Flagship studios closing?

[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.