In the rush to blame Laurent Wainwright for destroying game “journalism” forever, there seems to be a large issue overlooked: Rob Florence could have written the entire article and not ever mention Wainwright. Or if he mentioned her, he could have said, “And here’s the kind of gaming press attitude I’m talking about, the one that can’t even see the problem”. He didn’t need to mention his suspicions and doubts based purely on a single other tweet. Continue reading
A big issue to remember here is that a successful Kickstarter doesn’t mean a successful project – it just means that the studio raised some money from a crowd of people. Delivery of what has been promised is a whole separate issue. Continue reading
Going through other bits of info online,my first article about what happened to CoH 2.0 stirred up a confirmation from another source. Continue reading
The CoH/V community is making the loudest noise I can remember seeing in trying to save their title, getting 14 613 signatures in less than a week at the time of writing. Continue reading
Here’s a fun fact: it looks like Funcom’s last profitable quarter (by EBIDTA, anyway) was Q4 2010. The company has spent around a year and a half eating into its cash reserves. Continue reading
So let’s look at the payment models available for video games, at least at a high level. Continue reading
So, what’s the take-out here? Obviously the market conditions that 38 Studios launched with in 2006 were very different to those it expired under in 2012, with investors no longer interested in pouring tens of millions of dollars into MMO development. But it’s not like 38 Studios should have been strapped for cash – as identified, they had at least US$135m put into the studio. Yes, they got a single player title out, but it fell a long way short of the initial “broad media” dreams, or even releasing the promised MMO, while burning a lot of cash. Continue reading
This wasn’t MMO game development; this was a bloody soap opera. Continue reading
I was going to continue with my current series, but looking at the collapse of RealTime Worlds really brought home the similarities between that event and the collapse of 38 Studios. Observe: RealTime World’s collapse was a big thing at the time, but they didn’t have any public money involved with them (that I’m aware … Continue reading
If you selected this option, congratulations – you decided to back RealTime Worlds! RealTime Worlds Game That Destroyed Them: All Points Bulletin (APB) Studio Launch Date: Early 2002 Studio Closure Date: September 2010 Invested In By: Private investors Estimated Money Blown: Over US$100m Cause of Death: Spending all the budget before the game had even launched, … Continue reading
World Class Villains 