Looking Glass Studios Closes

Warrior writes: "Looking Glass Studios, makers of the System Shock series and Thief series, has closed it doors according to sources. GameSpy is reporting that the company plans to cease operations immediately. Despite strong sales of Thief II, the company was rumored to have financial problems. The story says there is no word on who will retain rights to the Thief and System Shock franchises."

Comments

Eidos & Daikanta...

[antdude]

I hope Eidos learned its lesson. :(

Re:Don't worry, folks!

[seebs]

It hits everyone in the industry,fairly consistently. Let's play the question the other way: Do you have any evidence that their games were *NOT* pirated?

Of course they don't list it as a specific reason; the exact numbers aren't known, and it's hardly unique to them. It's just that the smaller studios have a harder time making ends meet to begin with.

I have yet to hear of a game company which isn't suffering at least some from piracy. I don't see why we should assume this particular company is immune.

And yes, I used this as a platform, because slashdot has a number of users who, to borrow Mr. Wall's phrase, can't tell the difference between giving and taking.

They will never willingly admit that stealing from people has any connection to good companies going under, but you can remind them, and maybe occasionally a few will grow up.

possibly Microsoft's fault?

[CausticPuppy]

Considering that Looking Glass's Flight Unlimited III models the Seattle area in stunning realism, including Microsoft's corporate campus and even Bill Gates' house, MS probably got a little too urked at the idea that gamers all over the world were repeatedly Kamikaze-bombing both places with the Beechjet 400A.

Death of a Company, or Death of an Ideal

[mdwyer]

Looking Glass made some incredible games. There are no two ways about it. My personal favorite is System Shock. Allow me to give a brief history:

So, they make a great game, but they miss Christmas, and then their publisher does no publicity at all. All the reviews are excellent, but no can pick up the game anywhere! I loved System Shock, but I finally had to dig it out of the $10 bin at some backwoods store.

Why was it such a great game? It wasn't really the technology. It was a story so intense, and a world so sucessfully designed that you could sit in front of a glowing screen for hours thinking to yourself, "You know, if SHODAN wasn't such a bitch, Citidel Station would be a cool place to live!"

Now Looking Glass is closing their doors. After critically acclaimed games that have ALWAYS gotten good reviews, they are out of business.

Do we not respect story? Fully realized worlds? I think Half Life disputes that sufficiently. We are still able to put aside drooling on the wallpaper to enjoy the game.

But it remains up to us to discover the great games, and bring them to the forefront, if the publishers and seller do not. Heard about a good game? For the sake of the art, BUY IT.

Who's over-advertising?

[sammy baby]

In the scope of world tragedy, I have to agree that this isn't a huge loss. In the much smaller scope of game developers, however, this sucks rocks.

IMNSHO, Looking Glass has been the only company around to produce games which were not only extremely immersive, but of uniformly high quality. These guys just couldn't write bad games (although they did release a couple of games which weren't huge hits).

As for overspending on advertising: I could be wrong, but I'm fairly certain that's a function of the publisher. Eidos. The guys who were gonna buy them, then backed out. The guys who have spent the last couple of years propping up Ion Storm long enough to get Daikatana out the door.

In the end, that's the real tragedy of the whole thing. Looking Glass released Thief, and System Shock 2, and Thief 2, all fantastic games, all within the time it took Ion Storm to get Daikatana out the door. And which company is still running? As a footnote: I distinctly remember Ion Storm running ads advertising John Romero's desire to "make you his bitch." If that's not over-spending on advertsing, I don't know what is.

Re:Who's over-advertising?

[Erataikasu]

It's really sad. A couple of years ago, Lucasarts and Looking Glass were the only two companies that seemed to be making consistently great games any more. Then Star Wars Episode 1 came out, and Lucasarts began churning out dozens of mediocre Star Wars games and a bunch of their best guys left, and now Looking Glass is gone too. Other recent events such as Richard Garriott leaving Origin (Though arguably he's 'lost it'), Peter Molyneux saying he'll only do console games from now on, Ron Gilbert's Cavedog folding and him going back to doing kids games, Warren Spector's Deus Ex has tied him up for years...

