounds like with all that experience he had playing mmo's that Curt couldn't come up with a central idea for the game other than "it has to be the best" or "it has to have the coolest stuff". I don't think it is any wonder the game lacked direction or focus.

edit: and it is a noble goal but not one that is going to successfully build a bejeweled clone let alone an mmo.

fangblackbone wrote:

It sounds like with all that experience he had playing mmo's that Curt couldn't come up with a central idea for the game other than "it has to be the best" or "it has to have the coolest stuff". I don't think it is any wonder the game lacked direction or focus.

Business plan:

1) make game super rad
2) ?
3) Profit!!!

Of course he thought it would be easy. I think when a person achieves such success as Shilling, it becomes easy to just assume that you're truly exceptional and are capable of doing whatever you want.

gore wrote:
fangblackbone wrote:

It doesn't cost anything to get together with some designers for some beer and pencil gameplay concepts on paper napkins. This should absolutely be done before any artwork is done. (unless a particular part of your world is the central focus that everything else springs from)

It sounds like with all that experience he had playing mmo's that Curt couldn't come up with a central idea for the game other than "it has to be the best" or "it has to have the coolest stuff". I don't think it is any wonder the game lacked direction or focus.

Business plan:

- make game super rad
- ?
- Profit!!!

See also: Kaos Wars.

Somewhat related:

Spoiler:

I almost worked with a guy that set out to create a "WoW Killer". His small team's design (nowhere near Schilling's level of investment, mind you) started out the same exact way, though: "make pretty art, get investors, make the gameplay better than WoW... whenever-- that's the easy part-- then make long-term profit from subscribers!"

Unfortunately, Schilling's story isn't really anything new in the industry, overall (minus the Rhode Island funding debacle)-- god knows how many start-ups have gone in with the same exact idea and exact same lack of knowledge and/or experience, only to burn out or kill their budget due to that lack of knowledge and experience (and in a lot of cases, poor management).

The difference here: A) Curt Shilling's involvement; B) the ridiculous amounts of cash blown for no good reason (free laptops and puppies? Seriously?!); C) Rhode Island's business loans. It's definitely a sad series of events, but really not very new within the industry, at least fom what I've seen.

I dunno.. I'm going to borrow the Free Puppies employee motivation tactic.

And, of course, Scott Jennings has something to say in response to the article. He mentions the point about the perception of game not being fun.

I think it's clear at this point that 38 Studios wasn't interested in running a studio, they were there to hit it big. EA and Actiblizzard can play the blockbuster strategy because they've got hings like really deep pockets, multiple studios, and proven brand names. Their hit-driven strategy is out of necessity as much as anything; they're like sharks that have to keep moving. For 38 Studios, with no experience in business or games to leverage, it's more like betting everything on 00 on the roulette wheel.

The production entertainment industries (games and films and VFX) have a tendency to create of fly-by-night operations that have a lot of enthusiasm and money for a while, but no integrity and no delivery. The special effect company on Journey to the Center of the Earth is another recent example. There are a lot more studios now who are concerned about quality of life, but incidents still happen.

Dramatic Marlin wrote:

Lengthy article in Boston Magazine's End Game: Inside the Destruction of 38 Studios.

Wow, what a read. The interviewer is pretty kind to Schilling in it, despite the story making it pretty clear that the man was fully responsible for what happened. Just the notion that people would work the same as a baseball player would, 14 days on and then 5 days off... it really baffles me that he could be so clueless. When you add to that his delusional belief that things would just work out, since it always happened in baseball, even in the face of them knowingly ignoring bills, it shows his complete disconnect with reality.

The other thing that gets me is the hubris that even if the game was up and running and is totally awesome in visuals and fun, that they still have to figure out the server side of things. You can tack on at least another 6 months to work on server loads and that is with experienced developers.

Although the game not being fun to me screams of Schilling's inexperience, lack of self control and single minded approach.

The company would unlock $17.2 million for creating 80 new jobs in the state by spring 2011, another $4.2 million for adding 45 more by fall, and $3.1 million on top of that for 125 additional jobs by winter.

That he knowingly took money that required him to hire a few hundred additional employees within months also screams to a total lack of business sense. 250 new jobs in less than a year.

Just the notion that people would work the same as a baseball player would, 14 days on and then 5 days off... it really baffles me that he could be so clueless.

It also denotes a complete lack of understanding for a multi-discipline job like game programming, art or design. I am not going to say that being a professional athlete is not hard work. It is and it is grueling mentally and physically. But your responsibilities are few and focused and mental stress really doesn't factor in when you are working out, studying tape, traveling or practicing.

fangblackbone wrote:
Just the notion that people would work the same as a baseball player would, 14 days on and then 5 days off... it really baffles me that he could be so clueless.

It also denotes a complete lack of understanding for a multi-discipline job like game programming, art or design. I am not going to say that being a professional athlete is not hard work. It is and it is grueling mentally and physically. But your responsibilities are few and focused and mental stress really doesn't factor in when you are working out, studying tape, traveling or practicing.

Especially a pro athlete, who has expensive trainers and assistants easing the way.

Reading the article, it doesn't sound like Curt has a lot of experience dealing with the normal lives and jobs of most people. I've said it before, but being a pro athlete is like winning the lottery, not just the the sense that they have a lucky rare talent, but also in the sense that they have a huge windfall of cash and no financial experience to deal with it. Many, many lottery winners and pro athletes die in poverty. Curt wouldn't be the first person to mistake luck in one area with general ability; lots of more experienced people make the same mistake when switching industries or starting a new company.

Ha! I just came up with an off the wall analogy:

If game programming were like major league pitching:

1. you'd get paid better ($480,000 annual league minimum)
2. games would take forever to develop because you would have to determine every line of code with your catcher
3. every line of code would have bug potential ranging from: minor (single) to major (home run) memory leaks with the grand slam being a catastrophic system crash
4. every 3 subroutines completed allows you to take a break until the competitor company completes 3 subroutines
5. you write code for around three hours every 5 days
6. if your coding is off some day, you can have someone relieve you.
7. if your boss visits you twice in one day, you get to go home
8. you get to put your arm on ice, get a massage and get to sit in a jacuzzi after coding for a day
9. you frequently code on the road in competitor company's offices
10. you can get endorsements