Is Curt still that deluded? I bet he's still convinced that Take Two was on the verge of signing that deal, when all indications are that they barely knew about 38 and any talks between the two were really preliminary.
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Curt Schilling's '38 Studios' lays off entire staff, Big Huge Games to be closed
- Thread starter duckroll
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Is Curt still that deluded? I bet he's still convinced that Take Two was on the verge of signing that deal, when all indications are that they barely knew about 38 and any talks between the two were really preliminary.
Bump for news, looks like the sock is being sold. Guess he lost a good chunk of change after all.
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/schillings-bloody-sock-going-auction-182955269--mlb.html
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/schillings-bloody-sock-going-auction-182955269--mlb.html
Polygon reporting the sock story too.
http://www.polygon.com/2013/1/18/3889794/38-studios-founders-bloody-sock-to-be-auctioned-from-feb-4
Anyone want to let them know GameSpot isn't GameStop? - LOL
http://www.polygon.com/2013/1/18/3889794/38-studios-founders-bloody-sock-to-be-auctioned-from-feb-4
Anyone want to let them know GameSpot isn't GameStop? - LOL
Laughing Banana
Weeping Pickle
Man... to think that my only interaction with this man was that one time I posted a complaint at Kingdom of Amalur's OT and he responded quickly and politely too.
Seems like such a very distant memory right now.
Seems like such a very distant memory right now.
Mr. Enigma
Member
It should be clarified that he's only selling the sock he wore in the 2004 World Series. He's keeping the sock from the ALCS against the Yankees.
Ninja Scooter
Member
grosvenor_92
Member
Came into this thread wondering what new info had come out and wow he has really taken a huge hit from 38 closing.
shaowebb
Member
He was always very polite and he genuinely seemed to believe in his dream and love games. I even emailed him during the early days asking if they offered internships while I was still in college. He emailed back and was polite and told me some stuff. The man is a pretty nice person. Sad to see his dream die so horribly and all those people go through all they did in its demise.
If he had any modicum of intelligence he wouldn't have tried to develop an MMO on his first go. Developers with decades of industry experience are usually unable to make a successful MMO. What the hell was this guy thinking?
ElectricBlue187
Member
He was way out of his depth and made some really poor decisions.
Everyone there had decades of experience. The team was great. Some leadership fucked up.
It failed because of a really unfortunate string of circumstances, and governer Chafee was one of the biggest offenders in that.
The Gipper
Banned
They should have just stuck to Amalur instead of trying to do an MMO.
Damn shame they had to take BHG with them though, Rise of Nations was the shit.
Damn shame they had to take BHG with them though, Rise of Nations was the shit.
These two should be side by side. He was a good baseball player. Not a good invester or wise business man.
The truth is, someone needed to stop him and say something of this sort. It was a terrible decision to get into the games industry, invest all of his money, and choose a difficult genre to succeed in. I feel bad. But its 50 million loss in a boneheaded investment. All of his eggs in a basket.
As I said, developers with decades of experience usually fail at MMOs. The fact that studio was comprised of people with decades of experience means nothing. How old was the studio? How long had those people been working together? I'm guessing they were still relatively young.
But even if they were a lauded studio with people who had been working together for decades, they were going to fail. MMOs are a terrible bet, and the ones that are going F2P are occupying enough space in the market that newer MMOs won't be able to compete.
Even when the source material for the MMO is highly salient in the public consciousness, MMOs fail. SWTOR anyone? They had enough capital to make a slew of successful mini games for STEAM.
That and the company was going thru over $4 million a month!
D
Deleted member 17706
Unconfirmed Member
You don't need decades of experience to make an MMORPG, and that's ignoring the fact that the individual members he hired had tons of experience.
Also, will people please stop bringing up SWTOR as some kind of sign that MMORPGs are doomed to fail? The game was fucking shit. It got a ton of sales because of the Star Wars license, so that part did its job. It's just that they made a very, very poor game.
There's plenty of room to succeed in the MMORPG genre. You just need not aim for the stars at the very beginning and you need to make a good game that isn't a shitty version of WoW. Be original, make compelling content, start out smaller and iterate quickly.
Jesus, imagine someone giving you $100,000.00 or so for one of your old socks.
Okay. There are good MMOs that fail as well. The point is that the market for MMOs has a major barrier to entry, much greater than other genres of games. I don't bring up SWTOR often so I fail to see how someone else's overusage of SWTOR in arguments should restrict me from mentioning it.
D
Deleted member 17706
Unconfirmed Member
Like what? Most MMORPGs are mostly shit and only have one or two gimmicks with which to set them apart. Which have failed despite being good, well produced games?
ElectricBlue187
Member
mmmm no it's not shit. They made a very competent WoW clone that nobody was excited to play. The actual gameplay and mechanics are very good if more WoW happens to be what you're looking for.
D
Deleted member 17706
Unconfirmed Member
No, they really didn't. It was a bad WoW clone. All of that ability lag? The lack of connectivity between zones? The pre-Burning Crusade style quests? The crap dungeons and boss encounters? Nothing about the game was good but its Mass Effect-style dialogue stuff.
A competent WoW clone (with a few twists) is Rift, and it's doing okay, but they actually budgeted that game properly to make money on 'just' a few hundred thousand subscriptions.
graywolf323
Member
I'm with you, I'm a big fan of SWTOR if only because I enjoyed the stories in the game and you don't have to group to experience it which is fine by me
D
Deleted member 17706
Unconfirmed Member
Some fucking MMORPG... jesus.
TOR sucks on a lot of levels (hotkey response time is atrocious, the first couple instances suck, AH was laughable), but one of the biggest issues I had was it felt devoid of life for something that's supposed to be massive. They created some large cities and allowed all of what felt like three other people in before slapping another instanced version on top. You're stuck roaming around lifeless cities and interacting with nobody in particular.
And sure, it didn't help that it stuck to rules created by a game 6 or 7-years-old (and did them worse).
And sure, it didn't help that it stuck to rules created by a game 6 or 7-years-old (and did them worse).
D
Deleted member 17706
Unconfirmed Member
I didn't play Tabula Rasa, so I'll refrain from commenting, but Star Wars Galaxies, despite being extremely janky in the technical department, actually had a relatively healthy user base until they went and destroyed the game in an attempt to dumb it down enough to gain the more casual audience.
Part of what makes MMOs so problematic I think is that you need to get back that money on a huge investment, and need to figure out how. Easiest way is proven and safe gameplay drawn to keep you around awhile for a subscription, but that model seems to be collapsing with F2P SEEMING to be the best alternative, but I question the future of that too.
graywolf323
Member
obviously I would have preferred if they had just made KOTOR III
D
Deleted member 17706
Unconfirmed Member
Yes... I think all of us would have!
No, the failure was entirely foreseeable, and the governor had nothing to do with it. They had a bad business plan. That's it.
Captain Tuttle
Member
I feel bad for the guy, seems like he is a good person. I liked his game too. We all make mistakes, his was just very public and involved alot of people.
He is also a compulsive liar and a hypocrite. He probably seems nice in appearance though.
Most people seem like "nice guys" and "passionate" in general interactions. Read more and you'll learn he was hypocritical, nepotistic, and outside of the baseball/gaming world a crazy, born-again, hardcore fuck-you-got-mine republican.