Flagship sunk

SexyBeast wrote:
MikeMac wrote:
Malor wrote:

Anytime you have a development company that's more focused on the revenue model than on the actual game, there's a high chance of a real stinker.

Agreed.

I understand some people enjoy HGL. Different people like different things - not exactly breaking news. However, I think for the majority of gamers HGL was a piece of junk. It's derivative and repetitive.

For me, I'm very happy to see them go under. I feel sorry for the guys in the trenches, but crap developers should fail, in fact, MUST fail so we're not constantly inundated with poor quality games like HGL and Mythos. It's a healthy process.

i disagree with this. If we punish developers for taking chances, then we'll be stuck with games that are all the same because no one will be willing to accept any risk with their ideas.

I don't think anyone "punished" Flagship because they took a chance. They punished them because they released a game that still needed months in beta, lacked promised features upon release, and had a pricing/subscription scheme that a lot of people didn't agree with.

It didnt look to me like the game took any more chances than any other game that comes out. If the game took 4 years to make and was that rough at launch, it means they trashed a lot of their work. I have a feeling Age of Conan did the same. They supposedly took 5 years to make the game. I can definitely see it in the details of the art and the quality of the engine, but not in the actual world. 4-5 years is a HUGE amount of time to work on quests, dialog, balance, bug fixes; IF and only if they aren't trashing a lot of their own work along the way.

I have a feeling both games are guilty of that. If they wasted a lot of their own time it means they didnt plan ahead well enough and didn't scrap work early enough that it's not too damaging to the project.

It also doesn't make a lot of sense for a brand new company, even with experienced developers, to immediately start work on a 4 year project. As an armchair developer with 20/20 hindsight, I'd have finished Mythos first to generate some cash flow while the 2nd team works on Hellgate.

I'd really love to see a postmortem on the game/company to count up all the ways they blew it. The world needs to know, so the lessons can be learned from.

polypusher wrote:

It didnt look to me like the game took any more chances than any other game that comes out. If the game took 4 years to make and was that rough at launch, it means they trashed a lot of their work. I have a feeling Age of Conan did the same. They supposedly took 5 years to make the game. I can definitely see it in the details of the art and the quality of the engine, but not in the actual world. 4-5 years is a HUGE amount of time to work on quests, dialog, balance, bug fixes; IF and only if they aren't trashing a lot of their own work along the way.

I have a feeling both games are guilty of that. If they wasted a lot of their own time it means they didnt plan ahead well enough and didn't scrap work early enough that it's not too damaging to the project.

It also doesn't make a lot of sense for a brand new company, even with experienced developers, to immediately start work on a 4 year project. As an armchair developer with 20/20 hindsight, I'd have finished Mythos first to generate some cash flow while the 2nd team works on Hellgate.

I'd really love to see a postmortem on the game/company to count up all the ways they blew it. The world needs to know, so the lessons can be learned from.

I believe it. Reading the dev blog on the forum. The background artist lead revealed that a lot of the original, grittier and more gory content and art assets of the game was taken out the last minute...

Art Dev wrote:

In response to all of the comments about the violence and gore, once again I need to point out that this wasnt an art decision, it was simply a limitation we were given to work with, as for their full reasoning I can't say. What I can say is that I know a lot of people had to make a lot of changes towards the end of development when this decision was made (remember a lot of these guys made D2 so obviously also wish we could have more gore) but in a professional environment you have to make due with the rules and confines that you are given. One day we all recieved an email saying take a large percent of the gore out, so we did. If one day our leads decide to make the change back I am sure we will all be more than happy to do so. Hope this is helpful.

One of their big flaws, in my opinion (at the risk of sounding like a stuck record ) is, I think, that they tried to apply a subscription model to a game which was completely unsuitable for it. There just wasn't enough content to justify paying a monthly fee and I think they suffered a lack of subscribers because of that. (Not to mention all that trouble they had with subscriber accounts and multiple duplicate charges back when it first started).

Perhaps if they had instead gone with the Guild Wars Model, (e.g, released the "Stonehenge pack" as a downloadable expansion pack for a single fixed fee) they would have had more interest and been better off.

One of their big flaws, in my opinion (at the risk of sounding like a stuck record ) is, I think, that they tried to apply a subscription model to a game which was completely unsuitable for it. There just wasn't enough content to justify paying a monthly fee and I think they suffered a lack of subscribers because of that. (Not to mention all that trouble they had with subscriber accounts and multiple duplicate charges back when it first started).

