Okay... I should have seen this coming. Picture this: A group of developers and producers break away from a hugely successful gaming company. The hype factor for their first game release is totally over the top. By the time the game comes out, it's a complete mess. Company folds, end of story. Does anyone remember John Romero, Ion Storm, and the ugliness that was Daikatana? Yeah... it's like a recipe for failure.
So how did Flagship Studios fail? Here's my take:
Hellgate: London's terrible game design - When I first saw the cinematic opening for Hellgate, I was blown away. I wanted nothing more than to play that game. It was gritty and conveyed a sense of urgency, tinged with despair. I would have gladly sat though an entire movie based on that six minute trailer. When the game finally came out, the tone and atmosphere within the game were completely different. Instead of building upon the tone set brilliantly in the opening cinematic, I was forced to endure idiotic NPCs with stupid personalities and ridiculous quest goals. It felt wrong to me. I was supposed to be thrust into a world where mankind was fighting for its existence. Where desperate, yet stoic characters should be hiding from demons and frantically planning some kind of resistence. Instead, I find people standing around idly while I was sent to find STUFF that made absolutely no sense considering the situation. Perhaps part of it was due to English humor. I don't know. All I know is that it failed miserably to immerse me into a world that should have been easy to create. After a short while, I stopped caring about saving these idiots. In fact, if given the opportunity, I would have switched sides to fight for the demons. At least they seemed to exhibit some sort of passion.
Hellgate = Scope creep from Hell - Is it a single playergame? Is it a multiplayer game? Is it an MMO? Who the fuck knows? Certainly not Flagship Studios. There is no doubt in my mind that Flagship wanted to mimic their previous success (Diablo II), so why not implement a Battle.net type system for multiplayer action, too? Well... that sounds great in theory, but in their efforts to build the multiplayer side, they totally dropped the ball on the singleplayer side. Instead of an immersive, roller coaster ride full of struggles and triumph, I get sent off to gather ingredients so some alchoholic moron can make himself some hooch. Let's not ponder the possibilities of an alchololic even surviving in this type of environment. That insists on applying logic. With regards to multiplayer, Flagship made the fatal mistake of thinking that they could release boring, repetitive maps and then charge everyone a monthly subscription to upgrade the game. To which most customers said, "no thanks." There was no earthly way Flagship could get away with charging the same amount as, say, Lord of the Rings Online, without delivering the same level of content. Had they limited Hellgate to a Diablo II type multiplayer, they could have massively reduced costs. Had the game been good from the beginning, people would have paid for expansions. Bad, bad decision.
Run your best game in perpetual beta - Flagship was in the process of beta-tesing Mythos, very much a spiritual successor to Diablo II, and in a lot of ways, much more fun to play than Hellgate. In fact, it's possible that Flagship realized that their subscription plans for Hellgate weren't working, so they intended to allow people to play Mythos for free, using a micro-payment system. Unfortunately, the massive layoffs at Flagship have forced the company to shove Mythos into hiatus. At this point, no one knows if Mythos will be back. It's a shame. I was fortunate enough to be able to beta test Mythos. It would have been a good one.
On top of all this was the ridiculous "he said/she said" craziness that went on between Flagship and Hanbitsoft, a Korean company who is a part investor in Flagship Studios (9.5%). In Kim Jong il fashion, Hanbitsoft decided it would take the Hellgate IP from Flagship, I guess for their own good. Whatever...
Ultimately, it's sad to see a PC game developer implode the way Flagship did, especially considering the lack of games for the PC these days. But, as I said in the beginning of this article, we should have all seen it coming. Perhaps another fledgling gaming company can look at this and learn. Otherwise, I'll be writing a similar tirade about them in the future.
By Garret - Posted on 25 July 2008
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Okay... I should have seen this coming. Picture this: A group of developers and producers break away from a hugely successful gaming company. The hype factor for their first game release is totally over the top. By the time the game comes out, it's a complete mess. Company folds, end of story. Does anyone remember John Romero, Ion Storm, and the ugliness that was Daikatana? Yeah... it's like a recipe for failure.
So how did Flagship Studios fail? Here's my take:
With regards to multiplayer, Flagship made the fatal mistake of thinking that they could release boring, repetitive maps and then charge everyone a monthly subscription to upgrade the game. To which most customers said, "no thanks." There was no earthly way Flagship could get away with charging the same amount as, say, Lord of the Rings Online, without delivering the same level of content. Had they limited Hellgate to a Diablo II type multiplayer, they could have massively reduced costs. Had the game been good from the beginning, people would have paid for expansions. Bad, bad decision.
On top of all this was the ridiculous "he said/she said" craziness that went on between Flagship and Hanbitsoft, a Korean company who is a part investor in Flagship Studios (9.5%). In Kim Jong il fashion, Hanbitsoft decided it would take the Hellgate IP from Flagship, I guess for their own good. Whatever...
Ultimately, it's sad to see a PC game developer implode the way Flagship did, especially considering the lack of games for the PC these days. But, as I said in the beginning of this article, we should have all seen it coming. Perhaps another fledgling gaming company can look at this and learn. Otherwise, I'll be writing a similar tirade about them in the future.