Flagship studios closing?

[Thecla]

A lot of seemingly well-confirmed rumors that Flagship studios is going under

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_in...tory=19386

Whatever one's opinion of Hellgate:london (I like many things about the game, despite the real problems it's had) that's a sad outcome, and a very tough one for the developers...

[Quark]

Flagship seems to be the most poorly run game developer company since Interplay. They get a contract that forces them into a "release on X date" instead of "wait till it's done". They give up IP rights to something they created. They get too ambitious at the start.

It seems to me most of Flagship's problems have nothing to do with programmers/artists/etc and everything to do with upper management.

[Nastie_Bowie]

Flagship seems to be the most poorly run game developer company since Interplay. They get a contract that forces them into a "release on X date" instead of "wait till it's done". They give up IP rights to something they created. They get too ambitious at the start.

It seems to me most of Flagship's problems have nothing to do with programmers/artists/etc and everything to do with upper management.

That is hitting the nail squarely on the head.

Game development is not a business that can be run on a shoestring. They were underfunded and got beaten into deals that were un-realistic.

[NiteFox]

Confirmation. Makes one wonder about the future about the subscribed portion of HGL.

[RTM]

Re: Hellgate London

I have not played the game, but from the little bit I've read, the multitude of patches that have come out only apply to the multiplayer portion. Assuming the company goes under and support/servers/etc. dries up, will all that content ever be available to the single player part of the game? Honestly for $30 I could see myself getting my money's worth out of it even without multiplayer, but I'd hate to be restricted to a low-content buggy mess if the fixes only apply to multiplayer.

Or, if my initial info was wrong, disregard.:)

[Frag]

Re: Hellgate London

I have not played the game, but from the little bit I've read, the multitude of patches that have come out only apply to the multiplayer portion. Assuming the company goes under and support/servers/etc. dries up, will all that content ever be available to the single player part of the game? Honestly for $30 I could see myself getting my money's worth out of it even without multiplayer, but I'd hate to be restricted to a low-content buggy mess if the fixes only apply to multiplayer.

Or, if my initial info was wrong, disregard.:)

You're correct. A lot of us Diablo players were very disappointed that they followed what you outlined and 'ignored' us Single Players. So in order to actually play the updated and 'balanced' game solo, you had to go online and turn off the chat box so you didn't see the millions of spammers and b.net kiddie responses to inane questions.

Lots of potential to be had there, but somehow I enjoyed Titan Quest more, despite wanting to fall in love with Hellgate MUCH more.

Blargh,
~Frag:unsure:

[Occhidiangela]

A lot of seemingly well-confirmed rumors that Flagship studios is going under

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_in...tory=19386

Whatever one's opinion of Hellgate:london (I like many things about the game, despite the real problems it's had) that's a sad outcome, and a very tough one for the developers...

Bill Roper's voice, in full D2 act end boss reverb:

"Not even Hellgate: London can save me from myself."

Occhi

[NuurAbSaal]

"Not even Hellgate: London can save me from myself."
Occhi

Mean!

And rather funny:)

The voice acting in D2 is going to accompany me through many more years of minor geekdom. "Looking for Baal" is among my favourites.

I wonder if I should give the game that broke Flagship a try, if only to see/judge for myself if it was "worth it". I kind of doubt it though. The last game from imba people that I expected to be really great was Stubbs the Zombie from former Bungie employees. Interesting, but I couldn't shake the feeling that it could have been so much more.

take care
Tarabulus

[Taem]

Wow, that's really dissappointing. Hellgate London had much potential; it was a FPS and an RPG. It combined two elements I love the most about games and in a good way, however the gameplay was pretty boring IMO. I can't put my finger on what made the game boring but if I had to guess, I'd have to say it was the scenery and chat system that turned me off the most. I bought the collectors edition and only played it for a week or two at most. I really wanted to pick it up again later on, but never did. I think had Flagship had more time to make games, they could have made some really great ones. Maybe Vivdendi will gobble them up and keep them togeather before its too late :lol:.

[Iolair]

They are not completely dead. They still have the right to the IP. They don't take in new subscribers and have indeed fired most of the staff. But the whole Hanbitsoft owns the IP seems to be just a rumour.

This news recently got out:

"Flagship Studios Still in Operations

San Francisco, CA (July 14, 200 -- Flagship Studios has announced today that despite rumors to the contrary, the company is still operating.
“It is with deep regret that I must announce that Flagship Studios has laid off most employees. However, the core management and founding team members are still at Flagship.” said Bill Roper, CEO of Flagship Studios. “The past five years have been an incredible experience for us, but unfortunately, we couldn’t sustain the size of the company any longer.”

Flagship Studios owns the rights to all its technology and IP, including Hellgate: London and Mythos. Due to the current situation, Flagship will not be taking any new subscribers for Hellgate: London, and all current subscriptions will not be billed.

Flagship wishes to extend their heartfelt thanks to those that have supported the company and games over the past five years."

Link: http://forums.mythos.com/showthread.php?t=20719


I personally don't care much for Hellgate, that game was never for me. But I have played Mythos quite a bit and I still hope to see it out. I guess there is still hope...somewhere:)

[--Pete]

Hi,

“. . . Flagship Studios has laid off most employees. However, the core management . . . are still at Flagship.”

