38 studios Auction Nov 14th and 15th.

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Jovec

Jovec

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810
381
tad10_sl said:
we're making a AAA title, go big or go home
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One of our tenets at work is that if you can't do a project for a million dollars, then you aren't capable of doing the project at all.

Maybe $1 million isn't enough these days, but the concept remains. CS could have paid a decent salary for a small 10 person team for 1.5-3 years to prototype and implement ideas. Design and create the classes and combat. Build a single zone and dungeon with placeholder assets, etc. Iterate on ideas multiple times to determine what works and what doesn't. What's fun and what isn't. Then commit to the large team with it's associated costs. While some top industry talent couldn't afford to work in such a situation, many would chance it for promise of future money in some form (bonus, percentage of profit, stock, etc) and the chance to lead a big budget title. Just $5 million would have given Curt his answer on whether or not his game had enough to differentiate itself from the pack.
 
Furious

Furious

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
2,950
5,026
Jovec_sl said:
One of our tenets at work is that if you can't do a project for a million dollars, then you aren't capable of doing the project at all. Maybe $1 million isn't enough these days, but the concept remains. CS could have paid a decent salary for a small 10 person team for 1.5-3 years to prototype and implement ideas. Design and create the classes and combat. Build a single zone and dungeon with placeholder assets, etc. Iterate on ideas multiple times to determine what works and what doesn't. What's fun and what isn't. Then commit to the large team with it's associated costs. While some top industry talent couldn't afford to work in such a situation, many would chance it for promise of future money in some form (bonus, percentage of profit, stock, etc) and the chance to lead a big budget title.
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Bad management is the same whether it is using 1 dollar or a billion. At my firm, if you buy a coffee on loan you or an idiot with money.
At
 
G

Gecko_sl

shitlord
1,482
0
Furious_sl said:
Bad management is the same whether it is using 1 dollar or a billion. It my firm, if you buy a coffee on loan you or an idiot with money.
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It really isn't.

Almost all large companies are poorly managed. What they all have in common is generally product, cash flow, or a large investment pool. You can get away with those sort of things if you are an AT&T, Verizon, IBM, or Microsoft. You can't if you have no product or stellar plan.

Almost every small sized company is tightly managed because they have to be.

The problem with Curt is he was in category B there and ran things like he was a big ship with endless revenue. You probably need to sell a six pack of soda before you invest in competing with Coke and Pepsi...
 
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Jackdaddio_sl

shitlord
727
0
Mughal_sl said:
The assets are completely unusable. For a brief time before the layoffs all the people who knew how to recover the assets (art, text, animation) were employed by SOE but now they are scattered across various studios. Without those people it's just unusable garbage as nobody knows the toolchain etc. Maybe some Chinese outfit company can buy them for next to nothing and then brute force through it but otherwise that stuff had a very small window in which it could have been used.

I'm sure someone told RI this already.
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Didn't stop those guys from Heatwave buying the assets for G&H, fucking around with it for a year, selling Lifetime subs and sticking the shit up on Steam. I'm sure someone pointed out there's always a chance it can happen again.

Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising Trailer on Steam

 
Convo

Convo

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
8,775
637
He buck falls on him. The guy wanted over 100 million to make a game. That's crazy and he should have planned better and brought people in who knew what the fuck they were doing.
 
Furious

Furious

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
2,950
5,026
Gecko_sl said:
It really isn't.

Almost all large companies are poorly managed. What they all have in common is generally product, cash flow, or a large investment pool. You can get away with those sort of things if you are an AT&T, Verizon, IBM, or Microsoft. You can't if you have no product or stellar plan.

Almost every small sized company is tightly managed because they have to be.

The problem with Curt is he was in category B there and ran things like he was a big ship with endless revenue. You probably need to sell a six pack of soda before you invest in competing with Coke and Pepsi...
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Yes it is. Ask Bear Sterns.
 
Kuro

Kuro

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
9,110
24,109
What will happen to the bearded server maintenance hobo now
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meStevo

meStevo

I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
<Silver Donator>
6,531
4,815
It's a bit more profound than a failed business venture... it's about addiction, his dad dying, etc. So no, not about just wasting some money.
 
Big Phoenix

Big Phoenix

Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
<Gold Donor>
46,751
99,822
meStevo_sl said:
It's a bit more profound than a failed business venture... it's about addiction, his dad dying, etc. So no, not about just wasting some money.
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Yeah id call the rise and fall of 38 studios a bit more than just a failed business venture.
 
Mughal

Mughal

Bronze Knight of the Realm
279
39
Jackdaddio_sl said:
Didn't stop those guys from Heatwave buying the assets for G&H, fucking around with it for a year, selling Lifetime subs and sticking the shit up on Steam. I'm sure someone pointed out there's always a chance it can happen again.

Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising Trailer on Steam
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But G&H was basically a finished game. Entire systems were not yet designed in the 38S MMO - it was not a game but a collection of assets moving in an environment. They were looking at tens of m of $$ to have anything that could resemble a beta.

The only thing that could be done was to acquire the art assets for pennies on the dollar and reuse them for another game (or build the same game on top of another). And even that could only be done by the people who built that system as there was no documentation.
 
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