Well the line would have been blurred if the team/guild chat functionality wasn't broken and annoying to use. Also, if the grouping functionality wasn't horribly buggy and the performance didn't plummet when playing in a group, the game could have had sturdier legs. Oh, and don't forget the memory leak that eventually crashed the game after 20 minutes to an hour.

I'd bet if the game was obsessively gory, we probably wouldn't be having this discussion right now. That may also explain the stale monster animations (death and hit reaction) that took a lot of the personality out of the game.

True, that certainly wouldn't have helped

Never experienced any of that myself though...always played solo whether online or not

Sheazy wrote:

That was posted on June 11, not July 11. It was in response to some rumors that surfaced last month but isn't relevant to the current situation.

Well now, isn't there egg on my face.

I'm still sad at all the haterade being passed around (not so much here, but "around").

Despite all of it I hope that the people that worked at Flagship and their families are alright and can endure this sudden shift of economics. Good luck.

lethial wrote:
polypusher wrote:

It didnt look to me like the game took any more chances than any other game that comes out. If the game took 4 years to make and was that rough at launch, it means they trashed a lot of their work. I have a feeling Age of Conan did the same. They supposedly took 5 years to make the game. I can definitely see it in the details of the art and the quality of the engine, but not in the actual world. 4-5 years is a HUGE amount of time to work on quests, dialog, balance, bug fixes; IF and only if they aren't trashing a lot of their own work along the way.

I have a feeling both games are guilty of that. If they wasted a lot of their own time it means they didnt plan ahead well enough and didn't scrap work early enough that it's not too damaging to the project.

It also doesn't make a lot of sense for a brand new company, even with experienced developers, to immediately start work on a 4 year project. As an armchair developer with 20/20 hindsight, I'd have finished Mythos first to generate some cash flow while the 2nd team works on Hellgate.

I'd really love to see a postmortem on the game/company to count up all the ways they blew it. The world needs to know, so the lessons can be learned from.

I believe it. Reading the dev blog on the forum. The background artist lead revealed that a lot of the original, grittier and more gory content and art assets of the game was taken out the last minute...

Art Dev wrote:

In response to all of the comments about the violence and gore, once again I need to point out that this wasnt an art decision, it was simply a limitation we were given to work with, as for their full reasoning I can't say. What I can say is that I know a lot of people had to make a lot of changes towards the end of development when this decision was made (remember a lot of these guys made D2 so obviously also wish we could have more gore) but in a professional environment you have to make due with the rules and confines that you are given. One day we all recieved an email saying take a large percent of the gore out, so we did. If one day our leads decide to make the change back I am sure we will all be more than happy to do so. Hope this is helpful.

A lot of game companies are like this. This is AAA. For every GTA there's at least 10 other clusterf*cks just like this, except everyone thinks they can beat the game (life is not a video game) and be Halo. This is what killed PC gaming and will tank several console teams too, people are starting to wake up and smell the coffee but it'll take a few more Haze's and Hellgates etc for the industry to wake up.

fathamburger wrote:

This is what killed PC gaming and will tank several console teams too, people are starting to wake up and smell the coffee but it'll take a few more Haze's and Hellgates etc for the industry to wake up.

Did I miss something? I wasn't aware PC gaming had died

Sheazy wrote:

I don't think anyone "punished" Flagship because they took a chance. They punished them because they released a game that still needed months in beta, lacked promised features upon release, and had a pricing/subscription scheme that a lot of people didn't agree with.

That's true, but the question is, will future investors see it that way or will they see "World of Warcraft is making so much money they had to invent a new unit of measure to record it and this weird London thing bombed! I guess people want their elves!"?

LobsterMobster wrote:
Sheazy wrote:

I don't think anyone "punished" Flagship because they took a chance. They punished them because they released a game that still needed months in beta, lacked promised features upon release, and had a pricing/subscription scheme that a lot of people didn't agree with.

That's true, but the question is, will future investors see it that way or will they see "World of Warcraft is making so much money they had to invent a new unit of measure to record it and this weird London thing bombed! I guess people want their elves!"?

Fair enough, but I think it is safe to say that the next non-fantasy themed game that breaks through to mass appeal will render that moot. GTAIV? World of Starcraft? Oh I wasn't supposed to mention that one...hold on the doorbell is ringing...

