You’re the head manager of a new baseball team. You’re passionate about what you want to achieve, have some great ideas in mind and have at least enough money to get things rolling. When you tell other people about what your team is going to achieve, they sound excited too. You know that you are … Continue reading
New Blogger Initiative (#MMONBI) – Fear The Power of Syp!
In the past month: Dominus closed EA BioWare laid off a lot of people from Star Wars: The Old Republic 38 Studios imploded Fallen Earth was cut back to bare bones staffing numbers The Secret World delayed its launch Some may see the above as just the culmination of a number of bad things happening … Continue reading
38 Studios: Striking Out
Concluding my previous look at 38 Studios and possibly how all the money got spent is the news that 38 Studios has shut down, laid everyone off (including the Big Huge Games team) and will likely now be carved up and sold in order for Rhode Island to possibly get some money back. There’s an … Continue reading
Embers of Caerus: If I’m Snarky About Kickstarter, At Least I’m Consistent
Another day, another Kickstarter in the gaming “press” (which loves it, let’s be honest – it’s super-easy content to write regardless what happens). What caught my eye about the Embers of Caerus Kickstarter is that it is so that a group of 50 volunteer, amateur developers can develop an investor prototype that may eventually be … 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
City of Heroes / Villains: A Limited Bounce
When the first quarter of financial data landed following City of Heroes / Villains conversion to a free-to-play model, it showed a positive-if-only-moderate bump from 2812 million Won (or US$2.41m) in Q3 2011 to 3435 million Won (or US$2.97m) in Q4 2011. Going F2P saw about a 20% jump in revenue. It certainly wasn’t in … Continue reading
Path Finding and Kick Starting
As previously discussed, I’m fairly cynical of Kickstarter for video game development. Backers see it as supporting something they are interested in; I see it as companies leveraging off their previous reputation and gamer hope to get money gifted to them. Because that’s what the money is: a gift. Once the pledge target is met … Continue reading
Newbie Blogger Initiative (#MMONBI) – From There To Here
One of the things that the Newbie Blogger Initiative is meant to do is provide some tips and hints about blog writing. So here goes… It’s Up To You and You Alone To At Least Get Things Started My MMO writing career started with The Paragon Beholder, a faux-newspaper that was based in the City … Continue reading
World Class Villains 