When you think of sports stars and videogames your mind initially wonders towards tie-in promotional sports titles. Shawn White's Snowboarding, Madden, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, the list goes on. However, Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling didn't want to make a game about his life's work, he wanted to delve into his life's passion: MMOs. So he established his own company, 38 Studios, and begun work on his own MMO, Copernicus.
Gamesindustry.biz spoke with Schilling and 38 Studio's CEO, Brett Close, about the challenges of starting out in the MMO-sphere, the next step in customer service and creating touch points into new IP.
Kevin from Denkiphile: "The first I’d ever heard of Titan was at the height of my World of Warcraft career, which was also the same time that several games, touted as WoW-killers, came onto the market and failed miserably. It made sense to me at the time that the only thing that could kill WoW was Blizzard themselves, but this also eventually changed with the advent of session-based, microtransaction-supported games like League of Legends. Titan was supposed to revolutionize and revitalize the MMO genre, but it certainly was not the first to crash and burn before its first flight. Here are some MMOs whose ambitions flew them too close to the sun."
XMNR: 38 Studios founder Curt Schilling released some new screenshots of the Project Copernicus MMO.
being from boston and a die hard redsox fan, i hope everything works out for him
Are you kidding?!?!? I'm betting he knows EXACTLY what happened to all that money. He lays off the entire staff of his company, and you're feeling sorry for HIM?!?!? Just because you like the same ball team?!?!
apparently you are oblivious as to what he did for the team in 2004, bloody sock and all!
I feel sorry for all the workers who got fired because of that idiot Shilling and his bad ways of doing business
Those screens look pretty great, really love the art style. I hope the project gets a chance.
XMNR: 38 Studios reportedly laid off all of its employees including subsidiary Big Huge Games on Thursday. The layoff letter sent to employees was leaked not long after confirming the news and filled with the kind of odd corporate speak we all have come to love.
I highly doubt everyone is "fine", especially the ones with families. Not to mention not being paid since May 1. Wish the best of luck to the employees.
They tried to pay back 1.1mil of the 75mil loan...and their check bounced.
The company is in financial ruin, the CEO and senior VP already jumped ship, they haven't paid employees since April, and all employees insurance and benefits are gone.
Another company down. Just goes to show you how careful you have to be. It's expensive making games and you can't afford to fail over and over. Not any company. This is why exclusives don't matter. Too much risk involved. When they don't sell you hurt your company. A few failures are fine when you're doing well otherwise. But when the company is struggling, no one can afford a series of failures. I know this wasn't an exclusive. But it makes the reality of the importance of making games that sell clear.
I agree, but in my opinion, that also can mean getting stale games (like COD) that never take chances. Maybe it would be better if game developers skipped corners to save money (like use middle ware, unreal engine, etc). One of the biggest reasons the game industry in Japan is in ruins is because most of them don't embrace middle ware or unreal as much as the West does--so the cost of game development is high since they still make their own engines. That's just one way to cut costs, i suppose--but they'll need more ways if they don't want to let their fear of failure cause them to make lame generic games that wont sell anyway.
I understand the desire to want to do everything in-house. Independence is always better than looking to some money hungry corporation to help you. I think it is more a matter of pacing. Small companies should use middleware and license engines. But I believe they should also use things like XBLA and PSN to introduce new IP. There is no reason a small devs should spend 20 million plus to intro new IP. Do an Arcade level. Even a playable tech demo. Create interest and then go for a AAA version. Too many get stuck in the old ways of doing things.