All I can say is there had better be some new companies coming on the scene to take up the slack soon, because the PC game industry looks to be in serious trouble (From a quality POV)

Of course my fondest dream is that Tim Schafer, Richard Garriott, (Probably a couple of other big names I've forgotten) and a bunch of Looking Glass and Lucasarts ex-employees all get together in one super company and produce great titles. These days that seems unlikely with any designer with one successful game under his belt going out on his own and losing all the effort of building a great team. But a guy can dream, can't he?

Re:yeah, right

[Coldraven]

Actually, it wasn't just the Dark engine itself which added to the game's problems; excluding the spiders and the undead, the AI scripting of most the characters wasn't well planned.

One of the most notorious examples of this was in the innocent bystanders' behaviors, which were identical to the guards' templates. Hence they were often pacing about with invisible swords clutched in their hands.

Probably not the end

[Kragma]

I doubt this is the last we'll see of LGlass. As seems to happen often in the game industry, the core members of the company -that is, the really talented individuals- will probably go off and create a new company.

Since Eidos will still have the rights to Thief, this new company could easily continue right were they left off.

This reminds me of what happened to Viacom's Septerra Core. Viacom closed, but the Septerra team kept working on the game, without pay for a while. And they eventually finished the game and got it to stores.

Lets hope the same happens for Thief III; the "living city" idea sounds too compelling to just die.

Re:Food for thought

[Mr. Flibble]

I remember Theif, Thief II, and System Shock having excellent reviews.
This is good evidence that good reviews don't mean success, and that the gaming industry, seen as some as a haven for programmers, can be a nasty place.
And yet Ion "Egofest" Storm survives . . .

Yeah, there is a saying in the movie industry:

Guy: "Hey, didja see that movie eyes wide shut? I heard it was great!"
Other Guy: "No, but I heard it was really good too."
Guy: "I did not see it either, but I saw Die Hard 3."
Other Guy: "Yeah, I saw it too. It really sucked."

You can sort of see the point can't you?

:/

Re:Nice troll attempt

[delmoi]

Come on, try to hack my 31337 firewall!

Why are you hosting a copy of my site on your firewall box!!! Damn it, take it down or I'm going to sue you for copyright infringement!!!

(btw, if anyone didn't get it, that was a joke...)

I remember USG, and EIDOS isn't just them.....

[TuRRIcaNEd]

USG produced some fine games, and a fair amount of dreck in their time, but EIDOS Interactive is a large conglomerate now. an admittedly fairly old article here talks of how US Gold and Domark merged to form the company originally amid large mergers, including USG's main rival, Ocean with Infogrames. Of course more joined later, Core Design infamously. I don't know that much about internal politics, but EIDOS definitely seem to be more marketing than games oriented these days (flogging the Tomb Raider franchise to extinction, turning quite an original game into a shell of it's former self being a prime example). If you're business-minded, you can see they're just covering their collective butts by doing this, just diverting money from what they consider non-essential (read: less profitable) projects to those which stand to make a killing (And let's face it, Romero's return is going to generate an *awful* lot of revenue, whether the game is any good or not). It's not right, and it is extremely sad, but bitching isn't going to help.

Breaking into games programming and development is one of the toughest nuts a geek can crack, but there must be at least a few of us that could muster the time and energy to do it, regardless of platform, and if Open-Source projects can reap capital by being clued up, so can games. It would be too cool (However (un)likely), if we could take the games back, and show the next generation of gamers what they're missing now the marketers are in control.

To the LG boys and girls, we're on your side here. You were one of the few companies I know who could truly claim innovation a lot of the time, and one of the few where every sequel was a better game. On top of that, SS1 and 2 allowed us to experience paranoia in space in a way that only Mac people had (in the form of Marathon) before. As a company, you will be sorely missed. As programmers and gamers, you shall righteously kick ass in greener pastures, I'm sure.

Re:Bad news..