LobsterMobster wrote:
Sheazy wrote:

I don't think anyone "punished" Flagship because they took a chance. They punished them because they released a game that still needed months in beta, lacked promised features upon release, and had a pricing/subscription scheme that a lot of people didn't agree with.

That's true, but the question is, will future investors see it that way or will they see "World of Warcraft is making so much money they had to invent a new unit of measure to record it and this weird London thing bombed! I guess people want their elves!"?

And if Warhammer does reasonably well, it will only further that mindset :). But, I think that's really only of concern in the mmo-space. Outside the mmo-space, non fantasy themed games continue to do well, innovation continues to take place, and no one runs around trying to be a WoW-killer.

I don't know if a non-fantasy MMO could be a "WoW killer", but I would love for companies to try.

What are some companies that are Blizzard caliber, but specialize in other genres besides fantasy? Can they contend or even take away some of the clientele from WoW? Perhaps people, especially here in the western world, seeing as we have been involved in WoW longer than most other countries, can be enticed into a space themed MMO.

Are people tired of WoW yet? Is the next new shiny just around the bend?

Saying all that, I am looking forward to Warhammer Online.

I think AoC totally bucked the trend of "fantasy games need elves and dwarves to succeed". AoC could have well been on its way to being a WoW killer. WoW didn't just snap its fingers and become 10 million subscribers over night. It first started with 1-1.5 million which AoC's lauch approached and something of which EQ2 and LotRO dreamed. If AoC fails its because the novelty wore thin not because of theme or art style or the fact that it broke down the door of the adult aesthetic.

AoC dented WoW's armor. I think a lot of developers are feeling very confident now. This BS that you need a 100+ million dollar budget to beat WoW is laughable.

fangblackbone wrote:

This BS that you need a 100+ million dollar budget to beat WoW is laughable.

Uh, no. It's not laughable at all. Having a great launch is wonderful, but it'll take a year to find out how successful it really was. Combine that with the Mature rating and the higher system requirements, while AoC certainly is off to a good start, it has exactly a 0% chance of being a "WoW killer".

kuddles wrote:

while AoC certainly is off to a good start, it has exactly a 0% chance of being a "WoW killer".

Don't think anyone has ever claimed it trying to be one.

ranalin wrote:
kuddles wrote:

while AoC certainly is off to a good start, it has exactly a 0% chance of being a "WoW killer".

Don't think anyone has ever claimed it trying to be one.

Clearly you missed fang's post just prior to that, along with the legions of Anti-WoW fanboys on the internets. People are always looking for the 'WoW Killer', and are willing to brand anything that has a chance as such.

Ultimately, while I disagree with kuddles quite often, he's right on this count. AoC will do very well for an MMO, but I doubt they'll get to WoW's subscriber numbers. I honestly doubt that they'll break the magical 1 million sub point. And no, I don't believe that the 'units shipped' number they tout so heavily comes close to representing the number of active, paying subscriptions they have. Not with how heavy handed they are in smacking down anyone and everyone who tries to show that the game isn't doing so well.

There may never be a WoW killer. There are so many other companies trying for that market that the most likely outcome would appear to be a gradual subscriber loss in WoW, which is then fragmented across a lot of different games. Once WoW's star fades, the days of the single universal MMORPG may never return.

I don't think WoW will ever literally die. I suspect it will slowly lose subscribers to about the 5 million level, then there will be a new game to cause a mass migration. But considering that UO and EQ are both still alive and kicking I suspect WoW will probably outlive me, likely at about 1 million players.

Totally thumb-sucked, but makes sense.

Sheazy wrote:
fathamburger wrote:

This is what killed PC gaming and will tank several console teams too, people are starting to wake up and smell the coffee but it'll take a few more Haze's and Hellgates etc for the industry to wake up.

Did I miss something? I wasn't aware PC gaming had died :P

Well didn't you know that fathamburger thinks if he says PC gaming is dead than someday he might convince everyone else that it's dead even though he's wrong and always has been regarding PC Gaming being dead.

Uh, no. It's not laughable at all.

Uh, yes! AoC didn't cost anywhere near $100 million. (do I know that for a fact, no but I don't know where Funcom would be able to secure that kind of money) My point was that AoC was off to a similar start as WoW. Its a shame though because AoC doesn't have nearly the depth of Funcom's other game Anarchy Online. And also, it appears as though the rest of AoC isn't as thoughtfully crafted as Tortage. And to top it all off, they are relying on PvP and siege warfare to give the game legs. Neither of which seems to be breathtakingly implemented.

Off the rails!