There was a small town on the banks of a river. One year they had a budget surplus, so they bridged the river. Now, a bridge is a valuable asset, so they hired a night watchman to protect it. But the watchman had to be paid, so they hired an accountant. That gave the town a staff of two, so they needed a manager to run things. Then, the following year they had a budget shortfall.















So they fired the watchman.

--Pete

[Nystul]

HGL is not a bad game, but they needed to finish it about 3 years ago, without a subscription model, and possibly not even server side characters. Or reign the thing in in some other way. It certainly did not need a DX10 64 bit version either. Flagship bit off way more than they could chew, as people have been saying for a long time. Now it seems they are choking.

And yeah, having core management without a programming team large enough to sustain the subscription system of HGL or to finish another game... where exactly would they find the money to move forward from here if not by selling the game rights? Bill Roper voodoo dolls?

[DeeBye]

Bill Roper voodoo dolls?

I'd buy one.

[Bolty]

Pondering notes and a question from someone who never played Hellgate: London...

If World of Warcraft did not exist, how differently would Flagship Studios have fared?

Let's face it, WoW is the 10-ton gorilla of the PC games industry. I know that I personally would have played HG:L if I weren't so tied into WoW, and you have to figure that of the 3 million or so US WoW subscribers (almost 11 million worldwide), a percentage of them would have certainly at least tried the game out as well.

Hellgate: London won't be the first game to be swept under the rug of the behemoth, and it won't be the last; it's been a common complaint in the PC game industry over the last 3 years that WoW is stifling competition. While in many cases it's undoubtedly used as an excuse to cover for a poor game, I get the impression that HG:L had no more problems than WoW did on its release. Correct me if I'm wrong. WoW on release was almost unplayable and it took 6+ months to really fix a number of its core problems.

Would be interesting to hear the scoop from the inside of the company, from a Flagship employee, but undoubtedly there are legal concerns and drama that block that from becoming reality. A real shame.

-Bolty

[Ruvanal]

... I get the impression that HG:L had no more problems than WoW did on its release. Correct me if I'm wrong. WoW on release was almost unplayable and it took 6+ months to really fix a number of its core problems.

Your impression is not even in the same ballpark. WoW chat at the beginning of phase one beta was at least 5 times better the in game communication that was in HGL at least during the first month or two of release. The game had a major memory leak that was causing client crashes very frequently, usually requiring a system reboot to clear.

In my opinion there was also more variety of what players were going be able to interact with in Goldshire, Redridge and Duskwood that I ran into when doing the first 3 acts of the game. I understand that there was not much more variety even after that till they released a patch that had Stonehenge in it. Also those 'stair traps' that were in the D2 release were back in an even more brutal case that they were in D2. There had been several times that I had to give up a progression quest to exit the game and server so that I could try again and hopefully have a clear enough area (2 zones out from a station) that I could even get a start on for doing the needed quest.

Bolty if I had to rate HGL release to WoW beta phase 1, the WoW beta quality would have won hands down from my experience.

[Roland]

Pondering notes and a question from someone who never played Hellgate: London...

If World of Warcraft did not exist, how differently would Flagship Studios have fared?

Let's face it, WoW is the 10-ton gorilla of the PC games industry. I know that I personally would have played HG:L if I weren't so tied into WoW, and you have to figure that of the 3 million or so US WoW subscribers (almost 11 million worldwide), a percentage of them would have certainly at least tried the game out as well.

Hellgate: London won't be the first game to be swept under the rug of the behemoth, and it won't be the last; it's been a common complaint in the PC game industry over the last 3 years that WoW is stifling competition. While in many cases it's undoubtedly used as an excuse to cover for a poor game, I get the impression that HG:L had no more problems than WoW did on its release. Correct me if I'm wrong. WoW on release was almost unplayable and it took 6+ months to really fix a number of its core problems.

Would be interesting to hear the scoop from the inside of the company, from a Flagship employee, but undoubtedly there are legal concerns and drama that block that from becoming reality. A real shame.

-Bolty

Hellgate would have flopped just as badly if WoW had never existed. The only difference is now we have that 10-pound Gorilla to compare everything else to, whereas otherwise it would only have to compete with the rest of the world.

I had high hopes for Hellgate (like everybody), but I gave up on it after the first month and a half. I told myself I'd come back in about 6 months to a year, depending, to see how progress had been made. Looks like I waited too long (or, on the flip side, like I got out well ahead of time;)).

The game... well, it's complicated, but basically it had loads of bugs, was very unfinished, lacked ANY sort of polish whatsoever (I'd call it about an Alpha at release), and just had core problems with the structure all around. From forking the code between SP and MP (which caused SP to be months behind MP in terms of content, bug fixes, etc.), to archaic chat and UI systems reminiscent of chat in Diablo (yes, the first one), to repetitive scenery and gameplay reminiscent of old arcade games from the 80's (and many NES games), where backgrounds were just recycled images played over and over. It was the race horse that broke two of its own legs before the gate even opened, and then tried to win the race.