[Bad Mojo]

No matter how bad Diakatana is, there is one thing you must remember. Ion Storm releases nothing but crappy games. Let's see. Dominion: sucked! Diakatana: sucked! Therefore, I reason that Ion Storm is a creater of crap. And BTW, LGS sold more copies of excellent games than Ion Storm did. All Ion Storm had was Boobies (KillCreek) and Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3. You can't honestly expect me to beleive that LGS didn't warrant some cash for System Shock 1 and Theif but Ion Storm did warrant $20M for Dominion?

Now, KillCreek might be worth $20M, but that's my personal sex craved opinion. ;)

Bad Mojo

They aren't really going under...

[WorLord]

They are just deciding to no longer be in the ranks of the legit.

Garett is their president now, and under his expert tutilage, they will be silently swiping valuable Mings and golden chalaces in a city near you (as opposed to dealing with stiff-shirt Suts and bonds and investors and such.) With the type of funding they can get under this new management, it is likely that we'll see Thief 3 in no time.

*sigh*

Hey, I can still dream... that's a good sign.

May the One shine in us all, even if we wish our mechanical eye could shed a tear.
--WorLord

word from the L.Glass family ...

[joelin0]

Having been very close friends and a roommate to one of the LG programmers for the past 3+ years... I think I can safely say that not only were these people incredibly talented and brilliant game developers, but they were also tremendous human beings.

I had a chance to meet, hang out with, and play quake against alot of the LG'ers the past couple of years through my roommate Darren. From Tom Leonard, to Con Hantzopolous, to James and Liz Fleming - they are some incredibly cool and warm people. They'll all do well in their future with whatever avenues they choose. I speak for myself when I say this (so don't quote me).. but from the conversations I had last night about this .. almost expect another company to rise up out of this.

Godspeed LG ...

Re:Don't worry, folks!

[seebs]

"strong sales". So, if something does well, that proves that there are no conditions under which it would have done better?

If there are people who decided not to buy the game because they could warez it, that's less money for the company. If there were enough of those people, that would make the difference.

Do you think that only unpopular games that no one likes are copied? Do you think warez dudez sit around saying "I need a suckier game"? They steal the same things that other people buy, by and large. If a game is cool enough for a couple hundred thousand people to buy it, it's cool enough for some people to steal it.

The video game industry is full of close calls, full of companies "on the edge". That little margin is often a lot smaller than the amount of warez involved.

Re:goodbye to games with an intelligent storyline

[tjwhaynes]

Sad news indeed. I just hope some other company will take over producing entertaining games for those of us who actually appreciate a storyline

Take a look at Bungie Software's offerings - Bungie actually bother crafting something approaching a plot for almost all of their games (as evidenced by the ongoing discussion of the Marathon story years after it was released). Better still, Loki ported Bungie's Myth II to Linux, so there is hope that we might see Oni and Halo at some point. Plot/story/whatever make a huge impact on the longeivity and repeat playability of a game, and it's sad to see a company like Looking Glass shut it's doors, regardless of the rest of the industry.

Cheers,

Toby Haynes

Best company around

[Joe Rumsey]

I've been a huge fan of their games since Ultima Underworld (a first person RPG only loosely tied to the rest of the Ultima series). They are, as far as I'm concerned, the most innovative and consistently excellent developer around. Every game they've done has brought something new to gaming. Three games on the Dark Engine later, there's still nothing else out there with a sound system to match, and even Half-Life could learn a few things about integrating story into gameplay from Thief (1&2) and SS2.

The way the gaming industry works, I'm sure if these guys want to stick together, they will be able to get a deal somewhere under a different name. But it's still incredibly sad to see LG close down. If not for them being in Boston (I like California too much), I would have tried to get a job there long ago.

Bye, LG. Don't let idiots get hold of those licenses (Thief and SS) if you can help it.

Objectives of developing games

[Aero]

Normal:

• Have an idea. Doesn't have to be a good one.
• Form a design team. Doesn't have to stay together.
• If game is somewhere between 50% and 75% finished at Halloween, cut whatever corners are necessary to get game on shelves before Christmas.
• Ship on Marketing's ship date. Why pay beta testers when there are thousands of gamers who will pay to beta-test the game?
• Stay out of the bargain bin for at least 3 months.

