So Ends 38 Studios, and Big Huge Games With Them
Tibby’s tweet from this morning really says it all:
I’ve had better weeks.
— Ian S. Frazier (@tibermoon) May 24, 2012
I’ve been following the story a fair bit at my Examiner page, and for now at least I think I’ve said about all I can about the sudden end of such a promising game studio. It’s just bad news, and I’m sure all of our hearts go out to the nearly 400 people who were summarily let go today.
Hopefully all those let go — Tibby included — are able to land on their feet and find work with other game development studios. A number of individuals and studios have been posting to Twitter under the #38jobs hashtag, offering employment opportunities to the people who brought Amalur to life ever so briefly. It’s a beautiful outpouring of camaraderie and solidarity, and hopefully one that will be of benefit to many former employees of Curt Schilling.
In a press conference this afternoon, Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee said that the studio needed to sell three million copies of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning in order to break even, but the game ultimately sold 1.2 million. “The game failed,” he added.
Yeah, I saw that.
One one hand, it’s nice to know the game sold way better than my back-of-the-napkin estimate (700,000). On the other hand, it sucks and blows that a game like Reckoning can sell that well and still not have pulled in enough dollars to, y’know, keep its studio afloat.
Just…beyond stupid.
Too much money spent on EXTREME marketing.
Battlefield 3 sold 8 million copies and EA aren’t happy with it either.
Yeah, that’s nuts.
And yet, Mass Effect 3 can sell…what? Three million copies and be considered a success? Yeesh. Me not grok.
Three million copies and be considered a success?
I imagine ME3’s development was quite a bit cheaper, coming from an established team with experience and assets from previous games.
Nevertheless, I wouldn’t be surprised if EA higher-ups privately consider ME3 – and the entire ME franchise – to be a financial disappointment.
Well, keep in mind that ME3 was built upon an already existing engine and gameplay, si I could see Reckoning costing much more. I mean ME3 might be a big AAA SciFi RPG with action and all… but Reckoning has pretty huge SCOPE in terme of gameplay.
I can see some EA executive considering ME a financial dissapoitment – some had expressed before that they’d want the series to sell as much as Call of Duty game.
I’m sure they must be grinding their teeth while seeing Skyrim’s 10 millions sales…
@ultimacodex
EA’s not happy with Battlefield 3 because Activision did equally as well, if not better with Call of Duty. Activision brought in I believe a billion dolars in just over 2 weeks.
If there was no Call of Duty franchise, EA would be ecstatic with BF3.
That is interesting. If true, then it’s more about dick-swinging than the bottom line to shareholders. Unless the shareholders are actually envious of competing games’ disproportionate successes, which is unlikely considering most don’t pay that level of detail to the market. Envy is yet another sign of immaturity; -1 for the suits.
Oh, and let’s not forget such things like those five million dollars in royalties paid to R.A. Salvatore.
Because, you know, an overrated Forgotten Realms novelist is exactly what you need to spend tons of cash when creating a risky new IP.
Well 1.2 million might have been enough to keep things afloat had they not been working on two games at the same time, especially with one of them being an MMORPG.
It’s one thing if they had put the single player game together, then tackled the MMORPG. Having overlap between two games, even if they were sharing art assets and lore, leads to a lot of employees.
One thing to keep in mind is that Reckoning and the cancelled MMO were being done by two different studios in two different locations.
The Amalur MMO actually started development in 2008 before 38 Studios bought out Big Huge Games, and they had nearly 400 employees working solely on it!
Big Huge Games had no role in the MMO whatsoever, and indeed Reckoning was basically a revamped version of Ascendant, the RPG they were working on for THQ, that they set in 38’s Amalur universe.
Which is also why it feels so unfair to see BHG closed because of this, because they created and released a quality game, that sold rather well… and they’re basically the collateral damage of the Amalur MMO dragging the whole studio down.
Remember, BHG would have been closed three years ago if 38 hadn’t bought them. THQ had announced they were closing them down within 60 days unless they found a buyer, and 38 stepped in after the 60-day time frame THQ had given.
I know they were two different teams and if they had nearly 400 on just the MMO, they could have topped 500-600+ between the two games, but it seemed like a good idea at the time, since BHG was probably a huge bargain, and it was a chance to prime the pump for an MMORPG and maybe get some money flowing in to help finish the MMORPG.
Looking at everything now though, it’s clear that if Reckoning had done several times what it did, it wouldn’t have been enough.
If the “3 millions to make a profit” is correct, Reckoning unfortunately serves as perfect showcase of EVERYTHING that’s wrong with the AAA videogame industries at this point.
The idea that a million seller (especially for a new IP) could be considered a commercial failure, is just ludicrous – and yet it can be, simply because of how costly development was.
