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Curt Schilling's "38 Studios" in trouble, skips payroll, bounces check to RI

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I

Izick

Member
I blame the marketing and the name of their game for its failures. It seemed like a really solid game, but word of mouth buzz wasn't strong enough alone. We all know people can dig fantasy RPG's, it's just that they need to actually be, you know, marketed to people.

I say part of the blame is on EA for the lack of marketing, and part on the poor, mundane naming of the game.
 
T

thefro

Member
FStop7 said:
I think Schilling has too much ambition. He spent countless hours building up characters in Everquest and WoW, and he certainly knows the ins and outs of MMOs from the player side, but he just dove straight into making an MMO of his own. He got R.A. Salvatore. He staffed up, big time. The theme of the whole process seems to have been 'reckless abandon'. $75 million in taxpayer money for a startup video game studio? I'd be furious if I were a RI taxpayer.
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Pretty much. It seems like he's a money mark who thought he'd have a very successful game if he just threw enough money at it.
 
graywolf323

graywolf323

Member
Rob N Banks said:
It was a fun game from the demo, but fuck EA.

Sorry Curt. Work with a different publisher and I'll be more than happy to buy your game. I'd rather eat shit for the rest of my life than buy an EA developed/published game.
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then buy it on Steam, 38 Studios self-published that version so EA won't be getting any of your money
 
Haunted

Haunted

Member
:/

Amalur quickly lost its lustre for me and you could see some of the MMO roots in the way the world and the quests were set up, but it wasn't terrible or anything.
 
I

impact

Banned
I went to buy Amalur last weekend and it was still $60 so I said fuck it


that's probably part of the reason. BOMBA games should be $30 tops at this point.
 
L

LiquidSolid

Member
Haunted said:
:/

Amalur quickly lost its lustre for me and you could see some of the MMO roots in the way the world and the quests were set up, but it wasn't terrible or anything.
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Except it was never a MMO so that doesn't make sense.

A better explanation is that they overvalued the amount of content and that hurt the quality. So they've got an absolute ridiculous amount of sidequests but most of them were so bland (both in terms of the story, objective and reward) that most people probably never bothered with the vast majority of them.
 
S

StevieP

Banned
Heavy said:
The gen has been awesome, best gen ever in terms of games.

Amalur just didn't sell well enough and spent 4 years in development so it probably didn't recoup its costs or maybe just broke even. It's a shame cause it was a good game but it was 1) a new IP, and 2) didn't get all 9s and 10s, so it was an uphill battle.
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If you can't see where things are headed based on this generation, your next decade's gonna be fun. lol
 
S

soultron

Banned
LiquidSolid said:
Except it was never a MMO so that doesn't make sense.

A better explanation is that they overvalued the amount of content and that hurt the quality. So they've got an absolute ridiculous amount of sidequests but most of them were so bland (both in terms of the story, objective and reward) that most people probably never bothered with the vast majority of them.
Click to expand...

My biggest problem with it was that it played like a single player MMO. I enjoyed what I played, but I felt that it borrowed too much from the MMO genre.

Still sucks that 38S might be in trouble. They're very passionate and great at what they do.
 
Raptomex

Raptomex

Member
soultron said:
My biggest problem with it was that it played like a single player MMO. I enjoyed what I played, but I felt that it borrowed too much from the MMO genre.

Still sucks that 38S might be in trouble. They're very passionate and great at what they do.
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I believe Reckoning was originally intended to be an MMO. Then they decided to turn it into a single player RPG.
 
F

FStop7

Banned
Raptomex said:
I believe Reckoning was originally intended to be an MMO. Then they decided to turn it into a single player RPG.
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I thought Reckoning was meant to soften the ground for the MMO. To get players familiar with the mythology. Kind of like how Warcraft led to WoW, except in the case of Amalur on a deliberate and accelerated basis.

Anyway, the MMO space seems awfully full. Is there really room for another? WoW is hanging in there at 10.2 mil subs. Now there's an Elder Scrolls MMO coming. Guild Wars 2 is coming. How does another fantasy MMO fit in?
 
Raptomex

Raptomex

Member
FStop7 said:
I thought Reckoning was meant to soften the ground for the MMO. To get players familiar with the mythology. Kind of like how Warcraft led to WoW, except in the case of Amalur on a deliberate and accelerated basis.
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I think that's what it turned into. I'm at work so I can't site any real findings (blocked), but I'm pretty sure I read somewhere before it was released that it was supposed to be an MMO when it was early in development. I could be wrong. That's all I remember.
 
B

Big-E

Member
I still don't understand how every single developer and publisher thinks they can become Blizzard. It is not going to happen. You can be successful with an mmo, just like EVE but EVE is successful because they didn't try to supplant WOW and any fantasy or space fantasy MMO is clearly looking to try and supplant WOW. Elderscrolls Online is going to be an even bigger disaster. 5 plus years of development time? Stuff like this is why I don't really take business people seriously.
 
F

FStop7

Banned
Big-E said:
I still don't understand how every single developer and publisher thinks they can become Blizzard. It is not going to happen. You can be successful with an mmo, just like EVE but EVE is successful because they didn't try to supplant WOW and any fantasy or space fantasy MMO is clearly looking to try and supplant WOW. Elderscrolls Online is going to be an even bigger disaster. 5 plus years of development time? Stuff like this is why I don't really take business people seriously.
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5 years ago I think the idea of a killer MMO sounded great. But the world has changed a _lot_ in the past 5 years. Economically things have drastically changed and the landscape in the world of gaming looks radically different. But they were already long since committed, too late to pull out now.