Hard:

• Have an idea. Make sure it isn't a total rehash, or simply an excuse to wrap expensive eye candy around not much game.
• Form a design team. Keep them together during the entire project.
• Test and tweak sufficiently to warrant a version number of 1.0 (at least) on the gold master.
• Don't listen to Marketing, but still try to get the game out in time for Christmas if it looks like release will be in Q4.
• Sell 100,000 units.

Expert:

• Have an idea. If you're rehashing, make sure it's a rehash of something you've done, and make sure you're doing it better this time. Even this much rehashing is only permissible in a sequel.
• You've got a design team because, with few exceptions, your people don't leave.
• Make sure the game works. Nobody wants to download patches. Nobody catches all the bugs, true, but the game should be fundamentally sound out of the chute.
• Don't set a release date. Don't let Marketing set a release date. Screw Christmas.
• Sell 250,000 units.
• Don't kill anyone. Depriving QA personnel of normal lives during beta testing is allowed, though.

Too many developers play at Normal, and game companies aren't the only culprits. Not nearly enough play at Hard, and a literal handful even try Expert. And now there's one fewer of those. Damn shame.

Aero

Looking Glass: The Series Finale

[antdude]

http://members.aol.com/thief2metalage/

Pictures, the story during the last meeting...

Re:Bad news..

[FreshView]

Edios didn't necessarily give that money to Ion Storm just to fund Daikatana. It was given to Ion Storm as a whole, in order to buy out Ion Storm, Eidos now has a 51% stake in Ion Storm.

Looking Glass had their shot, their problem was that their games didn't appeal to a mass audience, it's sad to see a quality company go down, and it's even sadder to think that in order to succeed, you have to pander to the masses, but it also seems accurate.

BTW: I haven't yet purchased DK, but I probably will, I did enjoy the demo.

Re:The closure came as quite a shock

[joelin0]

As a side note ... it began almost immediately after the announcement.

I know of LG people getting voicemail from rabid recruiters less than an hour after it got reported. Messed up ... they're like crazed vultures those dudes.

Anonymous Info Posted Elsewhere

[StrutterX]

Posted in the evil avatar and fat babies forums:

Start quote:

Well, gee, I guess not all of us can be as hugely
successful as some people around here.

And, I'm happy to know we have such industry luminaries
who know so much about the inner workings and
sales numbers of LG writing our epitaph.

To make things clear:

0) Underworld 1/2, System Shock, Flight Unlimited 1
all sold very well, and were not money losers. Terra
Nova, BOCG, and FUIII sold poorly, and were. Viacom
killed the torturous hell of ST:V. FUII was break-even. BOCG
and TN left the company with a pretty big hole.

1) Thief sold *much, much* better than has been portrayed
in this thread, and at a very high average per-copy price. The
average retail price didn't drop below $30 until nine months
after we shipped. Including OEM deals it made millions
for LG.

2) SS2 didn't sell as well as hoped, but it was produced for
only a small margin over advances. It didn't sink us.

3) [The wood] One project was grossly undersold to publisher A,
and we mismanaged it to make the effect even worse. This
incurred unexpected costs.

4) [The coffin] After the team signed up to do a game signed
with publisher B bailed (unexpectedly and uncooly), publisher
B had grounds to pull out, did, and subtracted millions from
the LG FY2000/2001 budget. This was a disaster.

5) [The nails] Publisher C had stock, cash, other product
schedule slips, and banking issues that killed the acquisition
of LG that had been under LOI.

So there we were. Plenty of long-term income potential in
the briskly selling Thief 2, and signed deals. No short term
operating capital. Can't pay the bills, can't pay salaries?
Can't keep the doors open.

End quote

Someone else pointed out that:

"gross mismanagement following last year's buyout of Looking Glass by Intermetrics is what doomed the company"

Just reporting what I've read, and they ain't my opinions, because I wouldn't know!