This is just insane, and Reckoning is actually not the only game it happened.
It is insane. There’s hope though. Steam, Apple’s Mac App Store, etc. can make it a lot easier for smaller studios to make and sell quality titles without having to give away too much to other companies to get their game out there, unlike in the past.
Go back 5-10 years, and if you wanted to sell a million games, you had to have a retail presence, which meant you had to buddy up with a publisher. For every dollar your game brought in, you you didn’t get half of it, after the publisher, retailer, etc. got their cuts. You were doing good if you got 30%-40% of every dollar that came in.
Now, you can get crowd-funded on Kickstarter, and put your game out on Steam or Mac App Store, and probably Origin, and you get 70% of the money coming in, and it’s easy to get exposure on the internet, compared to say dealing with retailers and advertising.
Not surprising, really. Just take a look at every other sector of the U.S. economy. It would appear as if the suits, despite their owlshit cloaks, don’t know what the hell they’re doing anymore. J.P. Morgan, the housing bubble, the overvalued and technically botched Facebook IPO… The world is run by smooth talking retards these days. I think the lesson here is to trust no one but yourself and don’t let money blind you to the obvious.
Good luck to all the employees whose only mistake was working for the wrong people. To the state of Rhode Island and the financial gurus behind the loan, go fuck yourselves and die slow.
I think it really comes down to having a wildly optimistic business plan combined with starstruck political power throwing money in the wrong places. I had high hopes but was uncomfortable with Schilling’s fascination with WoW.
Agreed, as that falls in line with what I was speculating. Either someone didn’t do the math or someone was outright lying about how many copies they would realistically sell.
Imagine a recording artist selling millions of copies of their new album and receiving next to nothing in compensation with the catch being that the record labels distributing it got fucked too. Doesn’t make sense, right? So that begs the question, who got the money? EA? Marketing outlets? I hope someone somewhere is tracking down exactly where all that money got pissed into, as then at least we’ll perhaps understand what happened to cause this.
This is very disheartening. I still hold high hopes that our European contingent can carry the non Beth, non Bioware torch.
An astute Kotaku commenter made the observation that Copernicus the astronomer died today, May 24th. As did the MMO. Interesting coincidence.
That is rather interesting.
If, y’know, unfortunate.
Even Europeans RPGs makes me worried.
CD Projeckt is doing fine, but let’s just say I’m not optimistic about others Europeans RPG developpers, notably PB. Meh.
What about Lars and the gang?
Hmmm ? Not quite sure what studio you are refering too ? Larian ?
Well that’s embarrassing. I meant to say “Swen” but got it gobbled in my head with the company name.
Oh well then yes, Larian Studios seems to be doing well. Divinity 2 seemed rather good, Dragon Commander is promising and if their new RPG succeed at big U7-ish this could be awesome.
Last time I checked Metallica was doing pretty well. 😉
That just SUCKS.
I loved the Recknoning demo, and while I haven’t got the game yet, I still plan to play it down the road. It had a clear potential of becoming a great RPG series.
There are way too many RPG developpers in financial troubles lately.
By what right does the state of Rhode Island have in loaning that much money to a videogame studio? What could the government of Rhode Island know about videogame trends? It would appear that there’s a large percentage of Irish decendants in Rhode Island. Maybe it’s just a promotion of celtic mythology therefore Irish culture. For 75 million though, yikes!
So I guess that means the expansions aren’t coming out.
It had nothing to do with Irish heritage and everything to do with them being able to brag at their next election how many jobs they were bringing in to the state.
And it’s come back and bit them on the arse, hard. Doubt it’s going to help their re-election chances now.
On a related note, Tiberius confirmed the 3 millions sales to break even sprout out by the Governor is nonsens, and that Reckoning was considered an ok success. This whole thing is completly unrelated to Reckoning’s sales.
Source?
Tibby mentioned it on Horizons Tavern.
Can you provide a link?
There: http://www.horizonstavern.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showthreaded&Number=5269
Love how the site requires registration to view a post, Jesus…
“Yeah, the 3 million to break even thing is completely inaccurate. As were several other statements Governor Chafee has made. I have no clue where he gets his information from. :p”
Yeah, what’s up with that? Why so private?
I think there was some big spambots and software issue when the board moved back from its temp home to horizonstavern.com
And Richard Garriott was rich beyond all his teenage imaginings when he sold about 50,000 copies of Ultima I.
Agree with Micro Magic above – in what reality does any state government have any business loaning taxpayer money to a high-risk enterprise like a game studio?
Hey folks!
Just wanted to say thanks for all the support. I just ran across this page and it’s very heartwarming to see. 🙂
Thanks!
–Ian
You’re welcome, Ian. Our hearts go out to you and everyone else affected by this.