If you selected this option, congratulations – you decided to back Flagship Studios! Flagship Studios Deceased Games: Hellgate: London, Mythos Studio Launch Date: 2004 / 2005-ish Studio Closure Date: August 2008 Invested In By: Independent investors, publishing partnerships such as Hanbitsoft, financial services company Comerica Estimated Money Blown: Unknown, but the title spent around 4 … Continue reading
Filed under Money …
Pick A Winner!
Here’s a hypothetical for you: You’re an investor with US$100m burning a hole in your pocket. You absolutely have to invest that money in an MMO. (Why? That’s up to you – all your investor friends are doing it, you’re under an ancient gypsy curse, you have brain damage, whatever.) If things go wrong, you’ll … Continue reading
38 Studios: Incentivising Your Own Destruction, Plus Hot Chart Action!
In my previous bit of armchair expert analysis on 38 Studios current situation I ended with the statement that the “financial maths” hadn’t been done correctly, or had been ignored. But then I thought that may not have been clear what I meant. As such: charts! I’m basing these charts predominantly off this article’s timeline … Continue reading
How 38 Studios Spends $4m a Month On Operation Costs (Probably)
An interesting factoid emerged in the wake of 38 Studios struggling to come up with the cash to make a good faith loan payment back to Rhode Island and fund its payroll: it was announced that it costs them US$4m per month in operating costs to stay open. 38 Studios apparently has 379 full-time staff. … Continue reading
UnPopularity Contest – KickStart It!
As mentioned earlier, I’m going to start creating video for this blog if / when I get the time. And for my first attempt: KickStart It! What’s an UnPopularity Contest? I’m going to be creating videos on things from a viewpoint that probably won’t be popular with a broader public, but it will be viewpoints … Continue reading
There’s Gold in Them Thar Hills… Somewhere: Minecraft
I thought it was interesting to see that Minecraft has made over US$80m in revenue since launching in October 2010, but ‘only’ US$13.5m in earnings before taxes, interest, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA). The overall revenue figure seems pretty easy to calculate – 5m paying downloads at a variety of different price points from €14.95 for … Continue reading
How Many Players Did City of Heroes / Villains Have After Launching Freedom?
Converting from a pure subscription-based title to a hybrid free-to-play (F2P) is something than more than one MMO title has seen happen. And generally the indication from the studio is that such a move makes mad bank. When Cryptic Studios converted Champions Online to F2P, they said revenue went up 1000%; when Turbine Studios converted … Continue reading
Double Fine & Kickstarter: Everyone Is Still Going To Their Day Jobs Tomorrow
One of the hot topics at the moment is Double Fine’s Kickstarter project, with the mere words “a Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert point-and-click adventure” was enough to send some gamers into a donating frenzy – at this point a shade over 47 500 people have donated over US$1.6m towards the project. And there is … Continue reading
An Online Platform User Statistic For Comparison
Valve’s Steam has 40 million users (up from 35 million in 2010). It made Valve almost US$1 billion in games sales in 2010. Microsoft has 40 million users on Xbox Live (up from 30 million in 2011). This earned an an estimate of over US$1 billion revenue from game, movie and TV show-related content in … Continue reading
Star Wars – The Old Republic: And The Final Price Is…
In my previous examination of Star Wars: The Old Republic, the development budget from various sources ranged from the probably too-low US$80m (plus US$20 for advertising) through to US$300m. The LA Times has indicated that SWOR’s development cost sits at US$200m, while analyst Doug Creutz of Cowen & Co. suggested that EA’s “total all-in investment … Continue reading
World Class Villains 