StrutterX

Bad news..

[jeremy f]

Apparently, Eidos was set to buy Looking Glass completly, which had been going through a financial crisis (mostly due to having Eidos as a publisher), but Eidos themselves were strapped for cash, so they decided not to buy Looking Glass.

This is what happened.

The real kicker is that they (Eidos) donated $20 million to Ion Storm to help John Romero get Daikatana out the door. I, for one, will delete all games off of my computer the moment I hear that Daikatana sells even half as many copies as Thief II has, or recieves a single greater review than any of Thief II's reviews.

Food for thought

[Badgerman]

I remember Theif, Thief II, and System Shock having excellent reviews.

This is good evidence that good reviews don't mean success, and that the gaming industry, seen as some as a haven for programmers, can be a nasty place.

And yet Ion "Egofest" Storm survives . . .

Sad day! We also need an editor for System Shock 2

[antdude]

I love System Shock 2. I haven't played an immersive game like this for years. I would play this game until 5am and actually got scared (I jumped ;)). A definite good game! I never got into System Shock 1 and Thief games though.

I hope the SS2 community can get ahold of the editor to keep the game alive. There is a thread about it: http://www.ttlg.com/forums/ubb/Forum9/HTML/000533. html ... DOOM, Quake, Duke Nukem, etc. are still alive and popular because of editors. Now, if SS2 can do the same... :)

A Dang Shame...

[iceT]

Looking Glass was definately one of my favorite companies for games. Thief was one of the most innovative 1st person games I'd seen. With it's attention to sound, light (You gotta love the idea of a 'water arrow'!) and my favorite of all first-person game moves: The lean.

For YEARS I had been sitting in my chair leaning forward to 'peek' around a corner in games like Doom, Duke Nukem, Quake, et. al. (and NO, it didn't work, but it never stopped me from tryint!) Then came Thief, a game where I could actually do that digitally!! Seriously cool!

I'm sorry to see a company with such an innovative perspective close up so quickly.. (I mean, Thief II just came out just a few months ago!)

Back to the search for new and innovative games!

Vote with your wallet!

[Majix]

If you look at the sales statistics of PC games you'll notice that most games sell surprisingly few copies. A game can be called successful today if it manages to ship over 10 000 units. When we're talking about quantities this small, every single sale counts!

This has been said before, but I'll say it again: If you don't want to be playing Tomb Raider and RTS clones the rest of your life, support quality games by *buying* them. Don't warez that copy of Escape from Monkey Island, support LucasArts as one of the last makers of classic adventure games! Buy a Jane's simulation game, while they still make them!

Don't settle for that cloned, watered down, so called game, try a game from a different genre for once, you might be positively surprised!

Bleh

[Steeltoe]

"Feeling guilty" is just a way for someone or something to have control over you. Right now you're trying to have control over people "pirating" (what a lame word). It's very obvious, but we're so used to it we don't think about it. We're affected though, even if it really doesn't change our habits, it changes how we feel about ourselves.

You may think that this is allright, but it's really not. So what if a company dies a horrible death? It's just a company, not living. Why should anyone of us feel guilty of their bad business decisions? It was totally out of our reach for us, and to pretend otherwise is controversial at best. Why do you want to push _bad feelings_ on thousands of people? What good do you really think that is? If you think that every means is justifiable to meet an end, well I could just kill you to make you shut up (ironic).

1) The capitalistic market we're living in doesn't permit fringe awesome quality games that Looking Glass has made (Ultima Underworld I & II, Thief I & II, etc. We shouldn't feel guilty because we're living in a world where Brittney Spears tops the rankings, and Smashing Pumpkins have to give up against the marketing machine. We should _change_ it, promote change at the very least. It doesn't help to whine.

2) Was piracy really any worse for Looking Glass' products than for any others? Would it really matter, with more money they could just as well do bigger mistakes. Who knows? Stop putting people down!