But if this game doesn't show at this year's E3 then you have to wonder how well things were going to go even if conditions hadn't changed so much.
 
Haunted

Haunted

Member
LiquidSolid said:
Except it was never a MMO so that doesn't make sense.
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Oh, is that true? I thought Big Huge games had an MMO in the works and when 38 Studios took over, they made it into an SP RPG as a companion piece for the 38 MMO.

Well, if it really was an SP game from the start, that doesn't reflect well on the Big Huge Games designers at all. :/

soultron said:
My biggest problem with it was that it played like a single player MMO. I enjoyed what I played, but I felt that it borrowed too much from the MMO genre.

Still sucks that 38S might be in trouble. They're very passionate and great at what they do.
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Basically.
 
A

ArjanN

Member
Big-E said:
I still don't understand how every single developer and publisher thinks they can become Blizzard. It is not going to happen. You can be successful with an mmo, just like EVE but EVE is successful because they didn't try to supplant WOW and any fantasy or space fantasy MMO is clearly looking to try and supplant WOW. Elderscrolls Online is going to be an even bigger disaster. 5 plus years of development time? Stuff like this is why I don't really take business people seriously.
Click to expand...

I think most developers know their game isn't a WOW killer but I don't think you have to be to make money with an MMO, I'm pretty sure most MMOs do make money or they'd stopped making them ages ago.
 
S

SafeinSound

Member
This is really depressing news. I didn't buy KoA but I played the demo and enjoyed it a TON. I didn't buy it at the time cause I was absolutely broke and still deep into Skyrim. I got a couple of my friends to pick it up though. I still want to play it.
 
O

Orca

Member
I liked Amalur, and it did decently for a new IP late in the generation. It's a pity there's a MMO moneypit behind the scenes devouring capital left and right.
 
L

LiquidSolid

Member
Haunted said:
Oh, is that true? I thought Big Huge games had an MMO in the works and when 38 Studios took over, they made it into an SP RPG as a companion piece for the 38 MMO.

Well, if it really was an SP game from the start, that doesn't reflect well on the Big Huge Games designers at all. :/
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No, their THQ RPG was single player.

And I don't see why it would reflect poorly on Big Huge Games designers. They did some things well (like the combat system) and some other things not so well. It was their first RPG so I imagine they've learnt quite a bit and hopefully they'll get a chance to improve upon the flaws in a sequel.
 
Risible

Risible

Member
I thought it was a fantastic game.

That being said, the whole "promise a patch and then never deliver" thing left a real blot on the game.
 
DanielJr82

DanielJr82

Member
Did they really invest $75 million? If all they sold was 410k they're operating at a $50 million loss.

I'm not really sure I see where the $75M went into... ?
 
A

Amir0x

Banned
Curt was one of the most engaged and friendly developers I've ever seen in my time of GAF. He was patient, understanding of criticism and responded with long, intelligent commentary aimed at dispelling or clarifying problems people had. He never took things personally and was always genuinely passionate about his product. As an ex-mod we dealt with plenty of developers, and some were good and some were bad, but Curt was seriously amazing.

Whatever people may think of him elsewhere, he has been an exemplary GAFer and a golden standard other out-dev posters should be like, and I'm going to judge him as a GAFer. To me, he's a good guy and a great GAFer and I hope he posts here in the future when his games are coming up, if his studio makes it.

I think some people calling him 'shallow' because as soon as he's done with something he moves on, but that's also ambition in some circles. If something doesn't work out, you cut your losses and move on. But no matter how one views it, it's extremely distasteful to fuckin' shit on the guy who has done nothing to any of you in his time as a GAFer. The patch thing is unfortunate, of course, but I am not more intimately familiar with what's going on at the studio, and if there is serious problems like this it may be that it's not possible currently to continue working on the patch.
 
B

Baron_Calamity

Member
My guess is maybe whoever they were partnering with for the MMO pulled out. Who knows, maybe it was EA after Star Wars didn't set the world on fire?
 
Z

Zigzz14

Member
Curt was one of the most engaged and friendly developers I've ever seen in my time of GAF. He was patient, understanding of criticism and responded with long, intelligent commentary aimed at dispelling or clarifying problems people had. He never took things personally and was always genuinely passionate about his product. As an ex-mod we dealt with plenty of developers, and some were good and some were bad, but Curt was seriously amazing.

Whatever people may think of him elsewhere, he has been an exemplary GAFer and a golden standard other out-dev posters should be like, and I'm going to judge him as a GAFer. To me, he's a good guy and a great GAFer and I hope he posts here in the future when his games are coming up, if his studio makes it.
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I'm sure thats true and I hate to see video game companies go under but in real life he is a true piece of shit.
 
B

BigDug13

Member
Shilling is a huge MMO nerd from
Back in the EQ days. They probably did the MMO because of his desire and didn't really factor in the dying of the genre by now.
 
Lactose_Intolerant

Lactose_Intolerant

Member
One of the problems is they got Todd Mcfarlane and R.A. Salvatore which added nothing to the game. The story wasn't good and the enemies were pretty bland except for maybe 1 or 2. When all elves look the same you have problems. I'm sure those names probably cost 10 times or more what a regular author and art lead would cost.

You can't just throw money at things and think they will work out.
 
A

alr1ght

bish gets all the credit :)
DanielJr82 said:
Did they really invest $75 million? If all they sold was 410k they're operating at a $50 million loss.

I'm not really sure I see where the $75M went into... ?
Click to expand...

It was probably given to them to spur job growth in the area, not a "typical loan."
 
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