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

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.

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 ...

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

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.

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... :)

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: 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."