And in 2010 you discover you're out of money and need at least another three years to hope to finish your game. So decide to run the whole company from that moment onward through just state loans?Originally Posted by Miramon
Continues making no sense to me.
And if 379 staff can only deliver that mediocre Amalur then the responsibility is also equally distributed among those 379 people who did a rather poor job.
I can't believe so many people were employed there.
Well, it's only the 100 or so at BHG who did that. The other 280 or so were working on the MMO the whole time. Though I suppose it was only 280 fairly recently due to their foolish need to meet their state employment targets; a couple of years ago presumably there were fewer people working there.
But yeah, it was a bad job. Don't expect it to make sense.
No doubt they had some false starts and had to recover from a lot of lost work; but false starts in a game are almost always imposed by management. If you fire your Creative Director mid-way through development, you can't expect the time spent while he was in charge to be very effective.
As an aside, LOTRO threw away all its work at one point and started over almost from scratch, losing a couple of years of progress; and most of the content made for a full year after that was thrown away before launch.
It's still 6 years of development. They haven't shown even a single screenshot for a game supposed to launch in a year?
And as far as I know there weren't any dramatic changes in management that reset the work on the game. It's not Tabula Rasa going through complete rewrites and redesigns.
Oh, just proved wrong.
Looks like they went for the realistic style to make themselves apart from WoW /sarcasm
I believe they did in fact fire their CD. I was surprised to learn they had hired someone with so little experience when I heard about it shortly after the company was formed. But that was pretty early on, so they probably didn't lose much progress there.
They posted a world flythrough video just a couple of days ago. More than a screenshot; but not much more: a world flythrough video is meaningless as a way to gauge development progress. It's just putting a bunch of art objects down and moving a camera around. Then you edit with a bunch of fast cuts and put in some catchy music. It's very far from being a game.
How does continue keeping your company afloat to keep your people employed and continuing to develop and release products (including Reckoning) to make your company more financially stable make no sense to you? 99% of the time companies are formed, subsist, and live around the fact they owe someone else money (ie. loans).
And if 379 staff can only deliver that mediocre Amalur then the responsibility is also equally distributed among those 379 people who did a rather poor job.[/QUOTE]
I love how you just blame the employees for the company's obvious failings.
And how we have to continually re-iterate the facts for you time and time again, which has been done already five million times on QT3, not to mention elsewhere. The best thing for you to do is to read up on this a bit--you know, do at least a little bit of research--and then come back and make some arguments. 379 didn't deliver Reckoning, nor did they all work on the MMO.
--- Alan
Btw, Moorgard. Highlight mine:
As of today, everyone at 38 Studios Providence and Baltimore has been laid off.
It’s a very sad end to nearly six years of great work. Despite the odds, I believed in the dream we all shared. I believed with all my heart.
I’m not sure the public will ever know the beauty of what we built… that’s maybe the hardest part of it all. We snuck out a pretty, but dated, environment fly-through and a few key images, but there is so much more that would take your breath away. I truly hope you get to see it, in some form.
I don’t know what will happen to Amalur. It will no doubt be tied up in various legal proceedings for some time, both game assets and the intellectual property as a whole.
As people lay blame and the commentators turn a heartbreaking situation into the latest industry punchline, some will probably portray the team as a bunch of screw-ups who couldn’t ship a game. The story has so, so much more to it than that. In short order, you will start hearing truths, half-truths, and lies, as well as things that are true from a certain perspective. In the end, perspectives are what makes up history… real truth lies in the midst of it somewhere.
Perhaps someday I’ll talk more about my perspective… but not today.
Today, I mourn for what almost was. Because believe it or not, we came so close to pulling it off.
On to the next dream.
Thanks god he didn't meddle:
I guess Amalur failed because it was a sexist game."I asked the experts: What could have we done better? And they were telling me, 'You did everything right. You put your money in, you supported the game, and you're better off not meddling.' If I had meddled there wouldn't be all this violence in these games, all the sexism."