The game COULD have been a monster. The creativity behind it was great, and I've no doubt given about another year and a half, and a ton of resources, they could have pulled it together and came out with SOMETHING worthwhile, even if it didn't pan out in the direction I would hope for. Sadly, that's not what happened, that's probably not going to happen (at least, not under their charge), and frankly, given some of the fundamental underlying challenges they built into it themselves, I'm not certain they wouldn't be better off ripping whole sections of the game out to start over from scratch. Yes, it really is that bad in some respects.

Oh, and I should note that that's just the game itself, to say nothing of the subscription model and subsequent 1) lack of content, and 2) splintering of the playerbase. Nothing about the game, from the ground up, was handled well. Too many ideas, not enough discipline and just basic common sense and logic, I'm sorry to say.

I can't say I'm happy to see Hellgate in such dire straits, and even less so for Flagship. That's not to say I hold FSS in any ethereal esteem, just that it's always very sad to see a gaming company go under, especially one that shows a lot of promise (even if they're horribly rough around the edges). Hellgate could be a good game. With a ton of work, it could even be a great game. I just don't see it happening anytime in the next year, and truthfully, I'm not sure it will ever happen. I'll be keeping an eye on it, though, just to see what happens. I'm not interested in any of the BS drama, scandal, whatever. I just want to see FSS pull out of this and, most importantly, learn from their mistakes (of which there are many, and many large ones). I think they had a great vision, and I'd love to see that vision come true.

One final note: it can hardly be looked over that a large part of why Hellgate was rushed out the door was because they don't have the backing of Blizzard to keep it all going. I don't think they could get away with the whole "It's done when it's done" line, although I think some of the bad habits they had at Blizzard (months of sleepless nights working overtime to get the game finished) continued in their new company. I'm not excusing them for rushing out a poorly designed game way before it was ready, especially since the bulk of the problems stemmed from just bad decisions, but it would be unfair to say that this was all their fault.

Frankly, though, I think to point the finger at WoW is a red herring. WoW came back from their stumbles, but they had a solid foundation from which to do so. Hellgate did not have a solid foundation, not in the game, not in the company (speaking financially here, and again the whole ordeal of having a big-name publisher pushing your product out the door on their schedule, rather than yours), not really anywhere that I can tell.

Regardless, it's very sad, and I hope both the game and the company survive.

[Trevan]

I actually bought the game a couple of months after it came out despite hearing all the complaints, simply because I pretty much expected all the complaints. To be honest, I still don't regret it. I had fun playing the game. But it could have been much much better.

I feel that WoW didn't kill it, rather that the comparisons to Diablo killed it. With everyone believing this was going to be the spiritual successor to Diablo 2, it didn't really deliver that. To be honest, the game felt like it combined the worst aspects of Diablo and WoW. I loved the theme behind Hellgate London, but the repetitive locations, repetitive quests, bizarre forked patches, and awkward subscription model hurt it too much.

Despite all this, I still play it on occasion. Single player though.

Bizarre. My first post on the lounge (i've lurked since Diablo 2 came out) is about Hellgate London.

[ShadowHM]

While in many cases it's undoubtedly used as an excuse to cover for a poor game, I get the impression that HG:L had no more problems than WoW did on its release. Correct me if I'm wrong. WoW on release was almost unplayable and it took 6+ months to really fix a number of its core problems.

I beg to differ from the last two respondants. :P

Now, I suffer the same problem that you have; I didn't and have no intention of playing WoW.

Having said that, this game did and does have a lot of potential. It took many of the things I didn't like about D2 and fixed them. It gave the opportunity for some really good group cooperative gaming, without having to have buns of steel and huge groups to be able to prevail. It still allowed for reasonable solo play, too.

The game was initially rather unplayable for me, more due to my system not being up to snuff than any other issue. Rebalancing comments are irrelevant to Variant Scum™, eh? :lol:

[Roland]

I beg to differ from the last two respondants. :P

Now, I suffer the same problem that you have; I didn't and have no intention of playing WoW.

Having said that, this game did and does have a lot of potential. It took many of the things I didn't like about D2 and fixed them. It gave the opportunity for some really good group cooperative gaming, without having to have buns of steel and huge groups to be able to prevail. It still allowed for reasonable solo play, too.

The game was initially rather unplayable for me, more due to my system not being up to snuff than any other issue. Rebalancing comments are irrelevant to Variant Scum™, eh? :lol:

Agree or disagree, the forums close tomorrow at midnight. It seems the BS PR machine, though working overtime, just can't keep up.

The more this plays out, the more I think all the IP really will transfer over to other entities, and the game will live on in some form "under new management." Sad days, but I don't think the servers will be going down anytime soon.

Watch, now I've jinxed it all.:P

[Nastie_Bowie]

I purchased the game in mid-April.

It has bugs and requires a strong computer. I get random freezes, even though my machine exceeds the minimum requirements by a fair margin.

I enjoy playing the game. Hopefully FFS can keep the MP servers live until someone buys/bails them out, or they can transfer the MP stuff to SP.

Roland, Friday at 12:01 AM is tonight, not tomorrow night.