3) If all games were sold at the price they have now, and it was impossible to pirate them, I wouldn't play much. That wouldn't be a bad thing either. Not that I'm playing much now anyways, I'm thinking more of before, and hell, at that time I would perhaps afford to get ripped off buying a game every 2 months (if I used up all my allowance).

I'm sad that the people behind Looking Glass have to go through this. They surely don't deserve it, but I'm sure they'll be offered good jobs in other companies. Liff sucks and all that.

I would be happy to pay the price to play games all the time. On occations I buy games I really want or if they're huge (1 CD, most are these days). But even though I make alot of money, doesn't mean I can afford all the games I want to try. Besides, most of the times I've bought a game I've felt REALLY ripped off!

Yes, life is controversial and full of dilemmas. But if we stop fighting and controlling each other, instead do good, there's a much better chance for us.

- Steeltoe

Yes, I know my opinions suck ;-)

Re: Eidos...

[antdude]

I have to agree. Eidos donated too much money to wrong company. LGS should have gotten it. I did not like Daikanta at all. I hope the game developers of LGS continue to make awesome games. :(

This sucks.

[Mr. Flibble]

This really really sucks.

In my personal list of my top 10 favorite games of all time, a full 6 of those are Looking Glass games. The only complaint that I ever had about their software is that it was not ported to Linux. Other than Half-Life, all the games by Looking Glass (well, not the golf or flight sim ones) are the only reason that I still have a Windows partiton.

I was really hoping for Loki to port some of their stuff. :(

For those of you who have NOT tried a Looking Glass game (or anything by Warren Spector, now of Ion Storm) I STRONGLY urge you to buy one. Thief I/II and System shock I/II are simply mind boggling in their depth. Of those four titles, only one is currently "expensive" that one is Thief II. The rest lie in the bargin bin. System Shock should run under Dosemu (Have not tried).

So, even though this wonderful game company is dissapering it does not mean that we should forego their wonderful games.

*sigh*

Now my only hope is Warren Spectors "Deus Ex"

I'll miss you guys.

Re: Addendum to this thread...

[antdude]

More on that ShockEd from http://www.ttlg.com/forums/ubb/Forum9/HTML/000543. html thread:

"The employees didn't know of the closure until this afternoon. I was immediately notified, and because of this, I now have ShockEd and the mission files in my hands as we speak.

I'm going to make sure if it's okay to post everything that we're under NDA for, then I will go ahead and release ShockEd to the public. Or maybe wait until we get it working properly before tampering with it."

Some good news at least

[CausticPuppy]

One of the senior designers at LG posted in rec.aviation.simulators that they were still working out if/how to finish up Jane's Attack Squadron which was nearing completion. Here's a snippet:

Third, I want to comment on Jane's Attack Squadron (err, we STILL call it Flight Combat in the pit). There is a good chance that we may actually finish the game. It's been a LONG haul for the team, 28 months to be exact, and with about 2 months left to go it would be a shame to not see it ship. We really want to finish it. And although I can't speak for EA, we think that they want to finish it too. But it's all up to the creditors (the game is bonded, which is a good thing), who are coming in tomorrow to look at the game. And that's all I can really say about that. I'll know more by tomorrow afternoon.

I don't know if anybody here is a flight sim buff, but I am, and having the graphics engine + flight model of the Flight Unlimitd series, combined with the ability to SHOOT STUFF (finally!) would make me..... so happy......

Irrational Games - Pheonix from the Ashes

[DrVital]

While Looking Glass has done many amazing things over the last few years, a number of former LG team members are currently working for Irrational Games. This is the same company that produced Shock II, and are now doing "The Lost" for Crave. They are keeping the tradition of quality story and gameplay alive. http://www.irrational-games.com/

Don't worry, folks!

[seebs]

Thanks to the magic of software piracy, you'll still be able to get all the games they've released, at the same price you've always paid.

Remember, software piracy doesn't hurt developers, crappy and overpriced products do.

Keep repeating it, maybe someday you won't feel guilty anymore.

(Disclaimer: I know full well most pirates don't feel guilty anyway.)

*sigh*.