"The game failed," he said.
Last edited by HRose; 05-24-2012 at 09:43 PM.
Honestly, I'm discovering that trying to discuss and clarify the finer points of this for HRose is like telling the dog to stay off the couch: it looks at you like it has the light of some understanding in its eyes...but 5 minutes later Macchiato is back up on the sofa.
There's simply no apparent capacity to intake, comprehend, and process information here.
Honestly I understand both of you rather well. I don't know what you think I don't "comprehend".
Whether it is 379 people, or 279 doesn't make a real difference in the discussion. I suppose the 100 BHG worked on Copernicus at some point and in some capacity, as well the Copernicus guys worked on Amalur at some point and for some time. We don't know these details so it's pointless arguing about them.
The points that stands are:
- 100+ people worked on Amalur at some point and the game was considered shallow and had a lukewarm welcome.
- Most of critics I've read complain that the biggest problem is the difficulty curve, so it's a problem squarely grounded into game design. Game design is usually the one area (unlike art or programming) where you can't simply throw more money at, to fix. (hence, more responsibility on devs not delivering a good game, instead of lacking the resources for it)
- At least 379 people cumulatively worked on Copernicus at some point, and the game appears nowhere close to release even if projected on a cycle of 7 years of development.
Hence: if there aren't other unrevealed facts about it (as I suspect), a significant part of the responsibility is shared by the whole studio that in seven years and sitting on top of a huge pile of money wasn't able to finalize any good thing.
Amalur was non tight, it was made bigger than the ability of his authors to make every part feel has good the last TES game. The challenge breaks down for most players, so these that want challenge fail to get from the game. These thag hate story hate it even more in amalur because it looks like generic and bland. But beyond the surface, the game has a rich and original lore. So is a magna opus enormeous and fun to play game, it only lacks the type of polish that come from devs that makes smaller games an can put more work in every part, and perhaps have more experience.
And to top it off, it looks like they are still hiring! They have 18 current openings! Any "Build Engineers" out there? Take a chance? What could go wrong?
http://38studios.com/jobs-at-38
Last edited by divorced; 05-24-2012 at 11:04 PM. Reason: forgot link
Also ironic is the site's description of its benefits package:
One of the main principles of 38 Studios has always been that we value a high quality of life. Team members are expected to give their all while in the studio but at the end of the day, to go home and spend time with their family and friends. 38 Studios pays 100% of the benefits offered to all permanent, full time employees. Our package is just one illustration of our commitment to quality of life – it is one of the most comprehensive packages offered by, well, just about any company regardless of industry.
Never underestimate the power of poor management constantly shifting priorities, and direction.
Outline of the distribution of money from the RI EDC to 38 Studios, when and why:
The article on WPRI also makes the following notes regarding the distribution, payment and re-payment:• Nov. 2, 2010 … $10.9 million. “Upon delivery and the Date of Issuance of the Bonds AND after the date when [38 Studios], or a letter of credit bank selected by [38 Studios], presents reasonable documentary evidence to the [EDC] that the letter of credit required in connection with [38 Studios'] execution of that Lease dated Sept. 20, 2010 is to be issued subject only to the funding of a deposit account at such letter of credit.”
• Nov. 2, 2010 … $2.1 million. ”Collateralization for letter of credit that serves as the security deposit on Empire Street lease.”
• Dec. 10, 2010 … $9.4 million. ”Upon public announcement by [38 Studios] of a relocation date to RI.”
• April 18, 2011 … $17.2 million. ”Upon relocation of [38 Studios'] headquarters and the current object, Coperncius studio to RI AND the creation of at least 80 full-time jobs in RI with an average annual wage not less than $67,500 per year.”
• April 18, 2011 … $4.2 million. “Upon the creation by [38 Studios] of an additional 45 full-time jobs in RI with an average annual wage not less than $67,500 per year.”
• Aug. 16, 2011 … $4.1 million. ”Upon the entry by [38 Studios] into a satisfactory distribution agreement for its Project Copernicus.”
• Nov. 2, 2011 … $1.6 million. ”Upon the creation by [38 Studios] of at least an additional 125 full-time jobs in RI with an average annual wage of not less than $67,500 per year.”
Total … $49.5 million between Nov. 2, 2010, and Nov. 2, 2011.
--- AlanWhen the $75 million worth of bonds were sold on Nov. 1, 2010, the EDC spent $1.9 million of the proceeds on fees, then put the rest into three accounts: $49.5 million went into the Project Fund, $12.8 million went into a Capital Reserve Fund and $10.6 million went into a Capitalized Interest Account.
As of Nov. 2, 2011, a year after the bonds got sold, the Project Fund was empty – that was the source for all the above transfers from EDC to 38 Studios. The company told the state all $49.5 million is gone, but no details have been provided about how the company spent the money.
As of now, the Capitalized Interest Account is down to about $2.7 million – enough for one more interest-only payment, which is due on Nov. 1.
Starting next May 1, 38 Studios itself is supposed to start making the principal and interest payments to bondholders from its own revenue; if it can’t do so, the EDC will tap the Capital Reserve Fund. If that happens, the governor is required to ask state lawmakers to appropriate money in the budget to replenish the fund. However, lawmakers aren’t legally obligated to actually appropriate the money.
I am going to make a bold prediction: quantum physics is more complicated than it looks.
How the hell did they spend $49.5 million dollars in 1 year and only so far have a concept trailer?
Edit: nevermind - I cant read!! :-D
This is an easy thing to say, but think it through.
The game wasn't ready to show, but it existed, and ran. People played it every day. People added new stuff to it every day. You could run from end to end in the world. You could mount up. Combat worked (but wasn't finished). Chat was in. Groups worked. Looting worked. Questing worked and there was a ton of quest content in the game.
Just because you didn't see it doesn't mean it didn't exist. It just wasn't ready for a big announcement - that's what I was working on until a couple weeks ago. There's a much cooler, way more awesome trailer sitting on a hard drive at 38 Studios that has scratch audio that I hope gets released somehow.
And, I thought not starting up the hype train until they were ready was a good idea. Too many game companies start it way to early and the results never live up to the hype.
Better to get the ball rolling closer to having a finished product to show.
Did they bring the state people in and show them? If so, ugh... If not, wtf?!
Yeah, this is an important point Menzo brought up. Just because all you've seen is a concept trailer that just got released doesn't mean there wasn't a game. The issue is that it wasn't close to release, but they had all sorts of systems working and it was being pounded on daily. If the funding thing didn't occur they probably wouldn't have even released this trailer and development would have continued until they had a better product to show.
And don't treat it like all that money bought one concept trailer. Of course, the game was in development much longer than that.
And again, it wasn't one year--they received $49.5 million in one year, but spent it over a much longer period of time (well, up through this month I guess).
So extremely simple math shows that just payroll alone (not benefits, relocation or anything else) was around half of that money from November 2010 to May 2012--and that's minimum payroll.
--- Alan
and it looked like they covered insurance 100% - so you can factor that in the costs as well. Not to mention, most of the people most likely weren't minimum (as stated in the terms) salaried people...
That ... doesn't sound too shabby.Nov. 2, 2011 … $1.6 million. ”Upon the creation by [38 Studios] of at least an additional 125 full-time jobs in RI with an average annual wage of not less than $67,500 per year.”
I guess I underestimated how much gaming industry folks really earn.
With that many people and these kind of wages ...
_____
rezaf
... You understand how game companies blow through money?
I suspect they had to offer much more to attract talented and/or experienced people.
18 months I believe?
They had 337 employees if I read this correctly. I don't know for how long they have had 337 employees, but that's likely millions a month in payroll.
Your typical software developer earns more than your typical game developer, so that isn't the problem.
2-4 mill/month has been the burn rate thrown around.
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